The Big Killing by Robert Wilson Read Free Book Online

African's empty left hand gripped the Land Cruiser's roof rack. His right hand, still with the gun, pushed up off the door frame. His legs kicked up behind him. Another shot, another white line across the retina, and brown water burst in a puddle to my left. Then impact—the right corner of my car slammed the jeep's door shut. The cabin blacked out. The Land Cruiser rocked. The man's knees, elbows, toes and heels scrabbled across the roof rack. A body splashed in water. An engine howled.
    I turned the headlight on. The track was a hundred metres away. The ground was troughed and shadowed with plateaux of light from the rain water. The car's suspension panicked and jarred, the frame of the windscreen swerved and dipped. Different patches of trees held their leaves up against the light.
    I hit the path and cut the headlights to sides only and eased my foot off the accelerator, still in first gear, the engine not screaming any more. Another shot cracked off. The car crawled up the slope. The front end slid right—the wheel, violent in my hands, snapped at my fingers. The tyres ripped over the slippery ruts of the track and caught on the drier central ridge but slid back and zipped in the mud. The car crabbed sideways and forward, the angle crazed, the tyres chewing at the road not catching, the body slewing and then rearing at the track's edge. The rubber caught, the chassis lunged with the sound of gravel pock-marking the underseal. Another shot—the sound of ice cracking over a river and something with a sharp bite, like a horse fly, stung my neck. The car scrabbled like a desperate climber on a chute of scree. Another shot—the trees closer, my shoulders hunched forward, face up against the glass, the trees even closer but not in them yet, one more shot and then into the noise of the trees, the drops of water slapping and gonging on the metal. A warm trickle dropped below my collar, pooled in the clavicle hollow and ran down my chest.
    I stabbed the headlights on, which lit the tunnel of vegetation leading out on to the flats of the pineapple plantation. The car baulked at the rain-filled troughs across the track. The shock absorbers did what they were paid to do. The displaced water shot off into the night with the sound of torn paper. My eyes flickered between the rectangles of mirror, waiting for headlights to appear.
    The gully between the track and the graded road was flooded and I hit it at speed, the rain water pouring over the bonnet up to the windscreen. The car clawed its way up the bank as I lashed out at the wipers which swiped the screen in double time. Still no lights appeared in the mirrors. Steam poured out of the wheel arches and the engine faltered, leaving blank spaces in my chest. The fan belt screeched like a stuck pig as the car humped on to the road, the windscreen squeaking dry under the crazed wipers. The Peugeot gripped the road and I rallied through the gears back to Abidjan looking for lights, but the mirrors shone black all the way.
    It was nearly eleven o'clock by the time I reached my room near Grand Bassam and the power was off. I flexed my fingers, still stiff from gripping the steering wheel, lit a hurricane lamp and drank from the neck of a bottle of Bell's. I flopped under the mosquito net with it, and stared at the fan which hadn't worked even with electricity.
    My thoughts steadied in the yellow light which swayed lazily on the walls. I could see the Land Cruiser's driver, the white man who was supposed to make the drop, not sleeping but dead. There was no blood on him but he was stretched back, stiff, a line across his neck, the garrotte tied around the seat's head rest. The African I'd only seen for a second. His hair was close cropped and he had soft, rounded features with the light skin of a Métis which had shown three tribal cicatrices on the cheek dark against it.
    I turned the lamp off and took a final suck on the bottle. My jaw began to loosen off and I went to