by Simon Conway
She tried to get back up again, but discovered that her legs would not work, they slid uselessly in the mud, and as she tried to lift herself up on her elbows a lot of blood poured out of her mouth. She sank back into the ooze.
There was no point trying to move. It was only then that it occurred to her to wonder where she was hit. She couldn’t feel anything, but she was conscious that the bullet had struck her somewhere in the front of her body. When she tried to speak, she found that she had no voice.
Jonah saw the muzzle flash in the distance and started running, sloshing through the mud. He fell several times and each time got up again and forced himself forward.
The shape of a building emerged out of the rain. A long metal shed. There was a man running north along a raised dike away from the shed.
Winthrop.
Jonah ran after him.
Several times Winthrop stopped and looked back, aware that he was being followed. Several times he fired his gun wildly at shadows.
Jonah kept on running.
For a mile or so the track and the pylon line ran parallel to each other and then began to converge as the land narrowed toward the end of the spit. There was water on two sides and water ahead. Winthrop was running out of options. He was at the end of the line.
There was nothing but rushing water, and unreachable beyond the Medway the blazing lights of the power station. He turned back and kept firing his pistol until he was out of ammunition.
“What do you want?” he screamed.
Jonah came roaring out of the darkness.
You did it. Omar was kneeling beside her. You saved a million lives.
Miranda laughed at the irony. “I really did.”
There had been several minutes during which she had assumed she was dead. It was interesting to note what her thoughts had been at such a time. It made her unaccountably glad that her son was so proud. It made her think that her father would have been similarly proud. Perhaps she had not wasted her life after all. Happy as she was, she began to cry because her father had not lived to see it.
She took a deep breath between sobs and as she exhaled the blood bubbled out of her mouth. She tried not to breathe deeply again. Short, shallow breaths, she told herself. Everything was very blurry.
Are you ready?
It was Omar again.
“Ready for what?”
You know.
“I’m frightened.”
And he was gone. This time she knew it was for good. She had been searching for him all her adult life. In the end that was all there was, that was all there had been … the searching.
The helicopter passed directly overhead. It was close enough that she could see its oblong yellow undercarriage, lit up by red running lights, and for a moment her hopes were raised, but the searchlight swooped far off across the reed beds, away from her.
The searchlight abruptly went off.
There was no one there in the darkness. Not her father. Not Omar. Not even Jonah.
She heard the helicopter coming back.
It hovered about fifty yards away and the light snapped on again, reaching out through the prop-wash, to find her.
She shielded her eyes and through her fingers watched it land. A figure jumped down from its side and ran toward her through the searchlight’s beam, throwing a vast and hulking shadow across the marshes.
She heard the rotors slowing down.
The man walked up to her out of the glare. It was the American, Mikulski. He kneeled by her side and cradled her in his arms.
She died.
A BRIGHT DAY AFTER
It was about an hour after sunrise on the thirteenth and the morning sky was untroubled by aircraft. It reminded Mikulski of the days after 9/11 when the skies over New York had been completely empty. He looked around at the blasted landscape. There was water everywhere, bubbling in the rivers and creeks, and sparkling on the reeds and pylon lines and on the lambing-shed roof and the helicopter’s Plexiglas windshield and rotor blades.
He watched a large man come slouching out of the marsh, dragging something large behind him. After a while he saw that it was Jonah and he was pulling Winthrop by his ankle. Mikulski looked down and with his hand he smoothed the hair away from Miranda’s face. He had seen the tape. He had watched her as she recalled the events of her life, including the raw emotion on her face as she described the loss of her son. She looked peaceful in death. As beautiful as when he had first seen her, standing in the kitchen at Barnhill, just ten days before, but no longer harried. Jonah dragged Winthrop onto the track beside the lambing shed and dumped him there.
“Is he alive?” Mikulski asked.
Jonah nodded. “Just about.”
He walked over, looked down at Miranda, and then sank to his knees beside them. His face was battered and bruised and one of his arms hung uselessly at his side. He tipped back his head and let his mouth hang open. Mikulski looked away; he couldn’t bear to see the anguish on Jonah’s face. About a mile away a police Range Rover was bumping along the track toward them from Chetney Cottages. The police sniper had climbed out of the helicopter and was standing beside it, with his rifle in his hands, unsure of what to do. Mikulski waved him away.
It was a mess. Kiernan’s family were demanding justice. Various agency heads would have to draw strongly on their reputation for preserving public safety if they hoped to keep their jobs. There were people all over who would have to be arrested. Others, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, would disappear. Rendition protocols would be enacted.
Winthrop made a sound in his throat. A groan.
From what Mikulski had learned about Those Who Seek The End, it seemed unlikely that Winthrop would ever make it to trial. He did not envy those who would find themselves charged with protecting him in custody.
“You should go now,” Mikulski said.
Jonah held his head up and gritted his teeth, and there was in the line of his jaw, visible for anyone to see, the determination, the refusal to fold under any circumstances, that had driven him this far.
“Go on,” Mikulski urged.
Jonah looked at him.
“There’s no reason to stay,” Mikulski told him.
Reluctantly, Jonah climbed to his feet and, after spending a few moments staring down at Miranda’s pale, lifeless face, he sucked in a deep breath, turned toward the marsh and staggered back into it, a solitary figure wading through dark vegetation.
SOURCES
Greg Campbell, Blood Diamonds; Steve Coll, Ghost Wars; Dexter Filkins, The Forever War; Misha Glenny, McMafia; John Gray, Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern; Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind; Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al Qaeda; Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris; Ed Husain, The Islamist; Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game; Chris Mackey and Greg Miller, The Interrogator’s War; Pankaj Mishra, Jihadis; John Robb, Brave New War; Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory; Bruno Tertrais, War Without End; Mark Urban, War in Afghanistan; Paul Virilio, City of Panic; Ed Vulliamy, Seasons in Hell; Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life; Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower.