Vixen 03 (Dirk Pitt 5)

He had been in a small chemist's shop, buying Jenny's bath oil, when a sergeant from the Pembroke constabulary tracked him down and stam-mered out a sket

chy outline of the tragedy. At first Fawkes refused to believe it. Only after he reached Shawn Francis, the Irish-born constable of Umkono, over the Bushmaster's mobile radio did he come to accept the worst.

"You'd better come home, Patrick," Francis's strained voice crackled over the speaker. The constable spared Fawkes the details, and Fawkes did not demand them.

The sun was still high when Fawkes came within sight of his farm. Little remained of the house. Only the fireplace and a section of the veranda still stood. The rest was no more than a pile of cinders. Across the yard, rubber tires on the tractors smoldered on 25

their steel rims and emitted thick black smoke. The farm workers still lay where they'd fallen in the compound. Vultures were picking at the carcasses of his prize cattle.

Shawn Francis and several Defence Force soldiers were huddled around three forms lying under blankets when Fawkes braked to a stop in the yard. Francis came over to him as he leaped out of the mud-streaked Bushmaster. The constable's face was pale granite.

"God in hell!" cried Fawkes. He gazed into Francis's eyes, searching for a small ray of light. "My family. What of my family?"

Francis fought to get the words out, then gave up and dipped his head in the direction of the blanket-covered bodies. Fawkes pushed past him and stumbled across the yard but was caught short by the stout arms of the constable, which suddenly encircled him about the chest.

"Leave them be, Patrick. I've already identified them."

"Dammit, Shawn, that's my family lying there."

"I beg you, my friend, do not look."

"Let me go. I must see for myself."

"No!" said Francis, grimly hanging on, knowing he was no match for Fawkes's massive strength. "Myrna and Jenny were badly burned in the fire. They're gone, Patrick. The loved ones you knew are no more. Remember them alive, not as they are in death."

Francis could feel the tenseness slowly drain from Fawkes's muscles and the constable loosened his hold.

"How did it happen?" asked Fawkes quietly.

"No way of describing in detail. All your workers have either been driven off or killed. There are no wounded to tell the tale."

"Somebody must know . . . must have seen ..."

"We'll find a witness. One will turn up by morning. I promise."

The grim conversation halted while a helicopter whirled to the ground and the soldiers tenderly lifted the bodies of Myrna, Jenny, and Patrick Junior inside the cargo cabin and strapped them down. Fawkes made no move to go to them. He only stood there and watched with great sadness in his eyes as the helicopter lifted off and headed toward the mortuary in Umkono.

"Who is responsible?" Fawkes said to Francis. "Tell me who murdered my wife and children and my workers and burned my farm."

"One or two CK-eighty-eight plastic cartridges, the charred remains of an arm inside the house with a Chinese watch on the wrist, prints in the dirt from military-soled boots. Circumstantial as it is, the evidence points to the AAR."

"What do you mean, 'one or two cartridges'?" Fawkes snapped. "The bloody bastards should have left a whole mountain of them."

Francis made a helpless gesture with his hands. "Typical of an AAR raid. They always police the area right after an attack.

Makes it tough to tag them with any hard evidence. They plead innocent to any international investigation of terrorism while pointing a hypocritical finger at the other liberation organizations. If it hadn't been for our Alsatian dogs, we never would have uncovered the spent shells or perhaps even the arm.

"The raiders' tracks come and go from the bush through the cane fields and up to the house. I figure they shot down the guards during a shift change, while the gate was open, breaking the electrical charge. Pat Junior was killed over by that burnt-out tractor.

Myrna and Jenny were lying a few feet apart in the parlor. All had been mercifully shot. Patrick, for what little comfort it's worth, there was no indication of rape or mutilation."

Constable Francis paused to take a drink from a canteen. He offered it to Fawkes, who simply shook his head.

"Take a swig, Patrick. It's whisky."

Fawkes refused again.

"My office received a distress message over the radio from Jenny. She said that Pat had been shot and that men in bush fatigues were attacking the farm. She and Myrna must have put up one hell of a fight. We found four separate bloodstains in the yard behind the house. And you can see for yourself that what's left of the veranda floor is filled with bloody trails. Jenny's last words were, 'Good Lord, they're shooting the children in the compound.'