The Alamut Ambush (27 page)

He forced himself to touch the edge of the crater again. It couldn’t be as big as his fingertips told him it was, but by the size of it, it had to be an exit wound. As he touched it he felt pain for the first time: his brain was telling him what his body wasn’t yet ready to admit.

The question was – where was the entry wound?

Sudden fear drenched him again. It didn’t matter where he was hit, but only that he get to hell out of here before they came back.

He wrenched the groundsheet back, scattering the bracken and sending arrows of pain up his left side from the mangled buttock.

He raised himself stiffly on his hands and looked around. He was still close to the edge of the wood – he could see the light through the trees – but down an incline away from the path. He lifted his head higher and took his weight on his right knee.

Still not a movement anywhere. Away to his left he could now see the sunshine bright in the meadow, beyond a steep, sandy bank – there was a stream there at the meadow’s edge.

He glanced down and caught his breath: he was covered in blood, saturated in it, his shirt and trousers sodden. God! No wonder they hadn’t looked twice at him — he was like a slaughter house!

The thing now was to get away fast. He stood up – and cried out in pain and surprise as he pitched forward.

His leg wasn’t there at all!

No, blast it – he rolled desperately to protect his backside – of course it was there! But it felt as though it wasn’t and whatever was wrong with it, he wasn’t going anywhere on it.

Roskill pounded the soft earth in fear and anguish. He couldn’t stay here, but he couldn’t go far hopping or dragging himself. He felt thirsty and dizzy – two of the classic shock signs the squadron M.O. had dinned into his heads. He was hurt worse than he’d thought.

Falling blood pressure, rapid irregular pulse; skin pale, cold, clammy and moist… he could remember Doc Farrell reciting the litany.

But there was something else Farrell was always preaching in his survival course – what was it?

‘The sympathetic system overrides the central nervous system in emergency – the sympathetic reactions are directed towards the mobilisation of the resources of the body for the expenditure of energy in dealing with crises.’

Man — when you’re in danger the adrenalin pumps and you work at a tremendous peak of efficiency. If you went on living like that you’d burn yourself out in no time. But if you don’t panic while you’re there on top, you’re a superman
!

The superman wiped the blood-stained tears from his eyes and looked round him again.

The golf bag!

Trying not to look at Yaffe, Roskill slid the bag off the dead man’s arm. The straps were stiff and slippery – like everything else the bag was blood-soaked.

The family heirloom: God, let it not be some ancient muzzle-loader!

He knew before he’d slid three inches of it out what it was: an old Lee-Enfield – the blunt terrier’s muzzle, with the wooden stock and hand-guard, was unmistakable: the immortal S.M.L.E.

Bullets? He jerked back the bolt feverishly.

There was nothing there. But of course there was nothing there: Yaffe would never carry a loaded rifle in his golf bag. Not to panic; there had to be rounds in the bag somewhere …

Unless he collected them at the Rifle Club!

Roskill fumbled with the strap on the ball pocket: small, stout cardboard boxes with metal edges. And nestling in the boxes lovely .303 cartridges, five in each of the little black chargers. Thank you, God!

Remember how it was in the old A.T.C. days, when the Flight Sergeant forced them to learn the drill – and he had always found it easy to learn things by heart…

Draw back the rifle and hold it with the left hand at the point of balance …

It was easy still –
place the charger in the bridge charger guide. Place the ball of the thumb on the top round just in front of the charger
…

The rounds went down smoothly in a clean sweep. Roskill took another charger, pressed the rounds home and closed the breech with one round up the spout – no practice this time, with that last round safe in the magazine. He stuffed two of the little boxes into his coat pocket for good measure.

Superman was armed now, anyway – Lee Enfield against Uzi!

But not here. This was Uzi country; the old rifle liked the open spaces best, not the woodlands.

The meadow.

They would be coming back across the meadow.

Roskill set off, propelling himself up the incline on his right hip with his right foot, the rifle resting painfully on his collar bone, his useless left foot dragging behind him. But before he’d gone three yards he knew he’d never make the distance back up to the path and then along to the meadow – not in the time that must be left to him now. Not even that pumping adrenalin could disguise the weakness and the spreading pain down his leg.

He veered off to the left, towards the stream.

Downhill, even on the uneven surface of the wood, the going was easier – it was no more than agonising. And the stream itself refreshed him: he lay in it, he dipped his face into it, and at the last he drank from it, watching the water redden as it washed some of the blood from him.

The cattle, or whatever used the meadow, had used this point in the high bank to get to the water – there was a mud wallow, but beyond it a broad track worn to the top.

Leaving a slimy trail of blood and water behind him, Roskill inched his way up the track. He knew the effort was squandering his energy reserve as he crawled, anchoring each advance with the rifle butt. But the line of meadow grass at the top was the Promised Land; to fail to reach it now would be to lose everything.

At last he could peer over the top, between the tufts. For a moment he couldn’t focus: the landscape swam before his eyes.

Then it became an empty field – a much bigger field than he had imagined, at least from this worm’s-eye view, with a barbed wire fence marking its frontier with a low ridge of heathland and forest scrubland. And there in the far corner to his left was the stile which he and Yaffe should have crossed just a few minutes ago.

Yaffe….

The hay-makers had taken the first growth from the field, and it was trimmed to an even stubble. But they had left an awkward patch providentially close to where he lay, beside the stump of an old tree whose roots had been stretching down out of the bank towards the water.

Roskill crawled the final yards to the protection of the stump. For half a minute he rested his face against the rough bark, breathing deeply.

Another sign that he was slipping.

But not yet, damn it, not yet!

Roskill carefully placed the rifle on its side in the grass and took the spare cartridge boxes out of his pocket. He opened them and placed the spare slips ready beside the stump. He was appalled to see that his hand was white and shaking like an old man’s, the veins huge and blue.

He looked methodically around him again.

A good fire position should permit free use of the weapon, have a good field of fire, be inconspicuous and bulletproof.

Wasn’t there something else, though?

Be easy to move from
…

Well, it was all those except perhaps the last. But that didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t be moving from it, one way or another!

He slid the rifle forward, checking the safety catch. It was undoubtedly a very old one, with the open U-shaped backsight which he’d heard of, but never seen. At least the aiming rule was simple enough though: the top of the foresight must be in the middle of the U, in line with the shoulders.

He could feel a roughness on the stock – there were Arabic letters carved into it, and five little bright silver studs carefully hammered in line below.

Trophies, by God! One stud for each life the Arab owner had taken, until Yaffe – no, Yaffe’s father more likely – had missed becoming a stud and won it from its owner. The War of ‘47, maybe…

And there was something else, too: further down were two holes – new holes which had flaked the polished wood. Roskill looked in awe at the stock. No wonder the golf bag had hit him so hard! Like its owner, it had taken bullets which had his name on them…

He shook his head and looked up across the field again.

Jesus Christ! They were half-way across it! He’d been maundering over the Lee Enfield while they’d been marching almost straight towards him, and he hadn’t even decided what to do!

Shoot first at long range and drive them off, warning everyone?

But it wouldn’t warn anyone, because the T.A. men were still blazing away in the distance – and he’d likely miss at anything except point-blank range.

Which meant letting them get close, to see the whites of their eyes, when they could rush him if he missed…

Three of them. He saw them clearly for the first time now: Jahein, grizzled and watchful, with a raincoat slung over his arm to conceal the Uzi, the Englishman, spare, sandy-haired; and the third man, Middle Eastern, carrying a long, shallow black suitcase: that would be the Shibasaki telescopic microphone.

The Englishman would run. He hadn’t wanted to kill and hadn’t even the stomach to search a body. It wasn’t likely now that he would try to be a hero. That left two – and the two he could just possibly take. The two who mattered!

They were walking steadily, but not fast – three strangers out for a Sunday morning stroll in the country.

He lifted the rifle:
the sole object of a rifle is to kill the enemy
.

But the enemy heaved up and down in front of his foresight; it was like aiming at someone from a small boat in the ocean. He should have practised aiming –

Steadying now, though. First pressure on the trigger —
correct trigger pressing is essential
.

Damn it to hell! The safety catch was still on!

They were very close now. Roskill’s bottom was
a
fiery crater too: he wouldn’t be able to sit down for months – first pressure again – but if he missed now he’d never sit down again, ever.

He shot Jahein through the chest at five yards’ range.

The bolt moved smoothly, ejecting the case, and slammed back. Jahein was on his back in the grass –

If the third man had charged him then – or fled – the barrel waved so wildly he couldn’t have hit a house. But the man dropped his case and clawed in the grass for the Uzi which had fallen from Jahein’s hands.

The Uzi was a death warrant. It gave Roskill a second to steady the barrel and then an easier shot than the last: the man was bending, almost stationary, with the little machine-pistol just coming up from the ground when his second shot knocked him down, sending the Uzi spinning.

Like the chip of wood spinning…

Roskill lowered the rifle. All the saliva seemed to have drained from his mouth: it was like a lime kiln. Thousands of rounds he’d fired, cannon shells smashing the targets, clay pigeons puffing into fragments, and never a shot in anger until now, when two dead rnen lay there – Jahein’s heels were drumming convulsively a few yards from him…

The Englishman was running – not running,
scuttling –
like a rabbit across the field, twisting this way and that, towards the barbed wire fence.

Let him go then. The dead he had shot in self-defence and justice. The third time would be cold-blooded murder. And he was utterly exhausted.

Then it struck Roskill like a blow that they all mattered equally: if they had seen Razzak meet Shapiro, what each one of them knew might be – might be —

No more time to think, for this was a difficult shot. No wind to aim off into, but God only knew where the old Lee Enfield threw its bullet, high or low, left or right.

Except the instructor always said it wasn’t the gun but the concentration behind it that hit the target.

Concentrate then. At this range aiming off didn’t matter: the man had to reach the wire; it was too high to jump, so he’d have to stop and climb.

Wait and concentrate. It wasn’t a man, but a piece of knowledge running towards the wire. If it crossed the wire into the thicket beyond it would be on its way to Alamut. And whatever happened, nothing must wake Hassan to the truth.

Squeeze with the whole hand until you feel the first pressure —
he was almost at the wire … now he was climbing and it had snagged his coat sleeve –
restrain the breathing and continue that steady squeeze
!

God! Roskill winced as the kick seemed to travel down his body, exploding low down and spreading outwards, fogging his vision momentarily.

The man was crucified on the wire, half hanging over it. Then, as Roskill watched, he started to slide backwards the way he had come, jerkily as each strand of wire caught his clothing, took the strain and then ripped free. Roskill stared sickened as the body crumpled in slow motion to the bottom of the fence, one arm finally harpooned on the lowest strand. Inside the field.

He felt cold. A killer ought to feel cold, though. Jack the Giant-Killer. Wyatt Earp. Dead-Eyed Dick – no, not Dead-Eyed Dick. Dead-Eyed Someone, surely.

It would be nice to pass out now, warm and safe – cold and safe, anyway. But the damned adrenalin hadn’t stopped pumping.

He frowned, trying to catch his thoughts: there was something else to do, that was why!

Something else to wait for with the family heirloom. Three more silver studs and room for a fourth now: two for safety, one for duty, but the fourth strictly personal – for Alan.

It was curious, he reflected, how it was possible to feel lightheaded and clear-headed at the same time. He would have to discuss it in the squadron mess tonight with Doc Farrell – say to him he was dead right about the fear of God sharpening the wits!

Damn it all – he’d been so close – and then Audley had twisted it and forced the wrong answer on him!

The Firle meeting had been the key, not because Razzak had met Shapiro there – but because those dead men in the field hadn’t been told about it by the Watcher who was dogging Razzak’s footsteps.