Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 31

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both arms extended as he aimed.  He fired twice and hit the monkey-faced

gunman, sending him reeling back against the wall, but he stayed on his

feet and returned the agent's fire with the machine pistol, knocking him

down and rolling him IJ across the paving stones.

The yard was filled with a panic-stricken mob, a struggling mass of

humanity, that screamed and fell and crawled and died beneath the flail

of the guns.

Two bullets caught Hannah in the chest, smashing her backwards over a

table of glasses and bottles that shattered about her.  The bright blood

spurted from the wounds, drenching the front of her white wedding gown.

The centre gunman dropped his pistol as it emptied, and he stooped

quickly over the copper salver and came up with a grenade in each hand.

He hurled them into the struggling, screaming throng and the double

blast was devastating, twin bursts of brightest white flame and the

terrible sweep of shrapnel.  The screams of the women rose louder,

seeming as deafening as the gunfire - and the gunman stooped once more

and his hands held another load of grenades.

All this had taken only seconds, but a fleeting moment of time to turn

festivity into shocking carnage and torn flesh.

David left the shelter of the stone steps.  He rolled swiftly across the

flags towards the abandoned Uzzi, and he came up on his knees, holding

it at the hip.  His paratrooper training made his actions automatic.

The wounded gunman saw him, and turned towards him, staggering slightly,

pushing himself weakly away from the wall.  His one arm was shattered

and hung loosely in the tattered, blood-soaked sleeve of his jacket, but

he lifted the machine pistol and aimed at David.

David fired first, the bullets struck bursts of plaster from the wall

behind the Arab and David corrected his aim.  The bullets drove the

gunman backwards, pinning him to the wall, while his body jumped and

shook and twitched.  He slumped down leaving a glistening wet smear of

blood down the white plaster.

David swivelled the gun on to the Arab beside the kitchen door.  He was

poised to throw his next grenade, right arm extended behind him, both

fists filled with the deadly steel balls.  He was shouting something, a

challenge or a war cry, a harsh triumphant screech that carried clearly

above the screams of his victims.

Before he could release the grenade, David hit him with a full burst, a

dozen bullets that smashed into his chest and belly, and the Arab

dropped both grenades at his feet and doubled over clutching at his

broken body, trying to stem the flood of his life blood with his bare

hands.

The grenades were short fused and they exploded almost immediately,

engulfing the dying man in a net of fire and shredding his body from the

waist down.  The same explosion knocked down the third assassin at the

end of the terrace, and David came to his feet and charged up the steps.

The third and last Arab was mortally wounded, his head and chest torn by

grenade fragments, but he was still alive, thrashing about weakly as he

groped for the machine pistol that lay beside him in a puddle of his own

blood.

David was consumed by a terrible rage.  He found that he was screaming

and raging like a maniac, and he crouched at the head of the stairs and

aimed at the dying Arab.

The Arab had the machine pistol and was lifting it with the grim

concentration of a drunken man.  David fired, a single shot that slapped

into the Arab's body without apparent effect, and then suddenly the Uzzi

in David's hands was empty, the pin falling with a hollow click on an

empty chamber.

Across the terrace, beyond range of a quick rush, the Arab's face was

streaked with sweat and blood as he frowned heavily, trying to aim the

machine pistol as it wavered.  He was dying swiftly, the flame

fluttering towards extinction, but he was using the last of his

strength.

David stood frozen with the empty weapon in his hand, and the blank eye

of the pistol sought him out, and fastened upon him.  He watched the

Arab's eyes narrow, and his sudden murderous grin of achievement as he

saw David in his sights, and his finger tightening on the trigger.

At that range the bullets would hit like the solid stream of a fire

hose.  He began to move, to throw himself down the stairs, but he knew

it was too late.  The Arab was at the instant of firing, and at the same

instant a revolver shot crashed out at David's side.

Half the Arab's head was cut away by the heavy lead slug, and he was

flung backwards with the yellow custard contents of his skull

splattering the white-washed wall behind him and his death grip on the

trigger emptied the machine pistol with a shattering roar harmlessly

into the grape vines above him.

Dazedly David turned to find the Brig beside him, the dead security

guard's pistol in his fist.  For a moment they stared at each other, and

then the Brig stepped past him and walked to the fallen bodies of the

other two Arabs.  Standing over each in turn he fired a single pistol

shot into their heads.

David turned away and let the Uzzi drop from his hands.  He went down

the stairs into the garden.

The dead and the wounded lay singly and in piles, pitiful fragments of

humanity.  The soft cries and the groans of the wounded, the bitter

weeping of a child, the voice of a mother, were sounds more chilling

than the screaming and the shouting.

The garden was drenched and painted with blood.

There were splashes and gouts of it upon the white walls, there were

puddles and snakes of it spreading and crawling across the paving, dark

slicks of it sinking into the dust, ropes of it dribbling and pattering

like rain from the body of a musician as he hung over the rail of the

bandstand.  The sickly sweetish reek of it mingled with the smell of

spiced food and spilled wine, with the floury taste of plaster dust and

the bitter stench of burned explosive.

The veils of smoke and dust that still drifted across the garden could

not hide the terrible carnage.  The bark of the olive trees was torn in

slabs from the trunks by flying steel, exposing the white wet wood.  The

wounded and dazed survivors crawled over a field of broken glass and

shattered crockery.  They swore and prayed, and whispered and groaned

and called for succour.

David went down the steps, his feet moving without his bidding; his

muscles were numb, his body senseless and only his finger-tips tingled

with life.

Joe was standing below one of the torn olive trees.  He stood like a

colossus, with his thick powerful legs astride, his head thrown back and

his face turned to the sky, but his eyes were tight-closed and his mouth

formed a silent cry of agony, for he held Hannah's body in his arms.

Her bridal veil had fallen from her head, and the bright copper mane of

her hair hung back, almost to the ground.  Her legs and one arm hung

loosely also, slack and lifeless.  The golden freckles stood out clearly

on the milky-white skin of her face, and the bloody wounds bloomed like

the petals of the poinsettia tree upon the bosom of her wedding-gown.

David averted his eyes.  He could not watch Joe in his anguish, and he

walked on slowly across the garden, in terrible dread of what he would

find.

Debra!  he tried to raise his voice, but it was a hoarse raven's croak.

His feet slipped in a puddle of thick dark blood, and he stepped over

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