Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

Over my shoulder, I saw it: a dim grey cloud drifting gently over the ground maybe seventy yards back. And perhaps a dark figure walking beside it: Harvey, herding it along like a ghost elephant.

But across the bushes, I could see the pillbox on the next front parallel.

Alain must have seen it by now, know something had gone wrong. Would he shoot sooner – or later? Wait until the car was on the culvert, ten yards off, or fire at long range, knowing the Rolls daren't swing off the track?

I ran along the firestep, turned left, turned right…

Would Alain use lights? No – never. Why did I think that? Because we'd never used lights in the old days – lights meant throwing flares that would light us as well, would stop us pulling out if things got too tough…

I jumped on the firestep below the pillbox and screamed: 'Lights!'

The Rolls paused, then the headlights came full on.

Light, glaring blazing light, slammed against the pillbox like a silent explosion. Inside, a Sten fired into the blinding glare – but in the long wasteful howl of a man shooting at something he isn't certain about and is scared of.

I ran up the steps, threw the little Walther pistol in around the blast wall and yelled:'Grenade!'

He must have been thinking about grenades already -wishing he had some, maybe. He came around the wall like a kicked cat.

I pulled the trigger at a range of four feet. The burst lifted him, smashed him against the wall, hung him there. Then he pitched slowly forward and I stood aside and watched him fall past me into the trench.

It was the man coming out behind him who shot me.

It was dark and my mouth was full of slime and there was a distant rattle like a large-tooth file dragged across my raw brain. And deep inside, pain. The sort of pain you don't want to disturb, that you want to leave sleeping – but you know it won't sleep. Butyou can sleep. Just lie there. And sleep. And maybe die.

The idea jerked me awake. If I was dying, at least it meant I wasn't dead yet. I spat and tried to roll up on to my side – and that hurt. A flare of pain like a lighted fuse ran clear through me.

I kept very still and it died to a dull red ache around my stomach and a heavy feeling in my legs. God, not a stomach wound, not a bullet in the guts and living on milk the rest of my life. And you can bribe a doctor into patching up a bullet scrape and calling it a road accident, but a hole in the belly is going to get reported…

At least I was thinking like Caneton again. And come to that, why should a stomach wound paralyse my legs? I screwed my head around and saw the dead man lying across the back of my knees.

I looked carefully around. I was lying at the bottom of the pillbox steps, and just ahead of me was the body of the man I'd shot. The Rolls' lights were out.

The rattle started again, and this time it didn't feel distant. Bullets crunched and screamed at the lip of the trench and somebody dropped into it with a heavy splash. I groped in the mud for the Mauser, found it, then Harvey said: 'Cane – are you alive?'

'Christ, I don't know,' I said crossly. The shock was beginning to wear on and it was making me angry. Mostly at myself.

He rolled the dead man off my legs. I asked: 'Did you get him?'

'Yes. You seemed to be busy standing up in the spotlight taking a bow.'

'You were fifty yards off,' I said, still angry. 'You couldn't hit him with that little gun.'

'If you stopped being surprised at what other people can do, you wouldn't get your head shot off so often.'

I said: 'Stomach, damn it, stomach.' But he walked straight past me and turned over the other dead man. It occurred to me that I'd better find out just where Ihad been hit.

There was a messy hole just about the bottom of my ribs on the left-hand side: that would be the exit wound. For my cleverness, I'd got myself shot in the back. I groped round and found a smaller hole, higher up, round under my shoulder-blade.

I decided it probably hadn't got my stomach, and since my breathing didn't seem to have any leaks, it hadn't got a lung. I found Harvey squatting down beside me.

'I've got a busted rib or two,' I said. 'I think it ran around outside them.'

'Probably. He was using a 7.65 Sauer.' He tossed a small automatic into the mud by my face. 'Peanut gun; you were lucky. Can you walk back to the car?'

'We've got so far. It's not much farther.'

'You'vegot so far,' he corrected, 'and you ain't no advertisement. In case you want to know, neither of these guys is Alain. He's holed up in a pillbox across the track with a Sten.'

I hadn't really expected we'd killed Alain, but I'd hoped.

'Alain won't stay,' I said. 'Not if he knows we're still trying. The odds are against him now – he's a professional.'

'Still playing Caneton, hey?' He stood up and back. 'All right, let's see how you look on your feet.'

I took a deep breath – which was a mistake – and started. It took time and blood, and it was climbing a skyscraper with little green men swinging axes into my side. But after a while, I was up on my two feet and leaning hard against the wall.

Harvey said: 'Me, I'd say the wall was doing the work.'

'I'll chase him out,' I snarled. I was breathing in fast, shallow gasps, to keep the strain off my ribs. 'Get me the petrol tin out of the car.'

'Recommended procedure for knocking out pillboxes.' He went on looking at me. Then there was a distant shouting. We both looked back up the trench, to where the dark slope rose up above it to the frontier road and the mountain wall beyond. Light flickered, like men running with torches.

'I'd forgotten about the cops,' Harvey said thoughtfully. 'If we go back, we're still in Switzerland.' He swung back to me. 'You've kind of committed us, haven't you?'

'Get me the petrol.'

'Where'll you be?'

I nodded towards the culvert. 'Far side of the path.'

He nodded and hurried back towards the communication trench.

Crawling through the culvert started the little axes chipping away at my ribs again, but I made it. Then I had an eight-foot stretch of trench wall before it turned a corner leading forwards to the parallel where the pillbox was.

I knelt down carefully and took a quick look round the corner. The narrow dark eye of the pillbox stared back at me.

I jerked back. Thèpillbox wasn't only to cover the tank path – but also the trench itself. To stop an enemy spreading along it if he broke in. Just what it was going to stop me doing – if Alain was still there.

'Alain,'I called softly.'Voici Caneton. C'est tout fini, Alain.'

The pillbox stayed quiet.

I climbed up on the firestep, found a place where I could peep through the bushes and the wet sand-heaps, laid the Mauser down, and waited. Moonlight washed over the pillbox, turning it to a dirty bone-white – and as cold and quiet as the far side of the moon.

Are you still there, Alain? Don't you remember that a fixed position can turn into a trap? Damn it, you're a professional – you must have crept out and away. Given it up as a bad job, decided you wouldn't earn this twelve thousand or whatever you're getting paid…

Then the loophole spluttered flame and noise. Short, fast burst, as when a man knows what he's firing at. Harvey must have reached the car.

I fired two single shots and ducked, swearing angrily. Behind me, the shots had started more shouting among the cops weaving their way through the trenches from the frontier road.

But damn you, Alain – you shouldn't still be there. You've forgotten everything. You should never cling to a fixed position when the odds turn against you; it can kill you. It must kill you – because now we must go on.

There was a clatter in the culvert behind me, and a few moments later Harvey whispered: 'I've got it – where do I throw it?'