Smith laughed excitedly. 'It might not -- and, Jeez, what a signal we gave it!'
There was no reaction from Gatt; the loud voice had stopped with the explosion and I desperately hoped I'd blown him to hell.
III
It was too much to hope for. Everything was quiet for another hour and then there came a slow and steady hail of rifle fire. Bullets ripped through the thin walls of the hut, tearing away the interior insulation, and it was very dangerous to move away from the cover of the thick baulks of timber Rudetsky had installed. The chief danger was not from a direct hit but from a ricochet. From the pace of the firing I thought that not more than three or four men were involved, and I wondered uneasily what the others were doing.
It was also evident that Gatt was still alive. I doubted if the chicleros would still keep up the attack without him and his bully boys behind them. They wouldn't have the motive that drove Gatt, and, besides, an unknown number had been killed in the hut. I was reasonably sure that none of the men in that hut could have survived the explosion, and it must have given the rest a hell of a shock.
The fact that the attack had been resumed after an hour also demonstrated that Gatt, no matter what else he was, could lead -- or drive -- men. I knew personally of three chicleros that had died: say another four, at a low estimate, had teen killed in the hut, and add to that any that Fowler or Rudetsky had killed before being slaughtered themselves. Gatt must he a hell of a man if he could whip the chicleros into another attack after suffering losses like that.
The aircraft had circled a couple of times after the hut blew up and then had flown off, heading north-west. If it belonged to Gatt then it wouldn't make any difference; if it belonged to a stranger then the pilot might be wondering what the hell was going on -- he'd certainly been interested enough to overfly the camp a couple of times -- and he might report it to the authorities when he got to wherever he was going. By the time anything got done about it we'd all be dead.
But I didn't think it was a stranger. We'd been in Quintana Roo for quite some time and the only aircraft I'd seen were those belonging to Fallon and Gatt's little twin-engined job that had landed at Camp One. There's not much call for an air service in Quintana Roo, so if it wasn't Gatt's plane then it might be someone like Pat Harris, come down to see why Fallon had lost communication with the outer world. And I couldn't see that making any difference to our position either.
I winced as a bullet slammed through the hut and a few flakes of plastic insulation drifted down to settle on the back of my hand. There were two things we could do -- stay there and wait for it, or make a break and get killed in the open.-Not much of a choice.
Smith said, 'I wonder where all the other guys are? There can't be more than four of them out front.'
I grinned tightly. 'Want to go outside and find out?'
He shook his head emphatically. 'Uh-uh! I want them to come and get me. That way they're in the open.'
Katherine was crouched behind a thick timber, clutching the revolver I had given her. If she had not lost her fear at least she was disguising it resolutely. Fallon worried me more; he just stood there quietly, grasping the shotgun and waiting for the inevitable. I think he had given up and would have welcomed the smashing blow of a bullet in the head which would make an end to everything.
Time passed, punctuated by the regular crack of a rifle and the thump of a bullet as it hit thick timber. I bent down and applied my eye to a ragged bullet hole in the wall, working on the rather dubious principle that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. The marksmen were hidden and there was no way of finding their positions; not that it would have done us any good if we knew because we had but one rifle, and that had only two rounds in the magazine.
Fowler's body was lying about thirty feet from the hut. The wind plucked at his shirt and rippled the cloth, and tendrils of his hair danced in the breeze. He lay quite peacefully with one arm outflung, the fingers of the hand half-curled in a natural position as though he were asleep; but his shirt was stained with ugly blotches to mark the bullet wounds.
I swallowed painfully and lifted my eyes higher to the ruined hut and the litter about it, and then beyond to the ruins of Uaxuanoc and the distant forest. There was something about the scene which looked odd and unnatural, and it wasn't the ugly evidence of violence and death. It was something that had changed and it took me a long time to figure what it was.
I said. 'Smith!'
'Yeah?'
The wind's rising.'
There was a pause while he looked for himself, then he said tiredly, 'So what?'
I looked again at the forest. It was in motion and the tree-tops danced, the branches pushed by moving air. All the time I had been in Quintana Roo the air had been quiet and hot, and there had been times when I would have welcomed a cool breeze. I turned carefully and strained my head to look out of the window without exposing my head to a snap shot. The sky to the east was dark with thick cloud and there was a faint and faraway flicker of lightning.
'Fallon!' I said. 'When does the rainy season start?'
He stirred briefly. 'Any time. Jemmy.'
He didn't seem very interested in why I had asked.
I said. 'If you saw clouds and lightning now -- what would you think?'
That the season had started,' he said.
'Is that all?' I said, disappointed.
'That's all.' Another bullet hit the hut and I swore as a wood splinter drove into my calf. 'Hey!' shouted Smith in alarm. 'Where the hell did that one come from?' He pointed to the ragged hole in the wooden floor.
I saw what he meant. That bullet had hit at an impossible angle, and it hadn't done it by a ricochet. Another bullet slammed in and a chair jerked and fell over. I saw a hole in the seat of the chair, and knew what had
