The War of Immensities (61 page)

“Thommo has
just picked up a satellite image. It’s mostly a big black smudge
but he says there are plumes running from dozens of sites, from the
middle of Sumatra, right along Java, all the way through the other
islands to Timor. Krakatoa’s disappeared again and places like
Lombok and some other smaller islands have vanished altogether. And
you’ll be glad to know the ashcloud is slowing down.”

“Anything on
Lorna?”

“No. All the
transmitters are out. I think she’ll be okay, Harley.”

They flew on
and as time passed, Harley fretted and Felicity added data provided
by the technicians in the Orion. Bali was now a crescent shaped
island, half its former size, at least six small islands had
vanished completely, Lombok was now three small islands, each of
them a thundering volcanic peak. But the main devastation had hit
Java where it was unlikely that any part of the island had escaped
destruction. Jakarta was wrecked completely, although along the
south coast of the island, the damage seemed minimal. But all the
middle and north of the island lay under searing ash and lava flows
that spilled into the sea, raising vast clouds of steam.

Gordon located
Makasar first. In the dust-filled night it was impossible to see
the lights of the city below, and Thyssen realised they were not
lights, but fires. They flew on along the coast.

“I think we’re
over the spot now,” Bill announced and they circled, but the
brilliant spotlights of the chopper only reflected back at them
from the fog. Gordon eased them lower and until treetops came into
view and then began a grid search. It took forty minutes before the
shining skin of the land cruiser flashed back at them.

“There she is!”
Harley shrieked, unleashing the last of his anxieties, for now the
truth, whether good or bad, would stride into its place.

He bounded from
the chopper before it quite touched the ground and raced forward,
the lights of the chopper behind him dazzled when they hit the dust
but he blundered forward and found the vehicle. Hastily he unlocked
and opened the rear door. There was no sign of Lorna in there.

Joe Solomon, a
free man at last, planned ahead. He flew to New Orleans and waited
for the linkage to take hold of him, then made the long slow
journey by rail back to Washington on what he suppose to be the
Chattanooga Choo-Choo. In fact it went a little quicker than he
planned and he arrived too soon and had to keep on going, all the
way to New York. But that was okay. Through Lorna, Thyssen had
provided him with an address in The Bronx, which was supposedly
their secret base, and while the news broadcasts made their initial
reports of the disaster in Indonesia, he rode the final stage in a
taxi. He supposed, in the end, it was perfect timing.

The whole
journey took over a day and the final taxi ride almost an hour but
Joe didn’t mind. A time of relative peace, after two weeks of
wheeling and dealing over ranches for sale in the Matto Grasso. Yet
it was here, not Brazil, where such deals were to be done and he
was getting there. It was just a matter of time. The driver had the
temerity to sneer at the miserly tip and roared away in disgust.
Joe checked the street both ways before he approached the
building.

They weren’t
following him. At least, not that he was able to observe. He had
listened for extra clicks on his telephone and heard none. Of
course, there were no charges pending and he wasn’t really wanted
for anything, but they might at least have had the decency to keep
an eye on him. As it was, he felt lonely, cut off from the world,
as if he barely existed. So too, as he approached the building, did
he realise that he had no idea where his colleagues of Earthshaker
were nor what dangers they faced, no idea of how his business in
Perth was faring, hadn’t heard from his brother in five weeks.

He pressed the
special code into the intercom and, while he waited to go through
Val’s complex security procedure, saw instead that the door simply
opened. Val Dennis, the most antisocial man in New York, had ramps
for people in wheelchairs, all the way to the goods lift and there
everything was within reach, as if it was designed for him. There
was no button to press for Val’s floor, but a code that Joe didn’t
know. But when he closed the grille, the lift set off without any
instructions.

It stopped at
Val’s level—Joe recognised it immediately from the vast array of
electronic and other junk piled everywhere. It was such a tangle
that it took Joe a few minutes to realise that the place had been
wrecked. Everything he could see was smashed. His wheels crunched
over shattered glass. He had to push his way through a forest of
hanging cables. Once again the idea of carrying a gun seemed
sensible. On a couch over by the window, he saw the figure of Val
Dennis lying and as he neared it, he saw the blood all about.

Val Dennis, his
eyes closed by swelling, blood running from his spilt lips and
nose, lay on his belly with an arm that was plainly broken dangling
over the side of the couch. Joe could see he was still breathing,
though he showed no other sign of life. He looked around and
spotted the telephone and picked it up. It might had been the only
thing in the place still working. He called an ambulance and hung
up and then advanced to see what he could do to help Val. Not much
really.

Then
astonishingly, Val spoke, though without moving his jaw. “Who’s
there?”

“It’s Joe
Solomon, Val. What happened here?”

“Joe? Ah, yeah.
Joe. Thyssen’s creative accountant.”

“That’s me all
right. What happened here?”

“They came,
man. Took all the Earthshaker stuff. Wrecked the rest. Wrecked me
too.”

“Who came?”

“Suits, man.
Government dudes. Bastards.”

“Our side?”

“Bad guys
wouldn’t be this nasty. Left me here to bleed to death. Can you
believe that?”

“I’ve called
for an ambulance.”

“Ain’t paid me
subscription...”

“I’ll pay for
it. Do you know what they wanted?”

“Kill
Earthshaker. If they ain’t got it, no one else can have it. You
know how they think.”

“You just take
it easy.”

“Hey man,
listen. You gotta get onto Harley. Jami went to Lombok.”

“Where’s
Lombok?”

“Java, man.
Near there anyway. Said she wasn’t gonna miss the biggest explosion
in history.”

“She went
there. How?”

“On crutches. I
couldn’t talk her out of it. You get Harley to pick her up before
it’s too late.”

“It’s already
too late, Val. Most of Indonesia has just been blown off the face
of the earth.”

She awoke in
utter darkness—perhaps this was what it was like to be dead. Or
maybe she had gone blind, and deaf. When she had been knocked out,
the sun had set and the very sudden night of the tropics had been
coming down, but there were lights, and sounds, all around her. The
interior of the vehicle had glowed with red and yellow lights on
the control panels, and two computer screens, and green digital
figures, all of which whirred and buzzed lightly. And the static on
the radio. Now all of it seemed to be gone.

She hurt
everywhere, as if she had been completely crushed. Her head
throbbed, every muscle ached, her stomach was terribly upset. Had
she lain here, she wondered, for all eight days? So where was
fucking Harley? Where was everyone and everything. The moon and
stars seemed to have gone out. Painfully, she forced herself into a
sitting position. She was starting to sweat—it was very hot and
stuffy in the vehicle, now that its air conditioning system had
stopped. But she could move. In fact, nothing seemed broken or
severely damaged when moments ago she could have assumed many
injuries. She was just sore. And it was so very dark. And
quiet.

Then, slowly,
her senses began to kick in and start working—it was as if they had
been stunned into dysfunction and needed a moment to find their
start button again. It wasn’t quite as dark as before—so she wasn’t
blind. There seemed to be a faint glow illuminating the interior of
the cabin, coming from behind her. And sounds. Faint crackling
sounds. In a way, that emphasised the darkness and silence—only in
these conditions could such faint emanations be so prominent.

She got herself
onto her knees. She was so stiff and sore but still it was apparent
to her that she had not been lying here for anything like eight
days. Her mouth wasn’t even dry—it couldn’t have been more than a
few minutes, but in those minutes, an eternity had passed.
Something tickled her upper lips and she wiped it—she realised her
nose was bleeding. But almost as soon as she knew it, it stopped.
In the faint glow, the interior of the cabin was beginning to take
shape. She found the radio switch—the only one really familiar to
her—and flicked it. Nothing happened. She flicked it back and forth
but still there was no static in the headphones. She took them off
and threw them away in disgust. He hadn’t come, the bastard. Like
every other man in her life, Harley too had let her down. Then she
remembered the auxiliary power switch and flicked that a few times.
She wasn’t dead, but the technology certainly was.

There was the
glow that was her only source of light. She slid across to the rear
windows but it was just a foggy glow. Then she realised that was on
the inside, her breathing on the window. She gave it a wipe and
things became clearer. There was a fire, which also accounted for
the crackling sound. Down in the village, one of the huts was well
alight. Now that gave her something to think about. The fire could
spread and, if the wind direction was right, could come this way.
Something needed to be done.

Fire. Light.
Her instincts were kicking in and she remembered she desperately
needed a smoke. Which lead her to her lighter and a moment or two
of illumination. Enough to see the blood on her hand from her nose.
She flicked the lighter off and sat, smoking. And as it calmed her,
her brain began to work. There was a fire extinguisher in here
somewhere. She went forward and discovered it attached under the
dashboard. Along the way, she remembered there was a torch clipped
to the window frame. Battery powered—should work. She found it and
it did. Fine. Let’s go fight the fire.

She opened the
rear door and immediately the outside air hit her. It was pretty
hot and stuffy inside but out there it was even hotter. There was a
strong wind coming from, if she was right, the south. For sure if
she didn’t put that fire out, it might come her way. But it just
didn’t seem right, to go and fight a fire while smoking a
cigarette. She leaned on the back of the vehicle and smoked, and
then realised that she didn’t want a pee.

Which meant
that not a great deal of time could have passed. Maybe she had only
been unconscious for minutes, or even seconds. No. There was the
afterglow of sunset when she last saw anything, but not this utter
blackness. She raised the torch. The sky seemed so close overhead
that she might have been able to touch it. Smoke from the fire—some
of that for sure but there seemed to be some denser, darker, cloud
up there, heavy and ponderous. Dust thrown up by the earthquakes
that she might have gladly slept through? She reminded herself to
watch out for fissures.

Now she was
ready. She was pushing thoughts of snakes and spiders and scorpions
out of her mind, not to mention all manner of other dangers, but
the cigarette had provided courage and she stamped it out with
thanks. She started off, and immediately saw little bundles
littering the ground. Dead birds. Not dead, just KO-ed. As all the
snakes, spiders, scorpions and all other dangers would be. Feeling
even braver, she headed down the hill.

The hut was
completely destroyed when she arrived, and she could smell pork
chops cooking. When she realised what that was, she wanted to run
right back up the hill and hide in the cruiser. Instead, she
steeled herself and attacked the perimeter of the fire, in the
places where it threatened to spread. Soon the hut was just a heap
of charred wood, under control she assessed from no knowledge or
experience whatsoever. Now the village had become deathly quiet.
Earlier, there had been noise everywhere. Voices, birdcalls, things
rattling. Now nothing. She held the torch high. Several bodies lay
in the street—all of them men. She went to each in turn, found a
pulse, rolled them over and straightened them out. Harley’s
comments about the ants eating out their eyes worried her briefly,
until she remembered there wouldn’t be any ants. The last man she
found had fallen in a puddle, face down, and had drowned. She
backed away. Yes, there remained dangers. Now she could see what
she had to do.

One of the more
substantial huts had collapsed and she soon found several people
trapped in there. She set the torch on a post and dragged the
bodies out. All alive but one youth had a terrible open wound. She
tore the boy’s shirt off and used it to bind the wound and staunch
the flow. Left here, he would surely have bled to death. Her sense
of importance soared. She started to check out the huts one by one
and soon made a shocking discovery. A mother had thrown her body
over her children to protect them and now they were suffocating
under her. She hauled the woman aside and the gasping children
immediately regained normal breathing.

Now she had a
mission. She rushed from hut to hut, and found three other places
where misguided attempts to protect the innocent had backfired, on
one occasion fatally but Lorna reckoned she had saved four young
lives. At a table, she found a man whose face had turned blue in
the midst of his meal. She belted him on the back until he vomited
and resumed normal breathing. A lot of people had fallen on sharp
objects or awkwardly—she extracted them and bound the wounds as
best she could, and straightened out everyone she encountered. She
was running toward exhaustion and was aware of the sound of the
helicopter for some time before its significance occurred to
her.