Amy had Simon’s knife, and the blade was poised over her belly. The steel tip of the blade was aimed at her womb, the unborn. Ready to plunge.
David looked at Angus, who was gaping in amazement.
Amy said again, louder this time:
‘Let them go, Miguel. Because I will kill the child. Your son. The last Cagot in the world, in my womb. I will kill him. Let them go and then blow the place, but let them go.’
Angry, roaring, wolflike, Miguel stood – and ran at Amy, trying to lean and grab the knife, even as she jabbed it towards her womb, to kill, to stab; and as she did this, Amy screamed at Simon:
‘The lamp!’
It was already done. The paraffin lamp had been knocked across the wooden crates, smashing against the wall beyond. Instantly the flame of the lamp ignited the paper and wood, just soaked in gasoline. The chamber virtually exploded: a rush of flames flashed across, churning smoke, searing the air, choking the life from the cellar. One man screamed: his hair was on fire. Miguel was grabbing for Amy. She was shouting – at Angus. Where was he? Then David saw. Angus was swinging a torch at Miguel’s skull. The impact was gruesomely audible: a tremendous crack.
It happened so fast in the fire and the smoke, David could not see what happened next. Was Miguel down? But where was Simon. The air was dusty and burning, the shouts loud, the flames were keen. Amy? And then he realized, someone was yelling: ‘Run! The explosives!’
They were all running. Bodies running in the chaos. Everyone was turning, and running up the passage; but David lingered, and swivelled, and saw: Miguel was on the ground and bleeding. But he was reaching for something on the floor, between the stinking flames of the paraffin. The terrorist was seeking the switch – the explosive trigger. David was the nearest, he tried to lean and grab it. He was too late. The switch was pressed.
‘No –’
‘David!’ Amy screamed.
Her scream was utterly drowned by a strange explosion, oddly broken, and partial. For a moment the room shook and concussed – but then came a blast wave.
It was like a sideswipe from God, hurling David into a corner, and slamming him to the concrete floor. All was smoke and blackness.
50
The pain was intimate and intense, somewhere deep inside him. A pain that lived in the darkness, like an eyeless animal. But then he opened his eyes, and discovered the truth: he had survived. Yet he was half-buried under rubble and stones, he could barely move, but he could breathe and see.
The chamber had collapsed. Rocks and earth had filled most of the void, entombing the boxes, and stifling the fires. A respectful silence reigned. David realized he had probably been lucky. If all the charges had detonated, he’d have been killed. Maybe the flames had destroyed the wiring, maybe just one bomb had detonated.
So the fires were dying but he was still trapped under rocks. And there was no sound of any other life, and certainly no rescue.
A noise. He looked left and right; there was light filtering from somewhere, up the tunnel. An aperture, letting in air, inhaling sad grey smoke.
The earth moved again, a few metres away. A face emerged.
Miguel, brushing soil from his face.
Miguel had survived. The indestructible killer, the jentilak from the forests of Irauty.
The terrorist was prone and he was bleeding copiously from a wound on the side of the head, with another vicious wound in his leg, a lavish gash, proudly glistening.
The smoke and dust of the explosion drifted, wistfully, as the light of the last gasoline flames died away.
Miguel saw David.
The terrorist frowned. He frowned and laughed and shook his bleeding head. And then he threw a plank of wood off his chest, and rolled free, and began dragging himself across the rubbled concrete floor, towards David.
David’s blood was liquid cold. There was something unspeakable in the Cagot’s slow, grisly crawl, dragging his ravaged leg. Dragging himself over to David.
Desperate to escape this human worm, this crawling, bleeding predator, David tried, again, to liberate himself, but the rocks and stones were too heavy. It was squassation. He was being crushed like a witch by the rocks. And now Miguel was on him.
And the terrorist was salivating. Miguel had ripped away David’s shirt and exposed the flesh. A line of dribble spooled from the wide and scarred mouth; David’s skin twitched, reflexively, at the sickly warmth of