Saffron sighed, examining a small cut on her finger from her escape out of the laboratories.
‘If only you were that important, Colon,’ she murmured to another round of sniggers from behind them.
‘We were supposed to make a statement and free one of the chimps,’ Manx snapped, his bluster losing conviction in the face of her disinterest. ‘Not blow the place sky-high!’
Saffron shrugged.
‘If a job’s worth doing…’
Manx glared at her while occasionally peering sideways, seeking support from the crowd. Saffron could tell that none was forthcoming as Manx pulled himself up to his full height, building up to something.
‘You’ve gone too far,’ he snarled. ‘It’s time to cut you down to size.’
With a startling howl of what Saffron presumed was rage, Manx lunged toward her. His big, dirty hands shot out to her wrists in an attempt to force her to the ground. Saffron acted without thought or worry, stepping not away from Manx but toward him, turning sideways and ducking down as his hands shot past her face. With a heave of effort she drove her right elbow deep into his stomach just beneath his ribs. The howl was cut short as Manx gagged and a blast of foul air rushed from his mouth. He doubled over, just in time for Saffron’s knee to jerk up and smash across the bridge of his nose with a dull crunch like an eggshell crushed beneath her boots. Winded and blinded in less than a second, Manx flipped over and collapsed gasping onto the hot desert sand. Saffron looked down at him.
‘Good work, Colon,’ she murmured without pity.
The group around her laughed openly now. They were hers without a doubt. Manx struggled to his knees, coughing and spluttering, tears staining his dusty face as he squinted up at her.
‘You’re insane!’ he bleated.
Saffron turned her back to him, walking away toward the camper van. ‘And you’re pathetic. Get lost.’
Another round of laughs followed. Saffron saw in the windows of the GMC the reflection of Manx staggering to his feet, clutching his face and stomach as he made his unsteady way toward the main road, a quarter of a mile to the south. She waited until he was out of earshot, busying herself with cleaning her shotgun. From behind, she heard the groupies tentatively approaching, and the gentle noises made by the chimpanzees in the back of the GMC as they guzzled from recently refilled water bottles.
Ruby Lily’s voice squeaked again.
‘Let’s free the monkeys!’
A chorus of delighted cheers burst out as Ruby Lily dashed to the rear of the vehicle to open the main doors, where the cages were stacked. She had almost reached them when Saffron took two paces toward her, gripping her wrist in one hand and twisting it sideways. Ruby Lily cried out in alarm as she dropped onto one knee, trying to get away from the pain. Saffron glared down at her.
‘Are you a complete idiot?’ she demanded.
Ruby Lily looked up at her in confusion as Saffron released her and looked at the rest of the crowd.
‘These are Bonobo Chimpanzees from West Africa. They were raised in captivity and have learned to trust humans.’ She paused. ‘To a point. They have also been experimented on, kept in cages, and watched members of their troop go into operating theaters and never return. Chimpanzees have a muscle density far greater than ours, and are easily capable of tearing a human being to pieces with their bare hands.’ She let the point sink in. ‘What do you think they’ll do if they get out and can run free?’
Saffron waited until they realized that an answer was expected.
‘They’ll hurt people,’ someone said in a voice that sounded thin, as though they’d been up all night smoking dope.
‘Well done, Einstein,’ Saffron mocked. ‘They can also carry diseases that can kill, Ebola Zaire being the most lethal. We have no idea what was being done to them in the laboratories, therefore we don’t know what dangers they pose to us. We’ll take them to the nearest zoo in the morning and leave them there.’
Dismay soured the faces of everyone in the group, and Saffron slammed the GMC’s door shut.
‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘What do you think we should do with them?’
Silence enveloped the group and the desert around them. Saffron waited, feeling like a teacher in front of a kindergarten class. She doubted that the thirty of them could muster an IQ of a hundred between them, doped, drugged and mindless as they were.
‘Maybe I should put all of you in the van and let the chimps decide?’ Saffron snapped. ‘Get their water bottles refilled, and then get the van covered with brush and whatever else you can find. It’s going to get hotter and they need shade, understood? I’m going to scout the area, make sure it’s secure. We don’t want the FBI searching for Colon out here, do we?’
With a mixture of chuckles as well as some discontented mumbling, the group dispersed. Saffron turned and aimed for the nearest hill, hiking up through thick brush along a ridge that lined one of a series of gullys descending down into the valley floor behind her, where the Jemez Reservoir glittered. The blue water was formed by the Jemez Canyon Dam, built in 1953 and owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers. It took almost twenty minutes to reach the high point she sought, where the hot desert winds rumbled. She surveyed the surrounding terrain and fished in her pocket for a cell phone, then dialed a number from memory, waiting for the line to connect and watching the windows of distant vehicles flashing silently in the sunlight on the distant I-25.
‘Go ahead.’
The rattling, croaking voice filled her with a loathing that she struggled to conceal.
‘It’s done.’
‘Good. Where is Tyler Willis?’
‘Your men took him when we hit the labs,’ Saffron said. ‘You’ll have to ask them.’
‘Excellent work, Saffron. I’m very proud.’
‘I want your word,’ Saffron demanded. ‘Not a mark on him, understood?’
A moment later, the line went dead.
Saffron shut the phone off and slipped it back into her pocket before gazing out over the cruel beauty of the New Mexico wilderness. She sighed and wondered again if she was doing the right thing. Colin Manx was a weak man, and weak men did the bidding of the strong. All that she could hope for was that she had hit Manx hard enough, both mentally and physically, for him to fulfill his role.
And that she had the strength to do what she had planned for so long.
19
‘We’re chasing rainbows here, you know that, don’t you?’
Ethan drove with one arm trailing out of the Mercury’s open window, letting the desert wind blow in. He preferred it to the cold caress of air con, and while the car was moving it was cool enough to let him get away with it.
‘We don’t have much else to go on,’ he said to Lopez, who was sitting with her long hair rippling in the breeze and her sneakers resting against the dashboard on which a printed image of Saffron Oppenheimer and Colin Manx was taped. ‘Without Willis, we don’t really know who or what we’re after.’
‘I doubt we’ll find enlightenment out here,’ Lopez said. ‘Chances of a bunch of drop-outs knowing anything about experiments at Los Alamos is pretty unlikely, doesn’t matter who their grandpa is.’
‘You got any better ideas?’ he asked Lopez. ‘The troopers reckoned this was the likely escape route for Saffron Oppenheimer and Colin Manx after they ditched their original vehicle outside Los Alamos, but they don’t have the resources to scour the entire desert.’
Lopez laughed, shaking her head.
‘What?’ Ethan asked, smiling in bemusement.
‘The whole of New Mexico’s state police don’t have the resources to search a million square miles of desert,’ she said, ‘but you’re driving the two of us out here because you think we somehow do. I can’t wait to see how you pull this off. Divining rods? Sifting tea leaves?’