Small Wars by Sadie Jones Page B

was, unless Pappas and whoever was with him came out, they would have to go in, and they didn’t know how deep the cave went, how many men were in it, or how long their supplies might last.
    At seven o’clock a section of ten soldiers made the first descent down the cliff. They were covered by fire from the edges on both sides. The moment they gained the crevasse floor they poured fire into the cave too: a heavy rain of bullets, followed by burning oil-soaked rags to smoke the enemy out. There was no response from inside. Another section began the descent.

    There was, however, another entrance to the cave that the patrols had failed to find. It was a hole, barely the width of a man’s shoulders at the surface, but opening out as it went down. The shaft was at forty-five degrees to the inside of the caves, making it a good hundred paces east of the scattered rocks at the cliff-top, a clump of bushes concealing it with hazy shadows.
    Pappas had eight men with him in the cave. If they had all tried to get out that way they would certainly have been killed, but one man, easing head and shoulders out of the opening, under the cloud of thorny brush, could pull his .303 out after him, be very close to the British and still be hidden.
    The man they chose was the best marksman they had, but the gun was an old one: it had been loaded and unloaded from crates, stacked against rocks, in bundles and on the floors of boats for fifteen years, and bore the scars of that. The soldier he pointed it at was fifty yards away, crouched over his mess tin, with a roll-up behind his ear for later, eating his breakfast and talking to another soldier.
    The first bullet, aimed perfectly at his chest, went into his thigh instead and the bullet broke up on hitting the bone and made an explosion of flesh. Metal fragments flew, bloodied, into his face as well. He went over instantly, backwards to the ground, the other soldier jumping up and away while the men nearby took cover or hit the ground.
    ‘Down!’ and the second shot hit the same man in the soft part of his stomach, and the shooter slipped back into the shaft, pulling the thick stiff sacking that was the same colour as the ground over the shadow made by the hole.
    The bush, only slightly disturbed by his movement, ceased to tremble.
    The soldier who’d been hit was making deep, breathy sounds and convulsing. He was losing blood fast as it surged out of the wound, thick and pulsing. The man who’d been with him, who was very young and shaking too much to move well, ran back to him and tried to drag him to cover and keep his hand over the wound at the same time. Another ran to help.
    The shooter pushed back the stiff sacking once more and the light dazzled him. His eyes adjusted, and he could see soldiers, all looking around and frightened, aiming into the middle distance. He could see the body of his first hit, sideways to the ground, hunched up. He felt a curious delight that even in the face of terrible defeat he could have this triumph. He took careful aim, aware of his risk, and shot one more British soldier clean through his head – although not so clean as the soft bullet acted like a small explosion in the skull – and the man fell immediately.
    Then he really did retreat and slithered backwards down the shaft as fast as he could, keeping his gun up behind him and pointed at the opening as he descended. No light poured in after him, though; the ground made small tremors where booted feet tramped over it unknowingly.

    At the other end of the crevasse the two shots weren’t heard at all because of the blanket of fire as soldiers came down the cliff. Everybody was waiting for a reaction at the front of the cave.
    Once news of the soldiers being shot reached Hal – about fifteen minutes after their deaths – there was an hour and a half of reassessment, an avoidance of confusion, more searches and the eventual finding of the tiny shaft opening. Nobody could be proud when the thing