Beside Bruce, Ruffy aimed carefully and shot him in the head, ending it.
'There must be more, protested Bruce. 'Where are they hiding?'
'in the offices, I'd say.' And Bruce turned his attention quickly to the
block of Union Mini&e offices. The windows were in darkness and as he
stared he thought he saw movement. He glanced quickly back at
Wally's men and saw that four of them had bunched up close behind Wally
as they ran.
'Hendry, watch out!' he shouted with all his strength.
'On your right, from the offices!' But it was too late, gunfire sparkled
in the dark windows and the little group of running men disintegrated.
Bruce and Ruffy fired together, raking the windows, emptying their
automatic rifles into them. As he reloaded Bruce glanced back at where
Wally's men had been hit.
With disbelief he saw that Wally was the only one still on his feet;
crossing the road, sprinting through an area of bullet-churned earth
towards them, he reached the verandah and fell over the low wall.
'Are you wounded?' Bruce asked.
'Not a touch - those bastards couldn't shoot their way out of a
French letter, Wally shouted defiantly, and his voice carried clearly in
the sudden hush. He snatched the off the bottom of his rifle, threw
it aside empty magazine and clipped on a fresh one. 'Move over,' he
growled, 'let me get a crack at those bastards.' He lifted his rifle and
rested the stock on top of the wall, knelt behind it, cuddled the butt
into his shoulder and began firing short bursts into the windows of the
office block.
'This is what I was afraid of.' Bruce lifted his voice above the clamour
of the guns. 'Now we've got a pocket of resistance right in the centre
of the town. There must be fifteen or twenty of them in there - it might
take us days to winkle them out.' He cast a longing look at the
canvascovered trucks lined up outside the station yard.
'They can cover the lorries from here, and as soon as they guess what
we're after, as soon as we try and move them, they'll knock out that
tanker and destroy the trucks.' The firelight flickered on the shiny
yellow and red paint of the tanker. It looked so big and vulnerable
standing there in the open. It needed just one bullet out of the many
hundred that had already been fired to end its charmed existence.
We've got to rush them now, he decided. Beyond the office block the
remains of Wally's group had taken cover and were keeping up a heated
fire. Bruce's group straggled up to the hotel and found positions at the
windows.
'Ruffy.' Bruce caught him by the shoulder. 'We'll take four men with us
and go round the back of the offices. From that building there we've got
only twenty yards or so of open ground to cover. Once we get up against
the wall they won't be able to touch us and we can toss grenades in
amongst them.'
'That twenty yards looks like twenty miles from here,' rumbled Ruffy,
but picked up his sack of grenades and crawled back from the verandah
wall.
'Go and pick four men to come with us,' ordered Bruce.
'Okay, boss. We'll wait for you in the kitchen.'
