Desert Pursuit Part 11

They marched on across the plain as the sun rose higher and the temperature climbed. The closer they got to the installation, the less promising it looked, but they kept going, always keeping upwind of the fires. With the Scorpion on their trail, they had no other option. Finally they reached the high, wire fence that ringed the compound and made their way around to the gates, which were swinging open. Alpha Force stepped inside and looked around for any sign of life. Khalid stood beside them, and Juma and his three followers lined up beside Khalid, wanting to be seen as part of the older group. Sisi helped Kesia to sit down and put a comforting arm around Samir's shoulders, while Jumoke wandered over into the scant shade of the gatehouse, a tiny wooden hut on short stilts. The little girl leaned against the warm wood and drew patterns in the sand with her sandalled foot while she waited for Alpha Force to decide what to do next.

The oil wells burned a good distance away, beyond the back of the compound, but even where they were standing, at the front of the complex, the heat was intense. The air trembled with it. The Nissen-type huts nearest to the wells were charred skeletons. Steel cargo boxes the size of small houses had been lifted in the air by the initial explosion and thrown across the compound. The Nissen huts closer to the front gates were damaged too. All the windows had been blown out by the blast. Doors hung open on their hinges, swinging in the wind. Whole sections of wall had peeled away from one hut, leaving bedrooms and bathrooms open to the sand and wind.

Hex stared in at a small, neat bedroom, with posters and photographs pinned to the wall and a robe hanging from a peg. He was reminded of photographs of bombed houses in his home city of London during the blitz. There was the same sense of something too personal being exposed for everyone to see.

Paulo looked over to the helipad. It was empty. The company helicopter was lying on its side some way off with the rotors twisted and broken. Next to the helipad a short row of black body bags lay in the sand, each with a flapping white label attached to it. Three of the bodies in the bags looked small and slight next to the others and Paulo's stomach turned over as he wondered whether they were the three boys from the camp.

'h.e.l.lo?' shouted Amber. Her voice drifted on the wind, a faint and tiny noise swallowed up by the vast rumbling of the oil fire. She closed her mouth again, scared at how small she felt.

'I think they've all been evacuated,' said Li. 'The living ones, anyway,' she added, pointing to the body bags. 'They must be coming back for those.'

'Shall we wait here, then?' asked Hex.

'I don't know,' said Alex, glancing over towards the bluff. 'We might run out of time-'

He stopped short as Jumoke gave a high scream. Everyone turned to see the little girl writhing on the ground beside the gatehouse, clutching her foot. Rearing out of the sand above her terrified face, its jaws open wide and its two curved front fangs dripping with venom, was a large, hissing snake.

TWENTY TWO 'Li?' said Alex, without taking his eyes from the snake.

Li had a vast knowledge of plants and animals, learned from a childhood spent on field trips with her parents. Alex had no doubt that she would be able to identify the snake.

'Horned viper,' she said without hesitation, noting the pointed protuberances above the snake's eyes, the thick body and the sandy coloured skin with darker brown markings. She knew this type of snake had a habit of burying itself in the sand, leaving only its eyes exposed and waiting for its prey to pa.s.s by. This one had probably been disturbed by Jumoke's foot as she drew patterns in the sand.

'Venomous?' asked Alex.

'Highly,' replied Li.

Alex groaned and took a step towards Jumoke, hoping to pull her out of range. The viper raised its head and rubbed the scales of its back together in a warning rattle.

'Don't move,' ordered Li. 'Everyone! Ne vous deplacez pas! Ne vous deplacez pas! They only strike at moving objects.' They only strike at moving objects.'

'Any chance of it leaving if we stay still?' asked Alex, watching the snake.

Li started to shake her head, then changed her mind as the snake caught the movement and turned its beady eyes on her. 'Normally, I'd say yes, but this one looks pretty riled. The unusual ground vibrations from the oil well fires have made it edgy. We need to get Jumoke to stop moving otherwise that viper is going to strike again.'

'Also, if she lies still, the venom from the first bite will spread more slowly around her body.'

Amber started to talk to Jumoke softly in French, trying to get her to calm down and stay still. Jumoke was too terrified to listen. She continued to thrash back and forth in the sand, clutching her foot. The snake watched her, its wedge-shaped head swinging in time with her movements.

'We have to do something!' whispered Hex. 'That thing is going to bite her again any minute now!'

Slowly, Alex turned his head from side to side, looking for a weapon of some sort. There was nothing but sand all around him. Then he remembered his knife, hanging in a sheath at his belt. It was a single bladed knife with a wooden handle, perfectly balanced and extremely sharp. Alex moved his hand to the sheath and unclipped the top. He slipped the knife from the sheath and slowly, smoothly, went down on one knee.

Alex knew how to throw a knife and this knife was an old friend. With this knife, on a good day, he could throw accurately enough to pin a wasp to a tree.

On a good day.

Alex hefted the knife in his hand and studied the snake's weaving head and the wooden wall of the hut behind it. He would only have one chance. If he missed, he would anger the snake even further and prompt it to bite Jumoke again.

Alex drew a deep, steadying breath and took aim. The knife flew from his hand so fast, no-one saw it leave. They heard the thunk of metal sinking into wood, and suddenly there was the quivering knife handle, pinning the viper to the gatehouse wall. The blade had hit the snake dead centre, just below the head.

Alex stared at the thras.h.i.+ng snake, then down at his trembling hand. Then he suddenly sat down hard in the sand. His mouth had gone completely dry.

Paulo hurried forward and picked Jumoke up, carrying her well out of the way of the snake. They all gathered around him as he laid Jumoke in the sand, making soothing noises as he straightened out her leg and began to examine her foot. He could see beads and trickles of venom on her skin, mixed in with the sand, so he grabbed the girba and unplugged it. He poured water over Jumoke's foot to wash the venom and sand away, then he bent forward to remove her sandal and examine the bite.

'Is it bad?' asked Amber, her voice quavering as she saw Paulo's shoulders begin to shake.

'Very bad,' he said in a strangled voice.

'W-will she die?' quavered Amber.

'No.' Paulo raised his head and Amber saw that he was laughing, not crying. 'But we have a fatally wounded sandal.'

He held up Jumoke's sandal and pointed to the twin gouges in the thick leather straps that crisscrossed over the front. Jumoke stopped crying and stared at her sandal, then at her unmarked foot with such a comical expression of surprise that everyone started laughing.

Seconds later, the laughter died into a shocked silence as a man's voice snapped out an order directly behind them. At the same instant Alex, Hex and Paulo all froze as they felt the cold touch of steel on the nape of their necks. Alex tried to stand but the rifle muzzle jabbed into his neck, forcing him down. The man's voice snapped again, speaking in Arabic.

'He say to kneel,' said Khalid, in a trembling voice. 'Kneel slow and put hands so.' Khalid demonstrated by putting both hands on the top of his head, then he repeated the order in French to make sure everyone in the group understood.

Paulo and Alex were already down in the sand. Slowly, Hex knelt beside them with the cold rifle muzzle never leaving the back of his neck. Carefully he raised his hands to his head as Li and Amber kneeled down on either side of him, their eyes big with fear. The children all followed their lead, apart from Jumoke, who remained sprawled in the sand, too frightened to move.

Once everyone was down on their knees, the man who had barked the orders moved round to stand in front of them, with two of his men. Alex saw that all three were carrying high-powered semi-automatic rifles. With the three rifles that were still digging into the backs of their necks, that made six weapons, and his only weapon was stuck in the wall of the gatehouse. The rifle muzzle against his head made it hard to think straight, but Alex forced himself to stay calm and a.s.sess the danger.

The rifles the men were carrying were old AK-47s, with a wooden breech and handle, but Alex could see they had been well cared for. Besides, AK-47s might be ugly looking, but they lasted well and could withstand a lot of dirt and neglect. They were designed for fast, close-quarter combat, being short and easy to handle. The magazine carried thirty rounds and the pistol grip meant that they could be fired from the hip, or even one-handed in the hands of an expert and Alex could see that these men were experts by the way they handled their weapons. Alex abandoned any hope of fighting his way out of this one.

Hex also studied the three men in front of him. Even though he was sweating with fear, his photographic memory seemed to be working on automatic pilot and was insisting on feeding him all sorts of stored information from the research he had done before they came out to the Sahara. The men were all wearing a sort of combined turban and veil in a dark blue material. That was a sure sign that they were Tuareg, members of a race of nomads who pre-dated the Arab civilization in the Sahara. They were a war-like people, who had never managed to repel the invading Arabs and Turks or, later, the French, because they were too busy feuding amongst themselves. Looking at the fierce, dark eyes that glared out at him from the swathes of indigo material, Hex could see that these men would think nothing of killing him. He felt a cold snail-trail of sweat slip down his back.

The leader of the Tuareg glared at them all for a few seconds, then he squatted down in the sand and lifted Jumoke to her feet. He turned her gently this way and that, checking her for injuries, and Amber suddenly understood what he was thinking.

'Oh!' she gasped. 'They think we were torturing Jumoke! Imagine how it must've looked to them her screaming on the ground and us all huddled around her. Khalid, quickly, explain to them what really happened.'

Khalid nodded, then let fly a stream of Arabic, gesturing to Jumoke and the pinioned snake on the gatehouse wall as he spoke. Slowly, the men's eyes became less fierce as they listened to Khalid and then bent to inspect the still-twitching viper. Finally the leader lowered his veil, revealing a thin, lined, hook-nosed face, and his men followed suit. He looked at Alex and said something in Arabic.

'He say, good aim,' translated Khalid.

Alex nodded and smiled tentatively at the men. They might have dropped their veils, which he took as a good sign, but their AK-47s were still trained on the kneeling group.

The leader gave more orders in Arabic. Three of his men peeled off, running towards the Nissen huts. They were carrying large hessian sacks. The other two stepped forward and, talking casually to one another, began to search the group.

'What's going on?' demanded Li, as the watch and opal ring she had only recently claimed back from Amber were expertly removed.

'They're here to loot,' said Hex grimly, as his own watch disappeared into the robes of one of the men. He nodded over at the three who were going through the abandoned Nissen huts, taking anything of value. 'There's a long tradition of banditry amongst some Tuareg tribes.'

Paulo gasped. 'These men are bandits?'

'Looks like it,' said Hex.

'But aren't they going to help us?' asked Li as the two men finished relieving them of their valuables and headed off to join the others in the Nissen huts.

Hex nodded over at the six camels, tethered by their nose rings to the chain-link fence. 'I think that once they've taken what they want, they'll be out of here.'

'But they can't just leave us here!' said Amber.

Alex looked up at the leader, who was now lounging against the gatehouse wall, watching them idly. Would he leave them here if he knew about the Scorpion? The man had reacted with anger when he thought they were hurting Jumoke. Perhaps, if he knew their story, he would help. There was only one way to find out.

Alex turned to Khalid. 'Khalid, can you tell him who is after us?'

Again Khalid launched into a long stream of Arabic with many hand gestures, pointing north past the bluff, then south in the direction of Samir's village. He pointed to Samir as he explained what had happened to Hakim, then he gently touched Kesia's arm, showing the man the bandages. He turned Li's face for the man to see the cane slash across her cheek and lifted his sirwal to show the weals on the backs of his legs. Finally he came to a stop and sat back down on the sand. The man looked them over impa.s.sively.

'Look over there,' said Paulo, pointing over to the bluff.

A vehicle had just cleared the northern tip and was heading towards the oil installation in a cloud of dust. It would reach the compound in about fifteen minutes. 'It is the Scorpion,' said Paulo. 'We have just run out of time.'

Khalid started speaking again, pleading with the man. Amber joined in, speaking in French. The leader sliced both hands through the air in a silencing gesture. Slowly he turned to look at the approaching vehicle, then he shrugged, turned away from the group and called for his men. They gathered their haul together, strolled over to the camels and tied the sacks to the sides of the wooden saddles. Once the sacks were secure, the men untethered the camels and looked over at their leader, waiting for the command to move out. The leader began to walk away from the group of children and Alex slumped, feeling the hope drain out of him.

Then Jumoke stood up and hurried after the man. She came up alongside him and slipped her hand into his. 'S'il vous plait?' she said softly. 'Please?'

The nomad stopped and looked down at the little girl and Alex held his breath.

TWENTY THREE The Scorpion's lip curled in a sneer as he peered through the windscreen of his brand-new Land Rover at the approaching line of camels. Tuareg. Scavengers and bandits. They had been stripping the deserted oil installation. He could see all sorts of stuff hanging from their saddles. There was even a small fridge strapped to the back of the biggest beast.

The men walked alongside the camels, their faces hidden behind their blue turbans and veils. The women rode high on the beasts' backs in ones and twos, wrapped from head to foot in bright swathes of cloth. The Scorpion glimpsed a group of blue-turbaned children scampering along on the far side of the camels, half hidden by the big beasts. A flicker of interest briefly crossed his face. If he could not find his missing stock of slaves, he would need to find replacements for his buyers. But even if he could persuade a Tuareg to part with his children, they would never make good stock. They were too fierce and independent.

The Scorpion turned away, dismissing the children. Instead he brought the Land Rover to a stop next to the man he judged to be the leader of the group and pressed a b.u.t.ton to wind down the window. Instantly, hot, dry air flooded into the car, destroying the air-conditioned comfort within. The Scorpion grimaced with annoyance. When he found his escaped stock, they were going to suffer for this.

The leader and two of his men halted by the car and stared in impa.s.sively while the camels moved on by with their slow, swaying walk. The three men were armed with AK-47s, but then so were his men, so he was not too concerned. Without much hope, the Scorpion launched into a description of the children he was looking for, but to his surprise the leader nodded. Yes, he had seen those children. The Scorpion sat up. Where were they now?

The Tuareg pointed back towards the oil installation, then up at the sky. An evacuation helicopter had flown in and taken them all away. The Scorpion snarled and slammed his hand against the steering wheel. He closed the window, put the Land Rover into gear and drove on to check it out for himself. Behind him, the Tuareg walked on through the desert without looking back.

It was not until they reached the Tuareg camp that the leader allowed Alpha Force to unwrap themselves from the brightly coloured sheets they had stripped from the beds in the compound. The Tuareg shouted at the camels and pulled their nose rings until the big beasts went down on to their bellies, rocking violently back and forth as they folded first their front, then their back legs. Alex, Amber, Li, Paulo and Hex slid gratefully to the ground and gazed around the camp, their faces hot and sticky from their time under the sheets. Kesia, Khalid and Sisi slid down to join them.

Beside them, Samir, Jumoke, Juma and his gang unravelled their blue turbans, which were made from torn sections of a roller towel, taken from a bathroom back at the compound. They all grinned at one another. The disguises had worked. They were safe. For now.

The leader of the Tuareg came up to Alpha Force and solemnly handed back their watches and jewellery.

'Please, tell him to keep them,' said Amber to Khalid. 'We can never pay him back enough for saving us.'

Khalid shook his head. 'He say, you are guests now. He do not take from guests. He say his camp is yours.'

They thanked the leader, who bowed his head gravely, then went off with his men to unload the camels. A Tuareg woman hurried over with a jug of water and a bra.s.s dipper. She held the jug while they each took a dipperful of water and drank thirstily. Their throats were dry, their lips cracked by the hot desert wind and the water was cool and soothing. The woman smiled and hurried off again and Alpha Force and the children were left to wander around the camp.

The Tuareg tents were low, oval structures pitched in the lee of a small rise, which s.h.i.+elded the camp from the worst of the desert wind and also hid it from any pa.s.sing travellers. Containers of water and goat's milk were propped in the shade of the tents, while thin strips of meat were set out on racks to dry in the sun. Next to the drying racks was the main cooking fire for the camp, where a group of Tuareg women were already busy preparing a goat and couscous stew for their guests.

Amber and Hex wandered over to the fire, followed by Kesia and Sisi. The fire was fuelled with dried camel dung and it seemed to need a lot of puffing and blowing to get it going. Hex went down on his hands and knees and blew until the fire was crackling and he was red in the face. The Tuareg women giggled behind their hands at the green-eyed youth who was prepared to help with the cooking. Hex grinned back at them and settled down next to Amber with his eyes watering from the smoke.

'Watch it,' muttered Amber, more than a little jealous. 'If you make yourself too useful, they might want to keep you.'

Jumoke, Samir and Juma's gang went off to make friends with a gaggle of Tuareg children, while Li, Paulo and Alex strolled over to watch the camels being unloaded. Li was fascinated by the big beasts. They crouched in the sand while the men unloaded them, contentedly chewing on the dried fodder their owners had laid out for them and batting their long curved eyelashes to keep the drifting sand out of their eyes. They were all different. One big beast with a coat that was nearly white swung its neck like a snake, trying to take bad-tempered bites out of its neighbours, while a little camel with a deep red coat watched with a mild, long-suffering expression on his long face as the other camels stole most of his share of the fodder.

Once the saddles and saddle cloths were removed, they were revealed to be single-humped camels, or dromedaries. The humps wobbled from side to side as the men urged the beasts to their feet again. The men bent to hobble their front legs with rope, before removing the head ropes that were threaded through the nose rings. The camels wandered off to the edges of the camp to forage for food with the rest of the herd.

The men motioned to Li, Paulo and Alex to follow them over to the largest tent in the camp. A faded carpet had been spread on the sand in the shade of the tent and two large, shallow communal bowls of goat and couscous had been placed in the middle of it.

'We helped cook it,' said Amber proudly, pa.s.sing around big flat ovals of freshly baked bread.

Somehow, the six Tuareg, the five members of Alpha Force, Khalid and all the other children managed to squeeze around the two bowls of food. Alex watched the men carefully. They held the bread between their fingers and used it as a plate, pus.h.i.+ng the food on to it with their thumbs.

'You must only use right hand,' warned Khalid. 'Left hand is forbidden.'

Alex nodded, then reached forward and pushed the hot food on to his bread and took a bite. The goat meat had a strong, gamey taste and the couscous was soft and b.u.t.tery. It tasted wonderful.

After the meal came the ceremony of the tea. The Tuareg men sat back and lit little bra.s.s pipes while the leader sat cross-legged and placed a bra.s.s tray in front of him. The tray was loaded with gla.s.ses into which he put chunks of sugar, hacked from a solid cone with his knife. He then poured green tea into the gla.s.ses from a great height, so that the sugar dissolved and the tea frothed up to the rim. The gla.s.ses were handed round, drained, then handed back for the next person to use. The tea was sweet and strong and they all had three gla.s.ses before the leader of the Tuareg finally sat back and began to talk to Khalid.

Khalid listened, nodded, then turned to Alpha Force. 'He say, he do not think this man will give up. He wonders, what you do now?'

They looked at one another.

'We can't stay here,' said Amber reluctantly. 'He's right, the Scorpion isn't going to stop looking for us and we don't want to put these people in any more danger.'

Alex nodded in agreement. 'So where do we go?'

'We take Samir back to his village,' said Paulo simply. 'That is what we promised to do.'

'And then we wait,' said Li darkly.

'For what?' asked Hex.

'For the Scorpion,' said Li. 'He'll turn up at the village sooner or later, to see if Samir has returned home. When he does, we'll be ready for him.'

Khalid explained their plan to the Tuareg leader. He listened, asked a few questions, then spoke again.

'He say he know the village of Samir,' translated Khalid. 'For now, we sleep. Tonight, he and his men will take us there.'

It was a strange, dreamlike trip they took through the desert that night. The Tuareg had woken them from an exhausted sleep at dusk and given them a meal of bread, dates and tea. Six camels were already loaded and saddled, with head ropes threaded through their nose rings.

While the Tuareg men waited, Amber sleepily administered her insulin injection and Paulo changed Kesia's bandages, noting with satisfaction that the wound was still clean and free from infection. Once they were ready, the Tuareg men led the camels out of the camp, slipping between the low dunes in their indigo robes like moving pieces of twilight.

The Tuareg's gliding walk was deceptive. They set a hard pace as they tramped steadily across the desert, eating up the miles. Samir and Jumoke sat together on one camel and Kesia rode a second. The journey developed a gentle rhythm as the camels swayed along on their broad, two-toed feet. Alpha Force and the other children shared the remaining four beasts between them, turn and turn about, sometimes walking and sometimes riding. The moon rose, a million silver stars speckled the dark sky and they moved on in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts.

They only halted twice. The first stop was at the little cairn of stones behind the rise, halfway between the village and the sandstone bluff. Paulo and the Tuareg leader climbed the rise, carrying a length of clean, plain cloth and some thin rope. The other men stood sentinel to the north and south of the rise with their rifles slung across their shoulders. Alex, Amber and Paulo held the head ropes of the camels while Li took Samir and the other children a little way off and sat with them, her arm resting lightly around Samir's shoulders.

When Paulo and the Tuareg leader descended the rise ten minutes later, they were carrying Hakim's body, wrapped in the length of clean cloth and secured with the rope. Paulo's expression reflected a mixture of sadness and peace of mind as he helped to settle Hakim in a specially constructed cradle strung from one side of the little red camel. He was saddened all over again at Hakim's death, but it felt right to be fulfilling his promise to bring both brothers home.

The second stop was much further on. Two hours before dawn the Tuareg called a halt on the banks of a wadi. The men pa.s.sed around a girba of water and the leader showed Alex how to dig a deep hole on the outside bend of the wadi. As Alex watched, the hole in the dry river bed gradually filled with water. It was poor stuff, brown and brackish, but the camels drank it readily enough and Alex made a mental note to remember that trick if he was ever unlucky enough to be stranded in the desert without water.