'What's happening — ?' As she spoke, Mitchell stepped up beside her. 'Did you miss?'
'Yes. I missed.' He didn't look at her. 'One does sometimes.'
The Citroen's tyres churned up the track, with its little engine screaming at them to get it moving, so violently that it rocked and bucked this way and that before engine and tyres were both fighting to obey the driver.
'My rifle fires high, and to the right,' continued Mitchell. 'But he wouldn't have missed: he had a rather special gun, I think
— a Voss Special, I think they call it.' He shook his head sadly. 'I've never seen one of them — I've only heard about them. They're like the old buffalo-hunters' long rifles, only better: on a windless day they can manage a couple of miles, supposedly . . . It's got a very long barrel and a marvellous sighting-device.'
Noise filled the valley, drowning out the rest of Mitchell's excuse: there were dust-clouds on the top of the cornfield, where she had trailed up behind Ian, with her feet hurting; and there was a dust-cloud coming up the track from the village, round the rise of the field which was deceptively dummy2
flattened by the height of the Greater Arapile above it.
And — God! — there was even movement in the railway station, in the middle of nowhere, with men fanning out of the gap between its two buildings — and from behind them, with a single concussive bang, a red-winking rocket flared up, trailing a line of bright red smoke as it curved down towards the converging dust-clouds of the retreating Citroen 2-CV and the dther dust-clouds —
'I smashed the passenger's window, in the car, with that first shot.' Mitchell's voice came back almost to the conversational. 'I was only supposed to frighten him . . . But he didn't come up towards us — he went round to take aim over the bonnet — that's when I saw the Voss ... He was going to rest on the bonnet. So the second time I aimed for him.'
The dust-clouds still converged — even as the red smoke-trail descended, to bounce in a final red spark as it hit the field: the spark bounced brightly once, and then the smoke drifted away from the point where it vanished.
'I don't know where that second shot went.' Mitchell paused.
'I aimed . . . left . . . and slightly down ... I might have hit something — you never know ... I couldn't guarantee to hit a tyre, after that first shot, Miss Fielding — do you understand? Not at this distance — ?'
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The further of the two dust-clouds stopped suddenly, the two vehicles which had caused it slewing to the left and right so as to block the passage of the approaching Citroen. One of them was large and black and civilian, the other drab and military-looking: their doors opened even before they had halted, and their occupants tumbled out — Spanish Civil Guards from the military vehicle, in their distinctive black tricornes, and bare-headed civilians from the black car —
Mitchell was still speaking. But she had been so intent on watching the drama in the valley, trying to imprint every detail on her memory — this is something else I never thought I'd see!— that she hadn't taken it in. 'What?'
'I said . . . they took their bloody time.'
The Citroen had also stopped now, but well short of the road block — a hundred yards or more away from the Spanish Police.
'You knew they were coming?' It was a foolish question.
'Too-bloody-right!' He stared at the scene, frowning. 'You don't think we play silly games on our own in other people's countries? Not this sort of game, anyway — Ahh! He's thought better of it, by God!'
'What — ?' Something in his expression chilled her, in spite of the heat. But his words turned her away from him, back to the valley.
The Citroen was moving again, very slowly.
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'His moment-of-truth.' Mitchell murmured the words. 'Just like O'Leary ... it comes to them all sooner or later . . . later or sooner . . . But he's being — no! By God —
As he spoke the sound of the little car's engine changed, suddenly roaring in the great stillness of the yellow-and-red fields as the Citroen accelerated — with a new cloud of red dust, which had settled behind it, swirling up again as its tyres churned the track —
'He's making a run for it — that's my man!' breathed Mitchell.
The Spaniards at the road block were scattering — taking cover behind their vehicles.
'He'll never get through — '
In a tank maybe, thought Jenny. But a 2-CV was too little, too light —
Then the Citroen braked — its little red brake-lights were invisible in the dust and the sunlight, but it bucked and slewed sideways, until it was broadside in the track.
'He's turning round — '
'No he isn't — ' Paul Mitchell cut her off as the distant sound of the revving engine reached them again as the little car threw itself into the wire fence beside the road —
The fence bowed and shivered, and stretched on each side of the car for a moment, before the posts snapped and were pulled away as the car broke through into the corn stubble, throwing up an even greater dust-cloud as it started to climb dummy2
the slope — the same slope down which she'd walked, thought Jenny, suddenly torn between what she knew, and the old instinctive sympathy for any hunted animal with the pack in full-cry behind it — the fox breaking cover out of the spinney into open country, knowing that it had been cornered, but going for its own run-for-freedom nevertheless
—
The burst of gunfire, sharp and reverberating, with the echoes ringing across the valley from the Greater Arapile towards the opposing rocky plateau, changed the image: this was sun-baked Beirut again, with that same knock-knock-knocking —
But the dust-cloud was still moving. 'He's going to get away
— '
'No, he isn't.' Mitchell's voice was matter-of-fact, quite unemotional. 'See there — ?'
Up over the top of the cornfield, out of the dead ground from which the Redcoats had once marched towards the French, another of those malevolent army vehicles loomed up, trailing its own dust-cloud. And this one had its own little turret, like a miniature tank: it stopped suddenly as she watched it, and the turret began to traverse.
The Citroen changed direction, no longer trying to breast the rise, aiming now to escape beween two fires, along the curve of the field —
'Don't look — ' Mitchell caught her arm ' — Miss Fielding — '
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She pulled away from him — pulled away just as the long slender gun in the turret banged three times — a different sound from the preceding small-arms knocking . . . deeper and louder — and probably the loudest noise this peaceful valley had known since —
The Citroen was bowled over like a rabbit, rolling and exploding in the same instant, its four little tyres and underside visible for a last fraction-of-a-second before it became an incandescent ball of fire, shooting out flame and black smoke as it became unrecognizable.
'Don't look!' This time Mitchell's grip was irresistible: he swung her round to face him. 'He's dead now. He's no problem now — it's called "Shot while resisting arrest", Miss Fielding. So ... he's got no problems now, either: no one forced him to run, Miss Fielding ... do you see?'
It was strange how quiet it was. There had been the loudest bang! of all as the Citroen had exploded. But now she couldn't hear anything as she stared accusingly at Mitchell.
'You knew that was going to happen.'
'No. That is to say ... no ... I didn't know for sure.' He was stone-faced. 'But you don't need to waste any sympathy for him, Miss Fielding. He'd never met your nice Mr Robinson, who goes to church on Sundays. But he'd been paid to kill nice Mr Robinson, so that was what he was going to do — at maybe two thousand yards, and with a soft-nosed bullet. And that was what he was going to do ... and it frightened the shit out of me when he got out of his car, and the Spaniards dummy2