All Honourable Men (39 page)

Ranklin hesitated. Had O'Gilroy had time to get into position yet? They had only eight shells, little over two minutes' firing time, they couldn't afford to waste . . . Yet he had to keep up the pace, not give his amateur crew time for common sense to set in . . .

The devil with it: “Fire.”

The Arab opened the breech, the hot shell-case clattered off the trail and Corinna kicked it aside.

“Quiet!” Ranklin ordered, listening. He heard the distant
crump
, then nothing. Damn. One wasted, with nobody seeing where it had fallen. Then blessedly, a single faint whistle. “Over.”
Peep-peep-peep-peep
. “And to the left. Load.”

He made the corrections as they reloaded. Zurga had stopped firing – it was well over thirteen seconds since the last shrapnel burst – so he must know they had moved their gun. And he would have heard the whistle, so guessed he was under observed fire. What would he do now?

It was absurd how this thing had become a duel.

He was about to give the fire order when there was the bang of shrapnel. But distant, in front.

He frowned, then realised: if O'Gilroy could see Zurga's gun, then vice versa. And instead of firing blindly at where Ranklin might or might not be, Zurga was trying to destroy O'Gilroy so as to blind Ranklin as well. Now it wasn't a duel, it was a race.

The
bang
of the bursting shell was followed by the rattle of shrapnel balls among the trees and rocks and then the crackle of falling branches.

Bertie raised his head, frowned, then said: “Quite logical. Our good colonel shoots at the target he can see, not the one he cannot. But does he really see us, or only guess from the noise of your whistle?”

O'Gilroy crinkled his eyes with peering. Zurga's gun was just a darkish blob near the misty edge of vision, an amoebic shape that seemed to wriggle as the crew moved, fetching and loading shells. “If'n he's got good enough field-glasses – and he should have, being a Gunner – mebbe he can. We'd best move . . . split up, anyways, so one shell don't get us both. Hold on.”

They had heard the
thud
of Ranklin's gun firing, now both fixed their stare on the far-off blob. A flash and a cloud of smoke and dust jumped from the slope to its right.

“A
droit
– to the right now. And perhaps beyond still?”

“I think so.” O'Gilroy slid down and turned his back to the tree-trunk, then blew a single
peep
and a double one. “
Now
let's move.”

Only it wasn't that simple. Bertie's diplomatic training had obviously been pretty comprehensive, for apart from being skilful and calm about shooting fellow human beings, he had picked good defensive positions on both sides of the riverbed. Two Arabs were up among the rocks on the Peak side, but the one who had come with him on the plateau side had been unlucky. O'Gilroy had passed him, seemingly having bled to death propped against a tree, as he climbed up to join Bertie
among the trees just below the plateau. The ravine leading towards the monastery lay perhaps 150 yards ahead, and somewhere in its mouth were a handful of Turkish soldiers. The first encounter had left two of them dead in the dry bed itself; the rest were firing a shot every so often but clearly waiting for their comrades to get back from the trench and join in before they did anything else.

But it was only from this one position, at the top of the slope, that O'Gilroy and Bertie could see round the curve of the bed to Zurga's gun. Moving down would unsight them, and they couldn't go higher, only out onto the open plateau.

“I'll go
forward
,” O'Gilroy said. “Jest ten yards – metres – should be enough. After this,” he added, as Zurga fired.

The rocks up here were few and small, so they crushed themselves into the pine needles and unyielding soil behind inadequate tree-trunks, feeling horribly naked.

Shrapnel tore through the branches overhead, thudded into O'Gilroy's tree and kicked up earth a few inches from his cowering nose.

“Are you unhurt?” Bertie called.

“That and moving both.” O'Gilroy began a snake-like crawl forward, zigzagging around tree-trunks and their bulging, clutching roots. At least with his age, shape and infantry training he should be better than Bertie at this. He had thought of leaving his rifle behind, but to let go of it was a form of surrender. That was why men threw away their weapons when they panicked and ran.

The
thud
of Ranklin's gun made him stop and, cautiously, slowly – it was movement that caught the eye – raise his head to watch the shell burst.

Zero the gun on the aiming point, pull pin, load, close breech, “Retti!”
– and wait impatiently for the whistle and its corrections . . . They were down to five shells now, and perhaps even when they were on target, the high explosive would bury itself in soft sand and burst like a damp firecracker . . .

Such waiting gave you too much time to think . . . Then
peep-peep-peep
: on line but too short. He corrected up twenty-five metres. “Fire!”

O'Gilroy had gone at least ten yards, finding a good position behind a fallen tree, but slightly down slope so that he had to half-stand to see. Only he wasn't going to stand until he heard Ranklin fire. Before then, Zurga was due to fire at him – only he seemed to be taking his time.

Thud-thud
– an echo? Or Zurga trying to time his own shell to reach O'Gilroy at the one moment he must be watching? Whatever it was, he
had
to stand now – but as he stretched up the shrapnel banged almost overhead, and the upright tree beside him exploded splinters in his face. Blinded, he ducked instinctively for cover, hearing dimly the unseen
crump
of Ranklin's shell, but muddled by the memory of another sound, a shot, nearby . . .

“Did ye see where that one went?”

Silence.

“Are ye hit?”

More silence, while O'Gilroy found his left cheek was grazed and bleeding, but his eyes unhurt. He rolled cautiously to look back.

A rifle cracked, someone gave a choked yell from up on the plateau, and Bertie called: “A Turk had come up the cliff. I am sorry, he distracted me. He will not distract me again.”

So it
had
been a rifle shot that filled his face with splinters. Pretty adventurous of an ordinary soldier to have scaled the wall of the ravine to out-flank them. But all he'd achieved was making them miss one shell-burst. Ranklin would just have to fire another.

Wait
a minute: an ordinary soldier would never be adventurous alone, it wasn't what he was trained or allowed to do. O'Gilroy opened his mouth to shout a warning.

Every battery commander knew this impatience:
are you blind or just asleep up there in the observation post
?.

Or, in this case, of course, just dead?

They heard the second rifle shot, but intermittent shots had been coming from along the riverbed all the time.

“Devil with it,” Ranklin said. “We'll have to stick on the same aim.” Which would bring them down to four shells. “Fire!”

The second Turk's shot and the firing of Ranklin's gun were almost simultaneous. O'Gilroy saw Bertie sprawl out from behind his tree, was aware of where the rifle flash had come from, but then had,
had
to turn away to watch Ranklin's fall of shot. A second rifle bullet slammed into the trunk of the tree he was sheltering behind, and instinctively he sucked in his belly to make himself even thinner . . .

A flash winked behind the gun, blotted out immediately by erupting earth and dust. If that was over, it was only by mere feet, not worth bothering with. He flopped back behind his fallen trunk, dragged in breath, and began blowing
peep-peep-peep-peep-peep-peep
. . .

Then he reached for his rifle and started crawling. And now we'll see how Turkish Army training fits you to meet a
real
soldier . . .

Exultantly, Ranklin lost count of the
peeps
. “We're on! Ready? Fire!”

The breech slammed open, the empty case clanged fuming off the trail, a new shell slid home, the breech slammed shut – “Fire!” They were breathing the pure reek of cordite fumes now, but they had become a team, automatic and unthinking,
relay, close, fire, open, load, relay
. . .

“Fire!”

The explosion was stunning. Distant, yet far larger than a shell-burst should be.

Corinna looked at him, wide-eyed with hope. “What was—?”

“I'm not sure . . .” But as the silence spun on, as Zurga's gun didn't fire, he became sure. “I think we hit their ammunition.”

Her face was stained with powder-smoke, streaked with grease where she'd rubbed it. “Then have we won?”

Have we just torn Zurga and half a dozen men – anybody within a dozen yards of that gun – to pieces with red-hot fragments of metal? But she and the Arab were mere gun crew, obeying his orders; it was childish, selfish, to infect them with his own post-action tristesse.

“Yes, we've won. Well done,
bloody
well done.” He hugged her, pumped the Arab's hand – that might not be the correct thing to do, but his wide, if forced, grin made the gesture clear. Then he took the last unfired shell from the breech, not wanting it to cook in the hot gun, and rested it carefully on the ground. Then, with the Arab helping, he relaid the gun to point straight along the riverbed, just in case, and sent him back for a couple more shells.

O'Gilroy and two Arabs came around the bend in the riverbed where the gun was now aimed, a quarter of a mile ahead. Their own Arab came back with two more shells, Ranklin directed him where to put them, then offered him a cigarette and lit one for himself. When O'Gilroy came up, he passed it across and asked: “Bertie?”

O'Gilroy took the cigarette with a hand that shivered slightly. He took a deep drag, blew smoke, and said slowly, “Coupla fellers – Turk soldiers – tried to flank us, coming up the cliff. Near got me, 'n' Bertie got that one, then t'other got him. Then I got t'other.” Maybe, by tactful questioning – and half a bottle of whisky – Ranklin would one day learn what had really happened. If it mattered.

“T'other Arab got himself killed 'fore I got there,” O'Gilroy added. He sucked on the cigarette.

“Well done, anyhow.”

“I'd probly have killed Bertie meself anyways,” O'Gilroy said. “Him being a bastard.” Ranklin nodded. You didn't want to like, even to know, the ones who died. You wanted them just to be things. He looked around. The scattered shell-cases, the dead Arab on the beach, more shell-cases and boxes and the little line of bodies . . . There were plenty of things.

Oh God, why did You make courage so damned
normal
? We know You're on the side of the big battalions – but are You also
on the side of the men who send out the battalions? – who use men's courage to plug the gaps in their own stupidity? Surely You aren't another of those who believe the more terrible war becomes, the more likely men are to give it up? You're supposed to
know
about us! Have You forgotten so much since You last visited us 1900 years ago?
Oh God, just stop men being brave!

Corinna was looking at him. The streaks on her face were now further streaked with tears. Reaction. But she'd want him not to notice. She asked: “Are you all right?”

“Just praying. I think.” He threw his cigarette on the ground and got brisk. “There's still getting on for a hundred soldiers up there somewhere. They won't attack the monastery now but we're on their line of retreat even if they don't want to catch us. So you and O'Gilroy get on horses – if there's any still alive – and get back past the Railway tunnel and up to . . . your caravan road.”

“And you?”

“I'll disable this gun and go back with . . .” He waved at the three remaining Arabs. “Through the back way to the monastery. And get Lady Kelso out somehow . . .” At least they could now put Miskal on a horse (if
they
had any left alive) and move off to. . . their village? Or haul him down to Mersina and a doctor? Somewhere, somehow; he was too drained to worry. “I don't think we'd better go back through the Railway camp, so if you can get something to meet us on the road . . . And after that, we'd appreciate the hospitality of your – Mr Billings's – yacht.”

“Of course.” She looked up the riverbed. “Aren't we going to . . . bury them?”

“Digging even one grave takes an age.”

She turned away and then half-turned back. “Did you hear what I said about Edouard?”

“I heard. I think it's . . . just . . . Oh hell. I'm very glad.” They smiled at each other; the past seemed very past.

The Foreign Office had been built over fifty years later than the Admiralty, so Corbin's room was more grand than elegant. They sat near the window, just out of the slant of the afternoon sun, the Commander, Ranklin and Corbin himself, nobody from the Admiralty or India Office. Ranklin had asked about this and been told, politely, that it wasn't his concern.

Now Corbin was asking: “And this survey map is definitely destroyed?”

“I burned it myself,” Ranklin said firmly.

“And you believe that will delay the Baghdad Railway for . . . weeks? Months?”

“I think you'd have to ask an experienced railway surveyor that.”

“Umm. I think we'd prefer to go on not having heard of it,” Corbin said. “But we – somebody – is going to have to talk to the French. After all, they have lost a diplomatist. You say he was more, or less, than that – which seems borne out by their rather guarded manner in making enquiries about him – but nevertheless
prima facie
a diplomatist, so something has to be said. Would it be best if you–” his look switched between the Commander and Ranklin“– had a word with your French counterparts and left them to tell the Quai d'Orsay as much as seemed appropriate?”