Charlie crouched where he was, listening to the sound of their footsteps and beyond that, more frequently now, the isolated cough of a shot; rifles, he thought.
He had become aware that there was more room between the wheel and the ditch bottom on the other side, but he still left the same way so that the Mercedes was between him and the group. He peered cautiously between the up-ended wheels. A lot of the lighting was still in operation, despite the devastation around the gate area. The electrified fence had been broken, but there was a secondary source of power, so that occasional strands sparked when the gentle breeze drove them against a contact. The explosion had settled now and Charlie could see just how much had been destroyed. Not only had the support pillar and the gate been flattened, but also a gatehouse and about ten yards of wall.
‘Christ,’ said Charlie softly. The Russians must have responded after all.
Satisfied that for the moment he was quite alone, Charlie climbed from the ditch, feeling his clothing and then putting his hand in front of one of the headlights: oil, he saw. The suit was only three years old, too.
He looked again at the destruction of the wall and the cars and their bloodied occupants. Very distantly he thought he heard the sound of police sirens and the noise hardened his decision.
He paused for the briefest moment and then started to jog towards the exit on to Ocean Boulevard.
‘Bugger a few poxy stamps,’ he said to himself. It was survival time again.
He was alert, and the sweep of lights warned him well in advance of the first of the F.B.I. cars turning into the road. Charlie leaped to his right, confident of the ditch and its concealment. He waited until the first car was past, then carried on more slowly as the cavalcade went by in the opposite direction. The road junction created a difficulty because he could not just appear in front of the headlights. However, the very congestion gave him the escape. As the cars jammed, blocked by the obstruction of the upturned Mercedes, people began leaving their vehicles, to continue on foot, and in the confusion Charlie rose unnoticed from the gully.
He was on Ocean Boulevard, moving towards the turning into Flagler Drive, when the first of the police cars swept around the corner, siren wailing, roof cones flashing red and blue. Charlie walked unhurriedly, keeping close to the hedges and shrubbery, tensed against a challenge that never came.
Terrilli’s telephone call for help had been radioed to all the converging units and the police chief alerted. The police operation was excellently co-ordinated, four cars sweeping through and then two others swinging across the highway either side of the sliproad, creating a road block which effectively prevented more than half of Pendlebury’s force ever reaching their objective.
The police were bewildered by the number of people involved in the attack on Terrilli’s house. The two officers in the first car snatched their riot pump guns from the rack between the two front seats and the driver, a nervous youth of twenty-two responding to his first major call, loosed off a burst scarcely above the heads of the scrambling F.B.I. men. The following police cars did not recognise the shots as coming from one of their own men. Having been told by their despatch officer to respond with force, they crouched mob-control fashion behind the protection of their vehicles and began shooting into the milling shapes they could see in their headlights.
In that first flurry of shots, five F.B.I. officers were killed and eight wounded, two with injuries from which they later died. When there was no answering fire, the two lead police cars flooded the entrance with their manoeuvrable spotlights, using their foghorns to tell everyone to place their hands against the roofs of the cars.
Thirty men did as they were told, which meant that less than forty managed to get by the blocked cars and follow Pendlebury and the other three agents into Terrilli’s property.
Pendlebury was moving around the edge of the lawn that fronted Terrilli’s mansion, knowing it was the long way round but guessing he would need the cover of the border hedges. The floodlights brilliantly illuminated the area immediately in front of the mansion and the moon was so bright that it would have been like crossing the remainder in broad daylight had he tried to go straight across.
The years of indulgence slowed him, as well as his customary reluctance when faced with gunfire. The two operatives from the radio car were leading, Pendlebury next in line and then Gilbert.
The Cubans had left two men as a rearguard, expecting the explosion to bring the authorities, who would have to be slowed while they made their escape along the beach, a decision they had reached in the ditch, seconds before blowing the gate. So close were Pendlebury’s group and so powerful the bullet from the Armalite rifle that the first shot actually killed both the lead man and the one behind him. Pendlebury whimpered his fear as he plunged to the ground. He hoped Gilbert would think the sound was the breath being knocked from him.
‘You all right?’ whispered Gilbert.
Pendlebury grunted, to maintain the impression of being breathless.
‘Can’t see him,’ complained Gilbert, crawling up alongside.
Nearer the house there broke out a sudden snatch of firing and from where they lay they could hear the sound of breaking glass.
‘Bloody war up there,’ said Pendlebury.
‘But who?’ repeated Gilbert. He could see figures ducking through the floodlighting like some bizarre son et lumiere, with gunfire instead of words and music.
There was the sound of movement behind and both men twisted on their backs, trying to swing their guns around in time to fight off an attack. Then a figure spoke. ‘It’s me,’ and they recognised Al Simpson.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ demanded Pendlebury.
‘It’s chaos back there,’ said the man who had headed the Boynton Beach group. ‘Police have fired into our guys. Some have been hit. It’ll take some time to sort out.’
‘How many do we have here?’
‘Maybe twenty. Perhaps a few more. I don’t know.’
From the darkness ahead, the Armalite was fired again, the bullet stripping leaves off the nearby bush with a hissing sound, and then the second Cuban fired, driving their heads down against the grass.
‘You got rifles?’ asked Pendlebury. The grass got into his mouth as he talked.
‘And a hand-set,’ said Simpson.
‘Thank God for that. We’re being held down by people in that clump over there, marked by the outline of that tall tree. I want fire poured in there. Tell everyone to keep down. There’s fighting ahead but I don’t know between whom.’
Simpson twisted, repeating the instructions into his handset. Other shapes began to materialise, grouping themselves around Pendlebury, and at his signal they started firing in the direction from which Pendlebury had identified the snipers. There was sporadic answering fire and then, from Pendlebury’s left, the group Ramirez had taken into the grounds started shooting at the perfectly identified target. Simpson and Gilbert were killed immediately, and Pendlebury felt a thump in his left side and then numbness spreading from his shoulder to his thigh, and he knew he had been hit. He lay with his face against the grass, surprised that there should be a dampness to it, and wondered when the pain would come. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it and hoped they got him back to an ambulance with morphine before it got too severe. He started trying to find the wound and then stopped; if he felt anything too bad he knew the pain would begin.
‘Hit,’ he said, to a movement behind him, ‘I’ve been hit.’
He was distantly aware of someone muttering into the hand-set that Simpson had carried and then of another crash of shots as Ramirez’s group was flushed out. Ramirez tried to run towards the one Cuban who remained as a rearguard, but was mistaken for the enemy and caught full in the chest with a burst from the Armalite. Marked by the flash of the explosion, the last sniper was killed in the crossfire of two groups either side of the coppice.