Hubbard, L. Ron (13 page)

Beyond, an officer leaped into view, not having heard the pneumatics in the roar of sound. He jerked and his hands flew to his chest and were full of holes.

Above them a powder began to flow out from automatic trips. The regurgitant.

"Clear away!" howled Gian. And the doorway was clear of the Fourth Brigade as far back as the artillery.

Three guns crashed as one,, and half the wall went out, fragments spattering through the corridor to knock back the garrison troops.

Hastily snatching their packs and trying not to breathe, the Fourth leaped into the corridor. Gian whiplashed the carriers into moving guns and caissons. Men were already beginning to gag and vomit.

Pollard's bellow brought eyes to him. He sorely missed his lieutenant but it was up to him and he had to act. He pointed up the least defended incline and they sped along it. Behind them Carstone's pneumatics were covering their retreat by hammering back the mob of garrison soldiers.

When the last of Gians artillery rumbled by, Carstone began to have his machine guns shifted at intervals. By picking up the first of the string in rotation and making it the last, he was able to keep the corridor behind them sprayed and still retreat.

A clang sounded up again and Pollard began to howl for Gian. The artillery came up, the brigade hastily making room for it. A great steel door had dropped into place across the corridor and powder was again beginning to sift from above it.

"Stand back!" screamed Gian. "Ready guns three and four. Fire!"

The center of the door bulged out.

"Guns three and four reload! Fire!"

The bulge increased. The brigade was retching. Behind them the pneumatics sputtered and hissed, interspersed at intervals with the coughing clatter of the Belgian alcohol gun.

"Guns three and four! Fire!" bawled Gian.

The door collapsed. The half-deafened troops sped through it, some of them hastily binding wounds received from the ricocheting splinters of steel and stone.

Soon Pollard faltered in dismay. Quite evidently the corridor he had chosen had only gone up long enough to avoid a particularly hard seam of rock and then had been built downward. They were on their way into the depths of the fortress!

Wildly he glared about for another passage and found none. He had to go forward now. All the way through the place. Thank Heaven the regurgitant effect had been slight and was wearing away. Oh, if the leftenant were only here to tell them!

He sensed rather than heard or felt the machine gun which had hastily been thrown on a barricade to bar their way. Before he came to the turn he halted and piled up the men behind him. They were glad to stop and breathe better air.

"There's a machine gun up there, Gian."

"Right. Gun one, forward. Load solid. Make way, will you, Pollard?"

Gian laid the gun himself with the care of an artist. He yanked the lanyard and the roar was too great for them to hear the shot bounce off the far end of the turn. There was a scream of agony from the barricade around the curve.

"Weasel, mop up!" said Pollard.

Weasel and four men snaked forward. Twice their rifles crashed and then there wasn't any more sound at the barricade. The Fourth Brigade went forward.

The central offices were quite deserted save for one orderly who had risked all to rummage among the general's effects for any possible food cache.

Pollard hurried into the offices and glanced about, hoping to find a map of the fortress. But the grenade they had tossed into the place first had ripped up the wall chart beyond recognition. The remaining orderly, who had taken cover behind a desk, was hauled forth. He clearly expected to have his throat cut'

"Soldier," said Bulger, sticking his bayonet into the orderly's ribs and tickling him up a bit, "if you want to live, you'll lead us straight as a bullet to our leftenant."

"Y-y-y-You are the Fourth Brigade?"

"Right."

"J-j-j-just Pf-f-follow m-m-m-me!"

They followed him. Evidently the garrison had had a fiill belly for they were not again obstructed. They drew up and tried to straighten their uniforms when they came to the indicated door.

Pollard knocked with his pistol butt.

The lieutenant opened it.

Pollard gave one of his very rare salutes, though he forgot to take the gun out of his hand first. "Sergeant major Pollard, sir. Fourth Brigade all present and accounted for. Will...will you please take command?"

It was very hard, just then, for the lieutenant to remember to keep full control of his emotions.

Burrowed like a rat with a phobia against hawks, General Victor and his staff received fragments of news and acted accordingly. Their first effort was to order out the garrison, en masse, to engulf and put to death the leaders of the mutineers. Very confidently, then, they huddled in the darkness, awaiting report of results. A full hour passed before any orderly came down to them.

It seemed that the loyal garrison was perfectly willing but that the field soldiers, while only half their number, were opposed.

General Victor frothed and spluttered and sent out orders again, even sending a staff major along with them. Half an hour went by before the staff major came back.

It seems that he had somehow blundered into the north barrack which had housed the Fourth and there had found the corpse of Captain Malcolm.

"Mutiny and murder!" howled Victor. "Get back up there and sweep them into cells!"

"That is the point, sir," said the staff major. "The garrison soldiers state they would be only too glad to do it but it seems, somehow, that their rifles are missing."

"What's this? What's this? Missing! Incredible!"

"It would seem so, sir, but you must not forget that the field troops are quartered with the garrison troops now."

And so, bit by little, the staff pieced together the lieutenant's "fiendish" plan and their own defeat.

General Victor, once he understood, no longer raved. He just sat and stared at his boots in dumb dismay.

Smythe grew bitter, blaming everyone around him. "You should have understood! Why, I myself heard Captain Malcolm state his annoyance at the brigades slow progress back. They attacked every possible source of food supply. It's plain now. He's the devil incarnate!"

An orderly came down, the same that had found the lieutenant for Pollard.

He was happy to be momentarily free. "Sir, the compliments of the lieutenant and would the general come up under a flag of truce to discuss the terms?"

"Terms?" cried the officers. "For what?"

"Surrender, he says, sirs," apologized the orderly.

"Surrender! By all that ever was holy!" said Smythe. "Tell him no!"

"He says he'd hate to have to come down and get you, gentlemen. Begging your pardons."

"Come down
¯
How perfectly ghastly!" Smythe grabbed the orderly by the coat and shook him. "Does he think he can take his own general headquarters?

Does he?"

General Victor stood up wearily. "It appears that he has. I shall go speak with him."

They protested, but Victor did not hear them. Unwillingly they filed after him up through the fortress to the higher levels. It was with great surprise that they found the troops all out of the ground.

The rain had ceased for the time and small shafts of sunlight were cutting along the slopes, flicking over the remains of many an attack and sparkling in the water which clung to the bottoms of shell holes. Nearly eighteen hundred men were out here, variously disposed upon the flat expanse between the hills.

Victor's very large head turned this way and that, taking it all in. He saw that a machine-gun company was stationed in such a way as to command the expanse and that riflemen were posted so as not to interfere with the machine guns. It appeared very much as if the garrison was about to be executed to a man.

The stafrs eyes were burned by the light, to which they were not accustomed. And their courage also burned very low, for they bethought themselves of the possibilities of firing squads. Their consciences, where field officers were concerned, were very, very bad.

Victor located the lieutenant seated upon a rock, surrounded by several noncoms and two other officers. With misgivings he approached.

The lieutenant stood up and bowed, smiling.

"See here," said Smythe, beginning without preamble. "This is mutiny, murder and desertion; a hellish plot!"

"A plot?" inquired the lieutenant innocently.

"You know very well what it is!" said Smythe. "You cannot deny it. You stocked your men up with food and brought them here. You knew what effect that would have upon this garrison. You knew that when you ordered your men to revolt, there would be no hand to oppose them. This is a vile trick!"

"Perhaps, Colonel Smythe, perhaps. But you are wrong in saying that I ordered my men to revolt. That was not necessary, you know."

"Ah!" cried Smythe. "You admit it! You admit you came here on purpose to avenge your friends."

"Vengeance," smiled the lieutenant, "was not part of my plan. However, I might include it."

"How else," howled Smythe, "could it be?"

"We have very poor rifles, gentlemen. We had no rain cloaks, no sound boots. We had no baggage carts, no new-style helmets. We were short on good ammunition and only long on strategy. As soon as we have what we want we shall leave you to your regrets."

General Victor thrust Smythe aside. "According to international law, sir, you are a brigand."

"If we must have law," said the lieutenant courteously, "then let it be military law, by which you are a fool. Now please stand aside while we get on with this business."

Swinburne, Carstair, Pollard, Toutou and Thomas O'Thomas all looked wonderingly at the lieutenant. They had had no inkling of this as a deliberate scheme, but now they saw it clearly. They saw it in terms of numbers and guns, and gasped at the realization that the lieutenant had captured the only existing fortress in this countryside, garrisoned by sixteen hundred men, with not the loss of one in all his own command. Their faces softened into gentle worship as they gazed upon their officer.

It took half the day to complete the business. What with every garrison soldier clamoring to be included in the lieutenant's ranks and therefore turning out every possible hiding place for the hoarded stores, the detail became enormous.

The lieutenant worked on. He took no soldier who had, not had at least three years in the lines with a combat division. He took no soldier who thought there should be anything even faintly resembling a soldiers' council. And he did not even take all the field troops, for many of these were not fit for active service and would only have proved a burden.

At dawn of the following day, the organizations were made up. Five hundred and fifty troops were assigned to two sections, with the cream of the Fourth Brigade marshaled into a body of scouts under the direct control of the lieutenant. By order, the whole was to remain the Fourth Brigade, with two regiments and one artillery unit.

Drawn up on the expanse before the hill, the soldiers stood rigidly under the lieutenant's inspection, only a fortress guard under Pollard being absent from the ranks. The Union Jack was absent and in its place was the standard of the Fourth Brigade.

The lieutenant was very thorough. Each man had a good pair of boots, a rainproof cape, a visored helmet, a semiautomatic rifle, a breastplate, three bandoleers of ammunition, a canteen, a bayonet, a sharp-sided spade, six grenades, a good overcoat, two uniforms of regulation British slate blue, and an adequate haversack. The baggage carts were brimming with spare ammunition and condensed food. The artillery unit now had eight pieces and sixty noncombatants to draw them.

The lieutenant finished his inspection.

"Major Swinburne, is the First Regiment ready to march?"

"Us, sir."

"Ensign Carstair is the Second Regiment ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Orderly, recall Pollard and inform him he is to bring up the rear guard.

Weasel, lead off with the vanguard. By squad; kft! Alarckf"

In the ranks of the Hellfire Highlanders a bagpipe began to scream and wail, accompanied by three drums. Englishman, Scotsman, Irishman, Australian, Canadian, Frenchman, Finn, Pole, Belgian, Italian, Dane, Spaniard, Moor and Turk stepped out to the barbaric strain, the standard of the Fourth Brigade streaming out in the fore.

General Victor stood downcast upon the lip of the fortress, watching the command snake over a ridge and out of sight until the bagpipes, finally, had vanished into the distance.

"I was wrong," said General Victor. "There's reason, then, why a field officer should be treated well. Smythe, I wish to Heaven we had kept him under our command."

"There's no use talking about it now," said Smythe bitterly. "That outfit is headed for England!"

"You ... you think so?" said the startled Victor.

"I'm certain. Come, we owe it to London to tell them of this revolt and of the man that led it. This debt will yet be paid."