‘Yes, Mr Wrack. One of whom your men shot and killed in cold blood. A mischievous little boy called Mikey who never did anybody harm in the whole of his life. You’re complaining that nine of your men got killed? They killed Mikey, that was why.’
‘Well, I’m real sorry that happened. I am. And I’m very anxious that no more children get hurt. What I’m suggesting is that you come out with us tomorrow morning and talk to Martin Makepeace. See if you can cajole him into giving himself up. The very last thing we want is bullets flying around, with little children in harm’s way. ESS is a security company, Ms Vane. It’s our avowed mission to protect the lives of innocent people, not to put them in jeopardy.’
Saskia knew that Joseph Wrack was talking his usual insincere bullshit, and that he was anxious only to avoid a firefight in which more of his own men might be killed, and in which he might even lose another helicopter. Apart from that, killing children was very poor PR, especially since the ESS brochure showed one of their security guards holding the hands of two smiling toddlers, one white and one Hispanic, underneath the caption ‘First Steps To Safety’.
But then she thought of Mina, sweaty and feverish; and grumpy little George; and Nathan, grieving for his older brother, unable to understand why the world was being so horrible to him.
She thought of Martin, too. She had felt so strongly attracted to him that she didn’t really want him to come to any harm, but at the same time she wanted to punish him for not feeling as aroused by her as she had been by him. He deserved to be punished, one way or another, like most men. Bitten and beaten and scratched and choked until they begged her to stop; and then begged her to do it again.
‘All right, Mr Wrack,’ she said, at last. ‘I’ll talk to him.’
‘It’ll have to be pretty early,’ said Joseph Wrack. ‘We need to leave no later than a quarter after five so we’ll arrive at sunrise.’
He looked at the satellite image more closely, tracing the tips of his fingers over it as if he could almost feel how prickly the cholla was. ‘This is where they’re camped out, is it, in this open space here? In that case we can’t land there. We might accidentally hurt the kids and apart from that Makepeace could open fire on us before we’d even get our skids down. No … we’ll have to touch down here, at the head of the valley, and then make our way down on foot. We can wave a white flag to show that we’ve come for a powwow.’ He turned back to Saskia. ‘Where are you staying? I’ll send a driver for you at four forty-five.’
‘The Hilton. Meanwhile … I think I should take Halford back to the airport. He looks like he has ants in his pants.’
‘Don’t worry, Jim Broader can drive him. It’s about time Jim did something useful around here.’
‘No, I’ll take him,’ said Saskia. ‘His honor and I have a couple more things to talk over before he goes back to Sacramento.’
‘We do?’ said Halford, irritably.
They made their way back to the freeway through the rubble-strewn streets. Every now and then Saskia had to back up and turn around because the street ahead of them was barricaded with burning vehicles.
‘I think you’re taking me this way on purpose,’ said Halford, as they came nearer to the Inland Center, from which a huge column of smoke was rising into the afternoon sky.
‘Maybe I am. Maybe you need to have your nose rubbed in what you’ve done.’
‘Saskia, for Christ’s sake. You have your DVDs back now. What more do you want?’
‘I don’t really know, Halford. You caused me so much pain.’
‘Listen … I know how much you loved David. You didn’t mean that to happen. It was his own fault, as much as yours.’
‘Oh, terrific. You can say that now. You didn’t say that when you were threatening to hand over all of your videos to the DA’s office.’
‘I had to protect myself, Saskia, as well as you. It was always a two-way arrangement.’
They were on South E Street now, with only a few blocks to go before they reached the freeway, but Saskia slowed the car down and then drew into the curb. On their right-hand side, in the Burger Mania parking lot, at least five cars were on fire and another six or seven had already been reduced to blackened skeletons. The restaurant itself was gutted, with all of its windows smashed.
‘What are you stopping for?’ asked Halford. ‘Come on, Saskia, I just need to get back to the airport. My security people are going to be having kittens as it is.’
Saskia turned into the parking lot. Although so many cars were burning, there was nobody in sight. She looked around, frowning, for exactly the kind of space she wanted, and then she backed into one, stopped, and applied the parking brake.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Halford demanded.
Saskia turned to him and said, ‘You know, Halford, I blame myself, mostly, for David. He always wanted more and I should have said no. I blame myself for what you’ve been putting me through, too. I should have told you to do your worst, and hang the consequences. But maybe I enjoyed you treating me the way you did, thinking you could fuck me whenever you felt like it, and everything else you made me do. You’re such an irredeemable bastard, Halford, and you have such terrible taste in clothes, but maybe that’s why you turn women on so much.’
Halford closed his eyes for a moment, as if he had a migraine. Then he said, ‘Saskia. Put a lid on the psychoanalysis, will you, honey, and just drive me to the airport?’
‘There’s only one more thing, Halford. I have a little souvenir for you.’
‘Souvenir? What are you talking about?’
‘It’s in the trunk. I’ll get it for you. We won’t be seeing each other ever again, will we? So it’s something for you to remember me by.’
‘I don’t want anything to remember you by. I’d rather have something to forget you by. Can’t we just get going?’
Saskia took no notice. She took the keys out of the ignition, climbed out of the car and went around to the trunk. She opened it up and took out the spherical M-67 fragmentation grenade that she had wedged between the spare wheel and the side of the trunk, to stop it from tumbling around. With the trunk lid still open to mask what she was doing, just in case Halford happened to turn around, she pulled the pin out of the grenade. Then she slammed the trunk shut, and opened up the offside rear door.
‘Saskia—’ snapped Halford. But without a word to him, Saskia dropped the grenade into the footwell behind him. The safety spoon fell off it, and because she had deliberately parked on a slight slope, facing forward, it rolled right under his seat.
‘Saskia, what in God’s name are we waiting for?’
Saskia shut the door and started to run, pressing the central locking button on the Buick’s remote as she did so. She wasn’t waiting for anything, because she knew that she had only a few seconds to escape from the blast.
She sprinted across the Burger Mania parking lot to the low wall that divided it from the Shoe City parking lot next door, and threw herself flat down on the tarmac behind it. She closed her eyes and stuck her fingers in her ears, so she neither saw nor heard Halford as he shouted at her and tried to get out of the car.
Two tugs at the Buick’s door-handle unlocked it, but the fuse on the M67’s six-and-a-half pounds of Composition 4 explosive was only four-point-four seconds. The car was blown apart with a shattering explosion which echoed and re-echoed from all of the buildings around it, and on the opposite side of the road. A blizzard of metal and plastic fragments flew over Saskia’s head and were scattered more than five hundred feet away, in all directions.
After a few seconds, the clattering stopped, and Saskia dared to look up from behind the wall. The Buick was in flames, and it would only be a matter of time before the gas tank blew up, too. There was nothing left of Halford’s seat except for springs, and there was nothing left of Halford but an empty sack-like figure that was hugging a deflated air-bag. It looked more like a blood-soaked nightdress case than the Governor of California.
Saskia co
uld see Halford’s head resting on the front steps of Burger Mania, although thankfully he was looking in the opposite direction.
She didn’t wait any longer. She started to walk briskly back toward the city center. The way things were, with rioting all across the county, it would probably be days before anybody discovered what had happened to Halford Smiley. Who would notice one more burned-out car in a parking lot crowded with burned-out cars?
It was still so hot that the road in front of her was shimmering, and she wished that she had had the foresight to bring a bottle of water with her and worn more practical shoes, because she was starting to hobble. But she had only walked as far as SoCal Super Trucks, a quarter of a mile further up the road, when a bullhorn blew loudly behind her, and a fire engine pulled up beside her.
The driver leaned out of his window and called out, ‘Need a ride, pretty lady?’
She crossed over the road. ‘Thank you! You saved my life!’
The firefighters opened the door for her and held out their hands to help her climb up the steps. Inside the crew cabin it smelled strongly of smoke and rubber and sweat. Five soot-stained faces grinned at her as one of the firefighters shifted himself sideways to give her enough space to sit down.
‘I had a little car trouble,’ she said, loudly, as the fire engine pulled away with its engine bellowing. ‘Something I should have fixed a long time ago.’
TWELVE
Night fell and the stars came out and there was still no sign that Joseph Wrack had sent out a team to hunt them down, but Martin stayed where he was, sitting on the trunk of his Eldorado, with his Colt Commando across his knees.
Peta came over with a mug of Manhattan chowder for him. ‘Maybe she hasn’t told ESS where we are,’ she said. ‘Maybe she just didn’t relish the idea of living in the desert with a bunch of kids.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Martin. ‘I think we’ll have to give it two or three days before we’re totally sure. The Taliban used to do that to us … launch an attack and then disappear for days on end, until we thought that they must have moved on someplace else. Then, when we were all relaxed, they’d hit us again, even harder.’
‘This isn’t a war, Martin.’
‘Oh, yes it is, sweetheart. All human life is a war, and it always will be. So long as somebody has something that somebody else wants – so long as somebody believes in something different from somebody else – there’ll always be war. Always. It’s never going to end. Never. Not until this planet splits apart.’
‘You shouldn’t be such a pessimist,’ said Peta. She pointed to the stars and said, ‘Look … Cassiopeia.’
Martin squinted upward. ‘Oh, yeah? They all just look like stars to me. You were always telling fortunes. What does that mean?’
‘Cassiopeia is the goddess of riches and good fortune. If she shines on you, it means that one day, you’ll strike it rich.’
‘Like I’m going to win the MegaMillions?’
‘Maybe not literally rich, but your life is going to turn out well.’
‘Oh. I see. To tell you the truth, I don’t give a damn, so long as it starts raining again. What’s the point of being rich if the whole country is nothing but a dried-out desert?’
In the early hours of the morning, just before the false dawn began to light up the sky, Martin folded back his blankets and crossed over to the opposite side of the tent, where Peta was sleeping. He carefully eased himself in beside her and put his arms around her, and kissed her cheek. She stirred and said, ‘What? It’s not time to get up yet, is it?’
Abruptly, she woke up, and opened her eyes. Martin could see them glistening in the darkness.
‘Ssh,’ he said, and touched her lips with his fingertip, then kissed her.
They made love strongly and urgently, and then lay together silently for a long time afterward. Peta stroked the stubble on Martin’s chin as if it were Braille, and she was a blind woman trying to discover what he looked like. Gradually the tent began to fill with dim blue light.
Martin returned to his own blankets. He looked across at Peta and she looked back at him, but he had no idea if this meant that they would get back together again. After a while she turned her back on him, and fell asleep again. At least he assumed she was asleep. Maybe, like him, she was just lying there thinking.
The blue light grew brighter. He picked up his wristwatch and peered at the time. Six eleven. It was than that he heard the faraway whack-whack-whack of a helicopter; and then another; and they were coming closer.
By the time he saw the white flag waving in the distance, he had already made sure that everybody else was safely inside the cavern. He kept himself shielded behind Santos’ Suburban, holding one of his Colt Commandos, and with the other propped up close beside him, with the last of his magazines in it.
This morning seemed even hotter than ever, and he heard persistent thunder from the east, over the Coxcomb Mountains, which were the driest, most craggy and most inhospitable mountains in the whole of the Joshua Tree National Park.
The white flag came nearer. At last he heard a voice calling. ‘Martin! Martin, can you hear me? Martin, this is Saskia!’
Shit, he thought. So she has betrayed us, after all. Thank you, Saskia, I love you, too.
‘Martin! I just want to talk to you, that’s all!’ She came out of the bushes and walked across to the center of the open ground, still flapping her white flag from side to side. ‘Can you hear me, Martin! I just want to talk!’
‘What about, Saskia?’ he called back. ‘How to rat out the people who saved you?’
‘I’m sorry, Martin! I really am sorry! But you can’t go on living like this, out in the desert! Think of the kids!’
Martin said, ‘Are you alone?’
‘There are two men from ESS a little way behind me, in case I need help. But I promise you I’ve only come to talk.’
Martin stayed where he was, behind the Suburban. No matter what assurances Saskia gave him, there was no way that he was going to step out into anybody’s line of fire. If he had been one of Joseph Wracks’ men, he would have dropped him as soon as he got the shot. Efaqa, they had called it, in Afghanistan. It sounded like Arabic, but it was an acronym for ‘eliminate first, ask questions afterward’.
Saskia walked a few paces further toward the entrance to the cavern. She still couldn’t see where he was.
‘I’m over here,’ he told her, but when she started to walk toward him, he said, ‘Stay where you are. Don’t come any closer. Don’t even look at me.’
‘Martin, I’m sorry. But this is insane, hiding out here.’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘You have children with you. Nathan and George and Mina. Your own kids, too, Tyler and Ella. How long do you think they’re going to last, living off seeds and jackrabbits?’
‘As if you care. You don’t give a bent cent for anybody except yourself. Why did you do it, Saskia? If you didn’t want to stay here nobody was forcing you. You didn’t have to tell Wrack where we were.’
Saskia said, ‘I wanted you, Martin. Don’t you understand that? I wanted you from the very moment I first saw you.’
‘Is that what this all about? Jealousy? And you’re calling me insane?’
‘You don’t understand. I had to get even, Martin. Not with you. Well, yes, I admit it, maybe with you. But mostly with Halford Smiley. I did a deal with Halford to tell him where the water was.’
‘You’re a very sick woman, Saskia. Did anybody ever tell you that?’
Now she turned to face him, and she tossed her white flag on to the ground. ‘How sick is it to want to be happy, Martin? How sick is it to want to forget your past, and all the people you’ve hurt, and all the mistakes you’ve made? I killed my own husband, Martin! I strangled him, and I loved him more than you can ever imagine! And then I met you.’
Her fists were clenched and there were tears running down her cheeks. She stood there, incapable of saying any more.
Martin glanced
quickly up the valley. He could see one of the ESS security guards standing about two hundred feet away, next to a teddy bear cholla. He was armed with a carbine with a telescopic sight. He couldn’t see the second guard.
He knew that his position was hopeless. He had only sixty rounds of ammunition left, but even if he had a whole arsenal of weapons he wouldn’t be able to hold out against ESS. Not only that, ESS security guards obviously had no compunction about shooting children. He was quite sure that if he tried to put up a fight, they would all be killed, all of them, and their bodies buried here, and who would ever know?
‘What’s the deal?’ he asked Saskia.
Saskia took a moment to smear the tears away from her eyes. Then she said, ‘Wrack only wants you, Martin. He doesn’t want to hurt you, he just wants to see you handed over to the police, because of all the damage you’ve done.’
‘And I’m supposed to believe that?’
‘Martin, whatever I think about you, I wouldn’t have come here if I thought that he was going to do you any harm. I’ll admit that he’s a very vengeful man, and he wants to see you punished, but he’s not going to break the law to see that happen.’
‘And everybody else here, he won’t touch any of them?’
‘It’s only you he wants, Martin. If you give yourself up, that’s it. It’s all over. Everybody else here can do anything they want. Stay here, go back to the city, whatever. Wrack came here today in person. He’s up at the head of the valley, in his helicopter. He can give you his promise face to face.’
‘He came here himself? Jesus. He must be mad at me.’
‘He is. You cost him nine men and a very expensive helicopter, and a whole lot of prestige, too.’
Martin stayed where he was for over a minute, weighing up the odds, although in truth he knew there was nothing more to think about. He didn’t trust Saskia and he trusted Joseph Wrack even less, but what alternatives did he have?
He carefully propped his sub-machine gun next to the second one, and stepped out from behind the Suburban with his hands held up.
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