The silhouette of the truck altered as it turned back towards them, once again dust rose in a feathery tail behind it.
"They are coming on!" Perhaps he had fluked a hit on the driver, but whatever damage he had inflicted, it was not permanent. It had stopped them for less than two minutes and now, if anything, the truck was coming on faster than before. As if to emphasize that fact, another burst of heavy machinegun fire hit the Land-Rover with a crash.
In the cab, somebody screamed, and the sound was ask, shrill and feminine. Craig went cold, not daring to clinging to the roof tack frozen with dread.
and Craig"s "Timon"s been hit." Sally-Anne"s voice heart raced with relief.
"How bad?"
"Bad. He"s bleeding all over."
"We can"t stop. Keep going." Craig looked desperately ahead, and there was a great nothingness stretched before him. Even the stunted trees had disappeared. It was flat and featureless, the reflection from the white pans turned the sky milky pale and smudged the horizon so that there was no clear dividing line between earth and air, nothing to hold the eye.
Craig dropped his gaze, and shouted, "Stop!" To enforce the order he stamped on the roof of the cab with all his strength. Sally" Anne reacted instantly, and locked the brakes. The crippled Land-Rover skidded broadside, and came up short.
The cause of Craig"s urgency was an apparently innocuous little yellow ball of fur, not as big as a football. It hopped in front of the vehicle, on long kangaroo back legs, totally out of proportion to the rest of its body, and then abruptly disappeared into the earth.
"Spring hare! Craig called. "A huge colony, right across our front."
AA.
"Kangaroo rats!" Sally-Anne leaned out of the window, the engine idling, turning her face up to his for guidance.
They had been fortunate. The spring hare was almost entirely nocturnal, the single animal outside the burrows was an exceptional warning in daylight. Only now, under close scrutiny, could Craig make out the extent of the colony. There were tens of thousands of burrows, the entrances inconspicuous little mounds of loose earth, but Craig knew that the sandy soil beneath them would be honeycombed with the inter linking burrows, the entire area undermined to a depth of four feet or so.
That ground would not bear the weight of a mounted man, let alone the Land" Rover With the engine idling, Craig could clearly hear the roar of the truck behind them, and machine-gun fire whiplashed over them, so close that Craig ducked instinctively.
"Turn left! "he shouted. "Back towards the pan: They turned at right, angles across the front of the approaching truck, machinegun fire goading them on, Timon"s groans reachirg Craig above the engine beat. He closed his ears to them.
"There is no way through" Sally-Anne called. The spring-hare burrows were everywhere.
"Keep going," Craig answered her. The truck had swung to cut them off, closing very swiftly now.
"There!" Craig cried with relief. As he had guessed, the spring, bare colony mopped short of the salt, pan edge, avoiding the brackish seepage from the pan. There was a narrow bridge through, and Craig guided Sally-Anne into it. Within five hundred paces they were over the bridge with the ground firm ahead. Sally-Anne pushed the Land Rover to its limit, directly away from the pursuit.
"No! No!" Craig called. "Turn right, hard right." She hesitated.
"Do it, d.a.m.n you!" And suddenly she saw what he intended, and she spun the steering-wheel, running ite direction across the front Of the back in the OPPOS approaching truck.
Immediately the truck turned to head them off again, turning away from the pan, and from the bridge of firm ground through the subterranean maze of burrows. It was so close that they could see the heads of the troopers in the open back, catch the colour of a burgundy-red ge, hear the beret and the bright spark of a silver cap-bad fierce, bloodthirsty yells, see an AK 47 rifle brandished triumphantly.
feet ahead Machine,gun fire ploughed up the earth ten the standing dust.
of the Land-Rover and they tore into Craig was blazing away with the AK 47, trying to keep the driver"s attention off the ground ahead of the truck.
as he changed "Please! Please, let it happen," he pleaded G.o.ds were listening.
the magazine on the hot rifle. And the full bore.
The truck went into the undermined ground at ing into a pitfall. The earth it was like an elephant running opened and swallowed her down, and as she went in she men out of toppled to one side hurling the load of armed the back. When the dust rolled aside, she was half buried, around her, lying on her side. Human bodies were strewn upright, others me of them beginning to drag themselves so lying where they had been thrown.
y"ll need a bull" That it! Craig shouted down. "The dozer to get out of that."
"Craig!" she called back. "Timon is in a bad way. Can"t you help him?"
"Stop for a second." the roof, and scrambled into the back Craig dropped off seat, and immediately Sally" Anne drove on.
eat, his head Timon was lying sprawled half off the s thrown back and pillowed against the door. He had lost gargled in his throat, and the his gla.s.ses. His breathing back of his battle-jacket was a soggy mess Of blood. Craig eased him cautiously back in the seat and unzipped his jacket.
He was appalled. The bullet must have come in through the metal cab, and been deformed by the impact into a primitive durn-durn. It had torn a hole the size of a demita.s.se coffee cup in Timon"s back. There was no exit wound.
The bullet was still in there.
There was a first-aid box clamped to the dashboard.
Craig took out two field dressings, stripped the wrappers and wadded them over the wound. Hampered by the Land Rover"s erratic and violent motion, he strapped them tightly.
"How is he?" Sally-Anne took her eyes off the ground ahead for a moment.
"He"s going to be okay," Craig said for Timon"s benefit, but to Sally-Anne he shook his head and mouthed a silent denial.
Timon was a dead man. It was merely a matter of an hour or two. n.o.body could survive a wound like that. The smell of hot metal in the cab was suffocating.
can"t breathe," Timon whispered, and sawed for breath.
Craig had hoped he was unconscious, but Timon"s eyes were focusing on his face. Craig knocked out the Perspex pane of the window above Timon"s head with his fist, to give him more air. A
"My gla.s.ses," Tim(on said. "I can"t see." Craig found the steel-rimmed spectacles on the floor between the seats, and placed them on the bridge of his nose, ing ille sis over is ears.
"Thank you, Mr. Mellow." Incredibly, Timon smiled. "It doesn"t look as though I"ll be coming with you, after all." Craig was surprised by the strength of his own regret.
He gripped Timon"s shoulder firmly, hoping that physical contact might comfort him a little.
"The truck?" Timon asked.
"We knocked it out."
"Good for you, sir." with the smell of burning As he spoke, the cab filled rubber and oil.
"We"re on fire! Sally-Anne cried, and Craig whipped around in the seat.
The front end of the Land-Rover was burning, red hot metal from the damaged bearing had ignited the grease and rubber of the front tyre. Almost immediately the -tough the engine bearing seized up completely, and aid roared vainly, they ground to a halt. The slipping clutch wing out from under the burned out, more smoke spe cha.s.sis.
"Switch off Craig ordered and banged open the door, grabbing the fire, extinguisher from its rack on the doorpost.
He sprayed a white cloud of powder over the burning front end, snuffing out the flames almost instantly, and then unhitched and lifted the bonnet, scalding his fingers on hot metal. He sprayed the engine compartment to of the fire, and then stood back.
prevent a resurgence "Well," he said with finality. "This bus isn"t going anywhere any more! The silence after the engine roar and the gunfire was overpowering. The pinking of cooling metal from the body ig walked of the Land" Rover sounded loud as cymbals. Cra to the rear of the cab and looked back. The bogged truck was out of sight behind them in the heat haze. The silence buzzed in his ears and the loneliness of the desert bore down upon him with a physical weight and substance, seeming to slow his movements and his thinking.