Baird felt completely impersonal as he squinted through the telescopic sights at the guard. The big, fat, red-faced man he could see in the sights was no more human to him than the close-up of a movie star on a cinema screen. Baird thumbed back the bolt, steadied the rifle and drew in a long, slow breath. The sights of the rifle were as if fixed to the guard’s head. It wasn’t a difficult shot: fifty yards, probably a little more, but everything depended on it. If he missed, the cat would be out of the bag, and the whole set-up ruined. His finger began to squeeze the trigger. The guard sat motionless. He seemed half asleep.
His hands rested on his knees, his head was lowered. Slowly and steadily Baird continued to put pressure on the trigger: then suddenly the gun went off: making a sharp plopping sound which was drowned by the steady thump-thump-thump of the diesel engine.
The guard slumped forward very slowly over the machine-gun, as if he had fallen asleep. His hat fell off and rolled away in the dust. His head rested on the barrel of the gun, and blood ran from his right ear in a quick, steady stream on to his trouser cuff and shoe.
Baird looked quickly at the dredge. Neither of the guards was looking towards the hut; neither of them appeared to have noticed that anything had happened.
Baird signalled to Rico. He watched Rico take a bomb from the sack. Rico seemed to be having difficulty in holding it, and it nearly slipped out of his hand. Baird held his breath as he watched Rico set himself and toss the bomb high up in the air. It was a wild, panicky throw, and Baird could see it was going to be wide and short of the dredge, and he cursed.
He watched the flight of the bomb. It seemed to hang in the hot, still air, sharply outlined against the blue sky. Neither of the guards noticed it, but out of the corner of his eye Baird saw Noddy had stiffened and was watching the bomb as it fell.
It landed with a loud splash in the river. Immediately both guards looked in the direction of the sound. The one with the automatic rifle swung up the rifle, looking for something to shoot at. They both stared at the circle of ripples forming on the still water of the river. Then one of them looked across at the hut. He stared, shading his eyes, then pulled out a pair of field-glasses from a case slung around his neck and lifted them to his eyes.
Baird signalled frantically to Rico to throw more bombs, but Rico’s nerve had gone. He crouched down in the swampy mud, hunching his shoulders, waiting for the shooting to start.
Baird’s waving hand at racted the at ention of the guard with the automatic rifle. He threw the rifle up to his shoulder. Baird saw him in the nick of time, and fell forward on to the branch, nearly losing his Winchester as he did so. The automatic rifle cracked three times. Slugs hummed dangerously close to Baird.
Realising no one was shooting at him, Rico managed to get to his feet. Feverishly he began to lob bombs towards the dredge, not looking where they were falling. It was entirely due to luck that two of them landed on the deck of the dredge. They burst, throwing out a mass of white smoke that enveloped the deck and the bridge before the guard could fire a fourth time.