INCARNATION

by Daniel Easterman

  ‘How did you do that?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Girls’ secrets,’ she said.

  They lowered a cup inside on a rope. When it came up, it was filled with the sweetest water they’d ever tasted. They drank and drank, then filled their water containers with as much as they would take. David replaced the stone cap and took a careful record of the well’s position. Even if it were buried beneath ten feet of sand now, it would always be possible to dig straight down to it.

  ‘What do you think the wooden post was for?’ asked David.

  ‘I don’t think it was a post. I’d bet it was twenty or thirty feet high and that it had a flag on the top.’

  ‘So travellers could find it.’

  ‘Absolutely. What would be the point otherwise?’

  The inscription said that the next wells lay ten miles to the east and fifteen to the west. Acting on the assumption that the wells must lie more or less in a straight line, and that the line must lead to a town, as shown on the map, they filled their water containers and headed due east.

  ‘Ever get the feeling the ancient Chinese knew substantially more than we do even today?’ David asked. He brushed more sweat from his forehead. His hair was matted to his scalp. He’d liked to have had it cut, but they’d forgotten to bring any scissors.

  ‘You can bet the hard work was done by Uighurs.’

  ‘Nonsense, you weren’t even around then.’

  ‘There is that.’

  They walked more easily, knowing some sort of end was in sight. Shortly before sunset, in a moment of long shadows, they came to a valley with sharply pitched walls of sand.

  ‘Do you want to go down?’ asked David, ‘or shall we wait until morning?’

  ‘Better we go down and get ourselves out of sight somewhere. It’s not worth checking for water, is it? We’re not likely to find fresh so soon.’

  ‘Not too likely, no. I’d rather use the energy to keep on towards the next well.’

  The long descent was punishing, wracking every muscle in their legs and backs as they tried not to fall forward. David found himself pulling back constantly, using his bergen as a counterbalance to the force of gravity. Suddenly, about halfway down, the pull of the descent became too much for him. Just as he was about to fall forwards, Nabila caught his bergen and yanked him backwards. He sat for several moments, recovering his breath.

  As he did so, he became aware of a regularity in the wall of the valley below that could not easily be explained as the work of the wind, chiselling the sand into shape. He looked round. The sun was getting close to the horizon, but there was still considerable heat in the sand. On an impulse, he reached into the bergen and pulled out his infra-red scanner.

  Seconds later, he was looking at a wholly different place.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Nabila, coming up to him from below.

  He just put out a hand, as though to brush her aside, to get her out of his field of vision.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said.

  ‘What can you see?’

  He handed the scope to her and pointed towards the dune opposite.

  'Take a look at the dune. Can you see the way the sand falls quite naturally from its top down? Then it gets to a spot about halfway down where it slopes more steeply. Run the scope along that section.’

  She did as he said, and moments later let out an excited yell.

  ‘What do you see?’

  'I don’t know what it is. Long sections of cool, quite regular, horizontals mostly, with some perpendicular. Like ... like building blocks.’

  ‘That’s exactly what they are. I’ll bet anything those are stones. They don’t hold the heat as well as the sand, so they show up as cooler areas. Those are houses, Nabila. We’ve found one of our cities.’ They hurried down to the bottom. ‘We can’t possibly hope to dig through this,’ said David. ‘But if we can get a fix on it, maybe we can get a message through. It could be a vital discovery.’

  ‘Don’t you think you could be making a mistake? If this is a town, how come the buildings are all under one dune?’

  ‘Well, of course they aren’t. They’ll be under several dunes.’

  ‘But why isn’t anything showing on the surface between the dunes?’

  ‘There could be low buildings. We don’t know where the real ground level is. Anything would be covered with sand. Or if they were made from wood, they’d have rotted away.’

  They looked round. It wasn’t easy to form an impression of a city out here in the sands. ‘Let’s find a place to camp,’ said Nabila. The light was beginning to fade from the sky, and she wanted to choose a safe place before darkness set in.

  Suddenly, she became aware of a sound, the chop, chop, chop of a helicopter’s blade a little distance away. She looked up, and David raised his head too, but there was nothing to see. The engine noise faded as the copter moved away, then grew again until it was louder than before.

  ‘Look, David - quickly!’

  Nabila pointed along the valley to where a speck of colour had appeared just over the horizon. Even as they watched, it grew in size.

  'It’s coming in this direction,’ shouted David. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Wait. What’s that?’ She pointed back along the valley at the approaching aircraft.

  David lifted the binoculars that he now carried round his neck. The helicopter sprang into sight, its outline softened by the deepening twilight.

  ‘He’s using searchlights,’ he said. ‘One on either side.’

  They watched like rabbits on a dark road as the little craft drew nearer, two long pencils of light stabbing left and right through the deepening shadows.

  ‘The bastard’s got us trapped,’ said David.

  ‘He hasn’t seen us yet. If we can get round the corner of this dune we’ll make it. But we have to run.’

  They started sprinting, and it seemed as though their feet bogged down in the deep sand at every step, and their legs felt like rubber. Nabila thought of jettisoning her bergen, but realized it would be a huge mistake to do so. Without water and basic provisions, they would quickly die.

  The copter headed straight down the valley towards them, pausing every so often to allow the pilot to look more carefully at the ground beneath him. He’ll be fully alert, thought David; there’ll be a fat reward waiting for whoever brings us in.

  Suddenly, he saw the terrain open up about a hundred yards on his left, revealing a broad opening where the dune ended.

  ‘There,’ he shouted. ‘It’s just up ahead.’

  They dashed for the opening, desperately trying to get round to the other side of the dune. But it was already too late. The helicopter was on top of them, and before they could outrun it, one of the searchlights had them firmly in its grip.

  The pilot could not stop all at once, but went on several hundred yards, then, with a graceful dip, danced and turned, then drove down hard to the gap. The searchlight swung round again, recapturing its prey and pinpointing them harshly against the sand. The pilot executed a slow turn until he was facing them, with the twin lights bright in their faces, forcing them to shut their eyes.

  David regretted not having taken the pistol from his pack earlier. It was a Heckler & Koch P7, and at this range he could at least have put the lights out of action, maybe even done some real damage to the helicopter.

  As if to mock him, the pilot opened up with a light machine-gun, peppering the ground right in front of them and sending huge plumes of sand like coloured smoke into the air.

  ‘Keep running back!’ shouted David. He looked over his shoulder and almost fell. It was very nearly dark now, but the searchlights made visible what might have remained hidden had night fallen completely.

  The dune did not slope down as it should have done. Instead, it ended abruptly in a high stone wall, a wall that towered fifty or sixty feet above their heads. It was carved and chiselled and ornamented, and in it was set a high door, gaping open and only
partly filled with sand.

  ‘Nabila! Up there!’

  They ran together up the ramp leading to the opening, while bullets danced behind them. The helicopter bucked as the pilot attempted to keep them in sight and to fire accurately.

  Exhausted, they flung themselves through the opening, not knowing and not caring what was on the other side. The firing continued, and the chopping of the rotors. The helicopter sank lower and lower, and the pilot began to fire wildly into the opening. If he could just pin them down long enough to radio for reinforcements, he’d be sure of his reward without actually taking too many risks.

  David and Nabila found themselves on a gently sloping bank of sand leading into a vast unlit interior. Nabila threw her pack down and rummaged inside for a torch. With its help, she surveyed the area around the opening, while David hunted frantically for his pistol.

  ‘Leave that for now, David. We’ve got to get out of his line of fire.’

  They scrambled to one side of the opening, putting themselves out of reach of the bullets that still poured into the building.

  Suddenly, the firing stopped. For a few seconds, all that could be heard was the drumming of the rotors, then there was a sound of grinding and screeching. The pilot, intent on firing into the opening, had let himself get too close to the wall.

  There was an enormous crash, followed by an explosion. David rushed to the entrance to see the helicopter fall apart, its rotors spinning out of control then breaking up in what seemed like slow motion. The body of the helicopter seemed to crumple, then crashed to the ground in a ball of fire that gave out an intense heat.

  An ominous silence followed.

  'Thank God for that,’ said David, turning to Nabila, who was now beside him, trying to make sense of the wreckage.

  ‘Shhhh,’ she said.

  ‘What’s … ?’

  She put out a hand to silence him. Then he heard it too. A deep groaning, then a crunching sound.

  ‘Get back from the doorway for God’s sake, David!’

  Nabila ran forward and grabbed his arm, pulling him back from the entrance. Moments later, there came a complicated sound made up of creaks, groans, and heavy bangs. The sound picked up volume quickly, then there followed a ghastly grating sound. They both looked up to see a great stone slab rush from its moorings, slipping downwards along well-chiselled grooves to slam with an almighty crash on to the threshold. It filled the opening precisely, as it had been intended to do all those years ago when it was first cut and set in its high place.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Western Region Military Installation 14 (Chaofe Ling) [Coordinates classified] Level 3,

  Guojia Anchuanbu offices, Security Classification: Absolute

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you should see this right away.’

  ‘Yes, what is it, Jia?’ snapped the colonel.

  Chang Zhangyi was busier than usual. The test had gone satisfactorily, and the Iraqis were impatient to get the warheads on board the plane that was waiting at Lop Nor. That wasn’t a problem in itself: the warheads and other components could easily be moved down the long tunnel that had been built deep beneath the desert in order to allow building machinery and vehicles unseen access to the Chaofe Ling site. But Chang Zhangyi was worried about keeping the fate of Kashgar secret long enough to get the bombs out of the country. That was taking up all his time at the moment.

  His aide, Jia Hsiujia, gingerly placed a sheet of flimsy paper on the colonel’s desk. The old man had been getting increasingly tetchy, and Jia had had his head bitten off more times in the past week than he cared to remember.

  Chang Zhangyi grabbed the flimsy and threw it off his desk.

  ‘I want you to tell me!’ he nagged. ‘That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? I don’t have time to read this infernal rubbish you keep giving me.’

  In the background, the air conditioning chuntered gently away, transforming the impossible atmosphere forty feet beneath a blistering desert into something cool and bearable. Further down, it worked a lot less efficiently. But up here in Chang Zhangyi’s office it had never broken down. In spite of prominent notices to the contrary, the colonel insisted on smoking whenever possible, which meant most of the time in this, his private sanctuary. In acknowledgement of that fact, he slipped a long cigarette from a half-empty pack of Zhonghuas on his desk and lit up.

  ‘A report has just come through that one of the helicopters involved in the desert search has had some son of accident.’

  ‘A serious one?’

  ‘We don’t yet know, sir. Possibly. All we know is that he was making an urgent radio report when contact was cut off.’

  'I hardly see why you’re disturbing me with this. Accidents like that happen in the desert. Sand gets into a vent ...’

  ‘Yes, sir. If he resumes contact, no doubt we’ll find oul But ... there is the matter of the actual radio message.

  Chang Zhangyi’s eyes lit up. He sensed something peeping round the shadows.

  ‘I take it you have the wording.’

  ‘Yes, sir. On the … on the sheet I gave you.’

  ‘I can’t be bothered with that. Just give me a summary.’

  ‘Well, he says he made visual contact with a man and a woman, and chased them into some sort of opening that ended in a cave. He opened fire on them, but found it hard to keep them in his sights. The last thing he transmitted was: “I’m going in closer, see if I can flush them out.” Then we get some smashing sounds, him shouting ...'

  ‘Shouting what?’

  Jia shook his head.

  ‘We listened for several minutes. It wasn’t intelligible.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The radio goes dead. They’ve been trying to raise him since then, but either his set is switched off or it’s been smashed.’

  ‘Was the pilot dependable?’

  ‘Dependable?’ Jia looked shocked, though he’d never have said so. ‘Sir, the air crew selected for this mission were our top people.’

  ‘Yes, but even top people make mistakes.’

  Chang Zhangyi got up from his chair. He was smoking furiously, excited at the thought of being so close to Laing at last.

  ‘Did he give coordinates?’

  ‘There were none on the message, sir. But we do know the precise sector he was working through when this accident happened. If there’s been a crash, we should be able to locate it quite quickly. The other crews have been ordered into that sector already.’

  “Let’s hope the idiots don’t start crashing into one another. Tell them to pull out as many as possible and leave three or four to carry out the search. A helicopter can’t be that hard to find. And order the pilots not to waste time trying to rescue their friend. They’re to spread out and go on looking for our fugitives. They can’t have got far. We’ll launch a full-scale search in the morning.’

  He waved a hand to dismiss Jia, then summoned him back.

  ‘Jia, you said something about a cave.’

  'The pilot mentioned it, sir.’

  ‘Surely he was mistaken. There aren’t any caves in the desert.’

  ‘There are several mountain ranges. The Mazartagh, the Hamitagh.'

  ‘They’re all much too far south. I’m sure there’s nothing in the northern region.’

  ‘Sir, he said something about the cave being in a cliff.'

  ‘That’s just as unlikely. When did this happen?’

  ‘Sunset, sir. It was almost totally dark when the helicopter crashed.’

  ‘Then he could easily have been mistaken about what he saw.’

  ‘I’m sure he was, sir.’

  ‘All right, Jia, you’ve wasted enough of my time. Let me know the moment there’s anything further to report. I want a helicopter and a sober pilot to stand by in case I need to fly out there.’

  Jia saluted and went out, looking for a buggy to take him back to the central communications room. Set on auto, the almost silent buggies patrolled the rubbe
r-lined corridors of the complex. You could almost set your watch by them.

  Inside his office, Chang Zhangyi finished his Zhonghua and stubbed it out in a large ashtray littered with the corpses of its many predecessors. He drew another from the box and lit it. A thin twist of smoke made its way up to the ceiling, wreathing the white-and-red smoke alarm which Chang Zhangyi had long ago disabled.

  He opened a drawer and pulled out a large map. Unfolding it as far as possible, he let it flop back over the desk.

  He glanced at it for a few minutes, straightening it here, folding it there, until he was satisfied.

  He picked up the phone and keyed in a short number.

  ‘Helicopter control? Chang Zhangyi. I believe you’ve had an accident ... So I understand ... Now, do you have details of the sector covered by that particular craft? ... I see ...’

  He wrote a series of numbers on the margin of his map, then some letters.

  ‘No, I need nothing else. But let me know the moment further information comes in.’

  He hung up almost absent-mindedly. All his attention was fixed on the map. It took him very little time to locate the crash sector and to mark it out in bright red ink. He had never imagined that Laing could make it this far. It made him all the more formidable an adversary.

  ‘Well done,’ he whispered. ‘You very nearly made it. What a pity it has to end this way.’

  He refolded the map and put it in its drawer. He paused to extinguish his cigarette, then got to his feet. For a moment, he felt a touch of disappointment at having outwitted Laing and his girlfriend. But there would be compensations, he reassured himself - untold compensations.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  She was feeling bloody annoyed with Anthony, and she’d said so several times, in precisely those terms. Packing her back to London like that, and staying on up there just so he could help wean the precious Maddie off her drugs, as he put it. It was infernal cheek on both their parts.

  To make things worse, she’d returned home to find her car as dead as a dodo, God alone knew why. While his, of course, was up there in the land of the fucking heather, enjoying the scenery. Bloody, bloody cheek.