The big automatic in Dave's hand seemed to take charge of what happened next and with the laser-sight it was as easy as taking a photograph with some idiot's idiotproof camera. In a split second his entire world was reduced to a red circle with a central dot floating inside it, and Dave had fired several times more before the door behind him banged hard open again, knocking him onto the blood-spattered bed.
Dave slipped to the floor, pursued by this new assailant, whose hand gripped the fist holding Dave's gun as tightly as the other held his windpipe. Dave punched the man hard underneath the chin, but with no result and the two struggled to their feet only to crash through the door of the en-suite head. For a second, the grip on his windpipe released, and Dave could smell the cordite in the air from when he had fired the shots. He might have shot his attacker too if the barrel of his gun had been shorter. They collapsed over the edge of the empty bath, Dave's wrist caught on the shower door and the gun clattered into the bath underneath him. Dave lunged at the man with the top of his head, butting him hard in the mouth, then fell back against the tiled wall. He reached down below him for the gun but by the time he had the grip in his hand, the man had hauled the nylon clothes line out of the wall-mounted spindle and had wound a good length of it around Dave's neck. This time the grip was tighter and Dave kicked out in front of him, his boot smashing the glass in the shower door. The guy was strangling him. Twisting one way and then the other, like a dog on a short lead, Dave tried to elbow the guy in the stomach, but his own vest and the machine gun got in the way. Another minute and it would all be over. Another sixty seconds and he would be dead. Already he could feel the edges of his world becoming dark and hazy, as if the void was closing in upon him.
The head door slammed open and something spat twice into the air, jolting the man behind him like a bolt of electricity. The pressure on the line around his neck slackened and hot steamy liquid trickled down the back of Dave's neck. It was another second or two before he realized that it was blood from the dying man who groaned as Al lifted Dave clear of his attacker. Then Al stood back, levelled the silencer and fired another shot into the guy's throat, just to make sure.
Al looked anxiously at his coughing partner and asked, 'You OK?'
Trembling, Dave took a deep and unrestricted breath. Holding his nylon-burned neck, he stuck his throbbing head under the cold shower, hardly paying attention to the blood still running out of the dead man's bullet wounds and washing down the plug. When Dave finally answered Al, his own voice sounded as if he'd smoked a couple of cartons of cigarettes.
'I think so. Thanks. He'd have strangled me for sure.'
'Don't mention it. Kind of fuckin' actor are you anyway? I mean, there are no Oscars for what happened down here. Not even a lousy Emmy. Goddamned bedroom. It looks like The Wild Bunch through there.' Al lit a cigarette for Dave. 'Here. This'll help you get your breath. What did happen in there, as a matter of small academic interest?'
Dave pulled a towel over his head and sighed.
'Damned if I know.'
'It's like I said, then. The Alias Smith and Jones factor? It's bullshit. People carry guns, people get shot. Stands to reason.'
'They gave me no choice. I had to shoot them. It was them or me.'
'No doubt about it. I guess there was something about your manner they objected to. Me, I can relate to that. Your small talk can be like fleas sometimes. It itches like fuck. The sight of that badge drove 'em to it, perhaps. Who the fuck knows? But it's lucky for you I came down here or you'd be John Brown, man.'
'They thought we were pinching them. They thought it was a real bust. That's why they went for their guns.'
But Al hardly cared to listen. He was already heading back through the stateroom where the two bodies lay grotesquely twisted on the bloodstained bed, on his way upstairs. He said, 'The fuck difference does it make now? They're dead, ain't they? For them it was a real bust. Dead's the biggest bust there is.'
Coming upstairs into the moonlight, Dave took a deep breath of the cool night air. The Britannia looked so pure and white that it was hard to connect it with the bloody scene in the master stateroom below. It was a couple of minutes before he realized what else had happened.
'The storm's died away,' he said.
'That's what I came down to tell you,' said Al. 'Happened just like that.'
'I guess that's something.'
'Still want to do this the hard way?' asked Al.
'Meaning?'
'No killing.'
'More than ever.'
'You're being a mite particular, aren't you? These guys ain't gonna be any more co-operative than the three we just greased.'
