"Whiskey, for anaesthetic, surgery, molotovs."

"Roger that," she said to him.

"And I"m going to the cops," Brand said.

"OK. You"re on your own then. Do me a favour, don"t mention me."

Brand went to the small police station and found the door locked. A man with several layers of filthy tattered clothes and bloodshot eyes, presumably homeless, sat on an upturned dustbin. "No police," he said.

"Where have they gone?" Brand asked.

"Bus crash," the man replied.

With the shopping finished and no prospect of immediate help or sanctuary from the law they turned back to the other side of town and the side street that led to the town"s sole filling station and the castle beyond. "Emma checked on the doctor he"s out of town, not due back until tomorrow," Sonja reported.

Brand thought about that. Natangwe needed help. "So we refuel and keep going, maybe north to Opuwo they"ll have a clinic there or we stay here and call in an aerial medical evacuation."

Sonja nodded, weighing up the pros and cons as they pulled up next to the single island of fuel pumps shaded by a small tin roof. A woman sitting in the shade of a square mud-brick building across the road held up her hands and shrugged her shoulders.

"No fuel?" Brand called.

"No electricity," she replied.

"They can"t run the pumps. s.h.i.t," Brand said.

"I think that solves our dilemma," Sonja said. "We stay here, make a stand, and call for a casevac for Natangwe."

"The castle"s just up the road," Brand said.

He"d been here once before and Schloss Hhner, for all its quirkiness, still had the look of an oasis in the desert, right down to the towering palm trees and manicured emerald lawns at the gate. They parked and an African man in white shirt and dark trousers came up to them.

"I am very sorry," he said after they had exchanged greetings.

"What"s wrong?" Brand asked.

"We are closed for the next two days. We have no water. There is a problem with the mains, and as you may have heard at the filling station, there is no electricity. We have a generator, but we are out of diesel . . ."

"And you can"t refill because the filling station is closed because there"s no electricity."

"Exactly," said the doorman with a smile.

"We need a phone, urgently," Brand said. "We have a man who has been wounded and needs aerial evacuation."

The smile left the man"s face. "I am sorry. We have no landline. We rely on cellular phones here, but we need a booster to get signal. I am afraid the booster is not working . . ."

"Because there"s no electricity. s.h.i.t."

"We can"t keep running and at least Natangwe"s stable for now," Sonja said.

Brand looked at Sonja. "I vote we stay here at the castle. We can take one of Stirling"s jerry cans of diesel and get the generator running."

Sonja nodded. "Good place for a last stand." She took the doorman aside and explained to him that despite the lack of water and electricity they still wanted to stay the night. When the man tried to politely decline her request, twice, Brand heard Sonja raise her voice. In the end, he complied.

Sutton and Stirling arrived, followed by Matthew, who was bringing up the rear alone in the Hilux. "You know there"s no fuel at the filling station. I can"t go on."

"We know," Brand said. "We"ll park the vehicles in the courtyard and entryway to the castle. We need to block that entrance."

Emma, Alex and Dorset lifted Natangwe down from the Unimog and carried him inside the hotel. Stirling reversed his Amarok as far into the courtyard as he could, and Brand backed the Unimog in until its rear b.u.mper was almost touching the Amarok"s front. Matthew was able to park the Hilux halfway under the castle"s ornate arched entryway.

Brand collected the rest of their a.r.s.enal and marched inside the B&B, ignoring the protests of the doorman. He found a staircase that led to the roof and walked up, the doorman in tow.

"Really, sir, I"m concerned by all these firearms, and . . ."

Brand put the rifles down, along with a rucksack full of spare ammunition. "Look, what"s your name?"

"Isaac."

"Listen, Isaac, I suggest you and whatever staff are here take the rest of the day off. We"ve got some people coming to visit us and they"re not exactly going to be the most polite guests of all time."

Isaac looked down at the pile of rifles and swallowed hard. "It is my duty to stay here and care for the hotel, even though we are empty. I will, however, tell the non-essential staff that you will not be needing them today. What about dinner?"

Brand could tell Isaac still wasn"t getting it. "We might not be alive in time for dinner."

"I see."

"Go, Isaac."

"I must stay."

"Suit yourself."

Brand stuffed as many banana-shaped thirty-round magazines in his cargo pants pockets as he could. He tucked in his bush shirt and dropped another two down the front. He left a spare AK and a pile of three magazines on the roof and took the other two rifles downstairs.

First he went to Stirling and handed him a rifle. "You good with this?"

Stirling stared at the AK-47, rotating it in his hands, a pained expression on his face. At last he looked up at Brand and met his eyes. "I"ve never killed a man, but yes."

"Let"s hope it doesn"t come to that." He handed Stirling three loaded magazines.

Alex and Emma had put Natangwe on a leather lounge in the bar and dining room area. Brand went to him and gave him the nine-millimetre pistol. "You know how to use this, son?"

Natangwe blinked at him. "Sort of."

"I"ll show him," Emma said. "Mum taught me."

Brand had seen Emma"s handiwork, the legacy of her mother"s training. He handed Alex an AK-47 and fished four magazines from the backpack. "You know how to use a rifle?"

"Yes, sir," Alex said.

Brand gave the remaining rifle and half the spare ammunition to Emma, and handed Matthew some more magazines. "This," he said, waving the end of the barrel of his own rifle around the room they were in, "is our last point of defence. Matthew, Alex, I want you two on the roof with me. Professor Sutton, have you had military service?"

"Before these young people were born, but yes."

"Good," Brand said. "There"s an AK and ammo for you on the roof as well. Emma, you stay here and look after Natangwe."

"No way," Emma said, her voice rising. "I"m not a b.l.o.o.d.y nurse. You need me up on the roof, with you. I"m probably a better shot than any of you."

Brand squared up to her, noting that Emma had the same forged steel look in her eyes as her mother, not to mention her beauty. "I saw what you did back at the crash site. You don"t have to convince me you can shoot."

"Then why leave me down here, out of the action?"

It irked Brand to have to explain himself. Of everyone present only Sonja could match him on combat experience; he knew what he was doing. And he now cared for Sonja, so he cared for her daughter as well though he couldn"t tell the girl that. "We need someone, a shooter, in reserve. If we lose a man up top, or the enemy ma.s.ses on one part of the fort, I need a firefighter to hose that hotspot down. I figured it"d be a tie between you and Alex as to who could move the fastest, but I know you"re a good shot. Plus, you got a good man down, here in the bar, and the way I hear it he took a bullet for you. I"d say that means you owe him some watching over."

She looked to Natangwe, who rested with his eyes closed, then back to Brand. "But "

"But nothing, Emma," Sonja said. "Hudson is correct. You are our strategic reserve. Alex?"

"Yes, Frau Kurtz?"

"I"m not a Frau. Check the kitchens and talk to Isaac. Find us some food while we still have time. Tell Isaac I"ll pay."

"Of course."

"Emma, go help him," Sonja added.

"Yes, Mum."

Brand gestured with a flick of his head for Sonja to join him outside in the bright sunlight of the courtyard. It was a nice hotel, and he hoped it stayed that way. "When the bad guys come, you"re in charge, here at the castle."

"What do you mean?" she asked him.

"I mean that whether they come on wheels or by chopper they"re either going to come down that road," he pointed towards the small fuel station, "or land on the road to get here. I"m going to be there to try to stop them."

Sonja shook her head. "I"d already thought of that. I"m going to be outside the castle."

"Your place is inside, with your daughter."

She put her hands on her hips. "I don"t have a f.u.c.king place, mister. The best way I can protect my daughter is to kill as many of these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds as I can before they get to you and your ragtag army."

"I"m not going to argue with you about this," Brand said.

"And I"m not your wife, Brand."

"No more "Hudson"?"

"No more anything. I"m younger than you, faster than you, and the last time I saw combat wasn"t thirty years ago."

"I killed a rhino poacher in Kruger last year," Brand said. As he said the words he felt foolish for letting her draw him into such an argument, and for making such a statement. He felt off balance around her.

"Pah!" she said. "That"s nothing. You do what you want. I"m going to be outside the castle walls and on the move when they arrive if they arrive."

Brand could see from her eyes there was no point arguing with her. She probably could move faster than him, though he hated to admit it. "All right. We"ll be ready for you, covering you when you fall back."

She gave a curt nod. "Good."

"Tell me, how"s Stirling going to hold up, if we get in the s.h.i.t?"

Sonja"s face softened and she looked, he thought, as concerned as he was. "He"s no killer, Hudson. I"ll talk to him." She looked up at the sun, unfiltered by even a skerrick of cloud. "d.a.m.n, it"s hot."

"Only going to get hotter," Brand said. "Appreciate it, if you talk to him."

Sonja nodded. "I"ll do it now."

Chapter 33.

Brand said he was going to move the Hilux, to better block the entrance to the old fort. Stirling was standing in the doorway of the restaurant and bar, leaning against the door frame.

Sonja knew she didn"t have time to stop for a shower, but she felt disgusting. She sat on a chair in the courtyard of the fort, put her AK on a table, unlaced her boots and kicked them off. She emptied her pockets, stood, went to the edge of the swimming pool and dived in. She swam a couple of laps, fully clothed, and when she came back to the same end where she"d started, Isaac was waiting for her with a pool towel.

"Thank you."

"A pleasure, madam."

Sonja walked across the small square of well-tended gra.s.s to where she"d left her things. As she put her foot down she felt a stab of fire in her toes. "Ow, f.u.c.k!"

"What is it?" Stirling asked, his hand at her elbow.

Instinctively she shrugged away his offer of a.s.sistance, but the burning pain wouldn"t stop. "Ouch!"

"Here, stop struggling." Stirling got down on one knee. "It"s a bee."

She felt foolish. "Let me sit down."

"No, stop. Don"t move. It"s still there, between your toes." He shooed the bee away, but the pain remained. "The stinger"s still in you, I"ll get it out."

Sonja reluctantly put a hand on Stirling"s shoulder to steady herself. "Hurry."

"Patience, patience." Stirling had taken out his wallet and from it he"d taken a credit card.

At least he knew what he was doing. If he"d grabbed the stinger with his fingers, or, worse, a pair of tweezers, he would have squeezed in more venom from the stinger while trying to pull it out. Instead, he used the edge of the plastic card to brush the stinger out from between her toes, sweeping away from the puncture point to stop any more poison being forced into her.