with the same dodging, checking run, Bruce could see
Wally with them. He was holding his rifle across his hip when he fired,
his whole body shaking with the juddering of the gun.
Like a bird rising in front of the beaters one of the shufta broke from
the cover of the grocery store and ran into the street unarmed, his head
down and his arms pumping in time with his legs. Bruce was
close enough to see the panic in his face. He seemed to be moving in
slow motion, and the flames lit him harshly, throwing a distorted shadow
in front of him. When the bullets hit him he stayed on his feet,
staggering in a circle, thrashing at the air with his hands as though he
were beating off a swarm of bees, the bullets slapping loudly against
his body and lifting little puffs of dust from his clothing.
Beside Bruce, Ruffy aimed carefully and shot him in the head, ending it.
"There must be more, protested Bruce. "Where are they hiding?"
"in the offices, I'd say." And Bruce turned his attention quickly to the
block of Union Mini&e offices. The windows were in darkness and as he
stared he thought he saw movement. He glanced quickly back at
Wally's men and saw that four of them had bunched up close behind Wally
as they ran.
"Hendry, watch out!" he shouted with all his strength.
"On your right, from the offices!" But it was too late, gunfire sparkled
in the dark windows and the little group of running men disintegrated.
Bruce and Ruffy fired together, raking the windows, emptying their
automatic rifles into them. As he reloaded Bruce glanced back at where
Wally's men had been hit.
With disbelief he saw that Wally was the only one still on his feet;
crossing the road, sprinting through an area of bullet-churned earth
towards them, he reached the verandah and fell over the low wall.
"Are you wounded?" Bruce asked.
"Not a touch - those bastards couldn't shoot their way out of a
French letter, Wally shouted defiantly, and his voice carried clearly in
the sudden hush. He snatched the off the bottom of his rifle, threw
it aside empty magazine and clipped on a fresh one. "Move over," he
growled, "let me get a crack at those bastards." He lifted his rifle and
rested the stock on top of the wall, knelt behind it, cuddled the butt
into his shoulder and began firing short bursts into the windows of the
office block.
"This is what I was afraid of." Bruce lifted his voice above the clamour
of the guns. "Now we've got a pocket of resistance right in the centre
of the town. There must be fifteen or twenty of them in there - it might
take us days to winkle them out." He cast a longing look at the
canvascovered trucks lined up outside the station yard.
"They can cover the lorries from here, and as soon as they guess what
we're after, as soon as we try and move them, they'll knock out that
tanker and destroy the trucks." The firelight flickered on the shiny
yellow and red paint of the tanker. It looked so big and vulnerable
standing there in the open. It needed just one bullet out of the many
hundred that had already been fired to end its charmed existence.
We've got to rush them now, he decided. Beyond the office block the
remains of Wally's group had taken cover and were keeping up a heated
fire. Bruce's group straggled up to the hotel and found positions at the
windows.
"Ruffy." Bruce caught him by the shoulder. "We'll take four men with us
and go round the back of the offices. From that building there we've got
only twenty yards or so of open ground to cover. Once we get up against
the wall they won't be able to touch us and we can toss grenades in
amongst them."
"That twenty yards looks like twenty miles from here," rumbled Ruffy,
but picked up his sack of grenades and crawled back from the verandah
wall.
"Go and pick four men to come with us," ordered Bruce.
"Okay, boss. We'll wait for you in the kitchen."
"Hendry. Listen to me."
"Yeah. What is it?"
"When I reach that corner over there I'll give you a wave. We'll be
ready to go then. I want you to give us all the cover you can - keep
their heads down."
"Okay," agreed Wally and fired another short burst.
"Try not to hit us when we close in." Wally turned to look at
Bruce and he grinned wickedly.
"Mistakes happen, you know. I can't promise anything.
You'd look real grand in my sights."
"Don't joke," said Bruce.
"Who's joking?" grinned Wally and Bruce left him. He found Ruffy and
four gendarmes waiting in the kitchen.
"Come on," he said and led them out across the kitchen yard, down the
sanitary lane with the steel doors lor the buckets behind the outhouses
and the smell of them thick and fetid, round the corner and across the
road to the buildings beyond the office i lock. "They stopped then and
crowded together, as though to draw courage and comfort from each other.
Bruce measured the distance with his eye.
"It's not far," he announced.
"Depends on how you look at it," grunted Ruffy.
"There are only two windows opening out on to this side."
"Two's enough - how many do you want?"
"Remember, Ruffy, you can only die once."
"Once is enough," said Ruffy. "Let's cut out the talking, boss.
Too much talk gets you in the guts." Bruce moved across to the corner of
the building out of the shadows. He waved towards the hotel and imagined
that he saw an acknowledgement from the end of the verandah.
"All together," he said, sucked in a deep breath, held it a second and
then launched himself into the open. He felt small now, no longer brave
and invulnerable, and his legs moved so slowly that he seemed to be
standing still. The black windows gaped at him.
Now, he thought, now you die.
Where, he thought, not in the stomach, please God, not in the stomach.
And his legs moved stiffly under him, carrying him half way across.
Only ten more paces, he thought, one more river, just one more river to
Jordan. But not in the stomach, please God, not in my stomach. And his
flesh cringed in anticipation, his stomach drawn in hard as he ran.
Suddenly the black windows were brightly lit, bright white oblongs in
the dark buildings, and the glass sprayed out of them like untidy
spittle from an old man's mouth.
Then they were dark again, dark with smoke billowing from them and the
memory of the explosion echoing in his ears.
"A grenade!" Bruce was bewildered. "Someone let off a grenade in there!"
He reached the back door without stopping and it burst open before his
rush. He was into the room, shooting, coughing in the fumes, firing
wildly at the small movements of dying men..
In the half darkness something long and white lay against the far wall.
A body, a white man's naked body. He crossed to it and looked down.
"Andre," he said, "it's Andre - he threw the grenade." And he knelt
beside him.
Curled naked upon the concrete floor, Andre was alive but dying as the
haemorrhage within him leaked his life away. His mind was alive and he
heard the crump, crump of Bruce's grenades, then the gunfire in the