He decided to go ahead on his own. The main reason for waiting was the Chairman’s insistence in seeing the action. He felt a pleasurable sensation when he remembered his words: “There are to be no prisoners.”
Except the girl, of course. She was to be kept alive for a short while.
David looked at his watch. It was a few minutes to 12.30. “I wonder why they’re waiting.”
“Something’s happening now.”
There was a sound like a birdcall and the figures on the edge of the forest began to mass on the edge of the bush. The sun flashed on the metal of their assault rifles. The helicopter gunships began to move forward in formation until they hovered just above the soldiers.
“OK, chaps,” called Johnny. “Here they come.”
Kate put her hand on David’s.
“Just pray.”
A jungle green line emerged from the forest onto the clearing in front of the barricade with their rifles at the ready. Behind it another line began to form up.
“Save your shots until they come close,” said Johnny.
Now came a roar. The black line of the gunships moved forwards above the jungle green line.
“Hell!” said Johnny.
Suddenly there was a sound like a thunderclap right on top of them. The whole fort seemed to shudder and the top of the barricade collapsed outward down the slope of the hillock.
The defenders struggled to their feet in fearful apprehension at this totally unexpected and horrendous assault.
All around them was a strange silence.
The advancing jungle green line had hesitated. The gunships seemed to have veered away.
“Are they bombing?”
“Is it an earthquake?”
Tane carefully raised his head above the truncated battlements and looked out towards the Hollow Mountain. Did his eyes deceive him? At the very top there was a steep rocky bluff. Part of this bluff seemed to have given way, and the rocks were moving down the steep slopes below, rending the trees and rolling all before them.
Another roar and the sound of the avalanche swept over the flat like a mighty wind; it hit them with its blast, shaking the fort again.
He had seen avalanches before. Bluffs like that just did not collapse.
He saw the sky behind the mountain.
It was changing to red. Yet it was not sunset.
“It’s a volcano!” yelled Kate.
He saw the attackers standing in their tracks and looking back at the Mountain, their faces eerie in the red glow.
The faces of the people around him were also fixed on the Mountain. In a moment David and Kate were beside him.
The Mountain, like some giant prehistoric monster in its death throes, was convulsing, heaving, divesting itself of trees, rocks, collapsing in on itself, while from its shattered cone poured like dragon’s breath a towering sheet of fire and smoke.
“How can it be a volcano if it’s a limestone mountain?”
“Then what is it?”
“It cannot be…”
“The tutumaiao,” he said quietly.
“It’s come at last?”
“The revenge. It is the utu.”
CHAPTER 45
16:00 hours on Wednesday 26th January.
The Mountain or the remnant of the Mountain had ceased to belch out fire. The fiery glow remained and the bush appeared to be still burning on the flat at its base though smoke obscured the flames.
The attackers seemed to have fallen back into the bush and the gunships had disappeared.
Suddenly a familiar and ominous roar broke in on the defenders.
“They’re coming again,” called Johnny.
Then Kate saw the helicopters. They were not black and unmarked, but white with a red kiwi on a blue roundel.
“They’re Iroquois and they’re ours, lads,” cried Johnny.
Kate saw the marked helicopters landing on the river flat. Policemen in light and dark blue and soldiers in khaki leaped down from them and rounded up the jungle-green soldiers who seemed to have lost their urge to fight.
The policeman at the head of the arriving force raced towards the pa and was scaling the barricade.
“What the hell’s going on here?” said Matthew Piriaka.
The defenders did not answer but gathered together round him, anxious and white-faced.
“What about our families?” asked Johnny.
“They’re safe,” said Matthew. “Our guys and airport control picked up the Black Hawk on radar and communicated by radio with the pilot. Apparently he didn’t know what he was carrying. We got him to land on a Kaingaroa Forest air strip.”
You would have thought the people in the fort were the All Black team which had just won the World Cup and Matthew Piriaka was their captain. With huge smiles and faces awash with tears, they raised him on their shoulders in the midst of a cacophony of whooping and weeping.
An army officer approached Matthew with a puzzled expression. “Those boys didn’t want to fight us,” he said. “They handed over their weapons and then asked what money we could offer them.”
Bill who was standing nearby grinned. “I’ve met some of them. When they think they’re not going to get paid, they just switch sides.”
Stumbling over the flat now came a forlorn and ragged knot of people. They were neither soldiers nor policemen. More like refugees fleeing from a war zone. Originally they may have been dressed in white or blue uniforms, but their clothes were burned, blackened and torn by the smouldering forest through which they had come. Many were hobbling or dragging damaged limbs. Though they were in a group, they did not seem to be supporting each other, but every now and then looked back with fearful glances towards the grotesque red glow of the Mountain.
“Do any of you speak English?” David called.
One of the group nodded. His face was pale and soot-covered. His fair hair was interlaced with congealed blood which had already stained his tattered blue overalls. He blinked as if unable to focus.
“Sorry, can’t get used to this sun.” The accent appeared to be American.
“Your men will get help,” said David. Already Kate, Dick, Stan and Bill were setting up a first aid station and assisting the refugees to it.
He looked surprised. “Thanks.”
David pointed to the Mountain. “So you got out of there?”
“It was hell. We had only twenty minutes to leave; then as we tried to get away across the flat, we heard and felt the explosion and next minute the rocks were falling everywhere and trees started to catch fire.”
“What happened inside the Mountain?”
“I don’t know.”
“Matthew, did the air force bomb it?”
The policeman shook his head.
“Can I help?” Another man spoke with the same accent but with a tone of authority. One arm hung limp, his face was deeply gashed and his once white laboratory coat hung around him in soot-covered, bloodstained rags.
Tane broke in suddenly: “Are you Stephen Deveney?”
“I was his assistant. When I was called to the Control Room,” his voice broke, “I saw him.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was lying over the control panel. I knew he was dead. Then I saw the Chairman. He had a gun. He was shouting at me and telling me to stop something. But the sirens had already started and I realised what had happened. I said I couldn’t do anything, and he began shooting. I only just got out.”
“What did he ask you to stop?”
“Something which should never have been started.”
“Is it an emergency device?”
“Stephen designed it to stop his work falling into enemy hands.”
“How was it set off?”
“Stephen’s body appeared to have fallen on it.”
“Do you think he had anything to do with it?”