The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  No response.

  “If you know what I mean…” Sam said.

  He pulled heavily on the door and it opened right up. Inside the cockpit looked intact. The electronics were lit up and the radio was still receiving some sort of static. The pilot hadn’t fared so well. His legs had taken most of the energy as the front end of the aircraft slammed into the sand, sending his femurs, the long bones in his leg, into his torso. Surprisingly, his face looked untouched. His eyes were open wide staring vacantly ahead.

  Sam said, “You can relax, Tom. The pilots no longer in the mood to fight.”

  Tom asked, “Does he need medical help?”

  “I think he’s past anything modern medicine can do for him.”

  “Do you want me to come inside?”

  “No. Wait outside. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Sam looked past the grotesque remains of the pilot and reached for two unopened bottles of water in the compartment behind him. He glanced at the open tail spacing for any food. And found the emergency rations bag. Inside were another two bottles of water, several packets of dehydrated food, some medical supplies, and three glow sticks. He picked up the bag and climbed out of the broken wreckage.

  He let the door close and then quickly opened it again, because he heard the familiar static of the aircraft’s radio.

  “Come in Zogbi! Come in Zogbi!”

  Sam’s eye’s darted toward the writing on the side of the aircraft.

  It read, Zogbi’s Chartered Flights.

  “Zogbi. We copy your last transmission. Three people spotted sixty miles south-east of Bilma. We’re on our way. We’ll have men there within five hours. Good work!”

  Sam felt bile rising in his throat. His good mood had already deserted him. He turned around to face Tom and Zara. “We might have a problem.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sam looked at Zara’s face. Her usually hardened façade had been chipped. Her overtly self-centeredness had been tarnished by the prospect of getting them all killed. Her hazel-green eyes welled up, but no tears fell.

  She said, “I’m sorry to get you and Tom killed.”

  Sam shook his head. “Not yet, you haven’t.”

  “There’s at least five hundred men charging towards us on camels. They’re tired, they’re thirsty and their greedy. Driven by the dream of great riches that capturing us will provide there’s no way we’ll outrun them all the way to Mao.”

  “What about the waterhole?” he asked.

  “The well is covered with a steel door, which in turn is filled with sand to maintain secrecy, but the trackers will find it quick enough. Heck, someone amongst them would even know about its existence already.”

  “That’s okay, where I’m planning on hiding, they won’t follow.”

  She asked, “How?”

  “You’ll see. Just find me the well, and I’ll find you a place to hide for eternity.”

  “That’s it. I’d rather not have to die there.”

  Sam said, “Neither do I. Our agent spoke of an ancient place of sanctuary, hidden beneath the sea of sand, where he and his counterpart could make the regular trade of diamonds without anyone ever finding them. A place, I’m now guessing was in fact built by the Garamantes we both were lead to believe never made it this far south.”

  “They’ll track our footprints to the well.”

  Sam shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, they’ll never find us inside.”

  “If they’re certain we went in there, they’ll dig the place out with their bare hands.”

  “No they won’t. They’ll try to circle outwards, searching for our tracks again. The entire place will be covered in footprints, and they’ll keep scratching their heads over how they lost their greatest prize after getting so close.”

  “What if you’re wrong and this is just a well like any other?” she asked.

  Sam crossed his arms. “Then we’ll die there.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Four hours later, they were getting close. Zara made several mental notes about their location as she descended the sand dune. They might reach the well within the hour. Her mood was developing a second wind. If they could reach it in time, and Sam Reilly was right about the smuggler’s cave, she might still get out of this alive.

  Distracted by her thoughts, she didn’t see the desert horned viper. It was half buried in the sand with just its head sticking out. Its supra-ocular horns stood upwards like the horns of the devil. Startled, the normally relatively placid creature, began rubbing its scales together making a distinctive rasping sound.

  It was the sound, more frightening than a rattlesnake, which startled Zara.

  She screamed a vicious oath and jumped out of its way. She ran twenty or more feet down the sand dune before she landed on her side and rolled. When she came to a stop, she quickly stood up and looked back up the sand dune, where she could already see the snake rapidly sidewinding in the opposite direction.

  Zara breathed in and gently exhaled. She’d never been particularly frightened of snakes, but nor was she very fond of an early, and painful death by poisoning. She reached for her bag and swore again. It was still twenty feet up the dune.

  She quickly climbed to retrieve her bag. Picking it up, she noticed it was lighter than it should have been.

  The book’s missing!

  Her eyes scanned the area and found the book of Nostradamus half open in the sand. She ran over and grabbed it, quickly brushing the sand off before placing it back in its casing. She then stopped, and caught her breath, because a small sheet of folded paper fell out of the codex.

  Zara picked the paper up and unfolded it. Tiny holes in the paper formed in the crease, suggesting it had been that way for centuries. She glanced at the paper and shook her head. It was a carefully scribbled note written in the same hand as the other one allegedly by Nostradamus.

  She began reading it…

  Today you will meet a man who has traveled from someplace far away. He has been sent to this land for a very specific purpose. You must not let him complete that purpose. No matter how much you might want him to.

  She finished reading the second half of the note, unable to believe what was written, and yet certain it was true.

  “What are you reading?” Sam interrupted her.

  She smiled. “Re-reading actually. It’s another note Nostradamus left me. But like everything so far, I don’t quite know what to make of it.”

  He asked, “Can I help?”

  She folded the note, slid it inside the binding and locked the codex again. “No. This I have to do on my own.”

  “Okay.” Sam stood up from their five minute rest stop and continued walking south.

  She watched him leave. His feet sank heavily into the sand as he stepped. She knew Sam could never see the note. If he ever saw the second half of the note he would never trust her again.

  How could he? She bit her lower lip. I don’t even trust myself with the new information.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Sam ran downwards along the gradually declining sand until it leveled out. His blue eyes scanned the region, searching for a sign of the well Zara had told him about. The entire region was filled with sands which softly undulated into constant waves of perfect dunes. The sand, once eroded from the Air Mountains and Ténéré Mountains, had been carried along the plains for thousands of years.

  Unable to see anything but sand, he turned to face Zara. “Where is it?” Sam asked.

  Zara smiled. “Right in front of us.”

  “Where? I don’t see anything?”

  “I’ll show you. See that spot over there, where the sand looks like it’s been recently burned by fire?”

  Sam glanced at it and nodded. It could have been a place where local nomads had recently used a fire to boil their tea. Definitely nothing explicit enough to be used as a landmark, unless you already knew exactly what you were after.

  Zara walked slowly towards the darkened sand. “It used to be t
he site of the Tree of Ténéré – what was once considered the most isolated tree on the planet. An ancient acacia raddiana. The last remnant of trees within the region when the Erg of Bilma was still a wet-region, flowing with life. Acacia raddiana have been known to commonly live upwards of 650 years, but this one might have been around much longer. Until recently, it, along with the Arbre Perdu, or Lost Tree in the north were the only trees noted as landmarks on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000.”

  “It must have drawn from a water table somewhere below us.”

  Zara nodded again. “During the winter of 1938–1939, when fears of war in North Africa were becoming increasingly frequent, a well was dug near the tree to improve supply demands from Niger and Chad. Do you know what they found?”

  Sam shook his head. “What?”

  “The roots of the tree reached the water table at a depth of a hundred and eight feet.”

  “That’s the well we’re looking for?” he asked.

  “No. That well was filled in 1941 by Mussolini’s troops, in an attempt to block supplies from the south. The one we’re looking for is nearby.”

  “What happened to the acacia raddiana?” Sam asked.

  “The water dried up and with it, all kinds of vegetation.”

  Sam grinned. “No. I mean, what happened to the last tree?”

  Zara sighed. “Some drunken idiot crashed his four wheel drive into it.”

  Sam laughed and glanced around. There was nothing but sand in every direction all the way to the horizon. “Out here?”

  She nodded and stopped at the darkened sand. “Afraid so.”

  Sam watched as she took in her exact location in relation to the sun and turned to her left. She took small, measured steps forwards. He followed as Zara counted out sixty-five steps and stopped. Without saying a word, she began digging in the sand with her bare hands.

  Sam and Tom quickly joined in. Within minutes they’d cleared the top sand and found a large iron cover. The original well probably never had a cover. Sam guessed it was a more recent addition, brought by some traveling smuggler who wanted to keep the trail blocked off to most travelers. Take away a major water supply in the desert and you exclude travel routes.

  Sam and Tom pulled on the cover. It was heavy. Even between the three of them, they were having trouble shifting it. They cleared away the rest of the sand. At the base an old padlock barred the entrance.

  “Christ!” Zara said. “Who padlocks the only water for hundreds of miles?”

  “A new addition?” Tom asked.

  She nodded. “Locking the only source of water for hundreds of miles is akin to giving someone who needs it, a death sentence. I can’t even imagine who would do this.”

  “Someone who doesn’t want it to disappear.” Sam took the butt of his AK-47 and slammed it into the padlock. On the fourth try, the rusted lock gave way.

  Sam helped Tom pull open the heavy, hinged, cover and all three of them stared into the well. It looked deep. A lot deeper than he was expecting. Every foot of the hundred and eight below the surface, which Zara had described of the once nearby well, possibly even more. Narrow enough they could easily use the sides push their legs off and slowly shimmy down to the water, but not too narrow to make it difficult to maneuver. Sam wondered whether they’d be able to climb back out once their feet were wet, afterwards. He decided now was the wrong time to voice his concerns.

  “It’s deeper than I was expecting,” Sam admitted.

  “It’s a hundred and sixty feet deep,” Zara said.

  “There’s a second water table?”

  She looked pleased that he’d made the connection, and smiled. “Yes.”

  Sam removed the emergency kit he’d taken from Zogbi’s wrecked plane and dropped it on the ground beside the well. His eyes glanced up at something that glistened on the horizon. He squinted against the sun as he tried to make out exactly what he saw.

  “What is it?” Zara asked.

  Sam sighed. “We have company.”

  Tom’s eyes darted to the horizon. He was blessed to be born with 20:10 vision, or a visual acuity score twice as accurate at distance than the average person with 20:20 vision. “There’s three riders on the ridge. No. Wait. Make it four. They’ve crept ahead of the rest of our pursuers. They’re riding camels, pretty quick by the looks of it.”

  Zara studied the horizon. “They must have come from Bilma. They’re riding fresh beasts.”

  “How long do we have?” Sam asked, turning to Zara’s lifetime of experience in traveling through the region.

  “An hour. Maybe less?” she replied.

  Sam stared as the riders approached down the sand dune near the horizon. They had crept at least two, possibly even three miles ahead of the rest of their pursuers. They came fast. Their beasts, most likely out from Bilma were fresh and willing to be provoked into moving at speed. Four riders in total. They had come to kill everyone and capture their prize – the book of Nostradamus.

  For some reason his mind turned to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, famine, fear and death. There was no way he could determine which one was coming, but all he saw was death. It seemed so unbelievably unfair. After all the distance they’d traveled, they were going to get caught climbing into the ancient well and their hiding spot. Behind those four riders a dust plume spilled high into the horizon. The rest of their pursuers were scattered somewhere between two and three miles behind.

  Zara looked up at him as though she could read his concerns. “If you don’t kill them now, they’ll know for certain that we’re in the well.”

  Tom loaded the remaining magazine into the chamber of his AK-47. “Then we’ll have to make sure they don’t get to see us go in.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “I’ll check this well out. Zara, you and Tom circle back and make some additional trails in the sand for them to track. Hopefully they’ll think we filled our water flasks, and kept going south, towards Lake Chad. We might still lose them, after all.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sam opened the emergency supply kit he’d stolen from Zogbi’s downed aircraft and withdrew two green glow sticks. He pocketed the first one and then cracked the second one by bending the tube. He watched as the activator, hydrogen peroxide, flowed from its broken ampoule into the phenyl oxalate ester and fluorescent dye, where it mixed and created the chemical luminescence. The stick glowed brightly green. He tucked it into his belt and took one last glance into the distance. The four rider’s had disappeared down a sand dune – he would have to be quick.

  He sat down on the edge of the well and placed his left foot forward with his right leg backwards. Using a technique popular with rock climbers called stemming, he began his descent of the well. The concept was to place your hands and feet on opposite ends of the rock walls and push outwards as though trying to push through.

  Maintaining as much external pressure as possible, Sam began his descent. He shuffled downwards. Shifting his weight from each side to descend and using his hands primarily for balance. Apart from the risk of a life threatening fall if he slipped, the process was quite simple and didn’t require much effort compared to traditional rock climbing. He didn’t stop to consider the consequences of slipping. If he didn’t find a place to hide soon, Ngige’s men would kill him just as quick.

  Within minutes his feet reached the still water at the base of the well. He carefully lowered his left foot into the water, maintaining an increased oppositional pressure with his hands, Sam slowly dipped both legs into the water and then dropped.

  His head plunged below the waterline and his feet never reached the bottom. He quickly resurfaced. It was a good sign. The water was deep. If it had been shallow his theory would have already been debunked.

  He took a couple deep breaths in and out in a process known as hyper-oxygenation and then dipped his head beneath the water again. He opened his eyes in the cool water. Obviously untouched for at least
a month, the water was intensely clear. Sam removed the glow stick from his belt and held it out in front of him.

  The water in the well glowed green all the way to the sandy bottom.

  The water gave the well the impression it wasn’t very deep. A classic mistake in free-diving was to assume the water’s bottom was shallower than it really was because of the water’s clarity.

  He swam downwards, using his arms in long sweeping strokes, while his legs kicked vigorously. The well ended somewhere around forty feet below the waterline. The solid stone brickwork used to form the internal wall of the well, continued all the way to the bottom, which appeared filled with sand.

  Sam hyperventilated and then dived, face downwards toward the bottom. The water was deep, but barely an effort on his part. He worried more about Zara, but guessed he would deal with it once the time came.

  If he found the lost chamber…

  The old stonework stopped a couple feet from the sandy bottom. In its place were several large stones. They looked like they belonged. Most likely original pieces of stone carved off while the original construction took place.

  Sam ran his hands along the larger stones. Nothing moved. They were all solid. Through the awkward haze of his unprotected eyes he found nothing that benefitted his cause. No place large enough to hide, even for a short time. He’d hoped at the very least, there would be a protected ledge where they could hide while their pursuers passed by. He expected they would send hundreds of rounds of ammunition down the barrel of the well, but he doubted many would have been interested in climbing down after them.

  But instead, he found a solid circumferential stone wall that descended all the way to the ground. There weren’t even any cramped ledges which he could slide under or squeeze through. He ran his hands through the sand, slowly. He didn’t want to stir up the silt, but he needed to find what he was looking for. Perhaps his agent had buried what he needed?