The Sapphire Child (The Raj Hotel #2) - Janet MacLeod Trotter Page 0,128

tasted oddly metallic. After a moment of relief, he was as thirsty as ever.

Eventually, the convoy was almost past. Andrew gave the signal for his men to withdraw from the piquet. With weapons drawn, they descended as quietly and swiftly as possible. Halfway down, bullets suddenly began spraying the scree around them, sending loose stones bouncing into the air.

‘Take cover!’ Andrew shouted out across the men.

They scrambled behind clumps of thorny scrub – the only protection on the stark mountainside – and returned gunfire. Andrew saw a flash of white turban from behind the wall they had been guarding just minutes earlier. He took aim and fired. The head bobbed out of view. The sniper fire continued. They were pinned down and partially exposed.

Andrew motioned to Mackenzie to put into action the drill they had practised. While the corporal and the others kept up a constant barrage of bullets against the snipers, Andrew wriggled on his belly to the slight overhang below the piquet. Finding a foothold, he hauled himself up, his lungs labouring for breath in the thin air, and dived behind a large boulder. Swiftly, he pulled a grenade from his belt and released the pin.

Standing up, Andrew hurled the grenade with all his force at the tumbledown piquet and then threw himself flat behind the rock, praying it would withstand the blast. Seconds later, the grenade went off. Stones and dust rained down beside him. Andrew burrowed into the ground, his mouth filling with grit and his ears ringing.

Looking up, he could see nothing through the billowing clouds of smoke and dust. He heard no answering gunfire. Quickly, he hurtled back down the overhang, skinning the palms of his hands, and landed back beside his men.

‘Think that’s cleared the nest, sir,’ said Mackenzie.

Andrew, heaving for breath, gave the order for them to head down to the convoy.

They executed three more piquet duties that day without incident and arrived in camp before sundown, in time for the men to erect bivouacs and set up the various mess tents for the evening meal. Andrew sat on a camping stool eating chicken and rice next to a fellow Scots officer, Lieutenant John Grant, who had heard of his grenade attack.

‘All that cricket practice, eh, Lomax?’ he joked. ‘Best overarm in the platoon, I hear.’

Andrew shared his cigarettes with Grant while the amiable lieutenant chatted about fishing on the Tweed. It amazed Andrew how Grant always managed to have immaculately groomed auburn hair and moustache even in the desert.

‘Fishing in Kashmir is supposed to be good,’ said Grant.

‘It is,’ said Andrew. ‘I used to fish there with my father as a boy.’

Andrew stared at the ball of fire that was sinking behind the mountains of Waziristan. He could still see the sun imprinted on his eyelids when he closed them. He felt heady. What on earth were they doing chasing tribesmen on this remote western frontier when a vast fascist army was pressing at the eastern borders of India?

‘Did you say something about fascists?’ Grant asked him in bemusement.

Andrew wasn’t sure if he’d spoken aloud. ‘Sorry, just rambling.’

‘Are you okay, Lomax?’ he asked in concern. ‘Touch of sun, maybe? Here, have a swig from this.’ He handed over a whisky flask.

Andrew hesitated and then took a sip. It stung his lips and throat.

‘Thanks.’ He handed it back.

‘Get some rest,’ Grant said. ‘We have to do it all over again in the morning.’

That night Andrew crawled thankfully onto his bedroll and fell into exhausted sleep.

He dreamt of rain. It was lashing at the window of his tower bedroom at The Anchorage. He got up to close the window but couldn’t; he stood shivering and naked until the rain stopped. Then abruptly he was under the horse chestnut trees along the drive to Templeton Hall. He was walking hand in hand with Felicity under the russet autumnal canopy and they were laughing as the ripe chestnuts split from their casings and bounced around them.

But, horrifyingly, the nuts turned to bullets and Felicity started screaming. Andrew was trying to drag her to safety but she wouldn’t move. Then suddenly they were running and he was gripping her hand so he wouldn’t lose her, but when he turned it was Stella’s face he saw . . .

Andrew woke with a jerk, panting with fear. He stared around him and gradually remembered he was sleeping under the desert stars far from Ebbsmouth. He sank back, heart still beating hard. His dreams had been so vivid; he’d