Forcing himself on, he broke into a run. There was a thicket of trees to one side and he made for it, wondering if he might be able to lose himself among the trunks and branches. But it was a foolish hope. Alex knew that McCain’s men must have been tracking him from the start and that a single broken blade of grass or a fallen leaf would have been like a flashing neon sign for them. Now it was just a question of speed. Could he reach the dam before they caught up with him? Could he detonate the bomb? Alex had no doubt that he was going to be captured and killed. But he would die more happily if he knew that he had beaten McCain.
The wood ended as suddenly as it had begun. On the other side was a field and the first man-made object that he had seen since he set out . . . the remains of a low wooden fence. He leapt over it and continued running, aware that he was surrounded by a very different sort of vegetation. It was wheat!
Incredibly, he had actually found his way to McCain’s wheat field. So the dam must be directly ahead of him. He still couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. If he just continued forward he would have to come upon it.
Suddenly, he was racing through the stalks. He could feel it scratching at his ankles and his hands. It surrounded him. And with a jolt of horror he wondered if it had switched yet, if the spores had done their work. If so, he was running through a vast field of poison. Each one of these bright yellow blades could be the death of him. The very air he breathed could be full of ricin. Grimly, Alex kept his lips tightly shut and his arms held high. It seemed incredible to him that McCain could have done this: taken something as natural, as universal as a wheat field and turned it into something deadly.
He glanced back. There was no sign of his followers. Seeing them had given him new speed and determination. Over to one side he saw the electricity pylon that he had spotted before, or one identical to it—not steel, but wood, and only four or five yards high. It was still a quarter of a mile away, but he made for it. The wires would lead to the turbines and the turbines had to be somewhere beneath the dam. He tried to remember on which side he had seen the track. That would be the fastest way forward.
Was it possible that Njenga had come after him in the Land Rover? No. Alex would have heard the engine by now.
The wheat, waves and waves of it, crunched beneath his feet as he drove his way through it. He liked the sound that it made. He wanted to crush as much of it as he could, but the field seemed to go on forever, trapped between the two rock faces that rose up on each side.
Where was the dam? He should have been able to see it by now.
The wheat suddenly ended—so abruptly that it was as if Alex had fallen from one world to another. He was on the track! There it was, right underneath him. So how far did he have to go? How much farther
The track had once been covered with asphalt, but it was full of potholes now, with weeds and wild grass sprouting through. Alex guessed it would be used both by the farmers coming up to harvest the wheat and by technicians working on the hydroelectrics. He could make out tire tracks and hoofprints.
It was an easier surface for running, but he was still going uphill and his mouth was dry. He resisted the temptation to look back. He had no time to waste. His muscles were taut and his whole body was tingling with the anticipation of a knife or a bullet in his back.
And then the track turned a corner and there, ahead of him, was the Simba Dam.
It was completely bizarre and out of place. That was Alex’s first thought. This huge gray wall had been constructed in the middle of all this unspoiled nature, and it had no right to be there. It wasn’t exactly ugly. Indeed, the great curve, stretching from one side of the valley to the other, had a certain gracefulness. Beaten by the sun, the concrete had faded so that it blended in with the rocks that surrounded it. But it was still a scar. In a strange way, it reminded him of what had happened to McCain’s face. The dam cut the landscape in two, and the two halves didn’t quite meet.
Alex stumbled to a halt and stood there panting, his entire body covered in sweat. He desperately needed a drink. He wished now he had taken more care with his water supply.
There was no sign of the lake from where he was standing at the very foot of the dam, surrounded by discarded pieces of cement and broken rocks that must have been blasted during the construction. The surface of the water had to be about ninety feet above him and, of course, on the other side. He could see enormous slots in the wall, oversized letter boxes with what looked like metal gates cutting them in half. Presumably these could be raised or lowered to allow the water to spill through. Alex tried to imagine the amount of pressure that must be pushing against the wall itself, the tons and tons of water being held back. There was nobody here. Somewhere—perhaps in Nairobi—someone would press a button and a sluice would open. And then some of the water—just a few million gallons—would rush down a series of hidden pipes to the turbines, where its energy would be siphoned off to provide electricity before it was finally released to feed the crops.
Suddenly the bomb he was carrying felt very small. As he followed the track to its end, the Simba Dam loomed over him, much bigger and more complicated than anything he had imagined. It curved in two directions, forming a letter C around him but also slanting out over his head, away from the water.
What had Rahim called it? A double curvature arch dam. Now that he was here, it was easier to understand what that meant.
Two drainage slipways ran up on either side. These were basically curving roads running up the side of the hill, though so steeply that no car would be able to make the journey. Alex guessed that they had something to do with the water, which could be directed down them and into the valley if there happened to be heavy rainfall and the threat of a flood. Two concrete staircases had been built next to them, one for each slipway, with about a hundred steps leading up to the top. There was one other way up, a single ladder clinging to the face of the dam, leading to two inspection platforms, one above the other, and finally to the lip of the dam itself. The ladder was dangerous because it wasn’t quite vertical.
Following the curve of the wall, it slanted outward. It was also narrow, steep, and covered in rust.
Alex took this all in, then turned his attention to a construction directly in front of him. It looked like something out of the Second World War . . . a solid concrete bunker with an entrance and three barred windows. A pair of fat steel pipes jutted out, pointing at him like the cannons of two tanks that might have been parked next to each other inside. Both of them were capped, making them look like oversized industrial oil cans. They were connected to the dam by hydraulic steel claws with a network of smaller pipes, wires, and taps around them. The concrete underneath them was stained. It had recently been wet.
Alex knew that he was looking at the two valves that Rahim had described. His targets. He took one quick look back over his shoulder, then hurried forward. He had perhaps five minutes to position the explosive before the Kikuyus arrived. Even as he ran, he wriggled out of the backpack and opened it.
The concrete building had a sort of entrance, a narrow slit that led into an inner chamber with more pipes and machinery. While he was in here, Alex would be out of sight. Surely he couldn’t have left a trail on the broken rock
