The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan (11 page)

W
hen the
Shebelle
left the Italian port of Civitavecchia early the morning after Decebal’s coming aboard, it was shadowed by an Italian Navy submarine, the
Rodolfo Graziani.
For some time now, NATO had been keeping the ship under surveillance in the hope that it could track the pirates back to their secret lair in Somalia to destroy them for good.

To this end the submarine followed the ship as far as the Suez Canal where a U.S. military space KH satellite kept the
Shebelle
under surveillance until it reached the Red Sea.

A KH satellite is really just a gigantic orbiting digital camera with an imaging resolution of one inch, which means that it can see something one inch, or larger on the ground. In this way, the CIA had already managed to photograph Captain Sharkey and his entire crew of cutthroats while they were sunbathing on the deck of the ship. But back at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, they were surprised to discover a new man walking up and down the deck of the
ship and concluded that he must have joined the crew in Civitavecchia.

Whenever he appeared on deck — which was always at the same time in the morning and in the afternoon — he was accompanied by his own armed bodyguard.

All the same, he was hardly like any of the other pirates in that he was rather fat and pink. He wore a white shirt and a black tie, a waistcoat, and pin-striped trousers; he also wore a bowler hat. In short, he looked like an Egyptian bank manager.

This new man closely matched the description of someone long sought by police forces and security services all over the world. A high-level meeting of CIA intelligence analysts and agents was convened at which it was concluded that this new, unidentified man might just be the Egyptian “Mr. Big” behind all piracy in the Gulf of Aden, the almost legendary Sheikh Dubeluemmdhi. This caused great excitement in Washington and plans were put in place to kidnap the man as soon as the
Shebelle
reached the Strait of Hormuz that led into the Arabian Sea.

Here, an unmanned aerial vehicle from the USS
Wisconsin
took over the task of watching the pirate ship from afar. The important thing was to keep the pirates under surveillance without them knowing they were being surveilled.

This was easy since the noise of the ship’s old engines was more than loud enough to drown out the drone of the UAV’s single engine. And the UAV stayed at the kind of height that made it all but invisible to the human eye.

Besides, most of the pirates were too busy watching television or Mr. Groanin to pay much attention to what was happening in the sky eighteen thousand feet above their heads.

Having given his word as a gentleman to Captain Sharkey that he would behave himself and not try to escape, Groanin was permitted the freedom of the deck; it seemed better than being locked up in the hold; all the same he was kept under the gimlet eye of a pirate armed with an AK-47.

When he wasn’t taking exercise on deck, Groanin was kept busy in the galley. And unlike Decebal and his Romanian gang, the Somali pirates seemed to appreciate Groanin’s home cooking, which, it has to be said, was without equal in that part of the world.

Of course, this was hardly enough to make Groanin feel good about his situation. And he spent most of his time on deck reproaching himself for his own failure to appreciate just how well off he had been working as Nimrod’s butler.

“ ‘You never really know what you’ve got until it’s gone,’ right enough,” said Groanin. “And to think I used to complain about being in old Nimrod’s service.” He wiped a tear from his rheumy eye. “First-class travel, the finest food and wines known to humanity, linen sheets, my own flat, a Rolls-Royce to drive, everything a man could ever wish for, and more.”

He shook his head and glanced up at the sky, wondering exactly where Nimrod and the twins were at that precise
moment. Surely, they would have left Italy by now. Nimrod wasn’t the kind of person to let a little thing like the closure of European airspace, or a rail strike, stop him from traveling where he wanted to go.

“They’re all back in London probably,” he said. “What I wouldn’t give to be back in London.”

As he searched the sky, he saw what he assumed to be a star but was, in fact, the reflection off the American UAV’s fuselage in the high-altitude sunshine.

“Wish upon a star,” he muttered. “Why not?”

He thought for a moment and thinking that, perhaps, if only he wished hard enough and often enough, Nimrod, John, or perhaps Philippa might — if he believed they could — just feel or even hear his wish and make it come true.

“I wish I was back in London,” he said. “I wish I was back in London. I wish I was back in London.”

D
aylight arrived with the flying carpet somewhere in the sky over Egypt. At that particular place and moment in time, the ancient city of Kandahar lay almost two thousand miles to the east.

As the crow flies this would have been an eight-hour flight on the carpet. But for safety reasons, Nimrod decided to avoid overflying several countries including Israel, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, none of which care for unidentified traffic over their airspace.

“This is another great disadvantage of the flying carpet as opposed to a whirlwind,” explained Nimrod as they traveled farther south over the Arabian Peninsula to avoid these belligerent countries. “Being a solid object and about the same size as a decent-sized plane, the carpet shows up on radar. It’s not much fun having to take evasive action when some fool of a general decides that you’re unfriendly and sends up a military jet to shoot you down.”

“That’s something I’m glad I didn’t know until now,” said the professor.

“I’d have been glad not to know about it at all,” said Axel.

“Can they fly these jets with so much ash around?” asked John. “I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“I rather suspect that military jets will fly when a lot of commercial ones stay grounded,” observed Nimrod. “But, honestly. There’s really not much to worry about. Even if we can’t always outrun an F-15 or a MiG-17, their pilots are usually too nonplussed by the sight of people sitting on a flying carpet to shoot us down. More often than not, they report us as UFOs and that’s the end of it.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Philippa.

“No, it’s the surface-to-air missiles that we have to worry about,” added Nimrod. “They sort of arrive from nowhere and with no warning. So, from here on in we’d best start keeping a lookout. Even the Saudis are inclined to be a bit trigger-happy these days.”

“Keeping a lookout?” John frowned. “How does that work?”

“The same as on a whaling ship,” said Nimrod. “You and Philippa have keen eyes. Each of you, sit at one edge of the carpet and sing out if you see the spout of something coming our way. Better still, if either of you sees so much as a firecracker coming our way, you’d better use a little indjinnuity to deflect it.”

John winced at his uncle’s terrible joke.

“Like what?” asked Philippa. “What would you suggest to deflect a surface-to-air missile?”
“I don’t know. A flock of wild ducks, perhaps. A sheet of hot corrugated iron. A piano. Use your imagination.”

The twins did as they were bid and crawled to opposite sides of the carpet, where each of them looked very carefully over the side.

It was a long way down.

Philippa hugged Moby to her chest, feeling quite certain that the last thing she would use to deflect a surface-to-air missile would be a flock of wild ducks. Besides, making one living thing was hard enough, let alone a whole bunch of them.

John had his doubts about the whole idea. Being reasonably well informed about things military — in his time he’d watched a lot of action movies — he believed that surface-to-air missiles were attracted to the heat of a jet engine and since the flying carpet had no engine he wondered how it could home in on them at all. Then again, if it was aimed well enough, any rocket might just get lucky. And John concluded that Nimrod was probably right to be cautious about such things.

At one point, they actually saw the tiny pirate ship carrying their old friend Groanin as it steamed south on the Red Sea. And simultaneously, for just a few minutes, each twin thought fondly of him and wondered what he was doing, which was, of course, the immediate effect of all Groanin’s hard wishing directly beneath them.

I expect he’s back in London by now
, thought John.
Or perhaps Manchester. Assuming he managed to get out of Italy before they closed the airspace. Gosh, I miss that guy. He may have groaned and moaned a lot but he was a loyal friend. This whole adventure’s not really the same without Groanin.

Philippa was thinking much the same. But because her djinn power was a little stronger than her brother’s, she almost felt his presence and had to remind herself that he was not with them on their latest and perhaps last adventure.

Which is curious
, she thought as she looked around just to check that Groanin was not actually seated beside Nimrod.
I’ve grown so used to Groanin being around it’s hard to persuade myself he isn’t. I expect that’s what I was feeling just now. Yes, that must be the explanation. But why should I suppose that this might be our last adventure? That’s harder to explain. Could it be what Nimrod said back on Vesuvius? Something about volcanoes being linked with the destiny of our djinn tribe, the Marid? Or perhaps it was just the portentous way he said it, as if he had always expected something like this would happen. Yes, that’s probably it. At least, I hope so. I wouldn’t like this to be our last adventure.

Alone with their thoughts, the twins kept watch in this way for a couple of hours until they were over the Arabian Sea when they entered a bank of thick cloud and lost sight of what was below.

John returned to the center of the flying carpet. “No point looking out for anything,” he said, “in all this cloud.”

“Is it ordinary cloud, do you think?” asked Philippa. “Or cloud that’s made of ash?”

“There’s not much volcanic activity in this particular part of the world,” said the professor. “The nearest volcano is probably Taftan, in southeastern Iran, which must be almost a thousand miles northeast of our position.” He sniffed the air loudly and, behind the mask, he licked his lips. “Besides, the cloud doesn’t taste or smell volcanic.”

“Nevertheless,” said Philippa, “I can sort of hear a kind of rumbling from within the cloud.”

John listened carefully. “She’s right,” he said. “There is something. And it seems to be getting nearer.”

Everyone except Nimrod stood up and looked anxiously into the cloud.

“That’s not a volcano,” said Axel after a minute. “That sounds more like a motor.”

“A single-engine plane,” said John.

“I hope they don’t fly into us,” said the professor.

“They won’t,” said Nimrod. “I’ll make sure of that.”

“But what if they see us?” said the professor.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Nimrod said cheerfully. “If you were a pilot, would you report sighting a flying carpet with five passengers?”

“Er, no,” said the professor. “Probably not if I wanted to hold on to my pilot’s license.”

“Exactly,” said Nimrod. “Besides, there’s a limit to what I can do to disguise us while I’m flying this thing. A carpet requires a lot more concentration than a whirlwind.”

John pointed behind the carpet. “It’s coming from behind. There. Look.”

A strange, insectlike plane emerged from the cloud immediately behind them. It had long, gray wings, rather spindly wheel struts, and a large rear-mounted propeller. Underneath the wings was an array of bombs and missiles, but under the nose was the lens of a large video camera.

“It’s a surveillance UAV,” yelled John.

“A what?” Nimrod frowned. “Speak English, boy.”

“An unmanned aerial vehicle,” explained John. “A remotely piloted drone that flies without a human crew.”

“Yes, I understood as much when you said it was unmanned,” said Nimrod.

“The propeller explains how it was able to take off at all,” said the professor. “That kind of engine can’t be damaged in the same way as a jet engine can, by sucking ash in with the air and causing it to overheat.”

“The pilots are probably sitting in front of computer screens watching us from somewhere on the ground,” added John.

Nimrod was horrified. “You mean we’re being photographed? With a camera?”

“For sure.”

“Then get rid of it,” said Nimrod.

“Get rid of it?”

“I dislike being photographed at the best of times,” said Nimrod. “But I especially dislike being photographed without my permission. There’s too much of this sort of thing going on these days. Every time you open a celebrity magazine in the barber’s chair, you find a picture of some poor actress with her hair in a mess coming out of a coffee shop with her mouth stuffed with muffin. It’s rank, bad manners to photograph people in that way.”

“I don’t think they’re doing it for a magazine,” said John. “And it’s quite possible they’re not spying on us, but on someone else, and we just happened to get in the way.”

“Well, perhaps that was true,” said Nimrod. “But it’s true no longer. If I’m not mistaken, that camera is now filming
us. Besides, look at all those bombs and missiles the thing is carrying. Any minute now, whoever is watching us through that lens is going to conclude we’re dangerous and start shooting.”

“At five people sitting on a carpet?” Axel shook his head. “No, surely not. Why would anyone think we’re dangerous? None of us is armed. Therefore none of us constitutes a threat. Even the U.S. Army wouldn’t shoot at five people sitting on a carpet.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said John.

“Might I remind you that this is a flying carpet?” said Nimrod. “Without a flight number. That makes us an unidentified flying carpet.”

Axel shrugged. “So?”

“Did you ever hear of an unidentified walking object? Or an unidentified swimming object? No. Of course not. And that’s because there’s a lot less human understanding of anything when it’s flying than when it’s on the ground. Especially when it’s an object that’s not supposed to be flying at all. Like a saucer. Or a carpet. Even a commercial passenger jet that’s in the wrong place. Especially when it’s the military that is doing the understanding. Or not understanding, to be rather more accurate. ‘Shoot first, ask questions later’ is the motto of all army generals the world over.

“Then,” continued Nimrod, “there’s also the fact that the only flying carpets most people have seen are magic carpets in movies with Middle Eastern subjects like Sinbad and Aladdin. There’s a lot less understanding of all things
Middle Eastern than there used to be. Philippa? Get rid of it.”

Philippa hesitated. She wasn’t the kind of djinn who destroyed things lightly. In her short life, she’d met several djinn who were of a destructive disposition and acquaintance with them had taught her more than a little self-restraint when the exercise of her own power was concerned.

“Need I remind you that we are on a mission to save the planet?” demanded Nimrod. “It’s imperative that nothing interrupts our journey to Afghanistan. So get rid of it please, John, before it gets rid of us.”

John had to admit his uncle had a point. Several points. But how to get rid of the drone? Blowing it up was not an option, not with all the missiles it was carrying.

Then, following another moment of thought, a simple but effective device presented itself to his juvenile mind and, with the aid of his special word, he focused all of his djinn power into the creation of a can of spray paint.

“ABECEDARIAN!”

No sooner was the can of paint in his hand than John had gone to the rear of the carpet, reached out, and sprayed over the fish-eye lens of the camera.

“Can’t fly if it can’t see where it’s going,” he said.

“Perfect.”

Nimrod laughed and nodding his approval he increased altitude by several hundred feet, just in case the blinded drone fired off a missile in frustration.

“Well done. That’ll teach them for spying on people.”

Of course Nimrod was quite unaware that by spying on the Somali pirates, the drone could have assisted in the rescue of Mr. Groanin. In which case, he would probably have thought very differently about it.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, in the technology-packed surveillance room on the USS
Wisconsin
, the two UAV operators stared at their screens and then each other with a mixture of anxiety and incomprehension.

“Did you see that? Did you see that?”

“I saw it, sailor. But I don’t want to say what we saw. It doesn’t make sense. And I’m not even tired.”

“A bunch of people on a flying carpet is what it looked like,” said the first operator. “One of them was wearing a black mask, like a Harlequin. He must have been the evil boss.”

“But two of them were kids. And one of them was holding a duck. A mallard, I think.”

“And the other kid had a can of spray paint in his hand. The little punk painted over my lens.”

“That’s sure what it looked like. You’re right, sailor. The question is what do we do about it? If we report it like that, they’ll bust us. They’ll think we’re a pair of crazy loons and then they’ll bust us.”

“They’ll think we’re crazy and they’ll throw us out of the navy.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I dunno. We’re blind now since that kid sprayed over the lens. There’s not much we can do. Not even land the bird.”

“Push the joystick down, fly the drone straight into the sea, and report the thing missing. Let the people who designed the UAV figure out what happened.” The second operator shrugged. “It’s the only thing we can do apart from hit the self-destruct button.”

“Agreed.”

“Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and the drone will hit the pirate ship.”

Ten minutes later, the UAV crashed into the Arabian Sea a long way from the
Shebelle
, and NATO’s plans for the destruction of the Somali pirates and the kidnapping of the almost legendary Sheikh Dubeluemmdhi — otherwise known as Mr. Groanin — were themselves destroyed.

The pirates sailed on, still quite oblivious of the airborne peril they had so narrowly avoided.