Matt Hilton - Cut and run

I felt the tug of his bullet as it struck my SIG. Damn well near tore my hand off as it ripped the gun out of my grip. That was either the best or the luckiest shot I'd ever witnessed. My bet was on the latter.

My bullet hit Rickard high in his left trapezius muscle and he twisted with the impact, so that his second shot went over my head, struck the light fixture in the ceiling and plunged us into half-light.

I looked for my gun. Couldn't see it. Maybe it was damaged beyond repair. The Sigma was a few feet away. So was my assault rifle where I'd dropped it. There was no time for any of them; I vaulted up on to Jimena's deathbed, then through the air at Rickard.

He was already bringing his gun round to shoot me again, but his angle was wrong. I landed on my feet directly in front of him, even as I swept my forearm against his gun, knocking his next shot astray. Then my momentum took me chest to chest with him and we both crashed into a wall. I punched Rickard in the face. It took everything not to scream; an agonising flame leaped from my hand all the way to my brain. Something felt like it had broken in my hand when my SIG had been wrenched away.

Yet I couldn't let that stop me. If I gave him even the briefest of moments to rally, he would shoot me point-blank and that would be the end of it. So, my damaged hand became a bludgeon as I drove it four times in quick succession into his body.

Yelling directly into his face, I grappled with his gun. He yelled back. Nothing either of us said made any sense; it was just the bestial roaring of two wild animals engaged in a life or death battle.

Rickard was no slouch. He gave me a couple punches of his own. One of them got me in my right ear, the other dangerously close to the eye socket. I head-butted him, and he gave me one right back. He kneed at my groin, but I jammed his leg between mine and forced him against the wall. We were too close for clean strikes now and we both clawed. I got my fingers in his nostrils and forced his head back. Rickard stuck his thumb in my already stinging eye. Finally I managed to bang his gun against the wall and he released it. But that gave him two functioning hands as weapons. He punched me in the ribs. Air left my lungs, but I wasn't about to back away now. If I did that he might draw that blade he'd been holding earlier and then I'd be in real trouble. Instead, I sank my teeth into his shoulder at the exact point where my bullet had nicked him moments before. Rickard howled,and I echoed his scream through my clamped teeth.

We were both in frenzy, unmindful of the form standing in the open door behind us. We were too intent on ripping lumps from each other. But even in that primal state something impinged upon my senses. The blocking shadow in the doorway suddenly fled, allowing light to spill inside from the passageway. On the beam of light I saw the tumbling cylindrical object arch towards us as if it was moving in super-slow motion.

I experienced one of those snapshot moments.

My subconscious mind identified the object. It took another split second for it to push the military term to its hiding place in the back of my head and come up with the layman's name. Hand grenade.

Dear God!

I don't know which of us spoke those words. Maybe we both did. Because in the next instant we spilled apart just as the grenade landed in the gap we'd made.

The L2A2 is an anti-personnel weapon, a tin-plated fragmentation device with a coil of notched wire and packed with one hundred and seventy grams of high-explosive filling. It is designed to kill anyone in a radius of up to eighteen yards. The room we were in was no more than eight or nine yards square. It didn't give either of us very good odds at survival.

There was only seconds until detonation.

I went one way and Rickard the other. To be honest I forgot all about him in that instant, was only vaguely aware that he was nearer the exit door than I was. I threw myself over Jimena's still form and on to the floor, crouched and got my fingers under the edge of her bed and heaved it up so that the bed toppled, spilling its occupant on to the floor. The bed on its side wasn't much of a shield, but it was all I had.

It's hard to describe the explosion. I was so close that I didn't actually hear it, just felt the metal frame of the bed slam me and throw me back against the near wall. For the briefest of moments it seemed the frame was going to cut me to pieces, as though I was being passed through a massive dicing machine. But then the pressure was gone, I went face down on the floor and the bed collapsed on top of me.

That wasn't so bad.

Until I tried to raise my head and found that the commands of my brain were being ignored by my body. Then I heard noise: the slamming beat of blood pounding through my inner ears, someone roaring in deep-throated agony.

Pain assaulted me in every fibre.

My fingertips were twitching and I was oddly aware of the movement as though watching from outside myself. I wondered who was groaning in agony. A black wave passed through my mind and I felt like I was falling into a deep hole. I clawed at a dull spark of lucidity, refusing to succumb to the darkness, except it was a losing battle.

It was as though a black drape dropped over my head. In panic I imagined that I was being zipped into a body bag and I fought against the enfolding material. I'm still alive, I wanted to scream, but nothing came out. I kicked, bucked and came to my knees. Or that's how it seemed. When I opened my eyes again I was still face down. A troop of Nazis marched over my spine stamping down with their jackboots.

And someone was still groaning.

Me.

I shoved over on to my side. It was an Olympic-scale effort just to do that. My hearing was compressed by the pressure of the detonation, so that all I could hear were screeches and clicks and the beating of my own heart. The latter at least was a good thing. Didn't mean I was going to survive but it was a start.

Coming to some semblance of lucidity, I unfolded my arms; only then realising that I'd wrapped them round my skull at the last moment. It meant that my earlier image of watching my twitching fingers couldn't have been true, but everything about the entire situation felt more than surreal. Pressing an elbow to the bed frame, I pushed against it. The bed wouldn't move. Blinking through dust, I saw that one of the legs had been thrust into the wall, skewering deep into the plaster covering. It had missed my body by inches.

It was a Herculean task to get a knee under me and press my shoulder against the bed and move it away. As the bed frame scraped across the floor, I slipped and went down hard on my damaged hand. I cringed, but pushed up again. Part of me wanted to give in, to lie down and succumb to the bliss of unconsciousness. Another part screamed at me to get my arse in gear. The screamer was the most adamant. Even if Rickard was dead, the one who'd thrown the grenade at us wasn't. Any second now, he'd be coming back to make sure the explosion had done its work.

The room was full of smoke and dust, and dripping stuff. I didn't like to think about what was smeared on the ceiling and walls, or what the crimson chunks were that had been scattered to the four corners of the room. No way possible to count if those steaming entrails belonged to three corpses or four.

Staggering, I made it round the edge of the bed. First I looked to the door but I could detect no movement through the acrid smoke so I looked at the bed instead. The mattress had been shredded. Clumps of foam erupted from ragged holes where shrapnel had torn into it. The metal headboard had been ripped loose and was a mangled wreck a few feet away. A dark banner floated on the unnatural breeze as displaced air began forcing its way back into the room. It took a moment or so to realise that it was a lock of Jimena Grajales' hair. I closed my eyes against the sight and turned away.