The sub-machine-gun dropped.
In a flash Shaw was racing across the beach towards it, keeping low, but Karina got to the gun at the same instant. Shaw had no niceties left in him now. Savagely almost, he flung himself at Karina, got his arms around her body, feeling his hands roughly on her breasts, her thighs, the woman struggling and kicking and tearing at him like a maniac. He managed to get his hands round her wrists, held on like a vice, cruelly, panting and gasping. Karina was sobbing with rage, and biting whenever she got the chance… Shaw felt a burning pain in his ear and the trickle of blood down his neck. Something in him seemed to break then. He flung Karina to the ground, came down on top of her; they rolled madly for a moment. Then, panting and sweating, Shaw forced her hands behind her back and held her there, pinned, rigid and helpless.
He dragged in gulps of air. He gasped, “Pack it in, you bitch. Pack it in before I put a bullet in you. You can’t do any good for yourself now.”
She swore at him, drawing back her lips like an animal. Filthy names poured from her — he’d called her a bitch; that was mild enough in comparison. Shaw looked into her eyes, saw the whites shining in the moonlight and that horrible snarl twisting up her mouth. Certainly in that moment of seeming defeat there was something animal in her, and Shaw recognized it; but he knew too that for him Karina’s spell would never be wholly gone. He felt her breath coming hot and fast on his cheek, inhaled her scent heavy on the night air. The close contact began to trouble him now. Just for an instant of time he was conscious only of the fact that he was lying on sand beneath a bright moon with Karina once again, then sense returned, and with it a feeling of shame. Holding Karina with one arm and the weight of his body, he relaxed his grip with his right hand and stretched out for the submachine-gun lying on the beach.
As his fingers closed on the grip a bullet zipped over his head and ricocheted across the water, bouncing and kicking up little trails of spray and ripples in the calm, sleepy sea. Turning his head, he saw Debonnair running down the sand towards him.
She cried out, “Esmonde — the boat. It’s pulling out!”
It was the girl who’d fired that shot… Shaw twisted round in alarm, saw that the boat, with Ackroyd half sitting, half lying in the sternsheets, was moving out fast. Debonnair, at the water’s edge now, fired again, hit the gunwale of the boat, put off her stroke by the need to aim clear of Ackroyd. Shaw started to lift himself, and at once Karina’s knee came up and smashed into his groin. There was a moment of excruciating agony, and a whole spectrum of coloured lights flashed in his head; he doubled up. Karina wriggled away, rolled clear, and then was on her feet and running fast into the darkness of the roadway. Quickly, anxiously, Debonnair came back up the beach towards Shaw, bent over him.
His face was green and he was in great pain, but he forced himself to action, brought the heavy gun up, aimed to put a burst over Karina’s head. But when his fingers pressed the trigger nothing happened. The magazine was empty. Maybe that was why he’d got Garcia before Garcia got him. A mocking laugh floated back as he reached for his own gun. He swore, turned, saw Ackroyd’s distance increasing.
Debonnair asked, “Esmonde, do you want me to fire — or not?”
Shaw snapped, “Leave her for now — she can’t get far.”
“She can get our car.”
Shaw cursed, savagely. “Well, she’ll just have to, that’s all. Ackroyd is the important thing now.”
The sweat of agony poured off Shaw as he struggled to his feet and stumbled for the water. He just set his teeth and carried on. He plunged in, struck out for the boat, and the coolness of the water eased the burning pain a little.
A terrible dread gripping her heart, Debonnair watched him go.
Her revolver was up, and she was ready to give him covering fire the moment she was able to sight without fear of hitting Ackroyd. Shaw seemed to her to be gaining a little on the boat — the man in it was pulling very badly, catching one crab after another under the stress of his hurry. But it didn’t look as though Shaw would close the distance before the boat reached the parent vessel; and soon he would come under the fire from that fishing-boat, for surely there would be guns aboard.
The girl’s heart thudded and she sent up a prayer…
Then she saw the rowing-boat turn to make its approach to the side of the larger vessel, and that gave her her chance and she took it. The angle of the turn had brought the solitary rower clear of Ackroyd, so that she could sight on him without being in danger of hitting the little physicist.
Icily calm, Debonnair sighted. She fired three times.
The first shot seemed to zip into the boat’s woodwork, but the second and third shots got the man fair and square; the boat swung, the oars jammed in the rowlocks. The man hung head down in the water, canting the boat over and bringing it right round to circle to a stop before he flopped over into the sea. Debonnair waded in then, started swimming out to help Shaw, who soon had an arm over the gunwale. Ackroyd was lying flat in the bottom of the boat now, moaning to himself and shivering, water slopping about over him. Shaw grabbed at a rope lying in the boat and made fast to a ring-bolt in the bows; bringing the rope’s-end out with him, he dropped back into the water as the girl swam up.
They both heard then the sound of the fishing-vessel’s motor starting up. Shaw said urgently, “Deb, we’ll tow him inshore… keep your head down, for God’s sake, old girl. They’ll be bound to start shooting any moment now — unless they catch up with us first.”
They each took a grip on the rope, put their heads down, and went forward in a one-armed crawl. They didn’t make much speed, but there was no shooting, and Shaw wondered if that was because they were right out of the moonlight, in a big, spreading patch of pitch-darkness under the lee of a jut of land. A moment later Debonnair, who had noticed that the boat’s engine was getting fainter instead of louder, rolled over and looked back. Then she spluttered, “They’re pulling out — going to sea! Wonder what that’s in aid of?”
“What!”
Shaw’s head came clear of the sea and he eased down. He blinked the water from his eyes, looked ahead. Then he swore softly. “That’s what,” he said. “Back water, Debbie… look at the beach.”
Debonnair looked. Two men of the Civil Guard were coming down to the water’s edge and were staring out across the sea towards the now fast-retreating fishing-vessel. One of them cupped his hands and shouted out across the sea; a moment later a couple of shots were fired. Another guardia was kneeling by the bodies on the beach. None of them seemed to have seen the rowing-boat in its deep shadow, a shadow made blacker by the bright moonlight elsewhere, and Shaw whispered to Debonnair to keep very, very still and quiet. He said, “We don’t want to meet those chaps any more than our pals back there do. If they get hold of us it’s all up with Gibraltar. They’ll never believe our story — and three dead Spaniards, one of ’em a guardia, are going to take an awful lot of explaining away.”
“What do we do, then?”
“We stay at sea for a bit. It’s all we can do, Debbie.”
“Uh-huh.”
Miserably, she shivered. She knew she hadn’t sounded very enthusiastic, but she knew Shaw was perfectly right. Shaw swung round and very slowly, imperceptibly, keeping well in the dark, he edged the boat away from the land, his own breathing sounding loud in his ears. As they went they heard a car’s engine starting up ashore, and then the sound of furious driving along the road to Algeciras. Shaw said, “That’ll be Karina — in our car.”
Looking back, he saw the Civil Guards rushing up the beach.
The fishing-vessel was almost out of sight by now, heading flat out for the North African coast — Tangier was Shaw’s guess. Well, that was all right — they evidently didn’t realize that Shaw’s boat was coming out again. Shaw went on heading slowly out to sea, and the beach dwindled.