Instead, he reached out and started his car, realising that to remain in the vicinity risked the very involvement he wanted to avoid. He continued south down Ocean Boulevard, around the curve and then along the section that runs parallel with the sea. After about twenty yards, the houses to the left stopped and he was looking beyond the palms to the open sea. It was a completely clear night, the moon silvering the gently lifting water. There were a few cars at the metred spaces, but Williamson easily found a place in which to put his vehicle. He stopped again, suddenly aware that he was perspiring and knowing, because psychology had formed part of his training, that it was because of his uncertainty rather than the heat of the night.
At the moment when he turned off the ignition, there was the thump of an explosion and he twisted around in time to see the sudden glare from the direction of Terrilli’s estate.
Pendlebury’s tiny convoy had driven cautiously down the private road, stopping at the scene of the two crashed cars. Pendlebury’s driver still hadn’t turned off the engine when the explosion came. The Cuban commandos, who were expecting it, were flattened and quite hidden, sixty yards away, but the small F.B.I. group was completely exposed. The Dodge Colt was still leading and caught the full impact of the blast. All the glass in the car shattered inwards, blinding the driver and severing the carotid artery of the man sitting beside him. No one realised at the time and so he bled to death before help could be obtained. What was later to be judged the most serious effect of the blast was the damage to the radio car. The roof-mounted antenna was shifted from its mountings, giving from that moment only an intermittent signal, and the transistorised valves in the two back-up sets were both broken. The windscreen was shattered in Pendlebury’s Plymouth Fury, but the only injury he suffered was a cut thumb, of which he was not even aware.
The F.B.I. men were all stunned and sat unmoving for several moments. In Pendlebury’s car, Gilbert was vaguely aware of movement some way off, in the area still dusty from the explosion, but his eyes would not focus. He was too confused to associate it at that time with any danger.
‘What in the name of Christ…’ said Pendlebury. His voice croaked and he became aware from the cotton-wool numbness in his ears that he could not hear his own voice.
‘Did you authorise any explosives?’ demanded Gilbert, recovering first. When Pendlebury did not reply, Gilbert shouted the question again.
‘Just grenades. And Mace, of course,’ said Pendlebury. His ears were clearing.
‘That wasn’t a grenade,’ said Gilbert. ‘What the hell’s happening
…’
‘I wish I knew.’
Pendlebury left the car with difficulty, his body aching as if he had undergone some strenuous exercise. The radio control man was sitting with the door open and his head in his hands, and when he looked up at Pendlebury’s approach, Pendlebury saw that he was bleeding from the nose and eyes.
He gestured the man from the vehicle, reaching inside to seize the microphone to warn the approaching agents. It wasn’t until he had finished the message and demanded acknowledgment, receiving instead a lot of static whine broken by the odd, unintelligible word, that he realised he had no radio contact with the one hundred men converging on the mansion.
‘Fuck,’ he said bitterly, slamming the microphone against the seat. It bounced and fell on to the floor.
Pendlebury looked up as Gilbert ran from the crashed Chrysler. ‘Saxby, Boella and someone I think is Beldini, but I can’t be sure because the bullets caught him in the face,’ he said.
‘Terrilli’s people had been told to let them in,’ Pendlebury said.
‘Who then?’ asked Gilbert.
Pendlebury shook his head, an almost weary gesture. ‘Who’s in the Mercedes?’
‘Impossible to say.’
Pendlebury straightened, trying to clear the ache that had started around his neck and shoulders. He looked around. The man in the Dodge was moaning, hand to his sightless eyes and the passenger unconscious. There were two men in the radio car who appeared unhurt and another from the car he and Gilbert had occupied. He gestured one of the radio men back into the Plymouth.
‘Find a hand-set that works,’ he ordered. ‘Stay here and keep broadcasting. I don’t know what’s going on, so I don’t want anyone taking chances. Understood?’
The man nodded, turning back to the vehicle.
‘We’ve only got handguns,’ Gilbert warned him.
‘They’ll have to do until the back-up arrives,’ said Pendlebury. The pain was going and he had almost completely recovered from the shock of the explosion. The operation had gone wrong, he decided. He didn’t know how, but the whole thing had gone disastrously wrong. It didn’t matter whether the Englishman had caused it or not. Pendlebury was more determined than ever to have him killed.
‘Let’s go,’ said Pendlebury. ‘Stay in a group. Anything else is hostile.’
Hesitantly they moved off towards the entrance to Terrilli’s house.
‘Must have been a bomb,’ judged Gilbert as they climbed over the gate which had been blown to form a ramp over the masonry and brickwork.
Charlie Muffin’s assessment had been the same, when the blast had reached him. The bend in the road had saved him almost completely from any effect, but there had still been sufficient shock waves to knock him over. He landed awkwardly, thrown against the root of a palm tree, so that he was winded. He rolled over, arms hugging his body, and as he pulled himself up, with a grimace, he thought he detected movement from the direction in which he had been walking. He drew back against the palm tree with which he had collided, sure of its cover. Twenty yards away the Cubans, three of whom had been knocked over, tried to reassemble, using less caution than before so that Charlie was able to confirm his first impression. Charlie stared around him. He was against the edge of a ditch, dry and hard underfoot. He crouched below the level of the road and scurried forward, one hand still against his bruised ribs, the other steadying himself against the ditch wall.
Two crashed cars stopped him, a Mercedes blocking his path. He started to drag himself upwards when he became aware, about five yards back along the road, of the vehicles that had formed Pendlebury’s convoy. He halted, using the cars for concealment. Two men in the Dodge appeared to be injured, and there was movement from the Plymouth, but he couldn’t judge how many occupants it had.
As he watched, the Cubans came around the bend, jerking to a halt at the roadblock. The man with the hand-set saw them and jumped from the Plymouth, waving.
‘Careful, you guys,’ he warned.
Ramirez had been leading. He hesitated, recognised instantly the other man’s mistake and continued walking, gesturing at the melee of cars and shouting as he approached, ‘What happened?’
Ramirez reached the operator when he was about to reply, but before the man could speak the Cuban shot him, once, in the head. The operator was hurled back into the Plymouth by the impact. Two of Ramirez’s group had gone to the Dodge. Both men in it were unconscious now, so the Cubans left them.
Charlie slid down, flattening himself and squeezing beneath the Mercedes. Once past the wheel, there was quite a lot of space at the bottom of the ditch. Something was driping on him, he realised. He hoped it wasn’t petrol. After a few seconds, he had a limited vision of feet and legs, as the Cubans stared inside the car.
‘All dead,’ Charlie heard one of them call.
‘We’ve lost him,’ said another. Charlie recognised the voice as that of the man who had shot the radio operator. Terrilli’s men, he decided.
Distantly, but identifiably from the direction of Terrilli’s house, came the sound of gunshots.
‘We’d better get in there,’ said the same man.