Stormchild by Bernard Cornwell

the room was clamorous with dissent. The chairperson called for order, while a conflicting voice yelled at Matthew to sit down and be quiet. I was about to shout my own protest against the protesters, when suddenly the great room’s lights blinked out, the western sky sheeted a fiery red, and the first guests screamed with horror.
    Genesis had come at last.
     

 
     
    T he doors behind Charles and me were kicked violently open. A woman at a nearby table screamed in terror. I turned to see three bearded men silhouetted against the hallway lights that were still shining bright. The three men half stepped over the banqueting hall’s threshold. Everything was happening so fast that I was still pushing myself upright from where I had been leaning idly against the wall. Then the three men hurled missiles deep into the darkened room and I twisted awkwardly and frantically aside. I saw smoke trails fluttering behind the objects. Christ! I thought, the bastards are using grenades! and I was instinctively shrinking into a groin-protecting crouch as the first missile cracked apart in a foul-smelling gout of chemical stench. The “grenades” were stink bombs.
    “Come on, Tim! Come on!” Charles had recovered more quickly than me, and was already pursuing the fleeing men.
    I followed, only to be crushed in the sudden crowd of choking, screaming, and panicked delegates, who fought toward the cleaner air of the hallway. A fire alarm had begun to shrill, its bell filling the hotel’s vast spaces with a terrible urgency. The stink bombs were pumping a noxious, gagging smoke that overwhelmed the air conditioner ducts. I heard a crash as a table was overturned. A woman in a sari tripped and fell in front of me. I dragged her upright, shoved her out of my way, then drove my shoulder hard into the press of fleeing people to make a path through them.
    “This way, Tim!” Charles was free of the panic and running toward the hotel gardens. The men who had attacked the conference were fleeing through those gardens toward the sea, scattering leaflets in their wake. I could just see the three running figures in the eerie light of the flickering flames that illuminated the hotel grounds.
    I tore myself free of the crowd and sprinted after Charles. He had already rammed through a door and jumped off the terrace where the tables were set for breakfast. I leaped after him. Palm trees were burning at the edge of the beach, and I realized it had been their ignition that had sheeted the sky with red flame. The night air stank of burning and of the gasoline I guessed had been used to set the trees alight. The thatched roof of a beach bar had also caught the fire and was furiously spewing sparks into the night wind.
    Charles was overtaking the fugitives who ran toward the sea which lay just beyond the burning trees. The three men were wearing green overalls and had ninjalike scarves round their heads, and I realized, with a sudden excitement, that it was the same pale green in which Caspar von Rellsteb had uniformed Nicole when she sailed away on Erebus. One of the fugitives, slower than his companions, dodged between the empty lounges beside the hotel’s swimming pool, and Charles leaped onto the man’s back with a flying tackle that would have made an international rugby player proud. There was a terrible crash as the two men fell into the wooden furniture and I heard the Genesis fugitive cry aloud in pain. “Hold him!” I shouted at Charles in unnecessary encouragement.
    The other two men turned back to help their comrade. I reached the pool’s apron, ran past Charles and his struggling prisoner, and charged the two men. I shoulder butted the nearest one, who toppled, shouted in fear, then fell backward into the black pool. The second man tried to swerve past me, but I grabbed his arm, turned him, and thumped a fist into his belly. I followed that blow with a wild swing at his face that was cushioned by the man’s vast and springy beard into