trajectory across the plain.
It was aimed fractionally low. It passed inches below the tall
shuttered bows of the car, between the two front wheels, and struck the
earth directly below the driver's compartment.
The released energy. of the blast was deflected by the earth's surface
up into the soft underbelly of the hull. It blew the engine block off
its seating, tore off the big front wheels like wings from a roast
chicken, and stove in the steel floor of the hull with a great
Thor's hammer stroke.
If Gareth Swales's feet had been in contact with the steel floor of the
hull, the shock would have been transmitted directly into the bones of
his feet and legs, and he would have suffered that dreadful but
characteristic wound of the tank man below the knees his legs would
have been transformed into bags of shattered bone.
He was, however, suspended half in and half out of the driver's hatch
with both legs kicking frantically in the air, and the shock of the
blast came up like carbon dioxide in a bottle of freshly opened
champagne. He was the cork and he was shot out of the hatch, still
kicking.
The effect on the Ras was the same. He came out of the turret,
propelled high by the blast and he met Gareth at the top of his
trajectory. The two of them came down to earth simultaneously, with
the Ras seated between Gareth's shoulder blades, and the wonder of it
was that neither of them was impaled upon the war sword which went with
them and finally pegged deep into the earth six inches from Gareth's
ear as he lay face down and feebly tried to dislodge the Ras from his
back.
'I warn you, old chap,' he managed to gasp. 'One day you are going to
go too far.' The sound of oncoming engines, many of them and all
roaring in high revolutions, made Gareth's efforts to dislodge the
Ras more determined. He sat up spitting sand and blood from his
crushed lips, and looked up to see the remaining Italian transports
bearing down on them like the starting grid of the Le Mans Grand
Prix.
'Oh my God!' gasped Gareth, his scattered wits reassembling hastily,
and he crawled frantically into the shattered and still smoking carcass
of the Hump, beginning to shrink down out of sight before he realized
that the Ras was no longer with him.
'Rassey, you stupid old bastard come back, he shouted despairingly. The
Ras, once again armed with his trusty broadsword,
was staggering out on unsteady stork's legs, stunned by the shell burst
but still fighting mad, and there was no doubting his intentions. He
was going to take on the entire motorized column single-handed, and as
he hurried to meet them, shouting a challenge, he loosened up with a
few hissing two-handed cuts with the sword.
Gareth had to duck under the swinging blade, going in low in a flying
rugby tackle, to bring the old warrior down in an untidy heap.
He dragged him, still shouting and struggling furiously, under cover of
the broken steel hull, just as the first Italian truck roared past
them. The pale-faced occupants paid them not the slightest attention.
