'each other in a jumble of naked arms and legs and cascading hair.
No mercy now, thought Bruce with hatred replacing his fear as he looked
at the women and saw by the attitudes in which they lay that there was
no life left in them. No mercy now!
He slung his rifle over his left shoulder and filled his hand with
grenades, pulled the pins and moved quickly to the corner so that he
could look down the length of the covered verandah. He rolled both
grenades down among the sleeping figures, hearing clearly the click of
the priming ,and the metallic rattle against the concrete floor.
Quickly he ducked back to the lounge window, snatching two more grenades
from his haversack and pulling the pins, he hurled them through the
closed windows. The crash of breaking glass blended with the double
thunder of the explosions on the verandah.
Someone shouted in the room, a cry of surprise and alarm, then the
windows above Bruce blew outwards, showering him with broken glass and
the noise half deafening him as he tossed two more grenades through the
gaping hole of the window. They were screaming and groaning in the
lounge. Ruffy's grenades roared in the bar-room bursting through the
double doors, then Bruce's grenades snuffed out the sounds of life in
the lounge with violent white flame and thunder. Bruce tossed in two
more grenades and ran back to the corner of the verandah unslinging his
rifle.
A man with his hands over his eyes and blood streaming through his
fingers fell over the low verandah wall and crawled to his knees.
Bruce shot him from so close that the shaft of gun flame joined the
muzzle of his rifle and the man's chest, punching him over backwards,
throwing him spreadeagled on to the earth.
He looked beyond and saw two more in the road, but before he could raise
his rifle the fire from his own gendarmes found them, knocking them down
amid spurts of dust.
Bruce hurdled the verandah wall. He shouted, a sound without form
or meaning. Exulting, unafraid, eager to get into the building, to get
amongst them. He stumbled over the dead men on the verandah. A burst of
gunfire from down the street rushed past him, so close he could feel the
wind on his face. Fire from his own men.
'You stupid bastards' Shouting without anger, without fear, with only
the need to shout, he burst into the lounge through the main doors. It
was half dark but he could see through the darkness and the haze of
plaster dust.
A man on the stairs, the bloom of gunfire and the sting of the bullet
across Bruce's thigh, fire in return, without aiming from the
hip, miss and the man gone up and round the head of the stairs, yelling
as he ran.
A grenade in Bruce's right hand, throw it high, watch it hit the wall
and bounce sideways round the angle of the stairs. The explosion
shocking in the confined space and the flash of it lighting the building
and outlining the body of the man as it blew him back into the lounge,
lifting him clear of the banisters, shredded and broken by the
blast, falling heavily into the room below.
Up the stairs three at a time and into the bedroom passage, another man
