‘You can’t be serious,’ she hissed.
Stratton removed one of the batteries from the bag and placed it beside a stick that had been stuck into the ground and that had the end of the command wire that led from the bridge wrapped around it. ‘I want you to stay here,’ he said to Louisa.
‘What about those people?’ she demanded again.
‘You agreed to do what I said without question. Nothing’s changed. Don’t move from this spot. Look for me at all times. When I wave my arms at you, you’ll touch both wires to the terminals and blow up that bridge. Do you understand me?’
Louisa stared at Stratton, her jaw clenched tightly.
‘Trust me,’ he said, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘Victor,’ he said, breaking off and heading down the rise.
Louisa watched him go and stared at the wire and the battery.
Victor stared at her and could only imagine what was going through her mind.
‘Victor!’ Stratton called out impatiently.
‘Dear God,’ he said, squeezing Louisa’s arm for re - assurance before scurrying down the rise after Stratton.
By the time the Frenchman had caught up with him Stratton had slung half a dozen rockets on his back. ‘Pick up the rest,’ he said as he headed back the way they came. Victor clumsily hitched them over his shoulder. The Indians had followed him and moved to help. ‘No,’ Victor said. He didn’t know Stratton’s intentions but rockets and Indians certainly did not mix. ‘You stay here and wait for me,’ he said before hurrying off.
Stratton crouched at the bottom of the rise to observe the convoy.
Victor squatted behind him. ‘What is the plan this time?’
‘I haven’t worked it out yet.’
‘What are the rockets for?’
‘With some situations you start with how you see the end and work back. You confident enough to fire one of these?’
‘I had a terrible feeling you were going to ask me that. I’ve seen a bad example. Maybe if you show me a good one.’
Stratton removed one of the tubes from his back and held it by either end in front of Victor so that it was parallel with the ground. ‘Hold it like this and pull,’ he said. He pulled the ends and the tube smoothly telescoped open until it locked. The action caused the rear sight to pop up out of its housing. ‘This is the safety catch,’ he said, pulling a sprung lever. He put the tube on his shoulder beside his cheek. ‘Just like a rifle, you look through this, line up the front sight on the target, and squeeze down on this,’ he said, indicating a rubber button. ‘There’s hardly any kick.’
‘And keep the back away from my arse,’ Victor added as his nerves began to tingle once again.
‘After the first one you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.’
‘What am I shooting at?’
‘Nothing until I tell you,’ Stratton said, looking hard at the lead truck.
A soldier pulled the jack from beneath the truck and two of the peasants replaced the tools in the locker on its side while the others were herded back to their vehicle. The driver gunned the truck’s engine and a dense cloud of black smoke belched from its exhaust, enveloping the officers who were by now back in their jeep. Unable to tolerate the fumes, the jeep’s driver swung out into the road and accelerated past the truck towards the bridge.
Stratton looked now for David and Bernard. They had jumped down onto the road and, keeping low, slid down the embankment to the river.
Stratton looked back at the jeep. ‘It’s about that time,’ he muttered and moved off towards the bridge.
They jogged at a crouch through the low bushes towards the sharp bend in the river before it went under the bridge. Stratton stopped in the tall grass at the river bank and knelt where he had a clean view of both ends of the structure.
The jeep slowed as it approached the bridge in order to negotiate the shift from tarmac to metal on the road surface.
There was no sign of David and Bernard but Stratton had to assume they had taken cover.
He placed the rockets at his feet, putting the one he had already prepared to one side and made ready another, all the time keeping an eye on the jeep as it drove across the bridge.
Stratton levelled the rocket on his shoulder while Victor watched the rest of the convoy.
‘Victor?’ Stratton said without looking behind him.
Victor looked at him and realised with a start why Stratton had called his name. He was looking into the back of the launcher. ‘Oh, shit,’ he cried as he threw himself out of the way.
As the jeep reached the far side of the bridge the truck approached the other end and slowed to negotiate the hump, the rest of the convoy close behind.
Stratton pressed his face to the tube and looked through the sights, his finger on the firing button.
The jeep bumped onto the tarmac.
Stratton placed it in his sights and followed it along the road that curved back almost towards him. His peripheral vision kept track of the truck now on the bridge. Stratton was not so much waiting for the jeep to be in a particular place as he was the truck. As it reached the end of the bridge and slowed to ease its wheels over the hump there, Stratton pressed the rubber trigger button.
The roar shattered the silence and the rocket shot from the end of the tube, a fiery blast belching from its rear to set fire to the grass behind Stratton. The projectile left a trail of white smoke to mark its track and struck the jeep, exploding and turning the vehicle into a fireball that continued to move forward, the burning bodies limp in their seats. Not surprisingly, it failed to take the bend in the road and plunged down the embankment to hit the river bank, jettisoning its cargo of flaming corpses.
The truck about to drive off the bridge slammed on its brakes.
Stratton dumped the spent launch tube, picked up another, and swivelled through ninety degrees to find the vehicle directly in front of the truck that held the peasants. Smoke from the burning grass wafted around him but not thickly enough to interfere with his aim. He fired. The rocket streaked across the river and struck the vehicle, which exploded, turned sharply and rolled onto its side. One of the soldiers crawled out and got to his feet, screaming as he staggered, unable to see. His clothes, hands and hair were ablaze and he dropped to the road, where he did not move and continued to burn.
The truck carrying the peasants stopped now, the people inside shrieking as they flung themselves down onto its floor in terror.
Stratton glanced at the bridge. Much of the convoy had stopped on it, bumper to bumper. The most important vehicle, the black Mercedes, was in the centre.
Stratton got to his feet and faced the rise. ‘Louisa!’ he shouted as he waved his arms.
Louisa had seen the devastation that the rockets had caused, realised what Stratton had achieved, and knew that at any second he would call upon her to administer the
coup de grâce
. She’d already gripped the wires even before Stratton had called her name and was now holding them over the battery. If she’d been asked to pick up a gun and fire it she might have hesitated, lacking the confidence to pull the trigger and deal with the subsequent recoil and noise. But to touch the battery terminals with the ends of the wires was simple. She had come to terms with the guilt of sending so many souls to their deaths. Seeing the old man and the woman who’d tried to help him gunned down so callously only minutes before made it easier.
She touched the wire to the terminals and noticed a little spark, but was not even remotely prepared for the thunderous boom that followed. The explosion was tremendous, rocking the ground beneath her, and she covered her head as she slid down the slope.
Stratton grabbed Victor and together they hit the ground as the shock wave roared over them, punching them viciously in their backs as it passed.
Thousands of steel ball-bearings had been unleashed at bullet speed against the vehicles. The small metal spheres shredded the men sitting in the backs of the trucks, pulverised their skulls, tore their limbs away. No one inside escaped. Glass shattered. Every surface was peppered with holes. The vehicles dropped as their tyres burst. Fuel tanks erupted in flames and the bridge struts to which the mines had been tied buckled skywards.
Above the noise of the explosion’s echoes countless ricochets could be heard as the claymores’ steel balls hurtled furiously in all directions.
As the massive blast reverberated around the valley and began to subside debris rained down from the sky. A chunk of smoking metal hit the ground not far from Stratton and Victor. The steel balls came back to earth, splashing into the river and all around.
Stratton covered his head as several fragments of hot shrapnel landed painfully on his torso. As soon as the deluge of metal began to subside he was on his feet and grabbing up the remaining rocket launchers. It was not over yet.
A pick-up truck containing several soldiers behind the peasant’s truck began to turn.
‘Find a target, Victor,’ Stratton called out as he snapped open a launch tube. He placed it on his shoulder and a second later fired. The rocket covered the distance in a second and slammed into the pick-up. The explosion lifted it off the road as it burst into flames.
Stratton dumped the empty launch tube and picked up another. He was operating on full automatic, locked into total kill mode and not giving the enemy a second to recover.
Several soldiers scurried from a largely undamaged truck near the bridge and took up firing positions. Victor snapped open his rocket launchers but as he fiddled with the safety catch a boom nearby signalled that Stratton was ahead of him. The rocket hit the truck and the vehicle disintegrated.
Victor finished preparing his weapon - he was determined to fire the damned thing.
The peasants had at first remained in their truck for fear of being shot while trying to flee. When the nearby vehicle went up they panicked and scrambled over the sides in an attempt to escape the carnage.
Several shots came from around the only vehicle that had escaped destruction other than the peasants’ truck. Victor put the weapon on his shoulder, peered through the sights and pressed the trigger button. The tube shuddered as the rocket shot out to miss the target by inches and thud into the far embankment, showering the soldiers with dirt and shrapnel. Seconds later half a dozen of them walked out of the smoke with their empty hands in the air in the universal gesture of surrender.
Victor was stunned at the power of the device. He marched down the slope towards the river.
David and Bernard appeared, running along the river bank, guns in their hands.
The Indians crept towards the bridge, utterly stunned by the scene of destruction.
Victor crossed the river, keeping his launch tube aimed at the soldiers. ‘Anyone moves and I shoot!’ he shouted.
Stratton passed behind him on his way to the bridge. ‘The tube’s empty,’ he said quietly.
Victor kept the weapon on his shoulder anyway. ‘They don’t know that,’ he replied.
David and Bernard were buzzing with excitement and amazement as they joined their comrades.
‘David!’ Stratton called out. ‘Go round up your people,’ he said, referring to the peasants. ‘Bernard.’
Bernard was helping Victor cover the enemy soldiers and looked over at him.
‘Collect their guns before they realise how few of us there are.’
Stratton climbed the embankment onto the road and walked towards the bridge. The smoke rising from the wreckage was mostly black because of the burning tyres. Ash floated in the air. Every metal span that a mine had been tied to was buckled or shattered.
The bridge creaked and groaned loudly and Stratton wondered how badly weakened it was. He stepped over wreckage to get to the side where he could pull himself up a few feet onto a span for a better view. The vehicles were misshapen wrecks, peppered with countless small holes. Their interiors were laid bare, windows shattered, roofs crushed, engines exposed. The bodies inside were almost unrecognisable as having once been human. Not a single piece of them was untouched by a ball bearing or the blast itself. Some body parts were identifiable - a foot, a hand, a boneless face lying flat on the ground. The rear door of the Mercedes hung open on one hinge and a large piece of flesh, the remains of a man but without any limbs or head attached, lay across the back seat, flopping out onto the road. Only DNA analysis could prove that it was Chemora, but Louisa had seen him. He had been in the Mercedes, and nothing in the car could have survived.
The smoke irritated Stratton’s throat and he jumped down and backed away. He slid down the embankment and crossed the river, heading for the rise, his thoughts now on Louisa.
She had not moved and sat near the crest staring at the bridge, unaware of him, a gentle breeze playing through her long hair.
‘You okay?’ he asked as he came up to her.
Louisa glanced at him and nodded. ‘You did it.’
‘We,’ he corrected.
‘Tell me something. And please be straight with me.’
‘I’ve never been anything but.’
‘When did you decide that I would be the one to blow the bridge?’
She was distant. It was only to be expected. ‘It just worked out that way.’
‘As long as you didn’t do it.’
‘I always hoped to avoid that, but I would’ve, if I’d had to.’
‘That’s right. You came here just to teach . . . We owe you an apology, don’t we? We abused you.’
‘Maybe Victor was right. This is everybody’s fight.’
As Louisa watched the peasants gathering together, the women clutching their children, tears formed in her eyes, spilling forth to roll down her face. ‘Why does it have to be like this?’ she asked softly.
‘We’re still growing up.’
‘We’ll always be like this.There’ll always be those willing to destroy in order to get what they don’t deserve.’
‘I don’t agree. I can’t agree. Otherwise what would be the point in fighting them? I’d just look for a place on this earth to wait out my life. We’ll win in the end. Some day.’