Nemesis (50 page)

“Oliver!”

“Over here! I think I’ve killed him.”

“Noordhof’s squad is on the way. We must run.”

Webb sprinted back into the room. “I need a telephone!” he shouted, forcing his bleeding feet into shoes.

“A telephone? Where?”

“In the hacienda. At the reception desk.”

“You madman!” Judy shouted in reply. A flicker of light threw her face into harsh relief, revealing wild eyes and water streaming down her sodden hair: a witch from
Macbeth
.

“I have no choice.”

“They’ll cut you off with bullets.”

“No time to discuss it. Look, we’ll go on a wide circle round the back and approach the ranch from the front. That way we don’t bump into the squad. Do you know cars?”

“I’ve been around them since I was fourteen.”

“So steal one. Bring it round to the front.”

“Ollie, enter the hacienda and you’re dead.”

“I have to try. Go!”

They sprinted across the sodden ground, away from the ranch, and took a wide curve towards the front, risking exposure from a single flash of light; but for the moment there was only a distant flickering on the horizon. They made for the dark, squat outline of a small building. It turned out to be a football shelter and they arrived, gasping, just as a thunderbolt lit up the landscape and hammered on the ground. They stood at the back, puffing, and looked out through a waterfall streaming down from the corrugated roof. A dull glow came from the hacienda entrance.

“I don’t think we were seen,” Judy said breathlessly.

“Two red lights, about thirty yards to the left of the entrance.”

“Soldiers smoking. I think I see a jeep.”

“Don’t even think about it. It’s hardly twenty yards from them.”

“There are three wires behind the steering column. Two must be joined together. When you touch them with the third, the engine starts.” The sky flashed blue and there was an instantaneous glimpse of three caped soldiers huddled under a clump of trees. Three jeeps were parked not far from them. But the thunderbolt had shown something new, a tableau of four soldiers striding purposefully along the covered verandah, in the direction of the rooms.

“Oliver,” she said quietly, “your death squad.”

Webb felt the old scrotum contraction, and this time his scalp shrank with it. He said, “A jeep, front entrance, ninety seconds,” and ran into the dark. At the hacienda, he strolled casually out of the shadows, an eccentric foreigner walking in the rain, sodden. Dice were clattering on the hard wooden floor. Half a dozen GIs were shouting incantations and exchanging paper money. At the far end, Arkle and a few officers were lounging in armchairs, drinking coffee. Arkle looked up startled, but recovered quickly and gave Webb a wave. He returned it, casually, wiping wet hair back from his eyes. A long-faced, weary corporal at the desk was reading
Playboy
.

“Are the lines open yet?” Webb asked.

“Sure. Where do you want?”

It would be the early hours in London. Webb gave him the Astronomer Royal’s ex-directory number. The corporal started to dial. The squat, bullet-headed sergeant left the game and wandered over.

“Hi Doc,” he said, with exaggerated casualness. “Problem?”

“Not really.” Don’t give him a handle. Arkle had left the officers and was striding over. Webb was light-headed and sweating, and Arkle’s face told him what he had feared: that he would never make the call.

“Ringing for you, sir,” the corporal said, holding out the receiver.

Arkle reached them. The sergeant stayed within arm’s length.

“Hi Doc, you’re up early,” the general said.

Webb took the receiver. “Couldn’t sleep with all the noise.”

The Astronomer Royal, sounding tired, said: “Waterstone-Clarke.”

Arkle killed the connection, a chubby finger going down on the button. “Can’t let you make the call, Doc. Security.”

“Security?”

“That’s right. Security.”

The sergeant sensed an atmosphere, stepped back nervously.

“First I’ve heard of it, General. I need to speak to my London contact.”

“This is an open line, son. We don’t know who could be listening in. London contacts are out until Nemesis has passed.”

Webb nodded, mentally setting a new priority:
Get out of this alive
.

“By the way,” Arkle added, “Colonel Noordhof’s been looking for you.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Webb said, moving towards the stairs.

“He’ll be along. Join us for coffee.”

“Thanks, but I need to dry out. I’ll just get to my room.”

“I insist,” said Arkle.

“Okay.” Moving to the stairs. “Join you in a minute.”

“I reckon you’re not hearing too good, son. Join us now.”

“Sure. I’ll join you now in a moment.”

Games with words. The sergeant glances uncertainly between them, his lips twitching. A few yards away the GIs play their own esoteric word game as the dice clatter along the floor: don’t come, baby’s new socks, it’s a natural. Arkle stands, baffled and tightlipped. Slowly up the wooden stairs. Slowly along the short stretch to the door. Almost there.
Don’t run, for God’s sake don’t run. Slowly open the door. Turn to Arkle: a final wave. Casual, unhurried. Don’t blow it now; don’t run.

On to the verandah. Rain teeming down. Somebody shouting. A jeep without lights roaring up. From behind, Webb senses the ranch door opening. Shadowy figures rushing along the verandah, boots clattering on stone flagons. Another shout, this time from Arkle. The loud assertiveness of command.

“Stop them!”

Webb takes a running jump into the vehicle. Somebody seizes him by the collar. Webb punches him hard on the nose and cries out with the unexpected pain in his knuckles, but the sergeant staggers back, covering his face with his hands.

“Hit the boards!” Webb yells.

She hits them.

The pilot sprinted the hundred yards from the Portakabin to the helicopter, splashing through puddles and bent double against the rain. He quickly climbed in, threw off his baseball cap, put on his headphones and went through the check routine at superhuman speed. As the rotor started to chop he checked the radar; the other ship was ten miles to the south, six hundred feet above ground and following the pre-arranged perimeter patrol. There was a brief exchange on the radio. The pilot pulled on the collective and the gunship rose above the pyramids and the paraboloids. From above, the whole complex was lit up like some bizarre Alcatraz. He did a hard banking turn over the ancient city, switched on the thermal imager and followed the road north.

Ten minutes later he picked up the lights of Xochicalco, every detail of the ranch complex visible, pale and ghostly, like a snowscene tinged with green. The roof of the main building glowed as if aflame. He drifted over the complex and picked out Noordhof’s bungalow. A man was standing
outside it and the pilot switched on the Night Sun as he descended, to be seen.

Noordhof ran unsteadily towards the gunship, like a drunk man. He was holding the side of his head. The pilot leaned over and opened the side door. The Colonel buckled himself in; blood was oozing out of a three-inch gash in front of his ear.

“You should get that seen to, sir.”

“The road to Mexico City. They’ve got a jeep.”

The gunship soared rapidly into the air.

“How much of a start, sir?”

“Christ knows.” Noordhof’s words were coming out strained; maybe concussion, the pilot thought, or maybe pain, or maybe the giant bruise at the side of the soldier’s jaw made speech difficult. “I was out maybe ten minutes. It took you ten to get here. I guess they have a twenty-minute start.”

“No problem, sir. All we have to do is follow the road. We’ll have them in five.”

“We have to get off the road!” Webb yelled above the screaming engine. Judy, hunched forward like a shortsighted old woman, ignored him. Swathes of rain streamed across the cone of the headlights. The jeep’s speedometer was hovering at around eighty miles an hour independently of the curves in the stormswept road. He tried again, putting his wet face close to hers and holding grimly on to the dashboard. “The helicopter at Oaxtepec—it has thermal imaging. All he has to do is follow the road. Can you hear me, you crazy witch? Even if you switch off your lights the heat from your exhaust will show up like a whore in church.”

“You have a map, stupid? Where do we leave the road?”

“Another ten minutes on it and we’re dead. Watch that corner. Oh my God. Why did you wait until the last second to move on Noordhof? You had me worried.”

“A New Mexico scorpion, am I? Anyway, how did you know I wasn’t on Noordhof’s side?”

Another glistening corner rushed up and Webb grabbed her arm to stay on. Arcs of mud and water shot past his head. The jeep hammered into a deep pothole and he was momentarily in free-fall. “That slide into the gorge. If you were in with them you wouldn’t have told me it was a murder attempt. Anyway, if God had meant you to fool me he’d have given you brains.”

“And the pigs thought I was expendable,” she shouted furiously.

“They recruited you and . . .”

“ . . . and I went along with them to see how deep it went. Like you, Oliver, I didn’t know who I could trust.”

“Get off the road in five minutes or we’re dead . . .”

“The pigs, the lying, treacherous pigs!”

“ . . . and half the planet with us!”

They flew six hundred feet high in pitch black, the machine bucketing in the wind, but in the infrared the road below was easily traced even through the torrential rain.

A brilliant green spot appeared at the top of the HUD and drifted slowly down. The pilot grunted in satisfaction. “Contact. Two miles ahead.”

Noordhof peered through the driving rain into the blackness ahead. He thought he saw a hazy light but it disappeared. In a second it reappeared, more strongly now, at first seeming to move unphysically fast over the ground before it resolved itself into the reflection of headlights sweeping from side to side as the driver manoeuvred round corners.

“I see them,” said Noordhof. Then: “Take them out.”

“Sir?”

“You having problems with your hearing, Mister?”

“Sir, is that an authorized order? This is Mexican territory. We’re not at war with Mexico, sir.”

“Ay-ffirmative it’s legal,” Noordhof lied. “Ay-ffirmative you’re in Mexico. And if you question my orders again ayffirmative I’ll stick your head up your ass.”

The pilot pulled the collective up and the gunship soared into the clouds, stabilizing at two thousand feet. The storm played with the machine like a child with a rattle. They flew blind, the infrared increasingly useless against the water and the pilot increasingly nervous about mountains. Finally he lost his nerve and dropped the machine below the cloud base.
Noordhof looked behind; they were well past the headlights.

The pilot took the machine on for a minute and then turned it round, pushing the stick forward to decrease the lift, and settled gently down to the road, facing back towards a corner. He loaded a single rocket, pressed a key to arm it, and put his thumb over the fire button, with his free hand ready to switch on the searchlight when the jeep appeared. At this range there would be no need for a guidance mode: it was just switch on, take a second to line up and then, fried gringo.

Light scattered off a stony field. The pilot tensed. The headlights came into view about three hundred yards away. He began to press his thumb against the firing button, switched on the searchlight, and the wet bodywork of a melon truck glistened brilliantly in the beam. With a single curse the pilot switched off the light and soared away, leaving the driver standing on the brakes and frantically crossing himself.

They flew on for another five minutes, following the curving road.

“Okay,” Noordhof finally said. “So they’re cute. They’ve left the road.”

“Where, sir? It’s all mountains.”

“They ain’t on the road. So they must be off it.”

“I’ll go back and do a to-and-fro sweep, sir.”

“Just don’t hit any mountains.”

It seemed incredible, but the weather was getting worse, the sheer mass of water cutting down transmission through the normally optically thin infrared window and degrading the imager’s range. The radar was a mass of snow. He pulled the stick to the left, veering off the road, and began to fly low, in narrowly spaced sweeps about five miles wide. He began to wonder if maybe they weren’t so crazy after all.

Webb sat awkwardly on a melon and put his back up against a thin metal girder entwined with ropes, spreading his legs wide to maximize lateral stability. He could see
Judy in silhouette, jammed in a corner, knees almost round her ears.

He looked at his watch, and could just make out 4:59 a.m. on the luminous dial. It might take the pilot half an hour to find the empty jeep and check out the surrounding countryside before he cottoned on. It might be more, and it might be less.

Judy and the driver had talked in Spanish and Webb understood there was a village with a telephone which they said worked quite often. If Julio’s lazy son had done a proper job on the carburettor they would be there in maybe half an hour, otherwise who could say? From there we could phone a garage for a repair. He could recommend his cousin Miguel, who would not object to being wakened for gringo business.

But if the rain stops, Webb thought, the pilot’s IR range will expand and he’ll find the jeep in minutes. The hammering of the rain on the tarpaulin was deafening and brought joy to Webb’s heart; the occasional faltering of the engine, however, was having the opposite effect.

He hadn’t expected it would be at the bottom of a gorge and he almost missed the faint, fuzzy blob on the imager. He dropped to a hundred metres above the ground, hovering over the spot. He switched on the Night Sun and a cone of driving rain swept through the brilliant beam.

The jeep was lying on its side, three quarters immersed in black surging water. The gorge was about thirty feet deep and the ground on either side sloped steeply upwards. He lowered the gunship as far as he dared, the blades whipping the water below into a spray.