Those In Peril Part 12

'Women!' Hector murmured, shaking his head fondly. 'Where the h.e.l.l did she find a comb?' Then he called, 'Don't get too comfortable, people, we are moving out right this minute.'

They fell into formation again and climbed out of the wadi. Hector kept to the higher ground as much as was possible as he headed west, maintaining a strict watch over the surrounding territory. Within the hour he had good reason to be pleased with his vigilance. A couple of miles to the south he spotted a tiny feather of pale dust rising into the brazen and burning sky. He stopped the column and squatted to study the dust for a few minutes. It was moving slowly in their direction, and he wished he had brought his binoculars, but he had been concerned to cut the weight of the packs to a minimum. After only a short observation it was apparent that the dust was being kicked up by a slow-moving vehicle of some kind.

'Whatever it is, it's good enough for me.' He stood up and called Tariq to him. Quickly he gave orders to leave two of the men to watch over the women, while he and the rest of them ran to meet the oncoming vehicle. It soon became evident that it was keeping to a sandy, dry riverbed that ran along the bottom of a shallow valley where the ground was not as broken and rugged. When it reached a point in the river where the banks were shallower Hector got his first clear view of it. He recognized it at once as a medium-sized four-wheel-drive Mercedes truck. The windscreen was folded down and there was a driver with three other men sitting on a raised bench seat behind him. All four men were armed and wearing traditional tunics and turbans. Hector waited until the truck was hidden again by the bank of the riverbed.

'Follow me!' Hector jumped to his feet and with his men close behind him raced down the hillside until they could drop flat on the lip of the riverbank ahead of the truck. The Mercedes appeared around the bend two hundred yards beyond them. Hector let it come on until it was almost level with their position, then he and Tariq dropped down into the riverbed and blocked the way with their rifles levelled at the occupants.

'Don't touch your weapons or we will kill you,' Hector shouted in Arabic. 'Switch off the engine. Raise your hands above your heads.' The driver and two of the men behind him obeyed with alacrity, but the third man who was sitting nearest the back of the vehicle rose to his feet. He was very tall but also very old. His face was impossibly wrinkled with a long white beard tipped with henna. In his left hand he held an AK-47 a.s.sault rifle. He glared at Hector with the wild hypnotic eye of a biblical prophet and raised his right hand to point at him with a clawlike arthritic finger.

'You are the murderer of my three sons. You are Cross, the foul infidel swine with whom I have declared a blood feud. I curse you with all the might of Allah. May you never know peace even after I have slain you.'

'It is the Sheikh Tippoo Tip,' Tariq shouted in warning. Hector held his aim in the centre of the Sheikh's chest.

'Put down that rifle!' he called harshly. 'Get down off the truck, old man! Do not force me to kill you.' The Sheikh was like a deaf man. Without taking his eyes from Hector's he began to raise the AK-47. His twisted hands were shaking with the force of his hatred.

'Don't do it!' Hector warned him but the Sheikh ignored the menace of the rifle pointed at his chest. He placed the b.u.t.t of the AK-47 into his shoulder and took his aim over the wavering barrel.

'G.o.d forgive me!' Hector whispered and shot him in the centre of his chest. Tippoo Tip dropped the rifle but remained on his feet by clutching the grab rail for support.

'I curse you and all your descendants. I curse you with the fires of h.e.l.l and the claws and fangs of the black angels ...' Before Hector could prevent it, Tariq shot him once more, this time in the head. The Sheikh was thrown backwards off the truck into the sand of the riverbed. His two bodyguards roared with fury and grabbed their weapons, but before they could get off a single round Hector fired short taps of three rounds at each of them. The guards were knocked out of their seats. Tariq fired a burst at the driver behind the wheel as he drew his pistol, killing him instantly. Then he went to the truck and heaved the driver out of his seat into the wadi. Standing over the bodies he delivered the coup de grace to each of them at close range. However, when he went to the corpse of the Sheikh Hector stopped him.

'No, Tariq! That's enough. Let the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d lie.' Tariq looked at him with mild surprise, and Hector could not really understand his own squeamishness, except that the man was old. He knew that Tippoo Tip was a monster of cruelty and vice, but he was old. It had been unavoidable, but still it left a bitter taste. Thank G.o.d that Hazel hadn't had to witness it.

He went to the truck and climbed into the driver's seat. He hit the starter and the engine fired and caught.

'Sounds sweet enough.' Hector checked the fuel gauge. 'Just over three-quarters of a tank.' But he saw there were long-range fuel tanks fitted on each side of the body. 'A hundred gallons each,' he estimated with satisfaction. 'We're good for a thousand miles or more.' There was also a drinking water tank wedged in behind the front seats and he rapped the side of it with his knuckles. 'Full!' he said, but one of their bullets had punctured it and water was pouring from the hole. Hector tore a strip from the tail of his head cloth and plugged the leak. Then he nodded to his men and while they clambered up into the vehicle Hector rummaged in the locker between the seats. He pulled out a large-scale map of the area with all the roads and villages marked and named. This was a prize but best of all was the pair of powerful Nikon binoculars still in their green canvas carry pouch.

'I'm like a kid on Christmas morning!' he chortled. He hung the binoculars around his neck, checked that his men were all aboard and drove to where he had left the rest of his party hiding amongst the rocks with weapons ready. Then Hazel recognized him and ran down to meet the truck.

'Are you all right? We heard shooting.'

'As you can see, it was us doing the shooting. Now we can move out again in comfort. Hazel, you ride beside me in front.' Then he jerked his thumb back. 'Cay, I want you in the truck bed, keeping your head well down in case we run into more flak.' Cayla clambered over the steel side of the truck and then paused in disgust.

'Oh, gross! There is blood all over the place. I am not going in there. I want to sit next to my mother in the front seat.'

'Cayla Bannock, stop playing the grand lady with me. Behave yourself. Get your fundament into this truck right now!'

'But I don't want-'

'Listen to me, little girl. People are bleeding and dying because of you. From now on you will do as you are told.'

'I never did anything wrong ...' she started again.

'Oh, yes you did. You invited Rogier Marcel Moreau alias Adam Tippoo Tip onto your mother's yacht.'

'How did you know that?' She stared at him with a stricken expression.

'If you don't know you must truly be a r.e.t.a.r.d. Now get in the b.l.o.o.d.y truck!' Without another word Cayla scrambled over the side and sat beside Daliyah in the truck bed.

Hector let out the clutch and they pulled away. Beside him Hazel sat very still and silent. He did not want to look at her, but he could feel her anger. He knew how protective she was of Cayla. He drove on fast, descending again into the riverbed. The sandy bottom made for heavy going, but it was a faster and smoother ride than over the rocky broken ground and ridges. They had been going for only a short while when suddenly he felt a hand on his thigh and he started with surprise. He glanced sideways at Hazel, and her eyes were sparkling. She leaned towards him until her lips were an inch from his ear.

'You have a wonderful way with kids, don't you, Hector Cross?' she whispered, brus.h.i.+ng his bristly cheek with her lips. 'You will never know how many times I have wanted to do just that. When Mademoiselle Cayla starts acting up she can be a total little b.i.t.c.h.'

The admission astonished Hector. He covered the hand on his leg with his own much larger paw and squeezed it.

'I expect it's a sign she is getting her strength back. But I understand your predicament, Hazel. Cay hasn't had a father for a long time and you feel that you can't be too tough on her.' It was her turn to be startled by his perception. Then she recovered herself.

'I do have somebody in mind to take over the paternal role,' she said softly.

'Lucky somebody.' He grinned and they drove on.

Within the hour they left the riverbed and crested a rise of higher ground. Hector braked to a halt and cut the engine.

'What now?' Hazel asked anxiously.

'I want to make a couple of satphone calls. We should have good reception up here.' He climbed down and while he spread his newly acquired map on the engine bonnet and switched on the satphone, he told Tariq, 'Give everybody a full mug to drink. Let them get out to stretch their legs and water the roses.' He extended the phone aerial and nodded at Hazel. 'Good contact! There must be a satellite almost overhead.'

'Who are you calling?'

'Ronnie Wells on the MTB.' He dialled in the number and after a few ringtones Ronnie came on the line.

'Where are you?' Hector demanded.

'I'm anch.o.r.ed in a small cove of a rocky islet about five miles off the coast ...' He gave the coordinates and Hector checked them on the map.

'Okay. I've got your position. Stay there until I call you again. Hans Lategan didn't make it. The helicopter is down. We're on the run, but we have acquired a vehicle. Depending on what lies ahead of us, it's going to take us eight hours or more to reach the sh.o.r.eline opposite your position.'

'Good luck, Heck! I will be waiting for you.' They both rang off.

'Why don't we meet up with Paddy and his land column, rather than the MTB?' Hazel asked.

'Good question.' He nodded in acknowledgement. 'It's a judgement call. It's over a hundred miles further to the Ethiopian border where Paddy O'Quinn is waiting than it is to the coast where Ronnie is.'

'But will there not be better roads? If we head east towards the sea we will be travelling cross country.'

'Exactly,' he agreed, punching more numbers into the phone. 'The country in the uplands of the interior is much more fertile and heavily populated and by now it will be a hornets' nest, swarming with Tippoo Tip's militia. There will almost certainly be roadblocks at every junction. But I am calling Paddy now to let him know what we intend. He will be our last chance if we can't meet up with Ronnie.'

Paddy answered his call almost immediately. 'Where are you?' Hector asked.

'I am sitting on a mountain top on the Ethiopian border admiring the view over the picturesque Somalian hinterland. Where the h.e.l.l are you?'

'We are about twenty miles east of the oasis. Uthmann Waddah is a traitor. He is firmly in the other camp.'

'Son of a gun! Uthmann a traitor? I can't believe it.'

'He blew the whistle. They were expecting us. Uthmann himself hit Hans Lategan's helicopter with an RPG. Hans is dead and the MIL is wrecked. I managed to commandeer a vehicle and we are on the run for the coast to meet up with Ronnie.'

Paddy whistled softly. 'Did you kill that black-hearted b.a.s.t.a.r.d Uthmann?'

'I had a shot at him, but he was still wearing his flak jacket. I hit him, but I don't think he is dead. His body armour probably fielded my bullet.'

'Big pity!' Paddy growled. 'I knew something must be up. From where I am sitting I can see that every road on your side of the border is swarming with vehicles. I have my binoculars on one of the enemy trucks right now. There must be twenty men in the back of it. All of them are heavily armed.'

'Okay, Paddy. Hold your position and wait for my next call. If we can't join up with Ronnie, we may be forced to come to you. Be ready to come in across the border and fetch us out.' He cut the connection and looked at Hazel.

'Did you hear what he said?'

She nodded. 'You were right. It's only our last option. But will it really take us eight hours to reach the coast?'

'If we're lucky,' he replied, and he saw her eyeline s.h.i.+ft. He glanced around and found that Cayla had quietly come up beside him.

'I came to tell you sorry, Heck,' she said meekly. 'Sometimes there is a devil gets into me and I just can't help myself. Can we be friends again?' She held out her hand and he took it.

'We have never stopped being friends, Cay. And I hope we never will. But you owe your mother an apology more than you do me.'

Cayla turned to Hazel. 'I am so sorry, Mummy. Hector was right. I invited Rogier on board the Dolphin Dolphin, and I bribed Georgie Porgie to give him a job.'

Hazel winced. Up until this moment she had tried not to believe it, but now she had to face the fact. Her baby was a baby no more. Then she reminded herself that Cayla was nineteen years of age, rather older than Hazel herself had been that momentous night on the back seat of her tennis coach's old Ford when she had also become a woman. She rallied and held out her arms to Cayla.

'We all make mistakes, baby. The trick is to never make the same mistake twice.'

Cayla looked back to Hector. 'What is this fundament thing you keep telling me to put somewhere?'

'It's upper-cla.s.s Limey speak for your b.u.t.t,' Hazel explained, and Cayla giggled.

'Well, okay! I'll buy that. Fundament is a pretty cla.s.sy-sounding word. Much better than the other one.'

Uthmann struggled down the steep northern bank of the wadi. Every step was difficult and every breath was agony. He had abandoned the RPG and he clutched at his chest with both hands where Hector's bullet had slammed into the front panel of his flak jacket. At first he expected to hear Hector and his men following him, but after a while he realized that they must be trying to regroup after the destruction of their helicopter. He stopped for a few minutes to discard the heavy flak jacket and examine his injury. Even though the bullet had not penetrated, the bruising and swelling at the point of impact was ma.s.sive. Carefully he probed the area and felt the sharp spike of a broken rib beneath the skin. He worried that it might have punctured his lung. Although the pain was hardly bearable he took a deep breath. It seemed as though his lungs were uninjured and he hugged himself and staggered on down to where he had left Adam in the bottom of the wadi. He was no longer there. He must have climbed back to the rim of the bank where they had left the Sheikh and his men. Uthmann climbed the same route and found Adam at the top of the wadi, sitting on a rock and binding up his ankle with strips of cloth torn from his s.h.i.+rt.

'What has happened?' he demanded as soon as he saw Uthmann. 'I heard shooting and a loud explosion.'

Between careful breaths Uthmann described what he had done, and Adam was elated.

'So they have not escaped! Now they are stranded and I have them in the palm of my hand.'

'Yes, we have them trapped for the moment. But as I explained to you and your grandfather, Cross has made contingency plans for other escape routes. Now he will probably head down towards the coast where he has a boat waiting to take them across to Saudi. Where is your grandfather? We need his truck to follow them up.'

'He must have gone on to cross the wadi further down just as we arranged with him.'

'Both of us are hurt. We can never catch up with either your grandfather or Cross on foot. We must wait for the other truck from the fortress to arrive. They should have been here long ago.'

'Probably they have lost our tracks in the darkness,' Adam said with a frown. 'Or else they have had another breakdown.'

It was another hour before they heard the engine of the vehicle approaching, and finally it came into view over the ridge. There were two men in the cab and another dozen in the rear. Uthmann took a few minutes to strap Adam's ankle and his own chest with bandages from the truck's first aid kit, and then they mounted up and followed the tracks of the Sheikh's hunting vehicle. From a distance of a mile they saw buzzards circling in the sky ahead of them, and Adam urged the driver of the truck on until they came on the scene where his grandfather had been murdered. His corpse lay in the sand of the dry riverbed. Half the old man's face had been torn off and devoured by the birds, but his beard was untouched. Adam climbed down painfully into the sand and limped to kneel beside the corpse. Some other scavengers, probably a pack of jackals, had ripped open his belly and the entrails were already putrefying in the heat. The stench was nauseating.

Reverently Adam uttered the traditional prayers for the dead, but in his heart he was rejoicing. The years of his grandfather's tyranny had ended and he was now indisputably the Sheikh of the clan of Tippoo Tip. Only four days previously the old man had formally named him as his heir in the mosque, in the presence of the mullah and all his sons and grandsons. From now on n.o.body dare dispute Adam's claim to the chieftains.h.i.+p of the clan.

When he finished his prayers he rose to his feet and ordered the men to wrap his grandfather in a tarpaulin and lay him in the truck bed. He saw the new veneration towards himself in the eyes and bearing of the men as they hurried to do his bidding. Even Uth-mann's att.i.tude towards him had changed remarkably in acknowledgement of his elevation in rank and authority.

Uthmann had searched the area carefully while Adam prayed. He had found the tracks left by Hector and his ambush party. He went to where Adam stood and explained to him how the infidels must have come back across the wadi after the destruction of the helicopter, and by some evil chance had met the truck with the Sheikh aboard. They had murdered the old man and seized the vehicle.

'What are your orders, my Sheikh?' he asked. The sound of the t.i.tle soothed Adam's soul like a pipe of has.h.i.+sh.

'We must follow my grandfather's stolen vehicle until we can be certain in which direction the infidels are heading. Only then can we decide what we must do.'

Uthmann ventured to repeat his opinion. 'As I have already explained to you, I know this man Cross well enough to guess accurately what he will do. Now he has the stolen hunting car he will surely try to reach the coast where his escape boat is waiting for him.'

'What will he do if he cannot escape by boat?' Adam demanded.

'Then the only escape route still open to him will be the border of Ethiopia.'

'Let us see if you are right. Get the men mounted up and follow them.' They left the corpses of the bodyguards lying for the jackals and the birds and they went on after the tracks of the smaller vehicle. Soon they found the place where Hector Cross had stopped. They saw the footprints of his party where they had disembarked. Despite his injured chest Uthmann climbed down to examine the tracks, and then went back to report to Adam.

'There are nine of them; six men and three women.'

'Three women?' Adam demanded. 'One is my escaped prisoner, but who are the other two?'

'I think one of them is the woman of Tariq who showed Cross how to enter the fortress. The third and last one arrived in the helicopter. I saw her for a few seconds only before I fired the RPG. My view of her was from a distance and partially obscured by the fuselage so I cannot be absolutely certain, but I think the third woman is the mother of your captive. I saw her many times at Sidi el Razig and I am almost certain it is her.'

'Hazel Bannock!' Adam stared at him while he struggled to come to terms with the full extent of his great good fortune. Not only was he now the Sheikh of his clan but he had one of the richest women in the world almost within his grasp. Once he closed his fist on her she would make him one of the most powerful men in Arabia and Africa.

'Tens of billions of dollars and my own private army at my back! There is nothing I desire that I will not be able to have.' His imagination reeled at the magnitude of it. 'As soon as I have received the ransom money I will give Hazel Bannock and her daughter exquisite deaths. I will let every one of my men sport with them. They will take these two Christian wh.o.r.es in both their holes, a thousand times over from the front and from the back. If they cannot kill them with their p.r.i.c.ks then they can use their bayonets in the same holes to finish the job. It will be fine sport to watch. We will share the pleasure of it with the a.s.sa.s.sin, Hector Cross. Then I will have to think of something original for Cross. In the end I will probably give him to the old women of the tribe with their little knives, but for a start many of my men will enjoy him from behind. They will stretch his a.n.u.s wide enough to ride a horse through it. For a man like him the humiliation will be greater than any physical pain.' He rubbed his hands together gleefully. 'I will have the ransom and I will also have full settlement of my family's blood feud.' He called aloud to the truck driver, 'Turn back to the oasis!' Then to Uthmann he explained, 'I must bury my grandfather with all the respect he deserves. I will radio to my uncle Kamal to warn him that the fugitives will try to escape by boat. However, if Cross wriggles out of it again he must try to reach the Ethiopian border, and that is where we will be ready for him.'

All the remainder of the day they headed east. The going was hard. Three times Hector found they had run into a cul de sac of impa.s.sable ravines and they had to back-track several miles and search for an alternative route. When darkness fell Hector dared not switch on the headlights for fear of giving away their position to any pursuers. They had to wait for the rise of the moon before they could continue to grope their way eastwards.

Hector estimated that they were still twenty miles from the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Aden when their fortune seemed to have changed dramatically for the good. They reached a salt flat whose smooth surface stretched out before them to the limit of their visibility, smooth and gleaming in the moonlight. When Hector drove out onto it he was able to change into top gear for the first time since they had hijacked the Mercedes. They roared away with forty miles an hour registering on the speedometer towards the great silver disc of the moon which hung in the sky ahead of them. They had covered at least ten miles when without the least warning the crust of salt on which they were running gave way under them, and the truck was bogged down to its axles in the treacherous yellow mud of quicksands under the crust. It took almost three hours of heavy work for Hector to extricate them, using the truck's high-lift jack to raise the wheels enough to be able to stuff dry salt bush under them, then burying one of the spare wheels with the end of the tow line attached to it to act as an anchor on which they at last managed to winch the Mercedes out backwards from the clutches of the quicksands.

It was only on the dawn of the second day that they looked down upon the azure waters of the Gulf of Aden from the vantage point of the low hills above the sh.o.r.eline. They were on the Great Horn of Africa looking almost due north towards Yemen. Below the ridge on which they parked there was a single-lane road running parallel to the sea. Below that was the narrow beach of red sand. The water was shallow and clear as gla.s.s and Hector could see that the coral reef formed a barrier a hundred yards offsh.o.r.e. They would have to wade out that far to meet the MTB. All that time they would be very vulnerable.

While they watched only a single vehicle pa.s.sed along the beach road, and that was one of the ubiquitous African buses that cover every mile of the network of roads across the entire continent. The bus was so dusty that no glimpse of the original paintwork was visible. The mountainous luggage of the pa.s.sengers, including baskets of live chickens and bunches of coconuts, was strapped to the roof. The racket of the engine, the clash of gears and the rattling and banging of the bodywork and cha.s.sis over the heavily rutted road carried clearly to them as they watched from the ridge. No other traffic followed it and Hector could find no evidence of enemy presence. He set up the satphone and called Ronnie Wells.

'We are in sight of the beach, opposite the coordinates you gave me. How far are you offsh.o.r.e?'

'According to my chart we are four point three nautical miles out from the beach.'

Hector used his new Nikon binoculars to search the open waters along the bearing that Ronnie had given him, and immediately he picked up the cl.u.s.ter of tiny islands, dark as a pod of whales, at approximately the correct bearing and range.

'Roger, Ronnie! I think I have you. I want you to put up a yellow smoke rocket to confirm that I am looking in the right place.'

'Okay, Heck. Hold on. It will take me a few minutes to rig the rocket.' When it went up it left a brief yellow trail against the horizon, which dissipated almost immediately on the wind. It was so shortlived that an observer would have had to be watching out for it. Hector knew he had taken that chance, but he had to be absolutely certain of Ronnie's position before he exposed his party.

'Roger, Ronnie! You are on a bearing of fifteen degrees from our position. Come into the beach on a reciprocal heading.'

'Can you spot any other traffic in my vicinity, Heck?'