Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 19

• Предыдущая
• 19/116
• Следующая

hair, the great mainsail whispered above her head, and there was an

almost physical ache in her chest at the beauty of this night.

When Gareth came up silently behind her and slipped his arms about her

waist, she did not even turn her head, but lay back against him.

She did not want to argue and tease. As she herself had written, she

might soon be dead and the night was too beautiful to let it pass.

Neither of them spoke, but Vicky sighed and shuddered voluptuously as

she felt his hands, smooth and skilful, slide up under the light cotton

blouse. His touch, like the wind, was softly caressing.

Through their thin clothing she could feel the warmth and resilience of

his flesh pressed against her, feel his chest surge and subside to the

urgency of his breathing.

She turned slowly within the circle of his arms and lifted her face to

his as he stooped, meeting his body with a forward thrust of her hips.

The taste of his mouth and the musky male smell of his body hastened

her own arousal.

It took all her determination to tear her lips loose from his, and to

draw away from his embrace. She crossed quickly to where her blankets

lay and picked them up with hands that shook.

She spread them again between the dark supine forms of Jake and

Gregorius, and only when she rolled herself into their coarse folds and

lay upon her back trying to control her ragged breathing was she aware

that Jake Barton was awake.

His eyes were closed and his breathing was deep and even, but she knew

with complete certainty that he was awake.

eneral Emilio De Bono stood at the window of his office and looked

across the squalid roofs of the town of Asmara towards the great

brooding massif of the Ethiopian highlands. It looked like the

backbone of a dragon, he thought, and suppressed a shudder.

The General was seventy years of age, so he recalled vividly the last

Italian army that had ventured into that mountain fastness. The name

Adowa was a dark blot on the history of Italian arms, and after forty

years, that terrible bloody defeat of a modern European army was still

unavenged.

Now destiny had chosen him as the avenger and Emilio De Bono was not

certain that the role suited him. It would be much more to his liking

if wars could be fought without anybody getting hurt. The

General would go to great lengths to avoid inflicting pain or even

discomfort. Orders that might be distasteful. to the recipient were

avoided. Operations that might place anybody in jeopardy were frowned

upon severely by the commanding General and his officers had learned

not to suggest such extravagances.

The General was at heart a diplomat and a politician not a warrior. He

liked to see smiling faces, so he smiled a great deal himself. He

resembled a sprightly, wizened little goat, with the pointed white

beard that gave him the nickname of "Little Beard'. And he addressed

his officers as

"Caro', and his men as "Bambino'. He just wanted to be loved. So he

smiled and smiled.

However, the General was not smiling now. This morning he had received

from Rome another one of those importunate coded telegrams signed

Benito Mussolini. The wording had been even more peremptory than

usual. "The King of Italy wishes, and I, Benito Mussolini,

Minister of the armed forces, order that-" Suddenly he struck himself a

blow on his medal-bedecked chest which startled Captain Crespi, his

aide-decamp.

"They do not understand," cried De Bono bitterly. "It is all very

beautiful to sit in Rome and urge haste. To cry "Strike!" But they do

not see the picture as we do, who stand here looking across the Mareb

River at the swarming multitudes of the enemy." The Captain came to

the

General's side and he also stared out of the window. The building that

housed the expeditionary army headquarters in Asmara was double

storied

and the General's office on the top floor commanded a sweeping view to

the foot of the mountains. The Captain observed wryly that the

swarming multitudes were not readily apparent. The land was a vast

emptiness slumbering in the brilliant sunlight. Air reconnaissance in

depth had descried no concentrations of Ethiopian troops, and reliable

intelligence reported that the Emperor Baile Selassie had ordered that

none of his rudimentary military units approach the border as close as

fifty kilometres, to avoid giving the Italians an excuse to march.

"They do not understand that I must consolidate my position here in

Eritrea. That I must have a firm base and supply train," cried De

Bono pitifully. For over a year he had been consolidating his position

and assembling his supplies.

The crude little harbour of Massawa, which once had lazily served the

needs of an occasional tramp steamer or one of the little Japanese

salt-traders, had been reconstructed completely. Magnificent stone

piers ran out into the sea, great wharves bustled with steam cranes,

and busy locomotives shuttled the incredible array of warlike stores

that poured ashore by the thousands of tons a day for month after

month. The Suez Canal remained open to the transports of the Italian

adventure, and a constant stream of them poured southwards, unaffected

by the embargo that the League of Nations had declared on the

importation of military materials into Eastern Africa.

Up to the present time, over three million tons of stores had been

landed, and this did not include the five thousand vehicles of war

troop transports, armoured cars, tanks and aircraft that had come

ashore. To distribute this vast assembly of vehicles and stores, a

road system had been constructed fanning into the interior, a system so

magnificent as to recall that of the Caesars of ancient Rome.

General De Bono smote his chest again, startling his aide. "They urge

me to untimely endeavour. They do not seem to realize that my "

force is insufficient." The force which the General lamented was the

greatest and most powerful army ever assembled on the African

continent. He commanded three hundred and sixty thousand men, armed

with the most sophisticated tools of destruction the world had yet

devised from the Caproni CA.133 three-engined monoplane which could

carry two tons of high explosive and poison gas a range of nine hundred

miles, to the most modern armoured cars and heavily armoured CV.3 tanks

with their 50 men. guns, and supporting units of heavy artillery.

This great assembly was encamped about Asmara and upon the cliffs

overlooking the Mareb River. It was made up of distinct elements, the

green-clad regular army formations with their wide-brimmed tropical

helmets, the black shirt r Fascist militia with their high boots and

cross-straps, their deaths head and thunderbolt badges and their

glittering daggers, the regular colonial units of black Somalis and

Eritreans in their tall tasselled red fezes and baggy shirts, their

gaily coloured regimental sashes and put teed legs above bare feet.

Lastly, the irregular volunteers or ban da who were a. group of desert

bandits and cut-throat cattle thieves attracted by the possibility of

war in the way that the taint of blood gathers sharks.

De Bono knew but did not ponder the fact that nearly seventy years

previously, the British General Napier had marched on Magdala with less

than fifty thousand men, meeting and defeating the entire Ethiopian

• Предыдущая
• 19/116
• Следующая