and then worked the action to put a bullet into the breech.
The col apsed figure at my feet wasn’t going to be much use to anybody
even if he did wake up, so I didn’t have to worry about him. All I had
to do now was to take care of Daniel Boone ? the man with the rifle. I
returned to my peephole to see what he was doing.
He was doing precisely what he had been doing ever since I had seen him
– contemplating the Land-Rover with inexhaustible patience. I stood up
and walked into the hollow, gun first. I didn’t worry overmuch about
keeping quiet; speed was more important than quietness and I reckoned he
might be more alarmed if I pussyfooted around than if I crunched up
behind him.
He didn’t even turn his head. All he did was to say in a flat Western
drawl, ‘You forgotten something, Joe?’
I caught my jaw before it sagged too far. A Russian I expected; an
American I didn’t. But this was no time to worry about nationalities – a
man who throws bullets at you is automatical y a bastard, and whether
he’s a Russian bastard or an American bastard makes little difference. I
just said curtly, ‘Turn around, but leave the rifle where it is or
you’l have a hole in you.’
He went very stil , but the only part of him that he turned was his
head. He had china-blue eyes in a tanned, narrow face and he looked
ideal for type-casting as Pop’s eldest son in a TV horse opera. He also
looked dangerous. ‘I’l be goddamned!’ he said softly.
‘You certainly wil be if you don’t take your hands off that rifle,’ I
said. ‘Spread your arms out as though you were being crucified.’
He looked at the pistol in my hand and reluctantly extended his arms. A
man prone in that position finds it difficult to get up quickly.
‘Where’s Joe?’ he asked.
‘He’s gone beddy-byes.’ I walked over to him and put the muzzle of the
pistol to the nape of his neck and I felt him shudder. That didn’t mean
much; it didn’t mean he was afraid – I shudder involuntarily when Elin
kisses me on the nape of the neck. ‘Just keep quiet,’ I advised, and
picked up the rifle.
I didn’t have time to examine it closely then, but I did afterwards, and
it was certainly some weapon. It had a mixed ancestry and probably had
started life as a Browning, but a good gunsmith had put in a lot of time
in reworking it, giving it such refinements as a sculptured stock with a
hole in it to put your thumb, and other fancy items. It was a bit like
the man said, ‘I have my grandfather’s axe – my father replaced the
blade and I gave it a new haft.’
What it had ended up as was the complete long-range assassin’s kit. It
was bolt action because it was a gun for a man who picks his target and
who can shoot wel enough not to want to send a second bullet after the
first in too much of a hurry. It was chambered for a .375 magnum load, a
heavy 300 grain bullet with a big charge behind it -high velocity, low
trajectory. This rifle in good hands could reach out half a mile and
snuff out a man’s life if the light was good and the air stil .
To help the aforesaid good hands was a fantastic telescopic sight – a
variable-powered monster with a top magnification of 30. To use it when
ful y racked out would need a man with no nerves – and thus no tremble –
or a solid bench rest. The scope was equipped with its own range-finding
system, a multiple mounting of graduated dots on the vertical cross hair
for various ranges, and was sighted in at five hundred yards.
It was a hel of a lot of gun.
I straightened and rested the muzzle of the rifle lightly against my
friend’s spine. ‘That’s your gun you can feel,’ I said. ‘You don’t need
me to tel you what would happen if ‘I pulled the trigger.’
His head was turned sideways and I saw a light film of sweat coating the
tan. He didn’t need to let his imagination work because he was a good
craftsman and knew his tools enough to /know/ what would happen – over
5,000 footpounds of energy would blast him clean in two.
I said, ‘Where’s Kennikin?’
‘Who?’
‘Don’t be childish,’ I said. ‘I’l ask you again – where’s Kennikin?’
‘I don’t know any Kennikin,’ he said in a muffled voice. He found
difficulty in speaking because the side of his face was pressed against
the ground.
‘Think again.’
‘I tel you I don’t know him. All I was doing was following orders.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You took a shot at me.’
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘At your tyre. You’re stil alive, aren’t you? I
could have knocked you off any time.’
I looked down the slope at the Land-Rover. That was true; it would be
like a Bisley champion shooting tin ducks at a fairground. ‘So you were
instructed to stop me. Then what?’
‘Then nothing.’
I increased the pressure on his spine slightly. ‘You can do better than
that.’
‘I was to wait until someone showed up and then quit and go home.’
‘And who was the someone?’
‘I don’t know – I wasn’t told.’
That sounded crazy; it was even improbable enough to be true. I said,
‘What’s your name?’
‘John Smith.’
I smiled and said, ‘All right, Johnny; start crawling -backwards and
slowly. And if I see more than half an inch of daylight between your
bel y and the ground I’l let you have it.’
He wriggled back slowly and painfully away from the edge and down into
the hollow, and then I stopped him. Much as I would have liked to carry
on the interrogation I had to put an end to it because time was wasting.
I said, ‘Now, Johnny; I don’t want you to make any sudden moves because
I’m a very nervous man, so just keep quite stil .’
I came up on his blind side, lifted the butt of the rifle and brought it
down on the back of his head. It was no way to treat such a good gun but
it was the only thing I had handy. The gun butt was considerably harder
than the cosh and I regretful y decided I had fractured his skul .
Anyway, he wouldn’t be causing me any more trouble.
I walked over to pick up the jacket he had been using as a gun rest. It
was heavy and I expected to find a pistol in the pocket, but the weight
was caused by an unbroken box of rounds for the rifle. Next to the
jacket was an open box. Both were unlabel ed.
I checked the rifle. The magazine was designed to hold five rounds and
contained four, there was one in the breech ready to pop off, and there
were nineteen rounds in the opened box. Mr Smith was a professional; he
had fil ed the magazine, jacked one into the breech, and then taken out
the magazine and stuffed another round into it so he would have six
rounds in hand instead of five. Not that he needed them – he had burst
the tyre on a moving vehicle at over four hundred yards with just one shot.
He was a professional al right, but his name wasn’t Smith because he
carried an American passport in the name of Wendel George Fleet. He
also carried a pass that would get him into the more remote corners of
Keflavik Naval Base, the parts which the public are discouraged from
visiting. He didn’t carry a pistol; a rifleman as good as he usual y
despises handguns.
I put the boxes of ammunition into my pocket where they weighed heavy,
and I stuck Joe’s automatic pistol into the waistband of my trousers,
unloading it first so I didn’t do a Kennikin on myself. Safety catches
are not al that reliable and a lot of men have ruined themselves for
their wives by acting like a character in a TV drama.
I went to see how Joe was doing and found that he was stil asleep and
that his name wasn’t even Joe according to his passport. It turned out
he was Patrick Aloysius McCarthy. I regarded him speculatively; he
looked more Italian than Irish to me. Probably al the names were
phoney, just as Buchner who wasn’t Graham turned out to be Philips.
McCarthy carried two spare magazines for the Smith & Wesson, both of
them ful , which I confiscated. I seemed to be “building up quite an
armoury on this expedition -from a little knife to a high-powered rifle