Desert Pursuit (13 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Mysteries & Detective Stories
They scraped out a bed for the boy in the hard ground and laid him in it, covering his face with his headcloth. Then they built a low cairn of rocks and stones over him, to mark his position and protect the body from scavengers. They left the tracker device around his neck, so that he could be found later and given a proper funeral.
‘Someone should say something,’ said Amber as they stood around the finished cairn.
There was an awkward silence. They did not know this boy’s name, or which god they should talk to on his behalf, and their sadness at his death was mixed with a guilty relief that it was not Li under the stones.
Finally, Paulo sat down beside the cairn and began to speak, not to any god, but straight to the boy. He kept it simple, as though they were friends sitting side by side, passing the time on a lazy summer’s day.
‘It is a good place here, behind the rise. You have found the only shade on the whole plain. The sky is blue. The wind smells fresh and sweet after the storm. There is a sandstone bluff to the north and your village lies to the south, not too far away. Not too far at all. You will be fine, resting here in this good place for a while. When we have found your little brother, we will come back for you and take you home, I promise. We will bring you both home.’
Paulo rose to his feet again and looked around at the others. ‘Will that do?’ he asked, slightly unnerved by the silence.
Amber stepped forward, went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.
‘It was OK,’ said Hex, clearing his throat.
‘Come on,’ said Alex gruffly, keeping his head down. ‘Let’s move out. We have promises to keep.’
Alpha Force travelled on through the growing heat of the day, following the Unimog tracks. Sitting astride the quads with only their desert clothes to protect them against the soaring temperatures and drying wind, they were risking severe dehydration, but they had to catch up with Li. Now that she no longer had the tracker device, there was a real chance that she would disappear into slavery before they could find her. Once she was sold, Li would be very hard to trace and her future would not be pleasant. She could become a prisoner in a back-street hovel, weaving carpets in bad light until her eyes gave out and her lungs became clogged with the fibre-filled air. She might end up as an unpaid servant in a private household or be forced to work in the sex industry. The thought of Li having to suffer any of these fates was enough to spur them on despite the rising temperature. The Scorpion’s tracks headed north like an arrow, only swerving off course once to divert around the western side of the sandstone bluff that rose out of the plain like the back of a huge whale. Alpha Force stopped there for a water break and for Amber to waymark the bluff on her GPS unit.
‘Why did they go that way?’ asked Alex, frowning at the Unimog’s tracks veering off to the west. ‘It would’ve been quicker to cut round the eastern side of the bluff.’
‘Yeah, but if they’d gone east, they would have been in full view of that,’ said Amber, pointing out an oil installation that squatted out on the plain to the eastern side of the bluff. ‘Security is tight around those places, and the last thing the Scorpion wanted was a bunch of armed guards coming out to investigate him.’
While the others drank their share of water from the girba, Alex took his binoculars from his pannier and focused on the drilling post. The gas burn-off reared above the pumps like a vast, smoky candle and black pipes stretched to the horizon, carrying away oil that had formed from sediments deposited at the bottom of a Saharan ocean four hundred million years earlier. A small cluster of Nissen-type huts and steel cargo boxes sat inside a fenced compound about the size of a football pitch, with a helicopter pad off to one side. Alex guessed that the oil men were housed in those huts, in air-conditioned comfort.
Amber was right, he noted. Both the compound and the wells were patrolled by armed men. As Alex watched, he caught the flash of sun on binoculars. One of the guards was scanning the plain around the installation. Hurriedly, Alex lowered his own binoculars, suddenly feeling very exposed.
‘Let’s move on,’ he said, anxious to get out of sight behind the bluff.
They kept close to the base of the bluff, glad of the shade it provided for them as they travelled through the hottest part of the day. The sandstone had been carved into fantastic shapes by the wind and the walls were dotted with caves. It took them half an hour to travel the length of the bluff, then they were out of its shade and back in the full heat of the desert sun, but they kept going, determined to catch up with Li before night fell.
The sun was low and the shadows long when Amber slapped Alex on the shoulder. Alex jumped. He had fallen into an almost trance-like condition as he followed the Unimog tracks through the desert with the sun beating down on his head.
‘Border!’ yelled Amber.
‘What?’
‘Border coming up! Stop!’
Alex brought the quad to a halt and Paulo pulled up beside him. Amber showed them the map on her GPS unit. The border was clearly marked on the little screen, but there was nothing ahead of them to show that they were about to cross over into Morocco; just the flat plain with the Unimog tracks cutting across it towards a range of low dunes. Alex lifted his binoculars and scanned the area.
‘What are you expecting to see?’ drawled Hex. ‘A red line marking the border? Or maybe a little checkpoint, just for us?’
‘There might be soldiers,’ said Alex.
‘Out here?’ Hex snorted. ‘Why would they be out here? There isn’t even a road. That’s why the Scorpion came this way.’
‘I know it’s unlikely,’ said Alex tightly. ‘But it would be stupid to head into danger unprepared.’
‘But that was just what you let Li do,’ said Paulo. ‘Wasn’t it?’
The three of them glared at one another. They knew they should stop, but they were all feeling tired and dehydrated and wanting to take it out on someone.
‘Guys, back down!’ yelled Amber. ‘Can we focus, please? According to my GPS unit, there’s a town over the other side of those dunes. It’s in Morocco, but only just.’ She grinned at them. ‘A frontier town. If I were the Scorpion that’s the location I’d chose for my base. I think that town is where he’s taken Li and the others. We’re nearly there!’
Paulo smiled for the first time since Li had gone missing. ‘Let us go,’ he said.
The town was just where Amber had said it would be, spread out beyond the dunes like a 3D map. Alpha Force lay on their bellies at the top of a dune, studying the layout. The only road to the town came in from the north. To the south, there was nothing but desert, with the Unimog’s tracks cutting across it. The town was built beside a large oasis. Unlike the dying well back at the village, this oasis was green and thriving. There was a large palmery around the edge, full of the feathery tops of date palms. Further in, there were terraces of olive, almond and fruit trees. Looking through his binoculars, Alex could even see grain and vegetable crops planted beneath the trees.
‘There must be a big reserve of underground water here,’ he muttered, studying the oasis.
‘Forget the water,’ said Amber, snatching the binoculars. ‘Is there any sign of the Unimog?’
‘You won’t see it from up here, even with binoculars,’ said Hex. ‘There are too many alleyways and courtyards where it could be hidden.’
Amber threw him a look, then raked the binoculars back and forth across the town. Hex was right, of course. The houses were the white, flat-roofed buildings typical of the area and they all had deep courtyards to provide shade. Amber shifted the binoculars to the busy souk in the centre of the town. She could see hole-in-the-wall shops and market stalls and people thronging the streets, enjoying the relative cool of the early evening.
‘That’s where we should go,’ she said, handing the binoculars back to Alex. ‘The souk. The market. They sell everything there. If we want to know about slaves for sale, that’s the place to find out.’
S
IXTEEN
IXTEEN
The Scorpion unlaced the canvas at the back of the Unimog and yanked open the flaps, making everyone blink in the sudden brightness.
‘We have arrived,’ he said.
It was four long hours since they had left Hakim bleeding and screaming in the desert. The shocked group in the back of the Unimog had needed no more convincing from Li of the Scorpion’s intention to sell them into slavery. As the vehicle rattled on through the desert, they had clustered around Li and Khalid in the hot, stinking darkness, demanding to know the escape plan. Khalid had proudly told them all about Alpha Force, explaining that Li’s friends Alex, Amber, Hex and Paulo were tracking the Unimog to the Scorpion’s base, where they would carry out their rescue plan.
Li had smiled and nodded in agreement, but underneath her smiles she was much less confident of rescue. She had not told Khalid that she had left her tracker device out in the desert with Hakim. And there was another problem. The sandstorm. She knew it must have delayed Alpha Force, but by how much? Even if they managed to find her without the tracker device, would they get there before the auction?
‘Out! Out now!’ yelled the Scorpion, gesturing impatiently at them.
Li gave the others an encouraging smile before climbing stiffly down from the back of the Unimog. Quickly, she scanned the quiet back street, but there was no sign of the other four.
The Unimog was parked beside a high, whitewashed wall. There was an arched, wrought-iron gate in the wall and the Scorpion pushed it open, hustling them through into an enclosed courtyard with a well in the centre. Li looked around as the gate clanged shut behind them. This was the Scorpion’s base. It was a long, low building, stretching around the other three sides of the courtyard. The side to the right of the gate was open to the courtyard and Li could see that it was one big, rectangular room with elaborate rugs scattered across the floor. On the rugs were low tables, set with hookahs, bowls of dates and pistachios and glasses with sprigs of mint in them, waiting for green tea. Cushions had been laid out around the tables to serve as seats. It could have been a room prepared for a party.
Except for the raised dais at one end.
Li stared at the platform and realized she was looking at the auction room where they were to be sold the next day. A shudder ran through her as she imagined standing on the dais while a roomful of buyers bid for her. Turning away, she scanned the left-hand wing of the building. This side was not open to the courtyard. The frontage was a windowless, whitewashed wall, with a stout, padlocked wooden door set into it. Li had a feeling that the room beyond that door was to be their quarters for the night.
The silence in the courtyard was broken by the sound of a high-pitched, complaining voice coming from the house that formed the main part of the building. The voice came closer, accompanied by the slip-slap of leather sandals on tiles. They all looked towards the dark, open doorway of the house and a few seconds later the owner of the voice and the sandals appeared.
She was a huge woman, with a broad face as worn and pocked as a piece of old sandstone. She was dressed in black from head to foot, but her sleeves were rolled to the elbow, showing massive, slab-like forearms. As she came into the courtyard, a non-stop stream of Arabic flowed out of her, mainly directed at the Scorpion and his men. The Scorpion ignored her. He was tending to his dog in a shady corner.
‘What’s she saying?’ whispered Li in French, turning to Khalid.
‘She is his mother. She is saying that he is late. She has only two hours to make us ready before the buyers arrive.’
‘The buyers! But the auction isn’t until tomorrow.’
‘No. But tonight there is a viewing. They are coming to look at us before they buy.’
The woman marched up to them, still complaining, and roughly pushed them into a line. She inspected them, tutting when she came to Khalid. She grabbed hold of his chin and turned his head from side to side, inspecting the scarring before she moved on down the line.
‘What did she say?’ whispered Li, once she had been inspected.
‘She says I will fetch less. But I don’t need a pretty face to weave carpets,’ said Khalid matter-of-factly.
Li felt the anger race through her at this casual cruelty. She narrowed her eyes and glared at the woman as she waddled on down the line. ‘She’s no oil painting,’ she hissed and Khalid grinned.
‘How can you smile at a time like this?’ demanded Li, staring at Khalid’s cheerful face.
‘Because we will escape tonight,’ said Khalid calmly. ‘Alpha Force will make sure of that.’
As Li stared at Khalid, she wished she could be so sure. At the other end of the line the woman’s complaints had turned into shouts and they both turned to see what was happening. She had hauled a bucketful of water from the well and plonked it down in front of Juma, who was at the head of the line. As Li and Khalid watched, the woman handed Juma a metal dipper.
‘
Yallah!
’ she shouted. ‘
Yallah! Yallah!
’
Yallah!
’ she shouted. ‘
Yallah! Yallah!
’
When Juma did not move fast enough for her, she pulled a thin, whippy cane from her belt and began beating him across the back of the legs with it. Juma yelled with pain and surprise. Quickly, Khalid translated for him. ‘She’s saying “Come on, let’s go!” She wants you to pick up the water.’
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