Assignment - Budapest (23 page)

Matyas touched the brakes and the bus slowed its wild pace. The bright island of light around the roadblock came swimming up out of the dark pattern of the night, seeming to rush toward them out of black space. Matyas braked again. Air hissed and rubber squealed on the concrete. Durell heard a flat cracking sound, and he wondered if a warning shot had been fired at them, and then Matyas had the bus halted and a uniformed AVO man came walking angrily across the road as Matyas opened the doors.

This time it was a captain, and he was backed up by half a dozen armed men near the guard huts, as well as the glinting muzzles of tank weapons in the shadows of the highway shoulders. Ahead, the highway swept in a long, gentle curve to the south and west, and the dark shape of more woodland loomed against the night. The AVO captain came aboard with a Mauser pistol in his hand. He looked angry and suspicious, barking swift questions at Matyas while his eyes raked the dim interior of the bus. He looked dangerous.

“Who are you people? Stand up and get out of this bus. I want to look at you all.”

The AVO captain was squat and powerfully built, with a pock-marked face and a swaggering stride. Matyas said something to him in a placating voice, but the man spit on the bus floor and walked down the aisle straight toward Ilona.

“This one,” he said, looking down at her. “I think I know you, don’t I? Stand up, girl, and let’s have a good look.” He swung angrily. “The rest of you, get out of the bus! This is as far as you go. Get your papers ready and walk over to the hut, into the light.”

This was it, Durell thought. There was no escape, no chance of bluffing. The man was already suspicious, arrogant, sensing something wrong about the bus wandering the highway in the night. Durell stood up and nodded slightly to Matyas, who sank back in his driver’s seat behind the wheel. The diesel engine was still running, idling throatily. Ahead were the steel and wood barricades, the dim shapes of tanks like primordial monsters sheltering in the darkness under the trees.

“Leave the girl alone,” Durell said to the AVO man.

“You give me a suggestion?” The squat man spun in the aisle, his gun up. But he made the mistake of looking back through the open door of the bus, where his men were waiting, smoking and talking. It was enough for Durell. Ilona dropped away as he struck at the man’s gun, knocking it down, catching the man’s arm and slamming it hard over the brass-trimmed edge of Ilona’s seat. The Mauser exploded with a shattering crash, punching a slug into the floor of the bus. At the same moment, Matyas clashed gears and tramped on the gas pedal. The bus lurched ahead with a sudden roar of the engine. Durell was prepared for the movement; the AVO captain was not. Durell struck hard again, the edge of his palm clipping the thick nape of the man’s neck. The AVO captain fell, lurching, and his head struck the back of Ilona’s seat. At the same moment, the bus slammed at rising speed into the barrier ahead. Wood splintered, steel screeched, glass shattered. Durell was thrown from his feet, caught a grip on the seat, and stumbled over the AVO man. The Mauser slid along the bus aisle and he caught it up, pulling himself to his feet.

Everything was confusion. He heard the yells of alarm from the guards, and a machine gun on one of the tanks began to stutter and more glass flew in wicked, lethal shards as slugs came through the bus windows.

“Down!” Durell yelled. “Everybody down, on the floor!” The motion of the bus was insane, rocking crazily but still going forward, dragging part of the barricade along with it, the lumber and steel screeching on the concrete. Someone fell on Durell and he pushed angrily, struggling up. They were still moving. Janos grabbed his arm and babbled something and he shook the boy free and staggered forward to Matyas. The big man still clung to the wheel. One half of the big windshield was shattered, and blood streamed down the man’s face from a deep gash across his forehead.

“My eyes,” he gasped. “I can't see.”

Durell braced himself against a steel hand pole and got out a handkerchief and dabbed at Matyas’ face, wiping the blood away. “Keep going.”

“The tanks will follow.”

“Can they catch us?”

Matyas shook his head. “They can do forty. As long as they don’t blow our tires, we’re all right.”

Durell looked back. A blinding, iridescent glare filled the rear windows of the rocking bus as a spotlight centered on them. They were already twenty, thirty yards away from the check point, leaving it fast. He saw men running, saw the angry spit of exhaust from tank engines as the T-54’s started up. There came a sound like a clap of thunder, a muzzle flare, and the screech of a shell going by. The tank men were using their 75’s, hoping to hit the bus. But the road curved, and although Matyas was having trouble controlling the vehicle, they were sliding around the long curve to the south and west, putting trees between them. The speedometer needle was creeping up, past fifty, sixty kilometers, wavering crazily.

“You’ll have to go faster,” he shouted.

Matyas nodded, and Durell gave him his handkerchief to wipe off the blood that ran into his eyes. Another machine gun began firing at them, and four or five slugs struck the back of the bus, screaming angrily, and more glass shattered. Someone screamed. A spotlight flickered past them, caught them, bathed the inside of the bus with eerie bright radiance. To Durell’s quick glance, it looked like a shambles. He sought out Ilona and saw her taking the gun from McFee and poking the muzzle through the shattered rear window. She fired rapidly, in quick bursts, and the spotlight abruptly went out.

Durell worked his way back to her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. It was Mrs. Tagy who screamed.”

Durell swung back and saw Dr. Tagy holding his grayhaired wife. Janos was tearing his shirt into strips for bandaging.

“It was flying glass,” Dr. Tagy said. “She will be all right.”

Durell stumbled over the AVO man, knelt, lifted the man's head and shoulders. He looked unconscious, possibly dead. One of the bullets had hit him high in the chest. He dropped the man, looking for Maria, didn’t see her, then went forward and found her crouching behind Matyas’ driver’s seat. She was trying to keep the blood from Matyas’ wound from interfering with the big man’s vision. Her smile was quick as she saw Durell.

“No casualties?”

“None yet.”

“If we can keep them behind us for fifteen minutes . . ."

Durell nodded and looked back. Headlights from the pursuing tanks were still visible on the road behind them, but thanks to the curve of the highway, the slight rise and dip of the gently rolling hills, the tanks hadn’t used their cannon after the first wild shots. He felt the bus tremble and a quick, rhythmic jolt set his teeth to chattering, and he knew that one of the dual rear tires had gone flat. It was not the tanks behind them that worried him now. He knew that the radio had already jumped ahead of them to the frontier, sounding the alarm, alerting machines and men and guns to stop them.

He looked at his watch. Five minutes had gone by since they had crashed through the roadblock. It was enough to give them a safe lead from motorcycles, trucks or cars that might give chase. The danger from the rear was gone. What lay ahead looked dark, a gamble against the biggest odds he had ever chosen. He could count somewhat on the enemy’s confusion. Ten minutes might not be enough time for them to organize an airtight blockade of the road. But it wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t depend on that. Turning, he worked his way down the bus aisle, grabbing handholds as the bus lurched crazily, his feet crunching on broken glass. He crouched beside Matyas at the wheel. Maria was still working on the wound on the man’s head.

“How much farther?” Durell asked.

“Five miles, maybe.”

“What have they got up ahead?”

Matyas shrugged. His face looked gray and bleak in the dim light from the instrument panel. “Too much, maybe.”

“You don’t think we can crash through?”

“They will be ready now. Guns, mines, tank traps. We can only try.”

“You’d better slow down, then,” Durell said.

“What?”

“Look for a side road. Bear north.”

“They will all be the same, friend. The border area is closed tight.”

“But they’ll be looking for us on the highway. They won’t expect this bus to go anywhere else. Take any road, no matter how bad it is. Push ahead until we can’t go any farther.” “And then?”

“We’ll try to walk out,” Durell said quietly.

Their chance came sooner than he had hoped. A narrow cut appeared in the woods lining the highway up ahead, and Matyas slammed on the brakes, heaving at the clumsy bus wheel to make the turn. For a moment Durell thought they were going to turn over as the floor lifted under him. Branches crashed against the roof of the bus. The road was nothing but a frozen mud lane boring like a tunnel through the woods. The heavy wheels broke through the frozen surface and began to spin crazily, and the bus slid sidewise toward a parallel ditch. Matyas grunted and clung to the big wheel. Mrs. Tagy made a whimpering sound in the back of the bus. The wheels slid a few more feet, than gained traction and the bus lurched ahead, down the twisting, narrow lane away from the highway.

Durell drew a deep breath and looked back. Faint headlights flickered through the trees on the main road behind them, and he reached across Matyas and flicked off the headlights. Instantly Matyas took his foot off the gas as the way ahead was plunged into darkness. Yet enough light came from the pursuing tanks on the highway to guide them safely, at a snail’s pace, along the rutted dirt road. The tank headlights speared through the woods in long, ghostly streamers, flickering over and beyond them, and then were gone.

“Can you see your way?” Durell asked.

Matyas nodded. “Just about.”

“How far do we have to go?”

“Maybe five miles, if the road goes that way.”

They went ahead cautiously, the bus lunging like a crippled monster through the brush and weeds. Now and then they crossed a small wooden bridge, edging carefully over the gap until they reached the hard terrain on the other side. The landscape began to change after a few minutes, flattening and lowering into the swamps and marshes that characterized the frontier land. There were no stars and no moon, and in the hollows, the white frozen mist was forming. The inside of the bus was very cold. Now and then as the road led them into hollows, the mist was too heavy for any visibility at all, and Matyas had to turn on the dim lights for brief moments.

Durell looked at his watch. They were ten minutes off the highway, then fifteen. The lane was degenerating rapidly into two ruts across the frozen swamp. The mist was heavier, then it cleared, and to the left loomed the sudden, ominous outline of a spidery watch tower. Matyas kept going in low gear. The grinding of the laboring motor seemed enormously loud. There was no sign of life from the tower, but Durell knew better than to hope they might elude the listening ears and prowling patrols in this territory. He felt tension build inside him, and he started back down the aisle in the center of the bus, getting everyone ready to debark for the last dash on foot for the frontier line.

There was no warning when they hit the land mine.

Durell heard the blast only as a dim, echoing concussion after the sheet of flame that lifted the front end of the bus several feet into the air. It was followed by another as the momentum of the vehicle carried the front wheels onto a second mine. He was aware of cries and screams and rumbled curses from Matyas, the shattering of glass and the tortured sound of twisting metal, and then he felt the blow of the explosion like a giant’s hand slammed across his chest and he watched the front windshield cave in toward him as he fell back.

Flames crackled nearby, and Durell pushed himself up, seeing the lurid red that outlined the misty swamp all around him. Someone spoke to him quickly, soothingly. It was Ilona. He stared at the bus and saw that the front end was twisted and smoking, the entire vehicle atilt on its left side, windows shattered, burning fiercely. From far in the distance came the stuttering of a machine gun. The wheels of the bus were still turning slowly and he knew he had blacked out for only a few moments, but he could not remember getting out of the bus or what had happened to the others. He pushed himself erect, swaying, and Ilona stood up with him, her dark hair, cut in the Italian-boy style she had chosen, glinting with reflected coppery flames.

“Where is everybody?”

“McFee took them on ahead. Into the swamp. I stayed with you. We must hurry,” Ilona said.

“Who was hurt?”

“Matyas. And Maria.”

“Bad?”

“Matyas is dead,” she said.

Durell felt a deep, swift pang of bitter regret. “And Maria?” “She was falling in love with him. She took McFee’s ‘guitar.’ She went off toward the watch tower. It is her gun you hear. She will hold off the guards. But please hurry, darling. We must go after the others.”

Durell nodded. He took a few uncertain steps and then he felt steadier and stronger. He began walking at a rapid pace through the swamp with the girl. The fog was like a shroud all around them, and he could not see or hear the others ahead of them. Now and then they stumbled through icy water that was knee deep, numbing his feet and ankles. He trusted Ilona to choose the right direction, and she seemed to go ahead with assurance, confident of her way.

There was no sign of the rutted lane they had been following in the bus, but there was sporadic firing to the left, where he had glimpsed the watch tower, and he wondered about Maria and then he hoped McFee was leading the Tagy family in the right direction, too. He kept the Mauser in his hand, but the mists closed off everything within a radius of twenty feet as they stumbled on.

Once Ilona fell and he helped her up and they struggled on, and then she fell again and he made her sit on a fallen log to rest and catch her breath. For the moment, the swamp shrouded in its white, frozen mist was utterly silent.

She was breathing raggedly and she leaned her weight against him. “I am worried about the others.”

“McFee will see them safely across.”