Rhinoceros (61 page)

He never saw what happened to the third jeep because the road kept curving. The third jeep, under Ollie's com
mand, was some distance behind the other two. Ollie was smoking a cigar when, in the wing mirror, he saw a black
car coming up behind them. He realized immediately the
black car could be a problem.

'Slow down,' he ordered his driver. 'Then put the jeep at
right angles across the road. That will block this car coming
up on our rear.'

The driver acted swiftly. Stopping, he was on the wrong side of the road. He reversed, turning the jeep until it was
at right angles to oncoming traffic, making it impossible
for another vehicle to pass them. Ollie hauled out his
automatic from his holster, stood up, facing backwards,
waited.

The black car was slowing down. He could vaguely see
that the driver wore a wide-brimmed straw hat. Couldn't
stand the heat. It stopped about thirty feet away. Ollie
tucked the automatic inside the belt behind his back. He
held up both hands, formed a crude blower.

'Road blocked. Military exercise. Go back the way
you came.'

The driver acknowledged the command with a brief salute. He began to turn his car. The driver of the jeep reached for his own automatic. Ollie nudged him hard.

'Leave it alone. I'll take him. We don't want a witness.
I'm waiting until he's positioned at right angles to us -
then I can get him point-blank.'

The driver, who had his window down, was obviously
not skilled at backing and turning. First, the engine
stopped. The driver got it going again. He started backing slowly, ended up with his first try slant-wise across the road.

'Friggin' amateur,' Ollie rasped. 'Going to take him all
day. The next time he should make it, then I'll make
it.'

The jeep's driver was standing beside Ollie now, watch
ing with his arms folded. Again sweat was dripping off his
hands. He wiped them dry on his trousers. The black car's
engine stopped again. The driver waved a hand out of the
window as though to say
I'm not too good at this.

'He'll get there in the—' Ollie began.

He never completed his sentence. The barrel of a Heck
ler & Koch sub-machine gun appeared over the edge of
the open window. There was a devilish stutter of bullets
which neither Ollie nor his driver heard. A spray of bullets
hit both of them, a non-stop spray. Ollie fell dead at the same moment as his driver collapsed.

The driver of the black car climbed out, ran to the jeep. His gloved hands lifted one body, then the other, hurling
both into the ditch by the roadside. He then reached in, put
the gear into reverse, switched on the engine and jumped back. The jeep backed into the ditch, partly covering both of the bodies.

The driver ran back to his car, dived behind the wheel.
With great skill, he swiftly turned the black car to face the
way it had come. It sped back, vanished over the crest of
a hill barely a minute before Harry arrived on his motorcycle, slowed, stopped, stared.

He dropped the strut to stabilize his machine, swung off
the saddle, grabbed his Uzi out of the pannier, advanced
slowly. As he stood on the edge of the ditch, looking down,
he had no doubt both
the men in camouflage jackets, half hidden under the jeep, were dead. He could see enough of
their bullet-ridden bodies to be sure of that.

Two of the men who had been sent to kill Tweed were,
instead, themselves lifeless. But why was the jeep lying on
top of them? Harry decided he had no time to puzzle over what could have happened. He had to get back to Tweed
in time to warn him two jeeps were coming up behind
him. He shoved the Uzi back into the pannier, started
the machine, turned it and twisted the throttle savagely
until he was moving almost like a shell from a gun. He
hoped to God he'd get there in time.

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 amphi
theatre, 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.