The Burning (44 page)

Duncan and Morag had still not emerged.

A large, black motor launch sped into view on the horizon. Rachel watched it churning up a wake of foam as it began to power towards the shore. She could hear the roar of its engines and then the sound of another motor, high above them, swooping down, black and insect-like out of the sun.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as the snake of smoke shot from beneath the helicopter, and a second missile exploded into the cave behind them.

The blast knocked Rachel to the ground, and as she looked up, dust and debris fell around her. Her mother stood, shocked, frozen to the spot. She could have been turned to stone, save for the terrible screams that came from her. Rachel turned to see Gabriel lying flat beside her. He raised his face, sooty from the blast.

“You did this!” Rachel shrieked above the fading clatter of the helicopter blades. “You opened the door … and now you’ve closed it again.”

“No…”

“You’ve deliberately sealed it up so that nobody can get inside again. Well, you’ve sealed Morag and Duncan and the others up with it.”

Gabriel shook his head feverishly from side to side. Tears streaked his cheeks, washing clean lines into the soot.
He scrabbled to his feet, holding his hands to his head in anguish.

“I didn’t do this,” he said. “It wasn’t me. Rachel, it wasn’t me…”

Gabriel turned and sprinted back towards the cave. The missile had struck just above the opening and Gabriel watched, helpless, as rocks rolled down the cliff-face and tumbled on to the beach, blocking the entrance. Only a small gap remained where the mouth of the cave had been.

Gabriel ran.

He dived though the small black gap, back into the cavern, a second before the cave collapsed in on itself.

R
achel screamed and began to run towards the cave, but she was firmly pulled back by her mother.

“Leave it,” Kate said. “He’s gone…”

“No!” Rachel shook her head, tears streaking her face. “He can’t just … go.” They stared at the entrance. There were still smaller rocks rolling down on to the sand; dust was rising in a black cloud that drifted back towards them on the breeze.

“I think it’s time to leave,” Laura said.

Rachel did not move. “But Morag and Duncan are still inside. Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard…”

Laura laid a hand on her arm. “Nobody else is coming out of there, Rachel.”

As the rumble of collapsing rock died and the helicopter wheeled away across the cliff top, Laura became aware of another sound. She turned to see the motor launch still racing towards the shore. Men with dark glasses and automatic weapons were standing on the deck. After the
beating handed out to their unarmed colleagues by the French boys, the next wave of Hope operatives would clearly be taking no chances.

“We have to get out of here
now
,” she told Kate and Rachel. “We—”

All three of them turned slowly to face the ocean again, their faces suddenly wet with spray as the water rose up from nowhere and roared.

“What’s happening?” Kate screamed.

They stood and stared as, thirty metres or so offshore, the surface of the water began to spin at incredible speed. At first, it looked as though a giant whirlpool was forming, but then it lifted, hovering above the water and growing into a monstrous tornado, its funnel over twenty metres high.

Laura was almost blown off her feet, and sand was whipping up into her eyes. “Get down!” she shouted.

They all dropped to the floor, just as the spinning column of wind and water began to move. Just as the helicopter reappeared, swooping in from behind the cliff top. It was moving too fast to avoid getting caught in the vicious tower of water which rose up to meet it.

Adam stared at Clay Van der Zee. It was as though the doctor had resigned himself to something, though to
what
, Adam could not be sure. The man’s face was impassive, even though there were still two guns pointing at him. Even though the anguished voice of the helicopter pilot was filling the cabin.

“I’ve lost control … there’s nothing I can do…”

The noise of the rotor blades was suddenly much louder and Adam knew that the sound was not only coming through the radio.

“The instruments will not respond!”

The chopper was close. Way too close…

“I can’t bail out,” the pilot screamed.
“I can’t bail out!”

Adam released his hold on the minds of the two guards. They snapped into life, like men woken suddenly from bad dreams, took a few seconds to work out what was happening, then ran from the cabin.

“I have to try!” the pilot shouted.

Adam ran to the porthole, craned his neck and struggled to look up. It was hard to see anything at all with the whirlwind throwing water hard against the glass, but he could just about make out the dark shape that was getting larger, fast.

“The boat … I have to try and get clear,” the pilot’s voice screeched.

Adam turned just in time to see Van der Zee drop back into his chair and close his eyes. From the speaker, there was nothing but screaming through the crackle of static.

“I think this is probably goodbye,” Van der Zee said.

From the beach, Rachel, Kate and Laura watched as the helicopter was caught and held tight in the tornado’s grip. They saw it thrown around as though it were a toy.
The aircraft rolled over and twisted inside the dark funnel, the blades “
whop-whopping
” to no avail as the pilot tried his best to regain control.

“It’s like it just reached up,” Kate said. “Like the wind just plucked it out of the air…”

The sense of horror quickly grew, until each of them felt it like a blow to their stomach; until they realized that the helicopter was going to crash, and exactly where it was going to come down.

When they saw just what the point of impact would be.

Laura’s hand few to her mouth. “Oh my God!”

There was not even time to turn their heads away…

It was like a rush of wind, just for a moment, and then the full force of the explosion broke across them, throwing them on to their backs. The noise was unbearable, and by the time it had died down sufficiently for them to get back on their feet, the fireball was already climbing high into the air. Debris was crashing down into the water on all sides and they could no longer see anything of either the helicopter or the boat it had destroyed.

Rachel stood and watched, and for those few seconds before the realization – before the grief – hit, she was looking through a different pair of eyes.

She was a young girl who had rushed from a cave to that same spot thirty thousand years before. When another vessel had fallen from the sky. When a fireball had risen from the ocean and smoke had blacked out the sun.

The scream brought her out of it.

Rachel turned to see her mother dropping on to the sand like a dead woman and Laura rushing across to offer what little comfort she could.

“Adam!” Kate shouted.

Then Rachel understood. She saw the smoke continue to rise and felt her world fall away as she went down.

“Adam was on that boat.”

R
achel clung to her mother and their tears mingled, their cheeks pressed tightly together. No words, no gestures could express the trauma of the past hour. As their shadows grew long in the late afternoon sun, they stayed on their knees in the sand and wept.

Laura paced up and down at the water’s edge, shaking her head, trying to make sense of the burning wreckage floating offshore. Cinders and particles of smouldering boat hissed as they floated down and landed in the sea in front of her. The vortex had subsided, but a kilometre out, the sea still rolled and boiled…

Rachel got up and wiped away the sand stuck to her cheeks. She spat bits of grit from her mouth and strode towards the sea after Laura. She caught up with the Australian and launched herself at her, grabbing at her sweatshirt, pulling her down into the water: thrashing and punching wildly. Laura tried to restrain Rachel, but she had been caught off guard and the two of them tumbled into the cold, grey Atlantic.

Kate saw what was happening and ran in after her daughter.

“Rachel … no!”

Laura and Rachel were waist deep by the time Kate reached them and attempted to pull them apart. She held each of them by the neck of their shirts, like naughty children. As they struggled, the three of them fell into an awkward, wet embrace, clinging to one another for comfort, their tears coming again.

Then Rachel felt something else…

…Something which at first she mistook for a hard knot of grief, tightening in her throat. But the feeling became warmer, a vibration, and, as a new warmth spread through her, she realized that the twin Triskellions were pulsating against her chest.

“Can you feel it?” she asked.

Laura nodded.

“What is it?” Kate asked.

The feeling grew, buzzing, filling Rachel’s head with sounds and voices. “It’s …
hope
,” she said. “I think it’s a good sign.”

She looked upwards. Instead of cinders, a fine mist of raindrops was falling from the sky. They all raised their heads; the warm rain soothing their stinging, tear-stained faces.

Gabriel?
she called out with her mind.

Silence, save for the roar of water out at sea, but in her
head, Rachel could see Gabriel, Morag and Duncan, close together and moving away from her into a darkness thick with dust. Were they still alive, or was it no more than a wish?

“Adam…!”

Her mother’s scream wrenched Rachel away from the vision. Laura and Kate were splashing through the water along the shore, towards a wet figure that had been washed up on the beach. Rachel rushed towards the body of her brother. The three of them attempted to pull him up the beach, hauling his dead weight on to dry sand.

His lips were blue and his dark hair was plastered across his forehead. Kate covered his cold cheeks with hot kisses.

Rachel thought he looked beautiful. She held his limp hand.

And then Adam coughed. His body lurched and jolted. Spasms passed through his limbs and a jet of salt water spewed from his mouth on to the sand.

He slowly opened his eyes.

“Hi,” he said.

R
achel stared out across the water, her eyes drifting up from the vision of horror and destruction that still smouldered and smoked out at sea. Up to the single, bright star that had begun to glitter high above the ocean.

How had she described that feeling to the others?

Hope…

Adam, Laura and Kate appeared at her shoulder. Rachel turned. “You ready?” she said.

Adam shrugged. “For a trek across the desert with no idea where we’re going? Yeah, sure.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone’s going to come and pick us up,” Rachel said. She tucked the twin Triskellions down below the neck of her sweatshirt, then hoisted her backpack up on to her shoulders.

The others did the same, and they began to walk.