The castle burned more fiercely than ever, a fire obviously totally out of control. Suddenly, there was the sharp crack of an explosion and the ascending cable-car burst into flames. The car, half-way up to the first pylon, swung in great arcs across the valley, its flames fanned by the wind, and climbed steadily upwards into the sky until its flame was lost in the greater flame of the Schloss Adler.
Crouched in the shelter of the house, Schaffer touched Smith"s arm. "Sure you wouldn"t like to go and burn down the station as well?"
"Come on," Smith said. "The garage."
Colonel Wyatt-Turner leaned over in the co-pilot"s seat, pressed his face against the side-screen and stared down unhappily at the ground. The Mosquito bomber, all engines and plywood, was, he was well aware, the fastest warplane in the world: even so, he hadn"t been prepared for anything quite so fast as this.
Normal flying, of course, imparts no sensation of speed, but then, Wing Commander Carpenter wasn"t engaged in normal flying; he was engaged in what Wyatt-Turner regarded as highly abnormal flying and flying, moreover, that was liable to bring them to disaster at any second. Carpenter was giving a ground-level performance of some spectacular note, skimming across fields, brushing tree-tops, skirting small hills that stood in his way, and Wyatt-Turner didn"t like any of it one little bit. What he liked even less was the appalling speed of their own moon-shadow flitting over the ground beneath them; and what he liked least of all was the increasing number of occasions on which plane and shadow came within" almost touching distance of each other. In an effort to keep his mind off what must inevitably happen when and if the gap were finally closed he withdrew his almost mesmerised stare and glanced at his watch.
"Twenty-five minutes." He looked at the relaxed figure in the pilot"s seat, at the world-weary face that contrasted so oddly with the magnificent panache of the red handlebar -moustache. "Can you make it in time?"
"I can make it," Carpenter said comfortably. "Point is, will they?"
"G.o.d only knows. I don"t see how they can. Both the Admiral and I are convinced that they"re trapped in the Schloss Adler. Besides, the whole countryside must be up in arms by this time. What chance can they have?"
"And that is why you came?"
"I sent them," Wyatt-Turner said emptily. He glanced through the side-screen and recoiled as plane and shadow seemed to touch as they skimmed over the top of a pine forest. He said plaintively: "Must you fly so close to the d.a.m.ned ground?"
"Enemy radar, old chap," Carpenter said soothingly. "We"re safer down here among the bushes."
Smith, with Mary and Jones behind him and Schaffer bringing up the rear, skirted the backs of the houses on the east side of the village street and cautiously made their way through the automobile junkyard to the rear double doors of Sulz"s garage. Smith had his skeleton keys in his hand and was just reaching for the padlock when one of the doors opened quietly inwards. Heidi stood there. She stared at them as if they were creatures from another world, then up at the burning castle, then wordlessly, questioningly, at Smith.
"All here in black and white." Smith patted his tunic. "Into the bus."
Smith waited till they had filed through the door, closed it, crossed to a small barred window at the front of the garage and peered out cautiously.
The street was packed with a milling crowd of people, most of them soldiers, nearly all unarmed men who had come hurrying out from the various Weinstuben to watch the burning Schloss Adler. But there were plenty of armed soldiers nearby -- two truck-loads not thirty yards from the garage, not to mention three more truck-loads even farther up the street at the foot of the lower station. Farther down the street a motorcycle patrol was parked outside "Zum Wilden Hirsch". The one real physical obstacle in the way of their escape was a small command car, manned, parked directly outside the doors of Sulz"s garage. Smith looked at the car thoughtfully, decided that this was an obstacle that could be overcome. He withdrew from the window and crossed over to the doors to check that the four bolts were still withdrawn.
Mary and Carnaby-Jones had already made their way into the bus. As Heidi went to follow, Schaffer caught her by the shoulders, kissed her briefly and smiled at her. She looked at him in surprise.
"Well, aren"t you glad to see me?" Schaffer demanded. "I"ve had a terrible time up there. Good G.o.d, girl, I might have been killed."
"Not as handsome as you were two hours ago." She smiled, gently touched his face where Carraciola"s handiwork with the Schmeisser had left its b.l.o.o.d.y mark, and added over her shoulder as she climbed into the bus: "And that"s as long as you"ve known me."
Two hours! I"ve aged twenty years tonight. And that, lady, is one h.e.l.luva long courtship. Oh, G.o.d!" He watched in wearily resigned despair as Smith climbed into the driver"s seat and switched on the ignition. "Here we go for another twenty. On the floor, everyone."
"How about you?" Heidi asked.
"Me?" Schaffer"s surprise seemed genuine. He smashed the front window with the b.u.t.t of the Schmeisser, reversed the gun, released the trigger and knelt on the floor. "I"m the conductor. It"s against regulations."
The middle finger of Smith"s blood-stained, bandaged hand readied for the starter b.u.t.ton and the big diesel caught at once. Smith started to back towards the rear of the garage. Two perfectly good cars, a Mercedes and an Opel, lay in his way and by the time that Smith -- whose expression betrayed no awareness of their presence -- reached the back of the garage neither were fit for anything other than the sc.r.a.p-heap that lay beyond the rear doors. Smith stopped, engaged first gear, revved up the engine and let in the clutch with a bang. The bus jerked forward, gathering speed as it went.
Smith aimed the angled point of the ma.s.sive snow-plough at the junction of the double doors and for all the resistance the doors offered they might have been made of brown paper. With a splintering crash that sent shattered door-planks flying through the air like so much confetti, the bus roared out into the street, Smith spinning the wheel violently to the.right as they careened into the crowded thoroughfare.
Crowded the thoroughfare might have been, but the pedestrians, the rubber-neckers gazing at the funeral pyre of the Schloss Adler, had had at least sufficient warning given them by the accelerating clamour of the post-bus"s diesel to fling themselves clear as the bus came crashing through the doors. But the command car had no such opportunity for escape. Before either of the two occupants of the front seat -- -a sergeant with his hands resting lightly on the wheel, a major with a radio telephone in one hand, a thin cigar with a long ash in the other -- were properly aware of what was happening, their car was swept up and carried away on the post-bus"s snow-plough. For fifteen, perhaps even twenty yards, the command car was carried along, precariously balanced, on the broad blade of the snow-plough, before dropping off to one side. Miraculously enough, it landed on even keel, all four wheels still on the ground. The dazed major still had the telephone in one hand, the cigar in the other: he hadn"t even lost the ash from his cigar.
Farther down the street, outside "Zum Wilden Hirsch", a group of Alpenkorps motor-cyclists standing just outside the door stared incredulously up the street. Their first reaction, their immediate conclusion was either that Zep Salzmann, the highly popular driver of the post-bus, had gone, mad or that the accelerator had jammed on the floor-boards. Disillusionment was rapid. They heard the unmistakable sound of an engine changing up quickly through the gears and caught a brief glimpse of Smith hunched over the steering wheel and of Schaffer crouched behind, the Schmeisser sticking out through the right-hand shattered windscreen: then the post-bus"s headlamps switched on and they could see no more. But they had seen enough. One quick command from their sergeant and the motor-cycle patrol leapt for their machines, began to kick them into life.
But Smith also had seen enough. He blew a warning blast on his town horn, twisted the wheel and slewed the bus into the side of the street. His intentions were unmistakable and the motor-cycle patrol"s decision to elect for discretion in lieu of suicidal valour was as immediate as it was automatic. They frantically abandoned their machines and flung themselves for their lives up the steps of "Zum Wilden Hirsch".
There was a thunderous series of metallic bangs interspersed with the eldritch screeches of torn and tortured metal as the snow-plough smashed into the motor-cycles and swept them along in its giant maw. As Smith straightened out into the middle of the road again several of them slid off the angled blade and crashed with a great splintering of wood and buckling of metal into the boarded sidewalk: the machines were no longer recognisable as motor-cycles. Two of them, however still remained perched on the blade.
The post-bus was still accelerating with Smith"s accelerator foot flat on the floor-boards. The headlamps were flashing rapidly, alternately main beam and dipped, and the streets ahead were clearing with corresponding rapidity: but the moment when the last few straggling pedestrians were gal-vanished into jumping for safety came when Smith switched on the Alpine horn.
In the mountains, the Alpine post-bus has absolute priority over every other vehicle in the road and its penetrating and stentorian three-toned post-horn is the symbol of its total authority, of its unquestioned right to complete priority at all times. The sound of that horn -- whether the post-bus is in sight or not -- is the signal for all vehicles or pedestrians to stop or move well into the side of the road, a signal that is immediately and automatically obeyed, for the absolute ent.i.tlement to the right of way of the official post-bus is deeply ingrained into the minds of all Alpine dwellers, and has been( from earliest childhood. A magic wand might have made a better job of clearing that village street, but not all that much better; vehicles and pedestrians alike pressed into the sides of the street as if some powerful magnetic affinity had just been developed between them and the walls of the houses. The expression on faces ranged from astonishment to blank incomprehension. Hostility there was none: there had been no time for any to develop for events were moving far too swiftly and comprehension hadn"t even begun to overtake the events. The bus had now reached the end of the village street and still not one shot had been fired.
At the sharp left-hand corner at the foot of the street the two remaining motor-cycles slid off the snow-plough and smashed into a low stone wall: two more absolute certainties, Smith thought inconsequentially, for the automobile cemetery behind Sulz"s garage. Ahead of him now he could see the road stretch almost arrow-straight alongside the dark waters of the Blau See. He switched off the Alpine horn b.u.t.ton, changed his mind and switched it on again: that horn was worth a pair of machine-guns any day.
"Don"t you know any other tunes?" Schaffer asked irritably. He shivered in the icy blast from the smashed front window, and sat on the floor to get what little shelter he could. "Give me a call when you require my services. A mile from now, I"d say."
"What do you mean, a mile from now?"
"The barrack gates. That guy in the command car had a radio phone."
"He had, had he?" Smith spared him a brief glance. "Why didn"t you shoot him?"
"I"m a changed man, boss." Schaffer sighed. "Something splendid has just come into my life."
"Besides, you didn"t have a chance."
"Besides, as you say, I didn"t have a chance." Schaffer twisted round and looked through the rear windows of the bus for signs of pursuit, but the road behind them was empty. For all that, Schaffer reflected, the rearward view was one not lacking in interest: the Schloss Adler, now completely enveloped in flames, a reddish-white inferno by this time lighting up for half a mile around the startling incongruity of its snow and ice covered setting, was clearly beyond saving: arsonist"s dream or fireman"s nightmare, the castle was finished: before dawn it would be an empty and desolate sh.e.l.l, a gaunt and blackened ruin to haunt and desecrate for generations to come the loveliest fairy-tale valley he had ever seen.
Schaffer shortened his gaze and tried to locate the three others, but all were on the floor, under seats and completely concealed. He cursed as the shaking and shuddering bus lurched violently, throwing him against the right-hand front door, then straightened and peered at the illuminated dashboard.
"G.o.d save us all," he said piously. "Ninety!"
"Kilometres," Smith said patiently.
"Ah!" Schaffer said as he watched Smith"s foot move quickly from accelerator to brake, hoisted a wary eye over the lower edge of the shattered windscreen and whistled softly. The barrack gates were barely two hundred yards away: both the area around the guard-house and the parade ground beyond were brilliantly illuminated by overhead flood-lamps: scores of armed soldiers seemed to be running around in purposeless confusion, a totally erroneous impression as Schaffer almost immediately realised. They were running towards and scrambling aboard trucks and command cars and they weren"t wasting any time about it either.
"A hive of activity and no mistake," Schaffer observed. "I wonder -- " He broke off, his eyes widening. A giant tank came rumbling into view past the guard-house, turned right on to the road, stopped, swivelled 180- on its tracks, completely blocking the road: the gun turret moved fractionally until it was lined up on the headlights of the approaching bus. ,"Oh, my gosh!" Schaffer"s shocked whisper was just audible over the fading sound of the post-bus"s diesel. "A Tiger tank. And that"s an 88-millimetre cannon, boss."
"It"s not a pop-gun, and that"s a fact," Smith agreed. "Flat on the -floor." He reached forward, pulled a switch, and the eighteen-inch long semaph.o.r.e indicator began to wave gently up and down. Smith first dipped his main headlights, then switched them off altogether, covering the last thirty yards on side-lamps alone and praying that all those signs of peaceful normality might help to keep nervous fingers away from the firing b.u.t.ton of the most lethal tank cannon ever devised.
The fingers, for whatever reason, left the b.u.t.ton alone. Smith slowed to a walking pace, turned right through the guard-house gates and stopped. Taking care to keep his injured right hand well out of sight, he wound down his window and leaned out, left elbow over the sill as three guards, led by a sergeant and all with machine-pistols at the ready, closed in on the driver"s cab.
"Quickly!" Smith shouted. "Telephone. Surgeon to the sick-bay." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Colonel Weissner. They got him twice. Through the lungs. For G.o.d"s sake, don"t just stand there!"
"But -- but the post-bus!" the sergeant protested. "We had a call from -- "
"Drunk, by G.o.d!" Smith swore savagely. "He"ll be court-martialled in the morning." His voice dropped menacingly. "And you, if the Colonel dies. Move!"
Smith engaged gear and drove off, still at walking pace. The sergeant, rea.s.sured by the sight of a major"s uniform, the fact that the bus was moving into the barracks, the slow speed with which it was moving and, above all, by the authoritative clamour of the Alpine horn which Smith still had not switched off, ran for the nearest phone.
Still crawling along in first gear, Smith carefully edged the post-bus through the press of men and machines, past a column of booted and gauntleted soldiers mounted on motorcycles, past armoured vehicles and trucks, all with engines already running, some already moving towards the gates -- but not moving as quickly towards the gates as Smith would have wished. Ahead of the post-bus was a group of officers, most of them obviously senior, talking animatedly. Smith slowed down the bus even more and leaned from the window.
"They"re trapped!" he called excitedly. "Upstairs in "Zum Wilden Hirsch". They"ve got Colonel Weissner as hostage. Hurry, for G.o.d"s sake!"