18- Quiller Salamander by Adam Hall

Author:Adam Hall [Hall, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781932100181
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 1994-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Page 83

He'd finished vomiting but the air was putrid and I moved away a little, observing him. His face was bloodless under the dirt, his eyes closed; his breathing was steady but faint, his chest hardly moving. The assault rifle was lying near him, but not near enough for him to reach it before I could if I saw him move.

He began moaning now and I hated that: a scream I can handle because it's simply the sound of shock, but a moan is a plea for help and I couldn't help him.

He's one of the people who blows the legs off little children.

Well said, and timely.

Think, keep thinking. How long would it be before they came out here to see why these two hadn't returned, performed the execution and returned?

Not long.

I crawled towards the man and lay close to him, put my mouth to his ear.

'What will happen on the nineteenth?'

He didn't answer.

There would be a case, there would be a case here of inflicting further pain on him, if I thought it would impress him, persuade him to answer me, and it would have been acceptable for me to do that, to further traumatize this blower-of-the-legs-off-little-children; but it wouldn't physically be possible: pain was already roaring in him, and there was nothing I could add that he would feel.

Fear, then, of death? I felt for his throat. 'What will happen on the nineteenth?'

It would be nice to have something to debrief to Pringle, Flockhart, something perhaps conclusive: a Pol Pot attack on the capital, an assassination attempt on the king, something I could call information, which was what I was here for, putting more pressure on this man's windpipe, letting him think of death, using both thumbs and working inward - and then he moved and I was fighting off a claw-hand strike to the eyes and going down and rolling over, blocking a fist and forcing a heel-palm to the nose and missing, feeling the slickness of blood as the skin came away, my breath coming short as he struck again and the fear of death was mine, not his, until I found purchase for my left shoulder and drove a half-fist into the larynx and felt the cartilage snap and he reeled sideways and dropped, dropped like a sack with blood creeping from the corner of his mouth.

I got up and stumbled across the stones, found my way to the nearest jeep, my own, and dragged out two bottles of Evian water and went over to the other jeep and found the key still in the ignition, here was the trick, the point of no return: I hadn't got the strength to make my way out through the mountains on foot - they'd be here soon now, wanting to know why their comrades hadn't returned.

The engine fired at once and I took the thing through the gears as quietly as I could. The Chinese-built vehicle was larger than mine, would be faster - but they'd hear

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