The Serene Invasion Read Online Free PDF Page B

the fly-screen door.
    Krasnic sat at his desk, looking like a statue carved from grey granite. He looked up when she entered. Ben stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder.
    Krasnic said, incredulously, “Sally? Ben?” His eyes brimmed.
    “We... got away, Yan.”
    Only then did she see the pistol lying on the table between his outstretched hands.
    “I saw the carnage...” Yan said. “Mary told me you’d been taken.” He shook his head. “I... I don’t know what happened. I’d suddenly had enough, all I could take. So I filled my pistol...” He gestured to the gun on the desk, “raised it to my head and tried to pull the trigger. And nothing happened. So I tried again, yes? And... again, nothing. Was it God, telling me something?”
    Sally opened her mouth to speak, but the words would not come.
    She stepped forward, reached out and took the pistol. It was far heavier than she had expected, and cold.
    “Yan, we need to talk...”
    She was interrupted. Someone barged into the room, shouting. “Dr Krasnic!” The Ugandan orderly stared at Sally and Ben, then went on. “Dr Krasnic, amazing events in the south! You must come and see. The road is blocked!”
    Before anyone could question him, he ducked back through the door and sprinted across the compound.
    Sally looked out. The police car, the Red Cross truck and the army vehicle were rumbling in convoy from the compound.
    Sally turned to Krasnic. “Yan, come with me.”
    She waited until he stood, like a tired old bear, and she took his arm. They crossed the compound to the terrorist’s truck and all three shuffled along the front seat. Sally stowed Krasnic’s pistol alongside the other above the dashboard.
    Five minutes later they left the compound behind the slowly moving convoy and headed south.
    Krasnic was the first to see it. He pointed, stirred from his suicidal fugue by what had appeared in the distance. Sally recalled the flash high in the sky earlier that afternoon and, later, the diffuse nature of the sun.
    The convoy had halted in the road ahead, along with dozens of other vehicles, cars, motorbikes and bicycles. A crowd of perhaps two hundred citizens milled about at the end of the road – the end of the road because, spanning the patched tarmac that should have headed ruler-straight south without hindrance across the sun-parched desert, was what appeared to be a wall of glass.
    Dazed, Sally climbed from the cab, eased her way through the crowd, and approached the silvery membrane. She could see through it, to the road on the other side, the dun African land stretching away to the horizon.
    She looked up and stared in wonder at the concave expanse of diaphanous material that stretched high above their heads. It appeared that the town of Kallani was enclosed within the confines of a vast dome.
    Krasnic was beside her. “What the hell...?”
    Ben said, “It’s a sign, Sally. A sign...”
    She reached out and touched the sun-warmed membrane.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    T HE BOARDING OF the Air Europe flight from Heathrow to Entebbe was delayed for two hours due to a bomb scare in terminal six. Geoff Allen bore the hold up with customary patience. His job entailed prolonged travel, and these days delays were an inevitable part of the process. He unrolled his softscreen and spent the time editing a file of shots taken on his last assignment, a freelance trip to cover the aftermath of the bombings in Ankara.
    A rainstorm was lashing the tarmac, and when the time came to board the ancient Boeing 747 the passengers were informed that, because of ‘technical difficulties’, the umbilical corridor leading from the terminal building was out of commission. As he dashed through the rain, he looked ahead to the sun of Africa and the week he was due to spend with Sally.
    There was another delay, this time lasting thirty minutes, while the plane took its place in the take-off queue. He spent the time writing a short email to Sally and sending it as the