especial y for the first time, especial y when a civilian, especial y
when a woman. I put a snap in my voice. ‘You’l do exactly as I say
without question. You’l follow me and you’l run like hel without any
hesitation.’
She choked back a rasping sob and nodded breathlessly, so I went out of
the front door, and I went out shooting. Even as we went someone took a
crack at us from the /inside/ of the house and a bullet clipped the
architrave by my ear. But I had no time to worry about that because the
pair who had been sent to search the Chevrolet were heading right at me.
I shot at them and kept on squeezing the trigger and they vanished from
view, diving right and left, and we belted between them. There was a
tinkle of glass as somebody decided it was quicker to smash a window
than to open it, and then the bullets came after us. I dropped Slade’s
gun and again grasped Elin by the wrist and forced her to follow me in a
zigzag. Behind I could hear the heavy thud of boots as someone chased us.
Then Elin was hit. The bullet pushed her forward into a stumble but, as
her knees gave in, I managed to put my arm around her to hold her up. We
were then ten yards from the edge of the lava flow where I had hidden
the rifle, and how we managed to travel that short distance I stil
don’t know. Elin could stil use her legs and that helped, and we
scrambled up towards the top of the flow, over the mossy humps, until I
stooped and laid my hands on the butt of Fleet’s rifle.
I was jacking a round into the breech even before I got it clear of the
moss. Elin fel to the ground as I swung around holding the rifle in my
left hand. Even with a hole in the palm of my right hand I could stil
pull the trigger, and I did so to some effect.
The magazine contained the mixed load I had careful y put into it –
steel-jacketed and soft-nosed bullets. The first one that came out was
jacketed; it hit the leading pursuer in the chest and went; through him
as though he wasn’t there. He came on for four more paces before his
heart realized it had a hole in it and it was time to quit beating, then
he dropped on the spot, nearly at my feet, with a surprised look on his
face.
By that time I had shot the man just behind him, and that was
spectacular. A man hit by a big, soft-nosed bul et driven by a magnum
charge at a range of twenty yards isn’t as much kil ed as disintegrated,
and this character came apart at the seams. The bullet hit him in the
sternum and then started to expand, lifting him clear off the ground and
throwing him back four feet before lifting his spine out and splattering
it over the landscape.
Everything was suddenly quiet. The deep-throated bel ow of Fleet’s gun
had told everyone concerned that something new had been added to the
game and they held their fire while they figured what was going on. I
saw Slade by the door of the house, his hand clutched to his bel y. I
lifted the rifle again and took a shot at him, too quickly and with
shaking hands. I missed him but gave him a hel of a fright because he
ducked back in haste and there was no one to be seen.
Then a bullet nearly parted my hair and from the sound of the report I
knew someone in the house also had a rifle. I got down off the skyline
and reached for Elin. She was lying on the moss, her face screwed up
with pain and trying to control her laboured breathing. Her hand was at
her side and, when she withdrew it, was red with blood.
I said, ‘Does it hurt much?’
‘When I breathe,’ she said with a gasp. ‘Only then.’ ‘ That was a bad
sign, yet from the apparent position of the wound she had not been hit
in the lung. There wasn’t anything I could do there and then. For the
next few minutes I’d be busy making sure we stayed alive for the next
few minutes. There’s not much point in worrying about dying of
septicaemia in the next week when you might have your head blown off in
the next thirty seconds.
I scrabbled for the box of ammunition, took the magazine from the rifle
and reloaded it. The numbness had left my hand and it was now beginning
to real y hurt. Even the experimental flexing of my trigger finger sent
a shock up my arm as though I’d grabbed a live wire, and I didn’t know
if I could do much more shooting. But it’s surprising what you can do
when you’re pushed to it.
I poked my head careful y around a slab of lava and took a look at the
house. Nobody and nothing moved. Just to my front lay the bodies of the
men I had shot, one lying as though peaceful y asleep and the other
dreadful y shattered. In front of the house were the two cars;
Kennikin’s car appeared to be quite normal, but Nordlinger’s Chevrolet
was a bit of a wreck – they had ripped the seats out in the search for
the package and the two nearer doors gaped open. I’d be running up quite
a bil for damage to people’s cars.
Those cars were less than a hundred yards away and, dearly as I wanted
one of them, I knew it was hopeless to try. I also knew we couldn’t
leave on foot. Apart from the fact that walking on the lava beds is a
sport which even the Icelanders aren’t keen on, there was Elin to
consider. I couldn’t leave her, and if we made a break for it we’d be
picked up within fifteen minutes.
Which left only one thing – since neither the Mounties nor the US
Cavalry were going to show up on the horizon in the time-honoured
manner, I had to fight a pitched battle against an unknown number of men
securely ensconced in that house – and win.
I studied the house. Kennikin hadn’t thought much of it as a prison.
/’Built like an eggshel ,’/ he had said. A couple of planks thick, a
half-inch of plaster and a few inches of foamed polystyrene. Most people
would regard a house as bullet-proof, but I laugh every time I see a
Western film when the hero takes refuge in a clapboard hut and the
baddies careful y shoot at the windows.
Even a 9 mm bullet from a Luger wil penetrate nine inches of pine board
from very close range, and that’s a pee-wee bullet compared to the .44
fired by the Western Colt. A few wel placed shots would whittle away
the shack from around our hero.
I looked at the house and wondered how those flimsy wal s would stand up
against the awesome power of Fleet’s rifle. The soft-nosed bullets
mightn’t do much – they would tend to splash on impact; but the jacketed
bullets should have a hel of a lot of penetrative power. It was time to
find out, but first I had to locate that rifleman.
I withdrew my head and looked at Elin. She seemed better now that she
had her breathing under control. ‘How are you feeling now?’
‘My God!’ she said. ‘How do you think I feel?’
I grinned at her with some, relief. That spurt of temper showed she had
improved. ‘Everything wil get better from now on.’
‘They can hardly get worse.’
‘Thanks for what you did in there,’ I said. ‘It was very brave.’
Considering the attitude she had previously shown towards kil ing it was
much more than that.
She shivered. ‘It was horrible!’ she said in a low voice. ‘I shal see
it as long as I live.’
‘You won’t,’ I said with certainty. ‘The mind has a knack of forgetting
things like that. That’s why wars are so long and frequent. But just so
you don’t have to do it again, you can do something for me.’
‘If I can.’
I pointed to a lump of lava above her head. ‘Can you push that over the
edge when I tel you to? But don’t expose yourself or you’l get a bullet.’
She looked up at the lava fragment. ‘I’l try.’
‘Don’t do it until I say.’ I pushed the rifle ahead of me and looked at
the house. Stil nothing moved and I wondered what Slade was up to.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Shove it over.’
There was a clatter as the rock moved and rolled down the slope of the