Peter O'Donnell - Cobra Trap

"Willie, please—"

"Just listen. Once you're away I'll move off. I'll be a bit slow, but with any luck I'll be able to lie low or get clear one way or another. Then I'll take the jungle route to the border. I can rig a crutch with the rifles, and I'm good in the jungle, you know that. This is what Modesty would want, so this is what I'll do. Okay?"

She said in a small voice, "Yes, Willie."

"That's a good girl. Don't let Steve make a song and dance about this, will you? I think that's all. See you later, love, but I might be a while so don't wait up for me, eh?"

"All right, Willie. Good luck, and a big hug from me." She lowered the radio and called, "Steve! Steve!"

Two minutes later, grey with exhaustion and grief, Collier said, "Oh, dear God. We'll be breathing on one lung from now on." He put his arms round Dinah and held her close. "Do you think he'll make it?"

"He'll… sort of do his best. But for Willie there's no longer any point in making it now. That's the difference." She drew a deep breath, stepped back and wiped her damp grimy face. "Come on, tiger. We've got a job to finish. I couldn't bear to let them down now."

Fifteen minutes later Willie saw smoke from the locomotive appear above the trees to the east. He watched with satisfaction as it moved steadily on for several minutes before vanishing behind the ridge. There was no further attack in that time, but he suspected that a small party had split from the main body unseen during the last mortar attack and had moved along the valley to climb the ridge further west and so outflank him.

On reflection he decided it was time to tidy up and be gone.

He had strapped the broken ankle securely, and lashed the two riflebarrels together, overlapping end to end so that they formed a makeshift crutch. Now he spent five minutes crawling round the edge of the hollow, setting small quantities of plastic explosive deep in the sandy earth beyond the rim, talking quietly to Modesty.

"I'm glad it worked out for you, Princess. Knocked me sideways at first, but… I can see 'ow you felt. I reckon they're aiming to outflank me, so I'll be off soon. The train's away with Dinah and Steve and all the rest, so there's nothing more to be done 'ere. I 'ope you're okay. Funny thing, when we were on the train Steve got us talking about what comes next. Well… it's anyone's guess, isn't it?" He put the last piece of plastic in place, then set a detonator in each before crawling away from the hollow to the edge of the wooded slope leading down to the railway. There he took cover, watching.

The explosions came as close together as he had hoped when setting the detonators, and as the echoes died he saw with satisfaction that what had been a deep hollow was now a mound of earth and sand. He said, "Sleep well, Princess," and began to hobble down the slope.

After five minutes he had covered no more than two hundred yards and had fallen twice. His hurt foot gave no support and the rifles made a poor crutch on the incline, tending to slip. Pausing for a moment, holding a sapling for support, he heard shouts from the ridgetop behind him. Chest heaving with effort, he pushed on. There came a louder shout from above, and he heard the whipcrack sound of a bullet as it passed a yard to his left.

"Getting a bit dodgy, Princess." Holding in his mind's eye that smile of hers that was his alone, he stumbled on, well content, but had moved only a few more yards when he fell again and for a moment was numb.

Then he was on his feet once more, moving easily and unencumbered down the slope, without pain, the trees gone now. Timeless he moved down the slope of grass that in some way was not grass but perhaps the essence of it, down towards the valley where a silvery path or perhaps a river, though in some way neither, ran or perhaps simply was.

Somewhere he could hear the songs the stars sang, and with new senses he was aware in unimaginable ways of himself and everything about him, but above all and as never before knowing the totality of the familiar companion moving with him.

The End