Those In Peril Part 8

'Don't be rude. My paternal grandfather was born in Germiston.'

'I bet that in every other respect he was a splendid fellow.'

The C-130 Hercules touched down, trundled down the airstrip and swung off to park close to where they were standing, its four huge contra-rotating propellers sending a stinging cloud of sand over them. Nella cut the engines and dropped the roll-on-roll-off ramp at the rear of the fuselage. She and Bernie came down the ramp. Nella was a brawny blonde with a baby-doll face. She was dressed in camouflage overalls. The sleeves were cut off and showed a tattoo of a flying angel on her beefy right arm. She towered over her husband.

'Okay, Heck, what do you want us to do for half a mill? Knowing you, I bet it's not going to be easy,' she said as they shook hands.

'You've got me all wrong, like you always did.'

'Introduce us to your girlfriend.' Nella looked Hazel over with a penetrating eye, trying not to let her jealousy seem too obvious.

'You figure the relations.h.i.+p slightly wrong, Nella my love. This is Mrs Hazel Bannock - my boss and yours. So a little respect might be in order. Come on, let's go up to the terminal where we can talk.' They all piled into the two Hummvee trucks. In the situation room they sat at the long table and Hector explained their predicament to the Vosloos. When he had finished they were all silent for a while and then Nella looked at Hazel.

'I also have a daughter. Thank the Lord, she's found herself a good man in Australia. But I know how you must feel.' She reached across the table and covered Hazel's silken hand with her own huge paw which was ingrained with engine oil and grime. The nails were torn and broken off short. 'I would fly you for free if you asked me, Mrs Bannock.'

'Thank you, Nella. You are a good person. It s.h.i.+nes out.'

'For G.o.d's sake, ladies. Cut it out. You will have me in tears if you don't stop,' Hector interrupted. 'There's only one problem. We're not sure where we are going or when. But it will be close and it will be soon.'

'How soon?' Bernie Vosloo asked. 'We can't wait around here for weeks. Every day we spend sat on the ground costs us money.'

'You hold your mouth, Bernie Vosloo!' Nella rounded on him. 'Didn't you hear me give the lady my word?'

'He's right!' Hazel said. 'Of course, I will pay your down time. Twenty thousand dollars for the first day, increasing by another ten thousand every day longer that you sit on the ground.'

'You don't have to do that, Mrs Bannock.' Nella looked abashed.

'Yes I do,' Hazel replied. 'Now let's listen to Mr Cross.'

It took four days but by then they were all on the starting blocks. Ronnie Wells and three of his men had taken the MTB down the Gulf and around to Ras el Mandeb. He was anch.o.r.ed in a deserted cove on the Saudi coast just north of the border with Yemen and across the strait from Puntland. His fuel tanks were topped up from the canisters he carried on deck, and he was in full and constant radio contact with Sidi el Razig.

The Hercules stood on the fringe of the airstrip beyond the tiny airport building. She had three of the Cross Bow long-range GM trucks lashed down in the hold, and a small 750-gallon two-wheel gasoline tanker which could be towed behind one of the trucks. The trucks were packed with equipment and each of them carried a pair of 50 calibre Browning heavy machine guns concealed under the tarpaulins. They could be mounted in minutes, and their fire power was devastating.

Hector had rehea.r.s.ed the drop procedure with Bernie and Nella. As soon as they had acquired the target they would take off at nightfall and overfly it. Bernie and Nella had carried out dozens of parachute drops. They were experts. Hector's stick would jump, and the Hercules would fly on to the selected border airfield. There it would land and Paddy and Dave would unload the trucks and take up a listening and waiting position as close to the enemy base as was safe and feasible. At the radio summons from Hector they would race across the border and head for a pre-arranged rendezvous.

Those were the two least desirable extraction vehicles. Hector was really relying heavily on Hans Lategan in Bannock Oil's big Russian MIL-26 helicopter getting through to them for a quick and neat extraction. The crimson and white paintwork, in the colours of Bannock Oil, had already been sprayed over with mottled brown and dark green camouflage. It would be waiting on the nearest border, fully fuelled.

Hazel had sent a reply to the ransom demand, a.s.suring the Beast that she was doing all in her power to raise the money that they demanded, but stating that considering the amount involved this would take time. She hoped that she would have the full amount ready to send to their instructions within twenty days. She received no acknowledgement, and she fretted incessantly. There was nothing left to do but wait, and Hazel Bannock was not good at waiting. After she had finished her daily conference call to her people in Houston and checked with Colonel Roberts at the Pentagon there were still eighteen hours of each day to fill.

Every morning Hector took her with him to meet the local pa.s.senger flight from Ash-Alman, the capital of Abu Zara. They scanned the faces of everybody disembarking, but Uthmann and Tariq were never amongst them. There was a limit to even Hazel's athletic endurance, so they could not pa.s.s more than seven or eight hours a day running in the dunes or skin diving in the coral paradise offsh.o.r.e. Fortunately she was very easy to talk to once she began to trust Hector a little and to lower her defences a few inches. When they argued politics he began to detect a swing to the right in her original stance. However, she was vehemently opposed to capital punishment, and she still believed in the sanct.i.ty of human life.

'You're telling me that there is not a single ugly thug in this world, no matter how evil he is, who does not deserve to die?' Hector demanded.

'That decision remains with G.o.d. Not with us.'

'The old man upstairs has whispered in my ear often enough when I have one of the thugs in my sights, Take him down, Hector my lad! Take him down, Hector my lad! When the Lord calls then Hector Cross obeys.' When the Lord calls then Hector Cross obeys.'

'You are a total heathen.' She could scarcely hide her smile. He found that she was an old-fas.h.i.+oned believer, sublimely certain of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Jesus Christ.

'So you think that every time you get down on your knees J.C. is tuned in on your call sign?' he asked.

'You just wait and see, Cross. You just wait and see.'

'You've been chatting to him recently, I can tell,' he accused, and she smiled like the Sphinx. These discussions, and others like them, were good for pa.s.sing the hours. Then after dinner one evening she spotted a cheap wooden chess set on a shelf behind the bar in the mess and challenged him to a game. He had not played since leaving university. They sat facing each other across the board, and he swiftly learned that she cared very little for defence, and relied on a fiery queen attack. Once she united her rooks she was well nigh impossible to contain. However, twice he was able to sucker her into a royal knight fork on her king and queen. They came out about equal over a dozen hard-fought games.

Then on the fifth day after the arrival of Bernie and Nella at Sidi el Razig, Hector told her, 'Mrs Bannock, I am taking you out to dinner tonight, whether you like it or not.'

'Keep going, and you might be able to talk me into it,' she said. 'Should I dress up?'

'You look good to me just like that.' He drove her out to a stretch of beach three miles up the coast. She watched him expertly setting up the barbecue.

'Okay, you are a regular boy scout at fire-making, but what's to cook?'

'Come on, we have to go shopping.' There was only an hour until sundown, but they swam out a few hundred metres to his secret coral reef. With three dives he collected a six-pound strawberry-coloured rock cod and two big rock lobsters. She sat on a picnic rug with her long bare legs curled up under her and a gla.s.s of red Burgundy in her hand while she watched him cook.

'Dinner is served,' he announced at last and they ate with their fingers, picking the succulent white meat off the rock cod's bones and sucking the flesh out of the armoured crayfish legs. They threw the sc.r.a.ps in the fire and watched them blacken and burn. Then Hazel stood up.

'Where are you going?' he asked lazily.

'Swim,' she answered. 'You can come along, if you have a mind.' She reached behind her back with both hands and popped the clasp of her bikini top. Then she placed her thumbs inside the elastic of the pants bottoms and wriggled them down over her hips until they fell to her ankles. She kicked the wisp of pretty cloth high in the air and stood for just a moment facing him. He caught his breath with the shock of delight. She had the body of a woman in her magnificent prime: tight and high-breasted, her belly flat and hard, with hips swelling out proudly from her narrow waist into the perfect lines of an Etruscan vase. This was a natural woman, not shaven in the modern fas.h.i.+on like a p.o.r.nographic starlet. She laughed in his face, provocatively and wantonly, then spun around and raced down the beach to dive into the low surf and swim out into deeper water with a powerful over-arm crawl. There she trod water and, laughing still, watched him hopping around on one leg in the sand before he could kick off his swimming trunks.

'I am coming after you, you little vixen!' he shouted in warning and charged down the beach. She shrieked with delicious terror and churned the water foamy as she swam away from him. He caught her and turned her to face him while he reached for her mouth with his own. She placed her hands on his shoulders submissively until his lips were an inch from hers. Then she rose high above him and placed her entire weight on his shoulders, driving him deep below the surface. By the time he came up spluttering she was ten metres away. He bulled his way after her but as he reached out to grab her, she flicked both legs high in the air, jack-knifed her body and duck-dived deep into the dark water. He lost sight of her and trod water, turning slowly and watching for her to surface again. She came up nearer the beach and he charged after her, swinging his arms and kicking the water to foam behind him. She ducked down again like a cormorant after a fish. She was slowly and disingenuously working him back into shallow water.

Suddenly she stood up, only waist deep. She waited for him to come and then ran to meet him. They locked together, breath and belly. She felt him against her, huge and hard, as ready for her as she was for him. She flung her arms round his neck and clamped both her thighs around his hips. It took a moment of frantic manoeuvring by both of them before they could get themselves perfectly aligned and then he glided up deeply into her belly. It seemed to her that he might touch her very heart.

'Oh, sweet G.o.d. This is the one I have waited for, for so very long,' she breathed, and gave herself to him without check or reservation.

It was after midnight when they arrived back at the terminal buildings. He saw her to her room and would have left her at the door with a single lingering kiss.

'Don't be daft,' she said, and held the door open. 'Come on in.'

'What will people think?'

'To use your own lyrical terminology, I don't give a good stuff!' Hazel replied.

'What a grand idea! Let's do it.' He chuckled and followed her through the door and locked it behind them. They showered together, openly and lingeringly gloating over each other's bodies as they washed off the beach sand and sea salt. Then they went to the bed.

'Hemingway called his bed the Fatherland,' Hector remarked as they slid between the sheets.

'Old Ernie has my vote,' she laughed as she came in from the other side and they met in the middle. They made love joyously and tenderly, but always the shadow of tragedy coloured their happiness. When they had exhausted each other for the moment, she lay in his arms and pressing her face to his naked chest she wept softly but bitterly. He stroked her hair and shared her agony.

'I am going to come with you when you go in to fetch Cayla,' she said. 'I cannot stay here alone. I have only endured this long because of you. I am as tough as any of your men. I can handle myself in a crisis, you know that. You must take me in with you.'

'Do you know that you have the bluest and most beautiful eyes in all the world?' he said. She sat up and stared at him angrily.

'Are you cracking your stupid jokes at a time like this?'

'No, my darling. I am telling you why you cannot come with me.' She shook her head in incomprehension, and he went on, 'Things might not go as we planned them. We might become stranded and have to try and blend into the local populace and worm our way out. The Arabs call eyes like yours devil's eyes. The first of the enemy who looked into your face would know what you are. If I took you with me it would halve the chances of getting Cayla out safely.' She looked at him steadily for a long while, then her shoulders slumped and she hid her face against his chest again.

'That is the only reason why I would stay,' she whispered. 'I would not do anything that reduced the chances for her. You will get her out, Hector? You will bring her back to me?'

'Yes, I will.'

'And you? Will you come back to me? I have only just found you. I cannot lose you now.'

'I will be back, I promise you, with Cayla beside me.'

'And I believe you,' she said. She slept holding on to him. He could barely hear her breathing. He was careful not to move and disturb her. She woke as the dawn light filtered through the curtains.

'That's the first night I have slept straight through since Cayla ...' She didn't finish the sentence. 'I'm starving. Take me to breakfast.'

Big Nella was in the mess before them with a huge platter of scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage in front of her. She looked up at Hazel, and a flash of intuitive understanding pa.s.sed between them. Nella looked down at her plate and grinned.

'Mazel tov!' she said to her eggs, and Hazel blushed. Hector would never have believed that she was capable of such a thing, and he stared at the phenomenon with astonishment; for him it was more lovely than the sunrise. After they had eaten he took Hazel out to the Hummvee. She sat beside him in the front seat and every time he changed gear he touched her leg, and she smiled demurely. Hector parked the Hummvee in the shade under the wing of the Hercules, for even at this hour the sun was already uncomfortably warm. Now they could hold hands. The Fokker F-27 Friends.h.i.+p was only half an hour behind schedule.

'For Abu Zara Airways that is almost early,' Hector told her, as they watched it taxi up to park in front of the terminal building and shut down its engines. The twenty or so pa.s.sengers began to disembark and Hector watched them without any real expectations. They were nearly all Arabs in traditional dress carrying bundles and parcels of their possessions. Suddenly Hector stiffened and squeezed her hand hard.

'Son of a gun! It's them!' He swore softly.

'Which ones?' Hazel sat upright. 'They all look the same to me.'

'The last two. I could tell them from a mile off by the way they walk.' He blew a single short blast on the horn and started the engine of the Hummvee. The two Arabs looked across at them, and then headed towards them. They climbed into the back seat.

'Peace be on you!' Hector greeted them.

'On you, peace.' They responded in unison. Hector drove a mile along the track above the beach before he parked. Hazel swivelled in her seat to look back at the two men behind her.

'This is driving me screaming mad,' she blurted out. 'I have to know! Have you found where my daughter is, Uthmann?'

'Yes, Mrs Bannock. We have found her. I have been staying with my brother Ali in Baghdad. He is different to me. He believes the only way forward for our nation is the road of jihad. He is a mujahid and is allied strongly with Al-Qaeda. He knows that I do not support his views, but we are brothers and bound together by our blood. He would never divulge any of his jihadist affairs to me, but after I had spent these last weeks in his home he became relaxed and less secretive. Usually he uses a mobile phone and he never makes business calls from his home. A few days ago he mistakenly believed that I had gone out with his wife to visit friends of ours, but I was in the upper floor of the house when Ali used the land line to speak to one of his Al-Qaeda a.s.sociates. I listened to the conversation on the extension. They were discussing the capture and the imprisonment of your daughter, and one of them mentioned that she was taken by members of the clan of Sheikh Khan Tippoo Tip.'

'Tippoo Tip! That is the same name as the steward that got on board the Dolphin Dolphin. But who is this sheikh?' Hazel demanded, and Uthmann answered her.

'He is a warlord, and the head of one of the most powerful clans in Puntland.'

Hector touched his shoulder. 'As always, you have proved your worth, old friend,' he told him.

'Wait! I have more to tell you.' Uthmann shook his head sadly. 'Do you remember the men you shot and killed in Baghdad many years ago?'

Hector nodded. 'The three jihadists that had detonated the roadside bomb.' He glanced sideways at Tariq. 'Of course Tariq and I remember them.'

'Do you know what their names were?'

'No,' Hector admitted, 'apparently they were all using code names. Even Military Intelligence could not identify them. What have you discovered, Uthmann?'

'The man you killed was named Saladin Gamel Tippoo Tip. He was the son of Sheikh Khan Tippoo Tip and the father of Adam Tippoo Tip. The sheikh declared a blood feud with you.' Hector stared at him speechlessly, and Uthmann went on, 'The dhow that you and Ronnie Wells destroyed had six men on board. They had been sent by Sheikh Khan to avenge his eldest son. Amongst those who died was Gafour Tippoo Tip, the sheikh's fifth son. The blood debt then stood at two. The Sheikh sent a third son to find you and avenge his brothers-'

'The one called Anwar!' Hector exclaimed. 'My G.o.d! I will never forget him. With his last breath he mocked me: My name is Anwar. Remember it, Cross, you pig of the great pig. The debt has not been settled. The Blood Feud continues. Others will come. My name is Anwar. Remember it, Cross, you pig of the great pig. The debt has not been settled. The Blood Feud continues. Others will come.'

Tariq nodded. 'It is even as you say, Hector.'

'Where can we find this creature, Sheikh Tippoo Tip?' Hector demanded.

Tariq cut in sharply. 'I know him. His stronghold is in Puntland.'

'Puntland! That name keeps cropping up,' Hazel interjected.

'It's a rebel province of Somalia. Puntland is Tariq's home turf,' Hector explained, and looked back at Tariq. 'This is what we've been waiting for. What can you tell us about this thug?'

'Only what everybody else in Puntland knows: Tippoo Tip has his stronghold in the north-western part of the country at a place called the Oasis of the Miracle. It's south of the main road in the province, near the small village of Ameera.'

'Do you know the area?' Hector demanded, but Tariq shook his head. Hector knew him so well that he had no doubt that he was lying, or at least skirting the truth.

'Okay.' Hector needed no further confirmation. 'We need to find out all we can about Tippoo Tip and his fortress. We need maps of the area. I must get back to the terminal and get everybody working on this.'

When they were all a.s.sembled around the long table again Hector looked them over, before he spoke.

'Well, we now know where we are going. Does anybody here, apart from Tariq, know of a place in Puntland called the Oasis of the Miracle, or the village of Ameera? Those are our targets.' They all looked mystified. Hector singled out Dave Imbiss.

'Dave, can you get on to the website of Google Earth. Tariq will point out the targets on the map. I want copies of the satellite photographs of the area. I want to know the distance to fly. I want to know which is the closest airstrip in Ethiopia, and the distance by road from there to our target.' Then he paused and looked across at Bernie and Nella. 'Or do you two have any ideas on that? Do you know of a landing strip which fits the bill?'

'Jig Jig!' said Nella, and then screamed with laughter and gave Bernie a nudge in his ribs with her elbow that doubled him over.

'A landing ground with a name like that?' Hector raised an eyebrow. 'Interesting!'

'Nella gave it that name, not me,' Bernie protested as he straightened up rubbing his ribs. 'I don't know what its real name is, probably doesn't have one. It's an old deserted Italian military strip from World War Two. It's in shocking condition, but the Hercules doesn't mind rough ground.'

'We made an emergency landing there once.' Nella was still bubbling with laughter. 'I was taken short with an acute case of the hots and we landed there for Bernie to bonk me. It was terrific! One of his very best efforts, ever. Never forget it.' Bernie maintained his sober mien despite the hoots of laughter and general levity.

'It's perfectly situated, less than thirty miles from the Puntland border but, best of all, there is no official presence, no police and no immigration,' Bernie said.

'Sounds as though it was made for us. Show Dave where it is on the map. Nella, do you think you can restrain yourself when you land there again? No more indiscriminate bonking!' He turned to Paddy. 'Paddy, get on the radio to Ronnie Wells and tell him to move his MTB across to the Puntland coast and find a safe anchorage as close to the target as he can get. Let us know when he gets there.' All the time he was giving his orders he was aware that Tariq was watching him covertly. At last he glanced at him directly and Tariq jerked his head almost imperceptibly and then stood up and left the room. Hector gave him a minute, and then he said to Paddy O'Quinn, 'Carry on here. I won't be away too long.'

He went out to search for Tariq and after a few minutes spotted him behind one of the parked trucks. He was smoking a cigarette in blithe contempt of the no smoking sign on the side of the truck. When he saw Hector approaching he ground out the cigarette under his heel and walked off along the pipeline. Hector followed him, and found him squatting behind one of the pump stations.

'Speak to me, oh beloved of the Prophet,' Hector invited as he squatted beside him.

'I could not speak in front of the others,' Tariq explained.

'Not even Uthmann?'

Tariq shrugged. 'Did it not seem to you that Uthmann was able to gather a great deal of information about the Tippoo Tip clan by simply eavesdropping on his brother's telephone? It's the safety of my family I fear for, Effendi. I can take no chances.'

'There is truth in what you say, Tariq.' Hector nodded thoughtfully. Despite his deep affection for Uthmann he felt the worms of treachery stirring in his bowels.