"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise Pieces Of Modesty" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

The Reverend Leonard Jimson walked at the head of his flock as they moved between two groups of their captors at front and rear. He was singing a hymn with a marching rhythm, encouraging the girls to join him, but gaining only pathetic and spasmodic support.
The girls had stopped crying now, mainly from exhaustion. Modesty Blaise trailed behind them, stumbling, clumsy, fanning flies and mosquitoes from her face with a handful of long torquilla leaves. She felt almost satisfied that she had established herself as the most harmless member of a particularly harmless party.
Almost satisfied, but not quite. On the flank walked a man older than the rest of the guerrillas. Greying hair showed below the straw hat pushed back on his head. He had cold eyes set in a lean wary face, an experienced face. Every now and again he glanced at her thoughtfully. The AKM assault rifle he carried was held easily across his body, ready for immediate action.
Rodolfo was his name. She had heard the others use it. He was not in command of the group. The leader was Jacinto, a big swaggering young man in a sombrero. Modesty took the view that El Mico was not a good picker. Rodolfo should have been in charge. He was by far the smartest man here.
She had not used a word of Spanish. Twice she had called plaintively to Jimson, asking how much farther there was to go. After an exchange with the guerrillas Jimson had twice answered, 'Not very far, I think.'
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She wondered what Jimson was feeling. He had not panicked, and seemed more concerned with quietening the girls' fears than with speculating on what might happen next. Listening to the guerrillas, Modestry gathered that they had been sent across country by El Mico as a strike force to cut the mountain road and deny it to all traffic for twenty-four hours while El Mice's main force carried out some major operation to the south. The twenty-four hours had now passed, and in that time there had been no traffic at all. Except, at last, the bus.
Shooting up the bus had been little more than a reaction to boredom, Modesty thought, though among themselves they were pretending that the attack had been either for some cunning military purpose or for loot. On both counts the results were disappointing.
True, they had found four hundred dollars in the handbag of the crying foreign woman, but the foreign priest and his miserable flock had almost nothing between them. A pity, after such a skilfully executed manoeuvre. It would not do to let the prisoners go, however. That would be for El Mico to decide when he arrived. Perhaps a ransom could be secured for the foreign woman?
One was a rebel and a fighter for freedom, of course, but the practice of holding for ransom had deep roots and it was as well not to discard all the old and profitable traditions of the bandolero too quickly...
Jimson stopped singing. One of the men ahead had spoken to him. He turned, pointed to the flank of a high ridge and said encouragingly, 'We're nearly there, girls. Don't be afraid. We're non-combatants and we have nothing to fear. I shall speak to El Mico when he arrives, and everything will be all right.'
Modesty Blaise gave a tearful, doubtful sniff. The doubt was not assumed. She dropped the remainder of the now sweat-soaked torquilla leaves in a bunch. At the start of the journey, when they had struck away from the road, she had let fall two or three of the broad leaves in the first hundred yards. Since then she had dropped one at each point where there might be doubt about the route they were taking.
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Willie Garvin, even on this scrub-covered waste, would need no help in trailing a single man, much less a whole group. But the dusty, trampled leaves, where no leaves should be, would give him that much more speed and save him casting around where the trail split. Also, the last crumpled few, dropped together, would warn him that he was near die end of the trail and that it was time to move carefully.
The garage people had estimated seven hours to repair the car, but she knew Willie Garvin would never leave them to do it alone - not people who allowed a car to run off a ramp. He would probably take a hand in the work and would certainly supervise. His supervision would be very forceful. There would be no rest for the garagistes of Orsita until the work was done.
Modesty calculated time and distance. The best probability was that Willie Garvin would find the bus and the dead driver in about four hours from now. Allow another hour for him to follow die trail into die hills. So it would be five hours before he arrived on the scene. He would not arrive empty-handed. The Mercedes carried some useful items for emergencies.
But five hours was a long time, in which much could happen. El Mice's men had no reputation for civilized behaviour. Modesty thought it likely that if the bus had carried only men, diey would have been used for target practice on the spot. These guerrillas were young and trigger-happy. The girls, and she herself, had other uses of course, though she fancied that she might be reserved for El Mico. Jimson's chances of survival were very small. His cloth would not save him; he was the wrong brand of priest, an interloper.
They had rounded the flank of the ridge now. After anodier quarter-mile the straggling column passed between two steep slopes of rock. Beyond lay a small valley hemmed by low peaks. Long ago die valley must have been used as grazing ground for a few goats, for on one side stood a dry-stone pen widi a narrow gap in its roughly circular wall. At the far end of the valley a patch of struggling yellow grass suggested some small trickle of water along a gully there.
Not far from the pen was the guerrilla camp - diree pack-mules hobbled near a scattering of bedrolls and bivouac tents.
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And two more men. That made fourteen in all.
Rodolfo, his eyes resting on Modesty as they halted, said, 'Better to keep the prisoners out of die way, Jacinto. Away from the guns.'
Jacinto laughed and shrugged, pushing back his sombrero. 'These?' He gazed at die bedraggled group. 'You are an old woman, Rodolfo.'
'I wish to grow older still.'
Another shrug. 'Do what you please.'
'And you will post a guard for the camp?' Rodolfo pressed, glancing up at die slopes of die valley.
'Of course.' Jacinto snapped out die words irritably and turned away.
The brief exchange confirmed what Modesty already suspected, that Rodolfo was the only competent soldier among diem. The rest were undisciplined bandoleros pretending to be rebels.
Rodolfo looked about him, dien spoke to Jimson and pointed. To one side of die camp die ground rose for about ten feet in a natural ramp, then flattened again to form a small plateau set back in a half-circle of almost sheer rock.
'This way, girls,' said Jimson. 'That's splendid. We shall all be in the shade up there.'
The passing hours had no effect on Rodolfo. He was tireless in his quiet vigilance.
In the camp die guerrillas made a meal, ate, slept and gossiped. They sent a water-bottle to be passed round among die prisoners, and, for Rodolfo, a billycan of chopped meat and beans with dun cornmeal cakes. On a peak opposite die little plateau a man prowled, keeping watch on the approach to die valley. Twice a new man was sent up to relieve him.
But Rodolfo did not sleep, neidier did he seem to want any relief. He sat near the edge of the ramp and to one side, his back to a rock, watching the prisoners, watching Modesty Blaise, the AKM resting across his knees.
Once she rose and began to wander about as if stretching her legs, drawing slowly nearer to him. He lifted die gun and spoke sharply. She pretended not to understand.
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Jimson said anxiously, 'Miss Blaise, he's telling you to go back and sit down, otherwise he'll shoot you. I'm afraid he means it.' She looked scared and hurried back to where Jimson sat in the shade of the valley wall with the girls spread out around him, some of them dozing now.
As time passed their fears had dwindled with the subconscious belief that the longer nothing happened to them the less likely it was that anything would happen. Modesty hoped they were right, but with little confidence. The men were bored. They had eaten, they had slept for an hour or two, and now there was the rest of the day ahead with its long empty hours.
Her wristwatch had been taken. She glanced at the sun, knowing that her estimate of the time would be correct within ten minutes either way. Another hour and a half before Willie Garvin could be expected on the scene.
She thought bitterly of the MAB automatic for a moment. With that, she could have killed Rodolfo from where she sat and reached him in a dozen strides. His gun, the Russian AKM assault rifle firing a short 7.62 mm cartridge, was a good weapon. The average sub-machine-gun on single-shot would at best produce a twelve- to eighteen-inch group at a hundred yards. The AKM would group into six inches at that range. It carried a thirty-round magazine - and Rodolfo had at least two spare magazines in his pouches. She ran over the technical details in her head. Safety-catch mounted on the right-hand side of the receiver. Pushed fully up it was on safe. The middle position, marked by the Cyrillic letters AB, gave automatic fire. For semi-automatic you pushed the safety right down.
The edge of the ramp held a slight hummock, making dead ground on this side. Using that, and using as added cover the rock against which Rodolfo sat, she was reasonably sure that with the AKM she could have held off the whole band for a long time, perhaps even until their losses made them pull out. There would be plenty of losses. The camp was no more than forty yards away and the only cover was the dry-stone pen with its ten-foot diameter and its five-foot wall.
The first thirty seconds of firing would be tactically critical.
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The purpose of it would be to stop as many men as possible reaching the pen, and to drive them back beyond grenade range. A grenade on this confined plateau would be very nasty. Using the AKM on fully automatic wasn't the answer. Too many wasted bullets. She would have to use semi-automatic, quick-fire single shots, choosing the right target for each shot and...
But the MAB lay in a patch of scrub two miles away, and Rodolfo had an instinct about her. He would never let her get within reach of him, in reach of the AKM.
Jacinto and another man came from the camp and up on to the higher level. Smirking, they surveyed the girls. For a moment Jacinto's eyes rested hotly on Modesty, then he shrugged regretfully and looked at the girls again.
So she was to be the first prize, kept for El Mico. Jacinto and his men would make do with second best. Modesty knew with heavy certainty which of the girls Jacinto would choose. Rosa, the plump one with a pretty face, who looked a year or two older than her age.
'Your name?' Jacinto said amiably, pointing.
The girl smiled nervously. 'Rosa.'
'A nice name. We have wine captured from a house we found on our way here, Rosa. Come and have a little drink with us.'
She looked frightened and glanced sideways at Jimson. He stood up and said firmly, 'These girls do not drink strong liquor. I must insist that they stay with me. They are in my care, sefior.'