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He waited, letting his quarry dodge this way and that, trying to escape the relentless lights on the other Power-chutes. Only when he was ready, calm, and cool did Bond take aim and pull the ring.

The flare arced from his hand, catching Tarn in the chest, spraying out a blossom of phosphorus as it did so. He wheeled around again, taking aim with another flare. By now Tarn was rolling on the hard ground trying to put out the flames, which would not go out. The second flare caught him just below the neck, spreading its chemical down the already burned front of his clothes. As he pulled away, Bond thought he could hear the screaming, which sounded like a plea for someone to put him out of his misery. He seemed to be blundering around – a walking, moving ball of fire heading for the edge of the gun platform with its sheer drop below.

One of the SAS men finished it. The shotgun blast tore away the back of Max Tarn's head. For a moment he seemed to keep moving in a red mist that was eaten by the flame. Then he fell across the battlements and, headless, disappeared over the edge.

As they turned and took up formation on Dodd, heading out across the island, setting course for the house near Ponce, Bond heard the sound of singing in his ears. His companions had their heads back and were giving a somewhat tuneless rendering of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyrie."

26 – Tears on His Cheeks

They flew at around fifteen hundred feet, straining their eyes to make sure they could see one another. It was not the easiest of flights, as the gentle trade winds that cool the island seemed far from gentle from their position in the open on what was a very basic cockpit.

About halfway across, the moon came up and gave them more visibility. Bond would have found the flight exhilarating if it had not been for his concern for Flicka. He had done all he had sworn to do. Tarn was dead, along with some of his closest henchmen and -women. There would be no return to Tarnenwerder; no chants of "Heil Tarn" from a hypnotized mob bent on setting the clock back to the days of insanity.

He accepted this as part of his vocation. Danger had lurked beside him for as long as he could remember, and he wondered how he could possibly carry on if anything had happened to Flicka.

"The hill's coming up," he told the other three through the throat mike the moment he saw the area where he had stood among the trees with Flicka and Felix only a short time before.

Dodd had already seen the treeline, and responded, "Roger. Cut engines."

Suddenly they were floating, silent but for the air and breeze around them as they crested the rise and saw Tarn's villa lit up below them.

Maneuvering the parachutes, they formed a line astern: Dodd in front, with Bond and the others close behind. The shots came just as the fourth man was putting down to the left of the swimming pool, well inside the rectangle of the villa.

It was an automatic weapon being used from the far right-hand corner. One sudden and noisy burst that went wide, some of the bullets slapping into the swimming pool, only feet away from the last man who had landed.

A rip of fire from Dodd silenced the shooter, who died without even shouting. Bond followed the SAS officer to the right-hand cloister, while the other two troopers took the left side. He had worked in pairs with the SAS before, during training exercises, so knew what was expected.

There were four sets of double windows, each pair with a door between them on the ground floor. As they moved along the cloister they hurled stun grenades through the windows. On the farside, the grenades brought out only two men, who died as they came into view at the end of the cloister.

Nobody was flushed out from Dodd and Bond's side. "Let's do a pincer on the next floor up," Dodd said, as though this were a simple Sunday-afternoon stroll. He turned back and jogged to the stairwell, while Bond went ahead, taking the stairs in front of him two at a time. He reached the top to see a similar cloistered area with four more doors and pairs of windows, but this time, just as he reached the first door, a figure stepped from one of the doorways ahead yelling:

"You broke my jaw, you bastard." It was Heidi, though he had to interpret the words, as they were squashed and came from the back of her throat. For a split second he was back in the offices of Saal, Saal u. Rollen, where he had last seen her sprawled on the floor.

Then her arms came up and he caught the glint of the weapon in her hand. He dodged to the right, in through the door, as the pistol rapped out twice and he heard the bullets whip past him. Two more shots followed from farther away. There was a sound like a sack of potatoes being dropped on the stone under the cloister. Dodd had taken out Heidi.

For less than a minute, there was the sound of a brisk firefight from the opposite side of the villa. Bond was about to move out from the doorway when an arm slid, like a snake, around his throat. He felt a hand on the back of his head and the pressure on his windpipe. Whoever had him was using a well-tried method – the right forearm across the throat, the hand grasping the left biceps while the left hand held the back of the victim's head. It usually took only seconds to either strangle or render a victim unconscious. There was only one possible response, and he knew this must be taken very quickly, before the gray-out as the blood supply to the brain was slowed by the pressure.

He gave a violent kick with his feet, leaning and putting all his weight into falling backward, at the same time attempting to stamp on his assailant's shins and feet.

The two of them went toppling over. He felt the softness of the body under him, the gasp and oath, then the crack as Beth's head hit hard against the stone floor. The arms immediately relaxed and Bond rolled away, back onto his feet, reaching for the pistol on his belt.

"So you want your pretty lady back, huh?" Beth gasped. "You want…"

He did not even have to pull the trigger. The heavy fall had cracked her skull. Her eyes turned up as though in horror, and a stream of blood flooded from her nose and ears as she flopped, like some terrible beached animal, her body unnaturally spread out on the floor.

Then he heard Dodd calling to him.

Two doors along, Dodd had found Felix Leiter attempting to crawl across a room to get at his prosthetic arm and leg. He looked dog tired and frantic, but he smiled as Bond entered, then pointed to the far corner of the room, where Flicka lay, covered with a sheet, her face broken and bleeding.

"It's me, Flick," he whispered softly. "Me. You'll be okay now."

She tried to smile through the pain, then with great effort: "Will you still love me tomorrow, James?"

"Tomorrow and for all time, my darling girl," he said.

Later, in the SAS Officers' Mess at Stirling Lines in Herefordshire, when Captain Dodd related his version of the business in Puerto Rico, he used to say, "You know, I could have sworn that chap Bond was crying… Couldn't have been. Not that kind of officer. But I could have sworn… Even thought I saw tears on his cheeks. Couldn't have been though, could it?"

John Gardner

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