quick-firing guns. Guns that could crash a missile into his frontal
armour, through the engine block, through the hull compartment and any
crew members in its path, then out through the rear armour with
sufficient velocity still on it to do the same again to the car
behind.
'Tanks,' he muttered. 'Bloody tanks.'
'I say, an eagle scout in our midst,' murmured Gareth, sitting
comfortably up in the turret of
Priscilla the Pig. 'A tenderfoot might have thought those tracks were
made by a dinosaur but you can't fool old hawk-eye Barton, son of the
Texas prairies,' and he reached out to stub his cheroot against the'
side of the turret, an action which he knew would annoy Jake
intensely.
Jake grunted and stood up. 'I'm going to buy you an ashtray for your
next birthday.' His voice was brittle. It did not matter that his
beloved cars might be shot at by rifle, machine gun and now by cannon
that they had been scarred by flying gravel and harsh thorn. The
deliberate crushing of burning tobacco against the fighting steel
annoyed him, as he knew it was meant to.
'Sorry, old son.' Gareth grinned easily. 'Slipped my mind.
Won't happen again.' Jake swung up the side of the car and dropped
into the driver's seat. Keeping the engine noise down to a low murmur,
a sound as sweet and melodious in his ears as a Bach concerto,
he let Priscilla move away across the moon gilded plain.
When Jake and Gareth were alone like this, out on a reconnaissance or
working together in the gorge, the dagger of rivalry was sheathed and
their relationship was relaxed and comforting, spiced only by the mild
needling and jostling for position. It was only in Vicky
Camberwell's physical presence that the knife came out.
Jake thought about it now, thought about the three of them as he did a
great deal each day. He knew that, after that magical night when he
and Vicky had known each other on the hard desert earth, she was his
woman. It was too wonderful an experience to have shared with another
human being for it not to have marked and changed both of them
profoundly.
Yet in the weeks since then there had been little opportunity for
reaffirmation a single stolen afternoon by a tall mist-smoking
waterfall in the gorge, a narrow ledge of black rock, cool with shadow
and green with soft beds of moss, and screened from prying eyes by the
overhang of the precipice. The moss had been as soft as a feather bed,
and afterwards they swam naked together in the swirling cauldron of the
pool, and her body had been slim and pale and lovely through the dark
water.
Then again, he had watched her with Gareth Swales the way she laughed,
or leaned close to him to listen to a whispered comment, and the
mock-modest shock at his outrageous sallies, the laughter in her eyes
and on her lips.
Once she touched his arm, a thoughtless gesture while in conversation
with Gareth, a gesture so intimate and possessive that
Jake had felt the black jealous anger fill his head.
