He strained with all his weight before the steel wheels made a single reluctant revolution, then gravity took her and the cocoa pan began to roll. Give the bastard hell! Sean Courtney yelled, as he realized suddenly what Mark was going to do, and Mark grinned without mirth at that characteristic exhortation, and he trotted along, doubled up behind the heavily-laden steel truck.
A terrible tearing, hammering storm of Vickers broke over the slowly rolling truck, and instinctively Mark ducked lower and steadied himself against the metal side.
He realized that as he came closer to the tower, so the gunner's angle would change until he was shooting almost directly down on top of Mark, then the side of the truck would give him no cover, but he was committed. Nothing would stop the slowly accelerating rush of the cocoa pan down the slope, it had the weight of ten tons of rock behind it and its speed was gathering. Soon he would not be able to keep up with it, already he was running, and the Vickers roared again, the bullets screeching and wailing furiously off the steel body.
Twisting as he ran, he slung the rifle on one shoulder and reached up to hook both hands over the side of the truck. He was pulled instantly off his feet, and they dangled without foothold, in danger of being caught up in the spinrung steel wheels. He drew his knees up under his chin, hanging all his weight on his arms and taking the intolerable strain in his belly muscles as the truck flew down into the stretching octopus shadow of the headgear.
Still hanging on his arms, Mark flung his head back and looked up. The tower was fore shortened by perspective, and it crouched over him like some menacing monster, stark against the mellow morning sky, crude black steel and timber baulks pyramiding into the heavens. At its zenith, Mark could see the pale mirrortike face of the gunner, and the thick water-jacketed barrel of the Vickers trained down at its maximum depression.
The gun flamed, and bullets rang the steel near his head like a great bell. They churned into the blue rock, disintegrating into chips of buzzing metal and shattering the rock into vicious splinters and pellets that cut at his hands so that he screwed his eyes shut and clung helplessly.
Such was the speed of the truck now that he was under fire for only seconds, and the gunner's aim could not follow it, as it raced down on to the concrete loading bank, and slammed into the buffers. The force of the impact was brutal and Mark was hurled from his perch, the rifle-strap snapped and the weapon sailed away, and Mark turned in the air and hit the sloping concrete ramp on his side with a crash that jarred his teeth in his head. The rough concrete ripped away the thick barathea cloth from his hip and leg and shoulder, and scared the flesh beneath with gravel burn.
He came up at last against a stack of yellow-painted oildrums, and his first concern was to roll on to his back and stare upwards.
He was under the headgear now, protected from the gunner by the legs and intricate steel girders of the tower itself, and he pulled himself to his feet, dreading the give and crippling drag of broken bone. But though his body felt crushed and bruised, he could still move, and he hobbled to where his rifle lay.
The strap was broken, and the butt was cracked and splintered, and as he lifted it, it snapped into two pieces.
He could not fire from the shoulder.
The foresight had been knocked off, and the broken metal had a sugary grey crystalline look. He could not aim the weapon. He would have to get close, very close.
There was a deep bright scar in the steel of the breech.
He muttered a prayer, Please God! as he tried to work the bolt open. It was jammed solid and he struggled with it fruitlessly for precious seconds. All right, he thought grimly. No butt to hold to the shoulder, no foresight with which to aim, and only the one cartridge in the breech, it's going to be interesting. He looked around him quickly.
Beneath the steel tower, the two square openings to the main shaft were set into the concrete collar, protected by screens of steel mesh. The one cage stood at the surface station, doors open, ready for the next shift. The other was at the bottom station, a thousand feet below ground level.
They had stood that way for months now. On the far side was the small service elevator which would take maintenance teams the hundred feet to the summit of the tower in half a minute. However, there was no power on the shaft head, and the elevator was useless.
The only other way up was the emergency ladder. This was an open steel stairway that spiralled up around the central shaft, protected only by a low handrail of inch piping.
High above Mark's head the Vickers fired again, and Mark heard a scream of agony out there on the roadway. it hastened him, and he limped to the stairway.
The steel-mesh gate was open, the padlock shattered, and Mark knew by what route the sniper had reached his roost.
He stepped on to the stairway and began to climb, following the coils up the casing round and round, and up and up.
Always at his right hand, the open black mouth of the shaft gaped, an obscene dark orifice in the earth's surface, dropping straight and sheer into the very bowels, a thousand dark terrifying feet.
Mark tried to ignore it, dragging his bruised and aching body up by the handrail, carrying the broken weapon in his other hand, and strained his neck backwards for the first glimpse of the gunner above.
The Vickers fired again, and Mark glanced sideways. He was high enough now to see into the road, one of the trucks was burning, a tall dragon's breath of smoke and sullen flame pouring into the sky, and the drab khaki bodies were still strewn in the open, death's discarded toys.
Even as he watched, the Vickers fire thrashed over them, mangling already dead flesh, and Mark's anger became cold and bright as a dagger's blade. Keep firing, luv, Fergus croaked in that husky stranger's voice. Short bursts. Count to twenty slowly, and then a touch on the button. I want him to think that I am still up here. He pulled the Webley from his belt, and crawled on his belly towards the head of the steep staircase. Don't leave me, Fergus. It'll be all right, he tried to grin, but his face was grey and crumpled. Just you keep firing. I'm going down to meet him halfway. He'll not expect that. I don't want to die alone, she breathed. Stay with me. I'll be back, luv. Don't fuss yourself, and he slid on his belly into the opening of the staircase.
She felt like a child again, in one of those terrible dark nightmares, trapped and enmeshed in her own fate, and she wanted to cry out. The sound reached her lips but died there as a low blubbering moan.
