The War of Immensities (79 page)

“Yes, Jami, I
saw it. I felt it. You were right. It was worth it…” was his final
thought before blackness swallowed him.

He could see
they were just in time. As they swept inland from the southern edge
of the vast lake, Wagner soon spied the broad area cleared of
scrub. Two large prefabricated buildings and a lot of smaller
structures and tents had been erected, and the yellow shapes of
mechanical monsters dragged long tails of dust as they moved about.
The airstrip would be finished in days—they could probably already
land a C-130 there.

“Go straight
in,” Wagner instructed the pilot of his lead helicopter. He had
brought with him fifty men, more than enough he could tell. There
couldn’t be more than a hundred men on the ground and most of those
would be native construction workers. All of his own men were
trained heliborne assault troops.

“They’re asking
who we are,” the co-pilot responded, his voice crackling inside the
helmet Wagner wore.

“Tell them it’s
Colonel Wagner, come to reinforce the ground troops against rebel
attack.”

There was a
pause while the messages were exchanged. “Keep going right in and
land, no matter what,” Wagner instructed the pilot in the meantime.
“We’ll do it the hard way if we have to.”

“They’re saying
they haven’t had any trouble with rebels,” the co-pilot
relayed.

The Black Hawk
Assault Helicopters were pulling into a line behind him and on firm
descent toward the airstrip below.

“They’re moving
in on you even as we speak,” Wagner said with a smile. It amused
him that he was able to speak the truth. In the hills beyond, he
knew the Fulani guerrillas were making their way up from the south
to support his operation. They were because he had arranged it that
way. And from the west, Hausa rebels were closing in. That he had
arranged as well. Within days this would be the scene of a major
battle, and the movement of the pilgrims here would be utterly
unsupportable.

“They say they
can’t let us land without clearance from Captain Maynard,” the
co-pilot relayed.

“Tell them to
get clearance. Maynard takes his orders from me anyway. And by the
time he responds we’ll be on the ground.”

“They’ve got
Captain Maynard on the ground now,” the co-pilot said
sheepishly.

“Oops,” Wagner
chuckled, and then. “Patch him through to me.”

On the ground,
as the Black Hawks ever neared, he could make out the tent that was
the command post. A jeep had just pulled up there and a tall figure
had strode into the tent.

“Wagner, what
in the name of god are you up to?”

“You’ve got two
huge armies of rebels closing in on you. We’re the
reinforcements.”

“Nobody told me
about this. I’m sorry, Kev, but you can’t land.”

“We have to
land. We need fuel. And you need us.”

“I can’t permit
this. I have no appropriate instructions from Task Force.”

“I don’t take
orders from Task Force.”

“You do now. We
all do. This is totally a UN operation, and you are part of
us.”

“We are one
minute from touch-down.”

“You can’t
land, turn back.”

“What are you
going to do, Maynard. Shoot at us?”

He could almost
hear the groan on the other end of the line. In the background,
someone said something about another fuck-up.

And then the
Black Hawks touched down in a vast cloud of swirling dust. “Go! Go!
Go!” Wagner relayed to his men and they spilled from either side of
the skittish machines.

The dust from
the downdraft of the choppers gave them perfect cover and they
deployed as planned, to all parts of the site, invisible in their
yellow fatigues and face-masks and goggles until it was too late
for any of the ground crew to respond.

Wagner walked
out of the man-made yellow fog and saw Maynard coming straight at
him. He levelled his M16, and Maynard pulled up short.

“What the hell
are you doing?” Maynard shouted, and it cost him a lot to do so in
the hostile environment. Wagner was able to walk right up to him
while he coughed and spluttered and cleared his watering eyes.

“Call on your
men to surrender, Maynard. We got enough troubles without fighting
amongst ourselves.”

Maynard stared
at him. Suddenly, far too late, it was all clear to him. “What are
you going to do, Wagner, shoot me?”

“Unlike you,
Maynard, I won’t make the mistake of hesitating.”

Maynard was
such an officer and a gentleman that even at this moment of
betrayal and defeat, when he swore he did so under his breath. Then
he turned to the radio man behind him. “Order all units to stand
down.”

The order was
transmitted. Meanwhile, Wagner had walked past Maynard and they
both turned such that their positions were reversed. It was an
simple as that.

“Didn’t expect
you to be here, Maynard. Though you’d have your hands full at the
other end.”

“To get those
people to go somewhere, first you gotta give ‘em somewhere to
go.”

“Last I heard,
Andromeda was leading them straight on to Sierra Leone.”

“She’s got
nowhere to go but here.”

“Then she’s got
nowhere to go.”

“You won’t get
away with this, Wagner. You’re going to have the whole US air force
down on your neck.”

“Sure, that is,
if Grayson’s got the nerve to start a shooting war to defend the
Thyssen plan.”

“He’s
committed.”

“Sure he is.
I’m betting he’s as gutless as every politician in all
history.”

“If you keep us
hostage, he’ll have to send a rescue mission. My men are mostly US
Navy.”

“You ain’t
hostages, buddy. I’m not in the terrorist business. You can leave
any time you like. Take our helicopters. I give them to you.”

“And how are
you going to get out?”

“We ain’t going
anywhere.”

“You can’t be
serious.”

“I sure am. Go.
Now. I’m sure your men will squeeze in if they leave all their gear
behind. Go with my blessing.”

“And what are
you going to do when the rebels get here?”

“We’ll just
have to try and make friends with them.”

The hospital
was built to last, and certainly stand up to more than a distant
earthquake and tidal floods surging through its lower floors. The
moment Brian entered the building, an illusion was worked on him.
Out there was a swamped city, vast pools of mud lay about the
rubble, the trees were stripped of branches, everything in sight
was damaged. The people toiled in their bright shirts—as if to
cheer themselves—with shovels and brooms. There was no power, no
water, there were thoughts of evacuating the city if essential
services could not soon be restored. Honolulu was paradise turned
shambles.

But as the
hushed doors of the hospital admitted him into its cool corridors,
it was as if nothing had happened. The building was structurally
sound, the auxiliary power operating, everything had been cleaned
or thrown out—there was a huge heap of carpets and timber furniture
in the middle of the car park, as if waiting for bonfire night.
Fourth of July was only a week away, Brian supposed.

The white
uniforms of the shuffling nurses, implacable as ever with their
breezy air of efficiency, were everywhere. Ten days before this
building had been flooded up to second floor level and filled with
sleepers. When rescue services moved in, it became loaded with
casualties to many times its normal capacity. But now no trace of
all that remained.

Thyssen was in
a room on the top floor. He lay in the bed, pale, looking his age,
the rough ruddiness of his pallor and his personality vanquished.
Or so it seemed at first.

“Just the man I
wanted to see,” Thyssen said. His voice was chillingly soft.

“Don’t go
bungin’ the business-as-usual bullshit on me, Harley.”

“No, really.
I’m getting better every day.”

“Yeah. You look
it.”

“Listen, this
is important…”

“Nothing is
important. You’re a patient. I’m a visitor. That’s all there
is.”

“So where’s the
flowers?”

“Lorna said you
didn’t want any.”

“Who do you
reckon brought these?”

“Actually, you
are getting better. She said you couldn’t hardly speak when she was
here. If I’d known you were back in action, I’d have stayed away. I
do have a lot of work to do, you know.”

Thyssen decided
to give up on the banter. Plainly it was tiring him. He charged
straight at the point. “You’ve got to get me to Lake Chad.”

“No way. I
already checked. Doctors said you’re too ill to move.”

“Fuck the
doctors. I’ve got to be there. You know that.”

“No reason for
you to be there at all, that I can see. We have everything under
control.”

Brian wondered
if he ought to say anything about Kevin Wagner’s raid, but decided
against it. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore anyway.

“Come on,
Brian. Gimme a break.”

“I’ve got 12
million people to move in there. Do you think we can lay on a plane
just for you?”

The argument
seemed to defeat Thyssen. The anxiety left him and he breathed for
a while. Brian pulled up a chair and sat, regarding him.

“I saw it,
Brian. Right out that window. The whole damned thing. Kono Head
went up. The wave coming in. I even saw the shock wave go by. The
works.”

“You’d think
you’d be happy now, after that.”

“It was worth
it, Brian. Really. I think I understand why Jami did what she did.
That poor lovely girl. And Felicity. And Chrissie. Three fine
women, and I killed them all.”

“You killed no
one. Stop trying to take all the credit for everything. All three
knew the risks they were taking. Nobody forced them to do
anything.”

“You’re not
supposed to argue with me and get me excited.”

“I didn’t come
here to argue.”

“Then why are
you here?” Thyssen finally asked.

“To try and
figure out how come you ain’t dead. In case I need to know the
trick myself.”

Thyssen
laughed. It seemed to hurt him to do so. “Hard to kill, that’s all.
Some might say I’ve been dead for a long time.”

“You getting
into psycho-babble these days, Harley?”

“No, it’s true.
You know, I reached a point, when I was about fifty. My wife had
died. My kids were gone. I’d done everything in vulcanology that
there was to do and it was all boring to me. My life was over and I
wasn’t dead yet. That’s a very awkward position to be in.”

“Kids don’t
come by on Thanksgiving, huh? I thought all Yankee kids did
that.”

“It was me who
didn’t turn up for Thanksgiving, for most of their lives. Nor any
other time, all that much. I had too much work to do, and just
never got home. When I did, I was locked up in my study. They
hardly ever saw me. When they left home, they returned the favour.
It isn’t that they hate me or anything. Less than that. They just
don’t care about me.”

“Why are you
telling me this?”

“Same reason I
tell you anything else. Because you need to know.”

“I’ve been
keeping up contact with my family.”

“I can’t help
thinking about Felicity. The way that I deprived her family of her
for all those last months. It was unforgivable really. Almost as if
I did it out of spite.”

“I think your
heart attack has softened your brain, Harley.”

“She wasn’t the
only GP in the world, you know.”

“But she was
the best one for the job.”

“I can’t deny I
kept her around for selfish reasons.”

“We all liked
her, Harley. Loved her, I mean. You can’t blame yourself for
that.”

“I can, and I
do. It was all my fault.”

“You really
think you have that much control, Harley?”

“Well, maybe I
am a little deluded on that point.”

“Just like the
rest of us. We’ll all get over it.”

Thyssen allowed
a pause. He dragged himself further up the pillows, settled, and
Brian let all that happen without comment. Finally, Thyssen,
arranged to his own satisfaction, eyed his visitor directly.

“Brian, you do
realise that I have no idea of what is going to happen at Lake
Chad.”

“The evidence
is good enough for me.”

“It’s no more
than a best guess.”

“Harley, you
seem to be the only person left in the world who doesn’t know that
the smart thing to do is go with your guesses. It’ll be the right
time and place.”

“Yes, I think
it will, but thinking it will isn’t good enough for a
scientist.”

“You stopped
being a scientist a while back, now. You’ve become a humanitarian
instead. Didn’t you notice?”

“I wondered
what that strange feeling was. But it isn’t that. Empirical
evidence, circumstantial as it may be, is adequate to suggest I
have the time and place right. The hit will be at Lake Chad. What
I’m guessing at is what effect the pilgrims will have there and
what effect it will have on them.”

“As I recall,
that was my theory, not yours.”

“Okay, but I
gave it a scientific basis that in fact it doesn’t have. They may
all be killed, Brian. I may be sending them all into a trap.”

“And every one
of them knows that and is willing to take the chance. And thousands
of other non-pilgrims are heading there too, because they believe
it. It’s a matter of faith, Harley.”

“But I could be
sending 12 million people to their deaths. That makes me a worse
monster than Hitler.”

“Harley, they
aren’t doing it for you. They’re doing it because they can feel it
and it feels right. They all reckon they can beat this thing and
they want to be there and give it a go. And you provided them with
that chance.”

“Still, you
must understand why I need to be there. What if they all die and I
survive? Think of how unbearable that would be. I have to be there.
Whatever happens to them must happen to me.”