Sheba. Part 27

'Wait until they're half-way up the slope and fire when I give the order,' Kane said.

They waited in silence. Skiros was in the lead and once he looked up towards them, the moonlight falling clearly on his face. Kane grunted. 'I'll say this for the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He's got guts.'

And then Skiros had reached the large boulder splashed with moonlight which Kane had chosen as the half-way mark. 'Now!' he said, and pressed the trigger.

The three guns chattered in unison and there were screams and cries of dismay from below as several Arabs rolled down the slope to the floor of the valley.

The rest of them retreated fast, followed by Skiros, cursing at the top of his voice in German.

In the silence which followed, Cunningham sighed deeply. 'Well, that looks like that for the moment.'

Kane shook his head. 'He isn't going to put up with much of this. I've a feeling he'll come up with something nasty at any moment.'

As he spoke, Skiros walked forward. 'Kane,' he called. 'I'm not going to waste words on you. I'll give you fifteen minutes to come down with your hands up. If you don't, something unpleasant will happen to the ladies. I'm sure you and Cunningham don't want that.'

Kane touched Jamal on the shoulder and the three of them got up and moved back from the entrance. 'He's got us cold,' Cunningham said. 'We can't let him hurt the women.'

Kane shook his head and his eyes were grim. 'If he wants to harm them, he will and nothing we do will have any effect on him.' He shook his head. 'I think he's stalling. He's probably got some scheme cooking.'

At that moment there was a movement high up on the face of the cliff outside and the stones rattled down on to the ledge in a fine spray.

'I told you the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had something up his sleeve.' Kane said, and then a grenade rolled inside the entrance of the cave, clearly visible in the patch of moonlight.

He turned, pushing Cunningham and the Somali violently backwards into the narrow entrance of the tomb and followed them, dropping to his hands and knees.

The grenade exploded, bringing down a shower of stones into the entrance, then the whole cliff seemed to tremble and the roof started to cave in.

Muller stared up at the cloud of dust clear in the moonlight. 'Oh my G.o.d. Now what?'

'We get the h.e.l.l out of here,' Skiros said. 'Back to Dahrein. Leave on Selim's dhow. At least that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Kane and his friends have had it. I hope he takes a long time to die entombed in there.'

'But Berlin, the Fiihrer? What will happen to us?'

'Nothing, you fool. I'll get straight on the radio; tell Ritter the Catalina crashed. Hardly our fault and all they need to know.'

'And the women?'

'They can come with us for the time being. Now pull yourself together and let's get moving.'

He turned and went back down to the camp, waving Selim and the remaining Bedouins to follow him.

In Berlin, Canaris was standing at the window of his office having a cognac when there was a knock on the door and Ritter entered. The young major was pale and obviously disturbed.

'Bad news, Hans?'

'Operation Sheba, Herr Admiral. I've had a rather garbled message from Skiros. He's closing down and getting out. There was trouble of some sort, the Catalina destroyed, Romero and his men dead.'

'How very unfortunate,' Canaris said.

'But the Fiihrer, Herr Admiral. What will he say?'

'The Fiihrer, Hans, has a tendency to be very excited about something on Monday, which he has totally forgotten about by Friday.' Canaris smiled. 'And after all, he still has Poland.'

'Can you be certain he'll react in this way?' Ritter said.

'Of course. I've had considerable experience as regards the Fiihrer's mental processes, Hans.'

Canaris went and got another gla.s.s. 'Here, have a cognac. When you've been in this game as long as I have, you learn to take the rough with the smooth.'

'If you say so, Herr Admiral.'

'Oh, but I do.' Canaris raised his gla.s.s. 'To the Third Reich, Hans, and may it last a thousand years.' He laughed. 'And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.'

THIRTEEN.

THE CAVE WAS in complete darkness and Kane took out the small book of matches he had last used in the shaft. There were only three left and he struck one with fingers that trembled slightly.

The small tongue of flame flowered outwards, picking Cunningham's sweating face from the darkness. The Englishman laughed shakily. 'What happens now?'

'Let's have some light on the situation,' Kane said. 'Didn't you leave the tools and a spot-lamp at this end of the pa.s.sage when we finished work?'

The match burned down to his finger and he dropped it and lit another. He squatted, holding the match at arm's length, and Cunningham said, 'Got it!'

A moment later, a powerful beam of hard white light flooded across to the other side of the cave, slicing the darkness in two. The cave had decreased in size by at least a half, and a sloping bank of rubble anld stones lifted backwards, completely blocking the entrance.

It was unpleasantly warm and the air was heavy with settling dust and the acrid tang of explosives. 'Well, what's our next move?' Cunningham said.

Kane started to take off his shirt. 'I should have thought that was sufficiently obvious. We've got to dig and keep on digging. At least we've got the tools, which is something.'

'And what about our friends outside?'

'As far as they're concerned, we're dead meat,' Kane said. 'They probably think the d.a.m.ned mountain came in on us.'

'They wouldn't be far wrong either,' Cunningham told him. He flashed the spot up to the roof and around the walls. 'The whole place still looks d.a.m.ned shaky to me.'

Kane took the spot from him and set it down on the floor so that the beam rested upon the rock-filled entrance. 'The only thing we've got to worry about is the battery in this spot-lamp. You'd better pray that it holds out long enough.'

But there was more to worry about - much more. They laboured feverishly in the weird, dust-filled light, stripped to their waists, sweat pouring freely from their naked bodies.

Jamal was a tower of strength, his great hands lifting, unaided, rocks which Kane and Cunningham could not have moved together. Time ceased to have any meaning as they worked on, fingers bruised and raw. Finally, Jamal, who was working a little in advance of Kane, gave a strange, animal moan and moved backwards.

'What is it?' Kane demanded in Arabic.

The Somali turned, the whites of his eyes shining in the light of the lamp. He pointed and Kane crawled forward into the narrow cutting they had cleared into the heart of the rockfall.

The beam from the spot picked out an immense slab of stone weighing at least three or four tons, which stretched across their path, firmly wedged into place with rocks of varying sizes.