Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

'I'mthrowing it. Cover me as I go round the corner; he can see down that stretch.'

He hung on to the tin and said coldly: 'What's the matter – one medal isn't enough for you?'

'I'llget him. Give me the petrol.'

'Listen, hero,' he said softly. 'We don't have time for you to stagger bravely on and get your head blown off. Cover me.'

I'dcommitted us all right. And he had to dig us out.

I nodded. 'Don't go until he shoots at me.'

'Okay. Where do I throw it – over the top so it drips down and blocks the loophole?'

'That wouldn't stop Alain. Chuck it inside.'

He looked at me, then turned away. Then he turned back and said: 'Can you really light gasoline off a gunflash?'

'Yes.'

He walked carefully up the firestep to the corner. I waited until he was there, then raised my head and started firing careful single shots at the loophole. The first one raised dust just below it; the second didn't – it must have gone straight in. With a Mauser on a butt at eight yards, you can place shots the way a brain surgeon places a scalpel. The third shot didn't raise dust, either.

The Sten blared at me, throwing gobs of wet sand and bullets clattering against the back wall. Harvey went round the corner with a rush and splash.

Alain had forgotten another lesson. He'd let himself be distracted. I flicked the Mauser on to automatic and let go a burst that scattered dust around the loophole and then climbed uncontrollably off the roof. But the Sten had stopped.

Harvey didn't pause. He must have had the top off the can already. He jumped up the steps; I saw his head and shoulders rise above the parapet, holding the big can upside down to lay a petrol trail.

He ran smack into Alain coming out.

For a moment they hung together, so close that Alain couldn't use the Sten – and Harvey's gun was in his belt. Then they bounced apart. Harvey dropped the can and grabbed for his waist; Alain slashed with the Sten, knocking him back off the steps.

I stood straight up, shoved the Mauser out to arm's length, and squeezed the trigger. It fired once and was empty. Alain ducked, then calmly straightened the Sten in his hands and aimed down into the trench.

Harvey fired.

I saw the reflected flash – and Alain became flames.

You can have seen petrol fires before – have lit them before – and you never remember how fast they light because you just don't believe what you see. Alain must have been soaked in the stuff from bumping into the can, and the steps were flooded. Together, they turned into fire.

He didn't shoot at Harvey. He turned, a man of flames standing in a hedge of flames, tried to wipe the fire out of his eyes with a burning arm, then started to shoot careful bursts across my head at the Rolls. He had forgotten a lot -but not what he was here for.

Harvey fired again. The figure toppled off the steps with the Sten still going, and hit the bottom of the trench with a hiss.

I laid my head down on the wet sand of the parapet and started to feel very sick.

Harvey met me at the tank path; he was moving slowly and wearily, and he looked singed, dirty, and damp. Behind him, the flames still flickered in the trench, and behind me the waving torches of the police were only a few hundred yards off. But somehow they didn't seem important; nothing to hurry us.

HarvíV said: 'We seem to have won the war.' His voice was flat, numbed, without any expression.

I said: 'Yes,' and braced myself for anything he had to say about my bright ideas.

But all he said was: 'I could use a drink.'

'Me, too.'

We walked slowly towards the Rolls, which had come across the culvert and stopped just past the front-line trenches. When we got there, I said: Take the wire-cutters out of my case. There's probably some front-line wire ahead.'

He took them and started out in front of the car, then stopped and said: 'Bernard. And now Alain.' But his voice was still dead. He wasn't feeling anything about it – yet.

Five minutes later we were in Liechtenstein and turning on to the main road which we'd left on the other side of the frontier, three kilometres back. The Rolls had taken a thumping, but Rolls's are built for that, and fifty yards in the dark is a long range for a Sten – particularly if it was like most Stens I'd known and the single-shot button didn't work. One headlight was shot out, there were bullet-holes through the windscreen and both left-hand doors, and one through the big radiator grill. I didn't know if it hadpunctured the radiator itself – but we'd certainly find out on the mountain road to Steg.

I sat at the back alongside Maganhard, wincing at every jolt and slopping cognac down my shirt. Harvey was up front with the girl.

Maganhard hadn't said a word, but he didn't look much more dead than usual, so perhaps he was thinking.

After a few miles, Harvey turned round and said through the partition: 'D'you want us to leave you down near Vaduz? – find a doctor?'

Maganhard woke up and looked at me. 'You are wounded?'

'I'm not dying. And I don't suppose you know a doctor who's ready to call a bullet-hole a mosquito bite. And, anyway, there's still Calieron to come.'

'Think we'll have any trouble?' Harvey asked.

'Not much. He can't have every gunman in Europe under contract. And if he had, he'd have put them down in the battle zone.'

After a time, Maganhard said: 'When I told you I wanted to get past the frontier, Mr Cane, I did not understand that it would be necessary for a man to be burned as that man was,'

I said wearily: 'Nobody knew it would be necessary, Mr Maganhard. It just happened. In this sort of job, people don't always die with a brave smile and a kind word for mother.'

'I thought you knew him! '

'I did. And I'm sorry he got burned, if that helps. But nobody forced him to be down there with a Sten.'

He thought for a moment, then said: 'I suppose they came to kill or be killed. Perhaps it was fair.'

'You're still sentimentalising them. They came to kill – full stop. If they'd thought there was a chance of getting killed they wouldn't have come.' I shook my head. 'Alain didn't become St Francis just by dying rather nastily.'

Miss Jarman said: 'All the other times, you didn't have a choice about shooting. They started it. But this time – you planned it. You started it.'

'I could have stuck my head out of the trench,' I growled, 'and given them the first shot – if that would have made me more moral. It would damn sure have made me headless.'

'I didn't mean that.' Her voice was cold and a little shivery, and not just from the wind coming through the bullet-holes. She'd seen Alain burn, too. 'I mean perhaps we could have done something else that…' Her voice trailed off.

'Perhaps we could,' I said heavily. But I was trying not to think what.

We turned right at Triesen and on to the twisting road up to Triesenberg and, beyond it, Steg. We were going to find out about that radiator now.

Miss Jarman said: 'The engine's getting warm.'

'Keep going. Don't slow up.'

She didn't. We slammed into a series of hairpins as fast as Morgan would have taken them – and on just one headlight. But she had an open road for it: Liechtensteiners don't believe in doing much but sleep outside the money-making hours. We'd-only seen a cyclist and a tourist coach since the frontier.

As we came up to the lights of Triesenberg, it started to drizzlegently. Harvey leant across almost into Miss Jar-man's lap to read the radiator temperature. 'The needle's practically off the clock,' he reported. 'We won't get much farther.'

'Keep going.'

'Christ, we'll blow a cylinder.'

'That engine's full of cylinders. Keep going.'

The girl said flatly: 'We won't get as far as Steg unless we stop to cool down.'