‘Got my right foot under it. See if you can lever it up.’

They faced one another, two men at the centre of a river, with their arms bound tightly behind their backs and bullets all around.

‘I can’t find it.’

‘Put your foot on my leg and follow it down.’

As the toe of Ansell’s boot came down MacConnachie’s shinbone, he felt the heel knock the gun from the top of MacConnachie’s foot.

‘You stupid…!’

‘I’ve still got my foot on it.’

‘Get it underneath – lever it up.’

As he said this, MacConnachie turned his back to Ansell and lowered himself into the water, reaching behind him with groping fingers into the slime. Ansell could feel the metal slithering about on the toe of his boot. Don’t let it slip, he prayed, don’t let it fall. He eased it up with infinite caution.

‘I’ve got it!’

‘Easy, easy…’

MacConnachie was leaning right back now, only his face above the surface, his hair trailing like weed in the water. This time, it was his water-clumsy fingers that knocked the gun to the bottom again.

‘Oh sweet God Almighty!’

In a rage of frustration he turned about, plunged his head down into the filth and reappeared a moment later, the gun clamped between his teeth, his face plastered with muck and slime. This action released a vile stench which rose in bubbles to break on the air.

He grunted frantically until Ansell, interpreting him, turned his back and reached behind him for the gun. The next moment it was in his hands and they were floundering towards the bank, bullets slapping the water all about them.

Then Ansell fell. So great was his anxiety not to let MacConnachie down that he clutched the gun as though it could save him, forgetting to compose his features. Mouth open, breathing in, he swallowed.

His next clear apprehension, moments later, was of being seized by the scruff of the neck and dragged through the shallows, vomiting and retching. Then, at the touch of solid ground, his legs started to function again and MacConnachie, able to open his jaw to release him, shouted,

‘Give me the gun!’

‘I’m all right!’

But MacConnachie took it and ran for the nearest cover, crouching low. Ansell followed. They fell against the earth and lay there, gasping.

Hunched awkwardly on to his left side, MacConnachie peered up at the mountain. No scent of danger came to him from that direction. In any case, common sense told him that eight hours of heavy downhill labour lay between their late captors and themselves. But on this side of the river he could feel the faint, persistent tug of distant alarm, and he turned his attention to their new territory.

Immediately ahead lay a small area of pimple and scrub. This gave way almost at once to the first slopes of a range of hills that stretched from left to right to fill their entire field of vision with solid undulation. Somewhere beyond these hills, though hidden now by the nearer crests, stood the peaks of a vast mountain range that had become his objective the moment he had sighted them two days before. Once in those mountains, they would have a chance; the initiative would pass from the Goons to them. But first they had to establish their break. Then they had to get there. He rose and said,