Two men were there already with their knives, slashing at the sheets, and the patched brown sail flapped loose and trailed in the water behind us as the junk swung round in answer to the urgent tiller. The helicopter was rising now, and I grabbed the binoculars that Theo had slung round his neck and watched it. It was too directly above me to make sure who was on board; but as it had wheeled in, I’d seen Ming at the controls and two other men with him, one who seemed to be an American—the one with the bazooka—and the other a Chinese.
The skipper was close beside me. I heard him shout as I watched: “We hit him good, you see?”
I nodded. He was high above us now, hovering, getting into position directly overhead. I could see no armament fitted to the craft, no bomb-bays or anything really nasty, and I said: “We just might have a chance to hold him at bay till we get close enough to Macao to scare him off.”
Someone was cutting away the trailing mainsail, lightening our load, and the prow was slicing through the waves with a fine turn of speed. Mai was there suddenly, dragging away a man who had been wounded by the shell; and I said angrily: “Mai, get below!” She said calmly: “A man is hurt. I will take care of him.”
“Sally?”
“She’ll give us no trouble.” I didn’t press the point.
The helicopter was slowly, almost imperceptibly, dropping down. I took a rifle from one of the crew and asked Theo: “Does this thing shoot straight?” He laughed. “All our guns shoot straight, you see.”
It was a Magnum .45 with a shell in it that would knock an elephant over. I sighted carefully on the underbelly of the helicopter, taking my time and holding the aim until I was sure I was dead on target, and then I fired. I took the glasses again and saw the hole where the bullet had landed, just where I’d put it, and said: “He’s got armor plating under the seats. That means he’s safe above us, but I’ll bet you he won’t come in at water level again.”
I saw an arm come out of the craft above us, and called out again: “Take cover, grenade!” I heard the crew scurrying for shelter; a dozen mad characters in rags, with colored clothes around their middles and oddly assorted head coverings that ranged from coolie hats of straw to knitted caps of gaudy wool to knotted kerchiefs of brilliant Japanese print. They wore tire-soled sandals or heavy army boots, and some of them had bare feet; and there wasn’t a decently shaved face among them. I dived down by the hatch cover; the grenade landed in the water close beside us, harmlessly, and then another came down and landed on the deck, but there was nobody exposed within its range, and all it did was tear a few holes in what was left of the sails.
Theo was setting up the ancient cannon just so, and he ordered everyone out of the way and said: “Now, we see, no?” He applied a match to the breech, and there was a tremendous sheet of flame, and the gun went wild, running free of its moorings and shooting across the deck, to land with a dreadful, rasping thud in the scuppers. The shot had gone wild, and there was a gaping hole along the bulwarks where the cannon had hit, and Theo said calmly: “Okay, so we know, this is no good, eh?”
I said: “The theory was fine, but the practice was wrong. You should have lashed it in position. There was too much play at the fulcrum.”
Some men were already struggling with the wheels to get it back into its accustomed place, and then a hail of machine-gun bullets came thudding into the deck from up there, pinning us down, sweeping the decks with a terrifying fire. Theo had dived in beside me, and I said: “All he’s got to do is keep that gun firing, keep us under cover till he can get low enough to use the bazooka again.”
Theo said, worried: “That first time we hit him, we hit him good. How come nobody get hurt?”
As if in answer to his question, there was a bundle being thrust out of the helicopter high above us. I wondered what it was, but only briefly.
In a moment, it was free of the plexiglas door and hurtling down; a body; the Chinese. I said: “We killed one of them, and he’s lightening the load.” The body crashed into the sea close beside us, disappeared, and then floated back into sight again, a gray-clad, spread-eagled body staining the water with its blood, I wondered who it might have been, but whoever it was, there was no time for any misplaced sympathy for any of Ming’s crowd.
The helicopter was dropping down again, and the bazooka was outside the door, aiming straight down with nothing in sight behind it. I yelled: “Aim at the bazooka!” and the shell crashed into the deck, hitting home amidships as a dozen shots answered it; but it was a tiny target, and I saw it withdrawn and then come out again, much closer now. Another shell hit home and blew a gaping hole in the deck, and miraculously no one was hurt.
We were halfway across the straits now, and Macao was comfortingly close; but now there was steam gushing out from the hole in the deck, and I realized that it was peril ously close to the engine. The diesel took on another note; it was laboring, and then stopped suddenly, and the men on deck were firing wildly from under whatever cover they could find as hand grenades came dropping down onto the deck, fragmenting horribly all over the place. The junk slued round in the wind, and Theo, close beside me by the hatch and pressing himself into the timbers, said softly: “Now, the son of a bitch, he got us good, no?” The junk had stopped and was swinging round listlessly with the current.
I said; “No, not yet, he’s too damn vulnerable so close in.”
I could see our bullets thudding uselessly into, the underside of the craft, and I even fancied I could hear the clang of them hitting against solid armor, and then it wheeled away and over to one side the machine-gun still rattling at us, though its bullets were strafing the sides rather than the decks now. The copter was low, near the water again, but now up-tilted at an angle so that the tail propeller was almost dragging in the water; it was coming at us with its belly raised and pushed forward ahead, so that the armor was still out in front. Our own men had ceased firing, knowing that in this position they were wasting their ammunition. I saw two of them scurrying across to the other side of the junk, bent low and racing from one cover to the next, ready for the moment of truth when the rear end of the copter would be exposed to their fire, and I shouted out: “The tail propeller!”
The junk was stopped now, and the tail end of the copter was so close; as it swept past us, that it missed the top of the split mast by inches. We all fired at once, and I saw pieces of metal fly and the prop stopped turning with a sudden sound that was almost a shriek of anguish. But the main motor was still in good shape, and the copter was rising fast, high into the sky directly over us. I wondered how good a pilot Ming was, and it occurred to me that he was probably an expert.
It hung there in the sky, directly over our heads, five hundred feet up; and we rocked gently on the sea directly below; and for the moment, both of us were stymied.
But not for long. I knew that he could still fly, with limited but adequate maneuverability, as long as his main rotor was turning. And I knew that in the course of time, from his invulnerable overhead position, he could sink us with his grenades or his bazooka. Or worse...I wondered why he hadn’t done it already; was it the pride of personal vendetta? Did he feel the urge to finish this off himself?
I said to Theo: “He must have friends on shore. He must have a radio. Why doesn’t he call for help? A lightly armed launch could sink us in two minutes now.”
Theo shook his head. The engineer, grease-stained and bloodied, poked his head up, and they held a whispered consultation, and Theo said glumly: “Engine seized up, two grenades in engine room. Looks like we stay here long time now. Unless you got any bright ideas?”
The bazooka fired again. The shell crashed into us amidships and blew a hole in the deck, and then another one followed and enlarged it, and then a third that missed us altogether. He wasn’t aiming very carefully, because all he could do was hold the barrel over the edge of the craft and fire; but he didn’t have to line his eyes up behind it at such close range. Two more shells missed, and another slammed into the deck, and then another one—the one we had all been waiting for—went through an existing hole and slammed into the hull of the junk. In a few moments we heard the sound of rushing water, and the ship took on an alarming list.
I said to Theo: “Do you have any hand grenades?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “Sure, we got plenty. But how you going to get them up there where they do some good? You tell me that.” He caught on before I could answer, and his eyes lit up, and he laughed suddenly and said: “Like I tell you, is bloody good cannon.”
Yelling for someone to help him, he jumped to his feet and raced towards the cannon. I took hold of one wheel, and two men were lugging at the other. We rolled it down into the scuppers, reversed to take advantage of the list, and raised the barrel as high as it would go. We began to lash the wheels this time with stout ropes; and now the machine-gun up there started firing, but the gunner wasn’t taking any risks with careful aim, just sticking the muzzle out and firing blindly; and I sent three rapid shots up there to make him keep his head in behind the armor. A bullet caught one of our men in the knee, and he fell, screaming, and Mai was there to drag him away, and I knew it was no good trying to stop her.
Another shell landed, and the crippled mast crashed down suddenly, and two of the men leaped overboard to avoid it.
I said: “Now...or never.”
Theo was ramming powder into the ugly muzzle of the cannon, ramming rags down on top of it, and he looked at me and grinned and said: “This work, maybe, you think?”
I said: “It’ll work. Just a question of putting a projectile in the air, and that’s what this thing was made for. Only we have a different kind of projectile this time. I must admit...” I took time off to fire three rapid rounds at the helicopter to discourage him from examining too closely what we were up to, and went on: “I must admit, I’ve never fired hand grenades from an eighteen century cannon before. And I hope I never will again. You know we’ve got to wait for the right moment?”
Above us, the helicopter was swaying back and forth, wounded but still deadly, getting too far ahead and then backing up to correct its position. The barrel of the ancient cannon, now, was pointed straight up, and all we could do was seize the moment.
I said: “If this doesn’t work, we’re all of us dead.”
Theo grinned. “Some time, we all die, even people like us, Senhor Cain.”
The hand grenades were there, ready for us; a box of Mills’. I set two of them close beside the gun, took another one in each hand, and wondered what would happen if they all wouldn’t go down the ugly muzzle at one time. I said: “Keep the men firing, for God’s sake. We’ve got to stand here exposed till he’s in exactly the right position. Make sure the gunner up there can’t poke his face out.” He yelled an order, and I heard the cook swearing vociferously, and the firing started again.
Up there, he was ignoring the bullets; he could afford to. Well armored on the underside, all he had to do was stay overhead as best he could, maneuvering himself with his main rotor till he was where he wanted to be, and keep on firing shells over the side till, by the very force of quantity, a sufficient number of them hit home, enlarged the hole in our hull, and sent us to the bottom. The dinghy was gone, and we’d be in the water with no rifles to keep him at bay, and the rest would be easy. So, from his safe position, knowing he need not watch to aim, he just went on dropping his deadly missiles, knowing the end could not be far off.
And he was right.
It was all a question of timing. I nodded to Theo, and he yelled for the men to clear the decks. They went hurrying below, and the deck was all ours, just the two of us huddled there, terribly exposed and waiting for just the right moment of time.
I crouched by the gun while Theo held a lit taper ready. It was all a matter of guesswork now; and I’m much better at mathematical calculation; I thought about it for a moment, but there just isn’t a formula available.
