Shaw demanded, “How d’you imagine this is going to help? The coach’ll never be allowed to pass through Minsk after crashing a road check, even if they let us get as far as that! And if you give Minsk a miss and try to hide up you won’t have a chance…”
Fawcett laughed. “Maybe you won’t! Charlie Wicks and me, we leave the coach once we’re through.”
“But look — you can’t survive on the run—”
“That’s enough, Cane,” Fawcett’s knuckles whitened. “Just shut up and look happy.”
Shaw knew there was no point in arguing the toss with that gun. The coach was hurtling along the greasy road, swinging from side to side, and the red lights were leaping to meet them. There was no time left; nothing could prevent the consequences of Wicks’s action. A moment later, Shaw caught the flicker of flame as a strong guard of the MVD opened fire on the coach. Instinctively, he ducked. Wicks and Fawcett were crouching now, with the rest. A burst of bullets from the quick-firing Kalashnikovas tore into the coachwork. The wet glass of the windscreen cobwebbed from half-a-dozen impacts; Pope, in response to some instinct for self-preservation against crashing at speed, met death another way. He half stood up and smashed away at the remaining glass with the briefcase containing the passports, so that Tanner, alive by a miracle, could see. Rain blustered into the coach ahead of a gale of wind made by their own speed and more bullets ripped through. Pope’s head seemed to disintegrate, leaving the body momentarily holding its semi-upright stance. The briefcase rolled through the glassless windscreen to the road. Tanner was staring ahead, his hands gripping the wheel tightly. Seconds later, the coach hit the barrier and swept right through. Screams of agony came from the road. The heavy lumbering vehicle caught the police car parked in rear, a glancing blow that sent it leaping up into the air to fall back into their wake; more screams were tom off by the slipstream. The coach swung a little to one side under the impact; with an effort Tanner, gray-faced now, righted his vehicle. They plunged on into the night, tyres screaming on the wet surface. The coach slowed down, and Wicks shouted at Tanner. Then, when they must have been more than half a mile beyond the shattered checkpoint, the speed dropped still more, and suddenly Tanner slumped in his seat. One hand was thrown upward and Shaw saw the blood dripping from it, life blood that had, it seemed, welled from the man’s chest and coursed down the arm. Wicks gave a startled cry and jumped for the wheel, wrenching it round as the coach started to rock badly. Then, very suddenly, the vehicle gave a sagging sideways lurch, slewed to the left across the road, plunged into soft ground, seemed to hang for a moment on one set of wheels, then crashed on to its side a good twenty yards from the highway. Bodies and hand baggage flew through the air. Shaw, thrown heavily against a seat-back, felt blinding pain as something heavy crashed down on his head, and then he passed out.
His unconsciousness, Shaw believed, couldn’t have lasted more than a minute at the most. When he came round a few of the interior lights were still burning and he saw Wicks and Fawcett struggling to get through the emergency exit behind the driver’s seat on the upturned side of the coach. Fawcett was streaming blood from a gash on his forehead and one sleeve of his jacket was ripped clean away. There was blood all over the place, blood and bodies; some of the passengers were moaning and crying, others were silent. Miss Absolom was one of the silent ones, with a big glass splinter sticking out from her windpipe. The Irishman, Connell, was dead too; his religious enquiries would have to be satisfied elsewhere now. Tanner was lying crumpled beneath the wheel, as dead as Pope, whose almost headless body was dangling with its back broken over his own seat. Shaw couldn’t see either Hartley Henderson or Virginia MacKinlay. Men and women lay around him at odd angles. The noise of screaming tore at Shaw’s nerves; he could only shut his ears to it and his eyes to the passengers’ plight. At all costs, Wicks and Fawcett must be stopped; one of them was almost certainly Ivan O’Shea Conroy… pulling himself to his feet, Shaw scrambled over the sidewise seat-backs, making for the front of the coach. As he did so, Wicks dropped to the ground outside, and Fawcett, hearing the sound of Shaw’s movement, turned. A moment later, there was a flash and a report and a bullet sang past Shaw’s head to smack into the woodwork behind him. He dropped behind a seat and kept dead still; Fawcett, after waiting a moment listening, pulled himself through the emergency exit — and as he did so dropped his gun. It fell with a clatter into the general debris and confusion of the shattered interior.
Fawcett called urgently, “Charlie, I’ve dropped the bloody Webley. Hang on—”
“Hang on be beggared,” came Wicks’ voice. “Leave it! There’s a road patrol coming up behind.”
There was a startled exclamation and Fawcett pulled himself through the doorway. Shaw heard him dropping to the ground. Struggling across bodies and the hand baggage spilled from the racks, Shaw negotiated the sides of the seat-backs until he was beneath the upturned emergency exit. There was a strong smell of petrol. Ferreting about for Fawcett’s gun, he found it, grabbed it, and reached up for the edge of the door above his head. He heaved himself up, sweating, his head aching painfully. Already, Wicks and his friend had vanished into the pitch darkness, no doubt into the scrub fringing the highway — and Wicks had been only too right about that patrol. A distant siren was screaming up from the west, and a moment later Shaw caught the up-and-down flicker of headlights.
He scrambled down the side of the coach, scraping his clothing, and landing heavily on the wet, muddy ground. At any rate that siren would mean help for the people left in the coach; as for himself, this was where he parted company finally with Superluxury Tour Number 37.
He moved cautiously into the scrub, avoiding the beaming lights as they came speeding nearer, Fawcett’s gun ready in his fist. There was no sound except for the police car’s approach and the hiss of rain; he put on speed, getting as much country as possible between himself and the road. Soon after that, the patrol car, with its siren still wailing, screamed to a stop beside the wreckage.
Still making away into the darkness, Shaw heard a series of bursts, apparently from the sub-machine-guns. Someone was catching it, back there… but who? Surely the MVD wouldn’t fire on helpless men and women?
No time to worry about that now… somewhere in the rain and the dark night was Ivan O’Shea Conroy. From somewhere the hoot of an owl came, an eerie sound in the blackness.
Nine
Wicks and Fawcett had not been seen; the shooting was merely automatic zeal on the part of the Russian police. The two men were clear of the road now, going fast into the darkness — but it wasn’t long before Wicks stopped. He reached out a hand to Fawcett, restrainingly.
“Hold it,” he said. “Not too far off the road. We don’t want to end up in the Pripet… and I want to get as far as I can towards Minsk before the fun starts.” He added, “Besides, we have to watch out for Dubovik.”
Fawcett rubbed at his eyes. “D’you really think he’ll come out, all the way from Minsk?”
“He’d better!” Wicks took a deep breath and looked angrily at Fawcett. “Don’t start moaiiing now, for heaven’s sake! He’ll come, all right! Dubovik keeps his ear pretty close to the ground, you know that as well as I do. Soon as the news reaches Minsk of what’s happened he’ll drive out and look for us. He’ll know damn well we won’t be sticking to that coach.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Wicks sucked in his breath angrily; Fawcett said no more, and the two men went on as fast as they could through the clinging mud, grimly putting distance between themselves and the crashed coach as they plodded on in silence. Each time headlights beamed along the road they stopped, and flattened themselves into the mud.