Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

'We're bleeding,' I said. 'The main hydraulic reservoir's leaking. We won't get far – and if we want to get anywhere, we'd better start now.'

The car had been stabbed in its hydraulic heart; the fluid – the life blood – that powered the steering, brakes, springing, gear-change, was dripping away from the main tank. 'Right.' Harvey turned to the girl: 'All aboard.' She came up, white-faced, and clutching a double handful of empty shells against her stomach. I opened my briefcase and she poured them in.

Then she said: 'I'm sorry – I'm not used to this sort of thing. I didn't know it would be like this.'

'Nobody knew,' I said. She turned away and got into the back seat.

I put on my driving gloves and twisted the front wing clear of the wheel. The main reservoir was just behind the wheel, so it was the same shock that had punctured it. I thought about topping it up with the can of hydraulic fluid in the boot, but it would just waste time. I climbed in.

The hydraulic brake warning light came on – and stayed on. I shoved the lever into first gear, took a deep breath, and we crept forward. We weren't dead yet – but we were dying.

Maganhard asked: 'Can we get the car repaired quickly?' He sounded quite calm about it.

I said: 'No. We can't get it repaired at all. We daren't take it near a garage, not even through a village: we're full of bullet-holes, and the trouble with a bullet-hole is that it looks like exactly what it is.'

We had two holes through the windscreen on Harvey's side, from his own shots just before we crashed, one through the boot lid, two through the roof, and another through Maganhard's door.

'What do we do next then?'

'Get as far away as we can without meeting anybody, dump the car, find a phone, ring somebody up, and say "Help".'

I thought the next question would be 'Ring who?', and I hadn't worked that out yet. But all he said was: 'We'll be late, then.'

There wasn't any answer to that. I glanced at Harvey. He was just staring bleakly out ahead, his eyes searching. He hadn't forgotten there was still a gunman on the loose out there, though I didn't think we'd see him again.

I turned off up a narrow, winding road up over the hill. Already the steering was getting heavy as its power faded. Soon I'd have no gear-change left; then the springing would sag right down; finally, the power brakes would go, leaving just the mechanical foot-brake.

The car would keep going, because the engine would keep turning – but it wouldn't be comfortable, and once I'd stopped I wouldn't get started again, not without a gear-change. I left the lever in second, as the gear I most wanted.

Harvey said suddenly: 'If we end up in the backwoods somewhere, how do we find a phone?'

'I think I can end us up quite near one.'

The second hydraulic warning light came on: amount of fluid dangerously low. The steering was really dragging at my hands, on those bends, and the springing was letting through jolts. The car was dying.

The road straightened and flattened slightly. If it was the one I remembered, it led us up on to the top of a ridge, without a village for fifteen kilometres. It wasn't getting us any closer to the Rhône, but that might be an advantage if the police started setting up roadblocks. I wanted to be away from our obvious line of escape.

We crawled over on to the top of the ridge and I speeded up. The steering was entirely mechanical now, and we were running on square wheels. I hadn't had to use the brakes uphill, so there should be one last stopping effort left in them.

I went fast past a couple of farmhouses and a parked cart, then eased up and let the engine slow her down. We'd done about twelve kilometres since the ambush. To our left, the ridge sloped down to open, rolling country; on the right it was a steeper downslope of pine forests. At the bottom there was a minor main road with a fair selection of villages.

I covered about another six kilometres before I recognised the track through the woods. I slowed on the mechanical foot-brake, but not enough. At the last moment I jabbed the pressure brake. The car stood on its nose and made the turn, the engine jerking unhappily at far too low revs. We started down the track.

If we'd had square wheels before, now they were triangular. The car floor banged on the ground, and engine noise came up under my feet, so we'd crumpled the exhaust pipe. The slope got steeper. I pumped the brake: we slowed, but the slope got worse. I jammed the mechanical brake full down. The back wheels locked and we slid, slamming on to the ground. The exhaust pipe tore out with a clang.

I grabbed for the ignition and switched the engine off; the car added a shudder. I picked a clump of young trees and wrenched the wheel. We left the track, hit the ground again with an enormous bang, and ran gently to a stop in the trees.

'And that,' I said, 'is the end of the line.'

I knocked open my door. We had fir trees over us, all round us, and the ones we'd knocked down underneath us. With any luck, the Citroen wouldn't be found for a few days.

I said to Harvey: 'You better clean out the car,' and went round to fight open the buckled bonnet. When I found a screwdriver I got off the Dinadan number plates, and took both them and the old ones with me.

By then the luggage had been hauled out on to the track and Harvey was carefully wiping the car clean of fingerprints.

Maganhard said: 'That was my car. I doubt the insurance will pay for it.'

I stared at him, then shook my head slowly. 'No, if they can't find an escape clause in some of the things we've been doing, they're losing their touch.' I walked back up the track to find and hide the exhaust pipe.

When I got back Harvey was propping up a couple of flattened trees to cover the entry wound we'd made in the plantation. I kicked our skid-marks around and hoped it would rain soon. Then we were ready to go.

We walked down the track. The luggage was two soft leather Italian grips with long handles like overgrown handbags, my briefcase, and Harvey's Air France case. It didn't take much effort, but it was far too much to carry in public if we wanted to look like tourists out for a stroll. We'd have to hide it for a time.

After half an hour we reached the stream at the bottom of the slope. I picked a muddy patch, shovelled a hole with one number plate, then planted all four in, and kicked the mud back on top.

Maganhard said: They will trace the car by the engine number.'

'Yes, but it'll take them a few hours longer.'

The trees ended at the stream, but a few hundred yards along to our left, they started again on the far side. We walked along there, crossed, and went up through more woods towards the road. By my reckoning that put us about a quarter of a mile from the nearest village.

Harvey, who'd dropped naturally into place just behind Maganhard's right shoulder, turned round to me and said: 'Well – what's the plan?'

'I don't think we'd all better go into the village; four of us'll look suspicious – and they may have got the word about the ambush by now.' It was half past nine, over an hour since the shooting had started.

Harvey said: 'Okay. That means either just you or you and her. I stay with him.' His voice was quite definite.

I nodded, and turned to the girl. 'Miss Jarman – if you'd like to come with me, I'd like you to. A man and a woman look more innocent than a single man on his own.'

'Whatever you say.' Not exactly a rush of enthusiasm, but not everybody feels all that good an hour after being shot at for the first time. It can be quite a shock realising that people are really trying to kill you, personally.

Harvey said: 'About who you ring – I have an opinion.'

'Go on.'

'You don't ring Dinadan.'