The Age of Ra (4 page)

The cave convulsed. David was flung against the rear wall by a pressure wave. He fetched up sprawled across the corpses of his fellow paratroopers.

For a time, he couldn't move. Think. Feel.

He staggered to his feet. The air was dense with dust. The inner chamber was more or less intact, but the cave's outer wall had been reduced to rubble. A ragged aperture remained, large enough to clamber through. David made for it. On the way he stumbled across something on the floor. Captain Maradi. The Nephthysian was lying on his back. His clothing was charred and tattered. Most of the skin had been burned off him.

He stirred.

Still alive. Just.

David knelt. Maradi blinked up with scarlet eyes. His mouth moved, wordlessly, or so it seemed.

''I told you I would kill you,'' David said. Or thought he said. His ears were ringing too loudly for him to hear even his own voice.

Maradi's expression was resigned -
the irony of it
.

David rammed the heel of his palm against the base of the man's nose, driving bone and cartilage upwards into the brain.

Outside, dust hung across the valley in a red-brown fog. Through its skeins and swirls David could see that the place had been devastated. This portion of Petra was more of a ruin than it had ever been. The temple façades were gone, a few spars of column jutting here and there from landslides of rock. The rest was red, cratered moonscape.

The Eagles had dropped dual-cell fusion bombs. Green Osirian
ba
in one half, white Isisian
ba
in the other. Within the casing, a thin dividing wall of ceramic that shattered on impact, bringing the two divine essences into sudden contact. The result: a violent melding of diverse powers and a half-kiloton yield.

Having delivered their payload, the jets were now gone. David doubted they would return. Job done.

He went in search of McAllister and Gibbs.

3. West

T
he desert hissed and shimmered. It was earth that had been flayed by the sun, a patch of planet stripped of all softness, peeled back to the bone. Wadis spoke of rain that came abruptly and in torrents, scored channels in the ground, then vanished, offering little relief. Plants here lived a half-existence, deep roots tapping for moisture while shoots were brittle to the point of crumbling. Snakes and scorpions raced from shade to shade.

Three men came walking. Two of them supported the third, who hobbled along on one leg. The other leg ended in a ragged mass of flesh, a thing that hung limp and useless and looked only vaguely like a foot. A belt was tied around the thigh in a tourniquet.

McAllister had insisted on being left behind at Petra. David had insisted that if McAllister didn't shut up, he would put a bolt of
ba
through his head. McAllister had asked him to do just that. David had hoisted the sergeant up by the armpits and set off.

They had no radio equipment. Theirs and the Nephthysians' had been buried by the bombs. They had no weapons except a single Horusite
ba
lance, which David had retrieved from the body of a dead Nephthysian. All of their own weaponry had, of course, been confiscated earlier, and the bombs had buried that too. They had no food or water. They had been deprived of their emergency rations and bottles by their captors.

All they had was themselves.

Getting far away from Petra was vital. The bombardment was bound to attract attention and the area would soon be teeming with Nephthysian troops.

They had to go west.

West would get them across the al-Jayb river and onto the Sinai Peninsula. Any other direction would take them deeper into hostile territory. West was their only hope. West, and the one neutral country left in the world.

''How far?''

This was Gibbs's question. David didn't know the answer for sure.

''Fifty, sixty miles,'' he replied confidently. ''No more than that.''

The sun towered down on them. David was already acutely thirsty and hungry.

They would never make it to Freegypt.

They kept going anyway.

Night was bitterly cold, the stars like flecks of ice.

McAllister groaned dazedly in the dark. David sat with him, trying to distract him and keep him quiet by chatting to him in a low voice. Sound carried at night in the desert. A whisper was a shout.

''Ah'm such a heid-the-ball,'' McAllister complained in one of his lucid moments. ''Getting my leg all mashed up an' that.''

''Yes, it was your fault a chunk of cave roof collapsed on you,'' David said. ''What an idiot.''

''Ah'm just holding you up. You have to leave me.''

''What, and miss your cheery Scottish temperament?''

''Go an' fuck yourself, sir.''

''That's the spirit.''

At dawn, as much through luck as skill, David managed to catch and kill a lizard. He chiselled off its head with a sharp stone and they took turns to drink drips of its blood. Then they took turns to vomit.

The sun blazed, Ra at his least forgiving. The paratroopers draped their battledress blouses over their heads and felt their bare backs and shoulders start to blister. The horizon was one long wavering line, melting into the blue of the sky. However far they trudged it never came any closer.

Soon David had almost stopped thinking. All that filled his mind was thirst. His tongue was a lumpen, desiccated object in his mouth; it no longer felt a part of him. His brain throbbed inside his skull like a prisoner beating on the walls of his cell.

McAllister was scarcely walking any more. David and Gibbs were carrying him, and every step they took with his extra weight seemed to drain one more ounce of hydration out of them, one more erg of strength.

Eventually they set him down in the feathery shade of a tamarisk bush. They knew they were not going to pick him up again. Their arms were too stiff to lift him any more, and McAllister was too pain-wracked and feverish to bear any more of being lifted.

A few words hissed from his parched lips.

David leaned close.

''Could murder a brew,'' McAllister said.

''Afraid we're all out,'' said David.

''Whisky?''

''I seem to have mislaid my hip flask.''

Even more quietly, so that Gibbs couldn't hear, McAllister said, ''They bombed us.''

''I know.''

''Our own planes. Cleansing the scene.''

''I know,'' David said again.

''To shut us up. And so there'd be no bodies. No evidence. Nothing for the Nephs to parade on TV. Just a ruddy great mess of rubble that both sides can claim the other did.''

The term that Captain Maradi had used popped up in David's mind:
deniability
. ''We all know we're expendable.''

''Still,'' said McAllister. ''The stupid wee bastards.''

''That's the military, Sergeant McAllister. That, in a nutshell, is who we work for. A bunch of stupid wee bastards. And some might say we're stupid wee bastards ourselves, for working for them. Look on the bright side. The bombing freed us.''

''Not that that was the plan.'' McAllister gave a cough that was a laugh or a laugh that was a cough. He fumbled with the small, shatterproof glass phial that hung on a chain around his neck. ''You'll... you'll do the necessary for me, sir?''

It was a last request. David nodded.

''You're not so bad, you know,'' McAllister said. ''For a poncey English posho.''

''I'll be sure to have that carved on my gravestone.''

Within the hour, the sergeant was dead.

David unstoppered the phial and dribbled myrrh onto McAllister's bare chest. At the same time he murmured the Prayer of Anointment.

''Lord Osiris, Ruler of the Netherworld, I commend to you the
ka
of Malcolm McAllister, that his sins may be judged kindly by wise Maat in the Hall of Judgement at the Weighing of the Heart, and that he may pass on safely into the care of your nephew Anubis for all eternity.''

The myrrh's sickly-sweet odour rose in David's nostrils, so cloying he wanted to gag.

''With this oil I purify and sanctify his mortal remains and raise him to a state of holy grace, that he may be worthy in your eyes, O Hundred-Named One.''

He and Gibbs did not have the energy, or for that matter the tools, to bury the body. They had no choice but to leave it out in the open for the jackals to find and dispose of.