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

The man standing beside Jacinto had a rifle slung on one shoulder. He brought the butt up and round sharply, hitting Jimson on the side of the jaw. The girls screamed. Jimson teetered back, fell, then rolled over and got slowly to his hands and knees. He stayed there, mouth wide open, gulping in air and making wordless noises in his throat.
Modesty saw that Rodolfo's gun was lined up on her. She did not move. Jacinto took Rosa by the wrist, speaking smooth words, and began to walk away with her. Her eyes were glazed, she did not resist. The other man followed, grinning. 'Just a drink,' he said. 'It will make you feel very good.'
15
Jimson was kneeling up now, eyes dazed, mouth still wide, one hand pressed against a great lump high on his jaw. He seemed to be trying to say something. Modesty looked at Rodolfo, pointed to herself and then to Jimson. Rodolfo hesitated then nodded, watching her carefully. She got up, went to Jimson and said, 'Don't try to talk. Your jaw's dislocated. Just keep still and bear up hard with your head when I press down. Understand?'
He nodded, his face filmed with the sweat of pain. She put her thumbs in his mouth, one on each side, resting on the lower back teeth. 'Ready? Tense your neck and press up ... now.'' She bore down hard, then sideways. There was a click as the bone snapped back into place. Jimson swayed on his knees, hands pressed to his cheeks. She held him till he recovered.
'Thank you,' he panted. 'Thank you. I must fetch Rosa...'
Her hands on his shoulders stopped him rising. She said, 'There isn't anything you can do, Mr Jimson. They'll kill you.'
'Then ... they must do so,' he said hoarsely, and tried to push her hands away.
Rodolfo said calmly, 'Sit down.' They looked at him and he moved his gun slightly. Jerking his head towards the camp he said, 'They are fools. But I want no trouble. You sit down, sit still. Both.' His chin jerked towards a thin, plain girl huddled against the rock wall. 'Or I shoot that one. Not you. Her. And after her, another.'
Jimson shook his head slowly, stunned with horror. 'But...' he said helplessly. 'ButЧ'
He sank back on his heels and put his head in his hands. Modesty sat down. Rodolfo relaxed.
Ten minutes later they heard Rosa laugh. A stupid, giggling laugh that mingled with the deeper voices of the men. Jimson shivered. Another five minutes later Rosa shrieked suddenly. Jimson jumped as if struck by a whip, the blood draining from his face. He said, 'Dear God, what are they doing to her?'
Modesty looked at him. 'What the hell do you think?' she said roughly.
His whole body was shaking. He stammered, 'Please! We -we must stop them!'
16
'Stop them?' she said, her eyes on Rodolfo. 'How, Mr Jim-son? If we move, that man there will start shooting the girls.'
He pressed his hands over his ears to shut out the sound of Rosa's shrieking, then took them away again as if finding the silence even more intolerable. 'There must be something!' he cried desperately.
'There's nothing.' She lacked the charity to spare him, but there was neither satisfaction nor malice in her voice as she added bleakly, 'You threw away my gun. On principle. You're having to pay for your principles well ahead of the day of reckoning, Mr Jimson. So are the rest of us.'
He stared at her for long seconds and, strangely, her words seemed to calm him. His eyes became unfocused, gazing through her, and he said in a remote wondering voice, 'Yes ... I am being tested.'
Rage seethed in her, but she held it down and said impassively, 'Rosa should be honoured.'
The screams of protest changed to wild sobbing for a while, then began anew. There were guffaws of male laughter, cries of encouragement and advice. Modesty blanked her mind to the sounds.
On the hill across the valley, three hundred yards away, she saw the sentry come prowling slowly into view, a big man wearing a sombrero, like Jacinto. His brother, perhaps. A bad sentry. They all were. Standing on top of a hill against the background of the sky was no way to keep watch.
A flash of light dazzled Modesty. She blinked, moved her head slightly, but the dazzle was repeated, nickering across her eyes. It came from the man on the hill, a reflection from some ornate belt-buckle perhaps...
Her heart thumped suddenly. She put up both hands and smoothed back her hair, twice. The dazzle stopped. The man in the sombrero put his right hand on his hip, dropped it to his side, put it on his hip again. Modesty kept her head down, watching from under her brows and feeling relief flow through her like a healing draught.
Willie Garvin.
The unfailing Willie Garvin, an hour earlier than she had dared to hope. One sentry disposed of. Willie was wearing the
17
man's jerkin and sombrero. Not a reflection from a belt buckle but from the vanity mirror taken from behind the sun-visor of the Mercedes. Willie Garvin had a useful talent for looking ahead.
He stood with the sombrero tilted to shade his face, looking casually around, then brought one hand up slowly to his right ear. What orders?
She waited. He strolled away and passed below the skyline of the hill. Now he would be lying down, invisible in a fold of ground, watching her through binoculars. It took her over five minutes to send the message. The tick-tack code they used would have put it across in a quarter the time if she could have operated freely, but Rodolfo's eye was on her and she had to use the arm and body movements naturally, without emphasis, allowing long gaps between the signals.
At last she folded her arms. The sounds from Rosa were feeble with exhaustion now, just long shuddering sobs, barely audible at this distance. On the hill Willie Garvin stood up, put a hand to his left ear, and melted into the ground again. Message understood.
She turned her head to gaze absently at Rodolfo, and waited, glad that this was to be rifle work. With a hand-gun it was Willie Garvin's resigned boast that he could not hit a barn if he was standing inside it. His short-range weapon was the throwing-knife. With that he was deadly. With any good rifle he was also deadly.
He would have with him the two guns from under the back seat of the Mercedes. One was a CAR-15 carbine, ideal for close quarters. The other was an Ml 4 National Match Rifle, with hooded aperture rear sight, selected barrel and glass-bedded action. It took a twenty-round staggered-row box magazine of 7.62 mm cartridges. With the selector-shaft and lock welded, it could not fire fully automatic. That was not its purpose. On semi-automatic, firing single shots, it was superbly accurate. That was its purpose.
She saw the great exit-wound appear in the side of Rodolfo's head a fraction of a second before the sound of the shot reached her. Even before he toppled sideways she was on her feet and moving fast.
18
As she snatched up the AKM she saw that it was cocked, with the safety in the middle position. She pushed it down for single-shot, took the three spare magazines from the blood-spattered pouches on Rodolfo's chest, then rolled his body forward to make an added barrier extending from the big rock on the edge of the ramp, leaving a small gap between his body and the rock for sighting.
Down flat in the firing position. Laminated wood stock cuddled into her shoulder. Behind her a rising babble of hysterical jabbering from the girls. At the rear of the little plateau they were safe as long as they did not stand up. She thought of calling to them to keep down, then shrugged the thought aside. Anybody who needed telling that would hardly be affected by a bullet through the brain.
Less than ten seconds since the shot. In the camp forty yards away the men were on their feet, staring towards the far hill. They had spread out a little and picked up their guns, puzzled rather than alarmed. A shot had been fired from somewhere up there, but they did not know where the bullet had gone. They did not know yet that Rodolfo was dead.
Rosa, stripped, was crouched on her hands and knees on a mattress of blankets. Hers was the only face turned towards the slope of the low ramp. Modesty raised her head and beckoned with a full-arm swing. Rosa got unsteadily to her feet, holding a blanket about her, and began to move forward. The men were talking, asking each other questions that nobody answered. Rosa was halfway to the ramp when one of them turned, saw her, and gave a shout.
Modesty sighted the AKM on Jacinto and lifted her voice, calling in Spanish. 'Jacinto! Tell your men to drop their guns. You're in crossfire.'
It was useless, as she had known it would be, and she sneered at herself for indulging in the kind of stupidity that costs lives. The wrong lives. Rosa's first, perhaps. Jacinto swung his sub-machine-gun up to the firing position. She dropped him with a shot through the chest, sighted on another man kneeling to aim, and fired again. One, two, three quick shots came from the hill, blending with the sound of her own firing.
19
Panic among the guerrillas. Three men were down, lying still; another crawling, dragging a useless leg. Rosa ran on, grey-faced, trailing the blanket behind her. Modesty held her fire to cover any man who might try to shoot at Rosa. The guerrillas raced for the dry-stone pen, ducking and swerving.
From the hill Willie Garvin fired steadily, not hurriedly, picking his shots. Six men down. Now the remaining guerrillas had reached cover, scrambling over the wall of the pen. Modesty knocked the last man off the wall as he clambered over.
Rosa was at the top of the ramp, eyes blind with terror. Modesty eased down behind Rodolfo's body and turned her head as the girl went past. Jimson was standing at the back of the plateau, a hand to his head as if dazed with bewilderment. The girls were huddled together, crouching or kneeling. With a wail of relief Rosa ran to them, and they received her among them with little cries of pity and comfort, not untinged by an element of awed fascination at the manner of her recent debut into the ranks of the deflowered.
Modesty said in a low, fierce voice, 'Mr Jimson! We may get a grenade up here. Take the girls behind that huddle of rocks over on your right and make them lie down flat.'
Bullets spattered against the rock that gave her cover. She peered round the base of it, through the gap between the rock and Rodolfo's shoulders. From the hill came a long burst of automatic fire, spraying the pen. Willie had changed briefly to the CARЧ15. It would do little harm, unless a lucky shot ricocheted inside the pen, but it served to keep heads down while Modesty studied the situation.
Six men lay scattered about the camp, dead or badly wounded. Willie had dealt with the sentry on the hill. Rodolfo was dead. And she had dropped another as he climbed into the pen. That left five, all under cover now. Even from the hill Willie would not be able to sight them over the five-foot wall. And there were one or two small gaps in that wall where stones had crumpled and fallen out. Good firing apertures for the defenders.
Bullets sprayed the ramp and she felt Rodolfo's body quiver as it was hit. From the hill, single shots again. Willie was back
20