Monkey Wars (36 page)

With the bakery now unguarded, the rhesus formed a chain to whisk the food away to a distant rooftop, where they enjoyed a celebratory feast.

Day one of the war, and first blood had gone to them.

S
hock punched through the langur troop.

The squad commander was disciplined for incompetence, and the whole attack made to look as if it was his fault. It had to be, as the only alternative was to admit that someone out there could mount a lethal strike against the langur. Which was unthinkable.

Secretly, however, Tyrell was reeling.

It had been a bad time for the lord ruler—the shock of the Barbary desertion had hit him hard, and it took all his wily cunning to make out that it was actually part of his strategy. Langur commanders were hastily promoted to fill the gaps, and extra food was distributed to reassure everyone that all was well.

But Tyrell was tormented day and night by one question: why had his trusted Barbaries abandoned him?

As if struggling with that wasn't bad enough, now Tyrell had to deal with a direct attack on his troops. It wasn't the loss of food or the death of the monkeys that worried him; it was that someone had dared to raise a defiant fist against him. Worse still, the attack had been executed in such a mysterious way that none of those involved had any idea who was responsible.

Determined to get a grip, Tyrell threw force and rhetoric at the problem.

“Whoever has provoked us will find they have woken a vengeful monster!” Tyrell boomed. “We are the greatest troop monkeykind has ever known. We have the strength to crush anyone who opposes us. In the future, every food snatch squad will be protected by
six
guard patrols!”

Which was exactly the response Mico wanted; the more reinforcem
ents, the better, because the rhesus had no intention of hitting the same target twice. Unpredicta
bility was one of their key weapons.

They waited until there was a particularly intense deluge, then leaped onto a set of trams heading downtown to the old cemetery.

Lying flat on the slippery tram roofs, they looked down on the streets speeding by and could see that, despite the atrocious weather, langur patrols had been stepped up all over the city. Tyrell was obviously rattled.

Once at the cemetery, the monkeys divided into three units under the commands of Mico, Gu-Nah and Papina, as their inside knowledge would be crucial to the mission's success.

With all the flooding, the drinking pool had turned into a churning drain, channeling a fast flow of water under the wall.

“Ready?” Mico asked.

Silent nods as they steeled their nerves. But Mico could sense something wasn't right. He studied their eyes: Fig met his gaze with unblinking determination; the younger monkeys were tense and excited, eager to get started; but Papina looked down briefly.

“What's wrong?” he asked quietly.

Papina hesitated. “How many do we have to kill?”

So that was it—the bloodshed had got to her. The attack on the food snatch squad had been brilliantly effective, but the sight of the twisted, smashed bodies had sat heavily on her conscience. And now they were going to kill again.

“We've only just begun,” said Fig, cold as steel.

“I know,” Papina whispered.

Mico looked at the two monkeys thoughtfully. Despite all that she had lost, Papina still had compassion.

The problem was, right now, compassion had to be smothered.

“Remember, it was Tyrell who waged war on you,” Mico said, addressing them all. “Tyrell who drove you from your homes, who herded you into an alley and slaughtered you in cold blood. But he didn't act alone. Ordinary langurs helped him, cheered him, struck the blows on his behalf. They didn't have to follow orders; they could've chosen resistance.”

He pointed at the cemetery. “Every monkey inside those walls has chosen to stay, chosen to accept what's going on, which makes them all guilty. Even my own family.” As Mico's words sank in, he saw Papina's expression change, her resolution harden.

“We didn't start this,” he said grimly, “but we are going to finish it. We have to finish it.”

He looked at Papina, stretched out his hand and stroked her head gently. “Now do you see?”

Papina nodded.

“Then GO!”

One by one the monkeys jumped into the swirling pool and let themselves be sucked through the water flume. They bobbed up on the other side of the wall, and were carried along the torrent inside the cemetery, grabbing hold of roots sticking out of the banks to steer themselves.

Everything seemed eerily deserted—the langurs were all huddled inside their homes, sheltering from the rain, which fell heavily on the tombstones and made huge, muddy puddles of the paths.

Silently, swiftly, the rhesus floated undetected toward their target: the Great Vault.

They arrived at the back wall and, with the help of some wild ivy, scrambled up. Looking across the courtyard and the pool, Mico could see that little had changed since he was last there. All the security effort was concentrated on the main doors; once inside, the vault was a quiet sanctuary.

Not for much longer.

Gu-Nah's squad was to target the guards at the main entrance, while Mico had to lead his team deep inside, where senior langurs carried on the day-to-day business of running the troop.

Papina's squad was charged with securing the pool area, as this was the vital escape route, so splitting into twos, they swept down the rooms, searching for the enemy.

Twitcher kicked open the door to the first cubicle and Papina dived in, heart pumping, ready for the kill, only to find it empty.

He slammed open the next door. Again Papina rushed in, nerves jangling…a
gain, nothing.

A strangled cry from the opposite side of the pool made her spin round—she saw Cadby yanking down on the neck of a Twopoint guard, who crumpled to the ground.

Cadby swayed, shocked by his own actions. For a moment it seemed as if he was going to be engulfed by a wave of remorse.

“Cadby!” Papina's voice was hard, uncompromi
sing. Cadby blinked, looked up, caught her eye. She pointed to the pool, reminding him of the plan. Cadby shook himself, then picked the dead guard up and tossed him into the water.

At the entrance to the Great Vault, Gu-Nah's squad took out three guards with brutal efficiency, then dragged the bodies back to the pool, leaving bloodred stripes criss-crossing the stone floor.

Mico led his team deep into the vault interior, where they heard voices echoing in the stone chambers. Closer and closer they crept, peering round doorways, until they saw three senior langurs chatting over some papaya fruit.

Mico thought he recognized one of them and for a moment struggled to place him. Then he checked himself—no point remembering.

With well-practiced discipline, Mico's squad burst into the room—the langurs barely had time to understand what was happening before they were beaten to death.

The attack hadn't lasted long, but as Mico gazed at the pool, swirling red with blood, he knew it had changed the monkey world forever. This pool, the ultimate symbol of langur power, was now defiled with the bodies of dead guards. With a guilty pride, he saw that there was a dark brilliance in the savagery of this symbol.

“RHESUS!!!” A screech from outside the vault walls. One of the langur guards must have escaped.

Immediately the rhesus started scrambling up the walls, then they launched into the tree canopy and climbed for their lives.

Down below, Twopoint guards splashed through the mud and launched themselves into the lower branches, determined to catch the terrorists.

But a treetop battle wasn't in the rhesus' plans—they swung through the branches until they were within leaping distance of the power lines that fizzed dangerously in the rain. After a moment's pause to check which cable was which, they leaped onto the grid and scattered across the wires.

As the senior Twopoint guard watched the attackers melt away, he saw his own career vanish with them; in a last desperate attempt to salvage something from the debacle, he commanded the guards, “FOLLOW ME!”

He launched toward the power lines, reaching out and gripping the wires tightly with hands and feet.

Not so difficult, he thought.

They were the last words that flashed across his mind before thousands of volts put an end to everything.