Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

As Senechal continued to fumble, the car slowed sharply, pulled off the tarmac onto rougher ground and stopped. Webster heard the rumble of another car moving past and coming to a halt a short distance away, and felt the weight shift in the seat in front of him as their driver got out. For a moment the inside of the car was lit with a warm light; then the door shut behind him and with a beep and a clunk all the doors locked and the darkness returned.

“Hurry up, for fuck’s sake. Use your teeth.” Webster’s face was pressed to the window, his arms out behind him; he had never felt so naked. He wondered whether they would be shot, or burned, or both. “What are you doing?”

The hands had stopped working and Senechal was trying his door.

“It is locked.”

Webster didn’t reply. Feeling the muscles in his shoulders tense and cramp, he pushed his wrists together and worked them hard against the fabric, looser now, until there was a space large enough for his hand to squeeze through. Senechal was still pulling in panic at the handle of his door.

In one movement Webster tore the blindfold off his eyes and leaned into the front seats, desperately looking for the switch that would release the doors. The car’s alarm started wailing. A dim green glow from the dashboard was the only light; the car’s headlamps had been cut and outside all was black. He ran his hands over the door, between the seats, pressing at everything, trying to keep his head. From the back he could hear Senechal quietly intoning “ Mon Dieu, mon Dieu ” over and over.

The window he had been sitting by burst with unimaginable noise, and Webster felt glass spray across his back. A second bullet smashed the driver’s window, and he could feel the chassis of the car jar as a third hit his door.

He found the switch.

“Go! Fucking go!”

Sitting back he reached across Senechal, opened his door and shoved him out onto the sand, scrambling after him head first and over the howling alarm hearing the precise clunk of a bullet being pressed into the chamber of a rifle just before another shot cracked the air. He landed on his elbows in the dust.

There were two further shots, close together, as he shut the door and pulled himself against the body of the car. Senechal was to his left, his head leaning back against the other door, his eyes shut. After the brutal noise of the gun there was now silence: no cars, no wind. Webster, his breath quick and painful in his chest, thinking hard, leaned over to peer under the back of the car in the direction of the shots.

“One of us is going to have to…”

“Get up. It is you they want.”

When he turned his head he found himself looking right into the black eyes of Senechal, set in a face of pale wax and darker than the night. He was kneeling and holding a small pistol in his right hand. His face was so close that Webster could smell his dead metallic breath as he half whispered, half hissed.

“ Allez .” And then louder into the night, a thin screech. “Stop! Stop, I have him.”

He gestured with the gun. A car sped by on the road, its headlights for a moment illuminating the scene. Senechal was still wearing his suit, his tie still immaculately in its collar, an apparition somewhere between nightmare and nonsense. Webster felt a bolt of repugnance and fury pass through him and with a cruel, childish certainty knew that this man was weak and brittle and no match for him. Ignoring his pain and a rush of sickness he brought the back of his fist across his body into Senechal’s face, felt it connect with that sharp little nose, saw Senechal lose his balance and topple backward. A shot tore the silence but Webster ignored it and fell on Senechal as he tried to right himself, pinning him to the ground and trapping his right arm and beating his hand against the ground until the gun fell from it. Senechal’s face twisted with shock and fear as he writhed vainly for a moment against Webster’s weight; then he relaxed his muscles, composed his expression and looking right into Webster’s eyes spat, venomously.

In the strange, silent interlude that followed Webster turned his head and wiped the spit away as best he could on his sleeve. Senechal leered up at him, his black teeth like beetles, and suddenly Webster couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. He was filled with disgust. The desert and the pain and the bleak gunshots dropped away and all he knew was Senechal’s gruesome image, hideous, staring up at him in petulant defiance. He released his hold and pulling Senechal’s head up by his hair beat it against the ground, twice, hard. He moved to do it again but checked himself, his heart beating with force against his ribs, a strange giddiness in his throat. Senechal was unconscious, and his body had gone limp. Webster reached under his head and felt blood flowing thick and warm; felt the rock jutting out of the sand. From the darkness came another shot like a burst of light and the sound of another of the car’s windows being blown out.

Webster ducked, involuntarily, and rolled off Senechal’s prone body. On hands and knees Webster shuffled back against the car. He had to go now. There wouldn’t be another chance. Feeling in the sand for the gun he pulled one knee up, set himself unsteadily, as if under starter’s orders for a schoolboy race, took a deep breath and looked down at Senechal, wondering briefly what would happen to him, whether he should leave him here to his fate. He could do nothing else. With one last look at the ashen figure in the dirt he set off into the darkness, his leather soles slipping in the sand, adrenaline dulling the pain in his ribs and his head.

After perhaps fifteen yards he heard a hard crack behind him, a single shot, heard the tiny thin whine of the bullet as it passed, and kept running, changing direction a little, dodging rocks and doing his best to keep upright. Without turning he held his arm out behind him and fired shots into the night. He thought he heard voices shouting but paid them no heed. Two cars drove past along the road, and afterward another shot. This time he didn’t hear the bullet in the air.

Running in almost total darkness now he stumbled up a shallow bank of sand and scrubby plants. At the top he lost his footing, rolled down the other side, and for a moment lay on his back looking up at the stars, panting. His body had had enough punishment. Somewhere behind him, a hundred yards away, perhaps a little more, a car engine started up; he heard it turning over slowly, moving forward into the desert toward him. Over the low ridge a bright light suddenly burst, scanning the night and casting Webster’s refuge into even greater blackness. He lay still for a moment, then at a low crouch moved along the line of the ridge, parallel with the road, heading in the direction they had come. The lights tracked slowly across the sky and as they passed over him he dropped to the ground, the sand cool under his cheek. Ahead of him, ten yards away, was a little hollow, an indentation perhaps a foot deep, like the first workings of a grave. In the darkness behind the headlights he scuttled across the desert, keeping low, and pressed himself into the space.

The car reversed in an arc, and the lights swung back across the night. Webster felt them sweeping over him again, seeking him out, slowly moving away. A car door opened. He raised his head an inch to look. In the beams from the headlights a man in a suit—it looked like the guard from the prison—was standing by Senechal. Putting his foot on his shoulder he rocked the prone body back and forth, three times for good measure, before standing up and looking into the night, making a last search. Webster flattened himself out again. There was no noise but the idling of the engine until the car door slammed and the car crunched away, slowly over the dirt but once on the road accelerating hard.