With a wave of noise, the crowd surged out of the shadows. Off in the distance, on the fringe of the city, the slums were burning, cordoning off the city with fire. Why was it, Noburu wondered, that in times of disruption the poor burned themselves out first? Despair? A desire to be clean of their scavenged lives?
A single Japanese weapon opened up nearby, then stopped firing after expending a few rounds. His men were holding their fire, waiting until they could get the highest return on each bullet paid out. They did not need orders now. Every man understood.
Noburu could see three tanks crawling toward the gate and the breaches in the wall. It was hard to listen past the thunder of the crowd, but it sounded as if even more tanks were following the first machines.
That was it, then. There were no antitank weapons. No one had imagined a need for them here.
The tanks fired above the crowd, hammering the headquarters building with their guns. The shots seemed random and undisciplined. But they could not help having an effect.
The quickest members of the mob dashed through the gate and scrambled over the breaches in the wall. They stumbled across mounds of shattered masonry, firing wildly and shrieking.
The Japanese held their fire.
Kloete drew out a lean commando knife and teased it twice over the broken stucco that lipped the roof before returning it to its sheath.
'
Noburu turned to the younger man. Akiro stood upright beside him, unwilling to go to ground before his superior did so. But the aide's eyes glowed with fear in the dusk.
'In a moment,' Noburu said. He wanted to look his death in the face.
Akiro began to speak again, then choked and staggered against Noburu, grasping the general with uncustomary rudeness. Noburu had felt the warm wet of the young man's blood peck at his own face.
The aide clutched Noburu's arm, astonished. He remained on his feet, with his insides slipping out of his ripped trousers. He looked at Noburu with the innocence of an abused pet dog.
The aide relaxed his grip on his master and collapsed onto the cement. Freed from the constraints of muscles and tight flesh, the young man's lower internal organs flowed out of him as though fleeing his death and attempting to survive on their own.
Akiro's eyes remained open, and his head moved slightly on the intact axis of his spine. He looked at Noburu with a hopefulness the older man could not bear, as though Akiro expected the wise old general to fix him and make everything right again.
'Akiro,' Noburu said, reaching out to steady the boy's witchings, which continued to expel the contents of his torso.
The aide's lips made a word that Noburu could not decipher.
'Akiro,' Noburu repeated.
The tension went out of the boy's body, and the terrible vibrancy left his eyes.
Kloete opened up with the light machine gun, firing short bursts and cursing. The other machine guns kicked in, as did a few automatic rifles. Noburu kept waiting for the rest of his men to open fire. Then he realized that there were no others.
He picked up Akiro's automatic rifle, wiped off the wet mortality on his trousers, and knelt beside Kloete and the South African NCO. The three men fired over the edge of the roof. Noburu had stopped thinking now. He gave himself up to the trance of action, trying to fire as calmly as if he were on range.
The lead tank surged ahead of the crowd. It shot point-blank into the headquarters, following the main gun round with bright tracers from its machine gun. Tides of bodies fell to the Japanese weaponry, but there seemed to be no end to the mob. The space between the headquarters and the wall grew dense with the living and the dead.
In the blaze of the firefight, Noburu saw one of his men lash from a side door, charging without a rifle. In the last seconds before the man threw himself on top of the tank, Noburu recognized the swell of the grenade in the man's hand.
The explosion drove the nearest members of the mob to their knees. But it did not stop the tank.
'Sonofa
The tank fired again. The building shook beneath them.
The South African NCO fixed a bayonet to his rifle. Kloete drew out his sidearm. He stood up carelessly, cursing and leading his targets, one by one. Noburu fired and watched a dark form tumble.
The line of machine gun tracers crisscrossed down below as the remaining Japanese fired their final protective fires.
Noburu heard a noise that did not fit.
Something was wrong. There was a great hissing, a new noise for which he could not account. Up in the sky. As though enormous winged snakes were descending from the heavens. Dragons.
The lead tank disappeared in a huge white flash that dazzled Noburu's eyes. A stunning bell-like sound was followed by an explosion. His vision of the world crazed into a disorderly mosaic. But he could see the tank burning.
'I can't
The explosion had been as bright as a sun come to earth. The tremendous force of the impact made Noburu's head throb under its disordered bandage. He tried to see into the sky.
Two more explosions drew his eyes back to the earth.
Thank God, he thought, sinking down into himself. Oh, thank God. He found the thought that he was going to live unexpectedly pleasant.
The hissing and sizzling grew louder. The drone of engines began to emerge from under the cowls of their noise suppressors.
Someone had heard. Someone had monitored one of the radio transmissions. Someone had managed to muster an air-mobile relief force.
Kloete glanced over at Noburu between shots.
'Looks like your mates came through,' he said. Then he straight-armed his pistol down at the mob.
The massed attackers wavered at the destruction of their armored support. The tanks had promised them a magic victory. Now the tanks were gone. In the midst of the swarm, high voices sang out prayerlike encouragements.
Noburu still could not see the relief aircraft in the darkened sky. He tried to place them by the sound of their engines. But his ears were ringing. The blast had shocked his senses. And his hearing was half-gone at the best of times.
Nonetheless, it annoyed him that he could not identify the hissing, descending ships.
Whatever kind they were, they were welcome.
As if at an invisible signal, the mob surged forward again. In the suddenness of the rush, the lead figures gained the building. Noburu rose to his full height to spend his last bullets where they were most needed. But he could already hear the distinct echo of fighting inside the headquarters.
Perhaps the relief force would be too late after all. By minutes.
He followed a running figure through the firelight, leading him carefully with his sights. When he was certain he had the man, he squeezed the trigger.
Nothing.
He drew out his pistol. But the man he had targeted had already made his way to the shelter of the building. Down in the belly of the headquarters, something exploded.
'Your boys are fucking
Noburu fired and dropped a running man. The figure rolled over, clutching his knee.
There were too many of them. The attackers were already swinging themselves up to enter the building's second floor windows, leaving no point of entry untried. The last Japanese gun had been silenced.
The noise of the aircraft loomed in heavily. A pillar of fire descended from the heavens, followed by another, then a third. Noburu recognized the accompanying noise: Gatling guns.
