Juggernaut

'You know tanks too?'

The army taught me. There isn't anything on wheels I don't know,' he said with simple egotism. Proctor, alongside me, nodded in his grave fashion.

I said, 'Can you drive it out?'

'I'm pretty sure so. This thing never got a hit. The crew just baled out and she piled herself up in the dust here. Want me to try?'

'Why not?'

His head bobbed down and after a lot of metallic noises the engine of the tank burst into noisy song. It moved, at first forward and digging itself deeper into the ditch, and then in reverse. With a clatter of tracks and to spattered applause it heaved itself out of the gulley and onto the road. There was a pause and then the turret started to move. The gun traversed around and depressed, pointing right at us.

'Stick 'em up, pal!' yelled McGrath, reappearing and howling with laughter.

'Don't point that thing at me,' I said. 'Once a day is enough Well, it looks as though we've just added one serviceable tank to the Wyvern fleet. Captain Sadiq will be delighted.'

CHAPTER 9

It was an uneasy night. Nothing more happened to disturb us, but very few of us got a full night's sleep; there was a great deal of coming and going to the chuck wagon, much quiet talking in the darkness, a general air of restlessness. The day had been packed with incident, a total contrast to the normal slow, tedious routine, and nobody knew what the next day would bring except they could be sure that the routine was broken.

The rig had reached the valley where the tanks had been hit, and was resting there. Kemp had no intention of moving it until we knew much more about what had happened in Kodowa, and Sadiq had taken him off at first light to look at the road. I had elected to stay behind.

Talk over breakfast was sporadic and I could sense the crew's tension. Certainly I knew they had been discussing their own safety and the chances of their coming through the conflict unscathed, with less than full confidence, and I suspected that Johnny Burke and Bob Sisley were pushing the shop floor angle rather hard. That could bear watching. I began to put some words together in my mind, against the time when I'd have to give them reasoned arguments in favour of doing things my way. They weren't like Sadiq's army lads, trained to obey without question.

Ben Hammond had gone with Kemp to look at the road. McGrath and three or four of the men were still playing with the tank, which they had cheerfully but firmly refused to turn over to the military until they had tinkered with it for a while longer. The others, including myself, were doing nothing much; everything looked remarkably peaceful and normal if one ignored the three tanks piled up in the gulley by the roadside.

When the interruption came it was heart-stopping.

There was. a mighty rush of air and a pounding roar in our ears. Men sprang to their feet like jack-in-the-boxes as five air force jets screamed overhead at low altitudes, hurtling up over the ridge beyond us.

'Christ!' A pulse hammered in my throat and my coffee spilled as I jerked to my feet.

'They're attacking!' someone yelled and there was a dive for cover, mostly under the shelter of the rig itself, which would have been suicidal if an attack had followed. But no missiles or bombs fell. The formation vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Men resurfaced, staring and chattering. Soldiers grabbed belatedly for their rifles.

'Was it an attack?' Ritchie Thorpe asked me. Having driven up with me he'd been tacitly appointed the position of spokesman.

'No. They were going much too fast. I'm not sure they were even aware of us.'

'Where do you think they're going?'

'God knows.' I felt as if we were on a desert island, with no news getting through. 'Are you sure you can't raise anything on the radios? Any local station?'

'Sorry, Mister Mannix, It's all static. Everything's off the air, I think. Mister Kemp said he'd call in on the half- hour, so I'll be listening in then. Maybe he'll have some news for us.'

There was a distant roar and our faces snapped skywards again. One of the jets was returning, but flying much higher, and as we watched it made a big sweeping circle in the sky and vanished in the direction of the rest of the formation. For a moment it seemed to leave a thin echo behind, and then I stiffened as I recognized what I was hearing.

'Bert. There's another plane. A small one. Can you see it?'

He too stared round the sky.

'No, but I can hear it.' He raised his voice to a shout. 'Any of you see a light plane?'

Everyone stared upwards, and three or four of them scrambled up onto the rig for a better vantage point. It was Brad Bishop on top of the commissary truck who first shouted, 'Yes, over there!' and pointed south.

A moment later I'd seen it too, a small speck of a plane flying low and coming towards us. Longing for binoculars, I kept my eyes glued to the approaching plane and felt a jolt of recognition. I'd never been a flier myself, and though I'd logged hundreds of hours in small company planes as well as in commercial liners I had never developed an eye for the various makes, but this one I definitely knew.

'It's the BE company plane,' I called out. 'We've got visitors.'

'Where can they land?' Thorpe asked me.

'Good question. Kodowa's got a town strip somewhere but I don't know if it's going to be usable. He can't land here, that's for certain.'

But that was where I was wrong.

It wasn't an intentional landing, though. As the plane came nearer we recognized signs of trouble. It was flying in a lopsided, ungainly fashion. A thin trail of smoke came from it, and the full extent of the damage became visible. Part of the undercarriage was missing, and the tailfin was buckled out of alignment.

'She's going to crash.'

'Do you think the jets attacked her?'

I said, 'No – too high, too fast. That was a ground attack. Damn it, she's not a fighter plane, not even armed!'

We watched in alarm as it began a wobbly circle over the bush country, slowly spiralling downwards.

'Bring up the water carrier!' I shouted, and sprinted for the hire car. Three or four others flung themselves in beside me. The car was ill-equipped for bouncing off the road into the bush but with the Land Rover gone there wasn't much choice. The water tanker and some of the military stuff followed. I concentrated on charting the course of the stricken plane and on avoiding the worst of the rocks and defiles in front of me. The others clung on as they were tossed about, leaning out of the car windows in spite of the choking dust clouds to help keep track of the aircraft.

Soon it dipped to the horizon, then went below it at a sharp angle. I tried to force another fraction of speed out of the labouring car. The plane reappeared briefly and I wondered if it had actually touched down and bounced. Then it was gone again and a surge of dust swirled up ahead.

My hands wrenched this way and that to keep the car from slewing sideways in the earth. I brought it joltingly through a small screen of thorn bushes and rocked to a halt, and we looked downhill towards the misshapen hulk that had been airborne only moments before., We piled out and started running. The danger of fire was enormous. Not only would the plane erupt but the bush was likely to catch fire, and we all knew it. But there was no fire as yet, and the plane was miraculously upright.

As we got to the plane a figure was already beginning to struggle to free himself. The plane was a six-seater, but there were only two men visible inside. Our men clambered up onto the smashed wing and clawed at the pilot's door. The water tanker was lumbering towards us and Sadiq's troops were nearer still; I waved the oncoming vehicles to a halt.

'No further! Stay back! If she burns you'll all be caught. No sparks – don't turn your ignition off,' I shouted. 'Wilson, you and Burke start laying a water trail down towards her.'

As one of the big hoses was pulled free and a spray of water shot out, the door was pulled open and the two men inside were helped out. I ran back to the car and brought it closer. One of the plane's occupants seemed to be