Blind Reef

by Peter Tonkin

  But Saiid and the others knew well enough what the sound was. ‘Mister Richard,’ said Saiid. ‘We should return to the Land Rover now. Quickly, please. We should not be here. And even though we are not the primary targets, we do not wish to be seen.’

  Richard, however, set the binoculars to a wider focus and began to sweep the sky rather than the ground. After a moment or two, a black shape buzzed across his vision. He focused on it and the big blurred blob resolved itself into an American Apache attack helicopter.

  As he pulled the menacing black shape into focus, it began to fire a combination of thirty-millimetre M230E1 Chain Gun and Hydra 70 general-purpose unguided rockets into the valley they had just been observing.

  Tsibekti Selassie had never been so terrified in all her life, though the events of this morning ran what was happening this afternoon a close second.

  ‘Run!’ screamed Bisrat. ‘Tsibekti, run!’

  She could only hear what he was saying over the terrible rattle of gunfire and the deeper concussions of the explosions behind them, over the thundering whirl of the helicopter above them, because he was right behind her, also running for his life across the stony red ground that shook as though they were trapped in an earthquake.

  But it was not just the danger, the overwhelming noise and the nearness of death that frightened the young Eritrean. It was the fact that the men who, for the last few days, had reduced her to a quivering wreck were all equally terrified now. Perhaps more so, as they all ran across the juddering floor of the wadi, screaming and howling, followed by their camels, who added their own brays of fear to the disorientating storm of sound.

  The day had got off to a disturbing start, for the leader of the smugglers had suddenly appeared beside her clutching two cell phones – his and hers. He had brandished his at her, snarling in his barbarous Arabic, ‘Your brother is on his way now – my men are with him. Contact him again. I want him to know exactly what will happen if he delays or fails to pay up!’

  Trembling with fear, but wondering at the same time why the great Bedouin bully had not made things clear himself – it must have been a very short call indeed – she took her own phone and dialled.

  For the first time in several days it did not go straight to Nahom’s voicemail. It rang. And rang. And rang. At last she gave the phone back to her looming captor. ‘No answer,’ she said.

  ‘We will wait ten minutes then try again,’ he snarled.

  While they waited, he paced around the huge cave they had all been hidden in for three days now, waiting for the contact that had obviously just been made. Waiting, in effect, for Nahom and his money. Perhaps for other brothers with yet more money – there was a good number of young men and women being trafficked from a range of East African coastal countries. But no one talked to anyone else, except for the Bedouin traffickers, who talked to whoever they liked. And on occasion did more than merely talk.

  ‘Again!’ snarled the leader.

  Tsibekti dialled. Three rings. Connection was made and things got worse, for Tsibekti knew at once she was not talking to Nahom. She was talking to an Eritrean at least, but the strange voice sounded more like Bisrat’s brother Aman than anyone else.

  ‘Give me the phone,’ ordered the leader roughly, and she had no choice but to hand it over. Then, in the grip of too much tension to sit still and await her fate, she went to the back of the cave and joined the other women while the Bedouin spat his threats and orders into her phone, apparently unaware that he was speaking to the wrong man.

  Five minutes later, he swaggered over to her. ‘Count yourself lucky your brother is so quick-thinking,’ he said. ‘He brings not only money but American Express. All we need is an ATM machine and he will add ten thousand dollars to your price! It is fortunate for you that I have arranged to meet at a place where there are many such machines.’ And he swaggered off, pushing her phone back into the folds of his robe.

  And that was that.

  Until the helicopter appeared from nowhere just as they had all left the safety of the cavern and started raining Jahannam – Hell and destruction – down upon them.

  Tsibekti glanced over her shoulder, trying to gain some sort of control. There was a wall of fire between the panicked crowd and the caves in which they had hidden from the midday heat. It began to occur to her that perhaps the helicopter’s fire was not being directed at them, but simply being placed between them and their latest refuge. Like the vast majority of young Eritreans and her brother, Nahom, Tsibekti had served a stint in the army. Bisrat and Aman, with the cunning for which the Kifle family were well known in her village, had managed to avoid their National Service. But that gave Tsibekti an edge, for she had been prepared and trained to go under fire. She had never done so, as chance would have it, but she had been trained; she knew how to behave. In fact, it gave her a considerable edge, because, like Bisrat, the Bedouin traffickers who had been holding her captive for the better part of ten days had clearly not done National Service either.

  Tsibekti’s mind whirled. Could she maybe form a unit of like-minded Eritrean captives who had seen service? Or were they too lost and scattered among the other nationalities that were being smuggled along with them – the Ethiopians, the Sudanese, the Somalis, the couple from Djibouti?

  The thought had to be put to the back of her mind for the moment, however. For the leader of the smugglers, who she had named Al-Ayn or ‘evil eye’, proved the least cowardly and quickest-thinking of them all. ‘This way!’ he called. ‘To the Forest of Pillars! Quickly!’

  The others of his band knew what he was talking about – unlike their captives. They started to herd the frightened and confused Ethiopians, Somalis and Eritreans towards the valley leading north out of the wadi.

  Tsibekti followed helplessly with Bisrat, as usual, close behind her. And, behind Bisrat, the camel herders trying to keep their strings of terrified animals under control, all too well aware that if a stray shot set off what the camels were carrying in the slings made out of carpet that hung against their ribs on either side, then the explosion would likely decimate the smugglers and their victims – and very likely blow the chopper out of the sky into the bargain.

  Tsibekti found herself in a narrow, steep-sided offshoot of the main wadi, running northward. The height of the walls was a protection in itself, but it was clear that Al-Ayn had bigger things in mind, for he kept running and they all followed him like sheep and goats, herded by his increasingly confident band of men. After ten minutes or so, the narrow cleft opened out. The walls fell back and their slope eased off. In spite of the fact that they were in an exposed position once again, Al-Ayn slowed his pace and his men did likewise. Tsibekti looked around, trying to work out why the smugglers were suddenly so confident that they were safe. And she found herself at the southern edge of a forest. But a forest like no forest she had ever seen.

  Filling the centre of the valley stood a forest of tree trunks. Some stood erect, while others leaned over and still others lay as though they had been felled. There were no branches or leaves, only tree trunks. She could see – and, when she moved forward, she could feel – the rough bark with which they were covered. But the bark was cool – especially on the shadowed sides. And it was disturbingly unyielding, for these trees were petrified. Literally. As though by the spell of some evil djinn thousands of years in the past, the tree trunks had all been turned into black stone.

  ‘This is a national treasure,’ called Al-Ayn in his barbarous Bedouin accent. ‘A famous tourist destination. They dare not fire upon us here in the Forest of Pillars.’

  And, as though the men in the helicopter heard his words, the black machine turned and swooped back the way it had come, dragging the clattering pulse of its rotors behind it.

  ‘Even so,’ called Al-Ayn, ‘we march on.’ One of the camel handlers brought his travelling camel up and the beast knelt. Al-Ayn climbed aboard and prodded the beast to its feet before he continued to address them from high above their heads. ‘It
is important to move swiftly now.’ His evil eyes swept across the men and women he was trafficking northward. ‘Anyone who cannot keep up with us will die.’

  They all knew his threat was real. They had all seen stragglers executed more than once already. So they all crowded together and shuffled off in the wake of his camel’s slow and stately pace, into the black stone forest as the sun began to lose even its afternoon fierceness and the western sky above their right shoulders became as pink as the rocks beneath their feet. Paying no heed to Bisrat who stuck to her like a leech, Tsibekti worked her way through the crowd of prisoners until she was near enough the front to catch a word or two that the overconfident Al-Ayn was saying. And it was not that difficult. He was the only one riding at the moment, so he had to call his conversation down to the men walking beside him.

  ‘I have arranged it … We will make good speed … all night … at Gebel el Igma by dawn … Pick up there … Straight run north … To Nekhel … No, they’ll never catch us, even with their accursed helicopters … The pilots are all city boys from Cairo. They know nothing of the Sinai … I’ll wager they only discovered us by chance or by the direction of some evil djinn … They’ll never find us again … Yes, we’ll all meet up at Nekhel … Collect the money and go on from there … Nekhel … I have arranged it.’

  SEVEN

  Nekhel

  ‘Run!’ shouted Saiid, his voice just audible over the combined thunder of the Apache’s rotors and its armaments.

  ‘Wait!’ answered Richard, steadying his elbows on the boulder and he focused the Zeiss binoculars on the valley below and the thick red cloud kicked up by the barrage. Beyond the billowing sand grains he could still make out the crowd of people and camels running northward into the mouth of another narrow valley. When the helicopter opened fire he had expected to see carnage on the ground, but there were no bodies left behind the fleeing men, women and animals. He frowned, his mind racing. After his discussion with Saiid about helicopters he was simply flabbergasted that the Apache had managed to sneak up on them all without giving warning of its approach. And now that it was here, he was damned if he could work out what on earth it was up to.

  ‘We can’t afford to be seen here,’ emphasized Saiid, already moving towards the Land Rover where it stood concealed in the opening of the cleft in the cliff. ‘Especially if they’re shooting the smugglers and their victims! Massacring defenceless people whose only crime is to be smuggled or trafficked. Witnesses to anything like that aren’t likely to live for long.’

  ‘But they’re not!’ called Richard. ‘They’re not shooting at them. They’re shooting behind them, closing off their route back to the caves.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ wondered Ahmed, hesitating between Saiid and Richard.

  ‘No idea,’ shrugged Richard. ‘Perhaps they’re trying to herd them somewhere. Chase them into the open then land and arrest them.’

  ‘Well, that won’t work,’ said Ahmed. ‘They’ve just driven them into the one place they can’t follow them – certainly not with gunfire. The Forest of Pillars. It’s too important a historical site to risk anything. They can’t hope to land a chopper there either, come to that. It’s a forest of petrified tree trunks. The smugglers and their victims will just get lost among them. Unreachable from the air.’

  ‘The chopper pilots clearly don’t know the area,’ insisted Mahmood. ‘They’ve just driven the smugglers into the one place that ensures they’re going to get away!’

  ‘Looks like that’s what’s happened, all right,’ decided Richard, straightening. ‘So we’d better do what Saiid suggests. We don’t want to be the booby prize for some pissed-off policeman who’s just realized he’s screwed up his main mission.’

  They walked across to the Land Rover as quickly as possible without seeming suspicious or behaving in any way that might attract the chopper pilot’s attention. The crack in the tall black cliff face seemed narrow from a distance but as Richard approached it he realized that it was actually quite wide. Certainly there was no difficulty in opening the Land Rover’s doors on each side and climbing easily into their seats.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’ asked Richard as Saiid eased the big Defender into motion.

  ‘Ultimately, home,’ answered Saiid.

  ‘Ultimately?’ asked Richard.

  ‘We have to go via El Tor,’ explained Saiid. ‘We won’t stop there. But this track will take us down on to the main Sharm to Suez road just north of El Tor, then we’ll turn left and head south. It’ll take a couple of hours, but we should be back in time for maghrib – evening prayers.’

  ‘And for dinner,’ added Richard. ‘I hope you’ll all join us. It may not be up with what we had at the restaurant, but Sharl is an excellent chef …’

  ‘So,’ said Saiid. ‘The all-important question. Did you see Nahom Selassie?’

  ‘No,’ answered Richard. ‘And, thanks to your incredible binoculars, I got a close look at everyone down there, even allowing for the heat haze and the dust. One or two had their keffiyehs wrapped around their faces but they were all camel handlers. And the guy who looked like the leader wore his up too, but he had a cast in one eye. No. I’m as certain as I can be that Nahom was not down there.’

  ‘So, the boy and your cards are safe for the time-being,’ rumbled Mahmood.

  ‘That’s the way it looks. I wish there was something more we could do to help his sister, Tsibekti, though. I got a good look at her and I’d give my right arm to go down there and get her out.’

  ‘Be careful what you ask for,’ warned Saiid, glancing nervously out of the window beside him. ‘The djinn of this place have a wicked sense of humour. They might just make your wish come true.’

  The track wound down between high rock walls until it opened into the Wadi Feiran and joined the main road heading westwards there. Once again, Richard found himself looking straight into the white-hot fireball of the westering sun, but it was mid-afternoon now and some of its power was waning. He put his sunglasses back on, but the fan on the dashboard managed to keep him cool enough so that he did not feel the need to resort to wrapping his keffiyeh round his mouth and nose. After an hour or so they came to a T-junction with the road they were following at the top of the T, reaching straight on towards the vibrant blue of the Gulf of Suez. It was just possible to see the far shore, but Richard found all of his attention captured by the succession of tankers and container ships running north and south, to and from the canal like freight cars on a train.

  Saiid swung right and headed south down the spine of the T. ‘El Tor is halfway home from here,’ he said.

  They drove on in silence for a while. Then Richard said, ‘It’s a pity we have no idea what vehicle Nahom might be in. I mean, with them heading north to El Tor or wherever and us heading south, we could easily pass them and never know. Look at that battered old Fiat there. It looks as though it’s been in some kind of an accident. He could be in that. It’s heading in the right direction.’

  ‘There’s nothing unusual about battered cars down here,’ said Ahmed. ‘Some men are very dangerous drivers indeed, talking on their phones, driving with one hand, believing if they crash it is the will of God – inshallah – and there is nothing they can do about it, other than to pack their dashboards with religious artefacts and keep a copy of the Holy Qur’an in their glove box.’

  ‘It was on this road a couple of years ago,’ added Mahmood, his voice sad, ‘that a couple of tourist coaches collided. More than thirty people killed. What a tragedy! Even if it was the will of God!’

  The four of them fell silent after that and Saiid pushed his foot to the floor. The Defender’s speed on the open, nearly deserted highway rose to the better part of one hundred kilometres per hour. And it would have rolled on at that speed all the way to Sharm had Richard not called out, suddenly, ‘Saiid! Stop! It looks as though there was an accident here! Those skid marks come right across the central reservation. And that’s the front bumper of the Fiat we pa
ssed a while ago, I’ll bet. And what are those birds over there hovering just behind that sand ridge?’

  ‘Rachama,’ said Saiid, moving his foot on to the Defender’s brake pedal. ‘Vultures.’

  ‘’Andak!’ shouted Nahom. Watch out! He could hardly believe his eyes. A goat! In the middle of a six-lane highway! ‘Maa’ez – goat!’

  In spite of his bulk and apparent sloth, Tariq reacted quickly. He swerved to his left even before he started to turn around and learn what he needed to watch out for. The word ‘Goat!’ had not yet filtered into his consciousness. The car skidded on down the road as the wheels fought to pull it left. But the tarmac was almost melting in the vicious afternoon heat, the brakes needed some urgent work and the tyres were all bald. The Fiat went into a skid that almost immediately became a spin. By the time Tariq and Ali were front-facing they were looking at the central reservation and the goat was near the car’s rear door, so they never really saw it at all.

  Had the goat’s reactions been as swift as Tariq’s, the crash might still have been avoided. But instead of leaping backwards, the animal froze. Already swinging towards the central reservation, the Fiat’s rear offside door hit it sideways on. The goat’s head smashed the rear window at the same time as the door frame and the car’s roof immediately above the window shattered the goat’s skull. The animal never knew what hit it. Its forequarter slammed into the door hard enough to dent it, and the shock threw Nahom to his right, so that he went headfirst into the spray of window glass, blood and brain matter that came through the offside rear door. His head actually hit the ruin of the goat’s skull hard enough to stun him. When the car jumped over the low wall of the central reservation, Nahom was thrown helplessly one way as the body of the goat flew the other.

  The Fiat hit the opposite carriage way still moving at the better part of fifty kilometres per hour. Providentially, the road was empty. Miraculously, the bald tyres did not burst, but they left thick black tracks across the carriageway. The shock was enough to smash the front bumper loose, however. As Tariq fought to regain control, Ali shouted a series of prayers so rapidly he did not seem to breathe in throughout the whole incident. He hung on to the dashboard with one hand and the conveniently placed Qur’an with the other. As the Fiat jumped off the blacktop and into the desert beside it, the bumper came loose altogether and fell free to lie half on and half off the road at the end of the tell-tale skid marks. The headlights shattered, spraying shards of glass on to the tarmac and the sand. The shock stopped the eleven hundred cc engine as effectively as the collision had stopped the goat’s heart.