by Nick Cook
‘Dig! You big son of a bitch!’ Jones shouted. ‘I don’t want to end up a passenger on this operation.’
As Bitov tore into the sand again, he ripped a nail clean off a finger on his good hand. He ignored the pain. He knew now what Jones was trying to do.
Jones pushed the starshina into the hole.
‘Hold your breath and trust me,’ the American said, throwing his bush hat over Bitov’s face. He heaped the sand on top of the Russian’s body, praying that the grains, cooled by the bitter-chill tempera-ture of the night, were enough to fool the Sikorsky’s heat-sensor.
Jones saw two shadows moving against the stars. From their engines, the helos were now less than two miles away, easily within identification range. They seemed impossibly close already, when he hurled himself into his hole and shovelled the sand over himself. Jones took a last, deep lungful of air and pressed back into his makeshift grave. He heaped sand over his face and the grains poured into his ears and up his nose. He fought an overpowering urge to break free from his claustrophobic tomb and plunged his arm into the cool sand beside him. As he lay in his barrow, Jones felt every minute rock particle vibrate against his skin as the rotors beat the ground above him.
Jones’s lungs were at bursting point when at last he felt the change in tempo as the MH-53s began their climb-out. He no longer cared which way the FLIR turrets were pointing when he punched out of his grave.
Bitov followed a moment later coughing up dust.
The sound of the Jollies receded to the west. Jones guessed that the FLIR operator would be doing some fast talking, trying to convince his crewmates that he really had picked up two human signatures on his TV FLIR display. The others would be berating him for confusing a couple of desert foxes for soldiers. There would be a few jokes. Some asshole would wise-crack something about it being easy, mistaking animals for special forces.
‘How did you know?’ Bitov asked.
‘You learn that kind of thing in the Pathfinders,’ Jones said.
They took a drink and resumed their trek across the desert, settling back into the monotony of the march. For Jones the action would have provided a welcome distraction, but for the shortage of water. He shook the bottle. The unexpected expenditure of energy had pushed up their water needs. He had had no choice but to sanction double rations. They were dangerously low now.
He went back to a detailed examination of the sores in his mouth and tried to forget about their predicament.
The cool waters of the well that lay somewhere on the edge of the sand sea were not merely inviting now. They would soon be the difference between life and death.
Girling knew the Israeli Embassy would be little short of a fortress. Israeli embassies always were.
Being the Sabbath, few had entered and left. The fact that it happened to be the Jewish day of rest helped his case, because there were fewer people to watch. He was sure Lazan was in there somewhere. It was just a matter of time before he or she left the building.
Even though he had parked the car in the shade of a large tree, the interior was sweltering. He took another sip of hot Coke and put the tin back on the dashboard.
Using the binoculars to try and peek past the blinds into the windows was a periodic distraction, but it told him next to nothing. A sniper would have been similarly frustrated. The Israelis thought of every-thing. Here, they would be doubly stringent. The Israeli Embassy in Cairo was an island in a sea of potential hostility.
Girling had done stake-outs during his period at The Times. Then, it had been OK to distract himself with music, or to let his gaze drift when a girl walked by, or simply to daydream.
Under the circumstances, boredom was a luxury which he tried to deny himself. His reveries always ended the same way: Stansell shackled by a chain to the wall, in the dark, his cell little bigger than a cupboard. Sometimes a figure with Abu Tarek’s face - eyes wild and black as night - would bring food, or water. And sometimes he would bring a stick, or a steel bar, or a soldering iron attached to a car battery.
He shook his head and the image disappeared. He was left staring at the entrance to the embassy again.
Number 22 Ibn Zanki Street, the place listed as Lazan’s home address, had been an apartment block. Girling had studied every person who left the building between six thirty and nine o’clock. Sitting in the lobby of a hotel opposite, he counted fifteen potential Lazans leaving for work.
Next he picked up a car from a rental firm in one of the major hotels. He went for a BMW, partly because Kelso was paying for it, but also because it was the only car on offer that had a decent turn of speed.
The embassy door was opening. It was a curious air-lock - two parallel reinforced-glass doors bordered by steel frames. Girling raised the binoculars and adjusted the focus. He tweaked the focus another notch and the picture became crystal sharp.
A woman left the building and strolled, hips swinging, towards the main, outer gate. He scanned her face. She was dark, pretty and a little over forty, but he had never seen her before in his life, least of all in Ibn Zanki Street that morning.
The woman waved cheerily to the guard on the gate. They stopped and talked for a few moments, idle chatter by the look of it, before he let her pass. She walked up the line of parked cars on the opposite side of the street until she was parallel with his BMW.
Girling tucked Stansell’s binoculars under the street-map on the passenger seat and removed the can of Coke from the dashboard. He bent over the map and let his brow furrow, as if he was lost. When he looked up, she was getting into the back of a taxi. As the driver sped off she did not give him so much as a glance.
His gaze drifted once more to the entrance.
Of the people who had left Lazan’s apartment block that morning, three had been black-skinned - unusual for Israeli nationals, although not impossible - and seven had all the hallmarks of Egyptian businessmen. Girling left nothing to chance. He ruled no one in or out. He made copious notes on each person, even though he knew he could always fall back on a talent that had assisted him at varying times through-out his life: he had an outstanding memory for faces.
That left five likely Lazan candidates. One was a stern-looking woman in her late thirties wearing shoulder pads under a dark suit that was definitely out of sync with the weather. The second was a little too European-looking, but Girling included him on his list of probables. The third walked with a limp, was tall, frail almost, and wore a colourful waistcoat over an expensive shirt with links in the cuffs. Israelis, even civilians, usually dressed down: sombre trousers, topped by a short-sleeved shirt. This guy was almost trying to draw attention to himself; and in this neck of the woods - bandit country for anyone from Tel Aviv - that wasn’t too bright. The fourth and fifth were his two prime targets. One was tall, wiry, with olive skin, dark hair; about forty years old. The other was somewhat older, short, balding, and fit, judging by the way he darted across the road to his parked car. Looked like a military man, definitely the right profile for the defence attaché.
If he’d had time on his side, Girling would have followed them on successive days until the right one rang the cherries by leading him to the embassy. But he didn’t have time. The only other solution was to watch the apartment and the embassy in turn and wait until he got a match.
Girling wasn’t sure what he would do if and when he identified Lazan. There was no guarantee that Lazan had any of the answers. But one thought gave him hope. The Israelis were the best watch-dogs in the world when it came to their Arab neighbours. They had to be for their own survival. And Stansell had obtained his information from a source of the highest calibre. No one other than a spook backed by a hell of an intelligence organization could have given Stansell the information which set in train the events leading to his abduction.
In the absence of any further help from his father-in-law, Lazan seemed like the next best place to start.
Across the street, a vendor was wheeling a cart full of cold drinks and shouting his wares as he went. A s
ingle block of ice protruded from the midst of the trolley. Girling opened the door and crossed the street, reaching into his pocket for some change as he did so.
Fifty yards away, a car rocked slightly, although Girling, his back turned to it, never noticed the movement. Nor did he hear the squeak of its suspension as the driver shifted in his seat and adjusted his camera’s zoom lens.
The well was on the edge of the sand sea, its location marked only by a few piled stones. Behind it, the mountains of the Eastern Desert rose in jagged disarray towards the sky.
Jones and Bitov watched from a safe distance, their vantage point a rocky spur jutting into the sand. Both were in bad shape and neither made any bones about his predicament.
Two bedouin, nomads of the desert, each carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle, sat on the boulders by the well’s edge. A third bedouin, also armed, was standing on the rim, dipping the shadoof in and out of the water. Having filled the jug at the end of the long pole, he transferred it to their goatskins. There were four goatskins in all. One for each of them. The fourth bedouin slept beside his camel in the shade of a rock overhang.
The shadoof operator was too busy telling his animated story to notice or care about the water slop-ping carelessly out of the earthenware jug. The sound of splashing drifted to Jones and Bitov on the hot breeze, drowned periodically by snatches of guttural laughter.
Although they were two hundred yards from the well, Jones could see the sunlight glinting off the droplets. He looked at his watch. They had thirty-five kilometres and a mountain range to negotiate and twenty-four hours in which to do it. Without water, they weren’t going to get fifty feet up the rock face on the other side of the well. Without water, they were going to die.
Their progress had been pitifully slow. While the sun climbed towards its zenith, their water dwindled to nothing. For the last eight kilometres, they had been running on empty. Whatever the map said, Jones was beginning to think the second well had gone the same way as the first when, hugging the mountain ridge for the little shade it offered, they saw it. It was Bitov who spotted the distant circle of stones in the sand that marked the circumference of the well; Jones who saw the nomads and their camels chatting in the shade of the overhang twenty yards beyond.
For the past two hours they had waited in vain for the nomads to move. Two hours in which they had done nothing but watch helplessly as the bedouin brewed tea and talked.
‘I say we go down there and fuckin’ ask them,’ Jones stammered. His tongue felt like it was an alien part of his body, like it had no business being in his mouth. ‘I can’t keep this up much longer.’ He rolled onto his back and felt the relentless beat of the afternoon sun on his face.
‘Impossible, Yankee.’
They had been through this conversation already.
‘The Comrade Colonel’s orders were clear,’ Bitov added. ‘Avoid all contact with the local population.’
‘Come on,’ Jones said. ‘Tell me how the Comrade Colonel’s ever going to fuckin’ know?’
‘And anyway, the bedouin kill for their water,’ Bitov said. ‘They would not hesitate to kill us. They are armed. We have nothing to defend ourselves but our bare hands.’
‘We could still jump them.’
‘In your condition, Yankee?’
Jones noticed the blisters on the Russian’s face for the first time. Bitov was so pig-ugly, with his split lip and flat nose, superficial blemishes blended with his features. You had to look hard to see the sores.
‘You ain’t in much better shape yourself,’ Jones said, rolling back onto his stomach. ‘Besides, what the fuck would you have us do?’
Bitov lifted his eyes to the mid-afternoon sun. ‘Stop talking Jones. Be patient. They will move before long. And then we drink.’
‘So how come you’re so fuckin’ philosophical?’
‘Spetsnaz has taught me much.’
‘Stop shitting me, Bitov. Were you in Afghanistan?’
‘Yes. What of it?’
‘Was it as bad as they say it was?’
‘It was an experience.’
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘The question was... political.’
Jones snorted. ‘Political? What happened to glasnost?’
‘It is not a word often heard in Spetsnaz.’
‘Well, it certainly seems to have given the Comrade Colonel a wide berth.’
‘He has much on his mind, Jones. Do not judge him too harshly.’
‘If he ain’t careful, a higher authority’s gonna be judging him sooner than he’d like. And it ain’t necessarily gonna be the Angels of Judgement that’ll put him in the dock.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘The Pathfinders don’t take too kindly to this sort of treatment. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘This is discipline, Jones, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe if the Pathfinders had been more disciplined -’
Bitov stopped short of completing the sentence.
Jones narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t let me keep you from saying what’s on your mind, Bitov.’
‘We know what happened to the Pathfinders in Panama. Perhaps you should question your own colonel’s conduct before criticizing mine.’
Before Jones’s anger could spill over, there was a sudden movement far to their right. The three bedouin had risen from the well and were walking to their camels.
Jones could almost smell the cool, clear water. ‘Thank Christ.’
‘Save your breath.’
One of the bedouin pulled a rug from his camel saddle, spread it on the sand and lay down in the scant shade. The two others followed suit. The fourth, the one who had been sleeping, struggled to his feet, stretched and walked to a point between the camels and the well to begin his turn as guard picket. Even the taciturn Bitov allowed himself a curse.
‘Fuck it, I’m going down there,’ Jones said, stirring himself.
‘No.’
‘Look, if I approach from the desert, he’ll never see me. He’s staring out over the cliffs, for God’s sake.’
‘You will never make it, Yankee.’
‘Don’t you ever ease up? If we don’t get water, we die.’
‘I stand a better chance than you.’
In the end, Jones stuck two clenched fists in front of him and asked Bitov to choose between them. Bitov picked thin air and Jones kept the pebble.
Five minutes later, the American found himself squirming across the sand, the water bottle in his left hand. He kept his eye on the little he could see of the guard. The bedouin was sitting on a cluster of rocks about twenty yards beyond the watering hole, half his body hidden by the stone lip of the well.
Under the sun’s blistering heat, Jones’s sweat soaked his skin, his shirt, and trousers. A thin layer of sand now stuck to his body, giving him a little natural camouflage to help him blend with his surroundings. When he reached the well, he lay there catching his breath for a moment. Then summoning his strength, he raised his eyes level with the stones.
The guard’s back was almost four-square to him, but his head was turned fractionally, so that Jones could make out the harsh aquiline features of his face. The other three were fast asleep, the noise of their slumbering audible even above the deep breathing of the camels.
The tip of the shadoof seemed to tower above him, impossibly high. He could tell the jug was partially full, because water was dripping through the porous clay and splashing in the well.
Jones made his move. Silently, he clambered onto the sides of the well and stretched up for the jug, his eyes never deviating from the back of the bedouin. His hand slid over the moisture-soaked sides of the jug. He let it rest there for a second. The feel of it was pure magic.
Jones started to pull the shadoof towards him, praying that it would not creak in protest. As soon as the jug was level with his face, he dipped the bottle beneath the water. It burbled slightly as it filled, but nothing like loud enough for the bedouin or even the camels to
hear.
Jones placed the full bottle gently by his feet. He was in the act of lowering himself to the ground when a slight breeze blew in from the sand sea behind him. Even as the thought formed in Jones’s mind as a radiating pulse of fear, one of the camels jerked as if it had been stung by a scorpion and let out an enormous belch.
Jones froze. He had forgotten one cardinal rule of stealth. He had approached from upwind.
The guard started to laugh. He was pointing at his companion, who was sitting bolt upright, startled by the sound and movement of his beast. The look on his face turned to horror as his eyes met Jones’s. The bedouin stuttered a warning, but the guard was too busy laughing. Jones could see the rifle of the startled one poking from the holster in the camel saddle. It would take the bedouin several seconds to reach it, several more to ready it.
Jones ran. He hurled himself first at the guard, grabbing him round the neck and bringing his head down on a rock jutting through the sand. The American pulled himself to his feet, fighting the dizziness. He ran for the second bedouin, just as he was pulling back the bolt of the Kalashnikov. Jones hit him in the stomach in a flying tackle and heard the breath expelled from his lungs. In the split-second advantage allowed to him, he chose between the two other stirring bodies and kicked the man closest to a rifle, catching him squarely under the jaw. He swung round to face the fourth to find a Kalashnikov levelled at his chest.
Jones saw the bedouin’s finger tighten on the trigger. There was no question but that the guy was going to do it. Jones mentally crossed himself, and swore that he would see Shabanov in hell.
A barely perceptible movement behind the nomad prompted Jones to break his stare. The reflex saved his life, for instead of firing, the bedouin turned to find Bitov rising from the sand like a striking cobra. The Russian, cloaked from head to foot in dust, brought his foot up into the bedouin’s groin in a whirl of movement and choking sand. The nomad fell to his knees, dropping his assault rifle. Bitov snatched it before it even hit the ground.
It was the last thing Jones saw. The guard, whom he had only stunned, struggled to his feet, and before Bitov could shout a warning smashed his rifle stock over the back of the American’s head.