Black Pearl (32 page)

Mako saw the self-styled colonel stop, look wildly about, and run into the fringe of the jungle. He was on the point of sending some of his own men after the renegade when Richard and Anastasia arrived.

‘He has to be heading for the highway,' gasped Richard as he and Anastasia ran, the Amazons coalescing around them. ‘If he can get through the belt of jungle here, then he'll be on the lava flow from Karisoke that the Congo Librans are using as a road. It's his fastest way out. Or it would be, except that I warned Tchaba to tell Kebila about it. I'm surprised the Benin La Bas air force hasn't been up here yet.'

But, ‘
There!
' she called, and Richard saw a movement in the cane forest ahead. The Amazons went after him, swinging out around him, racing to cut him off from the last strip of jungle that might allow him access to the makeshift highway. The frightened man saw their movement, for his course veered towards the shore of the lake itself. The pack of women swung west as well, driving him into the open even as Richard and Anastasia burst on to the lake shore. But the shoreline stretched out into the blackness, and where there had been water there was now only lake bed – a wilderness of black slime stretching away to the far shore where the army of Congo Libre stood hesitant, rudderless and leaderless; out of their depth and far away from home. And the engineers and executives from Han Wuhan stood beside them, equally at a loss and far further away from home.

And that was the moment the lake bed chose to adjust to the sudden absence of thousands of tons of water that had been pressing down on it until just now. The basalt bowl which had been forced down for aeons on the great bubble of carbon dioxide trapped beneath it moved fractionally now that the weight of the water was gone. The pressure, building sufficiently to be forcing the gas out in bursts and clouds strong enough to kill the Chinese engineer and gas Ivan's men aboard the RIB, exploded into freedom now. And, just as had happened twenty years or so ago, a great bubble of deadly vapour exploded up out of the mud and went rolling downhill into the long-deserted graveyard of Cite La Bas. Everyone on the down-slope bank was swept away with it. The fittest lived for four minutes, choking as their lungs filled with pollution. Everyone else was dead long before that. Some of the deadly carbon dioxide rolled back into the bowl of the empty lake bed, filling it invisibly for a while before it followed the water out through the shattered dam and down the black river valley.

But none of this was obvious from the upslope shore where Odem came running full-tilt out of the cane forest, finally threw away his precious AK-74 and went slithering down the bank into the black mud of the empty lake bed. Had there been water there he might have turned to fight like a cornered rat, even though his matchet was long gone – discarded in the jungle somewhere together with his beret and his wraparound sunglasses. But the lake bed stretched away before him, seemingly offering yet another chance of escape. And so he blundered on. Calling instructions to the Mil, Richard ran down the slippery black silt slope just behind Anastasia. The Amazons were in an arc on either side of them now, all of them focused on the floundering apparition at the heart of the searchlight beam. Richard slowed, his nose twitching, watching the black spectre heaving and falling, apparently trapped by magical toils of the glittering mud he was wading through. He caught at the stem of his headset. ‘STOP!' he bellowed. ‘
Nastia!
HALT!' On his word, the girls froze. ‘Fall back,' he called. ‘There's deadly gas here.'

Odem already knew that. His whole face was on fire. His eyes and nose were streaming. His adenoids and throat were alight. He could feel the strength being sapped out of his body as the black mud wrapped itself around him as though it was made of nets. He grasped at the mud as it twined itself around him and pulled against great ropes of blackness while his consciousness reeled. He felt himself sinking into the suffocating, icy ooze. It was every one of his nightmares rolled into one overwhelming dreadfulness. He would have screamed at the horror of it but he could not catch his breath to do so. Richard watched as Odem fought, shaking his head in amazement at the way the mud seemed to gather itself into a great tangle of vines festooned with huge black grapes. And then he realized. It looked like nets because it
was
nets. Dr Koizumi had used nets to hold the oysters in place. The whole bed of the oyster farm was made of webs of indestructible nets to which the oysters were attached. Odem was getting himself tangled in them and the more he struggled, the deeper he sank, so that it was a race between the black mud and the caustic gas as to which one would choke the life out of him first. ‘Nastia!' he called. ‘Here's what I want you to do …'

Odem was dying. The acrid gas was burning the insides of his lungs now and the more he choked in the more he felt as though he was drowning. How could the whole of his chest be on fire inside while his entire body was freezing in icy slime on the outside? Had he been capable of rational thought he might have dwelt on the irony, but his brain was spinning into primal, howling panic. Then, suddenly – utterly unexpectedly – someone threw themselves across the mud towards him. A huge man with a battered and bloodied face reached out towards him. He grasped the massive hands and his grip was returned. ‘NOW!' bellowed the giant and the pair of them were slowly dragged free of the clinging mud and back towards the cool, sweet, life-giving air of the shore.

T
en minutes later, Richard was watching the puking wreck hanging between two of Anastasia's biggest Amazons come whimpering back to life. They had dragged Odem out of the mud and halfway to the compound before there was any real certainty he would survive. And now that he was showing signs of life, Richard broke into a trot while the Amazons carried their captive towards the brightness of the camp. ‘Right,' he choked into his headset. ‘Check in. Esan. Have the Mils got enough fuel to get us all down the mountain as planned?' He paused as Esan confirmed. Anastasia and the Amazons were all accounted for. ‘Abiye? Mako and your men OK? Good. We'll be with you in a minute. Ivan, what about your Russians?' He paused again, listening for Ivan's reply. But then he was interrupted as the radio operator cut in. ‘Oshodi? What? Kebila's jets are on the way in? OK. One run with cannon and bombs to close the road to Congo Libre. That should do it. We'll keep an eye out. Keep us informed.' He began again. ‘Ivan, what were you saying? All Russians accounted for. Except for Max!
Max!
Where in hell's name's Max?'

Bala Ngama had not been clutching Max out of fear as the Mil dragged the Zodiac across the mat of water hyacinth. The general was inexperienced but he was no fool. And Ivan had been his usual overconfident self too. For Ngama carried a weapon that the cursory search did not reveal. It was a Walther P22 in an ankle holster on his right leg. Through most of the voyage, its barrel was jammed into Max's ribs. Ngama reckoned that the Russian billionaire should ensure that anyone thought twice before acting too hastily when they came to deal with Ngama himself. Like Max, when the positions had been reversed, Ngama was looking to cut a deal. In furtherance of which, he was not sitting idly but was searching with his spare hand amongst the equipment boxes beneath his seat. There were all sorts of useful things in there, and at the very least he stood a good chance of finding a torch. And so it proved. He felt the familiar icy column of a Maglite's handle. He pushed it into his capacious pocket, his mind racing with plans to make best use of it, his gun and his hostage.

But then the RIB flipped over. When the two men were spilled out on to the lake shore, Ngama kept tight hold of both his gun and of Max. Whereas everyone else ran towards the camp as soon as they had picked themselves up, Ngama pushed Max towards the shadows, then on towards the darkness of the strip of jungle separating the work areas from the road across Karisoke into Congo Libre. The roaring of the vanishing water and the battering bluster of the Mil's downdraught made it impossible to hear anything else. So the two men staggered away and nobody noticed they were gone.

Ngama's desperate need for speed ensured that they stayed as high on the bank as possible – where the roots of the cane forest kept the soil solid. So they avoided the nets that were already wrapping themselves round Colonel Odem up ahead. And they also stayed clear of the deadly gas. The shoreline formed a series of little bays with outcrops of bamboo thick enough to conceal the two parties running this way and that from each other. They passed one another unobserved and unaware – one set dragging their whimpering captive towards the light and the other pushing his towards the darkness.

But the darkness was not absolute. The moon had been waxing for the last few nights and tonight it was full, casting its beams over the two men running along the lake shore. It was even bright enough for Ngama to make out Odem's discarded AK74. ‘Stop!' he yelled at Max, who was at least able to hear him now that they were away from the dam, most of the water was out of the lake and the Mils were both hovering down at the far end. The Russian obeyed and stood gasping as Ngama stooped and grabbed the rifle. He pocketed the Walther and swung the AK up into his armpit, using it to gesture Max forward into the jungle. Only when it was towering oppressively above them did Ngama dare get out the Maglite and switch it on.

Max was ready to explode with frustration and anger. To have been within millimetres of rescue and then to watch it slip away! But he could see no alternative other than to obey for the moment and keep an eye out for a chance to turn the tables. He did as ordered, therefore, and plunged forward along the beam of brightness Ngama's torch laid down. He was unknowingly following in the footsteps of Mizuki Yukawa when she had come stumbling this way more than forty years earlier with the pictures of Dr Koizumi's death replaying in her mind. Prodded by the barrel of the AK whenever his footsteps faltered, Max pushed through the ferns, tripping over roots and stumbling into bushes. ‘Keep going!' snarled Ngama. ‘You will soon see the lights from the roadway, then we will be safe.'

Max pushed through a jungle wall into a kind of path. He did not recognize it as an elephant trail any more than Mizuki Yukawa had done when she too discovered it. The trail had become overgrown but it still led down to the massive barrier of the fallen tree, then it turned to one side and now led out on to the wilderness of the lava flow with its makeshift road running up to Congo Libre. ‘Hurry up!' snarled Ngama, made impatient by the nearness of safety and the hope of escape. ‘We're there! We're nearly …'

The panther leaped out of the bushes and hit the general from behind. It was a huge beast, raised on the carefully balanced diet that the zookeepers in Granville Harbour had calculated would make it grow strong and healthy. It did not occur to them – for they did not know what its ultimate fate would be – that it would come to associate human scent with that of the food they brought it. Since its release into the wild, it had starved. And Ngama smelt like a good square meal as far as it was concerned. It measured more than two and a half metres from nose to tail-tip and, even half starved, it weighed more than ninety kilos. It was moving at nearly fifty kph when it hit him. Ngama hurled forward, losing his grip on the AK and throwing it towards Max. The gun hit the Russian on the back as the general vanished under the bulk of the massive predator, his torch beam only serving to show the beast's face as it sank the huge white blades of its canine teeth into the screaming general's throat. There was a choking gurgle, a pulsing hiss, a sound of ripping. A sharp crack as though a big branch had been broken. The deep purring growl of a feeding cat.

Max grabbed the gun and took to his heels with the sounds pursuing him down the elephant path. He had no thought except to escape, so he pounded down the trail blindly, shadows gathering impenetrably in front of him as the torchlight died and the last of the moonlight was swallowed by the canopy above. But then, through the pallisade of utter blackness which was the stand of trees to his left, he saw the promise of some brightness. He remembered what Ngama had said about a road over the mountain to Congo Libre. He turned, following the illusory beams, grateful that the dreadful sounds coming from behind him were fading. A wind came through, fanning his face, bringing with it a faint rumble of motors and the welcome stench of diesel exhaust.

But then, seemingly immediately above his head, there gathered the screaming howl of a squadron, its jets going into the attack. What had been flickers of brightness like fireflies in front of him exploded into a thunderous magnesium-white inferno so intense that he wondered for a moment whether the volcano had erupted. But then he understood. The Benin La Bas air force had just closed the road to Congo Libre. ‘NO!' he screamed.

Suddenly the darkness etched before him by that massive wall of sheer white light coalesced into a familiar shape, and Max found himself screaming profanities into the face of an angry gorilla. It came out of the undergrowth without giving any warning at all. Like Max, it was overwhelmed and terrified by the air-raid on the nearby road. Like the panther, it had been raised in the zoo and was a superb specimen. It towered two metres high and weighed two hundred and fifty kilos. Its arms extended two and a half metres, ending in hands nearly thirty centimetres wide – and they reached for the screaming Russian as it charged. Without any thought at all, Max started firing the AK74. Its bullets smashed into the huge creature's abdomen, but they missed its spine and pelvis so they did not slow it down. It reached for the gun and tore it out of Max's hands. Then, holding it by the barrel, it smashed Max's face open. All the Russian billionaire's cunning, planning, deviousness and ambition were bludgeoned out of his head along with his brains. If there was one last thought, it was simple astonishment at the overwhelming irony.
Ironyen.
It was actually funny, in a twisted Russian sort of way. After all he had been through – put Nastia through in one way and another – that it should come to this.
Simian Artillery
. He was actually being killed. By an ape. With a gun.