Sands of the Scorpion

by Bear Grylls

Peter laid out his own haul. ‘There’s not much food in the galley, but there is this . . . ’ He held up a small carton. ‘Aircraft survival pack. It’s got some rations and—’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll take that.’

  Next was a white metal box marked with a red cross.

  ‘Medical kit . . . ’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Oh, and one of these . . . ’ Peter held up a penknife. ‘All the other cutlery’s plastic so I didn’t think it would be very helpful.’

  ‘Perfect!’ Beck checked it – a single blade folding back into a wooden handle. The edge wasn’t as sharp as it could be but it still had a nice point on it. ‘Yup, that’s good.’

  ‘There’s, um, these . . . ’ Peter showed Beck a pair of large, clear plastic bottles full of fizzy drink. Beck pulled a face when he saw what was in them. It was the local brand of cola – a carbonated chemical brew designed to make you even thirstier and buy more.

  ‘We could use the bottles,’ he said. ‘We’ll tip them out and fill them up from the tap.’

  ‘And that’s about it . . . ’

  ‘Good work, Peter.’ Beck saw a small flush of pride creep over his friend’s face.

  He remembered the tool kit where he had found the screwdriver. He went back for another look through. There wasn’t much there he could use except for a torch, which he pocketed.

  ‘Um, dunno if this would be any good . . . ’ Peter was pointing at something that hung next to the door.

  Beck rolled his eyes. ‘Duh! Of course.’

  It was an emergency axe, the kind used to cut your way out of the hull if the plane crashed. Beck pulled it from its housing. He didn’t know how far they would have to walk once they had jumped. The axe was heavy, and as they grew more and more tired it would feel heavier, but it might still be useful.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Help me get this lot into the rucksack and then we’ll get you fitted for your first parachute jump!’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Oof.’ Peter staggered a little when the weight of the parachute dropped onto his shoulders.

  ‘Just shrug it on like it’s a rucksack,’ Beck told him.

  Peter wiggled his shoulders and Beck loosely did up the chest strap.

  ‘Right,’ he said, turning to the leg straps. ‘This is the important bit . . . ’

  The leg straps were a pair of loops hanging down from the bottom of the parachute. With a bit of help, Peter worked a leg through each of them, then stood while Beck tightened them around his thighs and checked them for twists. Then he adjusted the chest strap and tightened it all up. He had to pull the straps in almost as far as they would go to fit Peter’s small frame.

  ‘Why so important?’ Peter asked.

  Beck grinned up at him. ‘These are what hold you up. Without these you’d just drop straight out of the harness when the chute opens.’

  ‘So,’ Peter said faintly, ‘when it opens you’re dangling by your—’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Eek.’

  Beck finished by tugging on the shoulder straps to make sure that the parachute lay flat and snug against Peter’s back.

  ‘Right,’ he said. He looked into Peter’s eyes. ‘I don’t know how high we are and we don’t want to be in freefall for long. It takes many jumps to master keeping your body stable in a hundred and thirty mile-per-hour freefall. This is a crash course, not a freefall display. So, we’re going to hop and pop. That means we jump together and I will pull your cord for you as we leave the plane, right?’ He patted the emergency release – a handle on a much thicker strap against Peter’s ribs on his left side. ‘And I’ll pull mine right after that.’

  ‘Now, once your chute’s open’ – Beck clenched his fists and held them above his shoulders – ‘there’ll be a pair of toggles up here, right? One on either side. And you can use them to steer your chute. It’s called a ram-air chute. It opens up like a wing. Pull left to go left, right to go right and, just before you land, pull them both down together firmly. That will make the chute tilt upwards, which means you slow down, so you should touch down nice and gentle. Got that?’

  ‘Toggles, left, right, both down together, nice and gentle.’ Peter’s voice was wavering. ‘People do this every day, right?’

  ‘Every day,’ Beck assured him. He picked up the goggles and helmets, handing one set to Peter, then stepped back for a final look at his handiwork. Peter’s eyes darted around nervously. The chute looked as natural on him as scuba gear on a cat, but it would work.

  ‘Anything else . . . anything else . . . ’ Beck thought out loud.

  ‘Um,’ Peter said, ‘I know where we could get some extra food.’

  Beck’s face lit up. ‘Yeah? Where?’

  Peter simply nodded back down the cabin. Beck threw a puzzled glance at the cockpit. What did his friend mean? Steal the pilot’s sandwiches?

  And then it struck him. ‘Duh!’ he said again, and scowled at Peter’s broad grin. ‘Right.’

  Together they lifted the lid off the crate again and filled up the remaining space in the rucksack with tins of tuna.

  ‘And there’s a can opener in the galley,’ Peter said before Beck could ask. ‘I remember it.’

  ‘Right.’ Beck quickly retrieved it and slipped it into the rucksack, then tied it firmly closed. ‘My turn.’

  ‘You can’t really wear a chute and that . . . ’

  ‘I’ll wear the rucksack strapped to my leg. Chute first.’

  ‘We’ve still got some time to go, haven’t we?’ Peter asked nervously as Beck picked up the other chute.

  ‘Sure,’ Beck grunted. He heaved the pack up onto his shoulders. ‘But if we get ready now, we can jump at a moment’s notice. They’ll be on to us as soon as we open the door so we’ll have to be quick about it. Here, give me a hand with—’

  At exactly that moment there was a sharp bark from the cockpit.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  It was the South African. They all locked eyes for a moment and then three things happened simultaneously:

  The man’s hand flashed inside his coat.

  Beck frantically lifted a leg into the first leg strap, hopping and almost falling over as he did so.

  And there was a bellow of pain from the front of the plane.

  One of Beck’s legs was in. He spared a moment to look up in surprise as he tightened the buckle. The man was staggering back with his hand clamped to his face. Blood was pouring from his nose. Peter stood, poised, with a second can of fish in his hand.

  Beck quickly turned his attention to his other leg strap.

  ‘Why, you little . . . ’ The man’s voice was choked with pain. He pawed again at his coat. This time Beck distinctly saw the handgrip of a pistol in its shoulder holster.

  Peter threw again, hard, with unerring accuracy. He scored another direct hit on the man’s head.

  Beck vowed that he would never again call cricket a wuss’s game. Peter was the main strike bowler for the under-fifteens XI and he was saving their lives.

  ‘Hurry, Beck!’ Peter called.

  ‘I’m trying . . . ’

  The leg strap was a bit too tight and Beck couldn’t get his leg into it. He was hopping around again as he tried to loosen it.

  ‘What the hell is happening?’

  The second man had appeared. He immediately took in the situation and ducked down behind the crates before Peter could throw anything at him. He also pulled his friend down.

  ‘Give it up, boys!’ he called. ‘You’ve nowhere to go! We won’t hurt you . . . ’

  It would have been more convincing if the other man hadn’t poked his head, and his gun, up above the protection of the crates. This time Peter’s flung can caught his gun hand. The man swore as he pulled his hand back.

  Another rain of tin cans. The men could have just braved it and shot them, but they probably didn’t want to open up with guns inside an aeroplane. But any moment now they would decide to charge and simply overrun the boys.

/>   ‘There’s no time!’ Beck shouted. His chute was only half on, but he didn’t have any choice. It was go now or die. He lunged for the handle of the door and heaved.

  The door slid open and it felt like a hurricane filling the interior of the plane. Peter staggered back and bumped into Beck.

  Both men stood up, struggling for balance, and raised their guns.

  Beck only had time to slip one arm through the rucksack’s straps and grab Peter around the waist; then he pushed Peter backwards out of the plane. They were gone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Air and ground and sky whirled around them as they tumbled uncontrollably. A mighty wind roared in their ears and Beck was almost blinded. He hadn’t had time to pull down his goggles. Whenever he opened his eyes, the blast of wind simultaneously filled them with tears and dried them up.

  Peter’s yell rang in his ears. It went on and on and on. Beck still had his arms wrapped around him, and the rucksack was bulky between them. The boys were locked tightly together and plummeting straight down. Beck was the heavier, with the rucksack, so he was falling first.

  Still keeping one arm around Peter’s waist, Beck fumbled for his friend’s ripcord and felt his fingers close around it. He yanked, hard, at the same time pushing Peter away from him. A whipping, cracking noise. Then a blur of colour and motion right in front of Beck’s face. Suddenly Peter was whipped up out of sight.

  Now Beck had to get himself stable. He arched his back and flung his arms out wide; the wind flipped him over so that he was facing down towards the earth. Now he was in a stable position and, despite everything, he grinned. This was more like it. He didn’t feel like he was falling. The pressure of the wind against him made him feel as if he was just lying in bed, being blasted by hot air. If he didn’t have one arm still through the rucksack straps, he could have started doing somersaults, or banking from side to side, putting on all kinds of aerobatics.

  ‘You can do anything a bird can do,’ his instructor had told them on the course. Then he had added, with a wry grin, ‘Except go back up.’

  And that was the point. Beck was falling towards the Earth at about 130 m.p.h. This was no time for games. He felt for his own ripcord and pulled.

  The same whip-crack in his ears, and then a force seized his whole body and yanked him upwards. The furious rush of wind in his ears died down to a gentle rumble. The chute was fully open above him, a tent that blocked out the sky. Air pressure filled it out into a thick wing that thrummed like a sail. He was suspended in mid-air above Africa, and despite everything he gave a whoop of triumph.

  He looked up and saw Peter’s chute, already far above him. It was a red and white rectangle, sixty square metres of silk, soaring in the sky.

  They had survived. So far. Beck was still clutching the rucksack in his arms, so he wedged it between his knees and reached up for his control toggles. He steered himself in a wide, gentle circle. He would pull both brakes gently to slow himself down until Peter reached the same height, so that they could land together.

  The Sahara wheeled beneath him. It was a wind-sculpted landscape of sand, rocky canyons and plateaus. It made a vast wrinkled patchwork, with shades of brown stretching from horizon to horizon. A quarter of it was dunes. The rest was sun-baked rock, dry earth or salt pans.

  Beck looked vainly for any kind of landmark that could tell him where they were. No sign of any sea or rivers. Some of those darker lines would be dried-up riverbeds but they told him nothing. There might have been some mountains on the horizon – but they were so far away it was impossible to tell through the haze. Not a single road, no sign of any town or village or . . . anything. His exhilaration died away as the magnitude of where they were fully dawned on him.

  Six months earlier he had led his friends through the Colombian rainforest. They had had days to prepare, stocking up on supplies and then living off the land as they went.

  A couple of months ago, with another friend, he had traversed frozen mountains in the depths of Alaska. But they had had proper clothing for the expedition, a few basic supplies, and they had picked up more food as they went. And in a land of snow and ice it hadn’t been hard to find water.

  The Sahara Desert had very little food and even less water. They were wearing what they had put on when they got up that morning. And he was about to land in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a few emergency bits and pieces thrown together in a rucksack.

  ‘Beck!’

  Peter was now dangling in the air at the same height as him but about fifty metres away. Beck pulled on a toggle and his chute banked towards his friend’s. He was careful not to get too close. A mid-air collision would tangle their chutes and kill them both. Beck positioned himself so that he was flying parallel to Peter with a good twenty metres between their canopies.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Beck called back.

  ‘Bloody terrified! And my glasses fell off!’

  Beck grinned. That was the least of their problems. He could see that Peter had managed to put his goggles on.

  ‘Try steering. Pull the left toggle,’ Beck shouted across.

  ‘Whoa!’

  Peter banked sharply away from him to his left and almost turned a full circle. He also dropped down below Beck.

  ‘Not so hard. OK. Come right. More gently . . . ’

  Peter turned right again with a bit more control. Now his canopy was below Beck’s feet. Beck carefully steered himself away. His instructor had warned about what happened when two chutes got on top of each other. The lower one would steal the upper one’s air and the top one would collapse. Probably on top of the bottom one.

  OK, he thought, now what? We land and . . . um . . .

  On the ground, they were going to have to decide where to head. He looked at his watch. They had been in the plane for over an hour in total, gathering their supplies and getting ready. That meant they were probably more than halfway to Morocco. It made sense to keep heading north.

  He looked up at the plane, now dwindling into a dot in the distance. It was still maintaining its course towards Morocco – that was the way they wanted to go too, so it made sense to head in that direction.

  ‘Follow me,’ Beck shouted.

  He pulled on the control toggles, steering towards the dot in the sky. ‘We’re going this way.’

  It took about five more minutes for them to touch down. Beck didn’t know how much distance they had covered but at least they’d been travelling in the right direction. As they got lower he could feel the heat beating back at him.

  It was strange how you didn’t actually notice things on the ground getting bigger until the last moment, when they suddenly rushed up at you. A dune reared up beneath Beck’s feet. In a moment it had swelled up until it filled his vision completely. He hauled down on both toggles. This made the chute tilt up a little, which slowed him down as he prepared for the impact. He grabbed the rucksack and broke into a run the moment his feet touched the ground. A paratrooper couldn’t have done it better, he thought. He was down.

  He looked around. The landscape was dry and desolate. Baked earth, rocks and sand that would be almost too hot to touch. Beck had heard that a definition of a desert was somewhere that got less than twenty-five centimetres of rain a year. This certainly looked like it matched that description.

  ‘Ah-h-h-h . . .’

  Peter shot overhead and disappeared the other side of the dune. Beck had told him how to slow down but he wasn’t sure Peter had remembered. Knowing you are about to hit the ground can make you forget all your training – Beck knew that only too well from his own experience.

  He pulled on one of the steering lines, which collapsed his chute so that it wouldn’t pull him along the ground. Then he remembered that he hadn’t told Peter about that little trick and he swore to himself. He released his harness and hurried over the dune, feeling the hot sand shift and squirm beneath his feet.

  Peter was on the ground; his canopy was still billowing up behind him like a giant br
ightly striped animal. He struggled to his feet but it pulled him over onto his front and dragged him along the ground. Beck hurried after him. Peter kept trying to regain his feet but he was continually tugged forward.

  The canopy made straight for a row of scrubby bushes in the shade of a rock. The spiky branches snagged the silk, though the chute still billowed as it struggled to get free.

  Peter lay on the ground, still a little dazed, and fumbled at the buckles of his harness. The straps fell away as Beck came up to him and held out a hand, finally pulling him free of his chute.

  As Beck helped his friend to his feet, he saw that his eyes were a little glazed and he was already sweating in the heat. The sun pressed down and the wind felt as if someone was holding a giant hairdryer in front of them. Beck could feel the heat of the sand through the soles of his trainers.

  He assessed the situation: they could well be the only humans for hundreds of miles around. If he didn’t use every ounce of his skill, he knew that dehydration and sunburn could kill them just as easily as a smuggler’s bullet. It would just take a little longer.

  During the day temperatures could soar to fifty-five degrees Centigrade. A human’s core body temperature only had to rise 3.5 degrees for heatstroke to set in – which led swiftly to cramps, exhaustion and, ultimately, death.

  During the night you could just as easily get hypothermia as the temperature plummeted under the clear night skies.

  This was the impossible world of the desert.

  Beck grinned at his friend, baring his teeth without any humour.

  ‘Welcome to the Sahara!’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘We need to get out of the sun,’ Beck said firmly.

  Peter gazed around, squinting in the glare. There was nothing but sand and scrubby vegetation as far as the eye could see: small clusters of tough grass or bushes. Nearby was a leafless, thorny tree about the same height as a grown man.

  ‘Yeah, I think I saw a nice house over there,’ he said.

  ‘We brought our shelter with us.’ Beck put the rucksack he was holding down on the ground. He felt about in it for the penknife, then headed over to the snagged parachute. ‘Hold the canopy for me, will you . . . ’