Nogo tried to pull the bayonet free, but the wet clinging suction of the
abbot's guts held the steel fast, and when Nogo jerked harder, Jah Hora
was tossed about like a puppet, his arms flapping and his legs kicking
and. dancing comically.
There was only one way to free the blade of a bayonet that was trapped
like this., Nogo slipped the rate-of-fire selector on the AK-47 to
'Single Shot'. He fired once.
The detonation of the shot was muffled by Jali Hora's body, but was yet
so thunderous that for a moment it stilled the outcry of the monks. The
high-velocity bullet tore down the entry track of the blade. It was
moving at three times the speed of sound, creating a wave of hydrostatic
shock behind it that turned the old man's bowels to jelly and liquidized
his flesh. The suction that had held the bayonet was broken, and the
blast of shot hurled Jah Hora's carcass off the point of the blade,
flinging it into the arms of the monks who were crowding close behind
him.'
For a moment longer the strained, unnatural silence persisted, and then
it was shattered by a higher, more angry chorus of horror from the
monks. It was as though they were compelled by a single mind, a single
instinct. Like a flock of white birds they flew at the band of armed men
in their midst and descended upon them, intent on retribution for
murder. They counted no cost to themselves, but with their bare hands
they tore at them, hooked fingers clawing for their eyes, seizing the
barrels of the levelled rifles. Some of them even grasped the blades of
the bayonets with their naked hands, and the razor steel sliced through
-flesh and tendons.
For a short while it seemed that the soldiers would be overwhelmed and
smothered by the sheer weight of numbers, but then those troopers
carrying the stele and the coffin dropped their loads and unslung their
weapons, The monks crowded them too closely for them to swing the
rifles, and they were forced to hack and stab with the bayonets to clear
a space around them in which to do their work. They did not need much
room, for the AK47 has a short barrel and compact action. Their first
burst of fully automatic fire, aimed into the monks at belly height and
point-blank range, scythed a windrow- through them.
Every bullet told, and the full metal jacket ball whipped through one
man's torso with almost no check, going on to kill the man behind him.
By now all the troopers were firing from the hip, traversing back and
forth, spraying the packed ranks of monks like gardeners hosing a bed of
white pansies. As one magazine of twenty-eight rounds emptied they
snapped it off and replaced it with another, fully loaded.
Nahoot cowered behind the fallen pillar, using it as a shield. The roar
of gunfire deafened and confused him. He stared around him and could not
credit the'carnage he was witnessing. At such close range the 7.62 round
is a terrible missile, which can blow off an arm or a leg as efficiently
as an axe-stroke, but more messily. Taken in the belly, it can gut a man
like a fish.
Nahoot saw one of the monks hit in the forehead. His skull'erupted in a
cloud of blood and brain tissue, and the gunman who had shot him laughed
as he fired. They were all caught up in the madness of the moment. Like
