and do the same on the other side.” He nodded. “I’ll meet you at the spot where the crash boat shelled us in two hours.”
“What about you, Harry?” He made a gesture of handing me the FN - but I didn’t have the heart to deprive him.
“I’ll be okay,” I told him. “Off you go, man.”
It was a simple task to keep ahead of the line of beaters for they called to each other loudly to keep their spirits up, and they made no pretence at concealment or stealth, but advanced slowly and cautiously in an extended line.
There were nine of them on my side of the ridge, seven of them were blacks in naval uniform, armed with AK47, assault rifles and two of them were Manny Resnick’s men. They were dressed in casual tropical gear and carried sidearms. One of them I recognized as the driver of the Rover that night so long ago, and the passenger in the twinengined Cessna that had spotted Sherry and me on the beach.
Once I had made my head count, I turned my back on them and ran ahead to the curve of the salt marsh. I knew that when the line of beaters ran into this obstacle, it would lose its cohesion and that it was likely that some Of its thembers would become isolated.
I found an advanced neck of swampland with stands of Voting mangrove and coarse swamp grass in dense shades of fever green. I followed the edge of this thicket and came upon a spot where a fallen palm tree lay across the neck like a bridge - offering escape in two directions. It had collected a dense covering of blown palm fronds and swamp grin which provided a good hide from which to mount an ambush.
. I lay in the back of this shaggy mound of dead vegetation and I had the heavy baitknife in my right hand ready to throw.
The line of the beaters came on steadily, their voices growing louder as they approached the swamp. Soon I could hear the rustle and scrape of branches as one of them came directly down to where I lay.
He paused and called when he was about twenty feet from me, and I pressed my face close to the damp earth and peered under the pile of dead branches. There was an opening there and I saw his feet and his legs below the knees. His trousers were thick blue serge and he wore grubby white sneakers without socks. At each step his naked ankles showed very black African skin.
It was one of the sailors from the crash boat then, and I was pleased. He would be carrying an automatic weapon. I preferred that to a pistol, which was what Manny’s boys were armed with.
Slowly I rolled on to my side and cleared my knife arm. The sailor called again so close and so loud that my nerves jumped and I felt the tingling flush of adrenalin in my blood. His call was answered from farther off, and the sailor came on.
I could hear his soft footfalls on the sand, padding towards me.
Suddenly he came into full view, as he rounded the fall of brushwood. He was ten paces from me.
He was in naval uniform, a blue cap on his head with its gay little red pom-pom on the top, but he carried the vicious and brutal-looking machinegun on his hip. He was a tall lean youngster in his early twenties, smooth faced and sweating nervously so there was a purple black sheen on his skin, against which his eyes were very white.
He saw me and tried to swing the machinegun on to me, but it was on his right hip and he blocked himself awkwardly in the turn. I aimed for the notch where the two collarbones meet, that was framed by the opening of his uniform. at the base of his throat. I threw overhand, snapping my wrist into it at the moment of release so the knife leapt in a silvery blur and thudded precisely into the mark I had chosen. The blade was completely buried and only the dark walnut handle protruded from his throat.
He tried to cry out, but no sound came, for the blade had severed all his vocal chords as I intended. He sank slowly to his knees facing me in a prayerful attitude with his hands dangling at his sides and the machinegun hanging on its strap.
We stared at each other for a moment that seemed to last for ever.
Then he shuddered violently and a thick burst of bubbling blood poured from his mouth and nose, and he pitched face forward to the ground.
Crouched low, I flipped him on to his back and withdrew the knife against the clinging drag of wet flesh, and I cleaned the blade on his sleeve.
Working swiftly I stripped him of his weapon and the spare magazines in the bandolier on his webbing belt, then, still crouching low, I dragged him by his heels into the gluey mud of the creek and knelt on his chest to force him below the surface. The mud flowed over his face as slowly and thickly as molten chocolate, and when he was totally submerged I buckled the webbing belt around my waist, picked up the machinegun and slipped back quietly through the breach that I had made in the line of beaters.
As I ran doubled over and using all the cover there was, I checked the load on the AK47. I was familiar with the weapon. I had used it in Biafra and I made sure that the magazine was full and that the breech was loaded before I slipped the strap over my right shoulder and held it ready on my hip.
When I had moved back about five hundred yards I paused and took shelter against the trunk of a palm while I listened. Behind me, the line of beaters seemed to have run into trouble against the swamp, and they were trying to sort themselves out. I listened to the shouts and the angry shrill of the whistle. It sounded like a cup final, I thought, and grinned queasily, for the memory of the man I had killed was still nauseatingly fresh.
Now that I had broken through their line I turned and struck directly across the island towards my rendezvous with Chubby on the south peak. Once I was out of the palm groves on to the lower slopes, the vegetation was thicker, and I moved more swiftly through the better cover.
Halfway to the crest I was startled by a fresh burst of gunfire.
This time it was the distinctive whipcracking lash of the FN, a sharper slowerbeat than the storm of AK47 machinegun fire that answered it immediately.
I judged by the volume and duration of the outburst that all the weapons involved had emptied magazines in a continuous burst. A heavy silence followed.
Chubby was having a go, after all my warnings. Although I was bitterly angry, I was also thoroughly alarmed by what trouble he had got himself into. One thing was certain Chubby had missed whatever he had aimed at.
I broke from a trot into a run, and angled upwards towards the crest, aiming to reach the area from which the gunfire had sounded.
I burst out of a patch of goose-bush into a narrow overgrown path that followed the direction I wanted, and I turned into it and went into a full run.
I topped the rise and almost ran into the arms of one of the uniformed seamen coming in the opposite direction, also at a headlong run.
There were six of his comrades with him in Indian file, all making the best possible speed on his heels. Thirty yards farther back was another who had lost his weapon and whose uniform jacket was sodden with fresh blood.
On all their faces were expressions of abandoned terror, and they ran with the single-minded determination of men pursued closely by all the legions of hell.
I knew instantly that this rabble were the survivors of an encounter with Chubby Andrews, and that it had been too much for their nerves. They were hell-bent and homeward-bound - Chubby’s shooting must have improved miraculously, and I made him a silent apology.
So much were the seamen involved with the devil behind them that they seemed not to notice me for the fleeting instant which it took for me to slip the safety-catch on the machinegun on my hip, brace myself with knees bent and feet spread.
I swung the weapon in a short kicking traverse aimed low at their knees. With a rate of fire like that of an AK47, you must go for the legs, and rely on another three or four hits in the body as the man drops through the sheet of fire. It also defeats the efforts of the short barrel to ride up under the thrust of the recoil.
They went downward in a sprawling shrieking mass, punched backwards into each other by the savage strike of the soft heavy-calibre slugs.
I held the trigger down for the count of four, and then I turned and plunged off the path into the thick wall of goose-bush. It hid me instantly and I doubled over as I jinked and dodged under the branches.
Behind me, a machinegun was firing, and the bullets tore and snapped through the thick foliage. None came near me and I settled back into a quick trot.
I guessed that my sudden and completely unexpected attack would have permanently acounted for two or
