The men had spread out, two groups of four running in opposite directions along the sea wall, searching the land below. The third group came straight along the road towards me, looking in the ditches on either side as they came.
I moved to meet them, as close as I dared, and then submerged in the shallow ditch, instinctively adjusting my skin colour to match the muddy water. I waited until I sensed them going past, then surfaced and slipped onto the road, racing silently after them.
The first two fell as I touched them and their weapons clattered on the ground. The others spun round – one was too slow and already falling before he completed his move, but the other opened fire.
I dived to one side as the muzzle flashes split up the night, then bounced up again and touched him. By then, the other groups had turned back and were racing along the bank towards the road.
I picked up a weapon, which I recognised as a type of Kalashnikov, and swung the gun into the aim, noting that it had an optical sight with an illuminated aiming mark. I placed the mark just in front of the first running man and pulled the trigger. The man dropped immediately, but the muzzle flipped upwards with the recoil so I corrected my aim, held the gun more firmly and fired again.
I wasn’t sure how many I had hit but it wasn’t enough, and the others had taken cover on the seaward side of the wall. I realised that I was totally exposed and slid back down into the ditch, just as the return fire crackled the air around me.
A bright flash followed from behind the wall, and a streak of fire shot towards me. I ducked as the rocket-propelled grenade detonated on the road a few yards away. I sensed movement behind the wall and suddenly realised that they were getting in line with the ditch so they could fire directly along it. I rolled rapidly across the road and into the opposite ditch as the next grenade streaked along the ditch before detonating.
I felt a flash of agony from Sophie and in rage and desperation reached out with my mind to the men behind the sea wall and wrenched. There was a sudden silence and stillness, in which I became dimly aware of a distant throbbing, growing rapidly louder. A bright searchlight flicked on, spearing through the night and sweeping down over the scene. I raced to the bridge and dropped into the ditch, then realised the terrible truth. The second rocket-propelled grenade had hit the bank just in front of the pipe, blasting a lethal shower of fragments down it. I pulled out Sophie’s torn and bloodied body and held her in my arms, frantically seeking with all my senses for any sign of life, any chance of revival. There was nothing.
As I held her, a flash illuminated the sky above the wall, followed by a loud explosion. I scarcely noticed at the time, and only later realised that helicopter had flown on and destroyed the “mother craft”.
Time passed as I stood there blindly, just holding her, my mind a raw and endless scream tearing into the night. After a while I became aware that someone was speaking to me, and that the area was illuminated by car headlights. It was Richards, speaking the conventional words.
‘Cade, I’m terribly sorry.’ He was, too. But there was more than just sorrow in his mind – there was something else. Numb as I was with too much emotion, I didn’t realise at first what I was picking up, then it gradually dawned on me. It was guilt.
I turned and looked at him. ‘Richards, did you know about this attack?’
‘No,’ he said quickly. That was right in a way, too, but there was again something more.
‘You knew something, though, didn’t you?’ I focused on him and realised with growing horror what had happened. ‘You told them where we were!’
‘We had you covered!’ He said desperately. ‘It was the only way to find this new group, to make them come out into the open. They couldn’t resist going for you as a target. I thought they would come by road and we had that covered – they should never have got near you!’
I carefully laid Sophie’s body onto the road, then straightened up and looked at Richards. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I suddenly, instinctively, reached out with my mind and touched him, and then I turned and raced away, back towards the sea wall, ignoring the shouts from the other men.
I sprinted past the burning wreckage of the chalet, jumped over the contorted bodies lying behind the wall, their teeth gleaming in a rictus of terror and pain, and ran down towards the beach. The tide was in, the water lapping gently nearby, the ripples reflecting the lightening eastern sky as dawn approached. I plunged into the sea, wading fast until it was deep enough to swim, then settled into a long, steady stroke, letting my mind drift away as my body worked to take me away from the land, away from everything.
BOOK 2: SAURIANA
5
Time passed, unmeasured and unnoticed. I almost entirely shut down my mind and just swam. For the first couple of hours, I occasionally became aware of a mental intrusion as the searching helicopter throbbed too close, but I just took a breath, matched my colouring to the sea and continued under the surface.
As the day brightened I spent an increasing amount of time underwater, just surfacing occasionally for air. I found the rippling sunlight streaming through the water utterly beautiful and I spent hours absorbed in the shifting patterns as I swam. A school of porpoises came by, circling around me with lively curiosity before flashing off at many times the speed I could achieve.
Days and nights cycled slowly, and still I swam tirelessly. There were usually some merchant ships visible on the horizon, and once one headed straight for me so I sank to the bottom and looked up as it passed overhead; the great shadow throbbing with diesel power, the large single propeller turning slowly enough to count the blades. Another time my path crossed that of a trawler and I had to manoeuvre to avoid the towlines dragging the huge, sack-shaped net along the bottom.
From all of that time I can recall no conscious thought. But I was intensely aware of everything around me; the flow of the tides, the patterns of waves from the shipping, the residual swell from far distant winds, the life teeming in the water, the traces of pollutants from human activities. In contrast, my own self-awareness seemed to diminish, to become just a dot in the huge sea.
Drinking didn’t seem to be a problem – my versatile body could apparently cope with seawater – and I ignored the growing pangs of hunger as pointless; there were no fruit or nuts in the sea.
The distance from Essex to the Continental coast is something like a hundred and fifty kilometres in a straight line, but the surging tides pushed me first one way, then the other, so my course was more of a zig-zag across the southern North Sea.
Eventually I became aware that the sea floor was slowly rising to meet the surface, and that a distant, rhythmical roar was becoming audible. The surface of the sea became more agitated, forming deep hollows reaching down to me, interspersed with peaks rising high above. The movement of the water picked me up and rushed me into the breakers until I was thrown onto harsh sand. I crawled up the beach until the sand became soft and dry and I felt the brush of vegetation against my skin. It was dark, and I curled up into a ball and slept for the first time in days.
I woke. The sun was high in the sky, and felt strong and hot. My skin had automatically shifted to a silvery colour on top to reflect the rays, and black underneath to radiate away the surplus heat. I sat up, my skin colour shifting to keep track, and looked around.