Harkaway's Sixth Column Read Free Page B

will the war last?’ he asked eventually.
    ‘The last one went on for four years.’
    The thought of four years’ imprisonment obviously didn’t appeal much. Gooch stared at the end of his cigarette for a while, then he looked at Harkaway.
    ‘What you getting at, Squire?’ he asked. ‘You’re obviously getting at something.’
    Harkaway shrugged. ‘Why destroy the dump?’ he said. ‘There’s everything we want there. Weapons. Food. Water. Petrol. Why don’t we go there, then decide what to do?’
    ‘Such as what?’
    Harkaway thought for a while. ‘Well, we’ve got more than enough explosive to blow in the front of the cave,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we use some of it to blow up the road to the Tug Argan?’
    There was a long silence.
    ‘What for?’ Tully asked.
    ‘Stop the Italians.’
    ‘You want to win the VC or something?’
    Harkaway smiled. ‘There’s that bit they call the Wirir Gorge,’ he said. ‘A nice big bang there and the Italians in front will be cut off.’
    ‘Not for long, I’ll bet.’
    ‘No,’ Harkaway agreed. ‘But it might help.’
    It seemed to make sense and didn’t seem too dangerous.
    ‘We can always chuck our hand in later if there’s no alternative,’ Harkaway went on. ‘We might even think of a way of getting down to Kenya.’
     
    The dump was at a place called Shimber Addi, a natural stronghold in the Bur Yi range which rose a thousand feet from the plain. On the peak of the hill was an old fortress built of stone, complete with firing slits and machicolations, which had been used at the beginning of the century by Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan, the Mad Mullah, in his campaigns against the British. The place was intersected by deep ravines covered everywhere with boulders and thick scrub. Up here the desert gave way to a greener land with giant cedars and flowers, and the ravine sides were honeycombed with caves capable of sheltering large numbers of men and animals. During the days when Abdullah Hassan had been defying the might of the British Empire the bush round the fort had been cleared to provide a field of fire but it was growing back now and the fort had been destroyed both by bombing and by the pick-axes and crowbars of British soldiers when the Mullah’s power had crumbled.
    The dump was in one of the largest caves, and the narrow entrance was between two tall pillars of stone. They shifted the rocks that had been piled in the entrance and stood staring into a large cool vault with numerous passages running off to a series of smaller caves.
    Harkaway shone a torch. Among the piles of crates and cases along the walls of the caves were a few animals’ skulls as if the place had been inhabited at some point by a leopard, but they found they were better off than they had thought.
    ‘Stew,’ Tully said, peering at labels. ‘Tinned carrots.
    Tinned peas. Tinned potatoes. Christ, we’ve got everything we need here! There’s even some canned beer. And - Jesus! - whisky!’
    ‘That’ll be for the officers.’
    ‘Petrol. Fags. Toilet powder. Blacking. Blanco.’ Tully’s head turned. ‘Typical of the army. Make sure you’re healthy and don’t get heat sores, but make sure also you’ve got the means to shine your boots and whiten your webbing.’
    Their spirits were beginning to lift. Suddenly the prospect of being marooned behind the whole of the Italian army didn’t seem too bad. Shimber Addi was pretty inaccessible - as the Mad Mullah had decided thirty years before - it wasn’t desert, and there was food.
    ‘What else is there?’ Harkaway asked.
    ‘Grease,’ Gooch said. ‘Gun oil. To make sure your bundook works proper. Water down at Eil Dif.’
    Harkaway was studying the crates. ‘Two Brens,’ he said. ‘Two water-cooled Vickers. Four Lewises. They must have been in a hurry to get to the Tug Argan to leave this lot here. You reckon they’re all right, Gooch?’
    ‘They look it.’ Gooch was bending over the crates, a crowbar in his