Cry Wolf [047-011-4.8]

By: Wilbur Smith

Category: fiction action adventure

Synopsis:

"Run," he shouted. "Keep running." And he turned back to

face the crippled animal as it launched itself from the ledge into the

bed of the river. It was only then that Jake realized that he still

carried a full bottle of Scrubbs Ammonia in his hand. The lion came

bounding swiftly through the shallow stagnant pool towards him. Despite

the wounds, it followed with lithe and sinuous menace. it was so close

that he could see each stiff white whisker in the curled upper lip and

hear the rattle of air in its throat. He let it come on, for to turn

and run was suicide. At the last moment he reared back like a baseball

pitcher and hurled the bottle.

Jake Barton is an American engineer, Gareth Swalles (a stylish

Englishman with a nose for a quick deal. Both have always moved from

one escapade to another. Now, as Mussolini prepares to annihilate the

people of Ethiopia, the two adventurers come up against Vicky

Camberwell, the beautiful but fiery reporter bent on espousing their

cause. Striking a bargain with a beleaguered Ethiopian prince, the

trio dares to run gauntlet guns and a batch of run-down armoured cars

in a final, desperate gamble for freedom..

To Jake Barton, machinery was always feminine with all the female's

fascination, wiles and bitchery.

So when he first saw them standing in a row beneath the spreading dark

green foliage of the mango trees, they became for him the iron

ladies.

There were five of them, standing aloof from the other heaps of

worn-out and redundant equipment that His Majesty's Government was

offering for sale. Although it was June and the cooler season between

the monsoons, yet the heat on this cloudless morning in Dares Salaam

was mounting like a force-fed furnace and Jake went thankfully into the

shade of the mangoes to stand closer to the ladies and begin his

examination.

He glanced around the enclosed yard, and noticed that he seemed to be

the only one interested in the five vehicles.

The motley crowd of potential buyers was picking over the heaps of

broken shovels and Picks, the rows of battered wheelbarrows and the

other mounds of unidentifiable rubbish.

He turned his attention back to the ladies, as he slipped off the light

tropical moleskin jacket he wore and hung it on the branch of a mango

tree.

The ladies were aristocrats fallen on hard times, their hard but rakish

lines were dulled by the faded and scratched paintwork and the

cancerous blotches of rust that showed through. The foxy-faced fruit

bats that hung inverted in the mango branches above them had splattered

them with their dung, and oil and grease had oozed from their elderly

joints and caked with dust in unsightly black streaks and blobs.

Jake knew their lineage and their history and as he laid aside the

small carpet bag that held his tools, he reviewed it swiftly. Five

fine pieces of craftsmanship lying rotting away on the fever coast of

Tanganyika. The bodies and chassis had been built by Schreiner the

stately high cupola in which the open mounting for the Maxim machine

gun now glared like an empty eye-socket, the square sloping platform of

the engine housing, with its heavy armour plate and the neat rows of

rivets and the steel shutters that could be closed to protect the

radiator against incoming enemy fire.

They stood tall on the metal bossed wheels with their solid rubber

tyres, and Jake felt a sneaking regret that he would be the one to tear

their engines out of them and toss aside the worn-out but gallant old

bodies.

They did not deserve such cavalier treatment, these fighting iron

ladies who in their youth had chased the wily German commander von

Lettow-Vorbeck across the wide plains and over the fierce hills of

East

Africa. The thorns of the wilderness had deeply scarred the paintwork

of the five armoured cars and there were places where rifle fire had

glanced off their armour, leaving the distinctive dimple in the

steel.

Those were their grandest days, streaming into battle with their

cavalry pennants flying, dust billowing behind them, bounding and

crashing through the don gas and ant bear holes, their machine guns

blazing and the terrified German askaris scattering before them.

After that, the original engines had been replaced by the beautiful new

6 litre Bentleys, and they had begun the long decline of police patrol

work on the border, chasing the occasional cattle raider and slowly

being pounded by a succession of brutal drivers into the condition

which had at last brought them here to the Government sale yards in

this fiery May of the year of our Lord 1935. But Jake knew that even

the savage abuse to which they had been subjected could not have

destroyed the engines completely and that was what interested him.

He rolled up his sleeves like a surgeon about to begin his

examination.

"Ready or not, girls, "he muttered, "here comes old Jake." He was a

tall man with a big bony frame that was cramped in the confined area of

the armoured car's body, but he worked with a quiet concentration so

close to rapture that the discomfort went unnoticed. Jake's wide

friendly mouth was pursed in a whistle that went on endlessly, the

opening bars of "Tiger Rag" repeated over and over again, and his eyes

were screwed up against the gloom of the interior.

He worked swiftly, checking the throttle and ignition settings of the

controls, tracing out the fuel lines from the rear-mounted fuel tank,

finding the cocks under the driver's seat and grunting with

satisfaction. He scrambled out of the turret and dropped down the high

side of the vehicle, pausing to wipe away with his forearm the thin

trickle of sweat that broke from his thick curly black hair and ran

down his cheek, then he hurried forward and knocked the clamps open on

the side flaps of the armoured engine-cover.

"Oh sweet, sweet!" he whispered, as he saw the fine outlines of the

old Bentley engine block beneath the layer of thick dust and greasy

filth.

His hands with the big square palms and thick spatulate fingers went

out to touch it with what was almost a caress.

"The bastards have beaten you up, darling," he whispered.

"But we will have you singing again as lovely as ever, that's a

promise." He pulled the dipstick from the engine sump and took a drop

of oil between his fingers.

"Shit!" he grunted with disgust, as he felt the grittiness, and he

thrust the stick back into its slot. He pulled the plugs and, with the

promise of a shilling, had a loitering African swing the crank for him

while he felt the compression against the palm of his hand.

Swiftly he moved along the line of armoured cars, checking,

probing and testing, and when he reached the last of them he knew he

could have three of them running again for certain and four maybe.

One was shot beyond hope. There was a crack in the engine block

through which he could have ridden a horse, and the pistons had seized

so solid in their pots that not even the combined muscle upon the crank

handle of Jake and his helper could move them.

Two of them had the entire carburettor assemblies missing, but he could

cannibalize from the wreck. That left him short of one carburettor and

he felt only gloom at his chances of finding another in Dares Salaam.