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Largo turned in time to fling up an arm and parry Bond’s stab with his right-hand spear and Bond’s stab with the left rattled harmlessly off the aqualung cylinders on Largo’s back. Bond drove on head first, his hands outstretched for the air tube in Largo’s mouth. Largo’s hands flashed to protect himself, dropping his two spears and jerking back the joystick he had been holding in his right. The Chariot surged forward away from the two guards and shot obliquely upwards towards the surface while the two bodies clung and struggled on its back.
It was impossible to fight scientifically. Both men tore vaguely at each other while their teeth clenched desperately on the rubber mouthpieces that were their lifelines, but Largo had a firm grip of the Chariot between his knees while Bond had to use one hand to hang on to Largo’s equipment to prevent himself being thrown. Again and again Largo’s elbow crashed into Bond’s face while Bond dodged from side to side to take the blows on the mouth and not on the precious glass of his mask. At the same time Bond hammered with his free hand at his only target, Largo’s kidneys, beneath the brown square of flesh that was all he could reach.
The Chariot broke surface fifty yards down the wide cha
Bond was beat, utterly defeated by exhaustion. Now there was nothing for him but to get away and somehow stay alive. The bomb was immobilized, the Chariot gone, careering in circles over the sea. Largo was finished. Bond summoned the remains of his strength and sluggishly dived down towards his last hope, a refuge among the coral.
Almost lazily, Largo, his strength unimpaired, came down after him, swimming in a giant, easy crawl. Bond swerved in among the coral heads. A white sand passage showed up and he followed it, then there was a fork. Bond, trusting to the small extra protection of his rubber suit, followed the narrower lane between the sharp clumps. But now a black shadow was above him, following him. Largo had not bothered to get into the cha
And now the narrow passage was widening. There was the glint of a sandy cha
Largo took a pace forward and then another. Bond crouched, backing carefully, so as not to cut his rubber skin, into the narrow passage. Largo came on, slowly, deliberately. In two more paces he would attack.
Bond caught a glint of movement out in the open behind Largo. Someone to the rescue? But the glint was white, not black. It was one of theirs!
Largo leaped forward.
Bond kicked off the coral and dived down for Largo’s groin, the jagged rock in his hand. But Largo was ready. His knee came up hard against Bond’s head and at the same time his right hand came swiftly down and clamped the small octopus across Bond’s mask. Then from above, both his hands came down and got Bond by the neck, lifted him up like a child and held him at arm’s length, pressing.
Bond could see nothing. Vaguely he felt the slimy tentacles groping over his face, getting a grip of the mouthpiece between his teeth, pulling. But the blood was roaring in his head and he knew he was gone.
Slowly he sank to his knees. But how, why was he sinking? What had happened to the hands at his throat? His eyes, squeezed tight in agony, opened and there was light. The octopus, now at his chest, let go and shot away among the coral. In front of him Largo, Largo with a spear sticking horribly through his neck, lay kicking feebly on the sand. Behind him and looking down at the body, stood a small, pale figure fitting another spear into an underwater gun. The long hair flowed round her head like a veil in the luminous sea.
Bond got slowly to his feet. He took a step forward. Suddenly he felt his knees begi
A hand took one of his. But Domino’s eyes behind her mask were somewhere else. They were blank, lost. She was ill! What was the matter with her? Bond was suddenly awake again. His eyes took in the blood patches on her bathing dress, the angry red marks on her body between the scraps of bikini. They would both die, standing there, unless he did something about it. Slowly his leaden legs began to stir the black fins. They were moving up. It wasn’t so difficult after all. And now, vaguely, her own fins were helping.
The two bodies reached the surface together and lay, face downwards, in the shallow troughs of the waves.
The oyster light of dawn slowly turned pink. It was going to be a beautiful day.
24 | ‘TAKE IT EASY, MR BOND’
Felix Leiter came into the white, antiseptic room and closed the door conspiratorially behind him. He came and stood beside the bed where Bond lay on the edge of drugged sleep. ‘How’s it going, feller?’
‘Not bad. Just doped.’
‘Doctor said I wasn’t to see you. But I thought you might care to hear the score. Okay?’
‘Sure.’ Bond struggled to concentrate. He didn’t really care. All he could think about was the girl.