Rhinoceros

CHAPTER 36

It struck Harry before he saw the two jeeps that he could be recognized. He pulled up, took off his crash helmet – a very risky act – and put on wrapround dark glasses to make himself look different. He could have used the glasses earlier. The glare of the sun had bothered him on the way out.

He built up speed again, still worried that he would be too late. He crested a slight rise and there ahead of him were the two remaining jeeps. He twisted the throttle still harder. At least the blue Mercedes was not yet in sight.

Aboard the first jeep, Miller saw him coming in the rear-view mirror. He frowned, which is to say his face became even more brutal. He glanced at the driver who had also spotted the motorcycle in his wing mirror.

'Don't like this,' Miller told him. 'We had a motorcyclist pass us going the other way not so long ago.'

'Not the same guy,' the driver replied. 'No crash helmet and he's wearing dark glasses.'

'I don't take any chances,' Miller snapped in his deep throaty voice. 'I'm going to let him have it.'

He had hauled his Magnum. 357 halfway out of his holster when the motorcycle whipped past and was out of range. Miller stared in amazement.

'Must be doing over ninety. He'll come off, kill himself, do the job for us…'

Harry dropped out of sight over and down the other side of another slight rise. No more than a mile ahead he saw Tweed's blue Mercedes. He twisted the throttle like he was trying to choke it, flew like the wind. He was sweating when he pulled up alongside the Mercedes, which had stopped for him.

'Any second,' he warned Tweed breathlessly, 'two jeeps with five men in camouflage, coming up behind you…'

'Bob,' Tweed ordered immediately, 'back up to that big sand quarry we just passed. That's our fortress. Drive into it.' Moments earlier they had driven past a wide entrance in the hedge leading to a very wide and high semi-circular mound with sand walls. It was like a large amphitheatre and had obviously been abandoned. A chain system with large metal buckets dangling from it ran from the summit of the mound to a rusting muddle of sheds on the right. As the car left the road Tweed glanced back, saw two jeeps cresting the low rise.

'Drive the car near the sand wall,' Marler ordered. 'I want it well back. Harry,' he shouted through the window, 'ride up the right side of the mound but keep out of sight.'

'Take the high ground,' Harry shouted back and rode off.

'The jeeps are close,' Tweed warned.

Newman drove at speed across the base of the amphitheatre, the wheels sending up spurts of sand. He swung the car round to face the way they had come, close to the base of the cliff of sand, which had to be over a hundred feet high.

Marler pointed as he issued more orders. 'I'll be in that cave on the right, halfway up the cliff. Newman, you take Lisa and shelter behind that pile of sand on the left. Tweed, Nield, Paula, get up inside the cave on the left. Keep your ruddy heads down. Everybody take weapons. Go!'

Nield grabbed hold of the heavy satchel Harry had left in the rear section, threw back the flap. Lisa grasped one of the grenades. Paula leaned over as Harry held up the satchel, avoided the smoke canisters, clutched an explosive grenade.

'Hurry up!' Tweed snapped.

Marler, yards from the car, holding his Armalite rifle, called out to them.

'As far as we can, protect the car…'

Doors were flung open, hauled shut as they piled out of the car, ran towards their allocated positions. Tweed, despite being older, led the way, reached the sand wall which here sloped up to the cave, scrambled up with Paula behind him. He looked back, saw Paula had slipped, fallen down. He ran down again, grasped her arm, hauled her to her feet and she was scrambling up with him while Nield, now above them, peered down anxiously from the cave.

'You OK?' Tweed asked.

'I'm OK,' Paula replied.

She was still clutching in her right hand the grenade that most people would have dropped when they fell. They joined Nield. Tweed glanced round, surprised and relieved at what he saw. For some reason a mechanical digger had at some time scooped out a waist-high cave with plenty of space for the three of them.

'Kneel or sit,' he told them, 'but remain invisible.'

He could hear the two jeeps coming now, moving slowly. He looked round the amphitheatre. Marler had in seconds seen how he could place them all so they covered the whole area. With Harry somewhere near the summit they could command a view of every approach. Now all they could do was wait. They had found his fortress.

Miller had ordered his driver to move slowly, to stop before he came level with the entrance. The hedge was just high enough to conceal the jeeps. He jumped to the ground, a machine pistol slung over his shoulder, a grenade in his right hand.

He peered round the end of the hedge for a fraction of a second, took in the topography, went back to where his four men stood crouched below the hedge. He grinned viciously.

'We've got them. The friggin' fools are in a trap with no way out. You know I favour a mass rush against the enemy, but that won't do here. First we have to locate them, then we split up and stalk them, kill them off one by one.'

'Can you see them?' asked his driver.

'Not one. But when they open fire they'll give away their positions. Then we have them. I've seen their car. I'm going to smash that to bits first.'

He took the pin out of the grenade. Rushing forward, he stood at the entrance to the quarry, right arm well back, about to hurl the grenade at the car. Harry, perched high up on the mound, opened up with his Uzi. A rain of bullets landed inches from Miller's feet. The grenade he was holding would detonate any second. As he jumped back from the entrance he threw the grenade across the opposite side of the road, way beyond the hedge bordering it, dropped fiat. The grenade exploded, hurled up masses of soil and shattered crops from the field. Miller returned to the jeeps.

'You didn't get the car,' his driver said tactlessly.

'I got something more important. The location of their machine-gunner. He's high up on the right-hand ridge. So that's one to stalk.'

Miller's back was streaming with perspiration. He hadn't felt it necessary to tell his men he was the only one wearing a bulletproof flak jacket under his camouflage tunic. It would have restricted the movements of most men, but Miller was so brawny it didn't worry him. And it gave him added protection.

'We've got to make them all show themselves,' he decided. 'So the best way to do that is to give them something to shoot at. Brad,' he said to his driver, 'I want you to rev up your engine, hammering it until you can shoot past the entrance like a rocket to the moon. I'll be behind that hedge opposite so I can see where they all are.'

'With that machine-gunner firing like hell at me?' 'Up to you to be going so fast he misses you,' Miller told him callously. 'When you've gone past the entrance you keep going maybe half a mile, then turn round, rev up again and come back here.'

'Why not just put me in a shooting gallery?' 'What?' Miller bunched his huge fist. 'Any more talk like that and you'll lose a lot of teeth.'

He would have done it, too. But he was short of men and still was wondering what had happened to Jeep Number Three which should have arrived by now with two more men. He took a quick decision.

'Our jeeps are too close to them. I want them moved back a few yards. Don't start the engines, put the gears in reverse and we'll push them back manually…'

From his position, perched halfway up the ridge, Harry looked straight down on Marler, huddled in his cave, gripping his Armalite. Harry had reacted fast when Miller appeared in the entrance, but not quite fast enough. If he'd elevated the barrel of his sub-machine gun only an inch higher he'd have ripped the tall, white-haired brute to pieces.

He thought of crawling higher up until he reached the summit of the quarry. But Marler had ordered him to occupy this position. Also, Harry was sprawled inside a shallow gully and liked the position. He'd stay where he was. From where he lay he couldn't see the jeeps which had parked behind the hedge. Couldn't be helped.

Oddly enough, Marler had been thinking he'd left a dangerous loophole in his dispositions. He had no one on the other ridge opposite. Anyone crawling up that side could eventually look straight down on Tweed's cave and Newman's sandpile barrier. But Marler knew it was always a mistake to start moving men once he had them in position. Often a fatal mistake. He'd leave well alone.

Earlier, before Harry had let loose his burst of gunfire, he had called Tweed on his mobile. Reception was very clear.

'Tweed? Harry here. Should have told you I found the third rearguard jeep well back from the other two. Found it toppled in a ditch with two of the bastards underneath it, shot to pieces, riddled with bullets.'

'That's strange…'

'It means now there are seven of us against five of them. So the odds are in our favour.'

'Don't get complacent,' Tweed warned emphatically. 'They are trained soldiers, trained killers.'

From his position inside the cave, with Nield and Paula, he could look down and clearly see Newman and Lisa crouched behind their sandpile. Lisa appeared to be talking to him.

'Nothing's happening,' she whispered to Newman. 'What can they be up to? It's so quiet. Pity Harry didn't get that white-haired tree trunk of a man.'

'It could be deliberate tactics,' Newman told her. 'They wait and do nothing. A kind of psychological warfare to play on our nerves, make us do something silly. Patience is the answer.'

It was ironic that the bull-at-gate Miller had never thought of this move. That if he waited long enough and did nothing it could shred their nerves.

'You're thirsty, aren't you?' Newman asked Lisa, who had just licked her lips.

'I'm OK.'

396'So it's a good job when we left the car I grabbed a bottle of water. Here you are. Just take a few sips,' he warned. 'That may have to last us for quite a while.'

He felt sorry for the others who had no water at all. The sun was scorching down on them. If the thugs had any sense they'd wait until their opposition was in a pretty bad way. He refused a drink when Lisa offered him the bottle. He was determined to hold out as long as he could in this heat.

Above them Nield deliberately didn't watch them sipping the water. He just hoped the bastards would get on with it – whatever they were planning.

Miller had helped his four men push the jeeps further back than a few yards under cover of the hedge. He'd decided Tweed might get clever, hurl a few grenades over the hedge to destroy the jeeps.

While his driver was revving up his engine to make a Le Mans rush past the entrance to the quarry, Miller found a hole in the hedge on the far side of the road. Once through to the field he moved cautiously. Crawling on all fours, he passed another hole, but it wasn't opposite the entrance. He kept moving.

He'd have liked to take off the flak jacket under his camouflage tunic but he didn't for a moment consider doing that. He had a pair of binoculars looped over his neck, hanging down his back. They kept hammering into his body but he ignored the pounding as sweat streamed down him. Then he found another hole – facing opposite to the middle of the entrance. A perfect lookout point. He took out a handkerchief and settled down to wait.

He used the handkerchief to wipe neck and hands. When he'd finished, the handkerchief was sodden. He could hear his driver still revving up. He's scared. When you're scared you start moving – at least, that was what Miller always did.

Head hunched well down, the driver released the brake. If he was lucky he'd be past the entrance before Tweed's men realised what was happening. As he hurtled past, Harry's machine-gun opened up, peppered the side of the jeep with a hail of bullets. Newman had fired non-stop with the automatic rifle he had grabbed on leaving their car. Lisa stood up, threw a grenade. It landed yards behind the jeep, detonating without touching the vehicle, which was gone.

Miller, who had crawled well back from the hole into the field, was jubilant, smiled savagely. Lisa's grenade, raining shrapnel into the road and the field beyond, hadn't reached Miller, who congratulated himself on crawling far enough back.

He was jubilant because he'd located their positions. The machine-gunner was still in the same place, huddled down halfway up the right-hand slope of the quarry. Another man, maybe with others, was crouched behind a sandpile on the left. And a woman was also behind the same sandpile. What he didn't know was that Marler, with his Armalite and variety of other weapons, was hidden in his cave on the right-hand side of the quarry.

Waiting for his driver to make his second run, coming back, Miller hauled his binoculars round to his chest, raised them to his eyes, focused on each location. He saw nothing. No sign of movement or men. They were keeping their heads down.

While doing this, Miller's brain was planning his strategy for the final killing assault. He was now pretty sure they had left a loophole in their defences. There had been no sign of anyone located on the left-hand ridge – to complement the machine-gunner on the other ridge. He might scale that ridge himself.

Then he heard his driver coming back. He jammed his binoculars into his eyes, ready to swivel them from location to location. The jeep seemed to be returning even faster. Miller guessed the grenade had put the wind up him.

Marler used his mobile to warn Newman, then Tweed, not to react when the jeep flashed past – unless it drove inside the amphitheatre. If it did that they'd give it all they'd got.

Harry waited for it, judging from the engine sound just how close it was. Then he opened up with another rain of bullets, aimed them just across the road. The jeep flashed past. Unfortunately Harry's hands were wet and the muzzle was aimed lower than he'd intended. Bullets hammered into the lower part of the jeep, then it was gone.

'Damn!' said Harry. 'Damn! Damn!'

'What do they think they're doing?' Lisa asked.

'Trying to make us give away all our positions,' Newman told her. 'Probably got someone behind that hedge on the other side of the road, watching. Call it a rehearsal.'

He had passed on Marler's order to Lisa earlier. To stay put. Not to show themselves. Not to open fire. It was an order which had not been received with much enthusiasm. She'd disobeyed the order, but so had he.

Inside his cave Tweed was listening, hoping to catch a sound that would give him a clue to the enemy's intentions. He heard nothing. The silence was depressing. Below them, behind the sandpile, it was getting on Lisa's nerves.

'They seem to be taking for ever to do something,' she grumbled.

'Sometimes it happens like this,' Newman said calmly. 'It probably means they don't know what to do next. We're in a strong position here.'

He didn't believe what he had just said to reassure her. He was sure the opposition were planning carefully how to deliver the final onslaught.

Above them, in the cave, Tweed was secretly worrying that there was a hole in their fortress. They had no one on the ridge above them. He didn't blame Marler who, almost in seconds, had established a strong defensive position. But he was still worried. Nield noticed the expression on his face.