Free The Nostradamus Prophecies by Mario Reading Page A

second, part of a tree branch just above his head.
    By this time the two men were running back towards the camp, screaming. Bale missed the television aerial with his first bullet but broke it in two with his second. As he was shooting, Bale was also keeping a weather eye on the door of the caravan through which Sabir, the girl and the knife-wielding man had disappeared some twenty minutes earlier. But no one emerged.
    ‘Well that’s it. Just one magazine today.’
    Bale reloaded the Ruger and slipped it back inside its case and the case back into the poacher’s pocket sewn into the seat of his coat.
    Then he headed down the hill towards his car.

31
    ‘Is that a car approaching?’ Alexi had his head cocked to one side. ‘Or did the Devil sneeze?’ He stood up, a quizzical expression on his face and made as if to go outside.
    ‘No. Wait.’ Sabir held up a warning hand.
    There was a second loud report from the far side of the camp. Then a third. Then a fourth.
    ‘Yola, get down on the floor. You too, Alexi. Those are gunshots.’ He screwed up his face, evaluating the echo. ‘From this distance it sounds like a hunting rifl e. Which means a stray bullet could puncture these walls with ease.’
    A fifth shot ricocheted off the caravan roof.
    Sabir eased himself towards the window. In the camp, people were running in every direction, screaming, or calling for their loved ones.
    A sixth shot rang out and something thumped on to the roof, then skittered loudly down the outside of the caravan.
    ‘That was the television aerial. I think this guy’s got a sense of humour. He’s not shooting to kill, anyhow.’
    ‘Adam. Please get down.’ It was the first time Yola had used his name.
    Sabir turned towards her, smiling. ‘It’s all right. He’s only trying to smoke us out. We’re safe if we stay inside. I’ve been expecting something like this to happen ever since Alexi showed me his hiding place. Now that he can’t spy on us any more, it’s logical that he should want to drive us out in the open, where he can pick us off at his leisure. But we’ll only go when we’re good and ready.’
    ‘Go? Why should we go?’
    ‘Because otherwise he’ll end up by killing somebody.’ Sabir pulled the chest towards him. ‘Remember what he did to Babel? This guy isn’t a moralist. He wants what he thinks we have in this chest. If he finds we have nothing, he will become very angry indeed. In fact I don’t think he would believe us.’
    ‘Why weren’t you scared when the firing started?’
    ‘Because I spent five years as a volunteer with the 182nd Infantry Regiment of the Massachusetts Army National Guard.’ Sabir put on a hick country-boy accent. ‘I’m very proud to tell you, ma’am, that the 182nd were first mustered just seventy years after Nostradamus’s death. I’m a Stockbridge Massachusetts boy myself – born and bred.’
    Yola looked bewildered, as if Sabir’s sudden descent into levity suggested an unexpected side to his nature that she had hitherto ignored. ‘You were a soldier?’
    ‘No. A reservist. I was never on active duty. But we trained pretty hard and pretty realistically. And I’ve been hunting and using weapons, all my life.’
    ‘I am going outside to see what happened.’
    ‘Yes. I reckon it’s safe now. I’m going to stay here and take another look at this coffer. You don’t have the other one, by any chance?’
    ‘No. Only this. Someone painted it over because they thought it looked too dull.’
    ‘I guessed that much.’ Sabir started tapping around the exterior of the box. ‘You ever check this out for a false bottom or a secret compartment?’
    ‘A false bottom?’
    ‘I thought not.’

32
    ‘I’m getting two readings.’
    ‘You’re what?’
    ‘I’m getting two separate readings from the tracking device. It’s as if there’s a shadow on the screen.’
    ‘Didn’t you test it as I told you?’
    Macron swallowed audibly. Calque already thought him an idiot. Now