Cry Wolf

Cry Wolf [047-011-4.8]
By: Wilbur Smith
Category: fiction action adventure
Synopsis:
"Run," he shouted. "Keep running." And he turned back to
face the crippled animal as it launched itself from the ledge into the
bed of the river. It was only then that Jake realized that he still
carried a full bottle of Scrubbs Ammonia in his hand. The lion came
bounding swiftly through the shallow stagnant pool towards him. Despite
the wounds, it followed with lithe and sinuous menace. it was so close
that he could see each stiff white whisker in the curled upper lip and
hear the rattle of air in its throat. He let it come on, for to turn
and run was suicide. At the last moment he reared back like a baseball
pitcher and hurled the bottle.
Jake Barton is an American engineer, Gareth Swalles (a stylish
Englishman with a nose for a quick deal. Both have always moved from
one escapade to another. Now, as Mussolini prepares to annihilate the
people of Ethiopia, the two adventurers come up against Vicky
Camberwell, the beautiful but fiery reporter bent on espousing their
cause. Striking a bargain with a beleaguered Ethiopian prince, the
trio dares to run gauntlet guns and a batch of run-down armoured cars
in a final, desperate gamble for freedom..
To Jake Barton, machinery was always feminine with all the female's
fascination, wiles and bitchery.
So when he first saw them standing in a row beneath the spreading dark
green foliage of the mango trees, they became for him the iron
ladies.
There were five of them, standing aloof from the other heaps of
worn-out and redundant equipment that His Majesty's Government was
offering for sale. Although it was June and the cooler season between
the monsoons, yet the heat on this cloudless morning in Dares Salaam
was mounting like a force-fed furnace and Jake went thankfully into the
shade of the mangoes to stand closer to the ladies and begin his
examination.
He glanced around the enclosed yard, and noticed that he seemed to be
the only one interested in the five vehicles.
The motley crowd of potential buyers was picking over the heaps of
broken shovels and Picks, the rows of battered wheelbarrows and the
other mounds of unidentifiable rubbish.
He turned his attention back to the ladies, as he slipped off the light
tropical moleskin jacket he wore and hung it on the branch of a mango
tree.
The ladies were aristocrats fallen on hard times, their hard but rakish
lines were dulled by the faded and scratched paintwork and the
cancerous blotches of rust that showed through. The foxy-faced fruit
bats that hung inverted in the mango branches above them had splattered
them with their dung, and oil and grease had oozed from their elderly
joints and caked with dust in unsightly black streaks and blobs.
Jake knew their lineage and their history and as he laid aside the
small carpet bag that held his tools, he reviewed it swiftly. Five
fine pieces of craftsmanship lying rotting away on the fever coast of
Tanganyika. The bodies and chassis had been built by Schreiner the
stately high cupola in which the open mounting for the Maxim machine
gun now glared like an empty eye-socket, the square sloping platform of
the engine housing, with its heavy armour plate and the neat rows of
rivets and the steel shutters that could be closed to protect the
radiator against incoming enemy fire.
They stood tall on the metal bossed wheels with their solid rubber
tyres, and Jake felt a sneaking regret that he would be the one to tear
their engines out of them and toss aside the worn-out but gallant old
bodies.
They did not deserve such cavalier treatment, these fighting iron
ladies who in their youth had chased the wily German commander von
Lettow-Vorbeck across the wide plains and over the fierce hills of
East
Africa. The thorns of the wilderness had deeply scarred the paintwork
of the five armoured cars and there were places where rifle fire had
glanced off their armour, leaving the distinctive dimple in the
steel.
Those were their grandest days, streaming into battle with their
cavalry pennants flying, dust billowing behind them, bounding and
crashing through the don gas and ant bear holes, their machine guns
blazing and the terrified German askaris scattering before them.
After that, the original engines had been replaced by the beautiful new
6 litre Bentleys, and they had begun the long decline of police patrol
work on the border, chasing the occasional cattle raider and slowly
being pounded by a succession of brutal drivers into the condition
which had at last brought them here to the Government sale yards in
this fiery May of the year of our Lord 1935. But Jake knew that even
the savage abuse to which they had been subjected could not have
destroyed the engines completely and that was what interested him.
He rolled up his sleeves like a surgeon about to begin his
examination.
"Ready or not, girls, "he muttered, "here comes old Jake." He was a
tall man with a big bony frame that was cramped in the confined area of
the armoured car's body, but he worked with a quiet concentration so
close to rapture that the discomfort went unnoticed. Jake's wide
friendly mouth was pursed in a whistle that went on endlessly, the
opening bars of "Tiger Rag" repeated over and over again, and his eyes
were screwed up against the gloom of the interior.
He worked swiftly, checking the throttle and ignition settings of the
controls, tracing out the fuel lines from the rear-mounted fuel tank,
finding the cocks under the driver's seat and grunting with
satisfaction. He scrambled out of the turret and dropped down the high
side of the vehicle, pausing to wipe away with his forearm the thin
trickle of sweat that broke from his thick curly black hair and ran
down his cheek, then he hurried forward and knocked the clamps open on
the side flaps of the armoured engine-cover.
"Oh sweet, sweet!" he whispered, as he saw the fine outlines of the
old Bentley engine block beneath the layer of thick dust and greasy
filth.
His hands with the big square palms and thick spatulate fingers went
out to touch it with what was almost a caress.
"The bastards have beaten you up, darling," he whispered.
"But we will have you singing again as lovely as ever, that's a
promise." He pulled the dipstick from the engine sump and took a drop
of oil between his fingers.
"Shit!" he grunted with disgust, as he felt the grittiness, and he
thrust the stick back into its slot. He pulled the plugs and, with the
promise of a shilling, had a loitering African swing the crank for him
while he felt the compression against the palm of his hand.
Swiftly he moved along the line of armoured cars, checking,
probing and testing, and when he reached the last of them he knew he
could have three of them running again for certain and four maybe.
One was shot beyond hope. There was a crack in the engine block
through which he could have ridden a horse, and the pistons had seized
so solid in their pots that not even the combined muscle upon the crank
handle of Jake and his helper could move them.
Two of them had the entire carburettor assemblies missing, but he could
cannibalize from the wreck. That left him short of one carburettor and
he felt only gloom at his chances of finding another in Dares Salaam.