«The limited freedoms of Acquaba?» asked Alex softly.
Marcus shrugged; his eyes betrayed nothing. «An individual’s freedom of choice, Doctor.»
There was a barely perceptible cry of a bird, or the muted screech of a bat, from the dense, tropic jungle. Then there followed another. And another. McAuliff would not have noticed … there were so many sounds, so continuously. A never-ending nocturnal sympathy; pleasant to hear, not pleasant to think about.
But he was compelled to notice now.
Marcus snapped his head up, reacting to the sound. He swiftly reached over and grabbed Alexander’s flashlight and ripped it out of his hand while shouldering Tucker away.
«Get down!» he cried, as he pushed McAuliff violently, reeling him backward, away from the spot where he was standing.
Seven rifle shots came out of the darkness, some thumping into trees, others cracking into the jungle distance, two exploding into the dirt of the clearing.
Alex rolled on the ground, pulling his rifle into position, and aimed in the direction of the firing. He kept his finger on the trigger; a shattering fusillade of twenty bullets sprayed the area. It was over in seconds. The stillness returned.
He felt a hand grabbing his leg. It was Marcus.
«Pull back. Down to the river, mon,» he whispered harshly.
McAuliff scrambled backward in the darkness. More shots were fired from the bush; the bullets screamed above him to the right.
Suddenly there was a burst of rifle fire from only feet away. Marcus had leaped up to the left and delivered a cross-section barrage that drew the opposing fire away.
Alex knew Marcus’s action was his cover. He lurched to the right, to the edge of the clearings. He heard Sam Tucker’s voice.
«McAuliff! Over here!»
As he raced into the brush, he saw Sam’s outline on the ground. Tucker was crouched on one knee, his rifle raised. «Where? For Christ’s sake, where’s Alison? The others?»
«Go down to the river, boy! South, about three hundred yards. Tell the others. We’ll hold here.»
«No, Sam! come with me… Show me.»
«I’ll be there, son …» Another volly of shots spat out of the jungle. Marcus answered from the opposite side of the clearing. Tucker continued speaking as he grabbed the cloth in Alex’s field jacket and propelled him beyond. «That black son of a bitch is willing to get his tar ass shot off for us! Maybe he’s given me a little time I don’t deserve. He’s my countryman, boy. My new landsmann. Jesus! I knew I liked this fucking island. Now get the hell down there and watch out for the girl. We’ll join you, don’t you worry about that. The girl, Alexander!»
«There are five men out there, Sam. I killed one of them a mile back. They must have seen my flashlight when I was running. I’m sorry …» With these words McAuliff plunged into the soaking-wet forest and slashed his way to the river-bank. He tumbled down the short slope, there life clattering against the metal buttons of his jacket, and fell into the water.
South.
Left.
Three hundred yards. Nine hundred feet … a continent.
He stayed close to the riverbank, where he could make the best time. As he slopped through the mud and the growth and over fallen rocks, he realized his magazine was empty. Without stopping he reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh clip, snapping the old one out of its slot and slamming the new one in. He cracked back the insertion bar; the cartridge entered the chamber.
Gunfire broke his nonthoughts. Behind him men were trying to kill other men.
There was a bend in the narrow river. He had traveled over a hundred yards; nearer two, he thought.
My new landsmann … Christ! Sam Tucker, itinerant wanderer of the globe, schooler of primitives, lover of all lands—in search of one to call his own, at this late stage of his life. And he had found it in a violent moment of time in the crudest wilds of Jamaica’s Cock Pit. In a moment of sacrifice.
Suddenly, in an instant of terror, from out of the darkness above, a huge black form descended. A giant arm fell viselike around his neck; clawing fingers tore at his face; his kidneys were being hammered by a vicious, powerful fist. He slammed the rifle butt into the body behind him, sank his teeth into the flesh below his mouth, and lunged forward into the water.
«Mon! Jesus, mon!» The voice of Lawrence cried as he pummeled McAuliff’s shoulder. Stunned, each man released the other; each held up his hands, Alex’s awkwardly thrusting out the rifle, Lawrence’s holding a long knife.
«My God!» said McAuliff. «I could have shot you!»
There was another fusillade of gunfire to the north.
«I might have put the blade in … not the handle,» said the black giant, waist-deep in water. «We wanted a hostage.»
Both men recognized there was no time for explanations. «Where are you? Where’s Alison and Whitehall?»
«Downstream, mon. Not far.»
«Is she all right?»
«She is frightened… But she is a brave woman. For a white English lady. You see, mon?»
«I saw, mon,» replied Alexander. «Let’s go.»
Lawrence preceded him, jumping out of the water about thirty yards beyond the point of the near-fatal encounter. McAuliff saw that the revolutionary had tied a cloth around his forearm; Alex spat the blood out of his mouth as he noticed it, and rubbed the area of his kidneys in abstract justification.
The Jamaican pointed up the slope with his left hand and put his right hand to his mouth at the same time. A whistled treble emerged from his lips. A bird, a bat, an owl… it made no difference. There was a corresponding sound from the top of the riverbank, beyond in the jungle.
«Go up, mon, I will wait here,» said Lawrence.
McAuliff would never know whether it was the panic of the moment or whether his words spoke the truth as he saw it, but he grabbed the black revolutionary by the shoulder and pushed him forward. «There won’t be any more orders given. You don’t know what’s back there. I do! Get your ass up there!»
An extended barrage of rifle fire came from the river.
Lawrence blinked. He blinked in the new moonlight that flooded the riverbank of this offshoot of the Martha Brae.
«Okay, mon! Don’t push.»
They crawled to the top of the slope and started into the overgrowth.
The figure came rushing out of the tangled darkness, a darker racing object out of a void of black. It was Alison. Lawrence reached back to McAuliff and took the flashlight out of Alex’s hand. A gesture of infinite understanding.
She ran into his arms. The world … the universe stopped its insanity for an instant, and there was stillness. And peace and comfort. But for only an instant.
There was not time for thought. Or reflection.
Or words.
Neither spoke.
They held each other, and then looked at each other in the dim spill of the new moonlight in the isolated space that was their own on the banks of the Martha Brae.
In a terrible, violent moment of time. And sacrifice.
Charles Whitehall intruded, as Charley-mon was wont to do. He approached, his safari outfit still creased, his face an immobile mask, his eyes penetrating.
«Lawrence and I agreed he would stay down at the river. Why have you changed that?»
«You blow my mind, Charley …»
«You bore me, McAuliff!» replied Whitehall. «There was gunfire up there!»
«I was in the middle of it, you black son of a bitch!»
Jesus, why did he have to say that?