to match the sudden throb of a chopper's rotors. 'Is that you mobile down there?' And a searchlight beam swept down from above.
Jake leaned over and spat into the speaker, 'Only fucking just! Zero - Trask, is that you? - we could use some help.'
'Do you have a target?''If it's behind us and it's moving, it's a target/ Jake said, I straightening up in time to avoid a pothole. And as the adrenalin began to recede and his skin stopped prickling, he eased up a little so as not to send the Land Rover nosediving off the rim of the ramp.Then Liz said, 'Stop!' 'Stop?''Stop the vehicle. I want to see.''Feeling bloodthirsty?' Jake looked at her, frowning as he cautiously applied the brakes.'Not me.' She shook her head, shuddered her relief as she thumbed her nostrils one after the other to blow out her plugs. Then she half-turned her head, inclined it to indicate the dark shelf of rock that they'd left behind. 'And not them, not after this.' And now her voice was a sigh.They looked up and back. First at a sleek, black dragonfly shape under the gleaming blur of its fan, a shape that blotted the stars in its passing and turned the night to a whirling dervish dust-devil with its downdraught as it sped overhead, then at the torpedo-shapes that tumbled lazily, -end over end, down from its belly like so many elongated eggs.'Jesus!' Jake's sigh matched Liz's. And: 'Let there be light!' she said.And there was light. The napalm hit a little way back from the top of the ramp. It lit up a widening path all the way back to the knoll, roared with the thunder of its all-consuming passion, washed the wall of the outcrop like a tsunami of fire. In the space of a few short seconds the scene might well have been that in the caldera of an active volcano: a small mountain burned in the night, with man-made lava flowing down its flanks.
For long moments there were running, leaping, screaming figures in the roiling smoke, blackly silhouetted against terrible balls of fire that seemed to roll across the shelf of the rocky outcrop with lives of their own. The spidery figures were there ... and they were gone, cindered, rolled under ...
The unit was made up of two choppers, a giant support truck and various smaller vehicles, mainly 'Rovers. The truck and lesser vehicles wouldn't get here for some time yet. They had miles of rough road to cover.The choppers landed on the shelf itself, one to the north and the other to the south. In half an hour their combat-suited, gas-masked, heavily-armed special forces crews were moving forward into the scorched zone. Meanwhile Jake and Liz had joined up with Ben Trask, in charge of operations, also with lan Goodly, his 2I/C, and a 'civilian/ Peter Miller, of Australia's Rudall River National Park Administration - or 'Mister' Miller, as he insisted on being called.Obviously Miller hadn't been told too much, which was perfectly understandable; it was all on a need-to-know basis, and when E-Branch went out into the world it was standard procedure to avoid unnecessary rumour-mongering and the panic that might ensue. Miller was small, round and bouncy as a rubber ball; he was very excitable and utterly confused. And like many another small, insignificant man in a position of assumed 'authority/ he made a lot of noise. Right now he raved on at the tall, unflappable beanpole that was lan Goodly, who kept steering him away from Ben Trask so that Trask could talk to Liz and Jake. But still Miller's yappy, little-dog voice could be heard over just about everything else that was going on. Right now he was flapping his arms, yelping about:
'... This uttermost devastation? Damn it all, Mr Goodly, I know that this is a wasteland, a useless desert region that you can't damage any worse than Nature herself has. But ... there were men in that blaze! I saw men burning in those hell-fires! What was that stuff, napalm? But in any case, what does it matter? What happened here tonight was sheer murder! There is no other word for it. I... I still can't believe what I witnessed here ... cold-blooded murder, Goodly! And someone will be called to answer for it. In fact, I demand an answer right here and now!'
'Who is he?' Liz asked.
And Trask frowned. 'He's supposed to be our local liaison