"Seven hundred so far. It is rising. They are still pulling bodies from the offshore rigs. They hit us with antiship 'missiles."
"Good God," David said.
"Those were heavy armaments. We have choppers out looking for ships. There may have been several. But there are many ships in the Caribbean, and missiles have a long range."
He reached into his shirt pocket. "Have you seen these before?"
Laura took the object from his fingers. It looked like a big plastic paper clip. It was speckled camo-green and brown, and weighed almost nothing. "No."
"This one is defused-it is plastic explosive. A mine. It can blow the tire off a truck. Or the leg off a woman or child." His voice was cold. "The small planes scattered many, many hundreds of them. You will not be traveling by the road anymore. And we will not set foot around the complex. "
"What kind of crazy bastard-" David said.
"They mean to deny us our own country," Andrei said.
"These devices will shed our blood for months to come."
Land slid below them; suddenly they were over the Carib- bean. The chopper wheeled. "Do not fly into the smoke,"
Andrei told the pilot. "It is toxic."
Smoke still billowed from two of the offshore rigs. They resembled giant tabletops piled high with burning cars. A pair of fire barges spewed long, feathered plumes of chemical foam over them.
The jackleg rigs had cranked themselves down to the sur- face; their ornate hydraulics were awash with saltwater. The water was full of blackened flotsam-blobs of fabric, writh- ing plastic snakes of cable. And stiff-armed floating things that looked like dummies. Laura looked away with a gasp of pain
"No, look very well," Andrei told her. "They never even showed us a face.... Let these people have faces, at least."
"I can't look," she said tightly.
"Then close your eyes behind the glasses."
"All right." She pressed her blind face to the window.
"Andrei. What are you going to do?"
"You are leaving this afternoon," he said. "As you see, we can no longer guarantee your safety. You will leave as soon as the airport is swept for mines." He paused. "These will be the last flights out. We want no more foreigners. No prying journalists. And none of the vermin from the Vienna
Convention. We are sealing our borders."
She opened her eyes. They were hovering over the shoreline. Half-naked Rastas were pulling corpses up onto the docks. A dead little girl, limp clothes sheeting water. Laura bit back a shriek, grabbing David's arm. Her gorge rose. She slumped back into the seat, fighting her stomach.
"Can't you see my wife is sick?" David said sharply.
"This is enough."
"No," Laura said shakily. "Andrei's right.... Andrei, listen. There's no way that Singapore could have done this.
That's not gang war. This is atrocity."
"They tell us the same," Andrei admitted. "I think they are afraid. This morning, we captured their agents in Trini- dad. It seems they have been playing with toy planes and matches."
"You can't attack Singapore!" Laura said. "More killing can't help you!"
"We are not Christs or Gandhis," Andrei said. He spoke slowly, carefully. "This is terrorism. But there is a deeper kind of terror than this... a fear far older and darker. You could tell Singapore about that terror. You know something about it, Laura, I think."
"You want me to go to Singapore?" Laura said. "Yes. I'll go there. If it'll stop this."
"They need not fear little toy planes," Andrei said. "But you can tell them to be afraid of the dark. To be afraid of food-and air-and water-and their own shadows."
David looked at Andrei, his jaw dropping.
Andrei sighed. "If they are innocent of this, then they must prove it and join us immediately."
"Yes, of course," Laura said quickly. "You have to make common cause. Together. Rizome can help."
"Otherwise I pity Singapore," Andrei said. He had a look in his eyes that she had never seen in a human face. It was the farthest thing from pity.
Andrei left them at the little military airstrip at Pearls. But the evacuation flight he'd promised never showed-some kind of foulup. Eventually, after dark, a cargo chopper ferried
Laura and David to the civilian airport at Point Salines.
The night was pierced with headlights and the airport road was snarled with traffic. A company of mechanized infantry had seized the airport gates. A blasted truck on the roadside smoldered gently-it had wandered through a scattering of paper-clip mines.
Their chopper carried them smoothly over the fence. In- side, the airport was a jumble of luxury saloons and limos.
Militia in flak jackets and riot helmets were beating the airport bounds with long bamboo poles. Minesweepers. As the chopper settled to the weedy tarmac, Laura heard a sharp crack and flash as a pole connected.
"Watch you step," the pilot said cheerily, flinging open the hatch. A militia kid in camo, about nineteen-he looked excited by the night's action. Any kind of destruction was thrilling-it didn't seem to matter that it was his own people.
Laura and David decamped onto the tarmac, carrying the sleeping baby in her tote.
The chopper lifted silently. A little baggage cart scurried past them in the darkness. Someone had crudely wired a pair of push brooms to the cart's front. Laura and David shuffled carefully toward. the lights of the terminal. It was only thirty yards away. Surely somebody had swept it for mines already... . They eased their way around a mauve sports car.
Two fat men, wearing elaborate video makeup, were asleep or drunk in the car's plush bucket seats.
Soldiers yelled at them, beckoning. " 'Ey! Get away! You people! No robbin', no lootin'!"
They stepped into the long floodlit portico of the terminal.
Some of the glass frontage had been smashed or blown out; inside, the place was crammed. Excited crowd noise, waft of body heat, popping, scuffling. A Cuban airliner lifted off, its graceful hiss of takeoff drowned by the crowd.
A soldier in shoulder bars grabbed David's arm. "Papers.
Passport card."
"Don't have 'em," David said. "We were burned out."
"No reservation, no tickets?" the colonel said. "Can nah come in without tickets." He examined their cadre's uni- forms, puzzled. "Where you get those telly-glasses?"
"Gould and Castleman sent us," Laura lied smoothly. She touched her glasses. "Havana's just a stopover for us. We're witnesses. Outside contacts. You understand."
"Yah," the colonel said, flinching. He waved them inside.
They filtered quickly into the crowd. "That was brilliant!"
David told her. "But we still got no tickets."
["We can handle that,"] Emerson said. ["We have the
Cuban airline online now. They're running the evacuation-we can get you the next flight."
"Great. "
["You're almost back-try not to worry. "]
"Thanks, Atlanta. Solidarity." David scanned the crowd.
At least three hundred of them. "Man, it's a mad doctor's convention
Like kicking over a rotten log, Laura thought. The airport was crawling with tight-faced Anglos and Europeans-they seemed split pretty evenly between well-dressed gangster ex- iles and vice-dazzled techies gone native. Dozens of refugees sprawled on the floor, nervously clutching their loot. Laura stepped over the feet of a slim black woman passed out on a heap of designer luggage, a dope sticker glued to her neck.
Half a dozen hustlers in Trinidadian shirts were shooting craps on the floor, shouting excitedly in some East European language. Two screaming ten-year-olds chased each other through a group of men methodically smashing tape cassettes.