INCARNATION

by Daniel Easterman

  ‘Let’s go back to sleep’ he said.

  Nabila understood what he meant. She hadn’t the strength to resist either him or the temptation of a last rest. She’d die with him here, and they’d be found centuries from now, their clothes and bodies eaten away. The only things to identify them would be their packs and their unusual contents. Would anyone guess who they’d been, would anyone care?

  She reached out her hand and found David’s in the dark. He had switched off the light. She closed her eyes, knowing she would never open them again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Helicopter Base No 3, General Air Base Western Military Region Sector 17, Lop Nor

  Chang Zhangyi’s impatience had turned into bad temper, and his bad temper to rage.

  ‘I don’t care if they’re disguised as rats, I just want them where I can see them. Do you understand that? Or are you a total numskull?’

  The man wincing beneath the flails of Chang Zhangyi’s verbal assault was not exactly a foot soldier. He was Ho Wenming, commander of the Eighth Helicopter Squadron, quite an important person in his way. But round here, nobody outranked Colonel Chang Zhangyi. The mere act of standing up to him had landed more than one senior officer in serious trouble.

  ‘Colonel, we’ve scoured the place. We’re still scouring it. There’s nowhere they could have run to in the time available. In any case, I had a troop of commandos flown in to make a ground-level check around the crash site and beyond. They found footsteps coming in from the west, walking then running. They lead right up to the crash site. After that, there’s nothing.’

  'That’s impossible. Were their bodies found at the site?’

  ‘No, sir. Just the pilot’s.’

  ‘Then, where the hell are they?!’

  ‘We don’t know, sir. But they can’t possibly have survived. There are no footprints leading away from the crash in any direction. I know the troop leader personally. His men are very, very good.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn how good they are. Somebody is missing something.’

  ‘Sir, I visited the site myself several times. You can come out and see for yourself. There’s an enormous sand dune, and there’s a stone wall. That’s all. There’s nowhere for anyone to go.’

  ‘What about this wall? Is there some sort of opening in the side of it? Could they have slipped between?’

  ‘We’ve checked that, and the answer’s no. And you have to consider something else: their footprints go up to the wall. It’s a bit messy closer in, because of the crash. But as far as we can see, they were standing in front of the wall when the pilot hit it. That corresponds with his radio message.’

  ‘If they were hit by the helicopter, their bodies would be there. Use some common sense, man!’

  ‘I’m trying to, sir. I spoke to the military forensic examiner this morning.’

  ‘Bai Juntao?’

  ‘Yes. He was at the site yesterday.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s just that ... He pointed out that the pilot’s body was very badly burned, but that he had had the protection of the cabin. The worst heat was outside, and Bai Juntao thinks ...’ He paused, wondering how Chang Zhangyi would react to what he was about to say.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He thinks their bodies may have been cremated by the extreme heat. They could have been sprayed in aviation fuel and then, well, ignited at a very high temperature. The stone would have prevented the heat escaping. Once we’ve had a chance to go properly through the debris ...'

  ‘You’re telling me that Bai thinks they’ve been fried to a crisp? That there’s nothing left, not even a thigh-bone?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m just passing on what he said.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  Ho knew he had to take great care. He wanted to stand his men down: the squadron had been on this round-the-clock pursuit for longer than was good. That’s why the crash had happened. Pilots were losing their concentration and their finer skills. But he knew Chang Zhangyi wanted to go on.

  ‘You’re the best judge of what we should do next, sir,’ he said. ‘But I would like to make a formal request to stand down my squadron. Perhaps Peking will allow you to requisition other helicopters.’

  Chang Zhangyi sighed. The mystery was beyond all reason.

  ‘Very well, stand your men down. But bear in mind that, if there is any sabotage, your head will roll, not mine. I’m placing our conversation on record: I hope you’ll do the same.’

  Ho saluted and walked back to his office. Chang Zhangyi watched him go. Tomorrow, the squadron leader would be demoted and sent back to his home province to await an inquiry into his conduct of the search. Chang Zhangyi had better people to call on. They were corning in this evening. He just hoped they wouldn’t be too late.

  He started to walk down to bay six, where his private helicopter was waiting. The sooner he got back to Chaofe Ling, the better.

  By the time he got to the chopper, the engines were running. His pilot knew better than to cause Chang Zhangyi any delay.

  ‘This just came in for you, sir,’ the young man said, holding out a sheet of fax paper to him.

  Chang Zhangyi took the paper and folded it out on his lap as the helicopter lifted from the tarmac. It fluttered in the downdraught from the rotors, then grew still as the aircraft steadied.

  The final snags have now been overcome, and the first batch of warheads will be ready for shipment early tomorrow. Please reassure me that all necessary security measures are in place, and that the immediate threat you mentioned has been overcome.

  The fax was signed by Wan Shunzhang, the general commanding the Chaofe Ling complex. Chang Zhangyi leaned back in his chair and watched the dun and featureless landscape roll past beneath them. He smiled to himself. It was almost over, he thought. Almost over.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  They slept for a very long time, a night and a morning, fifteen hours or more, and Nabila woke feeling terribly sick. Her head was spinning and pounding, her eyes felt on fire, her throat was parched beyond belief. She reached out and shook David awake, to find he was in little better shape.

  ‘We can use the shields,’ she said, her voice shearing off every other word. ‘They’ll stack on one another like plates. You only need a foot or two more.’

  He was scornful at first, then saw the possibility in what she suggested. They scoured the tombs for shields, and brought them in pairs or three at a time to the mound. Slowly, they stacked them. When there seemed to be enough, David climbed on to them, leaning on Nabila’s arm to keep his balance. He turned the torch on the ceiling, then swung his left arm up to catch hold of the boss on the keystone.

  The stone was a thick mass of encrusted cobwebs, black, and sticky to the touch, dead and live spiders of all sizes, and God knows what other accumulations of two millennia. Fighting down his revulsion, David asked for a cloth and used it to clean the stone and the area around it.

  He studied it for a long time, and finally gave up.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t come far enough down, The weight of the surrounding stones is still holding it in place. You’d need a drill or a hammer and chisel to make any impact on this thing.’

  Nabila touched him on the elbow and switched off the torch.

  ‘We can’t find those,’ she said, ‘but what about an explosion?’

  ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have any explosives.’

  There was only the briefest of pauses.

  ‘You have ammunition, don’t you? Plenty of it. Why can’t you use that?’

  ‘Bullets would be no use, but the gunpowder … Yes. Yes, why not?’

  She helped him down, and they found the ammunition in his bergen, one thousand rounds of 9mm Glaser slugs.

  ‘We won’t need all of these,’ he said. ‘It has to be a fairly controlled explosion, enough to pop the keystone out without cracking anything round it.’

  He showed her how to break away the case and extrac
t the gunpowder. They started building a heap of it on one of the square plates.

  ‘We’ll have to keep the torch switched on while we do this,’ he said, ‘but I’m worried about the battery giving out. I can’t place a charge and blow it without light. We’ll just have to work as quickly as we can, and hope the battery’s got more life in it than we do.’

  The light took its time to fade, but fade it did. When an hour or so had passed, they found themselves squinting in half darkness.

  ‘Right, let’s stop here,’ said David. The pile of gunpowder on the plate was smaller than he would have liked, but he knew they were running out of time.

  ‘You’ll only have one chance,’ said Nabila. ‘If it’s not enough to blow the stone out, there won’t be a second opportunity.’

  ‘I’m all too aware of that. Now, I need something to pack this stuff in.’

  ‘What about a sock?’

  But when they removed their shoes, their socks had too many holes to make them of any use.

  Nabila rummaged frantically through David’s pack, then through her own, but there was nothing that might serve the purpose. Unless ...

  She laughed out loud, remembering something she’d noticed in a pocket in her pack when she’d bought it. Opening the pocket in question, she drew out a small rectangular packet.

  ‘Best army issue,’ she said. ‘Contraception for the masses.’ She tore the packet and extracted a beige-coloured condom.

  ‘Chinese condoms aren’t designed to help you enjoy sex,’ she said, ‘but they’re very effective at stopping you having babies.’

  David poured the gunpowder slowly while Nabila held the mouth of the condom open. They could barely see to do it.

  'This could prove to be the most explosive time any condom’s had in the history of the world,’ joked David.

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  They tied the condom tightly, then wrapped it in two socks, in case it got snagged on a piece of sharp stone. Finally, David climbed back up the mound, and once again ascended the pile of shields. Nabila helped him pain his balance, then passed the pack of gunpowder up to him. He had already decided on the best spot to place it. It slipped in easily.

  ‘Bring up three feet of rope and my cigarette lighter. In my bergen, the front pocket.’

  She found them and climbed back up the mound. A quick slice with her knife cut the rope down to the right length.

  ‘Soak the rope in the lighter fuel. Be careful, it has to go the whole way. And hurry up, this torch won’t last many more minutes.’

  Nabila shook the lighter gently down the rope and handed it over. David fitted one end into a sock and let the rest dangle down to the top of the mound. The torch went out. He shook it, but it refused to do more than flicker and die. He let it fall and reached into his trouser pocket for his box of matches.

  ‘I’ve got three matches left. Take the bergens to the back of the nearest tomb and get down behind it. As soon as I light this, I’ll join you.’

  ‘Will you have enough time?’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  He listened to her dragging the packs to safety. If they did succeed in getting out of here, they’d need them. ‘Ready!’ she called.

  He took a deep breath. There would be no second chance. He struck the match and held it to the rope. For several seconds, nothing happened, then, abruptly, the cord burst into flame. David hurled himself down the mound and scurried to the nearest tomb he could remember. As he threw himself behind it, there was a terrifying bang, the volume intensified by the enclosed space they were in.

  The sound of the explosion echoed loudly round round the tombs, awakening who could say how many spirits from their long slumbers. As it faded away, David could hear the smack and crack of small stones striking the floor. He’d have given anything to see exactly how much damage had been done. For all he knew, the entire roof might come crashing in on their heads any moment.

  The stones stopped falling. There were cracking sounds, and groans, as if stone under stress were preparing to give way. Then a long silence, then more stones clattering to the floor.

  ‘What’s happening?’ shouted Nabila.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why don’t you light a match?’

  He was ready to do so when he heard a new sound. He could not quite make it out at first, and then he realized what it was.

  ‘It’s coming through,’ he shouted. ‘It worked!’

  ‘What’s coming through?’ asked Nabila, standing to share in his excitement.

  ‘Sand! That’s sand pouring through the hole. We did it!’

  They made their way as fast as possible to the mound, and started to climb up. Suddenly, they were standing in a steady stream of fine sand. The mound was growing in size every moment.

  ‘Come on, we have to keep this under control.’

  With only their hands as tools, they spread the sand, pushing it down from the top of the mound, and as widely out at the bottom as they could manage. Like grain pouring into a silo, the sand rushed down remorselessly.

  It went on for a couple of hours, and then, in one instant stopped. The sound stopped, and the darkness in which it had been wrapped. Through the hole came sunlight, sunlight so pure and so bright they had trouble seeing.

  It was easy now to climb the mound in order to reach the roof. David went up first. The hole was big enough to squeeze through. He put his head up and looked out on the most beautiful landscape he’d ever seen. Mile after mile of sand dunes, mile after mile of emptiness, mile after mile of light.

  He climbed out. Nabila came behind and passed the bergens up to him. Then she climbed through herself. She sat for a long time, while her eyes filled with bitter tears.

  He kissed her hard on her mouth, and she kissed him back as if for the first and last time. Their lips and tongues were dry, as though they’d turned to leather.

  ‘We’re filthy,’ he said. ‘I think we should find some water.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  Hunger became something more than pain. It took everything - air, light, the desert, the open sky - and imbued it with the same sense of gnawing, nauseating hunger that filled their own bodies. And the thirst lay on top, like raw skin on top of a wound.

  ‘Why don’t you use the Mobilfone?’ she demanded again and again. ‘Ask them to take us out of here. You’ve done your best. It just isn’t possible to go on.’

  But he did not ring, he would not consider ringing, and somehow they did go on. Over this dune, then over that. Another night came, and they huddled on the sand, shivering, without even the strength to get inside their sleeping bags, thin things of silver foil that seemed incongruous amid such savagery.

  Morning found them side by side, not quite touching, fitful in dreams of hunger. Not food, not water, but the lack of them filled their sleep. David dreamt that he was in his garden at home, with Sam and Maddie. They walked round and round, but could find neither vegetables nor water. The whole garden had turned to sand and pebbles. A vulture stirred its clumsy, ragged wings on a branch of the ash tree. The other trees had turned to tamarisk shrubs. In the next garden, camels with tall spindly legs like those of Dali elephants brayed among the chimneypots.

  They woke to a grey sky and biting cold. ‘David, wake up, something’s wrong.’ Nabila shook him into consciousness. She could sense a deep change in the atmosphere.

  ‘It’s too early for winter,’ David said, sitting up and staring at the shifting field of grey above their heads. In his mind, he could still see Sam scrabbling in the sand to find water.

  ‘Early or not, those look very like clouds. This does happen from time to time, you know. Pressure builds up, clouds form, there’s a thunderstorm, and everything clears.’

  Even as they spoke, the sky grew more and more like slate. A wind was pushing hard, throwing sand into their faces with mounting force, herding thunderclouds together high above.

  ‘We should get on to high ground,’ urged Nabila. ‘If it
does rain there’ll be a colossal downpour. It won’t last long, but a lot of water will come down. That’s when flash floods occur. They often sweep down gullies like this. We wouldn’t stand a chance.’

  They struggled to the top of the dune. Both knew there was no guarantee as to where it would rain, if it did. If the clouds opened up half a mile away, they might not be able to get there before the water had sunk into the ground.

  ‘We should dig some trenches,’ David said. ‘We can line them with our sleeping bags.’

  ‘The bags are quite narrow

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Slit them down one side and the bottom. They’ll still be fine to sleep in. We can use them as blankets.’

  They got to work, scooping out clumps of sand with the little trenching shovels that they’d used from the start to dig down to water for the camels. As David threw his first shovelful to one side, there was a crack of thunder some distance away, followed in due course by flashes of lightning.

  'I’d say that was around five miles over that way,’ he said, pointing off towards the north. ‘It’s coming in hard from the mountains.’

  ‘Is it moving in this direction?’

  ‘It’s too soon to tell. It could be moving round in circles for all I know. But if we can go by this wind, I’d say it is coming our way. That’s if it doesn’t wear itself out before it gets here.’

  In the distance, the storm head was building. Steep clouds like rock faces rose with dizzying speed into the seemingly endless sky, while blue and white flashes rushed through them excitedly, charged with enough energy to power a city. In the unnatural light, the desert jumped out of the darkness like a vista at the North Pole.