"I've got to go."

She emptied her pockets of the tobacco tin and Zippo then threw them into the ammo box. She turned to me and smiled.

"She'd ground me."

Jogging out into the sun to cover the two hundred metres or so to the house, she pointed once more towards the invisible hut in the treeline.

"You can't miss it.

Later."

I left everything where it was and headed for the trees at the bottom of the cleared patch, keeping in the shade of the lot I was under. The hut didn't come into view for a while, and even when it did I couldn't face walking out into the sun to cut the corner. The heat haze that shimmered above the ground wasn't exactly inviting: I was a sweaty mess already.

I scratched away at my back and followed the shade of the tree-line round two sides of the square, eventually getting to what looked like a wooden outdoor privy. The door hung precariously on the lower rusty hinge and gra.s.s grew high right up against the door. Spiders' webs were spun all over the hut as if forming a protective screen. I looked through the gap in the broken door, but didn't see a toilet. Instead I saw two square, dull metal boxes with red and black stencilling.

This was a gift from heaven: four tin boxes, eight kilos in each. I couldn't understand the Spanish, but made out what was important: it contained 55 per cent nitroglycerine, a high proportion. The higher the amount of nitro, the more sensitive it is; a high-velocity round would easily detonate this stuff as it pa.s.sed through, which wouldn't have been the case with military standard high explosive, which is shockproof.

I wrenched open the door and stepped inside. Pulling off the opening key from the side of the top box, I saw the date on the pasted-on label, 01/99, which I presumed was its Best Blown-up-by date. This stuff must be old enough to have been used when Noriega was in nappies.

I got to work, peeling the sealing strip of metal just below the lid exactly as if I was opening a giant can of corned beef.

A plan was already forming in my mind to leave a device by Charlie's gates. If I couldn't drop the target as he moved outside the house, I could take him out while his vehicle waited for the gates to open by getting a round into this s.h.i.t, instead of him. My fire position would have to be in the same area I'd been in yesterday to ensure a good view of the pool and the front of the house, as well as the road going down towards the gate. I'd have to rig the device so it was in line of sight of the fire position, but I couldn't see that as a problem.

Sweat was gathering on my eyebrows. I wiped it as it was about to drip into my eyes and pulled back the lid of the tin container to reveal the inner wooden box liner. I cut the string banding with my Leatherman and lifted that too. I found five sticks of commercial dynamite, wrapped in dark yellow grease proof paper, some stained by the nitro, which had been sweating in this heat for years. A heavy smell of marzipan filled the air and I was glad I was going to work with this stuff outdoors. Nitroglycerine can damage your health, and not just when it's detonated. It won't kill you when you handle it, but you're guaranteed the mother of all fearsome headaches if you work with it in a confined s.p.a.ce, or if you get it into a cut or it's otherwise absorbed into the bloodstream.

I took three of the eight-inch sticks and wandered back to the firing point, following the shade of the treeline once more, pulling back the grease proof paper as I walked to reveal sticks of light green Plasticine-type material.

Minute grey crystals of dried-out nitro coated the surface. Pa.s.sing the weapon and ammo box, I continued the other two hundred paces to the target area, where I placed them side by side at the trunk of the thickest tree I could find near my paper targets. Then, back at the two-hundred point, I got into my firing position and took a slow, deliberate shot at the black circle.

The zero was good: it went in directly above the one-shot zero round I'd fired just as it should.

Now came the acid test, both for the zero and HE (high explosive). Picking up the ammo, weapon and bottle, I took another hundred paces to roughly the 300yard mark, lay down, checked the area to make sure Carrie or Luz hadn't decided to take a wander from the house towards the target area, then aimed at the sternum-sized target of green dynamite.

When I was sure my position and hold were correct, I had one last check around the area.

"Firing, firing!" The warning shout wasn't necessary, since no one else was about, but it had become a deeply ingrained habit from years of playing with this kit.

Aiming centre of the sternum, I took a slow, controlled shot.

The crack of the round and the roar of the explosion seemed to be as one. The earth surrounding it was dried instantly by the incredible heat of rapid combustion, turned into dust by the shock-wave, and sent up in a thirty-foot plume. Slivers of wood were falling all around the high ground like rain. The tree was still standing, and so it should be considering the size of it, but it was badly damaged. Lighter-coloured wood showed like flesh beneath the bark.

"NIIICK! NIIICK!".

I jumped up and waved at Carrie as she ran from the back of the house.

"It's OK ! OK! Just testing."

She stopped at the sight of me and screamed at the top of her voice, easily covering the ground between us.

"YOU IDIOT! I THOUGHT1 THOUGHT-'.

Cutting abruptly from her screams, she turned and stormed back inside.

Luckily there was no need to do anything more: the zero was on for all ranges, and the dynamite worked. All I had to do now was make a charge that'd take out a vehicle.

Clearing the weapon, I picked up all the other bits and pieces and headed back to the house.

TWENTY-FIVE.

The mozzie screen slammed shut behind me and I felt the sweat start to cool on my skin in the breeze from the two fans by the coffee table.

I headed straight for the fridge, dumping the weapon and ammo box on the way.

The light didn't come on when I opened the door, maybe some tree-hugging measure to save power, but I could still see what I was looking for another couple of two-litre plastic water-bottles like the one we'd emptied. The long gulps of chilled water tugged at my throat and gave me an instant headache but was worth it. I refilled the bottle I'd brought in from the garden-hose tap marked D and put it back in the fridge.

My T-shirt and trousers were still sticking to me, and the rash on my back was itching big-time. I got the cream out of my pocket and gave it a good smear all over. There was no point to welling myself off in this humidity.

After washing my gooey hands and face and throwing a couple of bananas down my neck, it was time to start thinking about the device I was going to make with the HE. With the half-empty water-bottle in my hand, and Carrie's giggle weed and Zippo in my pockets, I knocked on the door of the computer room as I entered.

Carrie was sitting in the director's chair on the left with her back to me, bent over some papers. The sound of the two overhead fans filled the room, a loud, methodical thud-thud-thud as they spun on their ceiling mounts. The room was much cooler than the living area.

The PC with the webcam was switched off; the other in front of Carrie showed a spreadsheet full of numbers, and she was comparing the data on her papers with what was on the screen.

It was Luz who saw me first, seated at her desk further down the room.

Swivelling in her chair to face me, she gave a "Booom!" with a big smile spread over her face and an apple in her hand. At least she thought it was funny. I shrugged sheepishly, as I had so many times to Kelly when I'd messed up.

"Yeah, sorry about that."

Carrie turned in her seat to face me. I gave her an apologetic shrug too. She nodded in return and raised an eyebrow at Luz, who just couldn't stop smiling. I pointed at the storeroom. I'm going to need some help."

"Gimme a minute."

She raised her voice to primary-school level and wagged a finger.

"As for you, young lady, back to work."

Luz got back down to it, using her thumb and forefinger to tap the pencil on the table in four-four. She reminded me so much of Kelly.

Carrie hit a final few keys on the PC and stood up, instructing Luz as she did so, still in schoolmistress mode, "I want to see that math sheet completed by lunchtime, young lady, or no food for you again!"

There was a smile and a resigned "Oh, Mooom, pleeeease ..." in return, and she took a bite from her apple as we headed for the storeroom.

Carrie closed the door behind her. The outside entrance was open, and I could see the light fading on the rows of white tubs. The sky was no longer an unrelenting blue; clouds were gathering, casting shadows as they moved across the sun.

I pa.s.sed over the tin and the Zippo and received a smile and a "Thanks' as she placed a foot on a bottom shelf and climbed up to hide them under some battery packs.

I'd already spotted something I needed and was picking up a cardboard box that told me it should be holding twenty-four cans of Campbell's tomato soup, but in fact had only two. Wanting just the box, I took out the cans and stacked them on the shelf.

It was Little America up on these shelves, everything from blankets and shovels to eco-friendly washing-up liquid, via catering packs of Oreos and decaf coffee.

"This is like WalMart," I said.

"I was expecting more of a wigwam and incense sticks."

I got a laugh from her as she jumped off the shelf and walked towards the outside door.

I looked at her framed in the doorway as she gazed out at the lines of white tubs, then walked over to join her, carrying the water and soup box. We stood together in the doorway for a few moments, in silence but for the generator humming gently in the background.

"What exactly do you do here?"

She pointed to the tubs and ran her hand along their regimented lines.

"We're searching for new species of endemic flora ferns, flowering trees, that sort of thing. We catalogue and propagate them before they disappear for ever." She stared at nowhere in particular, just into the far treeline, as if she was expecting to find some more.

That's very interesting."

She faced me and smiled, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

"Yeah, right."

I actually was interested. Well, a bit.

"I don't believe you, but it's very kind of you to pretend. And actually, it is very interesting..." She waved her arms towards the tubs and the sky above them, now dark with clouds.

"Believe it or not, you're standing at the front line of the battle to save bio diversity I gave her a grin.

"Us against the world, eh?"

"Better believe it," she said.

We looked at each other for less than a second, but for me it was half a second longer than it should have been. Our eyes might have been locked, but there was no way of telling behind her gla.s.ses.

"A hundred years from now, half the world's flora and fauna will be extinct. And that, my friend, will affect everything: fish, birds, insects, plants, mammals, you name it, simply because the food chain will be disrupted. It's not just the big charismatic mammals that we seem to fixate on," she rolled her eyes and held her hands up in mock horror, 'save the whales, save the tiger ... It's not just those guys, it's everything." Her earnest expression suddenly relaxed and her face lit up.

"Including the sandfly your eye has already gotten acquainted with." The smile didn't last.

"Without the habitat, we're going to lose this for ever, you know."

I moved outside and sat on the concrete, putting the soup box down beside me and untwisting the bottle top. As I took a swig she came and sat beside me, putting her gla.s.ses back on. As we both stared at the rows of tubs, her knee just touched mine as she spoke. This rate of extinction has only happened five times since complex life began. And all caused by a natural disaster." She held out a hand for the bottle. Take dinosaurs. They became history because of a meteorite crashing into the planet about sixty-five million years ago, right?"

I nodded as if I knew. The Natural History Museum hadn't been where I spent my days as a kid.

"Right, but this sixth extinction is not happening because of some external force, it's happening because of us the exterminator species. And there ain't no Jura.s.sic Park, we can't just magic them back once they've gone. We've got to save them now."

I didn't say anything, just looked into the distance as she drank and a million crickets did their bit.

T know, you're thinking we're some kind of crazy save-the-world gee ks or whatever, but-' I turned my head. 'I don't think anything like that-' "Whatever," she cut in, her free hand up, a smile on her face as she pa.s.sed the bottle.

"Anyway, here's the news: all the plant life on the planet hasn't been identified yet, right?"

"If you say so."

We grinned at each other.

T do say so. And we're losing them faster than we can catalogue them, right?"

"If you say so."

"I do. And that's why we're here, to find the species that we don't know of yet. We go into the forest for specimens, cultivate them, and send samples to the university. So many of our medicines come from those things out there in the tubs. Every time we lose a species, we lose an option for the future, we lose a potential cure for HIV, Alzheimer's, ME, whatever. Now, here's the cool part. You ready?"

I rubbed the bandage on my calf, knowing it was coming regardless.

The drug companies provide grants for the university to find and test new species for them. So, hey, go figure, we have a form of conservation that makes business sense." She nodded in self-approval and got busy cleaning her nails.

"But despite all that, they're closing us down next year. Like I said, we're doing great work, but they want quick results for their buck. So maybe we're not the crazy ones, eh?"

She turned once more to gaze out towards the tubs, her face no longer happy or serious, just sad. I was quite enjoying the silence with her.

I'd never had the tree-hugging case put to me like that before. Maybe it was because it came from her, maybe it was because she wasn't wearing an anorak and trying to ram it down my throat.

"How do you reconcile what you do here with what you're doing for me? I mean, the two don't exactly stand together, do they?"

She didn't turn to face me, just kept looking out at the tubs.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. Apart from anything else, it's helped me with Luz."

"How's that?"

"Aaron's too old to adopt, and it's so complicated trying to get things done here." I thought for a moment that she was going to blush.

"Soooo, my father came up with the offer of a US pa.s.sport for her, in exchange for our help that's the deal. Sometimes we do wrong things for right reasons isn't that true, Nick whatever-your-name-is?" She turned to me and took a deep breath.

Whatever was about to be said, it changed, and she gazed back out over at the treeline as a swarm of sparrow-sized birds took flight and chirped in frantic unison.

"Aaron doesn't approve of us doing this. We fight. He wanted to keep ha.s.sling for an adoption. But there's no time, we need to head back to Boston. My mother went to live there again after the divorce. George stayed on in DC, doing what he's always done." She paused, before going off at a tangent.

"You know, it was only after the divorce that I discovered how powerful my father is. You know, even the Clintons call him George. Shame he didn't use some of it to save his personal life. It's ironic, really. Aaron's like him in so many ways ..."

"Why go after so long because you're being closed down?"

"Not only that. The situation is getting worse down here. And then there's Luz to think about. Soon if 11 be high school, then college. She's got to start having a normal life. Boyfriends who double-date, girlfriends who talk about you behind your back, that kind of stuff..." She smiled.