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  The six men were pinned like rats in a hole, their room a middle one at the back of the hospital where the Zulus had set fire to the roof. The room had no windows and no internal door, just this exit opening out on the slope to Shiyane Hill where Craven had sniped at skirmishers. The door braced shut with the lance-sergeant's bed, Williams now knocked bricks from the adjacent wall to punch a loophole for his gun. The tiny stifling room stank of sweat, urine, and open wounds. Dodging bullets to throw their weight against the wooden panels, fierce Zulus gouged the door with their assegais, splinters flying until bulging in, the barrier between whites and mutilation buckled.

  "Snakes!" one patient shrieked amid the choking smoke. Delirious, he tossed on his bed in the grip of tropical fever.

  "Butchered or roasted alive!" rasped another. "That's us if we don't get out!" He crawled from his cot to help Craven chunk at the wall.

  "Down to my last cartridge!" Williams cried. Using his bayonet through the cracked door, he thrust a jab at the eye of a Zulu peering in.

  Then clawlike black hands grabbed Williams through the breach.

  This hellish, claustrophobic room was the stuff of nightmares. Damp from weeks of rain, the torched thatch smoldered, pouring sparks and smudge down into the dark confines where an oil lamp sputtered the only

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  internal light. In through the bashed door intruded the clash of battle: the magnified roars of rifles amid war cries of "uSuthu!"; gibbering from those impaled on bayonets and spears; the crack of a knobkerrie crushing a skull; the rap of bullets striking biscuit boxes; the queer plump of slugs tearing into mealie bags; the whizz and rip of hurled throwing spears; as the fevered soldier squealed "Snakes!" repeatedly.

  Grabbed by the arms and legs, Williams was dragged outside. There, Zulus speared him in a bloody "washing" frenzy, then his abdomen was slit to dissipate umny-ama. His face gray with plaster dust and brick chips flying, Craven punched through the interior wall as Africans stormed in. Masked by gagging smoke billowing out the door, he and his helper shoved a patient into the hole as Zulus across the room pounced on two Redcoats in their beds. "Snakes!" howled one while they stabbed him sixteen times, before slitting his belly so intestines slithered to the floor like the reptiles in his fever. Hauling his helper after him, Craven wriggled through the hole into the next room, but Zulus grabbed the private by the legs for a tug-of-war. When the "rope" died from an assegai to the spine, Craven nailed the Redcoat to the floor with his bayonet, using the corpse to plug the hole.

  The one-story infirmary was a disorganized maze of rooms. Chambers that didn't interconnect opened to the outside, while those that were linked had weak internal doors. Two large rooms in front opened on the veranda, backed by cubbyholes down one side and across the rear. Mattresses raised on boards within the tiny rooms was the only change that converted the house to a hospital. Chard had forewarned those confined to burrow from room to room, and failure to heed his advice meant every nook was now a cage.

  Fire and churning black smoke filled the room into which Craven escaped. The Zulus who seized the veranda after Chard's withdrawal to the storehouse barrier were inside the hospital and mobbing this door. Private Hook was single-handedly defending nine patients when Craven appeared in the smoke like a ghost who can pass through walls. A spear thrust in the door struck Hook's helmet, knocking it back to slash his scalp and gush blood down his face. "Hold them, Hook!" Craven yelled

  over the din of battle and cries from the wounded and groans of fear from bedridden patients. Grabbing the navvy's pick used earlier to punch loopholes in outer walls, Craven swung it hard at the divider between this room and the next. Chips and chunks flew everywhere as the lance-sergeant hammered, bangs! from the pick rivaling bangs! from Hook's rifle. Only one Zulu at a time could rush the door, and as each fell to Hook's lunger he blocked the assault of the next. Bullets they held in contempt, but Zulus respected the bayonet, for its reach extended beyond that of assegais. Craven smashed a jagged tunnel through the wall, then shoved or hauled patients into the adjoining room. Only Private Connolly remained when Hook gave up the door, blasting the nearest Zulu point-blank to hurl him back at the mob. Dragging Connolly behind him, Hook crawled into the hole, the invalid yelping with pain as his leg broke during their retreat. Frustrated cursing followed them.

  Another isolated room, another blocking wall. Hook held the last hole while Craven hammered the next, arms pistoning the lunger back through the breach, spurts of blood spraying in with each hit. Again Hook as last man out had to drag Connolly.

  The next two rooms had a connecting door. A window high up in the far wall overlooked the yard between the hospital and the storehouse. Their names reflecting the number of Welshmen in "B" Company and not kinship, here Private Jones, an "Old Sweat" with a black goatee, and Private Jones, born the year before the Sweat enlisted, were not only defending the room but trying to evacuate patients out the window to the yard. Craven and Hook joined the escape route, helping their men out the exit, too. The last patient was delirious from malaria. Dressed to go, he sat on his bed and refused to move. The Sweat and Hook climbed out the window. "I'll bring him!" said young Jones as he handed Craven his rifle spiked with a lunger. As Jones ran for the patient, the lance-sergeant clambered up to the exit.

  The fire had burned through the rafters and flames licked menacingly at Craven's head. Both hands were cut and blistered; his lungs hacked from smoke; and it was unbearably hot up here. But along with fresh air came a new ordeal, for thirty yards of no-man's-land

  stretched from the hospital to the barricade protecting the front of the storehouse. The mealie bag walls down both sides were seized by Zulus after Chard abandoned them, so the hospital patients were hobbling and crawling a gauntlet between enemy warriors massed outside the flanking barriers. A hail of sustained gunfire from the biscuit box rampart made it difficult for Zulus to breach and cross the yard, but now and then one would risk a dash to get at the escapers.

  A scream from behind wrenched Craven's head about. Zulus had broken into the room and were assegaiing the malarial patient. "Go! Go! Go!" Jones exhorted as he retreated for the window. Only the crash of burning timbers saved him from being speared. Clambering out the exit. Craven dropped into the yard.

  He remembered Shaka.

  This Induna Enkulu.

  Born in about 1787, Shaka was the illegitimate son of Chief Senzangakhona of the amaZulu people. Banished from their village as an embarrassment, both mother and son lived in exile among the Mthethwa. The youth gained a reputation as a ruthless warrior, and on his father's death in 1816 seized the throne to rule as King Shaka kaSenzangakhona of the amaZulu. When he took control of the army, the Zulu were just one of a number of small Nguni tribes. It was Shaka who designed the deadly two-bladed thrusting assegai, and then the attack formation of the "beast's horns"—the impondo zan-komo. One group of warriors—the isifuba or "chest"— rushed the enemy head-on. while two flanking groups— the izimpondo or "horns"—moved swiftly around on both sides to encircle the rear. Reserves—the umuva or "loins"—were massed behind the chest, and held back from battle to plug any gaps. Swiftness of foot was important, so Zulus fought barefoot. Their soles were hardened by having to parade on thorn grounds. Any man who flinched was put to death then and there. Ferocity was important, so Zulus could have no sex until they "washed their spears," and those defeated in battle were put to death. Discipline was important, so shield-bearers shading the king from the sun who allowed rays through were put to death. Respect was important, so

  those who sneezed when the king was eating or failed to grieve when his mother died were put to death. Power was important, so when he developed an interest in embryology, a hundred pregnant women were cut open for him to see. He made 'To Conquer or To Die" the Zulu motto, and within four years, the realm of the ama-Zulu— 'The Children of the Heavens"—was 20,000 square miles.

  He remembered Shaka.

  This Battlefield Commander.


  Zulus had a name for barbarians like these. Whites were abelungu —"pallid sea creatures"—which the surf spat onto African shores. Throughout the reigns of King Shaka, King Dingane, King Mpande, and now King Cetshwayo, they had pressed . . . pressed . . . pressed Zululand. Zulu regiments were humiliated at the Battle of Blood River by Boer Trekkers in 1838. And now—the ultimate insult—British Redcoats were invading Zululand. Earlier this afternoon across the river at Mount Isandlwana, 1,500 of the whites and their black slaves had been annihilated in the greatest Zulu victory since Shaka's time. Prince Dabulamanzi and this Induna were in command of the loin reserves—senior warriors of the iNdlondlo, uThulwana, and uDloko regiments. The reserves were not released so they had missed the battle, and consequently would have no tales of glory to tell and no exotic loot to flaunt. Laurels for being "the first to stab" would go to younger men, a blow to their honor. The king had prohibited his army from crossing into Natal, but Dabulamanzi knew he had to "wash the spears of his boys," who were loath to return home without something to show for the day. A raid on KwaJim —"Jim's place"—at Rorke's Drift would allow the 4,000 reserves to kill white Redcoats and loot their supplies.

  The raid was not going well.

  Outreached by bayonets, outgunned by the awesome firepower of breach-loading Martini-Henrys discharging sustained volleys like a machine gun, and outmaneuvered by having to rush fortified positions, Zulus were falling by the hundred for every defender killed. This raid could become a horrid defeat unless something magic was done, something to inspire the

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  attackers into a massive onslaught to overrun the ramparts around the storehouse yard, behind which the Redcoats were building a redoubt of mealie bags to make a last stand.

  He remembered Shaka.

  From when he was a boy.

  "To Conquer or To Die."

  The cry he shouted now.

  So this Induna Enkulu, this Battlefield Commander, reined his white horse around from where he and Prince Dabulamanzi watched the battle raging from the slope of Shiyane Hill, and rode down to the Zulu-held mealie bag wall running from the front corner of the storehouse across to the back corner of the hospital, where he dismounted from his horse across the wall in no-man's-land as patients ran the gauntlet.

  Dizzy from his illness and dazed by glare from the burning hospital, a trooper turned as if not sure which way to go, then wandered like a sleepwalker toward the Induna.

  Redcoats behind the barricade yelled at him to hit the ground so they could shoot.

  The trooper shielded the Induna approaching beyond.

  Limited to a handful of the most senior commanders in 1879, the Induna's battle dress harkened back to the days of King Shaka. His magnificent "kilt" was made of twisted civet and monkey fur. Cow tail festoons circled his neck, elbows, knees, and ankles. His stuffed otter skin headband was adorned with colorful feathers. Below his grizzled beard, the snakeskin pouch around his neck with the festoon contained ten knucklebones: izikhombi "pointers" he used to smell out evil. For this Induna was a bone diviner: an iny-anga yamathambo.

  One arm carried a full-size isihlangu shield taken from his horse.

  The other hand gripped a carved knobkerrie club.

  Inspired by the magic man's immunity to shots from the ramparts, other Zulus were vaulting over the mealie bag flanks.

  The Induna raised the knobkerrie to club the dazed trooper.

  "You!"

  The shout close behind caused the Induna to whirl.

  And that's when Lance-Sergeant Rex Craven used the twenty-two-inch socket bayonet to stab the witch doctor through his heart.

  THE STRATEGY WALL

  Vancouver

  Wednesday, December 8, 1993

  For Inspector Zinc Chandler it had been a long and bumpy road back. The Ghoul, the Cutthroat, the Ripper: three psychos out for the kill. More actually, but that was a different story. And each demon had taken a piece of him.

  Six-foot-two and 190 pounds, his physique was muscled from working the family farm in Saskatchewan. Rugged and sharp-featured, his face was hard and gaunt, the years of pain subtracting from handsome good looks. His natural steel-gray hair was the color of his eyes, the • metallic tint responsible for his given name. The one-inch-square piece of bone cut from his brow had left an indent where the doctors had patched his brain, but recent plastic surgery had hidden that. Those scars on his forehead from the bullet wound were gone, which left the old knife scar along his jaw. There was a new knife scar on his back, and that stabbing had taken the past year to heal.

  If reincarnation was true, he planned to come back as a cat.

  The way life had treated him, nine lives were what he needed.

  The aftermath of the Cutthroat shootout had forced Zinc out to pasture, five long years back on the family farm, waiting, waiting, waiting to return to Special X. Then one winter day, last December, the call to duty came, though no one, including him, realized it at the time.

  Who could have known what torture and torment that Mystery Weekend would be, trapped on a secluded island with Jack the Ripper himself, that carnival of carnage that put Zinc to a do-or-die test, the result being— after recuperation—he was allowed to return to Special X.

  Now, thanks to Jack having his head smashed in and his guts torn out, Zinc was the new head of Operations and back on top.

  Historically, the Tudor building at 33rd and Heather was to house Langara School For Boys. Purchased by the Force in 1921, it became barracks accommodation for 200 Members. Four stables were added for 140 horses. The Heather Stables, as it was known, was now the RCMP Training Academy. New recruits were trained at Depot Division in Regina as they had always been, but here West Coast Mounties could upgrade their leadership, management, or investigative skills for promotion. Like police forces everywhere, "E" Division is chronically short of space, so Special X had usurped a chunk of the stables. Chief Superintendent DeClercq's office on the second floor was the one he had commandeered during the Headhunter case.

  At three o'clock in the morning, six hours after Jack's death, Zinc rushed into that office with a fax from Germany.

  "John Doe's name is Gunter Schreck. German police want him for killing three cops. They must want him bad since they're flying a man here today with extradition papers."

  "Germany after us," Robert said. "If I have a say, all they'll get is Schreck's bones. He owes Jack a life in jail first."

  "Schreck's psychotic. Weird hallucinations. Thinks he's being persecuted by"—Zinc checked the fax— "Knochenpolizei."

  "Bone Police," Robert said.

  It never ceased to amaze him, the chief's eclectic knowledge, which Zinc put down to researching the books he'd published: Men Who Wore the Tunic (Those Who Wore the Tunic in a later edition), and Bagpipes, Blood and Glory, the myth of Wilfred Blake.

  "He sees cops as skeletons wearing uniforms," said Zinc. 'They have no flesh, so the only way to kill them is to crush their skulls."

  He passed the fax and accompanying photophone picture to DeClercq, who read the print twice and compared the German mug shot with one snapped here. The glower of the same skinhead in both photos gazed upon a vision of horror and paranoia. The chief pinned the papers to his Strategy Wall.

  Robert DeClercq's office was an airy, high-vaulted loft. Windows faced the Conservatory atop Little Mountain's Queen Elizabeth Park, once a quarry for rocks to pave the city's streets. Three Victorian library tables U'd like a horseshoe served as his desk. His chair was an antique from bygone days, high-backed with a barley-sugar frame crowned with the buffalo head crest of the North-West Mounted Police. Two walls were covered floor to ceiling with corkboard, for when plotting a book or solving a case, DeClercq campaigned visually. Standing before his Strategy Wall, the chief was a general about to do battle through troop markers deployed around his Headquarters map.

  Tonight, the map on the wall was of Coquitlam.

  Vertical lines divided the wall into thirds.

&nb
sp; The left third, on which DeClercq now focused his attention, visualized the murders of Bert and Ernie on Colony Farm. Preliminary reports encircled Polaroids of the bodies. Each new jigsaw piece to arrive was added to the puzzle.

  "Schreck killed both deputies," Robert began. "He stomped their heads, crushing them, then escaped across Colony Farm. The MO fits his psychosis. Skull-crush the Bone Police."

  "He's our man," Zinc agreed. "Psycho on the run."

  "Running amok? Or running toward a goal? New West Police arrested him B and Eing a sporting goods outlet. The loot he'd gathered consisted of a thermal coat, a polar tent, and other Arctic stuff. Does the Canadian Arctic somehow feed into Schreck's psychosis? Is that why he's here?"

  "I'll alert all transportation links to the North. Planes, trains, automobiles, gateways, and Cassiar and Alaska Highway stops. He won't be hard to spot."

  "Tag him 'extremely dangerous/ A crazy cop killer loose."

  After Zinc made the call, Robert moved to the map pinned high on the central third of his Strategy Wall. Vertical Colony Farm Road T-intersected with horizontal Lougheed Highway. Along the lower edge of the Lougheed ran railway tracks. "When the sheriff's deputies called in a ten-eighteen medical problem but didn't arrive at FPI, the Forensic Institute sent doctors out. They found the bodies and raised the alarm. Our response was along the only route, down the Lougheed and south on Colony Farm Road. Unfortunately, a mile-long train blocked the way. Schreck was long gone by the time it passed. Dogs lost his scent at the Coquitlam River, and didn't pick it up on the other side. Perhaps he used the ditch network to throw them off."

  From Colony Farm Road on the map, Robert's finger slid east across the Coquitlam River to Mary Hill Road. "Schreck escaped at ten after five, heading toward Dora Craven's home. Nick left her alive about that time, and later she's found bludgeoned with a crushed skull. Did Schreck pick up some kind of club as he fled, then use her house to hide from us?"