“Unreel the spool. I’ll cover you.”
For a brief moment, Hana’s face lit up. He was helping her. At last.
Osborne reloaded his two .38s, all the while peering nervously though the doorway. The bullets continued to whistle by outside. Hana moaned as she took a first step toward the door. Osborne motioned to her to advance.
“The boy’s waiting on the beach,” he said, holding her against him. “The coast is clear. Go!”
Hana gritted her teeth and gripped the roll of electric wire connecting the detonator to the mined ground. Without a thought for the stray bullets raining down outside, she started running toward the beach.
The special forces were fighting a pitched battle with Nepia’s men, who had regrouped at the edge of the forest. At the foot of the hill, the circle of initiates was finishing its bloodthirsty ceremony.
Ignoring the fact that her abdomen was tearing apart, Hana limped toward the sea, unrolling the precious wire. Osborne was covering her rear. Under enemy fire, the Maoris were retreating toward the foundations. A burst of gunfire sent the sand flying just behind them. Hana stumbled, and picked herself up again with difficulty. In a trance, Osborne shot one man in the back, another as he was reloading his pump-action shotgun at the corner of a hut. Two bullets in the head. He would kill others. He would kill them all. The sea was foaming a short distance away. In the darkness even the moon was covered with clouds. Hana was wailing with pain just ahead of him. His feet kept slipping on the loose sand, but she hadn’t let go of the spool.
Mark was waiting on the shore. If they could get into the water, they might have a chance to escape the blast that would wipe out the site. Osborne caught up with Hana, thought he detected a presence behind a cement mixer, changed his mind, kept straight on. Another twenty yards and they would reach the sea. Suddenly, a burst of gunfire whistled on the air.
They both fell.
Osborne rolled on the sand, turned and fired both guns blindly. A figure collapsed in the shade of the huts. A searing pain shot through Osborne’s body. He put his hand inside his jacket and when he took it out again he saw it was sticky with blood.
Lying a few paces away, Hana was still moving. He crawled to her, a burning deep in his belly. Hana too had been hit, in the legs. She was grimacing with pain, but her femoral artery was sound.
“Can you get up?” he said.
“No.”
In the fall, the detonator had slipped from his grasp and was lying some distance away, just out of reach. Osborne aimed his gun in the direction of the sea. A clumsy figure was staggering toward them across the sand: Mark.
He had seen them fall and had come to them, dripping with fear. He tried to speak, but Osborne got up and pushed him down hard on the ground. A shout had just gone up at the foot of the hill. Mark slumped on the sand. By the light of the torches, a newly decapitated head sat enthroned on the tip of a spear: his father’s.
Osborne cursed between his teeth. The sea was only some fifty feet away but they’d never be able to reach it. Lying beside him, Hana was trying to hold back the blood gushing from her stomach. Her pupils were shining with pain but her hand was trying desperately to reach the spool.
“Still a Maori, eh?”
“Still alive.”
Not for much longer: with sticky fingers, Osborne connected the wires to the detonator.
Meanwhile, the police had overrun the site. Shots were still being fired between the huts, almost at point-blank range. Nepia’s men were falling one by one, but they were determined and would fight on to the end. The connection was ready, the charge enormous. Osborne hesitated. The explosion would blow away the huts, the site, the whole area. There might be one chance in a hundred of getting out alive.
Pressed against him, Hana’s body was burning hot. “Go,” she breathed.
The boy tried to lift his head but Osborne held his face down on the ground.
“I’m fed up!” Mark stammered, his mouth full of sand.
“Me too,” Osborne said.
Hana’s eyes were shining in the moonlight, but they weren’t shining for him anymore. He pressed down on the detonator.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was helped by a Stendhal grant, awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I would also like to thank the Alliance Française in Auckland, and Pita Shapples, for his wero at the marae on West Coast Road. Many thanks to my brave readers, especially Olivier Mau and Jean-Jacques Reboux, for their encouragements and wise advice, as well as Sophie Couronne for placing the final stone in an edifice that until then had been quite unsteady.
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR
Zulu (Europa Editions, 2010) Férey’s first novel to be published in English, was the winner of the Nouvel Obs Crime Fiction and Quais du Polar Readers Prizes. In 2008, it was awarded the French Grand Prix for Best Crime Novel. Utu won the Sang d’Encre, Michel Lebrun, and SNCF Crime Fiction Prizes. Férey lives in France.
N
OTES
1 “Hello.”
2 “You speak Maori?”
3 “Oh, I only speak it a little.”
4 “That’s good. Sit down.”
