by Chris Ryan
Paulo nodded, then turned the ignition key. The Monster roared into life. He patted her dashboard, then turned her nose towards the dunes and moved off.
TEN
As the Monster fought her way across the spine of the dune system the rest of Alpha Force saw how good a driver Paulo was. Time after time, he took the Unimog up vast slopes, moving diagonally across the incline at just the right speed to avoid bogging down in the soft sand. Time after time, he clambered down from the cab and climbed the next dune-face to see what was on the other side and plan his next move. He kept to the firmer sand of the windward slopes where he could, riding high on the side of the dune banks so that he had a downward slope for extra momentum if he needed it. It was exhausting work but Paulo stuck at it until, finally, they came to a dune-face so steep, he knew he would have to take it head-on. If he tried to traverse that incline diagonally, the Unimog would roll.
Paulo sighed and prepared to clamber down from the cab once more and check out the other side of the dune.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Alex, grabbing his binoculars and clambering from the other side of the cab. Instantly, he felt the skin on his face and hands tighten as the sweat evaporated away in the hot wind. The sun hit the back of his neck like a hammer, and under his gandourah and sirwal the sweat formed in a slick layer. Alex licked his dry lips and reminded himself that they were all due a water break when he got back to the Unimog.
They reached the top of the dune and Paulo’s exhausted face creased into a tired smile. Ahead of them stretched a sandy plain of low, undulating rises. ‘Dios,’ he breathed. ‘I thought we would never reach the other side.’
Alex grinned at Paulo, then peered more closely at the plain ahead of them. There was a cluster of low buildings about halfway across. Alex lifted his binoculars and focused.
‘It’s a village,’ he said. ‘Out here in the middle of nowhere. There’s a small date palmery around an oasis – and some tatty-looking mud-brick houses. A few goats on the outskirts, the usual thing.’ He held the binoculars out to Paulo. ‘It’s a poor place, not much to look at, but they might be able to tell us something about the slavers.’
Paulo ignored the binoculars. He was gazing intently over to the west. ‘We may not need to ask,’ he said quietly.
Alex turned to look and saw a fast-moving cloud of dust heading towards the village. Quickly, he focused the binoculars on the dust cloud and got his first look at the Scorpion’s Unimog. It was rattling along and the canvas covering over the back was rippling in the wind. The canvas was laced tightly shut to hide what was inside. Alex clenched his jaw as he imagined Khalid under that canvas, packed in with a scared huddle of other children, baking in the airless heat and hanging on to the bench seat to stop himself being flung to the floor.
‘They’re definitely heading for the village,’ he said, lowering the binoculars. ‘They must be planning a stop.’ He scanned the open ground at the base of the dune. ‘See that wadi?’
Paulo gazed down at the dry river bed and nodded.
‘Here’s what I think we should do,’ said Alex. ‘We’ll hide the Unimog in the wadi, then me and Amber can take one of the quads and head for the village.’
‘Why Amber?’ asked Paulo.
‘She speaks excellent French: if we’re spotted, we may need to do some fast talking,’ said Alex, gazing across the plain. ‘I’m hoping we can sneak in, though. If we take a quad, we can use those bumps and rises for cover.’
‘And once you are there?’
‘We’ll just check things out. See if we can spot Khalid. Find out how much manpower the Scorpion has. Then we’ll report back here.’
Alex grinned across at Paulo and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Well done, Paulo! We caught up with them! You did it.’
‘Not quite,’ said Paulo, looking back at the steep slope they had just climbed. ‘I still have to get us over this thing.’
Ten minutes later they were back in the Unimog. ‘OK, everyone,’ cried Paulo, over the noise of the revving engine. ‘Are we ready?’
Alex and Amber braced their feet against the front of the cab, while Hex and Li gripped the armrests of their seats. Paulo had explained what he was going to do. He was planning to push the Monster around the bowl of the dune like a rider on the wall of death, until he had built up enough speed. Then he was going to drive straight at the incline and hope for the best. They only had one chance. If the Unimog lost momentum and slid down into the soft sand at the bottom of the dune bowl, there would be no way of getting out again.
‘Go for it!’ yelled Li, and Paulo floored the accelerator.
The Monster roared forward, sending up huge gouts of sand from the wheels. The cab leaned further and further over to the side as Paulo circled the bowl, building up speed. The Unimog rose higher and higher up the sides of the bowl and a cyclone of sand and dust whirled outside the cab. Alpha Force hung on, feeling as though their bones were being shaken loose inside them.
‘Here we go!’ yelled Paulo, twisting the wheel. The Unimog roared as he pointed its nose straight up the slope and Alpha Force were slammed back into their seats. They held their breath as the big machine tackled the incline, straining to climb higher and higher.
‘Come on!’ yelled Paulo. ‘Come on!’
And suddenly they were all yelling at the tops of their voices. ‘Come on!’ They strained forward in their seats as though that might help the struggling engine. Slowly, the windscreen of the Unimog filled with sky and Paulo watched, trying to judge the right moment to take his foot from the accelerator. It had to be just as the front wheels of the vehicle rolled over the edge of the dune crest. If he eased off too soon, the Unimog might end up straddling the crest on its belly or, even worse, rolling back down into the bottom of the dune bowl. He timed it just right, easing off as the front wheels tipped and allowing the momentum to carry them over the crest, then he slipped into first to take them down the far slope.
Two minutes later they were neatly parked in the wadi at the base of the dune, out of sight of the village. Paulo leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
‘That was extreme,’ he sighed with a satisfied smile.
In the end it was Alex, Amber and Li who set off to recce the village. Alex had explained to Li that if she came too, they would have to take both quads, which lessened their chances of coming up on the village unobserved, but Li stubbornly refused to stay with the Unimog.
‘I’m coming with you,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve been sitting in the Monster doing sweet nothing all day.’
They took a twisting route, always keeping higher ground between them and the village. When they came to the last shallow rise before the settlement started, they left the quads hidden at the bottom of the rise and commando-crawled up the slope. Just before they reached the top, Alex signalled to Amber and Li to stay down while he checked things out. He was pretty sure they had not been heard or spotted, but there was no harm in being careful. Cautiously, he lifted his head above the top of the rise, then immediately ducked down again.
‘Bingo,’ he whispered.
Alex eased the binoculars up until they were resting on the top of the rise, then he peered through them as Amber and Li crawled up on each side of him. Directly ahead of them the slavers’ Unimog was parked on the edge of the village. Eight children were hunkered down in a row on the desert side of the vehicle, out of sight of the village. One of the children was Khalid. Alex had picked him out immediately, even without the binoculars. Khalid’s Arab looks and clean gandourah made him stand out from the others, who were all West Africans, dressed in crumpled, filthy clothes. There were both girls and boys, most aged between eight and twelve, Alex estimated, although one little girl looked as young as five.
‘Nigerians, I think,’ whispered Li, gazing at the bedraggled group. ‘Maybe Ivory Coast. They’ve travelled a long way.’
There were two men guarding the children, and a tall, rangy dog with yellow eyes was lying in the shade under the
truck with its tongue lolling from its mouth. One of the men turned to lift a girba from the side of the Unimog and Alex groaned as he saw the Kalashnikov slung across the man’s back.
‘Bad news,’ he muttered. ‘They’re armed.’
The man opened the top of the goatskin girba and poured some of the water into his mouth while the children watched thirstily. Then he poured water for the other guard. The dog scrabbled out from under the truck, wagging its tail eagerly and the man poured a stream of water into the creature’s open mouth. Much of the water splashed into the sand in front of the children. The little girl next to Khalid began to cry with thirst and he put a comforting arm around her shoulders. Finally, the guard turned and casually ran the upturned girba along the row of children. Quickly, they held out their cupped hands to catch their share of the sparkling stream of water, then they drank thirstily and licked their palms, catching every last drop.
‘Oh, this is evil!’ fumed Li. ‘We have to do something!’
‘It’s not going to be that easy,’ muttered Alex as he spotted the second guard’s Kalashnikov propped against the wheel of the Unimog.
‘Where’s the Scorpion?’ asked Amber, her sharp eyes noting that neither of the men at the Unimog had a scorpion tattoo on his arm.
‘Good question,’ said Alex.
He panned the binoculars in a slow arc, trying to spot the leader of the traffickers. The village behind the Unimog was nothing more than a ramshackle cluster of mud-brick houses that had seen better days. Many of them were derelict and abandoned. The houses were built so close together that the narrow, winding alleys between them were like dark tunnels. The oasis on the edge of the village was plainly failing after the years of drought in the Sahara. The network of irrigation ditches was dry and crumbling. There was still an inner ring of date palms growing around the well, but the skeletal remains of a much bigger palmery formed a sombre outer ring. There was a sandy square with a few mange-ridden camels gathered around a rusty water tank, and that was it.
As Alex studied the village, he saw a flurry of movement in the doorway of one of the houses. A tall, good-looking Arab man emerged from the house. He was wearing a layered headcloth to protect his head and neck from the sun, but that was his only concession to desert clothing. The rest of his outfit was right out of a bad Western. His cowboy boots were highly polished, his jeans were skin-tight and the sleeves of his checked shirt were rolled up to the elbow.
‘Got him,’ grunted Alex as he spotted the scorpion tattoo on the man’s left forearm. The Scorpion strolled towards the Unimog and Alex checked him for weapons. He was not carrying a gun or a rifle, but a large knife in a tooled leather sheath hung from his belt.
Two boys followed the Scorpion from the house. The older one, a boy of about ten, held his head high and did not look back as he walked away. He was holding the hand of a younger boy. His little brother was crying and dragging his feet, looking back at the woman who stood in the doorway with tears streaming down her face. She held out her arms towards him and looked as though she was about to run after him, but a gaunt man appeared behind her, laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and drew her back into the little house.
‘We have to do something!’ said Li, her face tight with misery as she watched the boys walk away from their home.
Alex shifted uncomfortably. The truth was, none of them had thought this through properly before racing off into the desert after Khalid. ‘I’m not sure what we can do,’ he admitted. ‘There’s no way we can take on three men with Kalashnikovs. Even if we wait until dark and try to creep up on them, that dog is going to raise the alarm.’
‘Couldn’t we put the mutt out of action?’ asked Amber.
‘Then what?’ asked Alex. ‘We can’t just grab Khalid and leave the rest of the kids behind. But we can’t take them, either. We don’t have the room. And what if one of those kids gets hurt – even killed – because of us. No, I think we must . . .’ Alex hesitated, reluctant to admit defeat.
‘What?’ asked Li.
‘I think we must hand this over to the authorities. Hex can send a message on his palmtop, giving them all the details—’
‘No,’ said Li flatly.
‘No?’ asked Alex. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I’m not leaving Khalid,’ said Li. ‘He stayed for me, back at the minefield. He risked being arrested by those Moroccan soldiers. So I’m not leaving him now.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ mocked Amber. ‘So what are you gonna do?’
Li stared defiantly at Alex and Amber. All the shame and fear and frustration of the last few days was beginning to eat away at her and she knew she just had to do something to help Khalid. She had to take action. But what?
‘I suppose you could just walk right up to them and ask nicely,’ continued Amber sarcastically. ‘The nice men might give Khalid back to you . . .’ She tailed off as a slow smile spread across Li’s face.
‘Good idea,’ said Li, scrambling down to the quads.
‘What’s a good idea?’ demanded Alex, sliding down after her.
‘Walking right up to them,’ said Li, rummaging in the box that was strapped to the back of her quad.
‘Li, you can’t—’
‘Maybe I couldn’t,’ said Li, finding the first aid kit and yanking out a length of wide, crepe bandage. ‘But Liang could. Look away, Alex.’
Alex frowned. ‘Why?’
For answer, Li lifted her shirt up over her head. Alex gaped, then spun round so fast, he nearly tripped over his own feet.
‘Listen to me,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Whatever you’re planning, it’s not a good idea. I think we should just head back to the others—’
‘OK. You can turn round now.’
Alex stared at Li. She looked like a boy. Her slight figure had been flattened by the thick crepe bandage that was wrapped tightly around her chest under the shirt, and she had twisted her long, silky black hair into a tight knot under her headcloth so that not a single wisp was showing.
‘Li—’
‘I’m not Li. I’m Liang. I came here from China with my father. He was a foreign oil worker, a labourer. He died in an accident at work and I’ve been left on my own. I need to find work – an apprenticeship maybe. I speak Chinese and French. I’m strong and I’m a hard worker—’
‘OK, I get the picture,’ snapped Alex. ‘You’re planning to walk out there and let yourself be taken by a bunch of armed slave traders. That’s very bright. Don’t you realize yet how dangerous these men are? It was you who was telling us how they sell the girls into the sex industry!’
‘That’s why I’m going in as a boy. I’m less at risk that way.’
Alex made a disgusted noise and turned away from her.
‘Listen to me, Alex,’ said Li, hooking the tracker locket out from under her shirt, ‘and you’ll see it’s not such a bad idea. I’m wearing my tracker. You’ve got the tracker unit. Once I’m in that truck, I can lead you straight to their base! Then you can call in the authorities and they can mop up the Scorpion and his whole organization in one operation.’ She dropped the locket back into her shirt, tucking it under the bandage to keep it hidden.
‘You know,’ said Amber softly, ‘it really isn’t such a bad idea.’
Li grinned at Amber and handed over her watch and the little opal ring she always wore. ‘Keep these safe until I can be a girl again,’ she said.
Amber took the jewellery, then gave Li a hug. ‘Be careful.’
Li nodded. ‘I’m going to work my way over to the oasis first. Then it’ll look as though I’ve just walked out of the village.’
‘Good idea,’ said Amber. ‘We’ll stay to make sure they take you on board, then we’ll head back to the Unimog. We’ll be right behind you with that tracker.’
‘Wait! Wait a minute,’ said Alex. He was floundering. Events were moving rapidly out of his control and he could not seem to get a grip on the situation. ‘You haven’t even got a weapon—’
‘I can
look after myself,’ smiled Li, adopting a fighting stance. ‘Paulo can vouch for that.’
Alex grinned despite himself, remembering how Paulo had once tried to make a move on Li. He had only tried once. Li had thrown him clear over her shoulder.
‘OK,’ he said, raising his hands in defeat. ‘I give in.’
Li’s smile widened and her uptilted eyes sparkled at the thought of getting into some action at last. She turned and headed off towards the oasis, keeping low and moving at a steady trot. Amber and Alex watched her go until she slipped out of sight, then they crawled to the top of the rise again and waited for her to walk out of the oasis.
‘She’ll be fine,’ said Amber, noticing Alex’s worried face.
‘I hope so,’ muttered Alex, watching as the Scorpion and his men roughly bundled the two young brothers into the back of the Unimog. ‘Because if she isn’t, I’ll never forgive myself for letting her go.’
ELEVEN
Li hurried out from the oasis, calling and waving to the traffickers in broken French, her face a picture of anxiety in case they left without her.
‘She’s good,’ breathed Amber admiringly, peering over the top of the rise. ‘She even runs like a boy.’
Alex tensed as the man with the Kalashnikov slung across his back spotted Li and reached for his weapon, but the Scorpion put out a hand to stop him. As Alex and Amber watched, Li stood in front of the Scorpion and pleaded with him to take her along too and find her a good apprenticeship. The Scorpion listened, arms folded across his chest, then turned to his men with an amused look on his face. They grinned back. It was not often a boy walked right into their clutches without a struggle.
Turning back to Li, the Scorpion made a show of reluctance. He reached out to test the muscles in her wiry arms, then pulled down her chin to check her teeth. Finally he shrugged and pulled open the canvas flap at the back of the Unimog. Li boosted herself up on the tailgate and disappeared inside the vehicle. The dog jumped in after her, the three men climbed into the cab and the Unimog trundled away, heading north.