Those in Peril

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘I am going to raise Paddy O’Quinn on the satphone. He can’t be very far ahead of us.’ He could see by Hazel’s expression that she knew it was a white lie. There were at least a dozen reasons why Paddy should not be just around the first bend in the pass, wearing his shining white armour, ready to rush to the rescue. However, Cayla brightened a little and wiped at the tears with the back of her hand. He could not look into her eyes and see the false hope shining there. Hector went back to the rear window and watched the oncoming trucks while he switched on the phone and waited for it to search out the nearest satellite passing overhead. He watched the little screen avidly, but it showed only a very tenuous contact which glowed briefly and then faded almost immediately.

  ‘The mountains are blocking us,’ he fretted. On the off-chance he dialled in Paddy’s number and heard the weak and intermittent ringtone coming and going. Then suddenly he heard a faint and unintelligibly garbled voice that might have been Paddy’s, or anyone else’s for that matter.

  ‘If that’s you, Paddy, you’re breaking up badly. If you can hear me, our situation is this. We’re on the old road heading into the mountains but the thugs are hard on our tail. I don’t think we can outrun them. We are going to be forced to stand and fight. We are heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Uthmann is leading them. You are our last hope. Come if you can.’

  He repeated the same message slowly and clearly, and when he cut the connection he looked up and saw that both Hazel and Cayla had heard every word even above the racket of the engine. He could not meet their eyes and he looked back through the missing rear window. The trucks were bearing down on them. Already he was able to recognize Uthmann standing tall in the back of the leading truck, and could faintly hear the voices of the men around him shouting triumphantly as they brandished their weapons. He looked ahead and saw that the mouth of the pass was not too far away, the red-brown rock walls looming up on either side of the opening. He picked up the weapons and the bandoliers of the two men that Uthmann had shot to death and handed them to the women.

  He knew that Hazel was an expert shot with the rifle, so he spoke to Cayla. ‘I know you are hot stuff with a pistol, Miss Bannock. But can you shoot an AK worth a damn?’ She was still too shaken and distressed to speak up, but she shook her head and gave him an uncertain smile. He pulled the Beretta pistol from under his tunic and handed it to her with the two extra clips of ammunition. ‘Ask your mother to show you how to reload the magazines of the AK. You can keep us supplied when the brown stuff starts to hit the fan.’ At the very least reloading the magazines was something to distract them from the menace that was creeping up behind them. He looked ahead at the rocky portals guarding the entrance to the pass.

  ‘Well, ladies, we are going to make it into the pass, damned if we aren’t,’ he said cheerfully, and started back to keep the enemy under surveillance through the rear window. At that moment they all ducked as a burst of automatic fire twanged and rattled on the body of the TATA, and a single bullet came in through the rear window, traversed the length of the bus and then shattered the windscreen in front of Tariq.

  ‘They’re getting a little impatient,’ Hector remarked with a reassuring smile at Cayla. He reached the rear window and peered out. The leading truck was just a few hundred yards behind them, and now he could hear clearly the shouts of the enemy, but they were still too far back for him to take them on with the old AK. Dust kicked up from the road behind them as the jihadists blazed away at them. Now he could see Uthmann leaning on the cab of the truck with his rifle ready, waiting his chance for another clean shot. He had a red graze down the side of his face and blood on his shirt, probably where he had hit the ground when he was thrown from the capsizing Hilux. It gave Hector pleasure to know that he had not survived the wreck unscathed.

  Just before they reached the mouth of the pass another burst of automatic fire slashed across the back of the bus. It hit one of the rear wheels. The tyre exploded loudly and the bus wobbled its rear end like a fat woman doing a Hawaiian hula. A moment later they rumbled into the mouth of the pass. For the time being the rock walls protected them from more hostile fire.

  Now Hector was forced to make a snap decision. The old bus was staggering along on its last legs. He could hear the ruined tyre slapping the ground with every revolution of the wheel and their speed was bleeding away rapidly. They could not run much further. He had to choose a spot at which to make a stand. The shape of the pass gave him a small prickle of hope. In these confined spaces Uthmann would have very little ground for encirclement or manoeuvre. He would have to come at them head-on. Hector stuck his head out of the side window and saw that the pass ahead was not very wide. Perhaps he could use the body of the bus to block it, and the steel chassis might serve as a strongpoint from behind which they could defend the way.

  He looked up at the red rock walls that rose on either hand. From this angle it was not possible to judge their height. The walls had been carved out over the ages by flood waters, until they were smooth and concave. They overhung the floor of the pass on either hand like the roofs of facing verandas. Uthmann would have difficulty getting men up there to fire down into the pass. Of course they could simply lob a few hand grenades down instead. That would enliven the proceedings considerably, but what the hell! Nothing in life came without its own little problems.

  He looked ahead and saw that there was a bend in the pass coming up. He glanced back. The enemy were still not in sight. The old bus reached the turn in the pass and clattered on around it. Hector stared ahead in dismay. Not far in front of them the way ahead was completely blocked. The righthand wall of the red rock cliff had collapsed into the pass, blocking it from side to side with an impassable barrier of tumbled rocks. Some of the slabs were as big as or bigger than the bus itself. His mind raced as he surveyed this obstacle. Then suddenly he realized that instead of a death trap this might be their safe haven. If they could climb the wall and get to the top before Uthmann and Adam arrived, it would change everything. The pile of rocks would become a formidable redoubt. Adam and his thugs would be forced to abandon their trucks and climb up to reach them, exposing themselves for every step of the way.

  ‘Tariq! Get us as close to those rocks as you can,’ he shouted, then turned to the three women and spoke urgently, translating for Daliyah as he went. ‘Now, the rest of you listen to me. Hazel! You and Daliyah go first, and take Cayla between you. Do you see on the left there is a low place between those two big chunks of fallen rock? You have to get through there. It’s not too far. Don’t stop before you reach the top. The rest of us will come up behind you. Every man carries his own weapon. I will carry the case of ammunition.’ That was almost a hundred pounds deadweight and he was the only one of them who had the strength to manage it easily.

  Tariq skidded the bus broadside to the foot of the wall, and they piled out and started to scramble up. The sound of the jihadist trucks coming fast behind them was magnified by the containing walls, reverberating in the close and heated air, growing louder every second. The increasing din spurred them onwards. Cayla fell when they were only just below the cleft between the two big rocks. She brought both Hazel and Daliyah down with her. Hector dropped the ammunition case, dragged Hazel back onto her feet and slung Cayla over his shoulder. He ran up with her and dropped her over the far side of the barrier of stone. Hazel and Daliyah followed her closely. Without a pause Hector turned and slid down the slope to where he had dropped the ammunition.

  ‘No, no!’ Hazel screamed after him. ‘Leave it. Come back.’ Hector ignored her and picked up the case. He was the only one of them still on the exposed revetment of the wall. He hoisted the case onto his shoulder and started upwards again. The bellow of the truck engines echoing off the walls was growing ever louder. He heard the shouts behind him and then the crack and whine of rifle fire. He felt a bullet slam into the wooden case on his shoulders. It knocked him off balance so that he tumbled over the top of the wall into Hazel’s arms.

&nbs
p; ‘Oh God, I thought I was going to lose you.’ Her voice was a sob.

  ‘Sorry.’ He gave her a swift hug. ‘It’s not going to be that easy to get rid of me.’ He turned swiftly to direct the defence. He saw that Uthmann’s truck had been forced to stop so violently that it had slewed across the pass below them. The second truck had run into the back of the first. Jihadists were tumbling out of both vehicles and running forward, firing up at Hector and his men. But Uthmann had not yet regained firm control over them. Hector, Tariq and the two surviving Cross Bow men dropped flat on top of the wall and poured automatic fire down on them. Men dropped under their fusillade. Their attack broke up; they turned back in disarray. They left several of their number lying on the floor of the pass. At this range, even the decrepit AK-47s were effective.

  Some of the survivors ducked behind the bodies of the two trucks. The rest of them sprinted back around the bend in the pass. Hurriedly the drivers of the trucks disentangled themselves and executed a series of three-point turns then roared back the way they had come, with bullets from the AKs smashing into their bodywork. When both trucks had disappeared, Hector counted six bodies that the enemy had left behind them. Two of these were still moving. One man was calling to his comrades for help and the other dragged himself back with both his legs slithering uselessly behind him. The men on the wall opened fire on them with gusto. Before Hector could stop them both the stricken jihadists were dead.

  Not really cricket, but out here nobody has even heard of the game. He had not the least sympathy with the dead men. He knew he could expect as much kindness and compassion if the roles were reversed, which they very well might be in the very near future.

  ‘Tariq, have one of the men collect the empty magazines and give them to the women to reload. Uthmann will be coming back very soon, depend on it.’ Twice more within the next hour Uthmann tried to storm the rubble barrier. These were both expensive attempts and there were now fourteen corpses lying out in front of Hector’s position.

  The silence after the second attack had been repelled was abruptly shattered by the roar of many more trucks arriving at the mouth of the pass.

  ‘Adam has radioed for reinforcements. Now he probably has a couple of hundred men down there,’ Hector told Hazel. ‘How much ammunition do we have left?’

  ‘We have about three hundred rounds left in the case you carried up here. You have been using it up rather quickly.’ After a pause she asked, ‘Why do you keep looking up at the cliffs?’

  ‘I’m trying to work out what Uthmann is going to do next, now that he has built up his forces.’

  ‘What will he do?’

  ‘He’s going to send thirty or forty men up there from where they can fire down on us. Once they’re in position they will keep our heads down, then Uthmann will launch another direct attack on the barrier. This time we won’t be able to repel them.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ she asked.

  ‘We get under the overhang of the cliff so the men above us can’t fire directly down on us,’ he explained. ‘Then we build some sort of rock parapet behind which we can shelter from enfilading fire.’

  The three women kept watch from the top of the barrier, while Hector and the rest of the men threw up a stone parapet under the overhang. They worked fast piling stones roughly on top of each other. When they had finished they came back to their original positions beside the women to wait for the next frontal attack.

  Hazel reviewed their preparations in silence for a while, and then she said softly so that Cayla could not hear, ‘This isn’t going to work, is it?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘not for very long, anyway.’

  ‘What do we do after that?’

  ‘How good are you at praying? I am completely out of practice.’

  ‘You could try to contact Paddy O’Quinn again,’ she suggested.

  ‘That can’t do much harm. At least it will pass the time,’ he agreed and switched on the satphone. ‘In the meantime I want you to take the other women down to shelter behind the parapet, before we come under fire from up there.’ He watched them go while he moved up and down the barrier, trying to find a place from which the phone could see a satellite. In the end he gave up.

  ‘It’s like being at the bottom of a well,’ he muttered to himself. He scrambled down to join the women behind the newly erected parapet and sat beside Hazel.

  ‘The lull before the storm,’ he told her quietly.

  ‘Let’s not waste a second of it. Put your arm around me.’

  ‘That feels good,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it just. But, you know, it’s going to be such a terrible waste if it ends here, like this. I had so many marvellous plans.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘If you decided to kiss me now, you would meet very little resistance,’ she admitted.

  ‘Cayla is watching us.’ They both smiled at Cayla, and she smiled back uncertainly.

  ‘Do you mind if I kiss your mother, Miss Bannock?’ Hector asked and this time Cayla shook her head and giggled.

  ‘You two are so damned naughty!’ She watched them kiss with interest. The kiss went on for some time, but was interrupted in the end by the sound of men’s voices echoing down from the cliffs above them. All three of them looked up.

  ‘Don’t go away,’ Hector whispered to Hazel. ‘I’ll be back to continue where we left off.’

  He stood up and reached for his rifle. He saw that Tariq and the men were already watching the cliff tops above them for the first enemy to show himself. Hazel and Cayla crouched down at his feet behind the parapet, both of them gazing up at the cliff top in trepidation. Hazel had the AK resting on the top of the wall with the butt in her shoulder, and Cayla had the Beretta pistol in her lap, holding it with a two-handed grip. Daliyah squatted behind them.

  ‘Can you shoot a gun, Daliyah?’ Hector asked. She shook her head and lowered her eyes.

  ‘Then look after Cayla,’ he told her, and she nodded and smiled, still not looking at him. He left them and climbed to the top of the wall, squatting down beside Tariq. Now they could also hear the voices of the men assembling around the bend in the pass below them. The rock walls were acting as a sounding board so that Hector recognized Uthmann Waddah’s voice as he harangued them, working them up to fighting pitch.

  Hector knew that the men on the cliff above them would show themselves first, so he concentrated his attention there. He saw a furtive movement against the blue of the sky, and he waited. The movement was repeated and he raised the rifle and mounted the butt to his shoulder. He saw a man’s head peering over the lip of the cliff and he fired a three-round tap. Chips of stone flew from the top of the cliff, and the head jerked back out of sight. Hector thought he had missed. He waited a few seconds, ready for the next target, then suddenly a disembodied rifle slid over the rock lip and dropped into the pass. It clattered on the rocks close to where Hector sat. Seconds later a lifeless human body slithered over the same place on the cliff. It fell with its white robes fluttering like a flag and landed on top of the rifle. The dead man lay on his back staring up at the sky with one eye and a startled expression. His other eye had been ripped out by Hector’s bullet.

  Hector went to the body and rolled it off the rifle. He picked up the weapon and weighed it in his hands with a surge of delight. It was a Beretta SC 70/90. For a moment he wondered where it had come from; then he remembered the Cross Bow men that Uthmann had murdered at the oasis. Clearly this was one of their weapons. The one-eyed corpse had a bandolier draped around its waist. Hector pulled it off. He checked the pouches and found there were five clips, each loaded with thirty rounds of ammunition. He slung the bandolier over his own shoulder.

  Quickly he checked to see if the optical sight of the rifle had been damaged by the fall. Before he could decide if it was still intact there was another movement on the cliff above him. Instinctively he swung the rifle upwards and in the magnifying lens the image of an enemy head appeared before his eyes with the
crosshairs perfectly aligned. He fired. The bullet struck exactly where he had aimed. The jihadist tumbled over the edge of the cliff and dropped lifelessly into the rocks at Hector’s feet.

  Hector’s pleasure at having a real rifle in his hands again was shortlived. Almost immediately dozens of other turbaned heads began popping out over the edge of the cliff and bullets drummed like tropical rain on the rocks around them. The war cries of the enemy resounded off the walls. They were coming from the assault force that Uthmann Waddah was assembling lower down the pass.

  ‘Come on,’ Hector yelled at Tariq and the two surviving men. ‘We can’t stay here to be picked off like fleas on a dog’s belly. We have to get under the overhang!’ They jumped up and started down the reverse side of the barrier. Almost immediately one of his men was hit by the bullets from above. He went down with that peculiar rag-doll limpness which Hector knew was death. Nevertheless Hector stopped in the middle of the firestorm to make certain that the fallen man was beyond help. Then he jumped up again and started after the other two. Before they reached the bottom of the barrier and were under the rock overhang Tariq was hit, and he went down sprawling. Hector saw the blood spring brightly on the back of his tunic and a dark shadow seemed to pass before Hector’s own eyes.

  ‘Not Tariq. Please God, not him.’ He changed his rifle to his left hand and with barely a check in his run he scooped Tariq up from where he had fallen. Tariq was not a heavily built man and Hector carried him easily and dropped him behind the stone parapet.