Juggernaut

'We'll do that,' said Sisley. 'But we want some security against them too. We'll take one of the trucks.'

Hammond said, 'The hell you will, Bob!'

'Or the airlift truck. There's room for all of us at a pinch, and it's worth more. Yes, that's what we'll do.'

Hammond was beginning to lose his temper. 'Over my dead body!'

Wingstead held out a hand to calm him. 'There'll be no arguments. I forbid you to touch the transports, Sisley,' he said.

'And just how are you going to stop us?'

This had gone far enough. It was time I intervened. 'You're not taking that airlift truck anywhere. Or any other vehicle. Wyvern Transport is heavily in debt to British Electric and I'm calling that debt. In lieu of payment I am sequestering all their equipment, and that includes all vehicles. Your vouchers will come from me and my company will pay you off, when you claim. If you live to claim. You've got one hour and then you can start walking.'

Sisley gaped at me. He said, 'But Fort Pirie is -'

'About two hundred and fifty miles away. You may find transport before then. Otherwise you can do what the people you call nignogs are doing – hoof it.'

He squared himself for a fight and then surveyed the odds facing him. Behind him his own men murmured uneasily but only Burke raised his voice in actual protest. Hearing it, McGrath came across, fists balled and spoiling for a fight once again, but still with the matter-of-fact air that made him all the more dangerous. The mutineers subsided and backed away.

Sisley mouthed a few more obscenities but we ignored him. Soon they moved off in a tightknit, hostile group and disappeared behind one of the trucks.

'Keep an eye on them, Mick, but no rough stuff,' Hammond said.

Wingstead let out a long steady breath.

'I'd give a lot for a pull from that bottle of Scotch of yours. Or even a warm beer. But I'll settle for a mug of gunfire very gladly indeed.'

'Ditto,' I said, and we grinned at one another.

'You're my boss now, do you know that?'

'Sure I am. And that's my first order: a cup of that damned hellbrew of Bishop's and a plateful of whatever mess he's calling lunch,' I said. 'You too, Basil. Save the figuring for afterwards.'

Later that afternoon I had my chance to talk to Dr Katabisirua. The defection of five of our men troubled him little; they were healthy and capable, and he felt that having taken their own course it was up to them to make it in safety. The addition to our number of two more Americans and the expected arrival of a Frenchman and two Russians also meant little to him, except in so far as he hoped they might have some medical stores in their vehicles. The arrival of Dr Marriot he saw as pure gold.

He fretted about malnutrition, about sepsis, and was more perturbed than he liked to admit about the jolting his patients were receiving. For me, his worst news concerned Max Otter man, who was sinking into unconsciousness and for whom the future looked very grave.

He'd heard about the bridge, of course. 'There is no way to get to Kanja, then? No way at all?' 'Only for fit men on their own feet, Doctor. I'm sorry.' 'Mister Atheridge said he knew a way, I am told.' ' 'Yes,' I said, 'but he's wounded, over fifty, and in some shock. He's driven up there with some soldiers and one of our men to have a look but they won't be back before nightfall, I reckon. I don't think for a moment that they'll find any feasible way of getting across that ravine.'

He sighed. 'Then you are going to turn back.'

'To Kodowa, yes. And then south or west. Probably west. Do you know the town of Makara?, Is there a medical station there?'

But he said that Makara patients had always been brought to him at Kodowa. There wasn't even a trained nurse, only a couple of midwives. Then he brightened. There is the cotton factory,' he said. 'They have very large well-built barns but I have heard that they stand almost empty and the factory is idle. It would make a good place to put all my patients.'

'If it's still intact, yes.' And, I thought, if some regiment or rebel troop hasn't turned it into a barracks first.

Shortly afterwards the two Russians and the Frenchman arrived. The Russians were as alike as peas in a pod, with broad Slavic features and wide grins. They had polysyllabic unpronounceable names and neither spoke more than ten words of English. God knows how they'd managed in earlier days. Zimmerman, who had worked alongside Russians laying pipelines in Iran, was able to interpret reasonably well. Later they became known as Brezhnev and Kosygin to everybody, and didn't seem to mind. Probably the way we said the names they couldn't even recognize them. They were hauling a load of pipe casing northwards to the oilfields.