Solo

crowning stone ball. It was a dense dead weight, incredibly heavy. He shuffled with it to the edge of the battlements that projected out over the wide door that led from the drawing room to the lawn. Come on, Kobus, he said to himself, muscles straining – you must be curious, Bond is out there, Dawie has him.
    The door opened slowly and a wand of light from the drawing room fell across the lawn.
    Kobus Breed stepped out cautiously, a gun levelled in his hand.
    ‘Dawie?’ he shouted into the blackness. ‘Where the hell are you, man? You’re not coming through on your radio! You keep breaking up!’
    Bond looked down on him, his muscles beginning to ache horribly. Breed’s head was a small target from this height – but he wanted to crush it like a ripe cantaloupe melon.
    Breed stepped out another yard, his gun sweeping to and fro, expecting the danger to lie in the park beyond, not from above.
    ‘Dawie – show yourself! Have you got him?’
    Bond dropped the stone ball and took a step back. He heard the impact – the sound of meaty crunching, bone and flesh compacting – and Breed’s bellow of acute, hideous agony and surprise.
    He peered down. Breed was on the ground, writhing and moaning, his right arm flapping uncontrollably like some broken wing on a bird. The ball had missed his head but seemed to have landed square on his right shoulder, shattering bone, pulverising it.
    Bond slid down the drainpipe and, back on the ground, cautiously approached round the side of the building, slipping his Beretta from his pocket. He should just kill him, he thought, but he wanted Breed to know why he was dying, why his pain and imminent execution were recompense for what he’d done to Blessing. There’d be no point in just blowing him away. Bond wanted to taste sweet revenge.
    Bond levelled his gun as he drew near. Breed was face down – the stone ball beside his head – and was clearly in massive, intolerable pain and shock. His whole body was now jerking and twitching spasmodically. The stone ball’s impact looked like it had shattered the shoulder blade – and the collarbone. The down-force of the dead weight had also blasted the humerus into pieces. Three inches of thick sheared bone stuck through Breed’s shirt at the elbow.
    Bond turned Breed over with his foot. Breed screamed as his shattered arm dug into the turf of the lawn. But in the good hand that had been underneath his body he had clung on to his automatic pistol. He fired at Bond and missed – his hand was shaking visibly – and fired again, this time the bullet striking Bond’s gun and spinning it off and away in a shower of sparks. Bond threw himself down, knees first, on to Breed’s chest and felt ribs crack and his sternum bend. He side-kicked Breed’s gun from his hand and rummaged in his jacket pocket for the switchblade. No switchblade but the small aerosol can of Savage Heat pepper spray.
    Bond sprayed Breed’s un-closable open eye with a thick mist of oleoresin capsicum and heard his scream rip up from deep in his lungs. Breed’s right arm was useless so Bond stood on his left and let him writhe in the full torment of his pain, his legs kicking convulsively, the potent reduction of chilli peppers working on his seething eyeball. Breed wailed like a baby and Bond happily enveloped his head in another mist-cloud of Savage Heat.
    ‘This is for Blessing, you filth, you scum,’ he said, harshly, bending over him, ‘and this is from me,’ and sprayed his open eye again from a range of one inch.
    Bond reached into his other pocket for the switchblade. He shot the blade out and tugged Breed brutally over on to his front again, burying the knife deep in the back of his neck, severing the spinal cord. Breed’s body jerked and then went slack, his screams dying to a burble of popping saliva in his throat.
    Bond stepped back, breathing heavily, a little astonished at his own savagery. He massaged his tingling right hand and reminded himself of what Blessing had gone through – no tender mercies from Kobus Breed. He was angry with himself, however: never again, he thought – execute when the moment presents itself. Emotion – desire for just revenge – had undermined his professionalism, and had almost killed him. If you intend to kill – kill. Don’t hang around wanting to embellish the act in some way. He could hear Corporal Dave Tozer’s harsh voice in his ear: ‘DR, you stupid bastard. Disproportionate Response. Any threat