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A roar went up the like of which I had never heard before. It wasn’t an explosion. No, it was a never-ending series of explosions, battering the ears with incessant noise. Agonizing noise. I couldn’t help uttering a small cry of pain. Then, suddenly hands were covering my ears. Looking up, I gazed in Mr Ambrose hard eyes.
‘It takes some getting used to!’ he shouted over the racket. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the ear-splitting roar in the least.
My fingers trembling just a little, I pointed at the thing that was spitting bullets faster than lighting.
‘What kind of hellish machine is that?’
‘The killing kind.’
Blimey, was he right about that! Three of the things had opened fire on the entrance of the gorge now, and shots from there had halved in a few moments! Not that I could hear them over the din of the killing machines. But the muzzle flashes grew fewer and fewer by the second. Only a few more moments, and they ceased completely.
Something flashed in the corner of my eye, and my gaze darted to the left, then to the right. Ha! From both sides of the cliff, our men were slowly approaching the gorge entrance. They had to have taken a roundabout route to stay out of the line of fire, and were now sneaking up on the enemy without the bandits being any the wiser. If there were bandits left at the gorge entrance at all, that is.
The men on either side of the gorge raised their hands in what had to be a signal. Abruptly, the noise of Mr Ambrose ‘prototype’ cut off, and safe from fire, the men darted into the gorge. A few lone screams rose up into the air, then silence fell.
Letting his hands fall from my ears, Mr Ambrose stood up. ‘Forwards, men!’
Some mounted their camels again. Others, whose animals had been hit by one of the enemy’s bullets, simply ran forward, ready to hurl themselves on the ground the moment the enemy started firing again. But no shots came. We arrived at the entrance of the gorge, all unhurt and hardly out of breath. We were greeted by cheers from the men who had taken down the first line of bandits. Littered on the ground lay the bodies of their vanquished foes, the red bloodstains contrasting sharply with the white burnouses.
‘Dismount!’ Mr Ambrose called. ‘The gorge is too narrow for camels! We go on foot from here!’
He was right: the cleft in the rock was hardly wide enough for one man to walk through, let alone a camel. The bandits had chosen their hideout well. I didn’t know much about strategy, but under normal circumstances, this place would probably be as easy to defend as it would be impossible to take.
My eyes flitted to the massive prototype guns, and from them to Mr Ambrose. Circumstances, it seemed, were not normal today.
‘Youssef, know the desert mountains best.’ Mr Ambrose gestured for the Egyptian to squeeze past him. ‘You take the lead!’
‘Yes, Effendi!’
Pressed against the stone wall, rifle at the ready, Youssef started to edge down the gorge, Mr Ambrose right on his heels.
‘Sahib, wait!’ Karim called out. ‘I should go next, not you!’
‘Not this time, Karim.’ With a menacing ka-klack, Mr Ambrose reloaded his weapon. ‘I want them myself!’
And he slid into the shadows of the gorge.
Cursing in his native tongue, Karim dashed after him, and I followed suit.
“Blast and double blast that man! Does he think he’s invincible?” Gripping my rifle more tightly, I ran after my dear granite-head of an employer, my eyes firmly on his bodyguard’s back. I muttered a few more choice curses, but my efforts sounded pitiful next to Karim’s. I really had to make him teach me a few of his home-made curses! They sounded too interesting not to be sprung on London’s unsuspecting society.
Well, I could try to finagle them out of him - if we all got out of here alive.
Men pressed forward around me, sliding past me even though I ran at full speed. Whether it was because they had longer legs or were more used to moving in a burnous than I was, I didn’t know. But by the time gunfire started up ahead, I was already somewhere at the back of the line. Cursing, I redoubled my efforts to go faster, and was just about to slide past the man in front of me, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
‘Duck!’
The men didn’t react in time, and one of them went down with a bullet in his shoulder. Whirling around, I raised my rifle to a ledge, about ten feet up the side of the ravine, where a bandit had stepped out of some sort of cave entrance.
Please, God, I prayed. Please let that thing I’m about to squeeze be the trigger!
Bam!
Apparently, it was. The barrel in my hands spat fire and smoke, and the bandit twitched back, ducking his head. Then, as he realized my shot had gone wide of the mark, he rose again, grinning - and a volley of bullets from the men behind me caught him full in the chest.
‘Get up there!’ I shouted. ‘Check where that cave leads!’
‘How about this, instead?’ One of the men pulled something from his pocket. I only saw something round and shiny glint in the sun as it flew towards the cave entrance, then an explosion ripped apart the air, followed by the sound of stone crashing down. When the dust had settled, all that remained of the cave entrance was a pile of rubble.
