The sun was clear of the horizon now, smearing long dark shadows across
the golden sands. Dust and smoke from the mortar barrage still drifted
in a stately brown cloud over the ridge, and the bodies of the dead
were thrown at random across the bare plain. The women's dresses made
bright splashes of colour against the monochrome of the desert.
Jake swept a swift glance around the ridge that commanded the plain,
and saw that many of the Italian troopers had left their trenches. They
wandered in small groups around the edges of the slaughter ground, and
their movements were awed and timid green troops still not hardened to
the reality of open wounds and twisted corpses.
They froze in attitudes of surprise as the car burst out of the wadi,
and flew on usty wings towards the nearest waterhole. It took many
seconds for them to move, and then they turned and pelted for their
earthworks, tiny figures in dark uniforms with legs and arms pumping in
frantic haste.
'Turn broadside,' yelled Jake. 'Show them the crosses!' and Vicky
reacted swiftly, swinging the car into a tight lefthander that had her
up on two wheels, sliding broadside in the sand, displaying to the
Italians the huge scarlet crosses on the hull.
'Let me have your shirt,' Jake yelled again. It was the only white
cloth they had with them. 'I need a flag of truce!'
'It's all I have on,' Vicky shrieked back. 'I'm bare underneath.'
'You want to be modest and dead?' howled Jake. 'They'll start
shooting any moment now.' And she steered with one hand as she
unbuttoned her shirt front and leaned forward in the seat to yank the
tails out of her skirt. She shrugged out of it and reached up into the
turret to hand him the bundled shirt. Each time they hit another bump,
Vicky's breasts bounced like rubber balls, a sight that distracted Jake
for a hundredth part of a second before chivalry and duty recalled him
and he stood high in the turret, arms stretched above his head,
streaming the white shirt like a flag, balancing with a sailor's legs
against the wild antics of the car.
To the hundreds of men who lined the parapet of the Italian trenches
Jake displayed two emotive symbols, the red cross and the white flag,
symbols so powerful that even men in the white-hot must of the blood
lust hesitated with their fingers still curled about the triggers of
the machine guns.
'It's working,' shrieked Vicky, and swung the car on to its original
heading, almost throwing Jake from his precarious roost in the turret.
He dropped the shirt and clutched wildly at the coamings of the turret,
the shirt floating away like a white egret on the wing.
'There she is,' Vicky cried again. The carcass of the white stallion
lay dead ahead, as she braked hard and then pulled the car to a
standstill beside it, interposing the armoured body of the car between
the pile of bodies and the watching Italians on the ridge.
Jake dropped down into the cab and crawled back to open the rear double
doors of the car, knocking open the locking handles as he called over
his shoulder.
'Keep your hatch battened and don't, for chrissakes, show your head.'
