Flood (45 page)

When he came through the intersections himself Gary saw the remains of barbed-wire fences, smashed-open roadblocks, pillboxes of sandbags and concrete slabs. And at the Garcilaso intersection he saw a dead man, some guy in a bright blue AxysCorp uniform that looked as if it had rolled out of the factory today. He wore a white helmet, and had a sergeant’s stripes on his arm. He was flung over the road surface, face down, limbs sprawled like a doll’s, a deep crimson stain spreading over his back. This was the first corpse Gary had seen today. He had seen plenty of death in his time with Walker City, and enough violent death, but he never got used to it.

Now the column halted again. The order came to hole up. People looked for shelter, from the sun as much as from sniper fire, in doorways and alleys. Doors splintered and windows shattered as the invaders began to help themselves to whatever they could loot from the shops and residences, offices and churches. But Gary started to hear complaints that there was no food or water to be found.

The mayor told Gary she was going forward to see what was happening, and left him.

Gary went back twenty meters to find Grace, who had been walking with Domingo. Grace looked more uncomfortable than nervous. Domingo looked like some kind of pirate, grinning hugely as he cradled his own AK47, which he had polished until it gleamed in the clear Andean light. He had a looted necklace, a string of chunky aquamarine blocks, wrapped around his head like a bandanna.

“You really are an asshole, Domingo,” Gary said with faint disgust.

Domingo laughed.“But this is a day for assholes. What next, O great non-asshole gringo?”

“The mayor’s going forward. I guess Ollantay’s planning the next step. Come on, we’ll go up with her.” He took Grace’s hand.

“We are mere foot soldiers,” Domingo said.

Gary shook his head. “We got friends in this city. Anything we can do to reduce the body count today, we’re going to do.”

Domingo bowed. “Then I follow your lead.”

Holding Grace’s hand and followed by Domingo, Gary worked up the line until he caught up with the mayor’s party. They had stopped at another major intersection, beside a green space beneath the shoulders of a monumental-looking church.

Standing before this blocky pile, Ollantay held court. He was in his Inca finery, gaudy woolen tunic and trousers, those gold ear-studs bright in the sun, and he had a gold helmet on his head, looted from some private collection during the bee-sting raids he had mounted on Cusco before this main assault. He stood erect, his face dark and proud, here on this day of his apotheosis.

Mayor Thorson stood before Ollantay dubiously, listening to the conversation that passed between Ollantay and his senior generals, such as they were. They were a pack of thugs and troublemakers who had been attracted to Ollantay’s cause from the highland communities, farms and mines, here to settle old scores. There were even a few of the dispossessed from the raft communities offshore. This core group stood around a wooden box that looked like a coffin, hauled here on a cart.

Among them was a man Gary didn’t recognize, in a fresh-looking AxysCorp uniform. Aged maybe thirty, he was overweight, an unusual sight nowadays; he had a puffy, resentful face, and he stood by Ollantay nervously.

And Kristie was here. Her little boy wore feathers in his hair and had his own Inca-prince costume. He held his mother’s hand, one free finger probing a small nostril. It had been a shock this morning, the first shock of the day, for Gary to see Kristie Caistor at the side of a man like Ollantay. In fact, he saw, she wore a pink plastic backpack, incongruous amid the Inca stuff, and Gary had a faint memory of how she had carried the thing as that bright, pretty London kid, long ago.

Gary murmured to Thorson, “So what’s the plan?”

“Ollantay has spies in Project City,” she said. “Moles. Like that fat guy, evidently. Lammockson and his senior people have holed up in a sports stadium a few blocks thataway.” She pointed northeast along the transverse avenue.

And that was where Lily and Piers must be, Gary thought. What a strange reunion this was going to be. “So we’re going to lay siege?”

“Yeah. Although Ollantay seems to think he has a way in. Meanwhile Ollantay has some kind of ceremony to carry out here.”

“A ceremony. Some Inca thing?” Gary glanced around, at the blank faces of the buildings that surrounded them, the empty roads. He heard the distant buzz of a chopper. “The longer we wait here the more vulnerable we are.”

“Tell me about it. But you know Ollantay. Look at these guys. A lot of them aren’t thinking at all. They’re dispossessed, they’ve slaved for Lammockson, they’re refugees—as we are. The guys from the rafts in particular have got nothing to lose. This is their moment in the sun, their chance to strike back at
something
, somebody. The events of today have as much to do with testosterone as Lebensraum, I’d say.”

“That’s a grim thought.”

Her face was hard. “Well, we’re here to maximize our own gain. We owe nothing to Nathan Lammockson.”

The fat thirty-year-old broke away from Ollantay’s circle and approached Gary. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Gary Boyle. One of the hostages from Barcelona.”

Gary stared at him, startled. “Have I met you?”

“I was just a kid when you got out. Maybe you don’t remember. I’m Hammond Lammockson.”

Gary immediately saw the likeness to Nathan, which had been pricking his memory. He even spoke with a trace of his father’s London accent. “Wow. Yes, I do remember you. What are you doing here?”

“With AxysCorp’s enemies, you mean? I guess you don’t know my father well. The game’s up for him. He will be put on trial by the newly constituted government of Qosqo.”

“Trial, huh. And what are you, a witness for the prosecution?”

Hammond’s face was resentful, angry. “I don’t know what you think of Nathan Lammockson. I don’t care. As a father he’s a disaster. He spent his life putting me down, belittling me, marginalizing me.”

Gary could imagine that.“Maybe he thought he was toughening you up.”

“Well, he succeeded.”

Gary said, “Lily Brooke, Piers Michaelmas—they’re here, they’re still alive? I’ve not been able to contact them since we came to the area.”

“Oh, yeah. Still alive. Still my father’s favorites. Whereas I’m just a passenger. He was always closer to you people than to me, you hostages.” He sneered. “Like pets.”

Gary recoiled from this man’s bitterness.“You’re his son. I remember Nathan saying that everything he did he was doing for you, you and his grandchildren.”

“Grandchildren. Yeah. You should have seen the frigid bitch he chose for me to have those grandchildren for him. Well, I failed to oblige.”

“I can’t believe you’re planning to betray him.”

“Watch me.” And he walked away, back to the Quechua group, as Ollantay began his ceremony.

Ollantay climbed up onto the coffinlike box. The murmur of conversation around him ceased.

“So we begin the end-game,” Ollantay said. “The showdown with Nathan Lammockson, and the eradication of the stain of colonialism. And it’s fitting that we make ready for the final battle here at this historic site.” He waved a hand. “This is Qoricancha, the temple of the sun—the most important place of worship in the Inca empire. Once, seven hundred sheets of gold covered the walls. The mummified bodies of emperors sat on thrones of gold and silver. Even in this patio where we stand there were golden statues of beautiful women, and llamas, trees, flowers—even golden butterflies. The Spaniards desecrated the temple, seeking only gold, caring nothing for the Incas and their gods, and they turned this stone husk into a Christian church.

“But now the Inca sun rises once more.” He raised a military boot, and slammed it down on the coffin lid. The lid splintered and broke open. Ollantay reached down and hauled up a tangle of bones, broken and dusty, fragments threaded together with bits of wire into a loose representation of a skeleton. Ollantay grasped the skull, its jaw gaping open, and rattled the bones in the air. “Behold Pizarro! Behold Pizarro!”

There was a huge roar from his followers. Two men pushed upright a gibbet improvised from tent poles, and a noose was passed around the neck of the conquistador, five hundred years dead, his bones yellowed and splintered.

As the skeleton was hoisted aloft before the mighty walls of the temple, Mayor Thorson murmured, “God help us all.”

70

I
t had been an awfully long time since Cusco’s Estadio Universitario had been used for the purposes it was designed for, Lily reflected. Now the stadium’s pitch was crowded by tents and Portaloos. The grass was trampled and cut up by vehicle tracks, where it wasn’t covered by duck boards. Stocks of food and water had been laid in, the gates sealed shut, and gantries that had once hosted television cameras were home to machine gun nests. Lammockson’s private army was short on heavy weaponry, but the pitch was ringed by small artillery pieces.

This was where Nathan Lammockson would make his stand. Since the reports had come in of Ollantay’s approach with his ragged army, Lammockson had put in place a kind of scorched earth policy. He had retreated to this preprepared fortress with a couple of thousand people, his most trusted guards, his closest advisers and supporters, everybody that was precious and loyal to him, in fact. The rest of Project City had been evacuated, the citizens either holed up in churches and cellars or sent to Chosica where they were sheltering on the unfinished Ark. After that the town had been emptied of supplies. Nathan was convinced the rebels would disperse as soon as they got hungry and thirsty.

Inside the stadium the atmosphere was strange. The sky above was bright blue, and the sun, low this winter day, cast a golden light into the stadium, making the polished weaponry gleam, and the murmur of the thousands gathered in this echoing bowl gave it the feel of a sports crowd. It all made Lily feel peculiarly cheerful, as if it were a Saturday afternoon in London and she was taking Amanda’s kids to a football match, at Fulham or Queen’s Park Rangers. But a different sort of fixture was being planned today.

Lammockson himself was at the very center of the pitch, where once soccer teams had kicked off their matches. He was sitting in the sun on a fold-out canvas chair, sunglasses masking his face. But he was ringed by troops, and he sat only a few meters from two AxysCorp-livery helicopters that rested on the grass. Piers was with him, and Juan Villegas with Amanda sitting in the background, and Sanjay McDonald. Though he rarely spoke Piers had the distracted look of a man listening to a dozen conversations at once, probably through a mil-spec version of an Angel. Other advisers came and went, especially Nathan’s top military people, informing him of the disposition of the rebels. Nathan seemed cool amid the tension, like a director on some unlikely film set.

As Lily approached, Sanjay got up and hurried to her, small, intense, nervous, his beard ragged. “Lily, thank God. There’s news. I’ve been speaking to Thandie, in Denver.”

That cut through her preoccupation. “Thandie?”

“A Comsat drifted into the right position and we got a contact . . . It’s surging again. The sea-level rise.”

For years the rise had roughly followed Thandie’s rule-of-thumb exponential curve, doubling every five years. But the reality was always more ragged, more uncertain than that.

“Another subterranean sea broke open, I guess,” Lily said.

“Something like that. Actually it backs up reports we had from Chosica. There have been flooding episodes below the town. Seems Nathan’s Ark Three might be floating off sooner than he expected. But that’s not all Thandie had to say. Listen, Lily. She’s made a place for herself in Denver, got in with government circles.”

Lily smiled. “That sounds like Thandie.”

“And she’s discovered—”

“So you showed up, Brooke.” Nathan had spotted Lily and cut across Sanjay.

Sanjay, anguished, had to break off.

Lily mouthed, “Later.” She turned to Nathan. Once she would have bridled at his goading, but over the years she’d hardened to his insults. “You know where I’ve been, Nathan. Touring the perimeter.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “You know the situation. The perimeter’s secure, all units in place, armed and provisioned. But the rebels are in place too.” She had looked down from the old TV gantries at the grubby army Ollantay had assembled, a band that stretched right around the walls of the stadium. They were like fans waiting to be admitted to a sports event, a cup final. But most sports fans didn’t go noisily looting surrounding properties, or letting off potshots at the stadium.

“So we’re under siege,” Nathan said, unperturbed. “Fuck ’em.”

“Ollantay himself is there,” Lily said, glancing at Amanda. “You can’t miss him, strutting around in his Inca feathers, that golden helmet gleaming. Kristie is with him. And the kid.” She admitted,“A sniper could take Ollantay out. You don’t even need the spotter scopes.”

Amanda looked away, her face white, her eyes shadows. Juan put his hand over hers.

Nathan shook his head. “No. I want him alive so he can surrender. That’s the most orderly way out of this.” He grinned at Lily in that cruel way of his. “And besides, to you he’s family.”

“Oh, shut up, Nathan,” Lily snapped. “And speaking of family, your own son’s been spotted out there too.” There had been rumors that Hammond had gone over to the rebels.

Now it was Nathan’s turn to look away. “Ah, the hell with him too. My boys are under instruction to keep him safe. When all this fizzles out he’ll come around. I’ll make him eat a little shit, and that will be that.”

“ ‘Fizzles out,’ ” Lily repeated. “You’re confident about that, are you?”

“Why not?”

Piers put in, “We planned for this, Lily. You know that.”

Project City had been preparing for Ollantay’s assault for weeks, putting into place operations that had been worked out over months and years, plans drawn up for the event of a rebellion. The rebels’ reinforcement by the Walker City Okies was just a complication. Nathan wanted minimal resistance, no fighting at all if possible, and he had forbidden the use of heavy weapons or mines unless absolutely necessary. He wanted to preserve his city intact, he said. Lily was among the few who knew Nathan had a plan B.