The sharp plop of something in the rock-pool behind them was clearly audible before the flat crack of the Lee Enfield rifle came to them, muffled by the wind. The second shot splintered rock near McBride, and he felt the patter of tiny pieces on the back of his left hand before he was able to absorb the sensory information, understand it, and begin to move.
"Get down!" he yelled at Drummond, who was far slower to react.
McBride began running, stepping from rock to rock with unbalanced speed, changing direction by instinct as he moved closer to the cliff-face, under its overhang. Two more shots, the bullets skipping like angry insects away from his feet.
Then, ahead of him, and with a clear view of his dodging, almost hysterical passage across the rocks, a second rifleman opened up at him from Scullane Point. There was no shelter beneath the cliff-face from the second man, whose vantage looked down the length of the beach towards Horse Island.
The first two bullets plucked through the tail of McBride's donkey-jacket as it flew in the wind.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Weight of Evidence
McBride felt the tug of the bullets as they passed through the tail of his jacket as a momentary hand restraining him. Then he pitched, off-balance, across the rocks, scraping his shins and hands, but already adopting the momentum-of the fall and rolling with it, sliding down the face of a boulder, his cheek dragging painfully against its surface. He came to rest half-sitting in the shallow water of a rock-pool. He lay back as another shot splintered the grey rock, whined away towards the cliff-face.
He was out of sight — trapped, but temporarily safe.
"Drummond?" he called, and found his voice ragged and dry. "Drummond, are you all right!" A gap of time that the wind filled and the cry of a gull; but there was no shooting.
"Yes, where are you?"
"In the rocks. Are you hit?"
"No, thank God, are you?"
"No."
Then there was nothing more to say. McBride broke the contact that seemed as fragile as a long-distance telephone call. Drummond was, presumably, out of sight. McBride lifted his head, and began studying the cliff-face that leaned out over him, hiding him from either of the snipers who might walk along the cliff-top to that point. But as long as the second man remained on Scullane Point, McBride could not move.
A bullet screamed off the rock beside his head, and the flat crack of the rifle pursued it.
One of them would come down onto the beach — by the path Drummond had used — while the second man kept them pinned down. It was a simple task, like killing seals or seabirds. McBride felt infuriated at the helplessness of his situation, knowing even as he raged inwardly that he was wasting adrenalin, wasting rationality. But there seemed nothing he could do.
He raised his head again, in a different position further along the narrow pool. The water was chilly, seeping into him already, suggesting lethargy, insinuating inactivity. He was a hundred yards from the cliffs of Scullane Point, from their shelter. A hundred yards across outcrops of rock, fallen boulders, and loose sand. He could die a dozen times before he reached the shelter of the overhang. Again, his hands bunched into fists, and he hugged himself with the fury of impotence.
He had no other choice. Drummond receded in his awareness, as if he had begun clearing out the lumber of his life in preparation for dying. The man might already be coming down the cliff-path, might kill Drummond while he was still running for the cliff-face, but it could not be helped. He slipped out of his jacket, wondered for a moment about his boots but left them on, then began breathing deeply, easily. He lifted his head again, ducked back as the bullet whined across the rocks, waited a moment before turning onto his hands and knees — then thrust himself up and out of the shelter of the rock-pool.
The wind seemed to cut through his wet trousers, the noise of the sea was more ominous, omnipresent, a gull screamed as if to warn the sniper, he felt buffeted and unbalanced. He drove on, senses flooding with information, every inch of his skin alive with nerves that anticipated the impact, the dulling blow of the first bullet.
He jumped onto sand, a shot plucking up shells and sand near his boot, then began weaving in a broken run towards the point. A speeded-up drunk. He moved by instinct, the awareness of his body's paper-like fragility growing with each moment.
His mind chanted in chorus with each thudding footstep, come on, come on, come on — it chimed with the racing of his blood, the hideously loud heartbeat, even with the slowed-down breaths like an undertow. Each step was taking him closer, making the angle of the rifle more acute, more depressed. The sniper had fired only twice since he showed himself. He was waiting, lining up, had him now in the notch of the sight, his progress so much slower from that angle and height, his body bulky and unmissable—
He wanted to shout out, wave his arms, felt his nerve going finally as his sense of his own fragility all but overcame him. He knew his legs were going, slowing down, his breath catching up in pace. And the rifleman was waiting for that, waiting for the exposed fly to lose its nerve, crack. Anything else would be a waste of bullets. He was very close to screaming.
He stumbled into the overhang, felt the cliff at his fingertips, heard the rattle of rifle fire as the man on the cliff-top squeezed off four in rapid succession to express his frustration, the overconfidence outrun and baffled. McBride scuttled forward until he was sitting hunched into the rock, his back pressed against it, shaking, his arms hugging his knees, his breath roaring to drown every other sound. He could not believe that he had made it, even as he accepted that he had survived the gamble that the rifleman would wait just a moment too long for the optimum shot at a target moving towards him. McBride knew — an instructor somewhere had said it — that the first, second, even third man you killed could not be running towards you, could not be so easy a target, growing bigger in the sight-notch. It unnerved, but more than that it rendered complacent, expanded time until it ran out before you noticed.
McBride had never believed the instructor — not completely— until that moment. Now, he wanted to laugh, and vomit while he laughed. He kept his teeth pressed together.
The first man who had opened up on them was nowhere to be seen. Drummond's arm waved from behind some boulders, seemingly a huge distance away, then it went back out of sight. Drummond would have to take his chance.
Recovery time, recovery time—
He forced himself to his feet, and immediately felt light-headed and weak, his legs leaden and useless. He jogged a couple of yards, tried to feel better but didn't, then forced himself into an awkward, shambling run around the point, keeping drunkenly close to the cliff-face for shelter and support, his feet skittering and scrabbling in the loose shale.
He rounded the point, into a notch of rock with a pebbly beach which opened out further on into the cliffs of Toe Head. If he were simply running away now, he could keep on all the way round to Toe Head Bay, away from the two snipers. He moved along the bottom of the low cliff slowly now, eyes always flitting between the rock above him and the places where he carefully put his feet.
A split in the rocks, like a jagged knife-cut. His hand almost caressed it. He slid into it, back braced, boots wedged against the opposite side of the slit. Then he began moving up, using his back, his shoulders, his feet, his grasping hands — scuttling like a beetle or other insect as quickly as he could. The wind seemed to want to dislodge him. He did not look down. It was an easy climb, only difficult because he was climbing towards a rifle, he was already nervously exhausted, and because he was doing it in a hurry. His hands reached over two sharp lips of rock, and he heaved at the rest of his reluctant body — balanced — then raised himself by his arms until his head was just above the cliff-edge, his eyes level with the thin grass, with an old cigarette-end which lay right at the edge of the cliff.