Десмонд Бэгли - Bahama Crisis

‘Sure.’ I retreated up the bed to my original position. ‘I’m certain I could pay better.’ I was cheering silently because friend Earl had been manoeuvred into the right place. I leaned back casually against the wall and felt behind me for the string. ‘Like to talk about it?’

‘Nope.’

I groped and could not find the bloody string. The pottery knife was hidden by my body ready to be grasped by my right hand, but the string had to be tugged with my left hand, and not too obviously, either. I had to be casual and in an apparently easy posture, an appearance hard to maintain as I groped behind me.

As my fingertips touched the string there came a scream from outside, full-throated and ending in a bubbling wail. All my nerves jumped convulsively and Earl jerked the gun warningly. ‘Steady, mister!’ He grinned, showing brown teeth. ‘Just Leroy havin’ his fun. My turn next.’

Debbie screamed again, a cry full of agony. ‘Christ damn you!’ I whispered and got my index finger hooked around the string.

‘Let’s have your hands in sight,’ said Earl. ‘Both of ‘em.’

‘Sure.’ I put my left hand forward, showing it to him empty — but I had tugged that string.

I dived forward just as the shotgun blasted. I think Earl had expected me to move up the bed as I had before, but I went at right-angles to that expectation. My shoulder hit the ground with a hell of a thump and I rolled over, struggling to get up before he could get in a second shot. There was no second shot. As I scooped up the fallen shotgun I saw that nearly 600 foot-pounds of kinetic energy had cracked his skull as you would crack an egg with a spoon. A fleeting backward glimpse showed the mattress of the bed ripped to pieces by the buckshot.

I had no time for sightseeing. From outside Debbie screamed again in a way that raised the hair on my neck, and there was a shout. I opened the door and nearly ran into a man I had not seen before. He looked at me in astonishment and began to raise the pistol in his right hand. I lashed out at him with my home-made knife and ripped upwards. A peculiar sound came from him as the breath was forcibly ejected from his lungs. He gagged for air and looked down at himself, then dropped the pistol and clapped both hands to his belly to stop his entrails falling out.

As he staggered to one side I ran past him, dropping the pottery blade, and tossed the shotgun from my left hand to my right. It was then I realized I had made a dreadful mistake; this was no small crowd of four people — I could see a dozen, mostly men. I had a hazy impression of clapboard houses with iron roofs arranged around a dusty square, and a mongrel cur was running towards me, snapping and barking. The men were running, too, and there were angry shouts.

Someone fired a gun. I do not know where the bullet went, but I lifted the shotgun and fired back, but nothing happened because I had forgotten to pump a round into the breech. There was another shot so I ducked sideways and ran like hell for the trees I saw in the middle distance. This was no time to stop and argue — I had probably killed two men and their buddies would not be too impressed by exhortations from Robinson to shoot at my legs.

And, as I ran for my life, I thought despairingly of Debbie.

They chased me; by God, how they chased me! The trouble was that I did not know the country and they did. And damned funny country it was, too; nothing like anything I had heard of in Texas. Here were no rolling plains and barren lands but foetid, steaming swamp country, lush with overripe growth, bogs and streams. I had no woodcraft, not for that kind of country, and my pursuers had probably grown up in the place. I think that had it been the Texas we all know from Hollywood movies I would not have stood a chance, but here was no open ground where a man could see for miles, and that saved me.

At first I concentrated on sheer speed. There would be confusion back there for a while. They would find Earl and the other man and there would be a lot of chatter and waste of time if I knew human nature. Those first few minutes were precious in putting distance between me and my nemesis. As I ran I tried not to think of Debbie. Giving myself up would not help her, and I doubted if I could give myself up. Leroy would just as soon kill me as step on a beetle — there had been a close resemblance between him and Earl.

So I pressed on through this strange wilderness, running when I could and glad to slow down when I could not run. I considered myself to be a reasonably fit man, but this was the equivalent of going through an army battle course and I soon found I was not as fit as I thought.

My clothing was not really up to the job as I found when I inadvertently plunged into a brier patch. Sharp spines raked my arms and ripped the tee-shirt, and I cursed when I had to go back again, moving slowly. My shoes, too, were not adequate; the rubber soles slipped on mud and one of the sneakers was loose on my foot and I tended to lose it. This also slowed me down because to lose even one shoe would be fatal; my feet were not hardened enough for me to run barefoot.

And so I plunged on. My problem was that I did not know where I was going; I could just as well be running away from help as towards it. What I wanted to find was a house, preferably with a telephone attached to it. Then I could find out where I was and ring Billy Cunningham so that he could send one of his lovely helicopters for me — to ring the police and then go and beat the bejasus out of Robinson. There were no houses. There were no roads which would lead to houses. There were no telephone lines or power lines I could follow. Nothing but tall stands of trees interspersed with boggy meadows.

After half an hour I stopped to get my breath back. I had travelled about three miles over the ground, I reckoned, and was probably within two miles of the place where I had been held captive. I fiddled with the shotgun and opened the magazine to find out what I had — four full rounds and one fired. I reloaded, pushed one up the spout, and set the safety catch.

Then I heard them, a distant shout followed by another. I went on, splashing up a shallow stream in the hope of leaving no trail. Presently I had to leave the stream because it was curving back in just the direction I did not want to go. I jumped on to the bank and ran south, as near as I could estimate by the sun.

I went through a patch of woodland, tall trees dappling the ground with sun and shadow, then I came to a river. This was no brook or stream; it was wide and fast-flowing, too deep to wade and too dangerous to swim. If I was spotted half-way across I would be an easy target. I ran parallel with it for some way and then came to a wide meadow.

There was no help for it so I ran on and, half-way over, heard a shout behind me and the flat report of a shot. I turned in the waist-high grass and saw two men coming from different angles. Raising the shotgun I aimed carefully, banged off two shots, and had the satisfaction of seeing them drop, both of them. I did not think I had hit them because the shouts were not those of pain, but nobody in his right mind would stand up against buckshot. As they dropped into the cover of the grass I turned and ran on, feeling an intolerable itch between my shoulder blades. I was not in my right mind.

I got to the cover of the trees and looked back. There was movement; the two men were coming on and others were emerging on to the meadow. I ejected a spent cartridge and aimed and fired one shot. Again both men dropped into cover but the rest came on so I turned and ran.

I ran until my lungs were bursting, tripping over rocks and fallen trees, slipping into boggy patches, and cannoning off tree trunks. My feet hurt. In this last mad dash I had lost both shoes and knew I was leaving a bloody trail. I was climbing a rise and the pace was too much. I threw myself to the ground beneath a tree, sobbing with the rasping agony of entraining air into my lungs.