Aggressor (31 page)

She tried to draw breath, but she couldn't. She was suffocating.

Al-Qadi jabbered, calling her every obscenity she had ever heard. She could see the lust in his eyes as he pulled at her trousers. She felt she had been struck down by a snake, its poison paralysing her muscles, but leaving her with a disturbing clarity of mind. She could do nothing without breath to her lungs.

The sweat of his palms allowed Al-Qadi to slip a hand under the waistband of her trousers. She felt the fingers inching their way lower, the blunt tips clawing at her underwear, past the elastic.

‘So good, so good.' His spittle splashed her face. Something had snapped inside him. ‘Girling won't get far.' He licked her neck. ‘You whore! Did you think he would get away from me? That other ‘agnabi bastard bled like a pig when I shot him. Two bullets, that's all.' He laughed and shoved his hand down deeper. ‘But with Girling, I'm going to make it five.'

Suddenly, the air rushed into her throat, filling her lungs and banishing the paralysis. Al-Qadi had killed Stansell. Dear God. She lunged for the investigator's crotch, took both his testicles in her hand and squeezed with all her strength.

Al-Qadi's eyes bulged in their sockets, his mouth gaped, the fleshy lips curled back in agony. He rolled off her and her hand went to the back pocket of her jeans. She saw him going for the automatic inside his jacket. She felt the stock of the paper-knife in her hand and wrenched it from under her.

Despite the unyielding pain to his genitals, Al-Qadi pulled the gun from its holster. His face was grey. He brought the gun up to her head at the precise moment Sharifa plunged the ivory tip of the paper-knife into his chest.

‘I do not understand,' Abdullah said. He was gazing into the middle distance, studying the outer defences of the airfield.

‘What?'

They were four hundred yards from the perimeter wire, two nomads riding at a lazy pace, rejoining their tribesmen in the desert after a morning at Qena's market.

Abdullah spat on the sand, then gestured with a nod to the nearest of the watch-towers. They were spaced roughly half a kilometre apart.

‘There are two men in the tower, see, ‘agnabi? And one of them is watching us through long glasses.'

Girling raised his head level with the horizon. He had wrapped the headcloth to hide his face but for a narrow slit across the eyes. He saw a glint from the watch-tower. A pair of high-power binoculars reflecting the glare of the sun.

‘Don't worry, God will grant us another tower, empty next time, insh'allah.' Abdullah gestured ahead. ‘Do not show too much interest in them, ya majnoon, for if the soldiers become suspicious they will send trucks. And then it will be over for you.'

‘And for you also.'

‘Me they would never catch. But you... ?' He drew a finger across his throat and laughed.

Girling laughed, too. It helped to ease the tension.

Ten minutes later, they passed close to the next tower. It looked deserted. Suddenly, a head appeared above the parapet. The guard exchanged a series of greetings with Abdullah and Girling bit back his frustration.

‘Most curious,' Abdullah whispered. ‘Normally, it is deserted.'

Prompted by Abdullah, the sentry explained that they were providing security for a military exercise on the base.

When they discovered that the third tower was also manned, Girling put a new plan to his guide. ‘We wait until nightfall and cross the perimeter under cover of darkness.'

Abdullah shook his head. ‘Impossible, ya majnoon. There is a minefield on the other side.'

‘A what?'

‘A minefield, ya majnoon.'

‘You never mentioned the minefield.'

Abdullah shrugged. ‘I did not think it important.'

Girling threw his water-bottle onto the sand. ‘Not important? How were we ever going to get to the ta'iraat with, a minefield between the perimeter fence and the runway?' He swore under his breath. ‘I bet you knew about the bloody guards all along, too.'

Abdullah dismounted at the same time as Girling. The two men confronted each other between the camels. ‘Are you calling me a liar, ‘agnabi?'

‘I'm calling you a thief.'

Abdullah reached into his jellaba and pulled a knife. Girling faced him, aware that they were in full view of the guard in his watch-tower a few hundred yards away. He no longer cared. His anger was uncontrollable.

Abdullah's arm moved like a striking snake. But instead of lunging, the bedouin sheathed his knife.

Abdullah looked at Girling for a moment, then tipped his head back, his body racked with sobs of laughter. ‘I should have told you about the minefield. So keep your money.' He thrust a bundle of screwed-up notes into Girling's hand.

The bedouin forced his camel to the ground and mounted it again. He looked down at Girling, who remained unmoved.

‘There is nothing more for you here, ‘agnabi. Come. We go back to Qena.' He gestured to the watch-tower. ‘This is God's Will. I knew about the minefield, yes, but I did not know about the guards.'

Girling got back onto his camel and stared at the watch-tower. ‘If I could just see what they're protecting,' he said.

They turned the camels round and headed back towards Qena.

It was five minutes before Abdullah spoke. ‘Maybe they are protecting the halikubtars.'

At first Girling didn't register the bedouin's words.

‘They say the halikubtars are very valuable,' Abdullah added nonchalantly.

Girling pulled up his camel. ‘Halikubtars?'

Abdullah nodded. ‘Yes.' He made a whirling motion in the air with his finger. ‘But you are not interested in halikubtars, only ta'iraat. You said so in Qena.'

‘What is the difference?'

Abdullah held his hands out, arms level with his shoulders. He grinned self-consciously. ‘These are ta'iraat.'

This time, it was Girling who laughed.

‘Do not insult me, ‘agnabi.'

‘I'm not laughing at you, my friend, only my own stupidity.' Girling shook his head. Halikubtars. It was so simple. It had not occurred to him that the word ta'iraat would not include the species, halikubtar. Helicopter. He should have been more precise.

‘Tell me about these halikubtars.'

Abdullah pointed to a spot on the horizon. ‘Every day they fly into the mountains.' His arm described an arc from the air base to the jagged heights in the distance. ‘They say that one of them crashed.'

‘Recently?'

‘Two days ago.'

‘Where?'

Abdullah pointed to two barely discernible peaks, their summits arching slightly inwards towards each other. ‘In the valley that lies between the Horns of Shaytan.'

‘Take me there and you will receive the rest of your money.'

‘Never, ya majnoon. It is an evil place. They say djinn, evil spirits, dwell there.'

Girling studied the bedouin's face. There was fear there, certainly, but...

‘Would another fifty pounds lessen your fear?'

Abdullah smiled. ‘A hundred, maybe.'

They agreed on seventy.

Abdullah nudged the nose of his beast. He looked to Girling, riding beside him, and smiled. ‘Truly, you are mad, ‘agnabi,' he said.

CHAPTER 18

The sun was low in the sky when Girling and Abdullah rode up the dried river bed that lay in the long shadows of the Horns of Shaytan.

The wadi had known death. It was not just the physical evidence - a camel's rotting carcass lay a dozen yards away - there was a malevolence there too. Girling felt its imprint deep within the rocks. He almost found himself believing Abdullah's talk of genies and spirits.

They urged the camels on, following the course of the wadi deep into the mountain range.

After many miles and with the light diminishing, Abdullah pulled up his camel and the beast sank to the ground.

‘What are you doing?' Girling asked.

‘We camp here for the night.'

‘No, my friend. We do not rest until we have found the halikubtar.'

Abdullah raised his hands to the sky. ‘We have searched for hours with no sign of it. Perhaps those who gossiped in the market were mistaken.'

‘I don't think so,' Girling said. But inside, he was beginning to have his doubts.

‘And it is almost dark,' Abdullah said.

‘But not quite.'

‘I should never have told you about the halikubtar, ya majnoon.'

‘Think of the money, Abdullah.'

The bedouin groaned. ‘What good is money in this devilish place?'

They rode for another half-hour, until the light was so poor Girling could see scarcely a few yards ahead. Then, without warning, Abdullah stopped.

Girling no longer had the stomach to argue. ‘Khalas,' he said.

In the gathering gloom, the bedouin scurried down the side of a sandy depression in the wadi bed and was lost from sight. A moment later, Girling heard a muffled shout.

‘Come quickly, ya majnoon.'

Girling slid off his saddle and stumbled after him. He tripped over the edge of the hole, the sharp drop taking him by surprise. He tumbled down its side to land at Abdullah's feet.

Abdullah threw his arms out expansively, gesturing to the dimensions of the hole. ‘Is not this great trough the work of the djinn, ‘agnabi?'

Girling said nothing.

‘Tell me, ‘agnabi. How was it made?'

Girling looked around him. It seemed an unnatural hole in the otherwise flat river bed. ‘A flash-flood perhaps.' Then his bare foot touched something hard but smooth beneath the surface of the sand. ‘This was made by man, not spirits.'

He pulled a lighter from his robes and flicked the flint, the sparks like tracer in the darkness. The flame danced in the light, warm breeze that blew in from the far-off shores of the Red Sea.

The hole was big, probably thirty feet across. And deep.

He reached down and pulled the object from the sand and held it up to the light. Its geometry was almost perfect; a block of aluminium, two feet long and rectangular, with over thirty holes drilled into one face. He ran the light up and down the sides free of the perforations and saw the burnished identification plate, its Cyrillic indecipherable but for the serial number and the machine for which it was intended, a Mil Mi-24J.

The hole was big, because a helicopter had crashed here and then been removed. The flare dispenser he held in his hands, its thirty-two cartridges devised to seduce heat-seeking missiles away from their intended target, had been missed by the salvagers.

His thrill turned to disappointment. Girling had been positive he would find an American helicopter. But instead it was Soviet. And the Egyptians had Soviet-built helicopters coming out of their ears.

He let the flare rack fall to the ground and mounted the slope towards the place where they had left the camels.

Abdullah had been watching him expectantly. ‘There was a halikubtar here, ya majnoon?'

Girling turned to him. ‘Yes, my friend. You did well.'

‘Then why are you not pleased?'

‘I was hoping we would find a different machine. But ma'lesh.' No matter. ‘My search is over.'

When Abdullah came over the lip of the depression, he found Girling standing perfectly still, as if something had turned him to stone.

Girling swung round. There was a look of awe on his face. ‘My God,' he whispered in English. ‘The Russians are here too.' He let out a whoop of glee that echoed off the valley walls. ‘The Russians and the Americans are here. They're working this thing together.'

Everything came together in a whirl. The Ilyushin at Machrihanish, Stamen's visit to the Soviet Embassy the day he was taken, the fact that he had interviewed the Sword over a decade before in that distant corner of the once mighty Soviet Empire, Afghanistan. And now this Mi-24J, a helicopter so new that it wasn't even listed in the reference books. ‘The Egyptians don't have any Mi-24s - they never did.'

Abdullah rushed round to confront Girling, but the journalist was so absorbed he could not see him.

Girling laughed out loud. ‘This rescue mission's a joint operation. They're both going in together to get the Angels of Judgement. Because the Soviets know who the Angels of Judgement are, they have done all along. This is the New World Order at work.' He did a little jig in the sand. ‘The Russians know where the Angels of Judgement are, but the Americans don't. That's why Ulm came looking for me. He wants to know for himself, because the Russians won't tell him.'

Abdullah stared at him, horrified. ‘Are you possessed?'

Girling stopped dancing. ‘We found the right hali-kubtar after all,' he said, reverting to Arabic. And not just the right helicopter. His mind was spinning so fast he didn't know how to stop it. One piece of metal, a flare dispenser, had unlocked an Aladdin's cave of information. Not least, it pinpointed Stansell's source for the story. It hadn't been the Israelis, the Americans, or the Brits. Lazan had been right. It was the goddamned Russians who'd told him about the Angels of Judgement.

He clapped a friendly hand on the bedouin's shoulder. ‘So let's eat.'

They made a fire from wood washed down by flash-floods from the mountains. Abdullah brewed tea, dark brown and sweet, in an old biscuit tin that he kept inside one of the saddlebags. Another yielded their meal, a bag of foule beans that Abdullah mashed into a paste, mixing in maize oil as he went. When he had finished, he motioned for Girling to scoop the glutinous mixture from the bowl with his fingers and gave him some bread to add sustenance to their helpings.

The food was just enough for Girling to forget his hunger and he lay down on the camel blanket. Above him the Milky Way shone with a magical clarity, the pinpoints of light dimmed only by the periodic contrast of shooting stars.

He felt a sudden burning wish for Mona to be there beside him. He would have loved more than anything to have shared this moment with her, to talk it through with her and listen to her soft words of wisdom. He wondered whether she would have seen things the way he saw them. He hoped so, for to him the evidence was indisputable. Stansell had learned of the Angels of Judgement during the cocktail party at the Soviet Embassy, probably from a Russian diplomat who'd got pissed out of his skull and spilled the beans by mistake. On the face of it, Stansell already had his scoop, but being the sort of journalist he was, he had to take it one step further. The name of the Sword had triggered a hunt through past volumes of
Dispatches
until he struck gold and traced the Sword back to Afghanistan. Knowing of

the links that bound Muslim fundamentalist organizations from around the world, he'd gone to tap a source in the Brotherhood, perhaps the Guide him-self, to push the story that extra bit along. Yet that determination to go further than he ever needed to go had cost Stansell his life. The Brotherhood must have snatched him, knowing that Stansell, more than any-body else, threatened the Angels' whole operation.

Girling had never believed in anything like an afterlife, but under such a sky, on such a night, it was difficult not to feel that something existed out there for Mona and Stansell. He wondered whether her killer, Abu Tarek, was watching the sky that night. And whether he would ever be given the chance to make Abu Tarek pay.

Abdullah stoked the dying embers. As he did so, Girling saw him shiver.

‘What is it, my friend?'

‘I will get little sleep tonight.'

‘There is nothing to fear from this place.'

‘It is your soul that frightens me, ‘agnabi.'

Girling sat up.

‘Something troubles you,' Abdullah said. ‘Many times I have felt it while we were riding.'

Girling felt compelled to answer.

‘I lost my wife some years back,' he said. ‘There is still pain.'

‘How did she die?'

Girling told the story of Asyut and the manner of Mona's death.

‘I have heard of these people from the towns and cities who do wrongs in the name of our belief.'

‘I cannot forgive them, Abdullah.'

‘Then you will never truly live again, my friend. There is only one path to true happiness and that is forgiveness. Forgive and your pain will cease.'

‘If Islam is vengeful, then so am I,' Girling said.

‘God says that evil should be rewarded with like evil,' Abdullah said. ‘But the Koran also says that he who forgives and seeks reconcilement shall be rewarded by God.' He paused. ‘It is for each man to choose his path. You should make peace with the world, ‘agnabi. That is yours.'

‘That is easy to say, my friend.'

Abdullah sighed and lay back on the sand to sleep. ‘My heart is heavy for you, ‘agnabi.'

The light wind that had brought with it the heat of the Red Sea by day had turned colder and Girling pulled the blanket more tightly around his shoulders. Try as he might, sleep evaded him until the small hours before dawn.

The sound cut into his dreams before Abdullah's rasping whisper roused him. He had not stirred before because he was convinced that the swishing noise of the blades only existed inside his head.

Girling's eyes snapped open. The sky had lightened in the east. He had been asleep for an hour, maybe two.

Abdullah shook him hard. His voice was tense. ‘That sound. What is it?'

The canyon reverberated as the blades carved through the air towards them.

It took Girling a moment to focus his mind, a moment longer to appreciate that he, Abdullah and the camels were out in the open, clear of cover.

Girling knew that wherever the machines were going, their course would take them right overhead.

He threw the blanket off his body and sprang to his feet, thinking blindly that it would be enough for him and Abdullah to run for the shelter of the rocks close by. But then he remembered the camels.

Could he risk leaving them out in the open, while he and Abdullah cowered behind the rocks? The camels were alert, their ears twitching to each blade beat that echoed off the rocks. It was as if they sensed he might leave them behind.

‘We must move the camels behind the boulders,' Girling yelled.

He dragged the first camel to its feet. A moment later Abdullah was by his side.

They cajoled the creatures, their gangling legs resisting attempts to hurry them as the sound grew in Girling's head and the sand was whipped up by the rushing wind.

‘It is Shaytan. He is coming for us,' Abdullah said, gasping, eyes wide with fear.

‘No, not Shaytan.' But Girling was too breathless to explain.

They dragged the camels behind the nearest cluster of rocks just as the first helicopter swept round the bend in the wadi, the downwash from its rotors sending dust devils spiralling into the air.

The big machine roared past their position, its pilot holding a resolute course a few feet above the centre of the wadi bed. Girling recognized it as a modified Jolly Green, the fabled MH-53J Pave Low III of USAF special forces. It was so close that he could see the concentration on the pilot's face; so close that the monotone star and bar was easily visible on the fuselage.

The MH-53J was followed by three more, each flying with the precision of the first.

Girling saw the special modifications - refuelling probe and radar system in the nose, the miniguns protruding from the open cabin door - and knew that these helicopters were training for no ordinary mission.

When the last MH-53J had thundered past, he sprang out from behind the rock and watched as it skittered down the wadi like a giant dragonfly, eventually pulling up over the cliffs and disappearing from view.

He stood there, waiting for the din to recede, but the sound of their engines did not disappear into the desert as he thought it would. He could hear them roaring beyond the wall of the wadi.

Girling began to sprint for the cliffs just as the gunfire started.

Abdullah was behind him, rifle in hand. They reached the flat summit together and ran across the plateau, stopping only at the abyss that lay on the other side. What Girling saw took his breath away.

The helicopters were circling like vultures a few feet above the tops of the cliffs at the head of the wadi. Every second or so, a belch of flame leapt from the cabin doors, accompanied by a sound that ripped apart the last vestiges of the night.

The gunners were pouring fire into the ground at the base of the cliffs. The shooting was well disciplined, each burst aimed with pinpoint precision -Girling could tell as much by the isolated puffs of dust that jumped from the ground.

One of the helicopters broke away from the group and came in to a hover a few feet above the cliffs at the end of the valley. Girling was dimly aware of shadows scurrying from the open cabin door.

Two more helicopters broke away, but Girling only tracked their passage on the periphery of his vision. A complex at the base of the cliffs was beginning to take shape as his eyes grew accustomed to the light. It was as strange as any he had ever seen. Its rigid geometry looked incongruous against the desert setting, but the fact it was fifty kilometres from the nearest outpost of civilization made it absurd.

It was a perfect square, its sides some fifty yards long, its walls approximately fifteen feet high. In its midst was a great courtyard, covered, in part, by a flimsy roof. There were a number of outhouses scattered round it, all whitewashed. Beyond the out-houses a trench enclosed the cluster of buildings.