Carte Blanche

returned fire, though only to cover their retreat east, deeper into the Green Way facility. They disappeared into the brush. Bond glimpsed Dunne, who was surveying the situation calmly. He turned and sprinted in the same direction as the guards.
    Bond picked up the weapon he’d been using and ran to the police vehicle. Bheka Jordaan climbed out and stood beside Nkosi, who was looking around for more targets. Gregory Lamb peered out and stepped cautiously to the ground. He carried a large 1911 Colt .45.
    “You decided to come to the party after all,” Bond said to her.
    “I thought it wouldn’t hurt to drive here with some other officers. While we were waiting nearby up the road I heard gunshots. I suspected poaching, which is a crime. That was sufficient cause to enter the premises.”
    She didn’t seem to be joking. He wondered if she had prepared the lines for her superiors. If so, she needed to work on her delivery, Bond decided.
    Jordaan said, “I brought a small team with me. Sergeant Mbalula and some other officers are securing the main building.”
    Bond told her, “Hydt’s in there—or was. His three partners too. I’d assume they’re armed by now. There’ll be other guards.” He explained where the hostiles had been and gave a rough geography of the headquarters. Jessica’s office, too. He added that the older woman had helped him; she would not be a threat.
    At a nod from the captain, Nkosi, keeping low, started for the building.
    Jordaan sighed. “We had trouble getting backup. Hydt’s being protected by somebody in Pretoria. But I called a friend in the Recces—our special-forces brigade. A team is on its way. They aren’t so much concerned about politics; they look for any excuse to fight. But it’ll be twenty or thirty minutes before they arrive.”
    Suddenly Gregory Lamb stiffened. Crouching low, he lumbered south, toward a stand of trees. “I’ll flank them.”
    Flank them? Flank who ?
    “Wait,” Bond shouted. “There’s nobody there. Go with Kwalene! Secure Hydt.”
    But the big man seemed not to have heard and plodded over the ground like an elderly Cape buffalo, disappearing into the brush. What the hell was he doing?
    Just then a few rounds peppered the ground near them. Bond and Jordaan dropped to the ground. He forgot about Lamb and looked for a target.
    Several hundred yards away Dunne and the two men with him had regrouped and paused in their retreat, firing back at their pursuers. A dozen bullets hit near the van but caused no damage or injury. The three men vanished behind piles of rubbish on the edge of Disappearance Row, the seagull population thinning as the birds fled from the gunfire.
    Bond jumped into the driver’s seat of the van. In the back, he was pleased to see, were several large containers of ammunition. He started the engine. Jordaan ran to the passenger side. “I’m coming with you,” she said.
    “Better if I do this myself.” He suddenly recalled Philly Maidenstone’s recitation of Kipling’s verse, which he’d decided was not a bad battle cry.
    Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, / He travels the fastest who travels alone. . . .
    But Jordaan jumped into the seat beside him and slammed the door. “I said I’d fight by your side if it was legal to do so. Now it is. So go! They’re getting away.”
    Bond hesitated only a moment, then slammed the van into first and they bounded off down the dirt roads that gridded the huge complex, past Silicon Row, Resurrection Row, the power plants.
    And rubbish, of course—millions of tons of it: paper, carrier bags, bits of dull and shiny metal, cans, broken furniture, fragments of ceramic and food scraps, over which the eerie canopy of frantic seagulls was reassembling.
    It was hard driving as they swerved around earth-moving equipment, skips and bales of refuse awaiting burial, but at least the winding route gave Dunne and the two guards no easy target. The three men turned and fired sporadically but were concentrating mostly on escaping.
    On her radio Jordaan called in and reported where they were and whom they were pursuing. The special-forces team would not arrive for at least another thirty minutes, Bond heard the dispatcher tell her.
    Just as Dunne and the other men reached the fence separating the filthy sprawl of the plant from the reclaimed area, one guard spun around and fired an entire magazine their way. The rounds pounded the front grille and tires. The van jerked sideways, out of