But there was nothing I could do now to control the moment. I would have to watch for a chance if ever it came and use it for what it was worth. A very great deal of data was coming in to the left hemisphere for analysis: the Cuban was collapsing onto the deck with his blood colouring the air as it flew from the site of the blow. I saw Nicko's face, saw the grimace, the mouth drawn back and the eyes widening in an expression I'd no time to interpret, though it was shock, I believe, perhaps because it was the first time the man had killed without using a gun, had killed personally, intimately, leaving blood on his hands that would not be easy to wash away.
In front of me was Roget, and he still hadn't pumped the gun, presumably because I had indeed reached his motor nerves in time. He was already dying as the blood began filling his windpipe and his body was beginning to swing back from the force of the strike. It wouldn't take more than one hand to tip his spine across the rail and send him overboard, but -
Began firing and I wasn't ready for it because I thought the moment had come and gone and all I could do was push at the barrel and he swung faster and the shots went raking across the cabin and the sound banged in the confines as glass shattered and the man at the helm was pitched across the controls and the diesels began racing at full throttle. Nicko was shouting something and I didn't know if he'd been hit. Vicente was tumbling down the three steps from the cabin with his eyes on me and his hands ready, not reaching for his gun.
Six shots, rapid fire, the last of them from a dead man's finger as Roget tilted backwards over the rail and I pushed the big Suzuki with him, stink of cordite on the warm night air and the deck keeling as the unmanned helm swung over and we began weaving across the sea with the engines still at full ahead both and then Nicko was at me and we locked together and I tried for his throat but missed because my shoes were slipping on the Cuban's blood so I tried for the solar plexus with the fist rising to get under the ribs for a direct kill but the area was thick with flesh and he only grunted and I changed the fist into a heel-palm and struck upwards but didn't do more than graze the side of his head.
'Get him.'
Vicente, as he reached us and Nicko got an arm round my neck and put pressure there until I found the thumb and broke it and he screamed and the other man came in close for me with a knife and I hadn't expected that, the glint of the blade in the glow from the cabin lights, hadn't expected it because he hadn't been reaching for anything when he'd started his run.
Tried an elbow-smash into Nicko's face but he was half-turned away from me and off-balance, going down and dragging me with him and I let him do it because there was a chance of a strike and I straightened one leg with the foot angled to make a blade and thrust hard for Vicente's groin and did some damage and felt him spin sideways and strike the deck with his head, not making a sound, a different breed from Nicko and therefore the more to be wary of.
Cordite sharp in the lungs, someone coughing, the fat man coming in again and surprisingly fast and I couldn't do anything with him until he made a mistake and left himself open and I found his face exposed and went for the eyes and reached one of them but it galvanised him and he insisted with me, an arm round my neck again and squeezing as Vicente came in with the knife and I waited until it swung up and then turned and left Nicko as the target.
I don't remember when it was that they began gaining. It took time and much had passed. Vicente was losing blood because I'd managed to turn the blade and rip into him somewhere before I lost my grip on the handle and let it go. I had injured Nicko, perhaps with one of the nerve strikes I'd been working on, but he was still surprisingly strong and very quick, vicious in his anger because he wanted his cake and he'd been looking forward to it and I was trying to take it away from him, take my death away.
They had both spent a lot of time trying to reach their guns. At first they hadn't wanted to make any more noise after the hammering boom of the Suzuki, but then they'd realised I might get them both under control and they'd stopped worrying about making a noise. I'd sent the first gun – Vicente's – over the rail without any trouble because he was so busy with the bloody thing that he forgot about the combat and left himself open and I'd gone in with an eye strike and got the gun away from him while he was protecting himself.
Nicko was more difficult and we'd fired a round with his finger on the trigger and the gun pointing nowhere, but then I'd found his throat and he'd panicked and I'd got the gun and lobbed it overboard and this worried them and they became excited. I could have killed Nicko when I'd found his throat exposed but I didn't want to. That had been Proctor he'd phoned from the cabin and I wanted the number because it had become the focus of the whole mission, the only access to Proctor we'd got.
The stars were swinging through the black reaches of the sky and when the boat heeled as it sped across the surface I began losing orientation, just momentary flashes of knowing nothing, being nowhere, momentary but critical, potentially lethal. I didn't know where the boat was taking us; we knew it was running wild, that was all, the helm free and the throttles open, and the first thing Vicente or Nicko would do if they could get clear of me would be to break for the cabin and get control. I didn't want that to happen because if we hit another vessel and didn't totally smash up I'd have a chance of getting away.
The stars swung and the bows hammered across the swell and I lurched sometimes, mentally lurched into the oblivion that was waiting for me out there, a limitless void that was there to gather the end of things, the bric-a-brac of lost endeavours, the tattered rags of hope, where – for Christ's sake stay with it don't give up stay with it yes indeed, perhaps I'd taken the blade in somewhere and was losing blood, it felt like that, the onset of lassitude, stay with it, exactly so, but they were gaining, I tell you, they were gaining on me. Twice I found an arm exposed and worked my thumb into the median nerve with force enough to produce great pain but there was no sound, no jerking to free the arm, and after a time I realised that we were locked together, these two men and I, across the body of the Cuban.
'Nicko,' his voice, Vicente's voice, sounding stifled, with not much breath to spare, 'we've got him, Nicko,' speaking perhaps to boost the fat man's morale, or not speaking to him at all but to me, knowing the value of despair if one can instill it in one's adversary.
He failed, because I knew the danger, but the thought stayed in my mind on an intellectual level, the thought that they could have got me now, they could be within seconds, shall we say, of bringing me my doom, here under the swinging stars as -
Dazzling lights swarming against us in the night, their brilliance rising in a wave, towering, the lights of the city breaking over us as the boat hit and the night exploded and I was flung headlong as the hull burst open and glass from the smashed windows in the cabin flew in a bright shower in the light from the shore, then the sensation of falling and the flat sheen of water below and I hit the surface shoulder first and the lights flared and then darkened as I went under.
Nowhere.
It wasn't dark down here, not now. They'd set up a generator and floodlights, or perhaps it was one of the fire trucks with its search lamps going. The coloured flashes of the police cars dappled the surface above me and I could hear sirens dying towards the quay. I could see sharp outlines close to me, debris turning as it sank, and blurred shapes farther off, the huge body of the boat angled bows down with the stern breaking the surface.