Iron master, p.42
Iron Master, page 42
Situated in a quiet rural area, close to the main east-west highway and bordering on a large stretch of grazing land, the site had appealed to Min-Orota’s advisers and had been promptly repossessed. The dilapidated lean-to which was still standing in the north-west corner had been allotted to the Mute slaves, and new wooden units had been constructed to house the Trackers, their guards and overseers. Shigamitsu, the Heron Pool commander, his two chief lieutenants and their families had been billeted in the nearby house of the local landowner – who had been obliged to find another roof to sleep under. ‘Leaseholder’ was a more accurate term, and the duration of the contract depended entirely on the whim of the domain-lord. Like the robber-barons of old, Min-Orota was the ultimate possessor of every square inch of land, everything on it and underneath it.
The only drawback to the compound was its size. Workers and workshops could not both be contained within its walls. This was why the two long-roofed structures had been erected on either side of a wide alleyway leading from the arched gate in the rear wall. There was a six-foot gap between the southern ends of the workshops and the peeling back wall of the compound, and it had become part of the shortcut that Steve and Cadillac used when going to and from work. The alternative would have meant going through the compound, out of the main gate, then left along the road towards Mara-bara.
For some unexplained reason, the rear gate was only intermittently guarded. When the Trackers began and ended work they were counted out and counted back in, but Steve had noticed that people were passing to and fro during the day without being stopped and, perhaps because he’d been seen going backwards and forwards with Cadillac, no one challenged him when he took the shortcut to the pavilion on his own.
It was surprising, given all the hassles he had encountered elsewhere. Maybe it was because the privilege of working there – as with the Mutes who had been selected for the job of roadrunner – meant that security wasn’t a problem. As Simons had said to Jodi and Kelso, no Tracker in his right mind would do anything to screw up a sweet little number like this. Whatever the reason, it suited Steve. The sweet little number was due to come to an abrupt end. And that could prove tough on the renegade linemen who made up the original workforce, but Steve found it hard to be sorry for them. Not knowing who he was, they had treated him with the same contempt as they would any other Mute errand-boy. And when they had realized he was smarter than they were and could perform tasks that were beyond them, they had gone out of their way to give him a hard time.
Carrying a loaded bucket in each hand, Steve stepped through the arch and surveyed the interior of the compound. He now had his back against the north wall. To his left lay the quarters of the Japs and other dinks that made up the permanent staff. Ahead of him was an assortment of wooden buildings – cookhouse, laundry, bath-house, clothing and bedding store staffed by Mutes. Set along the wall immediately to his right were the ramshackle remains of the buildings once used by the horse-soldiers and now housing the Mutes. Beyond them, in the north-west corner, was the spot where the compound’s collective shit was dumped until it was carted away to neighbouring farms.
The two long bunk-houses in which the Tracker workforce was now confined lay side by side, parallel with the west wall. They were separated from their Mute neighbours by a fifteen-yard strip of raked gravel which contained four cruciform whipping-posts used for minor infractions. On the occasions Steve had seen them in use, the victim had simply been left tied up for a day in a position guaranteed to rack him with excruciating cramps; most defaulters, whose crime was not showing a sufficient degree of respect to a passing Iron Master, were usually made to kneel on the sharp-edged gravel chips with their hands on their heads for an hour or two.
There was one other building of even greater importance; the guard-house. This was the first structure that met a visitor’s eye when he entered by the main, southern gate and found himself in an open area which was used as a parade ground. The guard-house lay facing the main gate, on the far side of this open space. Running along the wall on the eastern edge of the parade ground was an off-duty cantina for the lower ranks, where they could meet wives and relatives, and where itinerant traders were allowed to offer their wares. A similar building, against the west wall, offered another form of relaxation that Steve had never encountered in an institutionalized form. Cadillac had told him it was a bordello staffed by half a dozen self-employed females.
The whole business of money and the commercial activity which underpinned Iron Master society was a totally new concept, which Steve had found difficult to grasp. The idea of having to work to earn units of currency which you then handed to the person you wanted to jack up seemed quite bizarre.
The cantina and the bordello were of no concern to Steve. His target was the guard-house, but he could not see it from his present position alongside the archway at the back of the compound. He was also unable to see the double entrance gates, but guessed they would probably be open. A handful of the thirty soldiers who manned the guard-house at any one time would be stationed at the gate, gossiping with passing farm-girls and bargaining with pedlars anxious to sell their wares to the patrons of the cantina.
The buckets, with their aromatic contents, were part of his disguise. Many Mutes in Ne-Issan were permanently employed on what captive Trackers termed ‘the shit detail’. With a full load, he was unlikely to arouse the suspicions of any guards, but even if he was stopped he would only be subjected to the most cursory examination. That was what he was counting on. During one of the earlier nightshifts, before they had been outnumbered by the present crowd of dinks, Steve had fashioned two planked circles that fitted inside the buckets, creating a false bottom. Hidden underneath, wrapped in transparent plasfilm, was a hefty charge of plastic explosive plus two gas grenades. Both packages were primed with one of AMEXICO’s special detonators, and they were guaranteed to spoil the day of anyone unlucky enough to be crapping into either bucket when it exploded.
Steve had reckoned that most of the resident Iron Masters would be on the field in front of the hangars at the far end of the workshops, or seated in the grandstand, leaving only a skeleton staff inside the compound. Apart from a handful of Mutes working on various chores, the place looked deserted. But Steve knew the guard-house would still be fully manned. In order to stand a chance of seizing the three aircraft needed to make their getaway, they had to eliminate as much of the opposition as possible. That meant taking out those who were closest to the action first, and using that blast to draw in others to where they could be caught in the second strike.
Approaching the rotting dungheap, he emptied both buckets and rinsed them out in the stone trough. The false bottoms had now been in place for a week and were indistinguishable from the real thing. Provided nobody compared their weight with the genuine article, no one would guess they’d been rigged.
Okay. Here goes…
Steve skirted the gravel punishment area and carried the buckets up the path fronting the Tracker bunk-houses, then turned left along the edge of the parade ground. As expected, some of the guards were loitering by the gate, and he saw some others on the veranda of the cantina. They were all dressed up for the big day but, like all soldiers throughout the age, they knew precisely when they could relax and just how far they could go.
It wasn’t hard to imagine what they were laughing and joking about. On a day like this, when the top brass were busy enjoying themselves, those who had been relegated to guard duty could afford to take it easy. Unlike those poor fools from the palace who had had to march all the way from Ba-satana in parade order and now had to stand in line, under the gaze of their officers, watching a bunch of even bigger fools shoot across the sky in all directions like dragonflies with their tails on fire.
At the rear of the guard-house, under an overhang of the roof, was a screened four-hole privy. The Iron Masters had a relaxed approach to bodily functions. On his journeys as a roadrunner, Steve had often passed people of both sexes cheerfully urinating in public – sometimes without interrupting their conversation. Faeces, on the other hand, be they horse droppings, cattle turds or the human variety, were a collector’s item, and this, again according to Cadillac, had led to the communal bench and bucket system. Higher-ranking Iron Masters made use of private indoor closets in which the wooden bucket was replaced by a similar container made of glazed porcelain. Besides its more elegant shape, it had the added advantage of not smelling after it had been washed. Fortunately, this luxury had not percolated down to the lower ranks – otherwise Steve would have been well and truly shafted.
Having made sure that the privy was empty, Steve entered and replaced the buckets at each end with those he was carrying. He then emptied and rinsed the middle pair, picked up his load and left. As he started to walk away, someone behind him shouted out the Japanese command to halt – a sound all slaves soon learned to react to. Instantly.
Steve froze, then turned back, a bucket gripped in each hand. Two soldiers, with a plump, giggling farm-girl between them, had just turned the corner of the guard-house and were walking towards him. As far as Steve could tell they were unarmed. He was packing enough ordnance to kill them ten times over, but he could not risk cutting them down. The girl hung back as the two soldiers approached. Their cheeks were flushed and they were bright-eyed – a sign they’d knocked back a cup or two of sake. Steve put down the buckets and knelt between them, head bowed. He couldn’t understand what the dinks were saying to each other or the girl, but they were clearly having a joke at his expense. And so it proved. After swaggering round him, both soldiers stuck a fumbling hand into their trousers, pulled out their hairless dongs and proceeded to pee into the buckets. The real joke came halfway through when they changed aim and widdled over him.
Terrific. There was nothing Steve could do but play the part of the abject slave. Enjoy it while you can, fellas, ’cause, believe me, in a short while you ain’t gonna find much to laugh about…
When Steve had been well watered, the two soldiers waved him away and strutted back to the giggling farm-girl. Steve got to his feet and stood with his head bowed until the trio had disappeared through the back door of the guard-house.
Time for Phase Two. Steve hurried back down the path past the Tracker bunk-houses towards the arch in the rear wall. He kept his head down, hiding his face under the brim of the straw hat. If any of the Trackers inside happened to look out of one of the windows and recognise him, the more sharp-witted amongst them would know he was up to something. Given the way they felt about him, they might try to summon the attention of the guard. And that would really throw a spanner in the works.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
To a burst of applause from the dignitaries in the stand and the cheers of the lesser spectators, five flying-horses rose clear of their launching trolleys and thundered skywards, one after the other, trailing blue ribbons of smoke. Levelling off at 1,000 feet, the five craft drew together into an arrowhead formation as they circled the field, then dived to build up speed before pulling up into a loop. Rolling upright as they came down off the top – a manoeuvre once known, after its creator, as an Immelman turn – they hauled their noses up and round for a second loop.
Their formation flying was not immaculate, but it was still impressive. It had been made possible by the fitting of a crude retro-thrust device which could be cranked down over the business end of the rocket tubes. A row of curved metal plates like miniature double ploughshares deflected the exhaust gases sideways and downwards, reducing the forward thrust. It was primitive, but it gave each pilot a measure of control over his forward speed – all-important when they were trying to keep their place in the formation.
There was a gasp from the watching crowd when the lines of blue smoke were suddenly severed from the aircraft as they hung upside down. The first rocket had reached the end of its brief life. Time for the second burn. Amid growing apprehension, the five flying-horses continued their downward plunge, then, with a reassuring explosion of sound, a stabbing, white-hot finger of flame appeared beneath the fuselage pod of the lead aircraft. Two, three, four – five!
The watching Iron Masters responded with a deep-throated roar of approval.
*
Cadillac heard their reaction as he stood on the rear veranda of the pavilion and watched the machines he had created weave smoke trails across the sky. Clearwater, now dressed in one of his white worksuits, came and stood by his side, her dark, sun-streaked hair hanging loose about her neck and shoulders.
The Iron Masters had banned him from the display, but they could not rob him of his moment of triumph. He had made this happen and he felt happy that Clearwater was here to witness it. If in the past he had been less in her eyes than he felt he should have been, here – at last – was proof of his abilities, his vision. His eyes met hers and she answered the unspoken question by hugging his arm tightly. He would have preferred a more wholehearted embrace, but her gestures had always been restrained in public or – as in this case – under the watchful gaze of Kazan and Kelso.
Cadillac knew from his penetration of the Iron Masters’ minds that his flying machines appealed to their aesthetic sensibilities. Like the proud horses of the samurai, they were lithe and graceful, and the echoing thunder that marked their passage through the sky conveyed the same feeling of irresistible power as the hoofbeats of their galloping steeds.
He was not ungrateful for the few, paltry privileges they had granted him, but he had earned them. He merited even better treatment, should have been given greater power, more responsibility. Today was to have been just the beginning: the best was yet to come. But no. The short-sighted fools had allowed themselves to be blinded by their mistrust of outlanders – no matter how gifted they were. Trusting their honeyed words, he had placed his future in their hands and they had shattered his bright hopes. But the failure was not his. They had failed him. So be it. This goose would fly away and lay his golden eggs elsewhere.
*
After burning up the second rocket with a couple more variations on the basic loop, the five samurai pilots used the third to execute individual slow, flick and hesitation rolls, corkscrewing upwards to gain height for the manoeuvre that had proved the most difficult to master in the time available: a formation barrel-roll.
Whereas ordinary rolls are rotations round an imaginary line drawn between the nose and tail of an aircraft, a barrel-roll, as its name suggests, requires the same 360-degree rotation whilst tracing a spiralling line around the surface of an imaginary barrel. A competent trainee pilot can quickly master the basic control movements required, but to perform the same manoeuvre as one of a group of five aircraft requires a much higher degree of co-ordination.
After several hair-raising near-collisions, Jodi and Kelso had urged Cadillac to drop it from the programme. Not wanting the display to be anything less than a triumphant success, he had been tempted to do so, but their five star pupils had insisted on its inclusion. Their socially inferior instructors were in no position to argue, but managed to persuade the glory-seekers to keep well apart going in, and on the upward half of the roll, then draw closer together on the round-out. The final practice sessions had still been heart-in-the-mouth experiences, but they had managed to avoid sliding into one another. With luck, they would do as well today.
Gliding across the sky, the five machines reassembled into an arrowhead formation like white geese heading south for the winter. They were now high in the air beyond the pond on the north side of the field, and to the right of Lord Yama-Shita’s troops, ready to begin the manoeuvre which would carry them in a left-hand spiral round an invisible barrel hanging in the sky in front of the grandstand.
From a height of some 2,000 feet, they dropped their right wingtips as the fourth rocket flamed into life, flew down the curve of the ‘barrel’, then rolled over on to their left wingtips as they climbed up the other side. The arrowhead formation was now almost completely upside-down, approaching the high-point of the roll directly in front of the seated domain-lords. Both men gazed up with rapt attention as the five machines curved towards them.
*
Hidden in a clump of bushes to the west of the workshops where he had a clear view of the field, Steve pressed the first five buttons on a powerful hand-held transmitter that AMEXICO had sent him. The signals, each on a precisely defined wavelength, triggered the radio-controlled detonators now attached to the plastic explosive he had concealed aboard the aircraft in the formation.
BooOOMM! Boo-boo-BOOMMM! BooOOOMMM!
Lords Yama-Shita and Min-Orota froze in their seats with speechless horror as each of the five flying-horses was engulfed in a ball of flame. The slender silk-covered wings and bodies, crumpled, were ripped to pieces then rapidly consumed by orange tongues of fire. High-ranking guests and assembled troops were thrown into confusion as the shower of burning debris spiralled down towards the packed stand preceded by the rag-doll bodies of the pilots and observers.
*
As the first machine exploded, Kelso rushed out onto the veranda and tossed the tote-bag and cloth bundle into the arms of Cadillac and Clearwater. ‘Okay! Go-Go-GO!’
Jodi was already in position by the bath-house on the west side of the yard. She pulled the pin on a gas grenade and hurled it towards the servants lined up along the wall. A gush of white smoke mushroomed out as the grenade detonated, filling the air with disabling nerve gas. Kelso followed it up with another as he raced across the yard behind Cadillac and Clearwater.
Like everybody else, the servants had been temporarily stunned by the aerial conflagration, but the dull report of the first gas grenade coincided with the protective reaction of two of the female servants. As they gathered up their children and turned to flee from the scene, they saw the burst of white smoke, saw their ex-master running across the yard, and watched as the red-haired slave behind him threw what looked like a stone in their direction.
