Drought (41 page)

Santos began to sing, very softly, in his native language, and at the same time slap his thigh and nod his head in time to the words. When he had finished, he said, ‘That was a song my grandmother taught me. It is like a hymn, I suppose. I was asking the Great Spirit to lead me safely up the mountain, so that when I reached the top the rest of my life stretched out before me, all the way to my distant death. I was also asking that the Great Spirit should protect my people from harm, and as far as I am concerned, you are my people now, all of you. The enemy is not red or white. The enemy is greed.'

They waited for over another hour. It was too much to hope that Joseph Wrack had given up and taken his men back to the city. If he had gone to the trouble of coming out here in person to hunt Martin down, he wasn't going to be satisfied until the job was done. They hadn't heard the helicopters lifting off, so they could be fairly sure that the ESS men were still at the head of the valley and preparing themselves for another attack. Maybe they would even wait until nightfall, when the children were all tired, and they could blind them with flash grenades. That was what Martin would have done, if he had been planning an assault on a Taliban camp.

A few more minutes went by, however, and Santos suddenly lifted his head up and sniffed and said, ‘Smoke. I smell smoke.'

Martin sniffed, too. ‘I don't smell anything.'

‘Wait, it will come to you. It is creosote bush burning. Creosote bush and cholla.'

Martin kept on sniffing, and soon he began to pick up the distinctive aroma of burning chaparral. Mina coughed, and George started coughing, too, although he was deliberately trying to cough louder than his little sister.

Before long, gray clouds of smoke began to drift in through the crevice, with shafts of reflected sunlight playing through it. Fragments of white cactus ash danced in the sunlight like moths.

‘What are they trying to do, Dad?' asked Tyler. ‘Smoke us out?'

Martin took hold of his Colt Commando and stood up. ‘It sure looks like it, doesn't it? I think now is the time to see if I can do some kind of a deal with them, if that's possible.' He pointed to his second Colt Commando, which was lying next to their cardboard boxes of food. ‘If anything happens, you know how to use that, don't you, Tyler?'

Tyler gave him a queasy nod.

‘Martin,' said Peta. ‘Please … be really careful, won't you?'

Martin gave her a tight humorless smile and walked across to the crevice. The smoke was billowing even more densely now, and it was so acrid that it burned his nostrils and the back of his throat. He tugged his filthy khaki bandana out of his pocket, the bandana that he had been using to clean his sub-machine guns, and tied it around his nose and mouth. It smelled of cordite and gun oil but it saved him from breathing creosote and cholla ash.

He shouldered his way through the crevice and then cautiously put his head around it. As he did so, he heard a loud howling sound, and a geyser of flame spouted toward him, out of the bushes. He jerked back into the crevice, hitting the back of his head against the rock, and even though the flames didn't reach as far as the valley walls, he felt a searing blast of heat, and he could smell gasoline, too.

He waited a moment, until the howling had abruptly stopped, and then he gingerly looked out of the crevice again. He could hardly believe what he saw. The whole valley was on fire, and almost completely hidden in smoke. The teddy bear cactus were blazing white and fierce and the chaparral branches were glowing red through the gloom like a network of overheating electrical wires.

Out of the smoke three ESS security guards were walking toward the open ground where their tents were pitched, two of them armed with carbines but one of them toting what looked like a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. They were all wearing face masks and respirators, as well as body armor with the ESS logo on it.

At their head was Joseph Wrack. Martin recognized him instantly, even though he was wearing a face mask, because of his iron-gray flat-top haircut. Strapped to his back was an Army-issue flame-thrower, with three khaki tanks on his back, two for gasoline and one for nitrogen gas propellant. He let out a short spurt of fire as he approached, and the last of the bushes burst into flame. He raised the nozzle a little more and let out another spurt, sweeping it quickly from left to right over the triangle of open ground. All three tents instantly caught fire, and were burned into skeletons in a matter of seconds, with blackened fragments of fabric flying up into the air.

As soon as he saw the flame-thrower, Martin knew for certain that there was no point in them offering to give themselves up. Flame-throwers were designed for one thing only – and that was to set fire to people, especially people who were hiding in caves or tunnels or other places where it was difficult to gain access.

Joseph Wrack had now stepped out on to the open ground, with his three men close behind him, and although Martin couldn't tell if he had seen him or not, he was walking directly toward him. He raised his flame-thrower again and Martin urgently shuffled his way back through the crevice and into the cavern. He shouted, ‘
Get back
!' to Santos and Tyler, who were both standing in the center of the cavern, waiting for him. He grabbed Tyler's sleeve with his left hand and barged Santos with his right elbow, so that they both stumbled with him toward the washing pool. He jumped straight in and they both followed him, splashing water over Peta and Ella and Susan and the children, who were crouching in the hollow in the cavern wall.

There was another howl, much louder than before, and a sheet of blazing gasoline roared through the crevice and exploded in all directions. For a few seconds, even the walls and the floor were on fire. Mina screamed and George started crying again.

About half a minute passed, and then another torrent of fire came through, longer than the first, and so powerful that the wall of the cavern directly opposite the crevice, over a hundred feet away, was set alight. Martin stayed waist-deep in the washing-pool, keeping his sub-machine gun pointed toward the crevice, while Santos and Tyler climbed out to join Peta and Susan and the children.

More time went by. They could hear the security guards outside talking to each other, and also talking on their two-way radios. They could also hear some clanking noises.

‘What's happening?' asked Santos. ‘What are they waiting for?'

‘Wrack is probably filling up his gas tanks. Flame-throwers only last for six or seven seconds before they run out of fuel.'

‘So what do we do now?'

‘We don't do anything. They'll probably keep on blasting away for a while, but they can't easily bring that thing inside here because the entrance is too narrow for anybody to make their way through while they're wearing it, and we can pick them off as soon as they appear.

‘During World War Two, they used flame-throwers against the Japs when they were hiding in caves and tunnels. Not to set fire to them, because they couldn't reach them, but to burn up all of the oxygen, so that they suffocated. But of course they can't do that to us here. This cavern's way too big, and way too well ventilated.'

Another few minutes went by, and then they heard a harsh amplified voice. It was Joseph Wrack, speaking through a bullhorn.

‘Makepeace! This is Joseph Wrack, from Empire Security Services. I'm giving you a last chance here, Makepeace. I don't know what happened when Saskia came to talk to you, but it was all an unfortunate accident. My men thought that you were threatening her life, that's why they opened fire. They were under the impression that they had shot you, too, but – well – obviously not.'

He paused, and through the bullhorn Martin could actually hear him licking his lips. It was smoky inside the cavern, but it must have been even smokier outside.

‘That's eleven men of mine you've taken down, Makepeace. Eleven. All with wives or partners and families to take care of. Plus, of course, one helicopter. I think I have every justification for being pissed with you, don't you? However, if you all come out of there now without giving me any further grief, I'll let everybody go, unharmed. You, I'll have to take you in to the cops, that's my legal duty under
posse comitatus
. But you did the crime, Makepeace, and sooner or later you'll have to serve the time.'

Martin looked around at everybody huddled in the hollow. All the gasoline flames had guttered out now, and their flashlights had died, so that he could barely see their faces through the gloom. Just their eyes, glittering.

‘What do we think?' he asked them. ‘Maybe I
should
give myself up. Even if I have to go court, I can call you as witnesses, can't I? I can probably get away with justifiable homicide. Self-defense.'

Peta said, ‘No. Don't even think about. I thought before that you might be able to make a deal with him, but what has he been doing? He's been doing his best to burn us all to death. Any one of these children could have been standing in the way, when he fired that thing. I don't trust him one inch.'

‘Me neither,' said Santos. ‘He is making this offer only because he doesn't know how he is going to get us out of here. We have food here, we have water. We could survive here for many days. Don't tell me that he can afford to stay out there for very much longer.'

‘Do you have an answer for me?' Joseph Wrack called out. ‘I'm not going to wait too much longer. Are you coming out peacefully, or not?'

‘We're agreed then?' said Martin. ‘We're going to try to hold out?'

Nathan nodded enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely. Tell him to go fuck himself.'

He looked around, but nobody said anything to him. It was probably the first time in his life that he hadn't been told to watch his language.

‘What's your answer?' Joseph Wrack demanded. ‘Come on, Makepeace! What's your answer?'

A
s it was, Martin didn't answer at all.

Over the next twenty minutes, Joseph Wrack appealed to him twice more to give himself up, sounding angrier each time. When Martin still didn't reply he said, in that hoarse, amplified voice, ‘OK. Have it your way, you obstinate bastard. Don't say I didn't warn you.'

They heard a scratching sound as he switched off his bullhorn and then a lot more clattering outside.

‘What do you think he's going to do?' asked Ella.

‘I don't know, sweetheart. In the Marines they taught us to think like the enemy thinks. Put ourselves in their shoes, if you see what I mean. Or sandals, rather, with the Taliban. But this Wrack guy … I can't get a grip on the way that his brain works. He promises to do something and he knows you don't believe it but he doesn't seem to care whether you believe it or not, because he was never going to do it, anyhow.'

Tyler said, ‘
What
?' but Santos said, ‘Never mind, young Wasicu. That is white man's logic. Explains nothing, excuses everything.'

Martin climbed out of the washing pool. The bush fires in the valley must have almost burned themselves out by now, because there was very little smoke eddying in through the crevice. He went over to the edge of the lake, knelt down and scooped up several handfuls of water. He drank some, and splashed the rest on his face and on to the back of his neck.

Peta came over and said, ‘I'm sorry about Saskia.'

‘Yes, well, so am I. But I'm much more sorry for the rest of us. Saskia got what she deserved. These kids don't deserve any of this, and neither do you. Your dad always used to say that you and I should never have gotten married, didn't he?'

‘My dad had black days, just like you. He was in Vietnam.'

‘I never knew that.'

‘Yes, he was in the Medical Corps. They had a serious shortfall of surgeons in those days, and he saw a lot of young men die who didn't have to. So I think he understood what your djinns were all about.'

Martin stood up. He put his arms around her and said, ‘I love you, Peta. I never stopped loving you, even when I was going crazy. Maybe even more when I was going crazy. If we manage to get through this—'

She eased herself free from him. ‘Let's get out of here first, shall we? Do you know how
frightened
I am? Do you know how frightened Tyler and Ella and all of those children are?'

Martin said nothing as she went back to the hollow behind the washing pool. Then he bent down and picked up his sub-machine gun. He had heard stories of Muslim fathers in Bosnia shooting their own families and then themselves, rather than let the Serbs get their hands on them, to torture them and rape them. Would he consider shooting Peta and Tyler and Ella and Santos and all of his grandchildren, rather than let them be burned alive, or whatever Joseph Wrack planned to do to them?

He wondered for a moment if Wrack would simply seal the crevice with concrete, in the way that the Serbs had sealed up Muslim mosques and cemeteries during the Bosnian conflict, but that would mean sealing the entrance to the lake, too. If Santos was right, the lake was more important than all of their lives. There had been gold in the Joshua Tree National Park, and there probably still was, but in the middle of this drought, Lost Girl Lake was worth much more than gold.

He walked back over to the hollow. ‘Anybody hungry? How about we all have something to eat? I know that none of us has much of an appetite, but we need to keep our strength up.'

The first explosion was devastating. It made a flat, hard sound, as if two bricks had been banged together very close to their ears. The shock wave that followed it made the surface of the lake ripple, all the way into the darkness of the inner cavern, and then splash fretfully against the ledge. They were all stunned, and the little ones stood with their hands pressed to their ears, temporarily deafened.

Dust and smoke rolled into the cavern through the crevice, but as it dissipated they could see much more sunlight streaming in than it had before, and they could also see that the floor of the cavern was strewn with thousands of fragments of broken granite.