Десмонд Бэгли - The Vivero Letter

But I didn’t think it was a stranger. We’d been in Quintana Roo for quite some time and the only aircraft I’d seen were those belonging to Fallon and Gatt’s little twin-engined job that had landed at Camp One. There’s not much call for an air service in Quintana Roo, so if it wasn’t Gatt’s plane then it might be someone like Pat Harris, come down to see why Fallon had lost communication with the outer world. And I couldn’t see that making any difference to our position either.

I winced as a bullet slammed through the hut and a few flakes of plastic insulation drifted down to settle on the back of my hand. There were two things we could do — stay there and wait for it, or make a break and get killed in the open. Not much of a choice.

Smith said, ‘I wonder where all the other guys are? There can’t be more than four of them out front.’

I grinned tightly. ‘Want to go outside and find out?’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘Uh-uh! I want them to come and get me . That way they’re in the open.’

Katherine was crouched behind a thick timber, clutching the revolver I had given her. If she had not lost her fear at least she was disguising it resolutely. Fallon worried me more; he just stood there quietly, grasping the shotgun and waiting for the inevitable. I think he had given up and would have welcomed the smashing blow of a bullet in the head which would make an end to everything.

Time passed, punctuated by the regular crack of a rifle and the thump of a bullet as it hit thick timber. I bent down and applied my eye to a ragged bullet hole in the wall, working on the rather dubious principle that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. The marksmen were hidden and there was no way of finding their positions; not that it would have done us any good if we knew because we had but one rifle, and that had only two rounds in the magazine.

Fowler’s body was lying about thirty feet from the hut. The wind plucked at his shirt and rippled the cloth, and tendrils of his hair danced in the breeze. He lay quite peacefully with one arm outflung, the fingers of the hand half-curled in a natural position as though he were asleep; but his shirt was stained with ugly blotches to mark the bullet wounds.

I swallowed painfully and lifted my eyes higher to the ruined hut and the litter about it, and then beyond to the ruins of Uaxuanoc and the distant forest. There was something about the scene which looked odd and unnatural, and it wasn’t the ugly evidence of violence and death. It was something that had changed and it took me a long time to figure what it was.

I said, ‘Smith!’

‘Yeah?’

‘The wind’s rising.’

There was a pause while he looked for himself, then he said tiredly, ‘So what?’

I looked again at the forest. It was in motion and the tree-tops danced, the branches pushed by moving air. All the time I had been in Quintana Roo the air had been quiet and hot, and there had been times when I would have welcomed a cool breeze. I turned carefully and strained my head to look out of the window without exposing my head to a snap shot. The sky to the east was dark with thick cloud and there was a faint and faraway flicker of lightning.

‘Fallon!’ I said. ‘When does the rainy season start?’

He stirred briefly. ‘Any time, Jemmy.’

He didn’t seem very interested in why I had asked.

I said, ‘If you saw clouds and lightning now — what would you think?’

‘That the season had started,’ he said.

‘Is that all?’ I said, disappointed.

‘That’s all.’

Another bullet hit the hut and I swore as a wood splinter drove into my calf. ‘Hey!’ shouted Smith in alarm. ‘Where the hell did that one come from?’ He pointed to the ragged hole in the wooden floor.

I saw what he meant. That bullet had hit at an impossible angle, and it hadn’t done it by a ricochet. Another bullet slammed in and a chair jerked and fell over. I saw a hole in the seat of the chair, and knew what had happened. I listened for the next bullet to hit and distinctly heard it come through the roof. The chicleros had got up on the hillside behind the cenote and were directing a plunging fire down at the hut.

The situation was now totally impossible. All our added protection was in the walls and it had served, us well, but we had no protection from above. Already I could see daylight showing through a crack in the asbestos board roofing where a bullet had split the brittle panel. Given enough well-aimed bullets and the chicleros could damn near strip the roof from the top of us, but we’d most likely be dead by then.

We could find a minimum shelter by huddling in the angle of the floor and the wall on the side of the hut nearest the hill, but from there we could not see what was happening at the front of the hut. If we did that, then all that Gatt would have to do was to walk up and open the door — no one would be in a position to shoot him.

Another bullet hit from above. I said, ‘Smith — want to break for it? I’ll be with you if you go.’

‘Not me,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I’ll die right here.’

He died within ten seconds of uttering those words by taking a bullet in the middle of his forehead which knocked him back against the wall and on to the floor. He died without seeing the man who killed him and without ever having seen Gatt, who had ordered his death.

I stooped to him, and a bullet smacked into the wall just where I had been standing. Fallon shouted, ‘Jemmy! The window!’ and I heard the duller report of the shotgun blasting off.

A man screamed and I twisted on the ground with the revolver in my hand just in time to see a chiclero reel away from the already long-shattered window and Fallon with the smoking gun in his hand. He moved right to the window and fired another shot and there was a shout from outside.

He dropped back and broke open the gun to reload, and I leaped forward to the window. A chiclero was jumping for cover while another was staggering around drunkenly, his hands to his face and crying in a loud keening wail. I ignored him and took a shot at a third who was by the door not four feet away. Even a tyro with a gun couldn’t miss him and he grunted and folded suddenly in the middle.

I dropped back as a bullet broke one of the shards of glass remaining in the window, and shuddered violently as two more bullets came in through the roof. Any moment I expected to feel the impact as one of them hit me.

Fallon had suddenly come alive again. He nudged me with his foot and I looked up to find him regarding me with bright eyes. ‘You can get out,’ he said quickly. ‘Move fast!’

I gaped, and he swung his arm and pointed to the scuba gear. ‘Into the cenote , damn it!’ he yelled. ‘They can’t get at you there.’ He crawled to the wall and applied his eye to a bullet hole. ‘It’s quiet out front. I can hold them for long enough.’

‘What about you?’

He turned. ‘What about me? I’m dead anyway. Don’t worry, Gatt won’t get me alive.’

There wasn’t much time to think. Katherine and I could go into the cenote and survive for a little longer, safe from Gatt’s bullets, but then what? Once we came out we’d be sitting targets — and we couldn’t stay down forever. Still, a short extension of life meant a little more hope, and if we stayed where we were we would certainly be killed within the next few minutes.

I grabbed Katherine’s wrist. ‘Get into your gear,’ I yelled. ‘Get a bloody move on.’

She looked at me with startled eyes, but moved fast. She ripped off her clothes and got into the wet-suit and I helped her put on the harness. ‘What about Fallon?’ she said breathlessly.