Catacombs (45 page)

Oliver backed slowly away from the opening of the drainpipe, until cardboard crumpled beneath his knees. He lay down again, sadly, eyes open. Before long they blinked slow tears. He gradually slipped into a stupefying depression, from which he was unable to rouse himself.

D
ay Three, Makari.

Raun Hardie awoke in her sleeping bag inside the small tent on Kungwe's south slope, hearing the barks and grunts of early-rising chimpanzees in the forest nearby. She'd observed a family of chimps
 
near dusk the night before, in the glade where they were camped. The chimps were adroitly "fishing" in a termite mound with blades of bamboo for the toothsome grubs. After eating their fill, a couple of the chimps, one a big male who would weigh more than a hundred pounds, had reconnoitered the encampment, pausing to deny their curiosity by doing backflips. In this remote place they might never have seen another human being. They were good company, and Raun had always enjoyed having them around. But she didn't try to get too friendly. The chimpanzees could, for no apparent reason, become hostile, and one of them might remove part of her face with a single powerful swipe of a long forearm.

She sat up, propping herself on one elbow. She smelled coffee. Already! The knowledge that she would soon have to face Matthew Jade again took her mind off the chimps' conversation.

On arrival they had quickly been sealed off by clouds, and the jets (Jade
 
had spotted more than one during his descent) were no longer a problem. But obviously their arrival in Tanzania had been noted and reported. He decided to move their projected campsite as far away as they could walk before dark, carrying on their backs just the necessities. The bikes would leave tracks too easy to follow, so they abandoned them.

He selected a site with a steep wall of rock at their backs, an exposed heath between them and the lake, a trickle of a stream on one side. Continuing clouds would make it impossible to find them again from the air.

After gulping reconstituted meals that were hot but not particularly palatable, Jade and Raun shared a tent just big enough for the two of them to sit with their knees touching and a lamp between them. They reoriented themselves according to the photomaps Jade had brought. Lem stood guard with an Israeli-made Galil assault rifle until Jade could relieve him.

Raun's head was heavy with fatigue. A leopard screeched, elephants flatted their trumpet solos. She wondered what it would be like to put her head in his lap and go to sleep. The desire for sex with him was the same as the desire to be punished, she knew that. Odd how she could be thrilled and scared pea green at the same time. She wanted to touch him, to somehow let him know how confused she was. But she couldn't.

Day two had been sullen but rainless. Jade spent the first daylight hours exploring, alone, and came back with bad news.

"This isn't the place, Raun."

She summoned the necessary surprise. "It isn't!"

"The elephant track is just that. Nothing's been up here but elephants. A major expedition involving dozens of people would have left plenty of traces, no matter how thoroughly the Tanzanian government tried to clean up after them. This is virgin bush."

"I was so sure."

"We'll look around," he said encouragingly. "It'll come back to you."

"I hope so."

It was a miserably hard day. Purgatorial. Because there was nothing to do but climb up and down dry streambeds that at times were almost vertical. And look perplexed and crestfallen. And suffer the added stress of his growing disbelief. By day's end Raun was grim and shaking. She felt, self-righteously, that she was earning her pardon through hazards and labor so unremittingly difficult it made the standard prison rockpile seem by comparison a nap on a featherbed. She went to her tent immediately after eating and fell asleep as if she'd been knocked in the head.

Now she needed a good bath, which she couldn't have, and a shampoo, which she might be able to manage in the little bit of water available on the mountain. She crawled out of the tent, stretched and shivered. She took with her toilet articles, a small tube of biodegradable shampoo, and the precious towel she had made room for in her pack. Lem was tending a small fire, getting ready to make breakfast. She didn't see Jade. It was still dark on the heath. A stiff breeze came down from the heights. The sky had begun to lighten over the lake, but the clouds were still solidly there. Daybreak would be gray and cheerless.

Raun took a lantern and a long stick with her, whisking it through the scrubby vegetation on her way to frighten snakes and scorpions, a precaution she'd learned as a child. She had returned easily to the daylight-dark cycle of wilderness living. It had been like stepping back into the past. She was half dreaming, her mind on her father, wondering what he would have thought of Matthew Jade. They had much in common. Her father was bright but eccentric, indomitable, a loner, stubborn, secretive. She'd rebelled against him often, and loved him without reservation. There was one critical difference. Macdonald Hardie had had a genuine reverence for human life. He could never have killed anyone in cold blood.

Near the stream she selected a suitable place for her toilet, then went on down across flat bare rocks to the water's edge. She had company on the far side of the stream, near the forest: Several varieties of bucks were licking at small pools beneath the aerial roots of wild fig, which had strangled the host trees and left them like skeletons beneath a curtain of flourishing green leaves. There was a strong odor of fresh animal dung. Raun took off her long-sleeved shirt, wet her hair, and applied a little shampoo. Scrubbed her scalp. The wall of forest, coming clearer from the dark, was stirred by the wind. Her nipples drew tight as knots in a rope.

As she rinsed her hair she felt the helicopters rising from the level of the lake before she distinguished the reverberating chop of their four-bladed rotors. The powerful turbine engines produced a resonance in the stones on which she crouched, as if heavy machinery were coming to life in the earth. Wrapping the towel around her head, she looked up and saw the bright landing lights of the lead copter, a West German-built light troop carrier. The copter slanted in across the heath, twin machine guns strafing the campsite. Another helicopter appeared a hundred yards behind the first, then another, adding to the intolerable racket. Raun grabbed up her shirt, was stunned by a burst of light in her eyes as the third helicopter swerved in her direction. She began running upstream, dodged behind a pile of boulders as the pursuing copter slashed by overhead. It banked steeply to avoid the escarpment two hundred feet away and came in for a landing on the heath. Clamshell doors opened at the rear of the fuselage and five armed soldiers jumped out. Raun heard small arms fire from the campsite. Another copter was landing in a swarm of dust.

It was total confusion; she ran headlong across the streambed toward the forest. Behind her an automatic weapon chattered; she heard what might have been bullets flicking off rocks behind her. Then there was only the sound of the remaining chopper aloft, casting around with its dual searchlights. One of the beams picked her out, bare to the waist, ducking into the trees like a bashful stripper on amateur night at the VFW smoker.

A strong hand grabbed her and neatly threw her to the ground, half knocking the breath out of her. Jade's hand tore the towel from her head and pressed down across her mouth.

"Stay there!" he demanded. When he took his hand away she struggled to get her breath. He was on one knee, looking back, listening. He had his rifle in the other hand. The helicopter flew almost at treetop level, lights blazing. Jade snatched Raun up and ran with her along the trail, threw them both down behind a big rotten windfall as machine-gun fire pattered through the leaves overhead. Behind them shouts were raised. The copter quit firing and backed off.

Jade got up and ran them again, through the half dark. A panicked antelope barged across their path and nearly hit them; Raun screamed.

"You're a big help," Jade muttered. He pulled her off in a different direction. He seemed to be able to find his way very well where there was no recognizable track. But the soldiers had penetrated the forest; they were close behind. One of them saw something and started shooting. A bullet whizzed through the vines. Jade
 
stopped short for just a moment. He seemed about to lose his balance. She felt a slight tremor running through his body, as if he'd brushed against a charged wire. Then he recovered and ran as swiftly as before, dragging Raun with him.

The helicopter was back, just overhead. It sank dazzling shafts of light through the dense foliage. The forest had become a lush, infinite stage setting, a masterpiece of shadow and light with vaulting trees and fuzzily luminous, dangling creeper. Raun looked up and saw blood running down Jade's face.

"Oh my God!"

At the same time they reached an impasse; a sudden drop, rock studded, forty feet or more. Jade backed off, turned, blood masking the pain and frustration he felt. He sagged down onto one knee and tried to clean out his eyes. He pitched his rifle away. "How's your Swahili?"

She stared at him. She could never have imagined him wounded, giving up.

"I can–I can make myself understood."

"Tell them I've been hit. They don't have to shoot anymore, they've got us."

"Matt!"

"Get on it, Raun, it'll be a bloodbath here in another half a minute!"

Raun found the appropriate words in her memory and began to shout. There was no answer. The helicopter had retreated again. From the heath came the sounds of voices; languages she recognized but couldn't speak. Desert French; Arabic. Light had begun to seep into the forest, which had a drowned look, as if it were covered by a shallow sea. The forest was utterly still; there was no wind. Raun shuddered and repeated their desire to surrender.

Soldiers wearing dark berets and jungle camouflage began to emerge. They carried assault rifles: Kalashnikovs. One of them darted in, retrieved Jade's rifle, and disarmed it. Raun kneeled and put her arms around Jade, looking at the welling of blood from a wound that might have been scalp deep, or much worse. It was causing him tremendous pain. She stared up at the faces. Only one African, the others with lighter skin. Asian mercenaries. She singled out the one with rank.

"Get us a doctor," she said in English. "Do you have a doctor with you?"

He shook his head, flicked an indifferent glance at Jade, motioned for the two of them to get to their feet.

Raun felt a surge of relief. They weren't going to be killed, at least not right away. This was the logical place for it, blast away and tumble the bodies down the cliff. She swallowed most of the lumps in her throat.

Another of the mercenaries moved in, poked at her shirt with the muzzle of his rifle until he was convinced it contained no concealed weapons. He hooked it by the tall front gunsight and tossed the shirt to her. Raun put it on.

"Stand aside," said the patrol leader to Raun. He pointed to two of his men. "Go with them."

She glanced in horror at Jade. He nodded reassuringly, his eyes on the patrol leader. Raun walked slowly to the soldiers, who fell in behind her, rifles leveled at her waist. The others surrounded Jade. They marched their prisoners back through the forest that way, widely separated, Raun in front, Jade behind;

It was dawn on the heath. There was no sign of Lem Meztizo. Raun looked frantically for him until she was prodded into one of the helicopters. They led Jade to a different helicopter. She saw him stumble going in, and knew he was badly hurt. She wondered if Lem was already in the other copter. But she had a sick feeling he wasn't.

One of the soldiers flying with her had an odd-looking ring on one finger. He was showing it to the others, in the meager light. Raun leaned forward to try to get a better look, was roughly thrust back into her seat and held there by the flat of a rifle against her breasts.

"Where did you get that?" she said angrily to the soldier.

He turned, grinning, and held out the long finger. But she'd already recognized what he was wearing: Lem's mummified tarantula, with the vivid collection of precious stones.

The soldier raised his other hand and made an unmistakable motion with his trigger finger.

Raun turned away in anguish, tears running down her cheeks. The clamshell doors at the rear of the fuselage closed, and the helicopter lifted slowly from the ground.

LAKE MANYARA

Iringa Highlands, Tanzania

May 21

T
iernan Clarke's house was large but crudely made and without style, knocked together like a packing crate. It was a clubhouse, a den of boyish men. On the front porch Erika leaned against a post and shielded her eyes. The day's glare had diminished, but what was left of the light sapped her strength. She heard men at work on the game ranch, the harsh bray of an animal, a truck motor racing.

The ranch was located atop the Great Rift Wall, one thousand feet high at this point. The forest going down to the bottom of the rift was turning gray from drought and dust. The glass shard of Manyara lay below; a hundred concentric wrinkles of dried soda measured the almost daily retreat of the shoreline in this dry year.

Hundreds of thousands of flamingos had arrived to take up temporary residence on the frothing shore.