Juggernaut

'I agree,' McGrath said briskly, standing up. 'I. want everybody lined up again, except for a couple of you behind the doors.'

'What about me?' I asked.

'When an officer walks through that door he'll expect to see Maksa, you and Mister Wingstead, because you're the boss men. So you'll be right there in line, under the guns.' He gave his knife to Lang and the cosh to Bert Proctor. 'You two take anyone coming through that door but only after the doors are closed. Harry, you take the other machine-gun and go stand up there where I was. If the guards do come in you can fire over our heads, and if that happens everyone ducks fast. Doctor Kat, you're in line too. Think your voice can carry outside?'

The doctor nodded reluctantly.

'I'll take the shotgun, Mister Mannix, if you don't mind,' McGrath said. I handed it over to him with some hesitation, but he was right, he had to look the part. It left me feeling vulnerable again.

We stood like actors waiting for a curtain to rise. Facing me was McGrath looking surprisingly like Maksa even from where I stood. Just as I had taken over from Kemp and Wingstead in one crisis, so now McGrath had as easily taken over from me. He was a natural leader and afterwards he would be damned hard to control. If there was an afterwards.

CHAPTER 21

McGrath went and opened one of the doors. He put his arm through the narrow opening, holding the shotgun at the ready. Dr Kat stood immediately behind him out of sight, so that the voice should seem to come from the bogus colonel. McGrath's head was averted as though he were keeping an eye on his prisoners, but light fell on his shoulder tabs and brassarded arm. When Dr Kat spoke it didn't sound much like Maksa but we could only hope that the soldiers would accept it. McGrath closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief.

'Right,' he said. Two officers are coming in. You ready, you three?'

The attack team nodded silently, and at the rear of the warehouse Zimmerman waved his machine-gun and dropped out of sight behind the topmost stack of cotton. McGrath strode across to Burns' body and stood beside it with his back to the doors. His legs were apart and he held the shotgun so that it pointed down towards the shattered skull. It was a nice piece of stage setting; anyone entering would see his back and then their eyes would be drawn to Burns, a particularly nasty sight.

McGrath judged it was too quiet.

'Say something, Mister Mannix,' he said. 'Carry on your conversation with the Colonel.'

'I don't want your bloody oil,' I improvised. 'I'm not in the oil business. I work for a firm of electrical engineers.' Behind McGrath Proctor had his ear to the door and the cosh raised. I carried on, 'We're certainly not responsible for how you run your country…'

The door opened and two officers walked in, Mosira still wearing his dark glasses and a much younger officer following him. I went on speaking. 'Colonel Maksa, I demand that you allow our medical people to see their…'

Proctor hit the lieutenant hard with the cosh and he went straight down. Captain Mosira was putting up a struggle, groping for his pistol. Lang had an arm round the Captain's neck but his knife waved wildly in the air. Mosira couldn't shout because of the stranglehold but it was not until McGrath turned and drove the butt of the shotgun against his head that he collapsed.

Outside all was quiet, and in the warehouse nobody spoke either. McGrath turned to Barry Lang and held out his hand for the knife. 'I said, don't be squeamish,' he said coldly.

Lang gave him the knife. 'I'm sorry, Mick, I just -'

'Who can use this?'

'I can,' said Hammond.

McGrath instantly tossed him the knife. 'Right, lads, let's pick up our loot and get this lot out of the way.'

Both officers had worn pistols and the lieutenant had a grenade at his belt. In the distribution I got one of the pistols. We looked to McGrath for guidance.

'Let's get those guards, lads. There are only six or seven of them. It'll be easy.'

It was entirely McGrath who made it work, his drive and coolness that kept the exercise moving. But paradoxically Maksa's own personality also helped us. He was clearly a martinet and no enlisted man was going to question his orders. The guards entered on demand and were easy to deal with.

We looked round the warehouse. The soldiers were laid in a row behind the cotton bales, together with the body of Russ Burns. The door in the rear was opened with ease and we were ready to leave.

McGrath said, 'As soon as possible we get that signal off. You know the drill, Mister Mannix?'

I nodded. The back of the warehouse faced away from our camp so we'd have to go around it and might run into enemy soldiers at any moment. One group was to get the medical team and Dan Atheridge to the rig and then rejoin the rest of us, who'd be in cover as close to the bridge as we could get. We'd leapfrog one another to get in place, ready to protect McGrath and his tractor team-mate. There had been some doubt as to who that would be.