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of a bomb blast once before. It also had been just like this, a random mix of devastation and safety. He had seen people dead like this too, without a mark on them, killed by compression. He started to cough as the smoke got into his lungs. He shouldn’t have left the girl alone. There were houses two kilometres away and the people there would have seen the smoke, heard the explosion. But the police were bought off, so maybe that wouldn’t deter Jones. There was the guy on the ridge. At least him. He could be closing in on her right now. It might even be possible to disable communications into a little valley like this – take out the GSM masts, cut the landline, giving them plenty of time. He stumbled back to the hole he had come through. He had to get back to her, quick.
     

 
    7
    Rebecca started a text to her mum but her fingers wouldn’t work properly – they were shaking, plus she couldn’t see properly, so it was really slow. She kept making mistakes and having to go back and start again. She was continually looking up as she was doing it, to see if he was coming back yet. She didn’t want him to see her doing it. She had no idea why, but knew she didn’t want him to know she had a mobile phone.
    Normally she was really quick texting, much quicker than any adult she knew, but now it wouldn’t work. She had started it because she was frightened he would hear her talking if she actually called her mum. She stopped, looked up for him, then moved further behind the rock. She would have to call her mum, speak quietly.
    She spoke her mum’s name almost in a whisper, so faintly the voice recognition didn’t register it, so then she had to speak it louder, move again to the edge of the road, look to see if he was coming out yet. There was still some smoke coming out of the roof. Would he call the fire brigade? she wondered. She held the phone to her ear and watched the house, waiting for him to appear. After a few seconds of complete silence she looked at the screen and saw she had no signal, no bars at all.
    She cut the call attempt and felt a panic fluttering in her tummy. No signal wasn’t normal. There was a mast right on the hill opposite. She looked up to make sure it was still there and out of the corner of her eye she saw movement to the side of her, back along the road down the valley. She turned towards it.
    There was a man there, coming quickly forwards. He was at the bend in the road, up above her – where she had been standing when the explosion had happened. When he saw her he stopped immediately. It was the policeman who had spoken to her, she thought. He looked young like that, in the same uniform. He had something in his right hand which, after a moment, she realised might be a pistol, though he wasn’t pointing it at anything. She thought she would shout out to him, warn him, or ask for help, but something stopped her.
    As she watched, he crouched down on the ground near to one of the bushes edging the road. He peered across to the house then, before she could decide what to do, he shouted to her: ‘Come. Come to me now.’ In Spanish, same voice – definitely the man she had just spoken to.
    She moved out from behind the rocks, took a step towards him. He was a policeman, so it must be safe.
    ‘Where is he?’ he shouted, again in Spanish, not looking at her, but down at the house. ‘Where is the man you were with?’ So he had seen the tall guy. She was about to tell him he was in the house, but again something stopped her. She took another step towards him though. Why was she uncertain?
    ‘The house is on fire,’ she shouted. ‘There’s been an explosion.’ She didn’t want to walk up to him. The tall guy had told her to wait behind these rocks, in case there was another explosion. She risked a glance back. There were wisps of smoke coming from the roof still, but no longer a big black column of it. Up above them, high in the air, the cloud was still hanging there. No sign of the