Two more answering shots crackled across the valley, close enough to leave a ringing in his ears, and Ethan saw a larger spurt of flame and a puff of blue smoke less than thirty yards away. A second, from lower down, was forty yards distant and right on target as the shot split the air above their heads. Ethan realized he had a problem: the enemy was now advancing on him.
‘They’re coming back at us,’ Lopez whispered. ‘We need to fall back.’
Ethan shook his head. If they gave ground now they’d end up in a running retreat, and with night now fallen it would be doubly hard to track their quarry. Despite the risk, it was better to remain within range and know where they were.
‘We need the high ground,’ he replied. ‘Otherwise they could flank us and pin us down here.’
The rifles cracked again, the muzzle flash now close enough to illuminate the ground around Ethan. A bullet smacked into the ground five feet from where he and Lopez lay flat against the earth. Ethan rolled sideways, bringing his pistol up and firing back. Twelve.
‘Goddammit, we need to get out of here!’ Lopez snapped.
Ethan looked about desperately in the darkness as a series of rustling noises through the bushes both above and below them betrayed the presence of an enemy-flanking maneuver. Ethan clambered up onto one knee, firing three shots at the nearest shapes moving through the shadows. Fifteen. He reached down to the webbing pouch at his waist, closest to his right hand, grabbing a second magazine. As he yanked it free of the pouch a shout rang out over the hillside.
‘He’s out of rounds! Pig-stick him!’
A burst of noise from the bushes to his right startled Ethan, and he turned to see a figure leap out of the undergrowth and sprint down toward them with a cry of fury. Ethan glimpsed a dark blue coat with yellow arm-stripes, a kepi hat, khaki pants and a bearded face, the man’s mouth agape as the flash of a metal bayonet raced toward Ethan’s face.
‘Get down!’
Ethan shoved Lopez toward the ground as he leapt up, dropping his pistol and magazine and dodging the bayonet as he drove his shoulder into the charging man’s chest. The attacker’s impetus smashed Ethan backward down the hillside, crashing through bushes and scrub in a cloud of dust and sand. The soldier landed on top of Ethan, his heavy musket pinned between them as they rolled over each other. Ethan slid to a halt with the soldier kneeling on top of him with one hand on his musket across Ethan’s chest. As the man raised a fist to punch him, Ethan saw that his kepi hat had fallen off to expose a scalp half decayed, chucks of matted hair spilling out across his shoulders, strips of desiccated skin hanging from the bone.
Ethan shot one hand out as the bony fist flashed down toward him, catching the soldier’s hand and twisting it hard. The soldier cried out as his wrist was wrenched to breaking point, and Ethan smashed his knee up into the man’s back and then hit him hard enough to send him sprawling across the dusty ground. Ethan leapt up, looking desperately for his pistol. The soldier struggled to his feet and whirled to face Ethan, the musket and its wicked bayonet pointing at him once again. Ethan lunged forward to grab the weapon, but as he did so the soldier twirled it over, the bayonet vanishing as the butt whipped up and smacked Ethan under the jaw with a crack that sent sparks of light flashing across his eyes. Ethan staggered backward and collapsed onto the dusty earth as a voice called down the hillside from the darkness.
‘Copthorne? You got ’im yet?’
The bearded soldier grinned down at Ethan with a smile full of gaps, the bayonet hovering above his chest.
‘He ain’t nothin’ but a new piece o’ history, Ellison!’ The man glared down at Ethan and smiled. ‘Time you took a taste of my Arkansas toothpick, boy!’
The soldier took a deep breath and then lifted the bayonet to plunge it into Ethan’s body.
A gunshot shattered the night, louder than all the muskets and pistols, and Ethan saw the soldier above him cry out and leap for cover into the bushes. Another shot followed, gouging a plume of dust up under the soldier’s feet. He leapt up, fleeing down the hillside. There was another gunshot from below and Ethan stayed flat on his back as round after round blasted across the hillside, rattling the bushes further up where the voices had come from. Ethan heard a scattering of panicked cries, and then the sound of boots pounding soft earth receding down the hillside into the distance.
Slowly, Ethan clambered up onto one knee and peered into the darkness.
‘Who’s there? Identify yourself.’
Lopez rushed up alongside Ethan, the pistol now loaded and aiming into the darkness.
A figure stood upright from the bushes, not more than ten yards from Ethan, and in the starlight he could just make out the figure’s long, thick blonde hair and a shotgun.
‘We meet again, hero,’ came Saffron Oppenheimer’s voice as she strode toward them. She looked at Lopez and the pistol in her hands. ‘I’d put that down if I were you.’
Lopez didn’t move. Saffron grinned and clicked the fingers of one hand. From around them in the bushes half a dozen people rose up, each holding a gun of some kind.
‘You’re the ones who were sky-lining yourselves, not the soldiers,’ Ethan said.
Saffron nodded once as Lopez, hopelessly outgunned, lowered the pistol. Saffron walked forward and took it from her before looking at Ethan.
‘A lot’s happened since we last met,’ she said simply. ‘We need to talk.’
46
Saffron Oppenheimer led Ethan and Lopez down to the valley floor. On Ethan’s advice, she sent her colleagues moving along the top of the valley, deliberately making themselves visible to deter any further attacks from the soldiers he knew must be somewhere ahead of them. After a mile Saffron changed direction and moved down a different canyon. Within ten minutes Ethan spotted the glow of camp fires nestled in the canyon’s depths. Above them the sky was ablaze with trillions of distant stars glowing amid the sweeping veil of the Milky Way.
The last time he had really looked at such a panorama had been deep in another desert landscape, searching desperately for Joanna Defoe among the warrens of Gaza City. Ethan watched Saffron Oppenheimer as she led them toward the camp fires ahead, and was struck by the similarities between the eco-warrior and Joanna; the same determination and drive, the same disregard for danger, and an almost identical passion for justice. It was that passion that had almost gotten Joanna killed in Bogotá, Colombia, long before she finally vanished from the streets of Gaza City. Ethan felt a sudden surge of compassion for Saffron as he realized that her unwavering determination could also only lead to tragedy.
‘Is this where your band of merry men hide out?’ he asked her as they walked.
‘We move around,’ Saffron explained, ‘never the same place twice and always concealed. The rangers spot us occasionally but they don’t bother us to speak of. We don’t cause any trouble.’
‘Except when you’re shooting at people,’ Lopez pointed out.
‘Saved your ass, didn’t it?’ Saffron lobbed back and stopped on the track. ‘And you speak when I tell you to, not before.’
Ethan stared in surprise at Saffron. He was aware of her dislike of Lopez, but her reaction was excessive. ‘You nearly killed that man,’ Ethan said, impressed and yet appalled at the same time. ‘You didn’t hesitate.’
Saffron sighed as they walked.
‘That wasn’t a man,’ she said with what sounded to Ethan like pure contempt. ‘Leastways not as far as I’m concerned. They’ve lived out here for a long time and they’ve chased us out of camps more than once and stolen our supplies. They’re usually armed and they’re as cunning as wolves, but we’ve generally avoided each other.’