dawned on Cortez where the Imam got his strength and endurance. It was his faith. Cortez had never seen anything so powerful.
After a few sessions Cortez forgot about the torture altogether and just asked questions, tending to the damage he had earlier inflicted on the Imam. He now came to see the man as wiser, braver and more saintly than anyone else he had ever met. The Imam's words felt the same to Cortez as water feels to a man about to die of thirst. Something ugly, black and misshapen began to come to life inside Cortez. Something he had long thought discarded. His soul.
Finally Cortez asked the Imam how Allah, in all His perfect love for mankind, could allow a man as devout as the Imam to fall into the hands of a person like Cortez. The Imam smiled and said: 'Because He knew that you, above all people, needed Him the most. The evil that we do and the harm that befalls us does not come from Allah. We ourselves are responsible for that. The loving grace of redemption, that comes from Allah alone.'
Cortez felt something wet run down his cheeks. He thought at first that he must have accidentally cut himself, but when he put his hand to his face he found it was tears. He hadn't cried since he was a child. Now he couldn't stop himself. He had a lifetime's worth of tears to shed over a lifetime's worth of sins.
He fell to his knees in front of the Imam and offered him his knife. When the Imam declined he held the knife to his own throat and offered the Imam his life in recompense for what he had done. The Imam stood slowly, in spite of the pain, and took the knife from Cortez.
He placed his hands on Cortez. 'Do you bear witness that there is but one God and his name is Allah?'
'Yes.'
'And do you bear witness that the Prophet Mohammed is the messenger of Allah?'
'I do.'
The Imam told Cortez to go and shower. Then to leave the compound and to do no more harm to his Muslim brothers.
Cortez stood in the staff shower. The water rarely came out hot, but this time it was ice cold. It didn't matter. Cortez was washing away his former life of sin. The shower was a declaration of faith. He was stepping over a line into a new life. He left the shower and walked out of the compound. No-one bothered to stop him. The world seemed as though it had been created anew. Everything was golden and full of the divine grace of Allah.
Cortez hired a boat and sailed across the Gulf of Mexico. He left it adrift a mile off shore and swam to the coast of Florida. Then he went to pray at the first Mosque he could find. Two weeks later, on the run as an illegal alien, he discovered that although he had never met anyone from a terrorist organisation, he was listed as one of the most wanted members of Al Qaeda.
'Are you out of your mind?' said Greaves, as Linda stretched a line of wire between two crates of high explosive. 'Do you know how volatile gelignite is?'
'Not as volatile as seven crazed Klan boys with guns. I merely chose the lesser of two evils.'
'It could go off at any moment, you've only got to make the slightest wrong movement.' Linda had noticed that Greaves got real sweaty when things didn't go his way. 'Will you at least take the belt off?'
'Not until I've set this wire. And me wearing this gelignite was the only thing that got us out of a cave full of pistol packing maniacs intent on killing us.'
'Yes, and you left them surrounded by crates of weapons and ammo. It doesn't matter that you took their weapons, any second now they're going to get up off the floor and arm themselves to the teeth. Then who do you think they'll come looking for?'
'So why do you think I haven't taken the gelignite off?' said Linda, answering Greaves' no-brainer with another. 'And hold that torch steady. This is even more volatile, especially if I can't see what I'm doing.'
She looped the wire around the pin of a grenade and gently pulled it taut. The wire ran across the entrance to the side chamber where they had found all the high explosive. She set it shin high to avoid detection. 'We better grab the others and get out of here. We'll be safe if we use that secret entrance you showed us won't we?'
'I doubt it,' said Greaves as they ran back to the corridor where Cortez and Anna were waiting in the office. Linda left her belt of gelignite back with the tripwire.
Greaves poked his head round the door of the office and shouted for Cortez and Anna to follow them as quickly as they could. Linda figured that when Frankie and his Klan boys did arm themselves and come looking for them, they'd split up and cover as many tunnels as they could. This meant that one of them was bound to stumble through the side chamber with the explosives and trip the wire. It was just a matter of time.
They had no idea how long they had. As they reached the fissure Linda heard voices approaching in the tunnels below. The Klan boys were gaining on them. What was it about Greaves and Cortez? All she seemed to be doing since she met them was running from people intent on killing her.
They were only a few metres from the entrance when the tripwire set off the grenade, which set off every other high explosive packed in the chamber.
It started as a low rumble vibrating through the tunnel they were crawling along. Then came a searing blast of heat and suddenly the rock around them seemed to be screaming as the tectonic structure of the whole cave system started collapsing.
Everything shook. Linda felt as though she was moving in every direction at once. The seemingly immoveable nature of the stone which surrounded her for miles just melted. Nothing was fixed. Everyone screamed but the din of the earth quaking drowned out the sound.
And finally it ended.
They had all bounced quite a distance back down the fissure. Up ahead of them a cave-in had blocked the entrance. Cortez crawled up towards the rubble and started to move it with his hands. 'It's alright. I think I can shift it.'
They crawled up to join him, dragging the rubble away. An hour and a half of sweating, cursing and scraping the skin off every knuckle later they finally saw daylight.
It was raining when they crawled out of the cave mouth. By some dumb luck Bertha hadn't been buried by the landslide set off by the explosion. Her armour plating looked sleek and welcoming with the rain running off it. Linda couldn't believe how relieved she was to see her baby.
It might be dumb to get all emotional over a big bus like Bertha but Linda had no family left, no network of friends, no-one she could depend on. Bertha was the one thing she had for protection. And she was a beautiful juggernaut. A dream to handle and a danger to anything that got in her way.
'So,' said Linda. 'All that coke and all those guns we left down there?'
'Buried,' said Greaves. 'There's no way we'll get them back. That much explosive would have brought down half the cave system. We're lucky to have gotten out alive after your reckless stunt.'
'We wouldn't have gotten out at all without my reckless stunt. I hope your little memory stick was worth risking all our lives.'
'And a hell of a lot more,' said Greaves patting his pocket. 'This is going to show us the way to salvation.'
Cortez waited for a moment by the entrance he had cleared in the rubble while the others returned to the vehicle. He was not pleased that they lost such a large haul when the cave collapsed.
The guns and drugs could have been bartered for a lot of things. Greaves seemed to think that they got the most important item though. Cortez trusted he was right.
Cortez was pleased to leave Tannenbaum's desiccated corpse lying down there, covered by the ruins of the Company base. He felt as though a part of his life he deeply regretted was now safely buried and laid to rest.
CHAPTER FIVE
This was not a custom of Cheveyo's people, this was a Cheyenne custom. The ritual was to take place in Cheyenne territory between a Hopi and a Navajo. Such was the blurring of the tribal ways in the days following the Great Purification, as the faithful awaited the Fifth Age of Man.
Cheveyo had been challenged. He had not accepted to save face or defend his territory, the usual reasons a brave faced the challenge of the Four Arrows. Cheveyo had accepted to safeguard the Fifth Age of Man and to win back the soul of his leader. Cheveyo believed Hiamovi was a forebear of Pahanna, the White Brother of Hopi
