Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (электронная книга TXT) 📗
She is running twenty-three minutes late. She left here two minutes ago. The trucks are numbers twelve and thirteen. Well done. Manfred De La Rey replaced the telephone and checked his wrist-watch before he smiled at the two women who watched him apprehensively across the farmhouse kitchen.
Thank you, Mevrou, he addressed the older of the two.
We are grateful for your help. No trouble will come to you out of this, I give you my word. Trouble is an old acquaintance, Meneer, the proud old woman replied. In ninety-nine the rooinekke burned my farm and killed my husband. Manfred had parked the motorcycle behind the barn. He started it and rode back down the track a mile or so until he joined the main road. He turned north, and a few miles further on he was riding parallel to the railway line. At the base of a rocky hill the lines and the road diverged. The railway tracks climbed the shoulder of the hill and then disappeared behind it.
Manfred stopped the motorcycle and checked that the road was clear, ahead and behind, then he turned off onto another farmtrack, and followed the railway tracks around the back of the hill. Again he stopped, propped the bike on its foot rest, and checked the locale.
They were far enough from the widow's farmhouse not to attach suspicion to the old woman. The hill hid this section of the tracks from the main road, but the road was close enough to offer a swift escape route in either direction. The gradient would slow the approaching locomotive to almost walking pace. He had watched while other goods trains passed the spot.
He turned the cycle off the road, following the tracks of other wheels that had flattened the grass. In the first fold of the land, hidden in a cluster of thorn trees, the trucks were parked. Four of them, a three-tonner, two four-tonners and a big brown Bedford ten-tonner. Getting fuel rationing coupons to fill their tanks had been difficult.
It was a mere hundred paces to the railway line from where the trucks stood and his men were waiting beside them, resting, lying in the grass, but they scrambled up as the motorcycle bumped and puttered over the fold of ground and they crowded around him eagerly. Roelf Stander was at their head.
She'll be here at nine-thirty, Manfred told him. The trucks are twelve and thirteen. Work that out. One of his band was a railway man, and he made the calculations of distance between the locomotive and the explosive trucks. Roelf and Manfred left the others hidden and went out onto the line to mark out the distances. Manfred wanted to stop the goods train so that the two laden trucks were directly opposite the waiting vehicles in the clump of thorn trees.
They paced it out from this point and Manfred set the charges under the fish plates in a joint of the tracks. Then he and Roelf went back and laid the red warning flares, using 0, the railwayman's calculations of speed and distance as a guide.
It was dark by the time they had finished, so they could proceed to the next step. They moved the men out into their positions. They were all young, picked for their size and physical strength. They were dressed in rough clothing of dark colours and armed with a motley collection of weapons that had survived the call-in by the Smuts government shotguns and old Lee Enfields and Marmlichers from other long-ago wars. Only Roelf and Manfred were armed with modern German Lugers, part of the contents of the rubber canisters from the U-boat.
Manfred took charge of the smaller group while Roelf waited with the work party that would unload the trucks, and they settled down in darkness to wait.
Manfred heard it first, the distant susurration in the night, still far off, and he roused them with three sharp blasts on his whistle. Then he armed the battery box and connected the wires to the brass screw terminals. The huge Cyclops eye of the approaching locomotive glared across the plain below the hill. The waiting men adjusted their face masks and lay hidden in the grassy ditch beside the railway line.
The beat of the locomotive engine slowed and became deeper as it ran onto the slope. It climbed laboriously, running past the first group of waiting men, and then it hit the first of the warning flares. The flare ignited with a sharp crack and lit the veld for fifty yards around with red flickering light.
Manfred heard the metallic squeal of brakes, and he relaxed slightly. The driver was acting reflexively, it would not be necessary to blow out the tracks. The second flare ignited, shooting out long tongues of red flame from under the driving wheels, but by now the locomotive was pulling up sharply, brakes grinding metal on metal and steam flying from the emergency vacuum tubes in screaming white jets.
While it was still moving, Manfred leapt onto the footplates, and thrust the Luger into the astonished faces of the driver and his fireman.
Shut her down! Switch off the headlight! he yelled through his mask. Then get down from the cab! With the brakes locked, the railwaymen scrambled down and lifted their hands high. They were immediately searched and trussed up. Manfred ran back down the train, and by the time he reached the explosives trucks, Roelfs men had already forced the doors and the wooden cases of gelignite were being handed along a human chain to be loaded into the first lorry.
What about the guard at the rear of the train? Manfred asked.
We have got him tied up, Roelf answered, and Manfred ran back to the head of the train. Swiftly he defused and lifted the explosive charges he had laid, delighted that it had not been necessary to fire them. By the time he got back, the first lorry was fully loaded with cases of explosives.
Take her away! Roelf yelled, and one of his men climbed into the cab, started the engine and with lights extinguished, drove it away.
The second vehicle reversed up to the explosives trucks and they began to load it.
Manfred checked his watch. Twelve minutes, he muttered. They were ahead of schedule.
The driver, the guard and the fireman were tied securely and locked in the guard's van while the loading of explosives went on smoothly and swiftly.
All finished, Roelf shouted. We can't load any more. 'Forty-eight minutes, Manfred told him. Well done. All right, move out everybody! Manfred ordered. What about you? I'll look after myself. He watched the Bedford truck pull away and waited until it reached the farm road and switched on its headlights. The sound of its engine dwindled. He was alone. If Roelf or the others had known what he intended to do now, they might have baulked and tried to prevent it.
Manfred climbed into the open door of the explosives truck. it was half filled with the white wooden cases. They had only been able to carry away a part of the load, while the second truck had not been touched. There were still at least twenty-five tons of explosive remaining on board.
He set the timing device with a delay of fifteen minutes and placed it in the gap between the stacked cases and the steel side of the truck, pushing it far back where it could not be readily seen. Then he jumped down to the ground and ran forward to the locomotive. None of the three men locked in the caboose of the guard's van were members of the Ossewa Brandwag. Left alive they would be certain to give damaging evidence to the police. He felt little pity for them. They were casualties of war.
He climbed into the cab of the locomotive and disengaged the wheel brakes; then he opened the throttle gradually.
The wheels spun, then found purchase and the train jolted forward with the couplings clanking. It began to pull away jerkily up the slope.
Manfred eased the throttle open to the halfway notch and locked it there. Then he jumped down to the ground, and watched the trucks rumble past where he stood. They were gaining speed gradually. When the caboose passed, he walked back down the tracks to the clump of thorn trees, and sat astride the seat of the motorcycle.
