Serafino was the only one who got off a shot from the hop as he went down, a lucky one that blew away the top of Legrande’s head as far as I could see, but I was already rolling into the cover of the fallen log on the other side of the fire.
The Uzi kicked dirt in a fountain towards me that died abruptly as the magazine emptied and I got to my feet and ran into the trees, head down.
My right arm swung uselessly, blood spurting from a hole in my shoulder. There was no pain, I was too shocked to feel any. That would come later. For the moment I had only one driving passion-to survive.
I stumbled on and behind me there were the cries of the dying, some confused shouting and then several bullets passed uncomfortably close, severing branches and twigs above my head.
The Uzi opened up again, Jaeger working it methodically from side to side, splashing a route through the undergrowth. If I stayed where I was, I had a few seconds more to live at the most and that wasn’t good enough, not with the bills I had to pay. I swung sharply to the right, forced my way through a screen of bushes and went head-first into the stream.
The icy coldness sharpened me up wonderfully. I surfaced, took a deep breath and went under. If I’d had to rely on my swimming alone I’ve had got nowhere. I found it impossible to use my right arm, but the current was fiercer than I had expected and seized me in a grip of iron, pulling me out from the shore so that when I surfaced again, I found myself in the central channel.
There was a cry from the shore and Jaeger burst through the bushes. He plunged knee-deep into the water and as he raised the Uzi and started to fire, Burke joined him. I went under again and a few moments later the water was rocked by a sudden tur-bulence, the breath was squeezed from my body and I was lifted bodily.
I was aware of Burke standing there, of his arm moving like a flail, the grenade curving through the air to land a yard away. It was the torrent which saved me, sucking me under into the central passage between great granite slabs so that I had already passed over the smooth apron of rock at the end of the reach and was falling into the pool twenty feet below when the grenade went off.
The water was nine or ten feet deep at that point. I touched bottom, surfaced and the current swung me across to the other side to ground gently on a shelving bank of black sand beneath a line of overhanging bushes.
In a moment I was into their shelter, still driven by that fantastic reserve of energy that is in us all and which only comes to the fore in periods of real stress and danger. I looked for the densest thicket I could find, crawled into it and lay there shivering.
I discovered that the Smith and Wesson was still with me, thanks to its spring holster, and I got it out awkwardly with my left hand and lay there waiting.
The woods were silent, I was alone in a primeval world, the undergrowth closing in on either hand. Somewhere nearby a bird called sweetly and was answered and then there was the murmur of voices. They seemed to come from another place, to have no connection with me at all and certainly I made little sense out of what was said.
The only thing I did hear clearly was the sentence, ‘Can you see the body?’ delivered in a harsh South African accent that could only belong to Jaeger. It at least meant that they thought me dead, presumably killed by the second grenade.
Burke’s voice answered, then there was silence. Lying there on my belly I was aware of something digging into my chest and remembered Rosa’s parting gift. I unscrewed the top of the flask with my teeth and swallowed. Like liquid fire, the brandy burned its way down and exploded in a warm glow.