Those In Peril Part 15

There will be a time for that, he told himself. But my first duty is to get them out of the jaws of the Beast. But my first duty is to get them out of the jaws of the Beast. He left them and ran forward to Tariq. He left them and ran forward to Tariq.

'We must not miss the turn-off to the old road,' he said quietly but urgently.

'The old woman told me that the sign was gone, but that there was still the pole on which it had once hung. That must be it there.' He pointed at the piece of steel water pipe reddened with rust, sticking up out of a patch of weeds on the lefthand side of the road ahead of them. He hit the brakes and slowed for the turn. 'I can't see any road.'

'There! Between the two rocks. Those must be the original markers.' The bus bounced over the verge of the highway and tore on between the two large rocks with barely a check.

'There! Now you can see the old road tracks.' Hector guided Tariq into them and once they were clear of the roadside weeds the track became even clearer. Hector was keeping a look out for the dust of the pursuing trucks, but at the same time he directed Tariq towards a cl.u.s.ter of large rocks a short way ahead. Obviously, the jihadist trucks had stopped to give a.s.sistance to the overturned Toyota, for they were no longer in sight. It took a while longer for them to come roaring down the main highway. By that time Hector had the bus concealed behind the rocks. The pursuers raced past the turn-off and went on along the highway without any check or hesitation. Hector watched them through the binoculars and he recognized both Adam and Uthmann in the back of the leading vehicle. They had survived the crash, more was the pity.

As soon as they disappeared into the dust and distance Hector told Tariq, 'That's not going to fool them for too long. Get moving again quickly.'

They pulled back onto the rudimentary path and accelerated along it. In places the summer thunderstorms and flash floods had washed the tracks out dangerously and Tariq had to bounce over the rough ground and low scrub to get around the worst spots. The land rose gently under them and there was very little cover. Hector looked back anxiously. He knew that when Uthmann realized they had been side-stepped he would come racing back to find where the TATA had left the road. They would immediately spot the bus on the open hillside. Laboriously the bus climbed towards the crest of the rise and the blue mountains of Ethiopia lay directly ahead. As they neared the crest Hector ran back the length of the bus and peered through the rear window.

'd.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l,' he muttered. He could make out the dust of the jihadist vehicles coming back along the highway from the north. He looked ahead and saw that they were still out on the open hillside and well short of the crest of the hill.

'We're not going to make it!' he muttered under his breath. There was no purpose in urging Tariq on; he was making the best possible speed over the broken ground. The pursuing trucks were now in full view. Suddenly the leading truck came to a halt. It was still too far for Hector to recognize the men on the back of it, but he had a mental image of Uthmann standing up and training his binoculars on the TATA. Then as abruptly as they had stopped the two trucks sped forward again. They reached the point where the TATA had left the main road and they slowed down to almost a walking speed and then both trucks turned onto the old road behind them.

'Here they come!' Hector lamented. 'And we have gained less than a mile.' He watched them climbing the hillside behind them. However, they were forced to negotiate the same dangerously rugged road as the bus. Their superior speed was no longer affording them much advantage. The TATA reached the top of the hill. Ahead the track dropped down into another shallow valley a mile or so across to where the route began the final climb up towards the foothills of the mountain range. The bus rattled down into the valley, losing sight of the pursuers. The ground was smoother across the valley bottom and they made better speed.

Hector peered over Tariq's shoulder at the lie of the land ahead. The solid bulwark of foothills that confronted them seemed impa.s.sable until he made out the mouth of the narrow pa.s.s between their frowning cliffs. He leaned out of the side window and looked back just in time to see the first enemy truck appear on the skyline behind them. It paused only briefly while Uthmann found his bearings and then started down into the valley after them. The second truck followed closely behind the first. Hector knew that they were now in a position to take greater advantage of the smooth ground of the valley bottom than they themselves could in the old bus. The odds had swung heavily back in Uthmann's favour. Hector looked ahead to the mouth of the pa.s.s. It was going to be a near-run thing to reach it before the two trucks could catch them. Hazel and Cayla were watching him, and he smiled rea.s.suringly.

'I am going to raise Paddy O'Quinn on the satphone. He can't be very far ahead of us.' He could see by Hazel's expression that she knew it was a white lie. There were at least a dozen reasons why Paddy should not be just around the first bend in the pa.s.s, wearing his shining white armour, ready to rush to the rescue. However, Cayla brightened a little and wiped at the tears with the back of her hand. He could not look into her eyes and see the false hope shining there. Hector went back to the rear window and watched the oncoming trucks while he switched on the phone and waited for it to search out the nearest satellite pa.s.sing overhead. He watched the little screen avidly, but it showed only a very tenuous contact which glowed briefly and then faded almost immediately.

'The mountains are blocking us,' he fretted. On the off-chance he dialled in Paddy's number and heard the weak and intermittent ringtone coming and going. Then suddenly he heard a faint and unintelligibly garbled voice that might have been Paddy's, or anyone else's for that matter.

'If that's you, Paddy, you're breaking up badly. If you can hear me, our situation is this. We're on the old road heading into the mountains but the thugs are hard on our tail. I don't think we can outrun them. We are going to be forced to stand and fight. We are heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Uthmann is leading them. You are our last hope. Come if you can.'

He repeated the same message slowly and clearly, and when he cut the connection he looked up and saw that both Hazel and Cayla had heard every word even above the racket of the engine. He could not meet their eyes and he looked back through the missing rear window. The trucks were bearing down on them. Already he was able to recognize Uthmann standing tall in the back of the leading truck, and could faintly hear the voices of the men around him shouting triumphantly as they brandished their weapons. He looked ahead and saw that the mouth of the pa.s.s was not too far away, the red-brown rock walls looming up on either side of the opening. He picked up the weapons and the bandoliers of the two men that Uthmann had shot to death and handed them to the women.

He knew that Hazel was an expert shot with the rifle, so he spoke to Cayla. 'I know you are hot stuff with a pistol, Miss Bannock. But can you shoot an AK worth a d.a.m.n?' She was still too shaken and distressed to speak up, but she shook her head and gave him an uncertain smile. He pulled the Beretta pistol from under his tunic and handed it to her with the two extra clips of ammunition. 'Ask your mother to show you how to reload the magazines of the AK. You can keep us supplied when the brown stuff starts to hit the fan.' At the very least reloading the magazines was something to distract them from the menace that was creeping up behind them. He looked ahead at the rocky portals guarding the entrance to the pa.s.s.

'Well, ladies, we are going to make it into the pa.s.s, d.a.m.ned if we aren't,' he said cheerfully, and started back to keep the enemy under surveillance through the rear window. At that moment they all ducked as a burst of automatic fire tw.a.n.ged and rattled on the body of the TATA, and a single bullet came in through the rear window, traversed the length of the bus and then shattered the windscreen in front of Tariq.

'They're getting a little impatient,' Hector remarked with a rea.s.suring smile at Cayla. He reached the rear window and peered out. The leading truck was just a few hundred yards behind them, and now he could hear clearly the shouts of the enemy, but they were still too far back for him to take them on with the old AK. Dust kicked up from the road behind them as the jihadists blazed away at them. Now he could see Uthmann leaning on the cab of the truck with his rifle ready, waiting his chance for another clean shot. He had a red graze down the side of his face and blood on his shirt, probably where he had hit the ground when he was thrown from the capsizing Hilux. It gave Hector pleasure to know that he had not survived the wreck unscathed.

Just before they reached the mouth of the pa.s.s another burst of automatic fire slashed across the back of the bus. It hit one of the rear wheels. The tyre exploded loudly and the bus wobbled its rear end like a fat woman doing a Hawaiian hula. A moment later they rumbled into the mouth of the pa.s.s. For the time being the rock walls protected them from more hostile fire.

Now Hector was forced to make a snap decision. The old bus was staggering along on its last legs. He could hear the ruined tyre slapping the ground with every revolution of the wheel and their speed was bleeding away rapidly. They could not run much further. He had to choose a spot at which to make a stand. The shape of the pa.s.s gave him a small p.r.i.c.kle of hope. In these confined s.p.a.ces Uthmann would have very little ground for encirclement or manoeuvre. He would have to come at them head-on. Hector stuck his head out of the side window and saw that the pa.s.s ahead was not very wide. Perhaps he could use the body of the bus to block it, and the steel cha.s.sis might serve as a strongpoint from behind which they could defend the way.

He looked up at the red rock walls that rose on either hand. From this angle it was not possible to judge their height. The walls had been carved out over the ages by flood waters, until they were smooth and concave. They overhung the floor of the pa.s.s on either hand like the roofs of facing verandas. Uthmann would have difficulty getting men up there to fire down into the pa.s.s. Of course they could simply lob a few hand grenades down instead. That would enliven the proceedings considerably, but what the h.e.l.l! Nothing in life came without its own little problems.

He looked ahead and saw that there was a bend in the pa.s.s coming up. He glanced back. The enemy were still not in sight. The old bus reached the turn in the pa.s.s and clattered on around it. Hector stared ahead in dismay. Not far in front of them the way ahead was completely blocked. The righthand wall of the red rock cliff had collapsed into the pa.s.s, blocking it from side to side with an impa.s.sable barrier of tumbled rocks. Some of the slabs were as big as or bigger than the bus itself. His mind raced as he surveyed this obstacle. Then suddenly he realized that instead of a death trap this might be their safe haven. If they could climb the wall and get to the top before Uthmann and Adam arrived, it would change everything. The pile of rocks would become a formidable redoubt. Adam and his thugs would be forced to abandon their trucks and climb up to reach them, exposing themselves for every step of the way.

'Tariq! Get us as close to those rocks as you can,' he shouted, then turned to the three women and spoke urgently, translating for Daliyah as he went. 'Now, the rest of you listen to me. Hazel! You and Daliyah go first, and take Cayla between you. Do you see on the left there is a low place between those two big chunks of fallen rock? You have to get through there. It's not too far. Don't stop before you reach the top. The rest of us will come up behind you. Every man carries his own weapon. I will carry the case of ammunition.' That was almost a hundred pounds deadweight and he was the only one of them who had the strength to manage it easily.

Tariq skidded the bus broadside to the foot of the wall, and they piled out and started to scramble up. The sound of the jihadist trucks coming fast behind them was magnified by the containing walls, reverberating in the close and heated air, growing louder every second. The increasing din spurred them onwards. Cayla fell when they were only just below the cleft between the two big rocks. She brought both Hazel and Daliyah down with her. Hector dropped the ammunition case, dragged Hazel back onto her feet and slung Cayla over his shoulder. He ran up with her and dropped her over the far side of the barrier of stone. Hazel and Daliyah followed her closely. Without a pause Hector turned and slid down the slope to where he had dropped the ammunition.

'No, no!' Hazel screamed after him. 'Leave it. Come back.' Hector ignored her and picked up the case. He was the only one of them still on the exposed revetment of the wall. He hoisted the case onto his shoulder and started upwards again. The bellow of the truck engines echoing off the walls was growing ever louder. He heard the shouts behind him and then the crack and whine of rifle fire. He felt a bullet slam into the wooden case on his shoulders. It knocked him off balance so that he tumbled over the top of the wall into Hazel's arms.

'Oh G.o.d, I thought I was going to lose you.' Her voice was a sob.

'Sorry.' He gave her a swift hug. 'It's not going to be that easy to get rid of me.' He turned swiftly to direct the defence. He saw that Uthmann's truck had been forced to stop so violently that it had slewed across the pa.s.s below them. The second truck had run into the back of the first. Jihadists were tumbling out of both vehicles and running forward, firing up at Hector and his men. But Uthmann had not yet regained firm control over them. Hector, Tariq and the two surviving Cross Bow men dropped flat on top of the wall and poured automatic fire down on them. Men dropped under their fusillade. Their attack broke up; they turned back in disarray. They left several of their number lying on the floor of the pa.s.s. At this range, even the decrepit AK-47s were effective.

Some of the survivors ducked behind the bodies of the two trucks. The rest of them sprinted back around the bend in the pa.s.s. Hurriedly the drivers of the trucks disentangled themselves and executed a series of three-point turns then roared back the way they had come, with bullets from the AKs smashing into their bodywork. When both trucks had disappeared, Hector counted six bodies that the enemy had left behind them. Two of these were still moving. One man was calling to his comrades for help and the other dragged himself back with both his legs slithering uselessly behind him. The men on the wall opened fire on them with gusto. Before Hector could stop them both the stricken jihadists were dead.

Not really cricket, but out here n.o.body has even heard of the game. He had not the least sympathy with the dead men. He knew he could expect as much kindness and compa.s.sion if the roles were reversed, which they very well might be in the very near future. He had not the least sympathy with the dead men. He knew he could expect as much kindness and compa.s.sion if the roles were reversed, which they very well might be in the very near future.

'Tariq, have one of the men collect the empty magazines and give them to the women to reload. Uthmann will be coming back very soon, depend on it.' Twice more within the next hour Uthmann tried to storm the rubble barrier. These were both expensive attempts and there were now fourteen corpses lying out in front of Hector's position.

The silence after the second attack had been repelled was abruptly shattered by the roar of many more trucks arriving at the mouth of the pa.s.s.

'Adam has radioed for reinforcements. Now he probably has a couple of hundred men down there,' Hector told Hazel. 'How much ammunition do we have left?'

'We have about three hundred rounds left in the case you carried up here. You have been using it up rather quickly.' After a pause she asked, 'Why do you keep looking up at the cliffs?'

'I'm trying to work out what Uthmann is going to do next, now that he has built up his forces.'

'What will he do?'

'He's going to send thirty or forty men up there from where they can fire down on us. Once they're in position they will keep our heads down, then Uthmann will launch another direct attack on the barrier. This time we won't be able to repel them.'

'So what do we do?' she asked.

'We get under the overhang of the cliff so the men above us can't fire directly down on us,' he explained. 'Then we build some sort of rock parapet behind which we can shelter from enfilading fire.'

The three women kept watch from the top of the barrier, while Hector and the rest of the men threw up a stone parapet under the overhang. They worked fast piling stones roughly on top of each other. When they had finished they came back to their original positions beside the women to wait for the next frontal attack.

Hazel reviewed their preparations in silence for a while, and then she said softly so that Cayla could not hear, 'This isn't going to work, is it?'

'No,' he admitted, 'not for very long, anyway.'

'What do we do after that?'

'How good are you at praying? I am completely out of practice.'

'You could try to contact Paddy O'Quinn again,' she suggested.

'That can't do much harm. At least it will pa.s.s the time,' he agreed and switched on the satphone. 'In the meantime I want you to take the other women down to shelter behind the parapet, before we come under fire from up there.' He watched them go while he moved up and down the barrier, trying to find a place from which the phone could see a satellite. In the end he gave up.

'It's like being at the bottom of a well,' he muttered to himself. He scrambled down to join the women behind the newly erected parapet and sat beside Hazel.

'The lull before the storm,' he told her quietly.

'Let's not waste a second of it. Put your arm around me.'

'That feels good,' he said.

'Yes, doesn't it just. But, you know, it's going to be such a terrible waste if it ends here, like this. I had so many marvellous plans.'

'So did I.'

'If you decided to kiss me now, you would meet very little resistance,' she admitted.

'Cayla is watching us.' They both smiled at Cayla, and she smiled back uncertainly.

'Do you mind if I kiss your mother, Miss Bannock?' Hector asked and this time Cayla shook her head and giggled.

'You two are so d.a.m.ned naughty!' She watched them kiss with interest. The kiss went on for some time, but was interrupted in the end by the sound of men's voices echoing down from the cliffs above them. All three of them looked up.

'Don't go away,' Hector whispered to Hazel. 'I'll be back to continue where we left off.'

He stood up and reached for his rifle. He saw that Tariq and the men were already watching the cliff tops above them for the first enemy to show himself. Hazel and Cayla crouched down at his feet behind the parapet, both of them gazing up at the cliff top in trepidation. Hazel had the AK resting on the top of the wall with the b.u.t.t in her shoulder, and Cayla had the Beretta pistol in her lap, holding it with a two-handed grip. Daliyah squatted behind them.

'Can you shoot a gun, Daliyah?' Hector asked. She shook her head and lowered her eyes.

'Then look after Cayla,' he told her, and she nodded and smiled, still not looking at him. He left them and climbed to the top of the wall, squatting down beside Tariq. Now they could also hear the voices of the men a.s.sembling around the bend in the pa.s.s below them. The rock walls were acting as a sounding board so that Hector recognized Uthmann Waddah's voice as he harangued them, working them up to fighting pitch.

Hector knew that the men on the cliff above them would show themselves first, so he concentrated his attention there. He saw a furtive movement against the blue of the sky, and he waited. The movement was repeated and he raised the rifle and mounted the b.u.t.t to his shoulder. He saw a man's head peering over the lip of the cliff and he fired a three-round tap. Chips of stone flew from the top of the cliff, and the head jerked back out of sight. Hector thought he had missed. He waited a few seconds, ready for the next target, then suddenly a disembodied rifle slid over the rock lip and dropped into the pa.s.s. It clattered on the rocks close to where Hector sat. Seconds later a lifeless human body slithered over the same place on the cliff. It fell with its white robes fluttering like a flag and landed on top of the rifle. The dead man lay on his back staring up at the sky with one eye and a startled expression. His other eye had been ripped out by Hector's bullet.

Hector went to the body and rolled it off the rifle. He picked up the weapon and weighed it in his hands with a surge of delight. It was a Beretta SC 70/90. For a moment he wondered where it had come from; then he remembered the Cross Bow men that Uthmann had murdered at the oasis. Clearly this was one of their weapons. The one-eyed corpse had a bandolier draped around its waist. Hector pulled it off. He checked the pouches and found there were five clips, each loaded with thirty rounds of ammunition. He slung the bandolier over his own shoulder.

Quickly he checked to see if the optical sight of the rifle had been damaged by the fall. Before he could decide if it was still intact there was another movement on the cliff above him. Instinctively he swung the rifle upwards and in the magnifying lens the image of an enemy head appeared before his eyes with the crosshairs perfectly aligned. He fired. The bullet struck exactly where he had aimed. The jihadist tumbled over the edge of the cliff and dropped lifelessly into the rocks at Hector's feet.

Hector's pleasure at having a real rifle in his hands again was shortlived. Almost immediately dozens of other turbaned heads began popping out over the edge of the cliff and bullets drummed like tropical rain on the rocks around them. The war cries of the enemy resounded off the walls. They were coming from the a.s.sault force that Uthmann Waddah was a.s.sembling lower down the pa.s.s.

'Come on,' Hector yelled at Tariq and the two surviving men. 'We can't stay here to be picked off like fleas on a dog's belly. We have to get under the overhang!' They jumped up and started down the reverse side of the barrier. Almost immediately one of his men was. .h.i.t by the bullets from above. He went down with that peculiar rag-doll limpness which Hector knew was death. Nevertheless Hector stopped in the middle of the firestorm to make certain that the fallen man was beyond help. Then he jumped up again and started after the other two. Before they reached the bottom of the barrier and were under the rock overhang Tariq was. .h.i.t, and he went down sprawling. Hector saw the blood spring brightly on the back of his tunic and a dark shadow seemed to pa.s.s before Hector's own eyes.

'Not Tariq. Please G.o.d, not him.' He changed his rifle to his left hand and with barely a check in his run he scooped Tariq up from where he had fallen. Tariq was not a heavily built man and Hector carried him easily and dropped him behind the stone parapet.

'Do what you can for him,' he told Hazel. He was angry again, and he stood tall and swept the cliff face above him with a long burst of fire. Three of the enemy toppled over the lip and came thudding down into the rocks. The other enemy heads jerked back behind cover. Hazel and Daliyah were already attending to Tariq. He saw that Daliyah was weeping, and even in the extremity of the moment this came as a surprise.

'Why is she bawling?' he blurted out.

'Stupid question. She loves him, of course,' Hazel replied without lifting her head.

'My G.o.d! Everybody's doing it.' Hector grinned recklessly with the battle madness fizzing in his blood. 'How bad is he hit?' He fired twice at the heads showing on the far side of the pa.s.s, and killed another man.

'I don't know. It's in his back. But there are no bubbles in the blood, so maybe it hasn't pierced his lung.'

'Put pressure on the wound. Try to stem the bleeding. That's all we can do for now. But in the name of all that's holy keep your own head down. You too, Cayla. You can't take them on with that handgun.' He punctuated his speech with single rifle shots.

A burst of enemy bullets splashed across the parapet, showering them with stone chips and dust. Hector ducked down and spat out a chip of stone. Then he lifted his head to listen. There were shrill Islamic war cries coming from the direction of the mouth of the pa.s.s. Uthmann's men were scaling the far side of the rock barrier and reaching the top without being offered any resistance. Hector wriggled around on his belly under the parapet until he was in position to fire up at the top of the barrier, without having to expose his head to the men on the cliffs when he did so. He was ready when the first man raised his head above the top of the barrier, but he held his fire and waited for more of them to show themselves. The first head bobbed down again, and when there was no rifle fire it rose again cautiously. Then others came up and went down again. Hector waited for them to become careless. Three of them stood up to their full height and chanted, 'Allahu Akbar!'

Hector fired five aimed shots so swiftly that they sounded like a burst of automatic fire. Men fell or threw themselves down, shouting with surprise or squealing with pain. In the uproar it was impossible to be certain, but Hector thought that he might have got all three of them.

'Not too dusty,' he congratulated himself in an undertone. 'We haven't completely lost the touch.'

The rest of the enemy reacted violently and from the top of both the cliff and the barrier they poured a stream of automatic fire into the overhang. The bullets tore chunks out of the cliff, filling the air with a white mist of dust and then whining away in ricochets. Hector put one arm around Hazel and the other around Cayla and pushed them down on the stone floor. All their faces were powdered dead-white by the fine stone dust. Through the chaos of gunfire and the shouted war cries Hector made out the distant but mounting roar of many truck engines.

What trick is Uthmann pulling now? he asked himself. he asked himself. He isn't going to be crazy enough to try and bring his vehicles over the barrier, much as I'd love to see that. He isn't going to be crazy enough to try and bring his vehicles over the barrier, much as I'd love to see that. But the engine beat grew louder, almost drowning the jihadist shrieks. Abruptly Hector realized that the engine roar was not coming from the other side of the rock barrier, but was echoing down the open pa.s.s from behind their position. The Arab gunfire began to shrivel and dwindle. Hector rolled over and, still keeping the two women pinned to the ground, sheltering them with his own body, he peered back up the open pa.s.s to the bend in the rock walls to their rear. But the engine beat grew louder, almost drowning the jihadist shrieks. Abruptly Hector realized that the engine roar was not coming from the other side of the rock barrier, but was echoing down the open pa.s.s from behind their position. The Arab gunfire began to shrivel and dwindle. Hector rolled over and, still keeping the two women pinned to the ground, sheltering them with his own body, he peered back up the open pa.s.s to the bend in the rock walls to their rear.

At that moment a column of three huge GM trucks roared into his field of vision, coming straight down the pa.s.s towards them. On their sides was blazoned the Cross Bow logo, and in the front of each was mounted a pair of 50 calibre Browning heavy machine guns. Behind the guns on the leading truck stood Paddy O'Quinn. He was grinning happily as he gripped the firing handles and swivelled the twin barrels onto the jihadists who were still swarming over the rock barrier that blocked the pa.s.s. In the truck that followed him Dave Imbiss was leaning back and aiming his heavy Brownings up at the cliffs.

'Paddy O'Quinn and his rock and roll band will now play their famous signature tune for us,' said Hector, laughing and hugging the two women. The guns opened with a tumultuous thunder that filled the pa.s.s with sound. Paddy's tracer sh.e.l.ls ripped the top off the rock barricade and filled the air with dust. Running Arabs trying to get to the top of the rock pile disappeared in the storm of shot, cut down before they reached it. In the second truck Dave swept the tops of the cliffs with his fire. Human bodies rained down into the pa.s.s, like overripe fruit shaken from the trees of an orchard by a gale of wind. Within seconds all the visible targets were destroyed and the guns fell silent. Paddy looked around and spotted them huddled behind the parapet under the overhang, and he waved cheerily.

'Top o' the mornin' to you, Hector. What a lovely surprise to find you still in such good form. May I offer you a lift home?'

'Enchanted, I am sure,' Hector shouted back. 'I never truly appreciated the sunshine of your smile until this very moment.' Gently he picked up Tariq. 'How are you, my brother?' he asked as he carried him to the leading truck.

'I will be with you for many more years. You and I still have to kill that son of Shaitan, Uthmann Waddah,' Tariq said. His voice was feeble but at least there was no blood in his mouth. Hector knew he was going to make it. He laid Tariq in the back of the truck, and the women climbed in beside him.

'Look after him well,' he told Hazel. It was more a plea than an order.

'Don't worry, Hector,' Hazel replied. 'Daliyah and I won't let anything happen to him.'

'Where are the others?' Paddy asked lightly as Hector climbed up beside him.

'What you see is what you get, Paddy,' said Hector sadly. 'There ain't no others, not no more.' Paddy stopped smiling and let his next flippant remark die before it reached his lips.

'G.o.d save their souls,' he said soberly.

'Amen to that.'

'But I see you managed to rescue the girl.'

'She's not rescued until we get her home. Let's go, Paddy!'

They drove back up the pa.s.s towards the Ethiopian border. It was soon apparent that Uthmann had not been able to get his vehicles over or around the barrier of collapsed rock, for there was no pursuit. They stopped once so that the Bannock Oil company doctor whom Paddy had brought with him could attend to Tariq. He set up a plasma drip, gave him shots of antibiotics and painkillers, and strapped up the wound. Then they drove on, making good progress even though in places the track had been washed away. Paddy's men had hastily repaired it as best they could on their way in. They reached the crests of the foothills and debouched into a maze of interconnected valleys and mountain pa.s.ses, through which the old road threaded. They followed it westwards for the remainder of that day, climbing gradually into the highlands. So far there had been no sign of human habitation, so they risked using the headlights of the trucks and drove on after dark. Paddy was navigating with his truck's GPS. Four hours after nightfall he announced that they had crossed into Ethiopia. However, there was no indication of any kind to mark the border. They halted the convoy briefly to celebrate with a cup of hot tea. While the canteen brewed Hector warmed up the satphone. From this high ground the reception was crystal clear and he spoke to Nella Vosloo at Sidi el Razig as though she were sitting beside him.

'We will be at Jig Jig before first light. Come and fetch us, my darling.'

'Bernie and I will be there. Trust me!' Nella told him. They kept on driving through the night. Hector stood beside Paddy in the open gun mounting, both of them vigilant and unsleeping. But the dark mountains through which they were travelling were deserted. Two hours before dawn they reached the Jig Jig airstrip without having encountered a single living being along the way.

They went into a defensive laager on the edge of the airstrip, and the women prepared breakfast. In the lorry's tucker box Paddy had two dozen fresh eggs, a side of streaky bacon and four loaves of mouldy bread. They made toast over the coals and plastered it with canned New Zealand b.u.t.ter while it was still hot. With Daliyah's a.s.sistance even Tariq was able to sit up and, devout Muslim though he was, wolf down a bacon b.u.t.ty. They were still drinking steaming mugs of black tea when they heard the sound of Hercules engines approaching. Paddy ordered a truck to park at each end of the strip, and switch on their headlights. Nella brought the colossal aircraft down smoothly on the strip between the trucks, and as soon as she lowered the rear loading ramp Paddy led all three trucks up into the cargo bay and strapped them securely. The Hercules was airborne again within twelve minutes of touching down.

The doctor re-dressed Tariq's wound and gave his opinion. 'He's lucky. Looks as though the bullet missed any vital parts. He is as tough as he is fit, and will be on his feet again in no time.' Daliyah wept helplessly when Hector translated this into Arabic for her. Then at Hazel's request the doctor turned his attention to Cayla. He took her into the tiny pilot's cabin behind the flight deck and examined her carefully. 'Physically she is doing well enough,' he p.r.o.nounced. 'The antibiotics that Mr Cross administered seem to have taken care of the food poisoning. However, once you get her back to civilization you should immediately see to it that she is tested for any infection. Of course, she is still weak but after the ordeal she has been through that is only to be expected. Her psychological state seems much more precarious. Of course that is not my field; however, I can only urge you to get her to a top specialist as soon as you possibly can.'

'I plan to do exactly that,' Hazel agreed. 'My jet should be waiting at Sidi el Razig. Right now I am going to make certain she gets some sleep.' She turned to Hector. 'You too! You haven't slept for three days.'

'Don't fuss so,' he protested as she tucked him in to one of the sleeping bags that she found in the rack above the bunk.

'Fussing is one of the things I do best. You have been giving the orders up until now, Hector Cross. From here on I am giving you a taste of your own medicine. Stop arguing and go to sleep!' She switched out the light. Both Hector and Cayla were still dead asleep when Nella landed the Hercules at Sidi el Razig.

From the moment they landed Hector found himself shunted into the background. He did not see Hazel again for the rest of that day. She disappeared into the executive offices of the Bannock headquarters, where she was locked in meetings with Bert Simpson or in conference calls with her head office in Houston. Every time Hector glanced out of the window of his own office he was made acutely aware of the big Gulfstream jet waiting on the airfield with all her luggage already loaded aboard and her pilots and cabin crew ready at a moment's notice to whisk her and Cayla away to the other side of the world.