Those in Peril (Unlocked) (30 page)

The rabble of pirates broke and ran, howling with terror, but none of them reached the boats alongside before the explosion consumed them in flame. Ronnie was still laughing as he was caught up in the double explosion, and a moment later the fuel tank against which he had been propping himself exploded and a pillar of flame and black smoke shot high into the sky.

Hector was watching through his binoculars and he felt the shock wave of the explosion ruffle his hair, and saw the tower of smoke and the brilliance of burning phosphorus, brighter than the sunlight on the waves. Simultaneously the satphone in his cargo pocket went dead. He went on staring through the lens for a few minutes longer while he gathered himself. Then he felt Hazel’s hand on his arm.

‘I am so sorry, my darling.’ It was the first time she had used that term of endearment. He lowered the binoculars and turned to her.

‘Thank you for your understanding. But it’s what Ronnie would have wanted. This very moment he is probably jeering at the fates.’ He gave his head a little shake, putting his sorrow aside for the moment, and shouted to Tariq, ‘Get everybody mounted up again.’ Then he turned back to Hazel. ‘That smoke rocket was my mistake. Now they can be sure we are here, and that Ronnie was signalling us. We have to move out quickly.’

With the Mercedes loaded Hector turned onto the coastal road and drove fast along it in the opposite direction to the pirate lair at Gandanga Bay. They covered almost fifteen miles before Hector spotted the dust of a strange vehicle approaching from the north. Quickly he pulled off the road and parked behind a clump of windswept thornbushes. He ordered all of them to dismount and sit behind the truck which was camouflaged by its thick coating of dust and dried quicksand. He crouched down behind the trunk of one of the thorny trees and watched another passenger bus grinding southwards, effectively wiping out their own tracks with its wide double tyres. As soon as it was out of sight he and Tariq each cut themselves a tree branch from one of the trees and went back to the verge of the road where they had left it. They came back to the parked truck, walking backwards and carefully sweeping all the signs of their passing from the hard baked surface, and straightening the strands of coarse brown grass that had been flattened by the wheels of their truck.

Satisfied at last that they had done all they could to throw off any pursuit by the pirates who were bound to come looking for them along the road, he ordered everybody to take their allotted seat in the vehicle and then headed back into the wilderness the way they had come, in the direction of the Oasis of the Miracle and the Ethiopian border. When darkness fell and it was not safe to continue onwards for fear of hitting a rock or crashing into one of the wadis, Hector parked the Mercedes. They brewed coffee on a small carefully screened fire of brushwood and drank it black and unsweetened to wash down the dry army survival rations. Every one of them was exhausted, so Hector took the first turn of guard duty. All the others threw themselves down on the hard earth and slept almost immediately. Even Hazel who was one of the toughest and most determined of them all had at last succumbed. She lay with Cayla cuddled in her arms, both of them still and silent as statues. When the night air turned cooler Hector spread his jacket over them; neither of them so much as twitched.

He let them all sleep for an hour after the moon rose. When at last he roused them and chivvied them back into the truck, he handed over the driving to Tariq and let the rocking and swaying of the Mercedes over the rough terrain lull him to sleep. He slept sitting upright in the high hunting seat with the loaded rifle across his lap held by the strap, ready for an instant response to any threat. He was awakened by a change in the truck’s motion. Suddenly it was much smoother and the engine note changed as Tariq engaged a higher gear. Hector opened his eyes and saw that they were moving faster on a roughly demarcated but beaten track. He glanced at the stars to orient himself. Orion was hunting the western sky with Sirius, his dog, running ahead of him. The moon was high. They were still heading west without headlights showing, relying on the moon and the glow of the Milky Way to light their route. He checked his wristwatch; he had been asleep for almost three hours. They must be getting close to the more fertile and populous areas of land along the main highway. He leaned forward and touched Tariq on the shoulder.

‘Peepee pause,’ he announced. Tariq braked and they all climbed down. The women went to the rear of the truck and the men to the front. Standing shoulder to shoulder with him, Hector spoke quietly to Tariq.

‘We have to dump this vehicle. Every man, woman and child in Puntland will be looking for it. We will requisition another. Then we must find the right clothing to be able to blend in to the local populace. You and Daliyah are the only ones suitably dressed.’ While they were talking Hazel and Cayla came from behind the truck to join them. They listened for a while to the Arabic conversation, until at last Hazel lost patience.

‘What’s this all about?’

‘We need other transport. Tariq and I are plotting to hijack another truck and then find suitable disguises for you and Cayla in particular.’

‘Hijack?’ Hazel asked. ‘That means killing more innocent bystanders?’

‘If that’s what it takes,’ Hector agreed.

‘Not really humane or discreet. Why don’t you send Tariq and Daliyah into the nearest town to buy a truck and the right gear?’

‘Good idea.’ Hector smiled in the moonlight. ‘Just hold on a minute while I rob a bank.’

‘You can be rather obtuse at times, Hector Cross.’

‘Last one who called me that was my mathematics teacher at high school.’

‘He must have been very perceptive. Come with me.’ She led him around the back of the truck and once they were unobserved she began to unbutton her shirt.

‘Mrs Bannock, at any other time this would be a splendid idea.’ Unperturbed Hazel untucked the tails of her shirt from her breeches and he stared at the money belt that was strapped around her waist, lying snugly against her flat belly. She ripped open the Velcro fastener and handed him the belt. He shone the flashlight into it, then took out one of the wads of green US banknotes and riffled through it.

‘How much have you got here?’ he asked in awed tones.

‘About thirty thousand. Sometimes it comes in quite useful.’

‘Hazel Bannock, you are a bloody marvel!’

‘Oh, at last you’ve noticed. Perhaps you are not quite as obtuse as I suspected,’ she said and he grabbed her and kissed her. ‘And getting smarter all the time.’ Her voice was husky. ‘To be continued later, right?’

‘Couldn’t be righter,’ he agreed.

They drove on, still without switching on the headlights, more cautiously as the daylight strengthened. At last they were running through cultivated fields of dried maize stalks and once they passed a few darkened hovels beside the track. There was no sign of life except the smoke from a cooking fire drifting from a hole in the roof of one of the huts. Shortly after that they crested a rise and saw in the distance ahead of them the lights of a large settlement. Some of the lights appeared to be powered by electricity rather than wood or kerosene which was a sign of at least rudimentary civilization. They stopped and Hector shaded his torch as he examined the map.

‘There was only one town that this could possibly be.’ He pointed it out to Tariq on the map. ‘Lascanood. Ask Daliyah if she knows it.’

‘I know it. I have been here before with my father. Some of his relatives live here,’ Daliyah confirmed. ‘It’s the biggest town in Nugaal province.’

‘How far is it from Ethiopia?’ Hector asked, and she looked embarrassed. She was a simple country girl and the question was beyond her.

‘All right. How far is it from your home – could you walk there in a day?’

‘In two days, not one.’ She said it with certainty. She had obviously made the journey.

‘Do you know if there is a road from this town to Ethiopia?’

‘I have heard people say there is a road, but nobody uses it now, not since the troubles with that country.’

‘Thank you, Daliyah.’ He turned to Hazel. ‘She knows the town and she says that there is a road from there to the border although I don’t see it marked on this map. Apparently it has fallen into disuse, which suits us just fine.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Hazel asked.

‘We find a place to hide out during the day, and I will send Tariq and Daliyah into the town to buy a bus or lorry and the other things we need.’ Hector turned back to Daliyah. ‘Do you know if there is a wadi or some other place close by where we can hide this truck while you and Tariq go into the town?’ She thought for a moment and then nodded.

‘I know a place,’ she agreed. She sat beside Tariq, obviously bursting with pride at having been selected by Hector as a guide, and she pointed out the way with an authoritative air. Just before sunrise they turned off the track and drove a short way to a clump of scraggly acacia thornbush. In the centre of it was a water-hole, a shallow depression which was now dry; the baked mud in the bottom of it cracked into rectangular tiles curling up at the edges. The thornbush screened them on all sides.

‘This is where my father and I used to camp,’ said Daliyah, pointing out the black ashes of a cooking fire on the edge of the clearing. They all disembarked, Tariq drove the truck under the trees and they cut branches to cover it, concealing it from casual observation. Hazel called Hector aside, while Tariq and Daliyah were preparing to walk into the town.

‘Should I give the money to Tariq to buy what we need?’

‘Give him a hundred dollars. That’ll be enough for the local-style clothing and food. I’m sick of dry rations.’

‘What about transport for us to reach the border?’ Hazel asked. ‘He will need a few thousand, won’t he?’

‘No. That’s too much temptation.’

‘Don’t you trust him?’

‘After the little trick that Uthmann pulled on me, I trust nobody. Tariq can find transport and even haggle a price with the seller, but I will pay over the cash.’ Hector went back to Tariq and gave him the hundred dollars in bills of small denominations. Then Tariq and Daliyah set off in the direction of the town. Daliyah trailed twenty paces behind him, as a good Islamic wife was bound to do. Once they were out of sight the rest of the party settled down to wait under the sparse cover of the thorn trees. Hector set up the satphone and after two or three attempts at last made contact with Paddy O’Quinn.

‘Ronnie didn’t make it,’ he told Paddy. ‘They were waiting for him. He put up a good fight, but in the end he bought the farm.’

‘I would like to get my hands on that swine Uthmann Waddah,’ Paddy growled. This was no time for sentiment or mourning.

‘Join the queue,’ Hector agreed.

‘Where are you now, Heck?’

‘Coming your way. We’re making progress, Paddy,’ he told him. ‘We’re hiding out near a town called Lascanood. Do you have it on your map?’ There was a short pause while Paddy checked.

‘Okay. I have it. Looks as though it’s about seventy or eighty miles beyond the border.’

‘Can you see a marked road that would get you from where you are to our vicinity?’ Hector asked.

‘Hold on a jiffy. Okay, there is a track indicated by a dotted red line, which is not a good sign. It usually means that the existence of the road is the subject of conjecture rather than hard fact. According to this, it joins the main highway about ten or fifteen miles north of Lascanood.’

‘Paddy, start moving in our direction pronto. Do not, I repeat do not call me back. I might be surrounded by the bad boys. I will call you again once we are in the clear this end.’

‘Roger that,’ Paddy agreed, and they broke the connection.

I
t was two hours before noon when Tariq and Daliyah returned from the town. Once again Daliyah was following him at a discreet distance, balancing an enormous bundle on her head. In the grove of thorns Tariq helped her to lower it to the ground, and they all crowded around to see what Daliyah had brought back with her.

Firstly and most importantly she had a large bunch of maize cobs and three scrawny chicken carcasses. These went onto the coals immediately. While they grilled, the men removed their Cross Bow uniforms and equipment and from the bundle they selected and donned the typical jihadist dress of baggy pants and black waistcoat over a grubby and wrinkled white shirt. Then they bound loose black turbans around their heads; even on Hector the change was immediate and convincing. He took Tariq aside and questioned him about what he had discovered in the village.