Shockwave by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848128583
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2022-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

30.

I woke before the others, thirsty as anything; Kotler had cooked dinner with a lot of salt. Careful not to wake anyone, I headed to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Outside, dawn was breaking. Something was moving within the open door of the shed opposite. Curious, I took a step closer to the window, just in time to spot Kotler dragging a small orange box across the shed. Whatever was in it seemed heavy. As he bent to lift it, he looked up and saw me framed in the window. I couldn’t make out his expression, but he immediately hefted the box out of sight. There was something furtive about the way he did this: his body language suggested I’d caught him in the act – of doing what, I had no idea.

I retreated to our room to find Caleb awake and shivering.

‘How are you doing?’ I asked him.

‘I’m all right, but I admit I’m not up to snowmobiling. I’ve been thinking: we could turn it to our advantage. Tell Kotler that Xander should stay behind with me.’

Over breakfast of pancakes, bacon and syrup, which Caleb didn’t get up for, we persuaded Kotler – who didn’t mention having spotted me in the window – that leaving the two behind was the best plan. Xander had spent much of the night on his computer, he said, getting nowhere. He did a good job of looking genuinely disappointed to miss out, though the bags under his eyes told me that he was almost as exhausted as my cousin.

I half expected Kotler to object: the day before, he’d seemed determined to push us on at all costs. But he didn’t. Perhaps he thought he’d already broken Caleb and Xander. In which case, job done. With another of his dismissive shrugs he said, ‘Mr Lukas wouldn’t forgive me for truncating the trip entirely.’ Nodding at me and Amelia, he went on, ‘It’s safest to take the two of you out. At least I’ll have done my part of the deal if I do that.’

While Amelia and I gathered our gear, I thought about Kotler’s use of the word ‘safest’. Did he mean that letting Xander stay with Caleb would keep everyone safe, or that he needed to take some of us out as planned to be safe from the repercussions of disobeying Lukas’s orders? Surely the former. Kotler was no pushover. How could Lukas be that much of a threat to him? When I raised this with Xander, he opened his laptop and said, ‘See if Kotler will tell you any more about Lukas and Armfield when you’re out and about. I’ll carry on searching with this.’

Back in the yard, Kotler was in his element again. He’d already set out three orange and black snowmobiles. Once he’d issued us with properly fitting helmets – mine even had a GoPro mount, which would make it easy for me to film the day’s exploits – he walked us around one of the machines, explaining how it worked.

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