John Gardner Bond 28 Seafire

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Instinctively, he felt that he was being watched.
It was some twenty yards to the end of the street. The first shot came as he
reached the point where the cobbles ended and the remains of the buildings ran
into what was virtually a T-junction. He heard the crack as the bullet hit the
stone just to the left of his head, gouging a small crater, splaying dust that
fell across his visor.
He ducked to the right, flicking the visor up and jumping into the ruined
street that formed the crosspiece of the T, fanning his hands in a wide
circle, gripping the butt of the pistol a shade too tightly.
There was movement to his left and he reacted, swinging his body in that
direction without moving his feet, squeezing off the standard two shots. The
figure was too quick for him, ducking back down an alley before the first
bullet struck the wall where, a split second earlier, the man had been
standing.
He turned again, knowing that the two men were trying to circle him, coming in
a pincer movement. Sweeping his hands from left to right, back hard against
the stone, he whirled in the direction of the target he had just missed. As he
wheeled to his left a second time, something moved in the periphery of his
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vision. This time he was faster, hands coming up to a firing position and
centering the guttersnipe sight of the ASP on the black-clad figure's chest.
The two rounds he fired both slammed into the target, ripping at the leather,
sending a sickening gout of blood and viscous matter into the wall behind him.
Now the odds had evened.
He turned left again, reached the junction where a line of uneven ruins made
another rough street, parallel to the one in which he had left the Daytona.
For a second his mind drifted and he felt that he was among ghosts, the men,
women, and children who had once peopled this place; laughing, arguing,
loving, and dying. Taking a deep breath he moved, stepping out cleanly, in a
firing position, ready to take out anything that lay in his path.
The street was empty, but he could see that the man he stalked might easily be
crouched within one of the undulating, fragmented buildings. The ground under
his feet began to angle down. For a second he looked past the end of this row
of bleached masonry and saw the beginning of the fantastic view that looked
out right across the Guadalquivir Plain. This one lapse of attention almost
cost him his life, for this time two bullets came from the left, shattering
the stillness and hitting the old stonework to ricochet with a deadly whine
within inches of his face.
He returned the fire, shooting only in the general direction from which it had
come. In the quiet that followed he could hear the thudding of boots moving
away from the clumps of stone.
He took off down what was left of the street, changing magazines as he did so,
feeling a terrible draft of frustration as a motorcycle engine burst into life
from nearby. The second killer had got to his Bond's machine, and he
hurtled down the slight hill, pistol still in both hands as he came out on the
edge of the ruins. He saw the motorbike moving slowly to his left,
disappearing from view, toward the plain that stretched below.
As he reached the open he saw it again, rushing down a grassy slope, heading
straight for the remains of the town's amphitheater, now an irregular oval of
stone benches, with the big acting area far below. The Daytona was bumping
almost casually down what had once been an aisle leading through the seating,
the rider trying desperately to put on speed, but braking constantly to keep
balance on the sheer angle of the hillside.
It was a long shot for a pistol, but his hands were steady as he brought the
sights to bear. Later he realized that he must have fired off practically a
whole magazine of ammunition. He felt the weapon jumping in his hands and saw
the little explosions of dust around the motorbike, then the two shots that
caught its rider in the back, lifting him into the air and returning him to
the saddle, his body slumping over the handlebars. As the Daytona slewed to
one side, now out of control, Bond reflexed, putting two more shots in the
vicinity of the target.
The rider was still actually on the bike as it toppled over, the leather strap
of the satchel slung across him over the right shoulder so that the pouch
rested against his left hip as the bike and body slid in a long jarring skid
down into the acting area of the amphitheater.
It was Bond's last shot that hit the gas tank.
He saw the flame dance from the bike before he heard the roar of the
explosion. The fire seemed to flicker and then rise, enveloping machine,
rider, and the satchel he carried in what looked like an unquenchable blossom
of flame.
Bond leaped forward, running at full tilt down through one of the aisles
toward the disaster here, where hundreds of people had laughed and cried, he
imagined that he could hear cries urging him on. By the time he got to the
furnace bursting around the motorcycle, devouring its last rider, he realized
that the cries were real, but they came from Spanish police officers ringing
the edge of the bowl above him.
The smell of burning flesh wrapped around his nostrils as he plunged a gloved
hand into the fire and pulled at the blackened satchel that was just about to
be eaten by the flames.
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