She must have sensed something, or else she heard his movement above her, because she broke into a sudden run, leaving the man to sprawl on the path behind her. The man fell heavily, but immediately scrambled to his feet and lunged after her with a demonic burst of energy. Jackie responded by cutting to her right and scrabbling at a steep, stony slope that would surely have defeated her heavier pursuer, except that the man just managed to leap up, catch her right ankle, and pull her back down the slope. I heard her scream as she was dragged down.
“I’ve got her!” the man shouted triumphantly.
“Bring her down!” One of the two men who had abandoned the chase, but who were still on the escarpment’s face, called back, and, when he heard no reply, he shouted again. “Stephen? Stephen! Are you OK?”
“I’ll bring her down in a minute! I’ve got her! Don’t worry!”
The two men waited a few seconds, then, assured that Stephen did have the fugitive in his control, they turned and scrambled back down the escarpment. One of the men raised a thumb toward Lisl, who, understanding the gesture, waved in reply.
Stephen, the man in the yellow headband, had meanwhile forced Jackie to kneel down on the path beside the reservoir. He was standing close in front of her, with his back toward me, and so he saw nothing as I slid from my crevice. I carried the rifle, but very carefully so that its metal bound butt did not clash against the rock. Jackie and her captor were scarcely more than thirty yards from me, but neither of them saw me and neither of them heard me.
Jackie, who was facing me, was too terrified to take notice of anything except her captor, who, with one hand in her hair, seemed to be holding her down on the path. I saw her twist violently to free herself of his grip, but the man cuffed the side of her head with his free hand. He hit her hard and she called out in pain. The man said something, but I could not distinguish his words.
The wind gusted about the rocks, bringing snatches of rain in its cold grip. I slithered down a rock slope, loosening a fall of pebbles with my right foot, but neither the man nor Jackie heard the small avalanche. For a few seconds a dip of land took me out of their sight, and, ignoring the pain in my feet, I ran swiftly across some flat boulders before stopping to peer over a rock barrier to see that Jackie was still kneeling in front of the man who now tentatively took his hand away from her hair. “Stay!” He snapped at her as though she were a dog.
I was now twenty feet away. The man’s back was still toward me as I gathered myself to attack.
The man was fidgeting and I thought he must be trying to disentangle a length of rope with which he planned to tie Jackie’s hands, but then, because he moved slightly to one side, I saw that he was fumbling to lower his trousers, and I understood why he had wanted Jackie to kneel in front of him.
Jackie understood too, better than me probably, and once again she hurled herself to one side in a frenetic attempt at escape, and this time she very nearly succeeded, except that the bearded man hurled himself full-length after her and managed to wrap his arms round her legs. “Come here, you bitch!” I heard him shout, then he twisted round and his eyes widened in desperate fright.
He had heard my boots as I scrambled over the rock barrier. He turned, and he saw a revenant come from the grave. He had seen me fall to my death just the day before, but now, like an apparition ripped from his deepest nightmare, I was reborn. I was charging over the rocks, stumbling on loose stone, but the man did not see my clumsiness, only my face, and he must also have seen my gun and remembered that his own was fifty paces away and lost.
He tried to get up and run, but Jackie tripped him. He scrabbled to free himself of her, half stood, staggered two desperate paces, but then I had pounded past an astonished Jackie and my boot lashed out to catch him in the base of his spine. He yelped in pain and toppled forward. His skull cracked audibly against rock and I saw a spurt of blood splash on stone, but he was still conscious and still ready to fight as he twisted round and balled his fist to lash up at me, but then he froze in terror because the muzzle of a.303 Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mark I rifle was about one half inch from his left eyeball. “Try it, Stephen,” I said, “please?”
He gave an infinitesimal shake of his head, but whether to indicate that he was not going to attempt an escape, or whether the response was just pure fear, I could not tell.
“Remember me?” I asked him pleasantly. “I’m the sucker who couldn’t fly and couldn’t swim either. But I can come back from the dead. And I can kill.”
“No,” he said, “no. Please!” His fly was undone and showing a length of filthy underpants. I jerked the rifle’s muzzle a fraction of an inch and suddenly a stream of yellow piss overflowed from the underpants to soak his trousers. “Oh, Stephen!” I said in offended remonstrance, then I put on the gun’s safety catch and reversed it so that I was threatening him with the gun’s brass butt instead of its muzzle. “Zip your nasty self up,” I said as nicely as I could.
He needed two hands to do up his fly, and, while he concentrated on the damp zipper, I thumped him over the head with the rifle butt.
I hit him too hard. He saw the blow coming and tried to twist away, which evasion only added desperation to my blow and so the brass cracked on his already bleeding temple with a horrid thud.
He did not immediately flop back unconscious. Instead he groaned and twitched, but I could see the whites of his eyes and knew he would live. More to my purpose I knew he was conveniently out of commission for a few minutes. “Hello, Jackie!” I called over my shoulder.
There was no answer, nor did I dare look round in search of one, for I had to concentrate on Stephen. That was my excuse, though in truth I was almost frightened to look at Jackie for fear of being disappointed, or overwhelmed, or embarrassed. Whatever, I bent over the stricken Stephen whose face had gone horribly white. A fresh trickle of blood, instantly diluted by rain water, spilled from a rapidly swelling bruise on his left temple, and I felt a horrid fear that I might have hit him too hard, and that he was dying after all, but then he gave an awful groan that convinced me he still had a deal of life left in him. I shrugged the nylon rope off my shoulder and swiftly lashed his ankles together, then heaved him onto his belly, dragged his ankles up toward the small of his back, and tied his wrists. He was now trussed as neatly as a dead stag, but I still had to gag him. I tried to rip a length of cloth off his green clothes, but the stitches would not rip and I had left my rigging knife in my hiding place, so I just wrapped the free end of the rope round and round his bearded face, forcing the line between his teeth so that the only sound he could make was a choked gargle. “Fuck you, Stephen,” I said cheerfully and patted his head as I stood up. He gargled helplessly, and I decided he was not going to die yet.
“Hello, Jackie,” I said again, and this time I did turn round to smile at her. She was still kneeling on the path from where she stared huge-eyed at me. “You’ll notice I didn’t shoot the scumbag,” I said, “but please don’t think that’s because I’ve developed moral objections to shooting scumbags, because I haven’t, but because the bastards are pretty sure I’m dead and a gunshot would rather give the game away. It might also bring the San Rafael back here, and frankly I don’t want that. I want to be left alone to make these bastards regret they were ever born. Hello.”
She burst into tears. She had no makeup, she was soaking wet, she was crying, and she was spattered with mud, and I thought she was beautiful.
“We can’t stand here and chat all day,” I went on. “We’ve got to hide, then fetch Scumbag’s gun, and I’m afraid we’ve got to take Scumbag with us because soon his friends are going to come looking for him and I can’t have him telling tales about me. I know you’ve got the most intense reservations about guns, but would you very kindly carry this one for me? It won’t go off.” I held the rifle toward her. She hesitated. “Take it!” I snapped, and she guiltily reached out and took it.