The second he heard Sabir’s voice, Bale played the fi re extinguisher over the candles and oil lamps surrounding Yola. He had caught sight of the extinguisher as he was fetching soup from the kitchen and had immediately decided how best to use it. Now he screwed his eyes shut and waited for them to readjust to the darkness.
Yola called out in her terror, ‘What was that? What did you just do? Why did the lights go out?’
‘I’m pleased you’ve finally turned up, Sabir. The girl’s been complaining that her legs are tired. Have you got the prophecies with you? If not, she swings.’
‘Yes. Yes. We’ve got the prophecies. I have them on me.’
‘Bring them over here.’
‘No. Let the girl go first. Then you get them.’
Bale knocked the stool away with a backward flick of his leg. ‘She’s swinging. I warned you of this. You’ve got about thirty seconds before her windpipe crushes. After that you could try an emergency tracheotomy. I’ll even lend you a pencil to stick her with.’
Sabir felt rather than saw Alexi gliding past him. Five seconds earlier the man had been on his knees. Now he was running straight for the entrance to the Maset.
‘Alexi. No. He’ll kill you.’
There was a flash of light from inside the house. Alexi’s running figure was briefly lit up. Then darkness fell again.
Sabir started running. It didn’t matter that he would die. He had to save Yola. Alexi had shamed him by running in first. Now he was probably dead.
As he ran, he dragged the clasp knife from his pocket and locked open the blade. There were more fl ashes of light from inside the Maset. Oh Christ.
On the first note of Sabir’s voice, Macron ducked in through the back window of the Maset. He would guide himself by the lights in the front room – that ought to do it. But as he made his way up the hall, the lights were suddenly extinguished.
Bale’s voice was coming from the left of the open door. Now it was moving across the room. Macron could just make out a darker silhouette against the faint light coming in from outside.
He tried for a snap shot. Please God he hadn’t shot the girl. The sudden flash of light was just enough to warn him of the barricade of chairs and tables Bale had set-up across the face of the corridor. Macron tripped over the first chair and began to fall. In desperate slow motion he twisted over on to his back and endeavoured to kick his way out of the mess – but he only managed to sink deeper inside the morass of wooden slats.
He still had his gun in his hand. But by this time he was lying on his back like a stranded cockroach. He shot wildly over his head, hoping, in that way, to keep Bale’s head down until he was able to disentangle himself.
It didn’t work.
The last sensation Macron had on earth was of Bale kneeling on his gun-hand, levering his mouth open and forcing a pistol barrel across the swollen barrier of his tongue.
Bale had instantly moved away from the girl after kicking out the stool legs. The Legion had taught him never to stand for too long in one place during a firefight. His drill instructor had drummed into him that you always move about a battlefield in a series of four-second bursts, to the tune of an internal rhythm that you keep on repeating in your head: You Run – They See You – They Lock and Load – You Drop. The old discipline saved his life.
Macron’s snap shot passed through Bale’s neck, puncturing his trapezius muscle, just missing his subclavian artery and shattering his clavicle. Bale immediately felt his left hand and arm go numb.
He twisted towards the danger, his gun arm rising.
There was a crash, as whoever had come in by the back way encountered his barricade. Then a second shot smashed into the ceiling above Bale’s head, showering him with plaster.
Still pulsing with adrenalin, Bale darted towards the shooter. He had seen the man silhouetted in the light of the gun flash. Knew where his head was. Knew what a mess he had got himself into with the barricade. Knew where the man’s pistol was instinctively aiming.
He speared the man’s gun-hand with his knee. Levered the man’s mouth open with the barrel of the Redhawk. Then shot.
Police. It had to be the police. Who else would have a pistol?
Bale ran for the back window, his left arm hanging loose. Civilian clothes. The man had been in civilian clothes – not paramilitary kit. So it wasn’t a siege.
He levered himself backwards through the window and fell to the ground, cursing. Blood was cascading down his shirt. If the bullet had nicked his carotid artery, he was done for.
Once out of the Maset, he cut to the right, towards the stand of trees in which he’d tethered the horse.
No other way out. No other way to go.