Crocodile Tears

by Anthony Horowitz

  He had to rely on the map and his own sense of direction. To start with, he had kept the river on his right—near enough to glimpse the water through the trees but not so close as to attract the attention of whatever might be lurking within it. That was his greatest fear. He was in the middle of a killing field—and he wasn’t being escorted around like a tourist in a four-by-four. It had been midday when he set out and most of the animals would have been asleep, but the sun was already beginning to cool and very soon they would awaken and begin their ceaseless search for food. Was he prey? He could imagine his scent creeping out. All around him, invisible eyes could be watching his progress, already measuring the distance. He had seen elephants, monkeys, and, of course, crocodiles. What other horrors might be waiting for him around the next corner if he was unlucky? There could be lions or cheetahs. He had thought of taking the Dragunov sniper rifle or searching Rahim’s pockets for other weapons, but in the end he had decided against it. Rahim might need them when he recovered consciousness. Now he wished he hadn’t been so generous.

  After about half a mile, he had turned away from the river, heading in what he hoped would be the direction of the dam—and it was then that his progress became harder. This time it was the map that was deceiving him. It hadn’t showed that the ground sloped steeply uphill, although he should have worked it out for himself. Rahim had told him that the water held back by the Simba Dam flowed through two hydroelectric turbines. Since water only flows downhill, it was fairly obvious that he would have to climb.

  It was hard work, weighed down in the hot sun. And the African landscape was huge. He knew he had only two miles to cover, but somehow the distances seemed to have been magnified so that even a shrub or a tree right in front of him always took too long to reach. Worse still, after leaving the river behind him, Alex had lost all sense of direction. The colors were too muted: the pale greens and browns, the faint streaks of yellow and orange. You could hide a herd of elephants here and not see them. There was nowhere for the eye to focus. There were no people, no houses, nothing that looked like a pathway or a road. This was the world as it must have been long ago, before man began to shape it to his needs. Alex felt like an intruder. And he was utterly lost.

  But as long as he was climbing uphill, he had to be going the right way. He stopped and took out Rahim’s water bottle. He had already drunk from it three times, and he had tried to ration himself, but even so, he was surprised to find it almost empty. He finished the last drops and slung the empty container into the bush. Let the Kikuyu tribesmen pick it up. Alex had no doubt that they were already closing in behind him.

  The bush ahead suddenly parted. Alex froze. It was an animal of some sort, small and dark, hidden by the long grass. And it was headed toward him. For a moment he felt the same uncontrollable terror that McCain had inflicted on him at the crocodile pit. If this was a lion, then it was all over. But then he relaxed. The animal was a warthog. For a moment it stared at him with its small, brutish eyes. Its upturned nose sniffed the air, and Alex could imagine it asking itself the same question it must ask every day. Food? Then it made its decision. This creature was too big and probably wouldn’t taste very nice. It turned around and fled the way it had come.

  Alex looked back. What time was it? There was a mountain ridge over to the west, lost in the heat haze like a strip of gray silk. The sun was sinking slowly behind it and there was already a faint moon visible against the clear blue sky. A meeting place of night and day. Alex wiped a grimy hand over his face. A mosquito whined in his ear. He wondered if Rahim had woken up yet. What would the Indian agent do when he discovered he was alone?

  A movement caught his eye. At first, Alex thought he had imagined it—but there it was again. An animal? No. About a dozen men were making their way toward him. They were still at least half a mile away, far down at the bottom of the slope that Alex had been climbing. They were spread out in a line and Alex could just make out their black faces, the combat clothes they were wearing, and the weapons they carried or had strapped to their backs. He knew exactly who they were. He also knew that if he had seen them, they had seen him. If he stayed where he was, they would be with him in less than fifteen minutes.

  Forcing himself on, he broke into a run. There was a thicket of trees to one side and he made for it, wondering if he might be able to lose himself among the trunks and branches. But it was a foolish hope. Alex knew that McCain’s men must have been tracking him from the start and that a single broken blade of grass or a fallen leaf would have been like a flashing neon sign for them. Now it was just a question of speed. Could he reach the dam before they caught up with him? Could he detonate the bomb? Alex had no doubt that he was going to be captured and killed. But he would die more happily if he knew that he had beaten McCain.

  The wood ended as suddenly as it had begun. On the other side was a field and the first man-made object that he had seen since he set out . . . the remains of a low wooden fence. He leapt over it and continued running, aware that he was surrounded by a very different sort of vegetation. It was wheat! Incredibly, he had actually found his way to McCain’s wheat field. So the dam must be directly ahead of him. He still couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. If he just continued forward he would have to come upon it.

  Suddenly, he was racing through the stalks. He could feel it scratching at his ankles and his hands. It surrounded him. And with a jolt of horror he wondered if it had switched yet, if the spores had done their work. If so, he was running through a vast field of poison. Each one of these bright yellow blades could be the death of him. The very air he breathed could be full of ricin. Grimly, Alex kept his lips tightly shut and his arms held high. It seemed incredible to him that McCain could have done this: taken something as natural, as universal as a wheat field and turned it into something deadly.

  He glanced back. There was no sign of his followers. Seeing them had given him new speed and determination. Over to one side he saw the electricity pylon that he had spotted before, or one identical to it—not steel, but wood, and only four or five yards high. It was still a quarter of a mile away, but he made for it. The wires would lead to the turbines and the turbines had to be somewhere beneath the dam. He tried to remember on which side he had seen the track. That would be the fastest way forward. Was it possible that Njenga had come after him in the Land Rover? No. Alex would have heard the engine by now.

  The wheat, waves and waves of it, crunched beneath his feet as he drove his way through it. He liked the sound that it made. He wanted to crush as much of it as he could, but the field seemed to go on forever, trapped between the two rock faces that rose up on each side.

  Where was the dam? He should have been able to see it by now.

  The wheat suddenly ended—so abruptly that it was as if Alex had fallen from one world to another. He was on the track! There it was, right underneath him. So how far did he have to go? How much farther could he go? He glanced back. There was still no sign of the Kikuyu tribesmen, but the wheat would cause them no problems. In fact, the trackers would have a field day. Alex would have left a highway for them to follow. He had to keep up his pace. They would surely have doubled theirs.

  The track had once been covered with asphalt, but it was full of potholes now, with weeds and wild grass sprouting through. Alex guessed it would be used both by the farmers coming up to harvest the wheat and by technicians working on the hydroelectrics. He could make out tire tracks and hoofprints. It was an easier surface for running, but he was still going uphill and his mouth was dry. He resisted the temptation to look back. He had no time to waste. His muscles were taut and his whole body was tingling with the anticipation of a knife or a bullet in his back.

  And then the track turned a corner and there, ahead of him, was the Simba Dam.

  It was completely bizarre and out of place. That was Alex’s first thought. This huge gray wall had been constructed in the middle of all this unspoiled nature, and it had no right to be there. It wasn’t exact
ly ugly. Indeed, the great curve, stretching from one side of the valley to the other, had a certain gracefulness. Beaten by the sun, the concrete had faded so that it blended in with the rocks that surrounded it. But it was still a scar. In a strange way, it reminded him of what had happened to McCain’s face. The dam cut the landscape in two, and the two halves didn’t quite meet.

  Alex stumbled to a halt and stood there panting, his entire body covered in sweat. He desperately needed a drink. He wished now he had taken more care with his water supply.

  There was no sign of the lake from where he was standing at the very foot of the dam, surrounded by discarded pieces of cement and broken rocks that must have been blasted during the construction. The surface of the water had to be about ninety feet above him and, of course, on the other side. He could see enormous slots in the wall, oversized letter boxes with what looked like metal gates cutting them in half. Presumably these could be raised or lowered to allow the water to spill through. Alex tried to imagine the amount of pressure that must be pushing against the wall itself, the tons and tons of water being held back. There was nobody here. Somewhere—perhaps in Nairobi—someone would press a button and a sluice would open. And then some of the water—just a few million gallons—would rush down a series of hidden pipes to the turbines, where its energy would be siphoned off to provide electricity before it was finally released to feed the crops.

  Suddenly the bomb he was carrying felt very small. As he followed the track to its end, the Simba Dam loomed over him, much bigger and more complicated than anything he had imagined. It curved in two directions, forming a letter C around him but also slanting out over his head, away from the water. What had Rahim called it? A double curvature arch dam. Now that he was here, it was easier to understand what that meant.

  Two drainage slipways ran up on either side. These were basically curving roads running up the side of the hill, though so steeply that no car would be able to make the journey. Alex guessed that they had something to do with the water, which could be directed down them and into the valley if there happened to be heavy rainfall and the threat of a flood. Two concrete staircases had been built next to them, one for each slipway, with about a hundred steps leading up to the top. There was one other way up, a single ladder clinging to the face of the dam, leading to two inspection platforms, one above the other, and finally to the lip of the dam itself. The ladder was dangerous because it wasn’t quite vertical. Following the curve of the wall, it slanted outward. It was also narrow, steep, and covered in rust.

  Alex took this all in, then turned his attention to a construction directly in front of him. It looked like something out of the Second World War . . . a solid concrete bunker with an entrance and three barred windows. A pair of fat steel pipes jutted out, pointing at him like the cannons of two tanks that might have been parked next to each other inside. Both of them were capped, making them look like oversized industrial oil cans. They were connected to the dam by hydraulic steel claws with a network of smaller pipes, wires, and taps around them. The concrete underneath them was stained. It had recently been wet.

  Alex knew that he was looking at the two valves that Rahim had described. His targets. He took one quick look back over his shoulder, then hurried forward. He had perhaps five minutes to position the explosive before the Kikuyus arrived. Even as he ran, he wriggled out of the backpack and opened it. The concrete building had a sort of entrance, a narrow slit that led into an inner chamber with more pipes and machinery. While he was in here, Alex would be out of sight. Surely he couldn’t have left a trail on the broken rock and other debris in front of the dam. With a bit of luck, the trackers wouldn’t be able to find him . . . until it was too late.

  He had the bomb in his hands. It couldn’t have been more old-fashioned or easier to understand. That was what made terrorism all the more frightening—the fact that it relied on such simple devices. The glass window in front of the clock face opened and Alex was able to take the single hand and move it as many minutes as he wanted, up to sixty. He made a quick calculation. It would take him about two minutes to climb up to the top of the dam, using one of the staircases beside the slipways. Once he was there, he would be safe from the torrent of water. But what about the Kikuyus? Suddenly, Alex had an idea.

  He turned the hand of the clock to the figure 5, then pressed the two switches. A green light came on and the clock began to tick. So it was done. Alex looked around him. It didn’t matter which valve he chose. He just had to hope that the explosion—contained within the concrete walls—would be strong enough to rupture them both. He placed the bomb on top of one of the pipes, wedging it against the ceiling. Now to get away.

  He slithered out of the opening and stopped in dismay. He saw three Kikuyu men just a short distance ahead of him. They had almost reached the end of the track and were gazing at the dam as if it had deliberately chosen to block their path. There was no more than fifty yards between them. They saw Alex at once. One of them called out. The other threw his spear. It fell short. None of them seemed to have guns.

  Alex began to run. He headed for the nearest slipway, but he hadn’t even begun to climb when another of McCain’s men appeared at the top, pointed down, and shouted. Alex realized what had happened. The dozen tribesmen had arrived at the dam and, as he had hoped, they had lost his track. So they had separated. They were all around him now, coming at him from all sides.

  And he had made a terrible miscalculation.

  There were just four and a half minutes until the bomb would go off. He didn’t have time to go back into the bunker and change the time of the detonation . . . he’d be trapping himself and it would only draw attention to what he had done. He had to move quickly—and preferably up. If he stayed here, he would be killed by the blast or drowned in the rush of water. The slipway on the right was covered. Alex looked the other way. Yet another tribesman had appeared and was scampering down. The three men who had first seen him were getting closer.

  That just left the rusty, winding ladder, running up the side of the bunker onto the roof and then up toward the two platforms.

  Alex grabbed hold of the first rung and began to climb.

  The F-4 Phantom 11 fighter jets had taken off at exactly 3:45 P.M. local time, their Rolls-Royce Spey engines powering them down the runway and into the air, climbing at 40,000 feet per minute. There were three of them. They had leveled off at 80,000 feet, moving into a classic arrow formation, before turning south toward Africa. Each one carried eight missiles. Between them, they were confident that they had enough firepower to turn McCain’s wheat field into a blazing hell in which nothing, not so much as a single microbe, would survive.

  There was, of course, the faintest possibility that the initial force of the impact would propel some of the mushroom spores into the air, ahead of the flames. These spores would then travel very fast and very far and do their lethal work elsewhere. But as is so often the way with British politics, a decision had been made. If it was later shown to be wrong, all the evidence would be gently massaged to show that no other decision had been possible. Not that the public would ever hear about this. The orders that the three Phantom pilots had received were top secret. Their flight plan had not been recorded. As far as the world was concerned, they hadn’t even taken off.

  And when the three planes crossed the Kenyan border, heading west from the Indian Ocean, the urgent inquiries from air traffic control in Nairobi were ignored. Later, it would be explained that they had accidentally strayed off course during a training mission. Profuse apologies would be offered to the Kenyan government. But for now, they were observing strict radio silence.

  The Phantoms were equipped with the Northrop target identification system, essentially a telescopic camera fitted to the left wing and connected to a radarscope inside the cockpit. As Alex began to climb the ladder at the Simba Dam, the planes began to drop altitude, flying toward the Rift Valley at just under 1,200 miles per hour. Inside their cockpits, the pilots made thei
r final preparations. There would be no need for a flyby. The target coordinates were locked in. Once they had visual contact, they would open fire.

  Alex was halfway up the ladder, with the first maintenance platform stretching out above his head. It was hard work, climbing up. Because of the curve of the dam, he was leaning outward, and the force of gravity was against him; every time he pulled himself up another rung, he felt himself being dragged backward. The sun was now beating down on him, burning his shoulders and back. He forced himself to keep going. He was painfully aware of the bomb he had activated and that was ticking away even now. If only he had given himself more time! If it went off before he reached the top of the dam, there was a good chance the ladder would be blown off the wall—and him with it. He was already too high up. If he fell, he would die.

  He grabbed hold of the next rung and looked back, only to see two of the tribesmen who had raised the alarm—at this height they were no more than toy figures—running down to the foot of the dam. The third was holding back. None of them seemed anxious to climb the ladder after him. Why?

  He looked up and saw the reason. They had no need to follow him. Another Kikuyu man had reached the center of the dam and was already climbing down.

  There was no way out. Alex consoled himself with the knowledge that nobody knew about the bomb apart from him and that in about two or three minutes it would explode, releasing millions of gallons of water that would flood the valley, drowning the wheat. It would be mission accomplished . . . except that he wouldn’t be around to see it. Somewhere in his mind, he wondered if anyone would ever discover what had happened. Perhaps Rahim would make a report if he managed to get away. He died fighting for what he believed in. Alex could already see the words inscribed on the medal. Jack could wear it at his funeral.