Awl attitudes of defrance gave way to sheepish embarrassment and a small
buzz of conversation filled the silence.
'Mike,' Bruce yelled, urgent again. 'Call the driver, he's trying to
take us through!' The noise of their passage had risen, the driver
accelerating at the sound of the shot, and now they were racing down
towards the U.N. barrier.
Mike Haig grabbed the set, shouted an order into it, and immediately the
brakes swooshed and the train jolted to a halt not a hundred yards short
of the barrier.
Slowly Bruce clambered back on to the roof of the coach.
'Close?' asked Mike.
'My God!' Bruce shook his head, and lit a cigarette with slightly
unsteady hands. 'Another fifty yards-!' Then he turned and stared coldly
down at his gendarmes.
'Canaille! Next time you try to commit suicide don't take me with you.'
The gendarme he had knocked down was now sitting up, fingering the ugly
black swelling above his eye. 'My friend,' Bruce turned on him, 'later I
will have something for your further discomfort!' Then to the other man
in the emplacement beside him who was massaging his neck, 'And for you
also! Take their names, Sergeant Major.'
'Sir!' growled
Ruffy.
'Mike.' Bruce's voice changed, soft again. 'I'm going ahead to
toss the blarney with our friends behind the bazookas. When I give you
the signal bring the train through.'
'You don't want me to come with you?' asked Mike.
'No, stay here.' Bruce picked up his rifle, stung it over his shoulder,
dropped down the ladder on to the path beside the tracks, and walked
forward with the gravel crunching beneath his boots.
An auspicious beginning to the expedition, he decided grimly, tragedy
averted by the wink of an eye before they had even passed the outskirts
of the city.
At least the Mickies hadn't added a few bazooka bombs to the
altercation. Bruce peered ahead, and could make out the shape of helmets
behind the earthworks.
Without the breeze of the train's passage it was hot again, and
Bruce felt himself starting to sweat.
'Stay where you are, Mister.' A deep brogue from the emplacement nearest
the tracks; Bruce stopped, standing on the wooden crossties in the sun.
Now he could see the faces of the men beneath the helmets:
unfriendly, not smiling.
'What was the shooting for?' the voice questioned.
'We had an accident.'
'Don't have any more or we might have one also.'
'I'd not be wanting that, Paddy.' Bruce smiled thinly, and the
Irishman's voice had an edge to it as he went on.
'What's your mission?'
'I have a pass, do you want to see it?'
Bruce took the folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket.
