Brian Freemantle: Charlie Muffin U.S.A.

The F.B.I. men were all stunned and sat unmoving for several moments. In Pendlebury’s car, Gilbert was vaguely aware of movement some way off, in the area still dusty from the explosion, but his eyes would not focus. He was too confused to associate it at that time with any danger.

‘What in the name of Christ…’ said Pendlebury. His voice croaked and he became aware from the cotton-wool numbness in his ears that he could not hear his own voice.

‘Did you authorise any explosives?’ demanded Gilbert, recovering first. When Pendlebury did not reply, Gilbert shouted the question again.

‘Just grenades. And Mace, of course,’ said Pendlebury. His ears were clearing.

‘That wasn’t a grenade,’ said Gilbert. ‘What the hell’s happening

…’

‘I wish I knew.’

Pendlebury left the car with difficulty, his body aching as if he had undergone some strenuous exercise. The radio control man was sitting with the door open and his head in his hands, and when he looked up at Pendlebury’s approach, Pendlebury saw that he was bleeding from the nose and eyes.

He gestured the man from the vehicle, reaching inside to seize the microphone to warn the approaching agents. It wasn’t until he had finished the message and demanded acknowledgment, receiving instead a lot of static whine broken by the odd, unintelligible word, that he realised he had no radio contact with the one hundred men converging on the mansion.

‘Fuck,’ he said bitterly, slamming the microphone against the seat. It bounced and fell on to the floor.

Pendlebury looked up as Gilbert ran from the crashed Chrysler. ‘Saxby, Boella and someone I think is Beldini, but I can’t be sure because the bullets caught him in the face,’ he said.

‘Terrilli’s people had been told to let them in,’ Pendlebury said.

‘Who then?’ asked Gilbert.

Pendlebury shook his head, an almost weary gesture. ‘Who’s in the Mercedes?’

‘Impossible to say.’

Pendlebury straightened, trying to clear the ache that had started around his neck and shoulders. He looked around. The man in the Dodge was moaning, hand to his sightless eyes and the passenger unconscious. There were two men in the radio car who appeared unhurt and another from the car he and Gilbert had occupied. He gestured one of the radio men back into the Plymouth.

‘Find a hand-set that works,’ he ordered. ‘Stay here and keep broadcasting. I don’t know what’s going on, so I don’t want anyone taking chances. Understood?’

The man nodded, turning back to the vehicle.

‘We’ve only got handguns,’ Gilbert warned him.

‘They’ll have to do until the back-up arrives,’ said Pendlebury. The pain was going and he had almost completely recovered from the shock of the explosion. The operation had gone wrong, he decided. He didn’t know how, but the whole thing had gone disastrously wrong. It didn’t matter whether the Englishman had caused it or not. Pendlebury was more determined than ever to have him killed.

‘Let’s go,’ said Pendlebury. ‘Stay in a group. Anything else is hostile.’

Hesitantly they moved off towards the entrance to Terrilli’s house.

‘Must have been a bomb,’ judged Gilbert as they climbed over the gate which had been blown to form a ramp over the masonry and brickwork.

Charlie Muffin’s assessment had been the same, when the blast had reached him. The bend in the road had saved him almost completely from any effect, but there had still been sufficient shock waves to knock him over. He landed awkwardly, thrown against the root of a palm tree, so that he was winded. He rolled over, arms hugging his body, and as he pulled himself up, with a grimace, he thought he detected movement from the direction in which he had been walking. He drew back against the palm tree with which he had collided, sure of its cover. Twenty yards away the Cubans, three of whom had been knocked over, tried to reassemble, using less caution than before so that Charlie was able to confirm his first impression. Charlie stared around him. He was against the edge of a ditch, dry and hard underfoot. He crouched below the level of the road and scurried forward, one hand still against his bruised ribs, the other steadying himself against the ditch wall.

Two crashed cars stopped him, a Mercedes blocking his path. He started to drag himself upwards when he became aware, about five yards back along the road, of the vehicles that had formed Pendlebury’s convoy. He halted, using the cars for concealment. Two men in the Dodge appeared to be injured, and there was movement from the Plymouth, but he couldn’t judge how many occupants it had.

As he watched, the Cubans came around the bend, jerking to a halt at the roadblock. The man with the hand-set saw them and jumped from the Plymouth, waving.

‘Careful, you guys,’ he warned.

Ramirez had been leading. He hesitated, recognised instantly the other man’s mistake and continued walking, gesturing at the melee of cars and shouting as he approached, ‘What happened?’

Ramirez reached the operator when he was about to reply, but before the man could speak the Cuban shot him, once, in the head. The operator was hurled back into the Plymouth by the impact. Two of Ramirez’s group had gone to the Dodge. Both men in it were unconscious now, so the Cubans left them.

Charlie slid down, flattening himself and squeezing beneath the Mercedes. Once past the wheel, there was quite a lot of space at the bottom of the ditch. Something was driping on him, he realised. He hoped it wasn’t petrol. After a few seconds, he had a limited vision of feet and legs, as the Cubans stared inside the car.

‘All dead,’ Charlie heard one of them call.

‘We’ve lost him,’ said another. Charlie recognised the voice as that of the man who had shot the radio operator. Terrilli’s men, he decided.

Distantly, but identifiably from the direction of Terrilli’s house, came the sound of gunshots.

‘We’d better get in there,’ said the same man.

Charlie crouched where he was, listening to the sound of their footsteps and beyond that, more frequently now, the isolated cough of a shot; rifles, he thought.

He had become aware that there was more room between the wheel and the ditch bottom on the other side, but he still left the same way so that the Mercedes was between him and the group. He peered cautiously between the up-ended wheels. A lot of the lighting was still in operation, despite the devastation around the gate area. The electrified fence had been broken, but there was a secondary source of power, so that occasional strands sparked when the gentle breeze drove them against a contact. The explosion had settled now and Charlie could see just how much had been destroyed. Not only had the support pillar and the gate been flattened, but also a gatehouse and about ten yards of wall.

‘Christ,’ said Charlie softly. The Russians must have responded after all.

Satisfied that for the moment he was quite alone, Charlie climbed from the ditch, feeling his clothing and then putting his hand in front of one of the headlights: oil, he saw. The suit was only three years old, too.

He looked again at the destruction of the wall and the cars and their bloodied occupants. Very distantly he thought he heard the sound of police sirens and the noise hardened his decision.

He paused for the briefest moment and then started to jog towards the exit on to Ocean Boulevard.

‘Bugger a few poxy stamps,’ he said to himself. It was survival time again.

He was alert, and the sweep of lights warned him well in advance of the first of the F.B.I. cars turning into the road. Charlie leaped to his right, confident of the ditch and its concealment. He waited until the first car was past, then carried on more slowly as the cavalcade went by in the opposite direction. The road junction created a difficulty because he could not just appear in front of the headlights. However, the very congestion gave him the escape. As the cars jammed, blocked by the obstruction of the upturned Mercedes, people began leaving their vehicles, to continue on foot, and in the confusion Charlie rose unnoticed from the gully.