Immortal

45

Ethan hurled himself to one side as a bullet cracked the air beside him, bursting through the fabric of his Bergen. Lopez leapt for cover behind a dense thicket of bushes to her left as the bullet ricocheted off the stony ground and zipped past her.

‘I thought you said not to worry!’ Lopez shouted.

Ethan rolled sideways into cover, squinting up at the hillside as bits of dust and grit stung his eyes. The sky was darkening swiftly, the glow of the sunset giving way to the deep blue of evening. He remained silent and still. Against the sky he could see occasional movement, furtive and sporadic. For a moment he couldn’t believe that their attackers could have launched such a perfect ambush and yet expose themselves so easily at the same time, and then he suddenly understood.

Another shot cracked out, and Ethan spotted a tiny burst of muzzle flame just before it smacked into the earth a few feet behind where he lay. The shot was at least a hundred yards closer than the figures milling about on the hillside.

‘They circled back on themselves,’ Ethan whispered to Lopez, cursing his complacency for thinking that professional soldiers, no matter how old, would have failed to cover their retreat. ‘They’re clearing their tail.’

Lopez’s voice whispered back to him.

‘That’ll teach you to respect your elders.’ Ethan shot her a disapproving glance, which she ignored. ‘There’s too many of them.’

‘I don’t think they’re all on the same team,’ Ethan whispered back, looking across to where his Bergen had fallen when the bullet had struck it. ‘We’d better move before they fall back.’

Ethan belly-crawled across to his Bergen, fumbling inside for a moment until his hand rested on something cold and hard. He pulled the weapon out, checking its mechanism in the darkness before looking up at the hillside.

‘Is that a pistol?’ Lopez asked in amazement.

The Beretta M9 9mm had been the standard issue sidearm of the Marine Corps in Ethan’s day, and he had liked the weapon despite concerns about its stopping power. Compact, light and easy to use, Ethan kept one for what he liked to call ‘special occasions’.

‘These aren’t boy scouts we’re following,’ Ethan whispered. ‘I thought it best to come prepared.’

Lopez didn’t argue, although he could sense a certain tension in the air between them as he started up the hillside, dodging from cover to cover. He knew that she was pissed at him both for not telling her that he’d been carrying and because she would be wanting a piece too.

Another shot burst out, a flash of muzzle flame perhaps sixty yards ahead and twenty higher, illuminating a dense patch of bushes. The shot zipped over Ethan’s head with no more than six inches to spare, the supersonic shockwave thudding through his eardrums.

‘Jesus,’ Lopez whispered, ‘another one like that and we’re going back down.’

Which is what they wanted, Ethan knew. It was the practice of all troops in the Marine Corps, especially special-forces units like recon, that when faced with an attack by a numerically superior force you did the last thing they expected you to do. You advanced, and turned a firepower disadvantage into psychological warfare.

Ethan dropped onto one knee to aim at the spot where the last muzzle flash had appeared and fired two quick shots into the darkness. Two. Instantly he sprang up, running full tilt for twenty paces straight up the hillside before dropping down and firing another two shots into the same area. Four.

Behind him, he heard Lopez laboring up the hillside in pursuit.

Another rifle shot, from further away this time. The shot went over Ethan’s head, higher than the last. He immediately aimed and fired two more shots directly at where the muzzle flash had briefly lit the edge of the hillside. Six. Nine rounds remaining. He leapt up and dashed ten yards forward and a few yards down the hill, dropping down onto one knee again and aiming at the edge of the hillside. Lopez reached his position and sank down onto her knees, breathing heavily.

‘The hell you doing?’

Ethan didn’t look at her, keeping his eyes fixed on the gloomy hills ahead.

‘Trying to make them think there’s more than two of us.’

Lopez was about to speak when suddenly three rifle shots rattled out across the valley, one after the other. Bullets zipped past them, rustling through the bushes or snapping over their heads. Ethan flinched, throwing himself forward and flat onto the earth as Lopez did the same alongside him.

‘Great,’ she whispered as the reports echoed away down the valley behind them. ‘Now they’re all shooting at us.’

Ethan got up and fired two more shots, one each at two of the enemy positions, and then began advancing toward them in a low crouched run. Eight. He dropped down and let fly two more shots, hoping against hope that the enemy would have fallen back in retreat. Ten.

Two more answering shots crackled across the valley, close enough to leave a ringing in his ears, and Ethan saw a larger spurt of flame and a puff of blue smoke less than thirty yards away. A second, from lower down, was forty yards distant and right on target as the shot split the air above their heads. Ethan realized he had a problem: the enemy was now advancing on him.

‘They’re coming back at us,’ Lopez whispered. ‘We need to fall back.’

Ethan shook his head. If they gave ground now they’d end up in a running retreat, and with night now fallen it would be doubly hard to track their quarry. Despite the risk, it was better to remain within range and know where they were.

‘We need the high ground,’ he replied. ‘Otherwise they could flank us and pin us down here.’

The rifles cracked again, the muzzle flash now close enough to illuminate the ground around Ethan. A bullet smacked into the ground five feet from where he and Lopez lay flat against the earth. Ethan rolled sideways, bringing his pistol up and firing back. Twelve.

‘Goddammit, we need to get out of here!’ Lopez snapped.

Ethan looked about desperately in the darkness as a series of rustling noises through the bushes both above and below them betrayed the presence of an enemy-flanking maneuver. Ethan clambered up onto one knee, firing three shots at the nearest shapes moving through the shadows. Fifteen. He reached down to the webbing pouch at his waist, closest to his right hand, grabbing a second magazine. As he yanked it free of the pouch a shout rang out over the hillside.

‘He’s out of rounds! Pig-stick him!’

A burst of noise from the bushes to his right startled Ethan, and he turned to see a figure leap out of the undergrowth and sprint down toward them with a cry of fury. Ethan glimpsed a dark blue coat with yellow arm-stripes, a kepi hat, khaki pants and a bearded face, the man’s mouth agape as the flash of a metal bayonet raced toward Ethan’s face.

‘Get down!’

Ethan shoved Lopez toward the ground as he leapt up, dropping his pistol and magazine and dodging the bayonet as he drove his shoulder into the charging man’s chest. The attacker’s impetus smashed Ethan backward down the hillside, crashing through bushes and scrub in a cloud of dust and sand. The soldier landed on top of Ethan, his heavy musket pinned between them as they rolled over each other. Ethan slid to a halt with the soldier kneeling on top of him with one hand on his musket across Ethan’s chest. As the man raised a fist to punch him, Ethan saw that his kepi hat had fallen off to expose a scalp half decayed, chucks of matted hair spilling out across his shoulders, strips of desiccated skin hanging from the bone.

Ethan shot one hand out as the bony fist flashed down toward him, catching the soldier’s hand and twisting it hard. The soldier cried out as his wrist was wrenched to breaking point, and Ethan smashed his knee up into the man’s back and then hit him hard enough to send him sprawling across the dusty ground. Ethan leapt up, looking desperately for his pistol. The soldier struggled to his feet and whirled to face Ethan, the musket and its wicked bayonet pointing at him once again. Ethan lunged forward to grab the weapon, but as he did so the soldier twirled it over, the bayonet vanishing as the butt whipped up and smacked Ethan under the jaw with a crack that sent sparks of light flashing across his eyes. Ethan staggered backward and collapsed onto the dusty earth as a voice called down the hillside from the darkness.

‘Copthorne? You got ’im yet?’

The bearded soldier grinned down at Ethan with a smile full of gaps, the bayonet hovering above his chest.

‘He ain’t nothin’ but a new piece o’ history, Ellison!’ The man glared down at Ethan and smiled. ‘Time you took a taste of my Arkansas toothpick, boy!’

The soldier took a deep breath and then lifted the bayonet to plunge it into Ethan’s body.

A gunshot shattered the night, louder than all the muskets and pistols, and Ethan saw the soldier above him cry out and leap for cover into the bushes. Another shot followed, gouging a plume of dust up under the soldier’s feet. He leapt up, fleeing down the hillside. There was another gunshot from below and Ethan stayed flat on his back as round after round blasted across the hillside, rattling the bushes further up where the voices had come from. Ethan heard a scattering of panicked cries, and then the sound of boots pounding soft earth receding down the hillside into the distance.

Slowly, Ethan clambered up onto one knee and peered into the darkness.

‘Who’s there? Identify yourself.’

Lopez rushed up alongside Ethan, the pistol now loaded and aiming into the darkness.

A figure stood upright from the bushes, not more than ten yards from Ethan, and in the starlight he could just make out the figure’s long, thick blonde hair and a shotgun.

‘We meet again, hero,’ came Saffron Oppenheimer’s voice as she strode toward them. She looked at Lopez and the pistol in her hands. ‘I’d put that down if I were you.’

Lopez didn’t move. Saffron grinned and clicked the fingers of one hand. From around them in the bushes half a dozen people rose up, each holding a gun of some kind.

‘You’re the ones who were sky-lining yourselves, not the soldiers,’ Ethan said.

Saffron nodded once as Lopez, hopelessly outgunned, lowered the pistol. Saffron walked forward and took it from her before looking at Ethan.

‘A lot’s happened since we last met,’ she said simply. ‘We need to talk.’