Dancing the Code Part 11

Jo realized that, as far as Belqua.s.sim was concerned, this was simple truth: victory depended not on guns or aircraft, but on who the land was supposed to belong to. She smiled at him. 'I think that's rather a nice way of looking at things.'

Belqua.s.sim's face softened. He reached out and pulled at her headscarf, which she had folded back over her shoulders.

'You should keep it over your head,' he said, gently pus.h.i.+ng it back into place.

Jo giggled. 'Why? Because I'm supposed to be modest?'

'No. Because it keeps the dust out of your hair, and also the flies.

So that it will be kept nice for your boyfriend.'

'I haven't got a boyfriend,' said Jo.

'That's a pity,' said Belqua.s.sim, but the expression on his face indicated that he didn't think it was a pity at all. Jo lowered her eyes and turned to face the Giltean settlement.

Something had changed, and after a moment Jo realized what it was. The canvas covering the weapons on the perimeter had been pulled back, revealing the gleaming metal teeth of anti-aircraft guns.

'What's happening, Belqua.s.sim?' she asked, but even as she said it there was a shout from behind, a clatter of gun metal, and the car door slammed.

Jo turned, saw Vincent running towards her, pulling Catriona after him.

'Down here! Quickly!'

'What's happening?' repeated Jo.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have come after me!' He rushed past her. 'This way!'

Jo looked at Belqua.s.sim, who was scanning the sky with binoculars. He said, 'Jets. Three.'

Abdelsalam shouted something in Arabic. Vincent, already twenty yards down the rocky slope, shouted back. Abdelsalam shrugged, went to the back of the Land Rover and emerged with a Kalashnikov in each hand, and two belts of ammunition. He gave one to Belqua.s.sim and kept the other, so that they were each armed with two guns, the Kalashnikovs and the French machine guns that had been part of the uniform. Jo couldn't see the point of it.

'Jo!'

Catriona's voice.

' Run! Run! ' '

The urgency in her voice convinced Jo to start down the slope, scrambling ahead of the two Gilteans. Vincent and Catriona were running ahead, dodging to the left now.

Belqua.s.sim shouted something, and a huge gust of hot air knocked Jo off her feet, sending her sliding amongst the hard pebbles. She saw something projecting ahead that might be a mine and struggled frantically to stop, scrabbling at the slope till her hands bled. She hit something soft: Catriona. For some reason the reporter was crouched with her hands over her head. Next to her Vincent was doing the same. Around them, pebbles were shattering and jumping into the air.

Something vast and silver thundered overhead, bringing an ear-hurting roar in its wake. Jo saw the white-hot exhaust at the rear of the jet as the plane sped away, barrelling over the Giltean settlement.

The perimeter guns spat, but they were too slow to track the jet as it climbed away from them.

There was a flash of silver in the corner of Jo's eye. A fraction of a second later, one of the gun batteries exploded, pieces of metal and other debris scattering in a ball of flame. Another jet appeared over the slope, raced down across the settlement. Tents jerked as bullets. .h.i.t them. A tiny figure with a gun fruitlessly fired at the tail of the plane.

Then an entire street exploded.

Over the confusion of sounds in Jo's ears, she heard Vincent screaming, 'No! They cannot do this! I should never have come here - they are doing this because they are angry with me - '

Catriona was shouting something too, pointing to the east.

Then Jo saw it: the first jet, rolling lazily back out of the sky, heading towards them.

Catriona dragged Vincent to his feet, and they started running. Jo looked over her shoulder for Belqua.s.sim and Abdelsalam, and to her horror saw only a scattering of burned and twisted metal where the Land Rover had been.

She stopped, stared, saw Abdelsalam lying on the slope, one leg buckled beneath him, his head twisted backwards, his eyes staring lifelessly at the sky.

Catriona caught at her arm, pulled her down.

'Where's Belqua.s.sim?' she asked the reporter.

Then she saw something burning near the remains of the Land Rover, saw the scorched pieces of clothing. 'Oh,' she said. She felt her stomach heave.

- but he was nice he was flirting with me we were having fun but he was nice he was flirting with me we were having fun - - Catriona pulled harder at her arm. The jet roared overhead. Rocks exploded into fragments around them. A piece of stone hit Jo in the leg, making a rip in the fabric of her trousers. Blood began to leak from the cut, but Jo didn't feel any pain. Somewhere on the other side of the road there was an explosion. A bullet must have hit a mine, Jo thought.

She began to run, following Vincent as he twisted and turned through the minefield, concentrating on putting her feet in the same spots as he did. The sounds of explosions from the settlement grew closer, but gradually diminished in frequency until all Jo could hear was a crackle of burning, the occasional crash of falling rubble and the constant sound of women wailing.

She could see very little ahead: the air was filled with dust and smoke. Vincent had tied a handkerchief over his mouth. Catriona was coughing, deep spasms that left her gasping for breath.

'Should we be going down there?' asked Jo. 'Won't they come back?'

Vincent shrugged. Jo realized that there wasn't really anywhere else for them to go. They could hardly walk back to Kebir City, or to Algiers.

They were walking across the black desert shale now. Ahead, through the thinning smoke, Jo saw a bank of loose rock and dirty sandbags. At first she thought it was rubble, then realized she was looking at the remains of the makes.h.i.+ft perimeter 'wall'. A piece of plastic pipe pa.s.sed through the embankment. A man lay flat at the end of it, cradling a gun. After a few seconds Jo realized that he was dead.

Vincent advanced with caution, picking his way amongst the stones. The sun was s.h.i.+ning through the smoke and dust now, dim and b.l.o.o.d.y.

Someone shouted from inside the embankment.

' Al Tayid Al Tayid,' said Vincent simply.

A gun emerged, followed by a man in khaki. He stared at Vincent, then stepped forward and embraced him. When he stepped back, he nodded at Catriona, then looked at Jo and shot Vincent an interrogative look.

'I'm Jo Grant,' said Jo, without waiting for Vincent's explanation.

'From UNIT. The United Nations.'

The man gave her another appraising glance. 'Do you have any medicines?' he asked.

'Medicines?' said Jo blankly. 'No, we escaped with Vincent -'

Then she broke off as it dawned on her why the man was so interested in medicines. She remembered the tents jolting under the bullets from the planes, thought about the people who had been in those tents. 'I do first aid,' she said.

The man glanced at Catriona, then turned back to Vincent.

'You'd better come through,' he said.

They crawled across the remains of the wall, into a scene worse than any possible nightmare. Two men in blackened uniforms were pulling a body out of a heap of dust and rubble that had once been a house. The street was already piled with bodies, some of them charred, others dismembered by the explosions. Several of the pieces were small enough to have come from children. Jo felt her stomach heave. She'd seen death before - too often - but this was the worst.

Human beings had done this. Three human beings, she thought, remembering the number of planes. Just three people, in powerful machines. And just one decision, to send them, made in Kebir City.

What had Vincent said? ' You think that governments don't kill You think that governments don't kill innocent people? innocent people? ' The words seemed to echo in her head as she stared at the heap of bodies. Maybe people couldn't be trusted with power. ' The words seemed to echo in her head as she stared at the heap of bodies. Maybe people couldn't be trusted with power.

Not any sort of power.

'Jo!' Catriona was beckoning from further up the street. 'They could do with a hand here.'

Jo ran up to her, saw an Arab woman with her head in her hands, sobbing. A turbaned man stood by her, a girl of about five in his arms. There was a piece of metal protruding from the little girl's chest.

Jo swallowed hard, made herself look closer. The metal was tubular, about two inches wide, and curved in an oddly familiar way - with a sudden shock she recognized the handlebars of a bicycle.

The metal had entered the chest just above the bottom of the rib cage, to the left of the breastbone, pinning the little girl's bloodstained s.h.i.+rt to her skin. She touched the girl's neck, felt a weak pulse, bent down to listen to her breathing.

Saw the ragged end of the handlebars protruding from the girl's back.

Helplessly, she brushed away some of the grey flies that were crawling on the girl's face. Brown eyes opened, stared at her.

She looked up at the father, said quietly, 'She will have to go to the hospital.'

The man frowned.

Jo felt a hand touch her arm. 'That's the hospital, Jo. Over there.'

Catriona's voice: she was pointing at a half-collapsed mud-brick building. The Red Crescent banner could be seen, scorched, torn, half-buried. Smoke rose from the only part of the building still standing, and Jo heard the distant sound of screams.

She opened her mouth to say something about the Geneva convention, then closed it again, realizing that there was no point.

The little girl gave a faint, whistling sigh. Jo looked down at her, saw that her breathing had become rapid, ragged. Her eyes locked on to Jo's, and a tiny hand reached out.

'You shouldn't move,' said Jo, though she doubted the girl understood English. She took the hand, squeezed it. The girl gave another faint sigh, and her breathing stopped. Slowly, the brown eyes glazed over.

Jo looked up at the father.

'I'm sorry.'

He touched her arm, gently, then turned and walked away, carrying the body of the child. His wife got up and followed, wailing softly. Jo stood there, feeling cool tears slowly run down her face. Flies tickled her cheeks, her nose, her lips, but she did nothing to brush them away.

Eventually she became aware of the sound of voices.

Vincent and Catriona were shouting, both at the same time.

Vincent: 'Promise me you will tell the world that the Kebiriz have tried to destroy these people. I want to see pictures on the front page of every newspaper.'

And Catriona: 'I haven't even got a camera, Vincent. You know I'll do my best but I haven't got a camera.'

Jo turned, saw Catriona holding Vincent's arms, almost shaking him. He was almost screaming now: 'The front page! Promise me!'

'Find a camera, Vincent,' said Catriona levelly. 'Find me a camera.'

Jo walked slowly away from them. She looked around at the burning hospital, at the heaps of bodies, at the ruins of the makes.h.i.+ft streets and gardens.

There must be something I can do, she thought. She looked at the hospital again, saw patients on stretchers being rushed out of the building, hastily set down in the street.

I could help with that, she thought. Perhaps that would help keep somebody alive.

She set off at a run.

The Brigadier's stomach lurched as for the fourth or fifth time the Doctor simply dropped the Superhawk out of the sky to avoid an incoming missile. This time when the dive bottomed out there was an ominous popping sound from somewhere in the aircraft. The plane flipped upside down, and the Brigadier had a dizzy view of a brown landscape flas.h.i.+ng above his head - or was that below his head? - of trees - Trees?

He glanced at the altimeter. They were flying at five hundred feet.

Correction: flying upside down at five hundred feet. The air speed indicator showed Mach 2.4.

Ahead of them was a sheer escarpment, white rocks blazing in the morning sun.

'Doctor!' bawled the Brigadier. 'I don't think - '

He was unable to complete the sentence: the air was forced out of his lungs as the plane jerked upwards. There were more ominous pops from the body of the aircraft. He had a brief glimpse of a jagged edge flickering blurrily past the c.o.c.kpit at a range he didn't care to think about, then the plane slowly rolled back upright.

Behind them the escarpment exploded. Twice. Two plumes of rock and dust, spreading out, but shrinking with incredible rapidity as the plane streaked away.

'Heat-seeking missiles,' said the Doctor's voice over the intercom.

'Clever, but not clever enough. You can always fool them with hot spots. A nice sunny cliff, for example.'

High, barren mountains rose ahead. The Brigadier tried again.

'Doctor, I don't see how we're going to clear - '

'Be quiet, Brigadier. I need to concentrate on this.'

A wall of rock was almost directly in front of them. For the second time in under a minute, the Brigadier made a closer acquaintance of a rock face than he would have cared to whilst flying at twice the speed of sound. There was a flicker of darkness: he could have sworn the Doctor actually flew through through something - a cave, perhaps - then they were soaring out over a huge yellow-brown plain, with the mountains falling away behind them. something - a cave, perhaps - then they were soaring out over a huge yellow-brown plain, with the mountains falling away behind them.

'Have we lost them?' asked the Brigadier.