lava flow. A rifle spoke and a bullet sang overhead and then another,
better aimed, struck rock splinters a little to the left. Whoever was
shooting knew his work, but I had him spotted. He was in an upstairs
room and, by the shadowy movement I had seen, he was kneeling at the
window with his head barely showing.
I took aim, not at the window but at the wal below it and a little to
the left. I squeezed the trigger and, through the scope, saw the wood of
the wal planking splinter under the impact. There was a faint cry and a
shift of light at the window, and then I saw the man in ful sight
standing with his hands to his chest. He staggered backwards and vanished.
I had been right – Fleet’s rifle would shoot through the wal s.
I shifted sights to the downstairs rooms and methodical y put a bullet
into the wal alongside every window on the ground floor, just where it
would be natural for a man to wait in cover. Every time I squeezed the
trigger the torn sinews in my hand shrieked in protest and I relieved my
feelings by bel owing at the top of my voice.
I felt Elin tug at my trouser leg. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said worriedly.
‘Don’t hinder the man on the job,’ I said, and dropped back. I took out
the empty magazine. ‘Fil that up – it’s difficult for me.’ These
periods with an empty gun worried me and I wished Fleet had had a spare
clip. To be jumped on by somebody now would be slightly disastrous.
I saw that Elin was coping with reloading the clip with the right
bullets and took a look at the house again.
Someone was wailing over there and there were confused shouts. I had no
doubt that the house was now fil ed with a considerable amount of
consternation; the idea that a bullet can rip through a wal and hit the
man behind it is highly unsettling for the man behind the wal .
‘Here,’ said Elin, and passed me the ful clip of five rounds. I slotted
it into the gun and poked it forward again just in time to see a man
break from the front door and take cover behind the Chevrolet. I could
see his feet through the telescopic sight. The door nearer to me was
swung open and, with a mental apology to Lee Nordlinger, I put a bullet
through the car and through the metal of the opposite door. The feet
moved and the man came into view and I saw it was Ilyich. His hand was
at his neck and blood spurted from between his fingers. He tottered a
few more steps then dropped, rolled over and lay stil .
It was becoming very difficult for me to work the bolt action with my
ruined hand. I said to Elin, ‘Can you crawl over here beside me?’ She
came up on my right side, and I said, ‘Lift up that lever, pull it back,
and ram it forward again. But keep your head down while you’re doing it.’
She operated the bolt while I held the rifle firm with my left hand, and
she cried out as the empty brass case jumped out into her face
unexpectedly. In this dot-and-carry-one manner I put another three
rounds into selected points of the house where I thought they would do
most damage. When Elin put the last round into the breech I took out the
magazine and told her to fil it again.
I felt happier with that one round in the breech as an insurance against
emergency, and settled down to observe the house and to compile an
interim report. I had kil ed three men for certain, wounded another –
the rifleman upstairs – and possibly yet another, judging from the
moaning stil coming from the house. That was five – six if Kennikin was
included. I doubted if there were many more, but that didn’t mean that
more weren’t on their way – someone could have used a telephone.
I wondered if it was Slade who was doing the wailing. I Knew his voice
but it was difficult to tel from that inarticulate and unstructured
sound. I glanced down at Elin. ‘Hurry up!’ I said.
She was fiddling desperately. ‘One of them is stuck.’
‘Do your best.’ Again I peered around the rock in front of me and my eye
was caught by a movement beyond the house. Someone was doing what they
al ought to have done at the start of this action – getting away from
the back of the house. It was only because of the sheer unexpectedness
of the gun power I wielded that they hadn’t done it before – and it was
dangerous because I could be outflanked.
I racked up the telescopic sight to a greater magnification and looked
at the distant figure. It was Slade and he was apparently unhurt except
for his bandaged hand. He was leaping like a bloody chamois from hummock
to hummock at a breakneck speed, his coat tails flying in the breeze and
his arms outstretched to preserve his balance. By the convenient
range-finder system built into the sight I estimated that he was a
little under three hundred yards away and moving farther every second.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly to steady myself and then
took aim careful y. I was in considerable pain and had difficulty in
controlling the wavering sight. Three times I almost squeezed off the
shot and three times I relaxed the pressure on the trigger because the
sight had drifted off target.
My father bought me my first rifle when I was twelve and, wisely, he
chose a .22 single-shot. When a boy hunts rabbits and hares and knows
that he has only one shot at his disposal then he also knows that the
first and only shot must count, and no finer training in good shooting
habits is possible. Now, again, I had only one shot available and I was
back to my boyhood again, but it was no rabbit I was shooting – more
like a tiger.
It was difficult to concentrate and I felt dizzy and a wash of grey ness
passed momentarily in front of my eyes. I blinked and it cleared away
and Slade stood out preternatural y clearly in the glass. He had begun
to move away at an angle and I led him in the sight and let him run into
the aiming point. There was a roaring of blood in my ears and the
dizziness came again.
My finger painfully took up the final pressure and the butt of the rifle
jolted my shoulder and Slade’s nemesis streaked towards him at 2,000
miles an hour. The distant figure jerked like a marionette with suddenly
cut strings, toppled over, and disappeared from sight.
I rolled over as the roaring in my ears increased. The dizziness built
up again and the recurring waves of greyness turned to black. I saw the
sun glowing redly through the darkness and then I passed out, the last
thing I heard being Elin’s voice crying my name.
HI
‘It was a deception operation,’ said Taggart.
I was lying in a hospital bed in Keflavik and there was a guard on the
door, not so much to keep me imprisoned as to shield me from prying
eyes. I was a potential /cause celebre,/ a /casus bel i/ and al those
other foreign phrases which the leader writers of /The Times/ trot out
so readily in moments of crisis, and al attempts were being made to
keep the situation potential and to prevent it from becoming actual. All
parties concerned wanted the whole thing hushed up, and if the Icelandic
government knew what had been going on they were damned careful not to
say so.
Taggart was with another man, an American, whom he introduced as Arthur
Ryan. I recognized Ryan; the last time I had seen him was through the
sights of Fleet’s rifle -he had been standing beside a helicopter on the
other side of Budarhals ridge.
It was the second time they had come to see me. The first time I was
drowsy with dope and not very coherent, but stil coherent enough to ask
two questions.
‘How’s Elin?’
‘She’s al right,’ said Taggart soothingly. ‘In better shape than you
are, as a matter of fact.’ He told me that the bullet had been a
ricochet and had the force taken out of it; it had just penetrated the
flesh and lodged between her ribs. ‘She’s as right as rain,’ said
Taggart heartily.
I looked at him with dislike but I was too wobbly to push it then. I
said, ‘How did I get here?’
Taggart glanced at Ryan who took a pipe from his pocket, looked at it