Part 35 (1/2)

Flank them? Flank who?

'Wait,' Bond shouted. 'There's n.o.body there. Go with Kwalene! Secure Hydt.'

But the big man seemed not to have heard and plodded over the ground like an elderly Cape buffalo, disappearing into the brush. What the h.e.l.l was he doing?

Just then a few rounds peppered the ground near them. Bond and Jordaan dropped to the ground. He forgot about Lamb and looked for a target.

Several hundred yards away Dunne and the two men with him had regrouped and paused in their retreat, firing back at their pursuers. Bullets. .h.i.t near the van but caused no damage or injury. The three men vanished behind piles of rubbish on the edge of Disappearance Row, the seagull population thinning as the birds fled from the gunfire.

Bond jumped into the driver's seat of the van. In the back, he was pleased to see half a dozen large containers of ammunition. He started the engine. Jordaan ran to the pa.s.senger side. 'I'm coming with you,' she said.

'Better if I do this myself.' He suddenly recalled Philly Maidenstone's recitation of Kipling's verse, which he'd decided was not a bad battle cry.

Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone . . .

But Jordaan jumped into the seat beside him and slammed the door. 'I said I'd fight by your side if it was legal to do so. Now it is. So go! They're getting away.'

Bond hesitated only a moment, then slammed the van into first and they bounded off down the dirt roads that gridded the huge complex, past Silicon Row, Resurrection Row, the power plants.

And rubbish, of course millions of tons of it: paper, carrier bags, bits of dull and s.h.i.+ny metal, fragments of ceramic and food sc.r.a.ps, over which the eerie canopy of frantic seagulls was rea.s.sembling.

It was hard driving as they swerved around earth-moving equipment, skips and bales of refuse awaiting burial, but at least the winding route gave Dunne and the two guards no easy target. The three men turned and fired sporadically but were concentrating mostly on escaping.

On her radio Jordaan called in and reported where they were and whom they were pursuing. The special-forces team would not arrive for at least another thirty minutes, Bond heard the dispatcher tell her.

Just as Dunne and the other men reached the fence separating the filthy sprawl of the plant from the reclaimed area, one guard spun around and fired an entire magazine their way. The rounds pounded the front grille and tyres. The van jerked sideways, out of control, and ploughed head first into a pile of paper bales. The air bags deployed and Bond and Jordaan sat stunned.

Seeing that their enemy was down, Dunne and the other guards began firing in earnest.

Amid the sound of bullets slamming into sheet metal, Bond and Jordaan rolled out of the shuddering vehicle and into a ditch. 'You injured?' he asked.

'No. I . . . It's so loud!' Her voice quivered but her eyes told Bond she was successfully fighting down her fear.

From beneath the wing of the van, Bond had a good shot at one of their adversaries and, lying p.r.o.ne, he aimed with the automatic.

One round left.

He squeezed the trigger but the instant the firing pin hit primer, the man ducked. He was gone when the bullet arrived.

Bond grabbed an ammunition box and ripped off the lid. It contained only .223 rounds, for rifles. The second held the same. In fact, they all did. There were no 9mm pistol rounds. He sighed and looked through the van. 'Do you have anything that'll shoot these?' He gestured at the wealth of useless bullets.

'No a.s.sault rifles. All I have is this.' She drew her own weapon. 'Here, you take it.'

The pistol was a Colt Python, a .357-calibre magnum powerful and boasting a tight cylinder lock-up and superb pull. A good weapon. But it was a revolver, holding only six rounds.

No, he corrected when he checked. Jordaan was a conservative gun owner and kept the chamber under the hammer empty. 'Speedloader? Loose rounds?'

'No.'

So, they had five bullets against three adversaries with semi-automatic weapons. 'You've never heard of Glocks?' he muttered, slipping the empty one into his back waistband and weighing the Colt in his palm.

'I investigate crimes,' she replied coolly. 'I don't have much occasion to shoot people.'

Though when those rare instances do arise, he thought angrily, it would be helpful to have the right tool. He said, 'You go back. Just keep to cover.'

She was looking steadily into his eyes, sweat beading at her temples, where her luxurious black hair frothed. 'If you're going after them I'm coming with you.'

'Without a weapon, there's nothing you can do.'

Jordaan glanced to where Dunne and the others had disappeared. 'They have a number of guns and we only have one. That's not fair. We must take one away from them.'

Well, maybe Captain Bheka Jordaan had a sense of humour, after all.

They shared a smile and in her fierce eyes Bond saw the reflection of orange flames from the burning methane. It was a striking image.

Crouching, they slipped into Elysian Fields, using a dense garden of fine-needled fynbos varieties, watsonias, gra.s.ses, jacaranda and King Protea as cover. There were kigelia trees too, and some young baobabs. Even in the late autumn, much of the foliage was in full colour, thanks to the Western Cape climate. A brace of guinea fowl observed them with some irritation and continued on their awkward way. Their gait reminded Bond of Niall Dunne's.

He and Jordaan were seventy-five yards into the park when the a.s.sault began. The trio had been moving away but it seemed that they had done so merely to lure Bond and the SAPS officer further into the wilderness . . . and a trap. The men had split up. One of the guards dropped on to a hillock of soft green ground cover and laid down suppressing fire while the other Dunne, too, possibly, though Bond couldn't see him crashed through the tall gra.s.ses towards them.

Bond had a good shot and took it, but the guard went to cover the instant Bond fired. He missed again. Slow down, he told himself.

Four rounds left. Four.

Jordaan and Bond scrabbled into a dip near a small field filled with succulents and a pond that would probably be home to stately koi, come the spring. They looked up, over the gra.s.s veld, scanning for targets. Then what seemed to be a thousand shots, though it was probably more like forty or fifty, rained down on them, striking close, shattering rock and spraying water.

The two men in khaki, probably desperate and frustrated at their delayed escape, tried a bold a.s.sault, charging Bond and Jordaan from different directions. Bond fired twice at the man coming at them from the left, hitting the man's rifle and left arm. The guard cried out in pain and dropped the weapon, which tumbled to the bottom of the hill. Bond saw that, though the man's forearm was injured, he'd drawn a pistol with his right hand and was otherwise capable of fighting. The second guard made a run to cover and Bond fired fast, tapping him somewhere on his thigh, but that wound too seemed superficial. He vanished into the brush.

One round, one round.

Where was Dunne?

Sneaking up behind them?

Then silence again, though silence filled with ringing in their ears and the internal ba.s.s of heartbeats. Jordaan was s.h.i.+vering. Bond eyed the Bushmaster, the rifle that the injured guard had dropped. It lay around ten yards away.

He studied the scene around them carefully, the landscape, the plants, the trees.

Then he noted tall gra.s.ses swaying fifty or sixty yards distant; the two guards, invisible in the thick foliage, were moving in, keeping some distance between them. In a minute or two they'd be on top of Bond and Jordaan. He might take one out with his last bullet but the other guard would be successful.

'James,' Jordaan whispered, squeezing his arm. 'I'll lead them off I'll go that way.' She pointed to a plain covered with low gra.s.s. 'If you fire, you can hit one and the other may take cover. That'll give you a chance to get to the rifle.'

'It's suicide,' he whispered back. 'You'd be completely exposed.'

'You really must stop your incessant flirting, James.'

He smiled. 'Listen. If anybody's going to be a hero, it's me. I'm going to head towards them. When I tell you, go for the Bushmaster.' He pointed to the black rifle lying in the dust. 'You're qualified to use it?'