Mr. Slye liked the smell of leather seats, and the Learjet’s comfort was something he could quite easily get used to. He gave the pilots a sheet of instructions.
“There’s been a change of plan,” he told them.
He knew they wouldn’t dare argue with Shaka Chang’s right-hand man.
* * *
Max’s helicopter hovered beyond the hangar’s mouth. The pilot was fighting the storm and he signaled to the men that he couldn’t hold it much longer. They had listened to the troops’ firefight over the radio as they cleared the main area. Chang’s bullies were no match for a disciplined attack. But then, instead of the all-clear, a dreadful warning came over the radio-the place was ready to explode. Clear the area immediately.
The pilot prepared to lift off. “No!” Max cried, and jumped to the ground. Without hesitation Mr. Peterson and the soldiers followed him as he sprinted into the hangar. “Dad! Where are you? Can you hear me?” he screamed.
A blur of white against the distant wall caught Max’s eye. Zhernastyn. He’d know where his dad was, but as he shouted his name Mr. Peterson caught up with him and grabbed him.
“Enough, Max! We have to get away! Take him!” Mr.
Peterson yelled to the soldiers, who roughly grabbed him and pulled him back towards the helicopter. “Mr. Peterson! Dad’s here! Right here! Don’t leave him! Please! Please!”
No matter how he fought and kicked, he was no match for the tough soldiers.
“The place is gonna blow, mate. You’ve done all you could,” one of the men shouted as he covered their retreat, his machine gun tucked into his shoulder. Max had never felt such despair. All the fight went out of him. He had lost. And he had used his very last ounce of energy to keep going. There was nothing left inside him now. No matter how much he willed himself, his body had finally failed him.
One last gasp of hope.
The key!
The Humvee.
Where else could his dad be? He would have crawled away from the blaze and the gunfire when Max had escaped. The armor-plated Humvee was the only safe place to hide, but if they didn’t get him out he would be burned to death.
“The Humvee!” Max yelled.
He looked into Mr. Peterson’s eyes and for a brief moment it seemed that Peterson faltered. He stopped as they dragged Max further and further away from finding his father. And then Mr. Peterson turned back into the hangar.
Somewhere in there, lights were flashing. Max could barely see now; the rain stung his eyes and the helicopter’s noise beat the air out of his ears, but there were definitely orange lights flashing and a siren-a car’s alarm. The weight of clouds sat over them now and the wind’s unearthly growl cut a frightening wound through the air.
His back scraped against the metal floor of the helicopter.
Voices shouted. They had to go. Time was up. They had to go now!
The black shape with the lights flashing and the struggling sound of the alarm was a Humvee. His dad hadn’t made it out, but he was in there. Max screamed at the soldiers, but no one could hear him shouting against the storm and the helicopter’s rotors that his dad was in there. That his dad must have heard the helicopter, must have heard Max’s voice calling to him. That his dad had set off the Humvee’s alarms. To alert them. For help.
Strong hands still held him. The helicopter quivered, the skids lifted.
Then one of the soldiers, eyes squinting against the rain, pointed.
From out of the hangar, through the curtain of rain, Mr. Peterson was holding his friend, Max’s dad, carrying him like an injured child towards the impatient helicopter.
Drenched by the rain, but alive, Tom Gordon was hauled into the helicopter. Soldiers yanked Mr. Peterson aboard, and the pilot worked hard to get them airborne.
Max’s eyes were closing. As the storm snatched at them, he saw a break in the clouds and spotted the figure of a man in a white coat, making his escape in a boat, down the slipway, into the river, where the boat settled for a moment and then began to sink.
In his panic to escape, Zhernastyn had forgotten that the boat was in need of repair.
The clouds closed around the picture of the man in the rain-stung water as bow waves rippled towards him.
Crocodiles don’t mind bad weather.
The wind and rain muffled the explosion, and the clouds shrouded the fort’s collapse. It didn’t matter anymore.
Father and son lay, soaking wet, next to each other on the cold metal floor. Max pulled himself against his unconscious father, lay an arm across him, and put his head against his chest.
He wanted to hear his heartbeat.
Nothing else mattered.
Fading words, snatched through the noise, penetrated his thoughts.
Carried into a storm-blasted lullaby, the swaying helicopter rocked him this way and that. But the frightening sensation of being at the mercy of a tremendous storm was not what Max felt. Part of him inside had stepped through that place again. His shadow-form had left him on the floor of that bucking helicopter and glided across the darkness that had settled over the land. Now he could feel his feet gripping rock as he ran, hard, unyielding in his determination, and he smelled the musty warmth of another animal nearby.
He ran into the night, instinct guiding him; his lungs burned; his eyes searched for the unseen quarry. Being earth-bound could not help him. And what was less than a thought-beat away became reality. The scudding clouds had taken the rain with them; now there was only the wind, but the wind was second nature to him. He no longer felt the hard-edged stone beneath him; now the sky was his domain.
He saw the steel bird that sheltered in an enclave of rocks, a safe haven from the storms. It sat unmoving, its wings silent. The sword and shield tattooed on its body were defiant in the night.
A movement caught his eye. A blackened shape loped across the rocks where moments earlier he had run, and he heard the familiar whinnying call. The dog-creature stopped. It had gone as far as it could on the clifftop. Max circled. The jackal looked upwards at Max as he heard his own keening call in response.
The lightning that crackled down from its hidden place above the clouds illuminated the mountains-ghostly veils of mist tearing away from the rock face. The concrete bridge between the two mountains. Images repeated themselves from his memory-the dark cave in a black night. He hurtled ever closer. Trying to understand.
The cave was a shape that moved. A man. Big and square-shouldered. He held a dully glowing light in his hand. A control. Some kind of remote device. And as the man held his arm out towards the stone towers that controlled this bridge across the night, Max knew he was at the dam.
Gates in the dam wall began to open. Far below, the white spume of the river’s overspill was already hurtling through the valley floor. As the floodgates opened wider, a tremendous force of water spewed out. The power seemed even greater than the storm that now punished the land on the horizon.
Was it instinct that made Shaka Chang turn and look upwards? Was it his unfailing ability to know when danger was close? It made no difference. He spun on his heel as Max fell ever faster, directly at him.
It was Shaka Chang’s turn to realize he was finished. Whatever it was that screamed out of the night sky in a near vertical dive shimmered through the darkness. His reflexes didn’t fail him as he smashed a hand through the air, and he connected with talons. The attack stopped him from completing the code on the remote control that would have fully opened the floodgates. He grappled, felt the bite of claw on his hands and arms. He dismissed the pain, but the attack caused him to drop the device, which arced away from his bloodied hands.
One hand grabbed the safety rail to counterbalance his lunge for the remote. The blood on the steel barrier was like oil on glass, and his bulk and weight carried his momentum forward. In his moment of disbelief he felt the breath of ice-cold water flare in his nostrils as he tumbled over the edge. Caught by the thundering torrent that he
