by Steve Reeder
“You got no more bullets, Englishman,” he shouted. “Now I kill you.”
There didn’t seem to be an effective reply to that so I kept my mouth shut.
“Come out with hands up and I not kill you,” he shouted, contradicting his previous statement. Yeah right.
I couldn’t work out why he wasn’t coming for me…unless he was scared? No. He didn’t seem the type. Then it dawned on me. Either he too was out of ammunition, which would be too much of a coincidence, or I had hit him with the shots from the office.
Three evenly spaced shots thudded into the stable door. That took care of the ammunition theory. But those shots had come from a handgun. No more rounds for the M16? Let’s hope so. Handguns are notoriously inaccurate when compared to rifles. I would have a chance to make a run for it. Not a good chance but a chance nonetheless.
The main gate, which I could now see out of, was fifty-five to sixty yards away to my left. The handgun was perhaps the same distance to my right. I could cover sixty yards in say nineteen seconds in my present state, perhaps less with someone trying to shoot me. Still too long if he was any good with a pistol, or just plain lucky. So far I had been blessed with more luck than I deserved.
Hoping it would hold I stood up and, after a couple of deep intakes of air I made a dash for the gates, zigzagging as I went. I heard four shots from behind and saw them strike the wall ahead of me, and then I was out the gates. I ducked left behind the high walls and looked properly for the first time at the surrounding countryside. Sand, sand and more sand.
There was a strange shuffling sound from inside the old fort, for that’s what it was. He was coming after me.
I took off running for the only cover I could see: a bush seventy yards or so out in the desert. Halfway there I felt the passing of a bullet and tried to increase my pace, but the sand was thick and soft, dragging at my feet with every yard gained. My lungs were on fire and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.
A third shot, closer this time, slapped past my left shoulder as I reached the dubious cover of the bush and sank gratefully to my knees behind it.
I was exhausted. The days of beatings and too little food had sapped my strength. Fortunately, the guy with the gun didn’t look like lasting much longer. I peered from under the wilted branches of my sanctuary at the old desert fort. He stood unsteadily in the entrance; the broken gates hanging drunkenly behind him. The moonlight was bright enough for me to see the red stain growing across his enormous chest. A trickle of blood escaped his gaping mouth even as he raised the gun for another shot. At this distance I shouldn’t have been concerned about him hitting me. But then again, every bullet has to go somewhere. I flattened myself, hugging the ground.
He never quite made it. Slowly he sank to his knees and then sagged backwards till he lay awkwardly on his back with his legs tucked under him.
I waited. Five minutes turned to ten, then fifteen. Nothing moved. There was no sound at all. No wind moved across the desert sands and any creatures awake at this hour waited fearfully with me in silence.
Nothing moved. Not me and not him.
Finally, I regained my feet. Keeping my eyes on him, I walked slowly back towards the old fort. Did he move? Perhaps just a twitch? I stopped halfway, uncertain if he was really done for or not. Three times I made to continue, but held back. I stared at him and hoped he was beyond staring back at me. A slight breeze sprang from the north causing the bush to rattle dryly. In spite of the heat, the breeze felt cool against my skin.
This time five minutes turned to twenty. Then, just as I had convinced myself that it was safe, he muttered an oath and with a huge effort he raised the gun and pointed it my general direction. Three shots rang out, one of them passing between my legs.
Silence descended again, except for a strange clicking sound. He was repeatedly pulling the trigger of the now empty gun. A spasm ran through his body and the clicking stopped. Even as I watched, he sighed deeply and died.
It was safe to go back into the old fort now. I just didn’t want to.
Chapter 16
Where the bloody hell was I?
The old fort lay bathed in moonlight, and I studied it properly for the first time. It was small and seemed to be built of adobe; in other words sun-dried bricks of mud and straw. I thought about who would have built such a fort. The Mexicans of course, but I was fairly sure I was not on the North American continent if only because smuggling an unconscious man into the USA or Mexico would prove very difficult.
The French had built many such forts across North Africa during their conquest of Algeria and surrounding African counties. I knew this mainly because Hollywood had made so many “Foreign Legion” films. Some of them were even worth watching. Northern Africa would make more sense what with the Arab connection. I was pretty sure the British had built no such structures although my history was weak on this subject.
OK then. French North Africa. I felt better for knowing, but it didn’t help any at this stage. I looked about, left, right and behind me: nothing but desert sand as far as the eye could see. No road either and that was discouraging.
I decided to circle the fort and see what I could find, knowing all the while I was just delaying going back inside.
Keeping thirty yards out from the wall, I trekked warily around the old stronghold. I found no other building, no vehicles and no signs of humanity let alone civilisation.
All too soon I arrived back at the gates. The body lay where it had been twenty minutes earlier, the empty gun still pointing to where I had been when it had last fired. I stepped around the corpse, eyeing him superstitiously: it was that type of night. Needless to say he didn’t move.
First things first. Find out where I was and work out how to get away from here. Preferably to an airport with connecting flights back to Britain. I’d worry about how I was going to buy a ticket later. Secondly, food. Realising that I was extremely hungry I headed for the mess hall first, giving Meany a wide berth. I didn’t like him any more now that he was dead than I had when he had been alive.
The mess was almost entirely empty but for a lingering smell of gunfire, fear and sweat. My footsteps echoed around the empty cavern.
It took me a while to spot the kitchen door on the far side. I kicked a dozen M16 cartridges aside as I hurried across the hall. A small table containing the remains of an interrupted meal stood alone in the centre of the room. I stopped and examined the dead man’s dinner. The plate contained a heaping of curry and rice along with a vegetable I couldn’t identify. A chunk of greyish bread lay alongside the plate. Several flies buzzed angrily, annoyed at my interrupting them. I decided to check out the pantry.
The kitchen proved to be stocked with a variety of canned foods as well as loaves of bread and, in the paraffin-powered fridge there was milk and cheese. The loaves of bread lay wrapped in muslin cloth on the scarred counter. I would either have to prepare something for myself, or finish the meal I had interrupted. I went back out and finished the curry and rice. It was cold and oily yet incredibly satisfying. I finished off this gourmet meal with a litre of cold milk. Strength and energy returned by the second.
A detailed search of the office revealed nothing new except for the flies attracted by the congealing blood. I left as soon as I could, stopping only to relieve the corpses of their money. I figured I would likely need it more than they would. I nicked Dirty’s wristwatch too. It was a Casio G-Shock. I mean let’s be honest; he wasn’t going to miss it, was he? Besides, one of them had stolen my Rolex. OK, that’s not really true, but it’s what you tell the insurance company, isn’t it?
The two rooms next door were indeed offices but were barren: a thick layer of dust testament to years of non-use. That left the barracks, which could easily have housed a contingent of a hundred Legionnaires but now had just six beds. An examination of the deceased’s effects produced only one thing of any merit to me. I spread out the grubby piece of paper. It would have been hardly readable even if the writ
ing had been in English. The Arabic script meant nothing to me but there were two names written in letters I could understand.
Ibab seemed to be the name of a small town in the M’zab valley which I vaguely though might be in Algeria. That was if I understood this correctly. High-school algebra was easier to figure out than this. What I concluded was this: I was in a place with an unpronounceable name, which was three hundred and ten kilometres from Ibab. The directions were intended for a pilot: a bearing of sixteen degrees either to or from Ibab. Fifty/fifty chance, do I go north or south? Could I in fact survive walking that distance across a desert? How long would it take? Well let’s see: walking steadily, I could expect to cover seventy kilometres in a day. That meant roughly four days. I would need at least two litres of water per day, plus another to be on the safe side, so that was nine litres, plus food for five days. That didn’t seem too bad. My army experience taught me to expect delays and miscalculations so I should probably add an extra two litres of water to that.
Of course I could just wait here for the Sultan to return. How many heavily armed men would he bring back with him? On balance, the five-day walk seemed less risky.
Scrounging around I found two military one-litre plastic water bottles and seven ten-litre plastic containers. Five of them were still full.
Bread, cheese and several cans of food were shoved into a sack along with one bottle of milk that I would have to drink first, obviously. It would be awkward to carry but I had found no backpacks. The water bottles I strapped to my belt. Each was held in a half-litre tin mug within a canvas holder. The ten-litre container was going to be a right pain to carry.
It was now nearing three-thirty according to my newly stolen wristwatch. The moon had long since vanished but there was sufficient light to walk by. I had no compass. I could navigate using the watch and the sun though, which meant daylight.
In the end I filled the water containers, drank as much as I could take and set off into the desert. I went out maybe two kilometres and then settled down to rest until daybreak. The next few days would not be fun.
Even that turned out to be an understatement.
Chapter 17
When I woke I knew I had overslept. The sun was already up and doing an enthusiastic job of heating the sand and rocks about me. The day was going to be a scorcher, just like yesterday and the day before, and very likely, tomorrow.
I drank what was left of the milk and, not knowing what else to do with it, I dumped the bottle where I sat.
It took me several minutes of stretching before I could even stand up straight. Every muscle, every fibre of my body ached and my battered and bruised face felt worse today than it had at any time in the past three days. I had no doubt that I stank.
The thought of walking three hundred and ten kilometres and carrying twelve kilos of water plus food seemed impossible in my present state. I wondered briefly if facing the Sultan and his men wasn’t in fact a better idea. I had brief visions of shooting helicopters out of the sky as they came in to land.
Common sense prevailed though and using the watch and the sun’s position to establish due south, I picked up my load and headed north trying hard not to think of dying of thirst, lost in this parched wilderness.
The handle of the water container immediately began to cut into my hand. Tough luck. My life now depended on the contents of that ten-litre plastic container. No water, no life.
My plan was simple: I would walk directly north navigating using the watch and sun. If I had to detour around anything I would always go east thereby allowing for the bearing of sixteen degrees. A town can’t be that hard to find, could it? That was the plan anyway.
To conserve strength and regulate distance I would walk five hundred paces and rest for one minute. Walking those first five hundred paces was the hardest thing I have ever done. Right from the first step I knew I was never going to make seventy kilometres that day. I’d be lucky if I made twenty.
Panting with fatigue ten minutes later, I stopped on a slight rise and looking back, I could still see the old fort. I sat and rested, staring back at the slaughterhouse as if to burn it forever in my memory. Not because I wanted in fact to remember it, but because subconsciously I knew it might be the last evidence of civilization I ever saw.
The one-minute rest turned to five before I wearily dragged myself to my feet. Fighting the urge to drink, I picked up my load again and started north five hundred paces.
By the tenth set I was beginning to find it easier. My muscles were slowly loosening up. Five hundred paces, rest, five hundred paces, rest. Sometimes a longer rest. On and on till the sun was low on the western horizon. I saw nothing all day but sand, small rocks and an occasional scrawny bush trying desperately to survive in this harsh landscape. Plus two lizard-type creatures that hissed at me as I staggered past. Maybe they found the strange human funny and were laughing. Sadistic little shits.
Finally I stopped and ate one of the cans of corned beef with a chunk of bread. It was salty and intensified my thirst so I drank another half a litre of water. I would save the second half of the day’s ration till I stopped for the night.
Each five hundred paces had taken me nine minutes. Much too slow. With a minute’s rest for each walk, it was taking too long. I knew I should be walking the distance in three minutes, perhaps four and I would have to do better tomorrow or it would simply be a slow unpleasant death. Are there any pleasant deaths? Yes, I know there is the one we all fantasize about, where at the age of ninety we drop dead from a massive heart-attack while having sex with the neighbour’s nineteen-year-old daughter, but realistically, how often does this happen?
By keeping count of the number of times I had stopped to rest and multiplying that by five hundred metres, I calculated I had walked only thirty-two kilometres. I needed to get going again and do at least another ten before stopping for the night. But I just couldn’t. I rolled over onto my back utterly exhausted and slept just where I was.
Twice during the night I woke. The first time I drank several mouthfuls of water and went back to sleep. On the second occasion a cold wind woke me and I moved twenty yards to find shelter behind a low sandbank.
I looked at the watch. It had just gone four-thirty. The sun would be up within the hour. Deciding not to go to sleep again I had another drink and something to eat, and then I began stretching and trying to get myself into some sort of shape to walk. I felt like an old man.
As the first glimmer of sun showed on my right I picked up my load and set off. Today I needed to walk seventy kilometres.
Five hundred paces and rest. Five hundred paces and rest. By midday the terrain was changing slightly. The sand gave way and the ground became harder. Walking was now much easier and I found I could cover the short walks in four and a half minutes. By mid-afternoon I decided to walk a full thousand paces before resting, and found I could do this without too much difficulty. I felt immeasurably cheered by this. Who knows, I might even survive this desert hike.
Hunger forced me to stop at five o’clock and eat. By my crude calculation I had come sixty kilometres so far. My food was nearly half gone, but I felt it was better off inside of me doing some good than me having to carry it. I could survive two days without food so long as I had water. I would walk another twenty kilometres before stopping for the night.
The helicopter found me as I stood up. It was perhaps two kilometres south of me coming fast. It flew directly towards me at a height of fifty feet following my tracks. I looked around frantically for shelter, but the land was flat and hard. Running seemed pointless so I pulled out the nine-mil and waited, careful not to let them see it.
The pilot caught sight of me at half a kilometre, swung away to my right and circled round me. I caught sight of a rifle being pointed out the side door. There were three people on board that I could see.
He did a complete circuit keeping perhaps two hundred yards out. I watched as the rifle followed me, expecting to be fired on at any second. If he l
anded I would open fire immediately and try to neutralize the rifle. If he opened fire in the air then I was in trouble. Hitting a flying airplane at this distance with a handgun was like buying a lotto ticket: you could only hope.
He did another circuit then switched tactics, turning suddenly and flying almost directly overhead, the rifle spitting fire and lead as it came. Dust kicked up all around me and then he was gone leaving dust and panic in his wake. Shit shit shit, you bastard. I screamed after him. I couldn’t believe I was still alive.
I grabbed the half-empty food bag, planning to make a run for it: to try to find some cover. I slung the bag over my shoulder and reached for the water container. A round had hit the plastic can near the top and exited near the bottom. The only reason it wasn’t already empty was the way it had fallen. The container lay on it’s side with the small entry hole underneath and the water seeping into the sand. The exit hole was as large as my fist.
Thinking quickly, I ejected a round from the gun and plugged the entry hole. I had lost perhaps half the water already.
The sound of rotors was returning. Looking over my shoulder I spotted him coming low and fast. All-or-nothing-time, I thought. Laying the water back on its side, I stood and faced him as if on a shooting range. At the last moment the pilot saw the gun and tried to pull out, executing a hard left turn. In doing so he presented me with a perfect shot from maybe forty-five yards. I fired twice into the side and saw the rifleman flung backwards with the impact of the rounds. As the helicopter beat a retreat I emptied the gun at him. He was half a mile away when smoke began to pour from the engine casing. If I got back to England I promised myself I’d buy a lotto ticket.
The helicopter flew on for twenty-five to thirty seconds before the pilot gave up trying to nurse the damaged machine home and crash-landed it. The machine hit hard and toppled onto its side, the rotors shattering as they struck the ground. I didn’t wait to see who survived.
Gathering up the food bag and now carrying the container cradled in my arms so as not to spill more water, I set off into the failing light to put some distance between myself and the crash site. I covered another three kilometres before exhaustion demanded I stop for the night. Water was going to be a serious problem. So was carrying it.