The lights above and behind him were closer; the opfoes were descending the slope in a ragged skirmish line.
There: a sable blotch upon the leaden blur of the sea. Lessing writhed down over the lighter grey of a log and slid into the brackish water. He crawled, wriggled, got to his knees, then to a crouch, only his face and his gun above the tepid, lapping waves. The blotch halted; a white oval appeared at its top: Richmond had turned to look back.
Beams of light cut the darkness. A voice bawled a question. Richmond answered with a hoarse bleat for help. It had to be now.
Lessing raised himself just enough to take aim. He let off everything that was left in the first magazine, fumbled the lever that switched to the second one, and added another half-dozen rounds for good measure. The little weapon chattered, sounding like a child’s toy out here in the open. Richmond squealed, a high, thin sound, like a wounded puppy.
Lessing heard a splash, then floundering. He slid back down into the water two meters from his original position. Lights, shouts, and gunfire poured out of the blackness behind him, and a line of slugs raised roiling foam in the place where he had been.
He crawled, dived, and swam, ignoring the scrapes he got from barnacles in the shallow water. Shots spattered behind him. A slug plunked into the water a meter from his face, and he ducked, stopped for breath, and peered around. Dim, shifting forms were visible against the ink-black of the shore: the opfoes were fishing Richmond out of the drink.
What now? He could leap up to empty his gun into Richmond and his rescuers. No, that was stupid. In Lessing’s book suicide wasn’t unthinkable, but it had to have a purpose.
Lessing was a fair swimmer. He could head straight out into Madolenihmw Bay, then travel parallel to the beach until he could come ashore beyond the club perimeter. Suicide might be more attractive then: gather what survivors he could and return to kill as many of these black-clad murderers as he could. Heroism? No, just revenge.
But why? Why bother? Jameela was dead.
Her death hadn’t hit him yet. Better to act now, while he was still sane, before he went berserk.
Lights clustered around Richmond’s limp body. Five or six opfoes were hauling a stretcher down through the undergrowth. Others were looking out to sea, toward Lessing. They couldn’t see him. He was just a ripple or a chunk of flotsam on the water. He could stay that way for at least another hour before the first glimmering of false dawn. He could still escape.
His foot struck against a hard object: a boulder. He cursed under his breath and veered away.
And he saw something that awoke horror all the way down to the roots of his primordial soul!
Floating right beside him, six inches away, was a human face! The eyes were open, pupilless, and white. The mouth hung agape. The lank, wispy hair was like drowned seaweed.
Memories of nightmare! The dead chiefs of old Ponape! Pacov’s myriad bloated victims!
He thrashed, gulped water, choked, and coughed. He couldn’t help it.
He gathered his feet under him, scraping his ankle against the jagged rock, and found that the water was just neck-deep. He lurched up, fear loosening his bowels.
The face was that of Sami Abu Talib. The boy was dead, quite naked, a dark red corsage of a bullet hole in his left breast. Near him Lessing saw a second body: a girl, also nude, her long tresses tangled with leaves and twigs and wrapped around her face, her breasts bobbing gently in the languorous waves. The opfoes had surprised poor Sami with one of his Brazilian popsies, the last date he would ever enjoy.
Lessing had been seen. A soldier shouted, “Hu stoma!” Others echoed him. Somebody called, “There he is!” Shots spattered the waternearby, and the Arab boy’s corpse jerked and writhed as more bullets struck it.
Lessing dived over the half-submerged rock, seeking deeper water on its seaward side. Something spanged off the boulder, and he felt stinging pain above his left ear.
Dazzling light. A bursting rocket of agony in his skull.
His eyesight dimmed.
There! He was on the outer side of the rock. He let himself sink down into the soft, warm, nurturing ocean, out of sight, beyond harm, down where none could see.
He would hide. His mother wouldn’t find him here. She ‘d search the house in vain. His father would eventually come to help, puffing ineffectually at his pipe and grumbling. But Lessing was hidden, down at the bottom of the bathtub, hidden….
Figures loomed over him. His parents? Only one way out! He thrashed and struggled. He would swim right down the drain, down and down, slipping like an eel through the pipes beneath the house until he reached the sewers, then the river, and eventually the safety of the great, endless, all-embracing sea.
Calm.
Eternity.
He knew nothing for a time.
Then he was awake again. Hands held him, and brusque fingers probed at the left side of his head above his ear. Pain danced there, and he tried to pull away. A gutturally accented voice said, “Hold the bastard. One more stitch.”
“Will he live?” someone else questioned in crisper, lighter tones.
“Why not? But am I wasting my time? Are you just going to shoot him when I’m done?” Something soft pressed against Lessing’s temple, and he heard adhesive tape being ripped from its reel. He discovered that he was strapped to a stretcher, his hands manacled in front of him. His wrists hurt
“We won’t. That’s for headquarters to decide. This is Alan Lessing, the manager of this snakepit. He’s on Captain Levi’s list He goes back to Jerusalem with us.”
“What the hell for?” a third, deeper voice snarled. “Isn’t he the one who thumbed the captain? And Ariel? And the tech-sergeant… whatzizname?”
“Yes. And Richmond too,” Crisp-voice added.
“Who cares about that schmuck? Captain Levi, now…”
“Why was Richmond sent along with this mission anyway?” Guttural-voice interrupted. “Trouble! Trouble!” He mumbled on in Hebrew.
“Hey, I don’t speak Hebrew that well,” complained the man Lessing called Crisp-voice. “It still isn’t the official language in the United States!”
“Not yet, anyway!” said the man with the guttural accent, he who seemed to be the medic.
“Maybe not ever. Not with Outram and his putzes getting cuter every day.”
Somebody in the background muttered, “We’ll take care of them too, just like this bunch.”
“We didn’t do all that well here,” the medic complained. “Got none of their top people except the Arab and the old lady. And this guy.”
Deep-voice snorted. “So what do you want? We took out their whole installation! And little piss-holes like Ponape are going to think a long time before letting these fuckers build new ones!”
“Anyway, Richmond was none of our business,” Crisp-voice finished. “Captain Levi was the only one who was briefed about him. Now they’re both dead.”
“Let’s get this Nazi bastard over to the copters,” Deep-voice suggested. “Our wounded and the other prisoners are already gone, and we’re supposed to be off this shit-pile by oh-three-hundred.” Lessing’s stretcher was lifted, then borne outside along uneven pathways, over obstacles, and through unseen, dew-dripping branches. Flashlight beams swung and danced beside him He guessed dizzily that they were heading up across the parade ground and over to what was left of the communications building.
A new voice, a woman’s, spoke in his ear. “You’ll be all right. Your wound is minor… a flap of scalp torn loose by a rock fragment.” He smelled disinfectant and knew without seeing that here was a tired, middle-aged nurse. She sounded sympathetic.