Lying low turned out to be simple – I spent all my cash on a bottle of “Jim Beam” and drained it to the last drop. Only alcohol could help in the struggle against the animal fear that had run me clean through. When my brains stopped working – eighty proof inside and forty degrees outside did their job fast – I somehow made it to the farthest beach and fell asleep there under the palms. Or rather, choked myself into a heavy doze. Despite the fact that my brain was fogged and foaming, my hearing was sharpened. Every sound capable of reaching that deserted corner reached me. I’m certain that if a hammer had clicked a hundred meters off, I’d have leapt to my feet instantly and jumped into the nearby thickets. In moments of mortal danger it really isn’t so easy to switch off and…
What’s that?
What?
Again?
Somewhere close by, sand creaked.
Who could be making his way out here?
I tried to unstick my eyes and didn’t manage it. Along with the click of a safety catch very close at hand, my body – on its own, without outside help, without any command from my head – dove into the mass of vegetation growing nearby. Dove with its eyes shut, at random. Surfaced with its eyes open, but it did little good. I was running away, taking no notice of where. My legs carried me wherever they liked. There was nothing I could do about this state of affairs until I found myself in a thick, nearly impassable stand of bamboo or whatever it… In short, the jungle stood high all around, and only there, in that hopeless multitude of flowers, foliage and thorns, was I able to catch my breath and come a little to myself. The alcohol had aired out of my system, my head started working and apparently taking charge of my scratched-up body, which up to then had been operating on autopilot.
I held my breath and listened to the sounds carrying through. Through the chirping of birds and the rustle of leaves I made out a distant crackle and swish. The source of the noise was some fifty meters behind me. I turned and dropped into a crouch. It was clear the pursuer was navigating by the corridor of crushed foliage I’d left. The enemy had to be outwitted. Crouching, I made my way quietly and carefully ten meters back and darted aside, behind a nearby tree. There I froze.
Soon the noise close at hand told me that – there it was! – someone unfriendly was walking my trail. The moment a stocky fellow with a submachine gun in his hand went past, I sprang on him. The fight lasted about five seconds, no more. The gunman went down on the ground with his belly slit open. There had been no sense whatever in his carrying a Finnish knife in his bootleg. It was with that Finnish knife, which found its way into my hand entirely as a matter of course, that I opened up his abdominal cavity.
Got him!
In the gunman’s glazed eyes, astonishment mixed half and half with horror had frozen for the ages. I closed his eyelids and, before taking the weapon, went through the dead man’s pockets. I found nothing noteworthy in them. Hm. Now if there had been some sort of instructions from Magda in there, or a full list of all her hired hands who had arrived… A nervous laugh went through me for an instant and vanished at once. Magda had arrived with more than one heavy, that was plain as day. You’d need at least a squad detailed to hunt me successfully. A platoon, maybe.
I turned the oddly built submachine gun over in my hand. Where might I have seen a rickety instrument like that? In a movie? A Schmeisser? Well, well. It looked like exactly that. Nonstandard weaponry for the local climate. What was that about?
I never got to the answer. Echoes of distant shouting reached me. Something along the lines of: «Yoo-hoo, brother Ivanushka!» As though someone were being searched for… Damn! Searched for the fallen soldier, obviously.
I got my bearings on which direction the beach lay in and set off briskly the opposite way, into the island’s interior. The voices ended up behind me and a little to the left. I glanced at the thin shafts of sunlight breaking through the leaves. The angle of the light worked out to about seventy degrees, running from my left shoulder to the toe of my right flip-flop. I cursed: «Couldn’t put proper shoes on,» and bore right so the sun would strike the back of my head directly. Moving in the chosen direction promised the shortest possible route away from my pursuers. A pity it meant going uphill.
I pushed forward and upward, all the while carefully keeping the sun behind me. Getting lost during a chase to the death did not appeal to me.
About twenty minutes went by.
Streaming sweat, gasping, recalling my former life and simply swearing, I did at last reach the summit of the mountain I was conquering, and rejoiced. I was alone at the island’s highest point. No extraneous sounds carried up to me. But it was not yet time to relax. I nosed about the surroundings a little and found what I was after. A narrow path led through thick brush to a clearing fifty meters by fifty – a former construction site. The clearing might have been created for the conduct of combat operations. A pair of half-ruined gray brick structures plus a dozen reinforced-concrete forms scattered here and there gave the landscape a useful variety. One could do one’s shooting in comfortable conditions. I prepared to go to ground beside a brick shed quietly crumbling away at the top of the clearing. Construction junk was heaped around the shed: metal structures of some kind, concrete posts, broken brick and other rubbish. From behind that trash, well overgrown with grass, there was an excellent view of everything happening below. The fighters coming up my trail would be right there in the palm of my hand. What’s more, their exit into operational space, meaning the clearing, was very unpleasant for them. The path was pinched on both sides by dense brush and they could not spread into a skirmish line outside my field of view. To do that they would have to come out onto ground I could shoot across, or go back about a hundred meters and try, navigating by compass, to come around my rear, but…
…but the most interesting part I had saved up for precisely that case.
I cast my eye over the clearing once more. When they came around my rear I would not be grieving. I would remember that what they had been building here twenty years ago was no trifle but, quite literally, a cable car. And – a noteworthy detail! – the line had been built and then forgotten about. Romanych had brought me here once to show off the monument to somebody else’s bungling. Who needs a cable line like that? Who is going to ride up here? Riding down, now – that’s another matter. Great fun. Romanych had demonstrated how, given a metal bracket, you could reach the foot of the mountain in one minute. The main thing is not to unclench your fingers out of fright. The howl of the wind in your ears is something to hear.
I remembered that descent of six months ago and smiled. Waiting for me at the end point of the ride would be a rescue station, a dozen bars, and a police post where my dear friends Tab and Willie were on duty today! And if two friends turned out to be too few, I’d get into their motorboat and roar off somewhere farther away.
Chasing the smile off my face, I regretted that there was no chance to zero the weapon before the fight, as one ought. Every gun has its peculiarities, and it is desirable to know them before they land on your head. Maybe this one fired its bullets out backwards. A joke. Nerves already…
How many pursuers would there be?
How many rounds did I have?
Right.
I shook my head.
Out of practice, gone soft, turned into an absolute sack of straw. The first thing to do was check the magazine for ammunition, not go rummaging in other people’s pockets.
I hefted the weapon and reckoned that the magazine appeared to be full. Which meant now was not the time to run off to my cop friends. No point. First let’s play at war, find out how many soldiers Magda sent after me. If their number turns out to be insignificant, we go on the offensive, and then…
A barely perceptible rustle of grass reached me. Not even a rustle – a premonition of a rustle. My hearing was strained to the limit and caught the least stirring of the air. I raised my head and saw a fighter in camouflage stealing across the clearing. Behind him stood a second, to all appearances the first one’s twin. He was not just standing there. Carefully, sector by sector, he was feeling out the thickets and the concrete forms around me with his eyes. The weapon in his hands was ready to fire. His half-bent legs, like compressed springs, waited for a danger signal. At any moment he could leap back into the saving brush and from there hose me down with lead from head to foot. Professionals. Whereas nobody had ever taught me to fight in the jungle. A pity.
I came up onto one knee, carefully raised the weapon, aimed, and at thirty meters dropped the nearer specialist with a short burst. For all his learning, he went down as though scythed. Without a sound his legs went slack and he settled straight down under himself like a sack. A good sign. The fighter had been killed outright.
I swung the barrel toward the second and… Just so. He was nowhere within view. Immediately bullets began snapping around me. I dropped flat on the ground and rolled five meters to the side. There, behind yet another reinforced-concrete block, I could catch my breath in relative safety and prepare for act two of the hostilities.
The shooting, frantic and disordered, meanwhile stopped. The enemy, it seemed, was deciding what steps to take. I glanced at my watch and fixed the time to the second. If this war was going to be waged according to all the canons of strategy and tactics, in three minutes I would be encircled. It would not hurt to prepare for such a development. I cast about with my eyes and saw what I was looking for: a metal bracket.
I must remember the spot.
A minute later the shooting started up again. They were firing my way from two barrels. The fire was not aimed, though – they were blazing away at the wide world like a copper coin. Evidently they were covering a snatch team. I looked out from behind the block and – just so! – saw a fighter bearing right of me, running from the path toward a nearby trench. The trench had crumbled and grassed over long ago, but was capable of sheltering a full dozen soldiers. Once he got there, that fighter could easily arrange a very merry life for me. I aimed and squeezed the trigger smoothly. The target let out a loud cry, went head over heels through the grass and, entirely out of my sight, fell silent. In that same second the whole space around me began whistling and snapping. I was showered with gravel, dirt and other filth. I rolled right again and studied the field of battle. Twenty meters off, between me and the shooters, the grass was twitching nervously. Apparently the lad had been wounded and was now coming to himself, fighting the pain, saying goodbye to life and… what else is there to do?
And what would his friends do?
On the far side of the clearing all movement had ceased. Withdrawn? Unlikely.
In unison with my thoughts, that side erupted in automatic fire and fell silent again.
Exactly two and a half minutes went by.
«So how many men are in this chase? – I asked myself the interesting question for the umpteenth time. – Two down, another two popping away in my direction. And the rest? So then, x minus four of them are coming around my rear right now. If they don’t get lost, they’ll be here soon.»
In confirmation of the conclusions that had come to me, I heard heavy breathing right nearby. I hunched up like a lizard, flattened my body among the scrap iron and dead branches, went as still as a little field mouse, and observed one camouflaged gunman… then a second, a third… a tenth… a nineteenth… They were talking quietly among themselves in German… They were armed with Schmeissers… Their heavy molded-sole boots left distinct prints in the rich soil a meter from my face…
Exactly like in the film about how the dawns here are quiet.
The fighters did not notice me. They came out into the clearing and looked around in bewilderment. I meanwhile hunted with my eyes for the cable above me, then dropped my gaze in search of the bracket (that damn thing was lying around here somewhere… where was it?.. I’d just seen it!.. where is it, hell?!!!) and…
– Hello there, handsome, – an insinuating woman’s voice made me screw my eyes shut. In that same instant the cold muzzle of a pistol pressed against my temple. – You lose.
– Yes, – I nodded.
– …damn your hide. Maybe you’ll open your peepers? Enough lying around like a pig, – the voice was no longer a woman’s but boozy and smoke-cured.
Somebody clouted me in the side with a blunt boot. Were they going to beat me, torture me, work me over? I’m no Marat Kazei, I’m not going to keep quiet. I carefully slipped a hand behind my back – the pistol was there – and…
…in my eyes, flying open, astonishment blazed half and half with joy, with the radiance of ten suns. Standing over me was Romanych, shoving me in the side with his boot:
– Cowboy, you bitch’s udder! Why aren’t you at Ted’s? I asked you for help like a human being, and you, you dog’s weathervane, you went and put a bolt through my request. When it comes to hauling whores around in a car, you’re first in line, but when it comes to helping with repairs, you’re nowhere! What, you couldn’t give me a warning?
– Ah… Er… What’s with you?
– I’ll give you what’s with me! Did you promise to help with the car? You promised. Now get moving over to Ted’s, on the double! He’s over there ratatat-tatting with the car and you meanwhile are here tra-la-la-ing…
The rest requires no translation.
I flapped my ears, blinked my eyes, somehow assumed control over my own limbs and got heavily to my feet. My organism, which a minute ago had lived through a fight to the death with a drunken nightmare, obeyed with great difficulty. I was queasy and reeling.
– That’s a magnificent load you’ve got on, – Romanych appraised my condition expertly. – Come on, come on, get moving, you drunken piglet.
He put an arm around my shoulders, and, held up by my friend, I plodded slowly back toward the hotel. What was waiting for me there?
What?