The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,85
two hours’ hard walking to reach the mine site.
Clay stood beside the largest of the pits and stared down into the copper sulphate sterility of the bright-blue water. The air had that crushed, burnt smell of sulphides, the latent sweetness of molybdenum, an undertone of pine resin breaking through now and again as the breeze swirled through the valley. A faded metal sign swung from a rusted barbed-wire fence that ran with listing and fallen posts across the end of the pits towards an old adit entrance. A set of narrow-gauge rails, almost buried now, tracked from the adit across the open kill-zone that surrounded the pits and disappeared into the trees.
Crowbar was on the bank between the two smaller pits. ‘Smart bokkie,’ he said, voice bouncing over the heavy, metal-rich sludge. ‘Nice field of fire.’
Koevoet was right. From where he stood, Clay had a clear view at least a hundred metres in every direction. Not a bad spot if you wanted a private conversation. And yet of all the places she could have chosen, why here?
Crowbar raised his field glasses, scanned the ridge above them, pointed up at the steep rock face. ‘That’s where I’ll be, broer.’
It took them almost half an hour to scramble to the top of the ridge. The slope rock was weathered, cubed, hot already in the midday sun. It disintegrated under their boots as they climbed, trickled back down the hill in rivers. Gnarled pine trees clung to the bands of marble and gneiss that jutted from the slope like ramparts, their twisted roots spreading like veins through the barren rock. How they survived here Clay could not imagine.
They collapsed to the ground, sweating and panting. Clay looked back down to the pits, three blue sapphires sparkling in the sunshine. From here, he could see out across the whole spread of the mine workings, the old rail line snaking up the valley to the western approaches, mountains stretching away to a blue horizon in every direction.
Crowbar slung off his pack, fished out a water bottle, drank and offered it to Clay. Then he stood, walked along the ridge, disappeared momentarily behind a boulder the size of a small truck and reappeared. ‘Commanding,’ he said, pulling out his Beretta. ‘Great lines in every direction. No better place in the whole goddamn valley.’ He looked down at the pits. ‘I figure 350 metres, seun. Too far for me to help. But I can warn you, ja. Two quick shots from this, time for you to ontrek. RV at the Pajero.’
Clay nodded at Crowbar, looked at his watch. Three and a half hours to go. He started back down the slope, the sun refracting through the edges of the treetops, strobing over him as he pushed his boots down through the rattling scree, and after all these years, that feeling again, of someone watching over you, an archangel. And, as he reached the base of the ridge and started towards the pits, he knew that everything had changed. And though he’d known it for days, it had been like so much else in his life – having the knowledge but not the understanding. You chose who you loved, or maybe they chose you. But a son, a daughter, you were given.
He sat on the middle berm, in the epicentre of the pits where he could be clearly seen. He picked up a handful of the crushed mine tailings, let the stuff fall from his hand and waited. He thought about her disappearance from the hotel that day, the note she’d left, wondered about her leaving, about Spearpoint that day on the street outside the hotel in Istanbul – had he been one of Medved’s informants? Had he been the one who’d called in the assassins whose bodies were now rotting at the bottom of the Med? The things she’d said to him that last morning they were together replayed now in his head. Justice isn’t an event, she’d said. It isn’t something you do once. There is no end to it. Forgiveness, you earn.
In a couple of long hours, he’d see her again.
A cold wind blew through the valley. Clouds the size of mountain villages drifted high over the peaks. Shadow passed over the ridge, cooled the surface of the ponds from molten copper to glacier blue. He closed his eyes, breathed.
At just that moment, just as the unfamiliar shade of serenity began to flow over him, a shot echoed through the valley.