He placed the rucksack on the ground after removing the flare pistol he had taken from the aircraft. One hundred and twenty thousand candela, burn time five seconds. He raised the pistol and fired it into the air. Tension gripped his stomach like a steel band.
Starshell burst. The clearing seemed to be blanched, made lifeless by the exploding flare cartridge. Anyone watching would be dazzled, he no more than a guessed-at moving shadow on their retinae, and the low-light TV cameras would be glare-blind. He ran, head down and in a straight line, across the narrow clearing-Strickland knew Gant was there, coming straight out of the trees. There was something moving on two of the screens, insubstantial as a bird's wing that had fluttered too close to the cameras. He felt himself tense, as if the flare-wash in the room was a fire.
"Is he there?" Fraser demanded, almost thrusting him off his swivel chair, his large hands seizing the console as if to shake some confession from it. Already, the light from the flare or whatever it was was lessening.
"What's that—?" His finger jabbed at the betraying screen. On the radar, there was nothing. Gant was in the blind spot
"I can't see, dazzled—" Fraser didn't believe him. Mclntyre was on his other side, the material of his coat sleeve rubbing against Strickland's cheek. There was a gun in his hand, at the corner of eyesight.
"I can't see shit! Mclntyre bellowed as if in pain.
"Is there anyone there?"
"Maybe there is," Fraser grunted.
"Maybe—" He turned towards the windows, then glowered at Strickland.
"And where is…"
"He can't be trying to get in-."
There are two men down! He's stopped playing with us, you pillock!"
Do it now, Fraser told himself, as night returned beyond the windows.
Just in case.
He moved towards Strickland, drawing his pistol as he did so.
Winterborne's priority was the only one that mattered now, whatever deal he had with Mclntyre.
Strickland's eternal silence
"What the hell are you—?" Mclntyre began, but Fraser motioned him away with a waggle of the gun.
He moved on Strickland quickly, as if pouncing at the man, thrusting the pistol towards his head-Gant saw Fraser advancing across the garishly lit window towards Strickland. It was like a bleached photograph taken at the moment of an explosion. He was close enough to recognise the fear on Strickland's features, see his hands trying to fend off Fraser, the purpose in Fraser's movement.
He raised the Ruger to his shoulder and squeezed off three shots. The window shattered. Fraser's head seemed to dissolve in a red, splashing haze in the instant before his body was flung aside and out of sight by the impact of the bullets. Strickland and Mclntyre appeared frozen in the moment. Gant hurtled himself towards the verandah as he glimpsed Mclntyre move from the window-Mclntyre, struggling out of the shock of Fraser's death as if out of a clinging swamp, lumbered towards the door, switching off the lights before opening it, then yelling:
"Any of you see anything?"
— see anything, Gant heard as he crouched on the verandah beneath the suddenly darkened window.
Under the overhang of the roof, the verandah was dark, protecting. He could hear the fizzle of the flare in the clearing. If they'd seen him, they were afraid to come out. He listened above the thud of his heart.
"No, nothing—" '-nearly blinded me!"
Both voices were calling from the direction of what he presumed was the kitchen. The lodge creaked now with their soft movements, echoing their tension. He felt rough wood against his cheek.
"Check every room, every window!" Mclntyre.
Two down and Fraser dead. Mclntyre, three others… Strickland. He was poised like a runner, then crabbed along the verandah, scuttling on his haunches, to the room next to Strickland.
"Are you assholes checking—?"
Panic remained in the air, like the scent of the flare cartridge after its light had vanished. He stood up beside the window as he heard noises, saw the faintest glimmer of light as a door was opened-smashed the window, fired the flare pistol, ducked back. The cartridge exploded against the far wall of the room or in the corridor beyond. The verandah was flooded with a sinister, nuclear light. Two seconds, three The window slid upwards and he heaved himself over the ledge into the room as it fell back into shadow. Listened. Moved quickly as someone stumbled unsurely through the door, head shaking as if to rid himself of plaguing flies.
He struck the body in the stomach with the rifle, then across the side of the head as it came within reach. Hauled the man aside. Corridor…
Mclntyre was in the room to his left, with Strickland. They hadn't moved out of it, even in their near-panic. The flare fizzled at his feet as he crouched back against the wall, the Ruger slung across his back, the Smith & Wesson Calico now in his hands.
Footsteps overhead, from a bedroom, someone coming down the stairs cautiously, one step at a time, long pauses between each movement on the open treads. He could see feet, legs coming into-the Calico ripped gashes in the banister, the panelling of the wall. The legs disappeared and he ducked down, the Ruger banging against the corridor wall.
He heard shots go past his head, imagined he felt the heat. Two more wild shots from the stairs drove him back into the darkened room.
He heard his own stentorous breathing, that of the unconscious man on the floor. Moonlight reflected from the surface of a table. Faces of plates watched him from a dresser.
Mclntyre was still in the room with Strickland and Fraser's body. What remained of the face that had looked out at him from Aubrey's photograph, and which he had recognised in France, would be staring up at them in shattered surprise. Two men upstairs, unhurt.
Feet on the stairs, as his blood ceased to pound in his ears. Creaks faint as beetles in the wood. The slightest of clicking sounds-He flattened himself against the wall, hunched into a position of abject surrender beside the sentry like shape of a long case clock, as the automatic weapon emptied its magazine into the floor, the room, what remained of the window. The rug moved under the impacts, the window frame shattered, the unconscious man was no longer breathing when the noise subsided into silence.
Another clicking noise, a new magazine engaged. The din began again.
Plates on the dresser disintegrated, there were gouges in the walls, along the polished surface of the dining table, in the wall near his head, the inlaid wood of the clock. The body on the floor bucked with the impacts long after it was dead.
Gant pressed his hands over his ears, over his head, curling into himself, hunched smaller, his body jumping involuntarily like that of the dead man.
Silence again, except for the slight, unnerved jangling of the clock's weights, its mechanism. His ears stopped ringing. He waited, watching the torn, pocked door that had swung half-open, pushed by bullets.
Watched the window.
Listened, waiting for the man on the stairs to empty another magazine into the dining room. He crouched back against the wall, swinging the Calico to cover the window, the door, the window, repeatedly.
"Bobby?" he heard hesitantly, a hoarse whisper.
"Agent Mclntyre?" It was the man on the stairs. Bobby's dead… What was Mclntyre doing? Nerves stirred his left foot. The tiny crunch of glass beneath his boot surprised an exclamation of breath from the staircase. Were both men on the stairs? There were no noises.
Window, door, window-The acrid scent of powder on the air, the roll of gunsmoke visible in the pale moonlight. Glass-littered floorboards, glass sparkling from the torn rug. The pale light reached the door. He could not move to the window without exposing himself to the automatic weapon aimed at the doorway.
He heard mouselike stirrings from the room that contained Mclntyre and Strickland. The man on the stairs moved, but he wasn't making any approach to the door that stood half-open. Presumably, the second man was crouched near him. There were no sounds of anyone trying to climb on to the roof, get outside.