Drought (20 page)

‘I said drop them!' Martin repeated. ‘Put 'em down – now!'

There was a moment's pause, but then the other gray-suited agent genuflected as if he were in church and laid his automatic on the ground. He looked around at the other agents and made a flapping sign with his hand. They hesitated for a few seconds, but then they followed his example and laid down their guns, too.

Martin guessed that they were probably carrying hideaway guns strapped to their ankles, like the agent who had shot Charlie, but he wasn't going to give them the chance to go for them. He climbed to his feet, heaving the agent in the gray suit up with him, and then circled around to the back of his car, keeping his arm around the agent's throat and his gun pressed hard into his ear.

‘Go easy, will you?' said the agent, in a strangulated voice. ‘Believe me, you're not worth getting killed for. I have kids.'

‘You should have thought of that before you came looking for me,' Martin retorted.

Ella had unlocked the Eldorado's trunk, so Martin released his hold on the agent's neck and raised the lid. He reached inside and lifted out one of the Colt Commandos. Then he shoved the agent out in front of him, tossing his automatic into the trunk and raising the sub-machine gun.

‘I need you all to get back into your vehicles!' he shouted. ‘Do it now and don't try anything creative! Like your friend here just said, I'm not worth getting killed for!'

Again the agents hesitated for a few seconds, but then the agent in the gray suit said, ‘Do like he says, OK?'

All seven agents backed away across the road and climbed back into their Escalades. All of them were scowling.

‘Close the doors and don't try to open the windows!' Martin told them. ‘And don't try to drive off, either! Stay right where you are if you want to get out of this alive!'

Once the agents had slammed all of their doors shut, Martin called out over his shoulder, ‘Tyler!'

‘Dad?'

‘Come and pick up all of these guns! Drop them into the trunk of my car, OK?'

Tyler climbed out of Peta's Hilux and jogged over to collect up all of the weapons that the agents had laid down in the road. Once he had done that, Martin walked across to the two Escalades and slowly swung the Colt Commando from side to side, as he if were preparing to rake both vehicles with bullets.

Tyler was climbing back into the Hilux now. ‘Dad!' he called. ‘Come on, Dad!'

Martin raised his left hand to indicate that he had heard him. He guessed that by now the agents had already put in an emergency call to their headquarters and asked for a back-up team, but since the ESS were helping the police to handle the riots downtown he doubted that they had the manpower to respond very promptly, if at all.

He took two or three paces backward, and then he fired a burst into the leading Escalade's front tires and into its engine compartment. The bullets made a series of satisfying bangs as they penetrated the SUV's front fender.

He fired another burst into the rear tires, and then he turned to the second Escalade, and shot its tires out, too. He finished with three single shots into its radiator grille. He couldn't see the expressions on the agents' faces because of their darkly tinted windows, but he could imagine their tightly closed eyes and their tightly clenched teeth. He had been in a Buffalo armored personnel carrier in Afghanistan when it was hit by Taliban machine-gun fire, so he knew from experience that you just grit your teeth and pray.

He climbed back behind the wheel of his car although he kept the sub-machine gun lifted in his right hand in case any of the agents took it into their heads to fire any retaliatory shots at him as he drove away.

Ella was still pressing her fingertips into her ears. ‘My
God
, Dad! I think you've made me deaf.'

Martin reached across with his left hand, started up the engine and shifted the Eldorado into gear. He blew his horn twice to alert Peta and Santos that they were leaving now, and he backed up to allow them to reverse out of the driveway. As they headed off down the road, he saw the driver's side window in the leading Escalade drop down three or four inches, but he aimed his sub-machine gun at it and it was quickly closed up again.

He followed Peta's Hilux, but he kept glancing in his rear-view mirror from time to time, just to make sure that it hadn't occurred to the ESS security agents to commandeer a vehicle from one of her neighbors and come after them.

‘Dad,' said Ella.

‘What is it, sweetheart? Are you OK?'

‘I'm OK. I'm really OK. It's
you
.'

He gave a last quick look in his mirror. There was nobody following them so he lowered the Colt Commando on to the floor behind the passenger seat.

‘
Me
?' he said, deliberately pointing to himself like Robert De Niro in
Taxi Driver
. ‘What about me?'

Ella shook her head, although she was smiling, too. ‘Don't you ever get
scared
? I mean, what happened back there, they could have shot you, those men, and you could have been killed.'

‘You can't go through life being scared of dying, Ella. That's one of the things I learned in Afghanistan. If you go through life being scared of dying, you'll never live. Not properly – not the way God meant you to live. And the sad part about it is, you're going to die anyhow, sooner or later.'

They had reached the end of Fullerton Drive, and Martin could see a green Buick LaCrosse parked beside the children's playground in Lionel E. Hudson Park. He flashed his lights and blew his horn to tell Peta and Santos to pull over, and then he pulled over himself, in front of the Buick, and climbed out of his car.

He walked back to the Buick and as he did so the door opened and Saskia climbed out. She was wearing a black silk blouse and tight black jeans and very high-heeled black ankle-boots, and when she came toward him she strutted almost like a model on a catwalk, one foot in front of the other.

They stood facing each other for a moment, not saying anything. Martin couldn't read Saskia's expression at all. Her chin was lifted and her lips were slightly pursed and even though she was looking him directly in the eyes she was repeatedly blinking, as if she had lost the power of speech but was trying to give him a coded message.

‘Are you OK?' he asked her. ‘We're leaving now … heading for the mountains. Are you sure you want to come with us?'

Saskia nodded. She had appeared to be so confident and professional when he had first met her – scathing, even – but now she sounded as if she were falling to pieces. She grasped the shoulder of his shirt and said, ‘I'm
scared
, Martin. I've never been so scared in the whole of my life.'

Martin went back to talk to Santos. As Santos put down his window, the children all stared at Martin in awe. Mikey pretended that he was holding a sub-machine gun and spraying bullets in all directions.

‘That was
so
cool, the way you shot up those SUVs! That was unbe-
lieve
-able!'

‘Yes, well, thanks, Mikey, but that wasn't supposed to be a lesson in how you should normally deal with a sticky situation.'

‘Shit – I wish I'd of had that machine gun when I was in my math class! “Mikey – what's nine times thirteen?” “Who gives a shit, Mrs Terman?”
Brrrrrp-brrrrrrp-brrrrp
!'

Rita turned around in her seat and said, slurrily, ‘You watch your language, Mikey, you little prick!'

Mina whispered, ‘I'm
thirsty
. And I'm
hungry
.'

‘Me too,' said George.

Martin said to Santos, ‘Do you know your way from here?'

‘I'll be OK once we get to the Rim Of The World Highway. But I'm running pretty low on gas.'

‘There's a gas station on the way, at Wildwood Plaza,' Martin told him. ‘Go back the way we came, but hang a left when you get to West Fortieth Street. It's only a couple of miles.'

‘This other woman is coming with us?'

‘Saskia, yes. I'll introduce you when we stop for gas.'

‘You can trust her?'

‘What makes you ask?'

Santos pointed to his eyes and then pointed to Saskia, the same way he had pointed to Martin and Tyler when they had rejoined him after ramming Big Puppet's pick-up.

‘Even as a child, I could see things when others were blind. Many of my people have that gift.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘That woman is not only dressed in black. She has a dark shadow around her.'

Martin turned around. Saskia was standing under the trees but apart from that he couldn't see any shadows.

‘Let's worry about that later,' he said. ‘Right now I think we need to get out of here. You go first, then Peta and Tyler will follow you. I'll bring up the rear, just in case any more of those spooks come after us.'

‘Whatever you say, Wasicu.'

Martin knew that Santos had called him ‘Wasicu' to make a point. It was to emphasize that he was a white man, and didn't have the sensitivity to see the auras that surround not only people, but animals, and birds, and even trees. He didn't say anything, but patted the roof of Santos' Surbuban and went back to join Saskia.

‘Let's go,' he told her. ‘It'll make things a whole lot easier if you leave that rental car here and come with me.'

He introduced Saskia to Ella. Ella, guardedly, said, ‘Hello,' and then, ‘I'll go sit in the back.'

Martin gave a wagons-roll! wave of his hand and Santos drove off, closely followed by Peta in her Hilux. As Martin pulled away from the curb, Saskia said, ‘You know that Wrack isn't going to let up. He's going to do everything he possibly can to find us. He's that kind of person.'

‘You don't have to tell me,' said Martin, and he described how the ESS agents had tracked him down to Peta's house, and how he had shot up their SUVs.

‘Oh my God,' said Saskia. She pressed her hand against her forehead as if she were starting a migraine. ‘It's not just Joseph Wrack, either. It's Halford Smiley. Once Halford finds out that I've run out on him,
he's
going to want me out of the way, too, just as much as Wrack, if not more.'

‘So what is it between you and Governor Smiley? If anybody had asked me, I would have said that you were a woman who wasn't afraid of anybody.'

Saskia glanced at Ella, who was now sitting in the back of the Eldorado, leaning her elbows on the seats in front of her, her hair blowing across her face. ‘I can't tell you now, Martin,' said Saskia. ‘Let's just say that I'm much more afraid of me than I am of him. The me that I used to be, anyhow.'

Martin was about to ask her what the Saskia that she used to be had done to frighten the Saskia that she was now, but decided against it. It was clear that she didn't think that it was suitable for the ears of fourteen-year-old girls.

They were approaching Wildwood Plaza, at the intersection between East 40th Street and North Waterman Avenue. As they neared the intersection they passed a McDonald's Drive-Thru and a Del Taco restaurant and a Starbucks. Outside McDonald's a large cardboard sign announced NO WATER SORRY CLOSED TILL FURTHER NOTICE. Del Taco and Starbucks, too, were both closed, their doors shuttered and their interiors in darkness.

Saskia was looking around and frowning. ‘This isn't right. We weren't supposed to rotate this area for at least three more days. We had a hiatus schedule meeting only yesterday afternoon, and we weren't going to cut off the water in this neighborhood until the middle of next week, if at all.'

‘Maybe something's happened that you don't know about.'

‘I still have the schedule. Arrowhead, then Ridgeside, then Nena. Shandin Hills was going to be the very last to lose its supply, and even then we were only going to cut if off for twenty-four hours, because of the golf club.'

‘My God. You people are all heart, aren't you? Who cares about babies dying of dehydration, so long as the golf courses get watered?'

‘Well, I happen to agree with you about that. But you just try to tell that to Halford Smiley. Babies don't have a vote; and babies don't pay taxes or make generous donations to the Halford Smiley re-election fund.'

They reached the Chevron gas station on the corner. With its suspension squeaking, Santos turned his Suburban into the forecourt, and Peta followed him. Martin parked beside him and climbed out of his car. The gas station was deserted and all of the pumps were fastened with padlocks. There was nobody inside the office or the small food mart attached to it. It was late afternoon now and the shadows were lengthening, but the air was still baking hot; and although they were only two or three miles to the east of them, the mountains were barely visible through a haze of heat.

Santos came over to Martin, stretching his arms and sniffing. ‘So what do we do now?' he asked. He lifted up one of the padlocks and said, ‘I don't have any bolt-cutters on me, how about you?'

‘Let's take a look inside,' said Martin. He walked across to the office and peered in through the glass door. He couldn't see any keys hanging up but he doubted if the staff took them home with them, so they were probably kept in a drawer, or in the cash register. He would have to force his way into the office in any case, to switch on the pumps.

Santos took hold of the door handle and shook it. ‘See. All locked up. Maybe Gitche Manitou is trying to tell us not to go. Maybe we should just go back and try to survive like everybody else. My ancestors suffered much worse than this.'

‘Don't chicken out on me now, Santos. I can't go back, and neither can Tyler, or Saskia, and you're the only person who can take us to Lost Girl Lake.'

Santos smeared the sweat from his deeply creased forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I'm tired, Wasicu. I'm tired and I'm hurting.'

‘Do you have any painkillers?'