Page 106 of The Island

She and Jacko were three feet apart now. He’d been drinking but he didn’t look drunk. She could smell his fury. He, no doubt, could smell her terror.

He tried to get the gun off his back but she was too close so he changed his mind and punched her in the face. A fast, little bony rabbit punch that connected with her cheek and hurt like hell.

She staggered backward and scraped her ankle on a piece of rock.

Jacko swung at her again with a right hook, but this one missed and overbalanced him now. Jacko, however, had been fighting with his brothers and cousins since he could walk, and he recovered quickly. He kicked Heather in the left kneecap.

She’d been watching his hands and hadn’t expected a kick.

It caught her unawares, sending a shooting pain up her entire left side. It was like his feet were made of iron. Her left foot gave way; she went down and she knew she wouldn’t get up in time to prevent him kicking her again.

He didn’t do that.

Instead, he took three steps away from her and then, carefully, he took the rifle off his back and pointed it at her.

“Now, you just sit right there, sweetheart,” he said. “Drop that blade you got.”

She shook her head and tried to get up.

The pain in her knee was horrific.

She had to save Olivia, she had to keep going, this was the only—

“I said stay still! Don’t you bloody move a muscle. This is a Lee-Enfield Number Four. Me granddad killed three men with this at Tobruk. At this range it’ll split your head in half. You get me?”

She nodded.

“Drop the blade!”

She dropped the machete.

“Take three steps back.”

“I don’t think I can get up.”

“On your arse, then, backward, away from the blade.”

She did as she was told.

“Now, you just sit there on the ground and don’t do nothing.”

Olivia groaned behind him and tried to move. She’d been hit hard and her mouth was bleeding. Jacko stepped on her back, shoving her into the sand. He took a little yellow walkie-talkie out of his pocket. “Ivan, are you there?”

Static.

“These things are terrible,” Jacko told Heather. “No range. Toys, really.” He pressed Talk again. “Oi! Ivan! Are you there?”

Static.

He gave the walkie-talkie a shake. “Oi, Ivan, are you bloody there?”

“We’re here…we were just checking the body of the Kraut woman,” Ivan said through a blizzard of hiss.

“You won’t believe what I done now,” Jacko said.

“What?”

“I’ve only gone and caught the Yank woman too, haven’t I.”

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