“But why have you built her?” Holliday asked. “Why now?”
“Because war is coming.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“As a matter of fact I can. I’ve told you that I had my own spies and the battle is to be very soon. It doesn’t matter who the winner is between Kolingba and his enemies. Either way we will be sought out and slaughtered. We have hidden long enough. With the dark of the moon we strike.” He waved toward the ship. A group of kilted workers were fitting a bloodred curling snake figurehead on the high, delicate stem of the ship.
“This cavern stretches the length of all three sections of the falls. When the cofferdam is opened the cavern floor will fill and the ship will be thrust out into the stream with sixty men at her oars. And sixty more at the crossbows. A hundred pirogues will join us on the downriver journey, each paddler armed with a blowgun and a hundred killing darts.”
“You’re mad!” Holliday burst out. “You’re leading your people to suicide!”
“We never asked for war. We never wanted war. But we will not run from war. I know Kolingba and his mind. Just as I know the kind of men who will be fighting him. It may well be suicide to fight, but is it better to wait like sheep for genocide instead?”
“Tiene razon, mi amigo,” murmured Eddie. “Better to die fighting than praying.”
“Is that a quote?”
“Si. Fidel, I’m afraid.”
“Well, I guess this time I agree with him.” Holliday turned back to Limbani. “We’ll fight with you, Doctor, but I want Peggy and Rafi kept safe from harm.”
“I think I can manage that.”
“When is the new moon exactly?”
“Tonight.”
30
Time is a fickle concept during battle. Ask most survivors of D-day and they will tell you that it seemed to take forever for the combined American, British and Canadian forces to establish a beachhead, when in fact it took slightly less than three hours, from six twenty-nine a.m., the official start time, to nine seventeen a.m., roughly the time it takes the average office worker to rise and shine and get to work. In that same period of time on D-day there were approximately twenty thousand casualties incurred by both German and Allied personnel, which was almost two every second. So battle time is relative-it seems to take forever to survive and only a split second to die.
Peggy’s photograph of Havdragoon, the Sea Dragon, bursting through the curtain of water at Kazaba Falls, big square sail set and stitched with its indisputably Templar cross, all sixty of her long oars out and her bloodred dragon figurehead glaring ahead, eventually appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the world and on the cover of every magazine. It made Peggy a wealthy woman in her own right, got her unbelievable assignments and introduced a whole new civilization to the world. But all that was in the future.
Both Holliday and Eddie were on the steering platform as the brand-new ship with its thousand-year-old design hurtled through the cave mouth and dropped down into the foaming, churning maelstrom below. As well as Holliday and Eddie, two of the Pale Strangers, Baltazar and Kaleb, manned the heavy steering oar with them, hanging on for dear life as the Sea Dragon hurtled down into the water, then rose again like its namesake, the great red dragon figurehead streaming water, its golden teeth seething with froth and a sudden wind from behind them bellying the sails as the sixty oars dug into the deep black river water and drove them forward.
“My God!” Holliday breathed, soaked to the skin but feeling an exhilaration deep in his soul he thought was long forgotten.
“?Increible, mi hermano!” Eddie roared ecstatically.
“Krigsanggen!” screeched Baltazar and Kaleb beside them, and in that moment they knew they all spoke the same language, whether they understood one another or not. Something had risen from the deep past and propelled them forward and there was no way back.
Sea Dragon steered easily out of the whirlpools at the foot of the falls and slid effortlessly toward the near bank of the river, the land-side oars rising at a single command from the ship’s undisputed captain, Loki, a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, bearded fury who stood in the bow of the ship, his strong right arm hooked around the red dragon’s neck like a lover. He carried not one but two blowpipes across his back and, according to Limbani, could use them both at once and so quickly that the motions were only a blur.
A gangplank was thrown aboard and Limbani crossed into the ship with Peggy and Rafi on his heels. Ahead of them on the river the sun was setting quickly.
“It will be dark soon,” said Limbani. “We need to load the rest of the warriors and their supplies on board. Even with this wind Loki says it will take almost until dawn to get us downriver to Fourandao.”
“That should be just about right.” Holliday nodded. He paused and gave Peggy a short look. “Did you bring our weapons?”
She nodded. “Stripped from Jerimiah Salamango’s imps.”
Three men came across the gangplank carrying a sagging litter loaded down with AK-47s, ammunition belts, two RPGs with a half dozen rounds each and a pair of brutal-looking Saiga automatic shotguns with nine or ten eight-round magazines each.
“Bueno,” said Eddie, “my favorite, un acelerador de cabeza.” He grinned, looping the sling crosswise over his shoulder and pushing a half dozen magazines into his belt. “In the army we called them Fidelitos-small but with a big mouth.”
Holliday turned and looked directly at Peggy. “Now, look-” he began.
“Don’t even start, Doc. I’m a big girl; I’ve taken photographs in a dozen war zones. I’m not your responsibility. We’re coming, and that, cousin o’ mine, is that.”
“You don’t have anything to say about this?” Holliday said, turning to Rafi.
“I’ve spent the last hour arguing with her. I lost. We’re coming, because if she goes then I’m damn well going with her.”
“You’re both crazy,” said Holliday.
“No, mis amigos,” said Eddie with a grin, “we’re all crazy.”
Konrad Lanz had been sitting in the navigator’s jump seat of the old Vickers Vanguard for three and a half hours and his legs were beginning to cramp. Looking between the pilot and copilot’s seats there was nothing to see but the velvet black of the night and the green and yellow glow of the instruments. For the past hour or so they had been flying at under five thousand feet, and so far they hadn’t heard a single query on the radio.
“How much longer?” he asked the pilot, another one of the old guard named Janni Doke, a South African in his late fifties who could fly anything from a Piper Cub to a jumbo jet.
“Twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five.”
“I’d better get the boys ready, then,” said Lanz.
“You do what you want, baas; just make sure you leave me a couple of roughies to top up the tanks. We’re on fumes as it is,” responded the gruff old Afrikaner.
“Will do,” said Lanz.
“You’re sure about the landing lights?”
“Positive. The approach lights are on all night. They get some late cargo going in and out.” He paused. “There’s only one runway, eight thousand feet, just like I told you in the briefing. The runway lines up with the tower. You can’t miss.”