danced, distorting vision and distance. At one moment the mountains
were so close that it seemed they reached to the heavens and they must
topple upon the small group of men crouched in the shade of the two
concealed armoured cars; at the next they seemed remote and
miniaturized by distance.
The sun had heated the hulls of the cars so that the steel would
blister skin at a touch and the men who waited, all of them except
Jake Barton and Gareth Swales, crawled like survivors of a catastrophe
beneath the hulls, seeking relief from the unrelenting sun.
The heat was so intense that the gin rummy game had long been
abandoned, and the two white men panted like dogs, the sweat drying
instantly on their skins and crusting into a thin film of white salt
crystals.
Gregorius looked to the mountains, and the clouds upon them, and he
said softly, 'Soon it will rain.' He looked up to where Jake Barton
sat like a statue on the turret of Priscilla the Pig. Jake had swathed
his head and upper body in a white linen sham ma to protect it from the
sun and he held the binoculars in his lap. Every few minutes, he would
lift them to his eyes and make one slow sweep of the land ahead before
slumping motionless again.
Slowly the shadows crept out from the hulls of the cars, the sun turned
across its zenith and gradually lost its white glare, its rays toned
with yellows and reds. Once again, Jake lifted the binoculars and this
time paused midway in his automatic sweep of the horizon.
In the lens the familiar dun feather of the distant cloud once again
wavered softly at the line where pale earth and paler sky joined.
He watched it for five minutes, and it seemed that the dust cloud was
fading shrivelling, and that the shimmering pillars of heat-distorted
air were rising, screening his vision.
Jake lowered the glasses and a warm flood of sweat broke from his
hairline, trickled down his forehead into his eyes.
He swore softly it the sting of salt and wiped it away with the hem of
the linen sharnma. He blinked rapidly, and then lifted the glasses
again and felt his heart jump in his chest and the prickle of rising
hair on the nape of his neck.
The freakish Currents and whirlpools of heated air cleared suddenly,
and the dust cloud that minutes before had seemed remote as the far
shores of the ocean was now so close and crisply outlined against the
pale blue white sky that it filled the lens. Then his heart jumped
again below the rolling spreading cloud he could make out the dark
insect shapes of many swiftly moving vehicles. Suddenly the viscosity
of the air changed again, and the shapes of the approaching column
altered becoming monstrous, looming through the mist of duSt. closer,
every second closer and more menacing.
Jake shouted, and Gareth was beside him in an instant.
'Are you crazy?' he gasped. 'They'll overrun us in a minute.'
'Get started,' Jake snapped. 'Get the engines started,' and slid down
into the driver's hatch. There was a flurry of sudden frantic movement
around the cars. The engines were cranked into reluctant life, surging
and missing and backfiring as the volatile fuel turned to vapour in the
