Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 22

22. Usuthu!

The impi had deployed into the ground floor of the factory, which stank of tramp piss and was lousy with discarded heroin needles. Bizarrely, an intact, somewhat mouldy old sofa occupied one corner; Privates Cracker and Honky were sitting on it seeing to their Martini-Henries. The rate of fire on the old pieces would, Steve was aware, make them almost entirely useless. The spike bayonets that could be fitted to them would be of far greater value.

Syndii had recovered, and was striding about giving orders. "They'll try and come through the proper doorways first. I want those barricaded. Then they'll start on the windows. Collect up mud from the floor and stick all that broken glass in it - as soon as they put their mitts on the sill I want them to learn the error of their ways -"

Steve was disturbed to see a dog turd from the factory floor going into the mud. "Uh - Shanice? Are we planning to give them septicaemia?"

Syndii turned and fixed Shanice with a stare; Shanice glared defiantly back.

Syndii turned back to Privates Cracker and Honky. "DO EITHER OF YOU TWO MISERABLE LOT HAVE HIV? IF SO, REPORT TO ROTTENFÜHRER SHANICE WITH YOUR VEINS OPEN."

Cracker and Honky shook their heads.

"Funny", she said. "I could have sworn you two were gay. Call yourselves gays?"

"We're not gay", objected Private Cracker. "All the drinking each other's piss and stuff is male bonding."

"You don't have to have HIV if you're gay", said Private Honky. "It isn't the law."

"ANY SIGN OF THEM YET?" yelled Syndii up the stairwell.

"NOTHING", called the stairwell back. "THEY'RE DRIVING THE TANKS ROUND AND ROUND IN CIRCLES."

"They're too scared to use them", said Steve. "It costs them a couple of hundred quid every time one of those bastards busts a link in its tracks."

"I imagine Porsche just don't make the parts any more", said Syndii.

"That's right", nodded Steve. "They have to get them from an organization called Crazy Bob's White Aryan Resistance Stockpile in a place called Hooky Cross, Alabama. Worryingly, those are the only people who machine tank parts large enough."

"WE GOT GERMAN HELMETS TO THE NORTH AND EAST", reported the stairwell, "AND RUSSIAN TO THE SOUTH AND WEST."

"Some of those Germans are Daniel's", said Steve. "Hardened imitation troops. Issued with proper steel helmets, able to shoot their blank cartridges straight. But some of them will be Anne Sommers sales team members. Helmets of plastic and papier-mâché, and an even chance of telling the dangerous end of a bayonet from the safe one. It might be useful to know which of those helmets are which." Flicking open a mobile phone, he scrolled down a list of numbers, picked one, and moved the phone deliberately away from his ear. There were several seconds of silence, followed by the sound of a Crazy Frog ringtone to the east.

"Papier-mâché helmets", said Steve, "in that direction..."

He cancelled the call, dialled another number, listened again. Sweetie The Chick sounded from a different quarter.

"...stretching round to that direction."

Syndii nodded. "A weak point in their defences. We could exploit that. They'll be expecting us to cower inside our walls, not to suddenly storm out and attack."

Steve looked up at Syndii in some concern. "I can't say I was expecting it myself." He dialled another number. A faint tinny midi version of Ride of the Valkyries sounded outside the factory walls. "Fierce bad Germans to the north. I believe Daniel keeps his phone switched on in synagogue specially to annoy the rabbi with that one." He dialled again; the Dambusters March sounded from the south.

He cancelled the call. Almost immediately, his own phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Stop calling our phones, young man. It's historically inaccurate. The Poles did not have any such advantages when they were crushed by Germany and Russia in 1939."

"We're not Poles. We're Zulus. And all's fair in love and war."

"It will avail you naught. We will crush you like ants beneath our Iron Jackboot."

Steve switched the phone off. Almost immediately, Syndii's phone went off, and Steve heard Syndii's side of the same conversation continuing uninterrupted. He could even, if he listened hard, hear Alasdair's own tiny, fighting mad voice: "You have interfered with our operations for the last time, Syndii Nobela Williams. Now you will suffer our wrath..."

A blank cartridge wad pockmarked the plaster in the wall above his head. The lookout yelled at the top of her lungs.

"HERE THEY COME! THICK AS GRASS AND WHITE AS A SCOTS SUNTAN!"

***

A volley of Mosin-Nagant blank fire whipped in through the doorway, followed by a lusty cheer of Za Stalina! and a mass of dark brown uniforms, tipped with safety-first ball bearings welded to bayonets. They rushed into the building like a bolt into an action.

Then, also like a bolt in an action, they stopped and locked solid. A sub-impi of Zulus carrying rectangles of corrugated iron sheeting had been waiting on either side of the doorway, and closed in around the invaders in a reversal of the old Roman legionary tortoise of shields. Spears stabbed through the gaps between the panels; ersatz Russians yelped in pain. Within seconds, they had turned tail and withdrawn, in some cases leaving rifles and cartridges behind them.

The iron shields drew back again from the entrance.

"CASUALTIES?" barked Syndii.

A voice answered in the dark. "Bearable. Taneesha got jabbed in the tit. A couple of broken fingernails." There was the sound of one hand patting another. "Don't worry, mate, it'll glue on again. I do mine with Super Glue."

"They're miniatures of my favourite ten female role models. And I broke Nichelle Nichols."

"It looks all right to me."

"They cost ten quid each. Look, Nichelle's mouth is completely ruined."

"You could always turn it into Whoopi Goldberg."

Syndii's eyes drilled into the concrete, seeming to penetrate the undergrowth and the souls of the men who cowered in it beyond. "They'll be back. That was only a probing attack. Alasdair is no fool."

From outside came a megaphone-distorted voice: "THAT WAS ONLY A PROBING ATTACK. I AM NO FOOL. WE CAN HIT YOU TEN TIMES THAT HARD."

Syndii raised her voice and yelled at the ceiling: "YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE NOTICED, ALASDAIR, BUT WE'RE BEHIND GOOD STRONG WALLS. TRY TO HIT A WALL TEN TIMES AS HARD AND YOU ONLY END UP BREAKING YOUR KNUCKLES."

"SEND OUT THE TRAITOR, WILSON, AND YOUR MISERABLE LIVES WILL BE SPARED."

A throat cleared out beyond the walls. "AHEM. I FEEL I REALLY SHOULD POINT OUT AT THIS JUNCTURE THAT THAT IS A LIE. I WISH THAT I COULD OFFER YOU SOME CONSOLATION BY PROMISING THAT YOU WILL DIE QUICKLY AND PAINLESSLY, BUT I AM IN A PIG'S SPHINCTER OF A MOOD, AND I TEND TO WORK OUT MY PERSONAL VULNERABILITY ISSUES THROUGH TRANSFERENCE."

Syndii smiled rigidly. "YOU'LL BE LUCIAN, I TAKE IT. LAST TIME I SAW YOU, YOU WERE RUNNING AWAY LIKE A LITTLE GIRL. CARE TO REPEAT THE EXPERIENCE?"

There was a clearly audible from outside. Steve flung himself across the room and hurled Syndii to the ground just in time. A thicket of spears covered him, just as an incredibly loud BANG rang round the chamber and gobbets of concrete spattered against his cheek.

"GET OFF THE ISANGOMA!"

"Get off of him, you douchebags." Syndii raised herself cautiously to her feet, now standing slightly less tall than she had. The bullet crater in the opposite wall was exactly at the height of her head. "Jesus. That went clean through the wall."

"WHAT'S WRONG?" gloated the voice outside. "NOT AS SOLID CONCRETE AS YOU THOUGHT?"

"He's taking a hell of a risk", said Steve. "His gun's full of all manner of, well, crap, and he hasn't had time to clean it."

"Yeah, right", muttered Shanice. "That's gonna be the first thing on my mind if he points it at me."

"It's a revolver", said Kandeece. "He's got six shots. And he's probably lost a few of them while he was shooting at your car. Probably doesn't have any spare shells either."

"Why not?" said Steve.

"If all your shells are in the gun, you can chuck it down a drain and be clean when the po-lice catch you", said Kandeece. "That don't work if your pockets are full of bullets, innit."

"Kandeece is from a Yardie Gangsta Massive", explained Syndii.

"We need to make him mad", said Steve. "Make him waste his last few shots."

"You need to get up on the roof", said Syndii. "Hang your arse over the battlements and disparage his marksmanship, that sort of thing."

"I don't know. His marksmanship's pretty good from where I'm standing." Steve raised his voice. "HAVING A SHIT DAY, LUCIAN?"

Two more bullets crashed in through the wall. The floor was instantly carpeted with Zulu bodies.

"COME ON NOW! YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT! THAT WAS A BIT - WHAT WOULD THE WORD BE? OH, I KNOW! SHIT!"

Two more bullets, this time high and low, bracketing Steve unnervingly.

"THAT'S BETTER! YOU'RE REALLY GETTING YOUR SHIT TOGETHER NOW!"

He steeled himself redundantly - flinching would do him no good against a bullet. But this time he only heard an action click uselessly as its hammer bit down on an empty chamber. A sound that was half cursing, half bestial growling came from beyond the walls.

"Bugger. Todger Gjon, pass me your shitstained ammunition. I plan to give our man toxoplasmosis even as I kill him."

A faint voice piped up. "I say, are those real bullets?"

"I thought he said he wanted to crush us under his Nazi jackboot", whispered Steve.

"BACK IN YOUR FUCKING TIN CAN". After a frighteningly rapid reload, the gun blared again, to be followed by contemptuous PINGs of tiny little forty-four magnum rounds flying harmlessly off Tiger armour.

"THE REST OF YOU FUCKING HEAVILY ARMED TRANSVESTITES WILL CONTINUE AND TAKE THE OBJECTIVE. THE FIRST MAN TO SHOW COWARDICE IN THE FACE OF THE ENEMY, I WILL SHOOT IN THE BACK. I AM IMMUNE TO THE IRONY OF THE SITUATION. NOT ONE STEP BACK."

There was a brief pause; then there was the sound of two flavours of jackboot clattering inward over giant hogweed and shattered concrete.

"Za STALINA!"

"Judah VERRECKE!"

***

The air was full of flying wadding, ricocheting plaster, early morning coffee breath, and stabbing assegais. Despite the fact that the air he was breathing might at any moment suddenly prove to contain a bayonet, Steve found himself thanking his lucky stars for the solid ranks of men trying to stab himself in the throat and standing between him and Lucian's revolver.

"NGADLA!"

"GET THAT ONE'S TRAAZIS OFF, HE'S DAHN!"

Ball bearings thrust into his ribcage from all directions. So effective were they in making a steel point safe that Syndii had insisted the impi reverse their assegais and sharpen their wooden ends.

"IT'S NOT SAFE, HERR FELDWEBEL", he heard a voice complain. "THEY'RE USING POINTY STICKS."

He saw blood on the shafts of the iklwas. Someone had, at the very least, caught a really bad splinter.

"RÜCKWÄÄÄÄÄÄÄRTS!!!"

Apart from a few struggling prisoners-of-war, the Nazo-Soviet marauders disengaged. The line of makeshift iron ishlangu shields moved back from the entrances in their turn. But many of them were limping now, and many of the iklwas were only barely staying in the hands that held them.

"They hit us from all three directions that time", said Syndii. "If they hit the windows too, we won't have enough bodies to hold it all together."

"GET BACK! GET BACK IN THERE!" yelled Lucian in frustration. "I WILL PUT A BULLET IN YOU! DON'T THINK I WON'T!"

"THIS VEHICLE WEIGHS SEVENTY TONNES", bellowed a new, level, emotionless voice, "IF YOU HARM ONE OF MY MEN, I WILL DRIVE IT OVER YOUR LIVING BODY. YOU WILL BECOME REALLY, REALLY THIN. SUPERMODELS WILL ENVY YOU."

"Daniel", whispered Syndii. "Much, much meaner than Alasdair. Alasdair's all mouth and lederhosen. Daniel is the man of the house."

Steve thought about this.

"Who's the man of your house?" he said.

Syndii looked at him severely.

"Sorry. I guess it was a kind of rhetorical question."

One of the vutwamini was lying bent double in the arms of another, crying in pain. The angle of her arm appeared incorrect.

"This is getting out of hand", said Steve. "Somebody is going to get hurt. It is time for me to suffer like Jesus." He walked over the factory floor to where the trousers were being removed from a whimpering, but no longer resisting Soviet infantryman. He clicked his fingers and held up a hand. "I'll take those". Without waiting to be obeyed, he began to remove his own shoes and trousers. The vutwamini watched him, mystified. "I'll take the jacket, too, if you don't mind."

Within minutes, he was the image of a Soviet soldier - grimy, bloodstained, malnourished, and wearing a poorly fitting uniform. He lifted a beaverskin hat decorated with a red star onto his head and settled against the wall to one side of the doorway.

"Next time they come", he said.

The vutwamini nodded.

"Remember", he repeated, pointing to himself for emphasis, "this one is me. Try to remember not to stab me up."

Again, they nodded.

One thing was in their favour, at least - the mist was coming down again, rolling towards them across the marshes like a great rucked-up blanket, blown on an inexplicable breeze. Confusion was coming with it. In the mist, one red star cap and one coal-scuttle helmet would look very much like another.

Syndii stood apparently undecided as to whether to allow this or not. "Steve. What are you planning to do?"

"Someone's got to draw their only real guns away from here. That'll give the rest of you a chance." He drew a line in the air with his hand to the east. "The weak point in their line is thataway. Make a breakthrough there, and their flanks will roll up like a party blower."

Syndii nodded.

"Steve, I don't want you to do this."

He grinned. "You don't want me to do this? I don't want me to do this -"

"VORWÄÄÄÄÄÄÄRTS!!!"

A crush of field-grey uniforms punched into the entrance. Within seconds, Steve was a mass of assegai cuts, and he had to slap someone's hand away as they attempted to debag him.

***

"TO HIS RIGHT, TO HIS RIGHT! HE'S PASSED IT!"

The B team had possession. Greville-Hawkins' heart was pounding. Not only might he not win a medal after all, he might lose what little Olympic opportunity he had. That bastard Quorroll was managing his men today, maybe well enough to push his way to the captaincy. Isanov had passed the goat to Wazir, the Pakistani, but had slyly continued to ride low in his saddle bent over by an imaginary weight, as if still in possession. Meanwhile, Wazir was already thirty yards away, the rump of his horse plunging up and down in the muck.

Invisible in the mist, Ghilzai appeared to half-scream, half-vomit the Pashto for 'foul'. Someone, somewhere, had kicked or whipped or bitten or ridden their horse over someone, and Ghilzai was registering his displeasure.

"UP AHEAD! UP AHEAD!"

Despite Quorroll and Greville-Hawkins' best efforts, the team members assigned to goal and midfield had ridden enthusiastically to the front and mixed in with the forwards, rucking on horseback for the ball. They were getting better - they'd stayed in formation for over five minutes today rather than their usual thirty seconds - but Greville-Hawkins' Circle of Justice remained undefended. He would be having words after the match in as many languages as necessary.

The foul proved to be on Wazir by Khudaidadzai, who had leapt bodily from his saddle and borne the smaller man into the mire. Although this wasn't specifically prohibited by any rule Greville-Hawkins could remember, what Khudaidadzai was now doing to the soft parts of his teammate with his belt buckle were clearly deeply wrong in most religions, and Ghilzai was barking increasingly strident orders to stop from somewhere out in the miasma. How could the old man see what was going on was beyond Greville-Hawkins' ken. So - Wazir and Khudaidadzai were fighting, and neither had the goat. Where, then, was the goat?

The mist rolled back as he rode closer, revealing a bemused and quite frightened-looking young woman in a World War Two German army uniform, cradling the goat in both arms like a baby, checking it over in great concern. She turned and spoke to other, more shadowy field grey figures behind her.

"I don't think it's breathing. Who are these guys? What have they done to it?"

She squeezed the fake goat under her arm like a whoopee cushion. "How do you do mouth to mouth on an animal?" One of the figures behind her spoke, too quietly for Greville-Hawkins to hear, and she replied to it scornfully. "No, Jules it just looks like it doesn't have a head. I think it's some sort of long-haired pug dog."

It was obvious what had happened. Wazir, cannoned into by Khudaidadzai, had dropped the goat, sending it sailing across a small patch of water into the arms of the woman. Greville-Hawkins, his concentration formerly on the game to the exclusion of all else, was now dimly aware that he could hear gunfire very close at hand, and screams that were not the screams of his own men, which would have been relatively acceptable.

Khudaidadzai was now holding Wazir down under the water, bloodlust overriding reason. Ghilzai had stopped yelling, and a small red dot had appeared on the back of Khudaidadzai's head. A small red dot, furthermore, threaded by a fibre of light stretched taut through the air back towards Ghilzai. Greville-Hawkins opened his mouth to yell a warning, a tragic half-second too late.

Sparks spat in the air, something shadowy writhed across metres of mist, and Khudaidadzai writhed on the end of that. Greville-Hawkins could smell hair cooking. Steam was rising from the Pashtun's clothing, and his hands fanned the air as if playing invisible tom-toms. This went on for an age.

Then, abruptly, it stopped, and Khudaidadzai pitched forward into the water and did not get up. A black charcoal dot smoked on the back of his head.

"Fuck", exclaimed Ben Quorroll's voice from further out in the murk. "The old bastard's got a taser rifle. Do they make taser rifles?"

The girl across the cut was still pumping the goat under her arm, appearing not so much to be attempting Holger-Nielsen resuscitation as trying to play it like a set of bagpipes.

She looked up at Greville-Hawkins.

"BARBARIANS! You come over here with your bloody burkahs and your sharia laws and your bloody exploding shoes, and take all our toilet cleaning jobs! You're not hurting this little animal any more! I'm getting him to a vet!"

She turned, clutching the goat to her breast, and ran.

Greville-Hawkins ground his teeth like a hyaena menacing a rival, and dug his heels in to his horse. The game had made him both more and less than a man. He was a projectile loaded in a chamber. He could not stop.

The horse plunged forward into water far deeper than he'd expected; freezing cold water filled his boots, not for the first time today. He swore in Pashto, Russian and English, slid without hesitation off his saddle into the icy water, and began to swim his horse across the channel.