James Bond said, “Now this is what we’re going to do. First of all, I want you somewhere where you can help but where I don’t have to worry about you. Otherwise, if I know these men, they’ll concentrate on you and guess that I’ll do anything, even let them get away rather than let you get hurt.”
“Is that true?”
“Don’t be silly. So you get on over the road under cover of this bit of building and then work back, keeping well out of sight, until you’re just about opposite their car. Stay quiet, and even if one or both of them gets to the car, hold your fire until I tell you to shoot. All right?”
“But where will you be?”
“We’ve got what are known as interior lines of defense—if we consider the cars as the objective. I’m going to stick around here and let them come at me. It’s they who want to get us and get away. Let ’em try. Time’s against them.” He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly three. How long before first light around here?”
“About two hours. Around five. But there are two of them and only one of you! They’ll do a sort of what they call ‘pincers movement.’ ”
“One of the crabs has lost a claw. Anyway that’s the best I can do for a master plan. Now you get on across the road before they start something. I’ll keep them occupied.”
He went to the corner of the building, edged round, and took two quick shots at the right-hand cabin. There was a distant crash of glass and then the vicious blast of the sub-machine gun. Bullets splatted into the masonry and whipped across the road into the trees. James Bond had pulled back. He smiled encouragingly. “Now!”
I ran to the right and across the road, keeping the lobby building between me and the end cabin, and scrambled in among the trees. Once again they tore and scratched at me, but now I had proper shoes on, and the material of the overalls was tough. I got well inside the wood and then began working along to the left. When I thought I had gone far enough I crept down toward the light from the flames. I ended up where I had wanted to, just inside the first line of trees with the black sedan about twenty yards away on the other side of the road and a fairly clear view of the flickering battlefield.
All this while, the moon had been dodging in and out through the scudding clouds—in turns lighting everything brightly and then switching itself off and leaving only the changing glare that came mostly from the blazing left half of the lobby block. Now the moon came fully out and showed me something that almost made me scream. The thin man, crawling on his stomach, was worming his way up the north side of the lobby block, and the moonlight glinted on the gun in his hand.
James Bond was where I had left him, and, to keep him there, Sluggsy now kept up a steady stream of single shots that flicked every few seconds at the angle of the wall toward which the thin man was worming his way. Perhaps James Bond guessed the significance of this steady fire. He may have known that it was meant to pin him down, because now he began moving along to the left, toward the burning half of the building. And now he was running, bent low, out across the browned grass and through the billowing smoke and sparks toward the charred, flickering ruins of the left-hand line of cabins. I caught a brief glimpse of him diving through one of the carports at around Number 15, and then he was gone, presumably into the trees at the back to work his way up and take Sluggsy in the rear.
I watched the thin man. He was nearly at the corner of the building. Now he was there. The single shots ceased. Without taking aim, and firing with his left hand, the thin man edged his gun round the corner and sprayed a whole magazine, blind, down the front wall where James and I had been standing.