Operation Syria

— 26 —

Maggie’s heart was in her mouth right up until Wiggins dragged the captain aboard and only then did she start to believe that they might have made their escape. She saw Banks check around his foot.

“I’ll need a new pair of boots,” he said. “But it didn’t penetrate, thank fuck.”

The captain went up front and she saw him talking to the pilot and pointing at the tower below them. She went forward herself and looked out the window. The whole hillside swarmed with the spiders and they crawled freely all over the walls and turrets of the old town.

Banks turned to her.

“You’re not going to like this,” he said grimly. “But I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Brock and for the members of your team we couldn’t save and for all the folks in that town down river.”

Maggie saw that the pilot’s hand was over a firing mechanism.

“I think we can do a wee bit better than tar and sulfur,” Banks said.

She looked in his eyes and nodded, echoing Kim’s words from earlier that day.

“Burn them all. Burn the fuckers.”

The pilot pressed the button and two missiles sped out, trailing flame in the night, diving down into the tower, the first taking out the tower itself, the second disappearing into the depths below. Two seconds later, fresh gouts of flame flared up out of the vents in the hillside, then the whole escarpment, spiders, towers, and the bulk of the old town fell away in on itself into the white spider’s chamber. A wall of dust and smoke rose up, meaning that the chopper had to move away fast. After it banked and turned to bring the escarpment into view again, the smoke was already clearing.

The whole hill was now no more than a smoking crater, where nothing moved.

“I’m sorry,” Banks said.

Maggie patted at where the camera sat inside her shirt.

“Don’t be. I have the evidence. I’ll be back.”

She looked down at the crater one last time before the chopper turned away and they lost sight of it.

“I’ll be back,” she repeated. “I like to dig. It’s what I do.”