Always count…
But before he got far, there was a huge snap near his head and the nearly simultaneous boom of a rifle from a side corridor. He saw two men in security-guard khaki approaching, holding Bushmaster assault rifles. Bond fired twice, missing, but giving himself enough cover to kick in the door to the office beside him and run into the cluttered workspace. No one was inside. A fusillade from the.223 slugs tore up the jamb, wall and door.
Eight rounds left.
The two guards seemed to know what they were about – ex-army, he guessed. Deafened by the shots, he couldn’t hear voices, but from the shadows in the corridor, he got the impression that the men had joined up with others, perhaps Dunne among them. He sensed, too, they were about to make a dynamic entry, all of them at once, fanning out, going high and low, right and left. Bond would have no chance against a formation like that.
The shadows moved closer.
Only one move was possible and not a very clever or subtle one. Bond flung a chair through the window and leapt after it, sprawling on the ground six feet below. He landed hard, but with nothing sprained or broken, and sprinted into the Green Way facility, now deserted of workers.
Again he turned towards his pursuers and dropped to the ground, under cover of a detached bulldozer blade sitting near Resurrection Row. He aimed back at the window and a nearby door.
Eight rounds left, eight rounds, eight…
He put a bit of pressure on the sensitive trigger, waiting, waiting. Controlling his breathing as best he could.
But the guards weren’t going to fall for a trap. The shattered window remained empty. That meant they were heading outside by other exits. Their intention, of course, was to flank him. Which they now did – and very effectively too. At the south end of the building Dunne and two Green Way guards sprinted to cover behind some lorries.
Instinctively Bond glanced the other way and saw the two guards who’d fired on him in the corridor. They were moving in from the north. They too went to cover, behind a yellow-and-green digger.
The bulldozer blade protected him from assault only from the west, and the hostiles weren’t coming from that direction but from the poles. Bond rolled away just as one of the men started to fire from the north – the Bushmaster was a short but frighteningly accurate weapon. The bullets thudded into the ground and clanged loudly against the bulldozer’s yoke and Bond was pelted with searing shards of lead and copper from the fracturing slugs.
With Bond pinned down by the two in the north, the other team, Dunne leading, moved in closer from the opposite direction. Bond lifted his head slightly to scan for a target. But before he could paint one of his attackers, they moved on, finding cover among the many piles of rubbish, oil drums and equipment. Bond scanned again but couldn’t spot them.
Suddenly earth exploded all around him as both groups caught him in a crossfire, the slugs finding homes closer and closer to where he huddled in a dip in the ground. The men to the north vanished behind a low hill, presumably intending to crest it, where they’d have a perfect vantage-point from which to snipe at him.
Bond had to leave his position immediately. He turned and crawled as quickly as he could through grass and weeds, east, deeper into the grounds, feeling the chill of absolute vulnerability. The hill was behind him and to the left and he knew the two shooters would soon be at the top, targeting him.
He tried to picture their progress. Fifteen feet from the top, ten, five? Bond imagined them easing slowly up to the hillock, then aiming at him.
Now, he told himself.
But he waited five harrowing seconds more, just to be sure. It seemed like hours. He then rolled on to his back and lifted his pistol over his feet.
One guard was indeed standing on top of the rise, painting a target, his partner crouching beside him.
Bond squeezed the trigger once, then shifted his aim to the right and fired again.
The standing man gripped his chest and went down hard, tumbling to the base of the hill. The Bushmaster slid after him. The other guard had rolled away, unhurt.
Six rounds left. Six.
Four hostiles remaining.
As Dunne and the others peppered his location with rounds, Bond rolled between oil drums in a tall stand of grass, studying his surroundings. His only chance of escape was through the front entrance, a hundred feet away. The pedestrian walkway was open. But a lot of unprotected ground separated him from it. Dunne and his two guards would have a good shooting position, as would the remaining guard still at the top of the hill to the north. He could-
A rapid barrage erupted. Bond kept his face pressed into the dusty ground until there was a pause. Surveying the scene and the positions of the shooters, he rose fast and started to sprint to an anaemic tree – at its foot there was some decent cover: oil drums and the carcasses of engines and transmissions. He ran flat out. But halfway to his destination he stopped abruptly and spun round. One of the guards with Dunne assumed he was going to continue running and had stood tall, leading with his rifle to fire in front of Bond so the bullets would meet him a few yards further on. It hadn’t occurred to him that Bond was running solely to force a target to present; the double tap of Bond’s 9-millimetre rounds took the guard down. As the others ducked, he kept running and made it to the tree, then beyond that to a small mound of rubbish. Fifty feet from the gate. A series of shots from Dunne’s position forced him to roll into a patch of low vegetation.
Four rounds.
Three hostiles.
He could make it to the gate in ten seconds but that would mean five of full exposure.
He didn’t have much choice, though. He would soon be flanked. But then, looking for the enemy, he saw movement through a gap in two tall piles of construction debris. Low on the ground, barely visible through stands of grass, three heads were close together. The surviving guard from the north had joined Dunne and the man with him. They didn’t notice they were exposed to Bond and seemed to be whispering urgently, as if planning their strategy.
All three men were in his field of fire.
It wasn’t an impossible shot by any means, though with the light rounds and an unfamiliar gun, Bond was at a disadvantage.
Still, he couldn’t let the opportunity pass. He had to act now. At any moment they’d realise they were vulnerable and go to cover.
Lying prone, Bond aimed the boxy pistol. In competitive shooting, you’re never conscious of pulling the trigger. Accuracy is about controlling your breathing and keeping your arm and body completely still, with the sights of your weapon resting steadily on the target. Your trigger finger slowly tightens until the gun discharges, seemingly of its own accord; the most talented shooters are always somewhat surprised when their weapons fire.
Under these circumstances, the second and third shots would have to come more quickly, of course. But the first was meant for Dunne, and Bond was going to be sure he didn’t miss.
And he didn’t.
One powerful crack, then two others in succession.
In shooting, as in golf, you usually know the instant the missile leaves your control whether you’ve aimed well or badly. And the fast, shiny rounds struck exactly where they were aimed, as Bond had known they would.
Except, he now realised to his dismay, accuracy wasn’t the issue. He’d hit what he’d aimed at, which turned out not to be his enemies at all, but a large piece of shiny chrome that one of the men – the Irishman, of course – must have found in a nearby skip and set up at an angle to reflect their images and draw Bond’s fire. The reflective metal tumbled to the ground.
