Blind Reef

by Peter Tonkin

‘He is right,’ said the burqa-clad woman in Sergeant Sabet’s decisive voice. ‘Send me with them, Major. I can take command of our men – of the entire expedition if needs be. Our men will obey me and will whip the Nekhel men into line if necessary. I will look after them and report back to you.’

  ‘That is a tempting suggestion, Sergeant. But you know very well that I would hesitate to send you on such a mission unsupported. You may well be able to command our men, and I have no doubt they would be able to keep the local contingent in check. But I would still be concerned if there was no one actually there to watch your back.’

  ‘Then allow Captain Mariner to accompany me if you yourself cannot,’ Sergeant Sabet suggested in her forthright way. ‘He has proved himself more than capable of handling a range of dangerous situations. We are only here because of his quick-thinking about the jet. The men we are pursuing are only alive because of him. This whole situation has turned around him, and Mrs Mariner. Nahom Selassie trusts him – and perhaps Aman Kifle does as well, for he and Mrs Mariner saved his life into the bargain. And I trust him, Major. If I could not have you to back me up, then there is no one else I would trust as much.’

  ‘Now, wait just one minute …’ Robin began.

  ‘The sergeant is right,’ said Ibrahim. ‘This is a suggestion that might work. It finds favour with me.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t find much favour with me,’ Robin snarled.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ said Richard. ‘Sergeant Sabet will keep me safe. Major Ibrahim might even allow me to carry a weapon …’

  ‘Now that is out of the question,’ said the major. ‘You are a tourist, Captain, not a member of the Egyptian Security Force.’

  ‘Just thought I’d ask,’ said Richard amenably, thinking if push comes to shove, I can probably pick one up somewhere along the way …

  And that was that.

  Ibrahim and Robin went back to the airstrip in Captain Fawzi’s staff car, a quarter of an hour later, accompanied by the man himself – who was probably very glad to see the back of them, Richard suspected. The pair of six-wheeled, two-ton military-style trucks eased themselves forcefully out of the bustle of the market and back up on to the Taba road. The two squads of policemen told to accompany Sabet and Richard came forward and climbed aboard. Ibrahim’s men saluted respectfully as they passed their sergeant. Fawzi’s men did not. Already there was a simmering tension building between the two commands, one which Richard found more than a little worrying. There were only two men Sabet could count on if the going got tough – three counting Richard himself, though he of course had been forbidden to carry a weapon, so he would be of limited value in a whole range of violent situations. And there were ten of Fawzi’s men, all fully armed, any number of whom might conceivably be working with the smugglers. For a disorientating moment, Richard found himself wondering how much Sergeant Sabet would fetch at a Saudi slave auction if things went really badly wrong.

  Richard and Sabet went to join the two trucks as the last of the police privates climbed aboard, Richard registering for the first time that the six-lane highway which joined Suez to Taba, and came through Nekhel as it did so, actually stood on a kind of steep-sided causeway a good few metres above the level of the desert with which it was surrounded. There was nothing much to look at, he thought, and a good deal to think about. But in the cab of a big truck on top of a well elevated roadway he would be in a prime position to look at what little there was to see as he tried to think this new situation through.

  Just before they climbed aboard, however, Richard tackled the first of the imponderables that had been occupying his mind. ‘Sergeant,’ he said to Sabet, who had vanished to remove the burqa disguise during the fifteen minutes it had taken to get everything organized and was now back in her white uniform and headscarf, ‘that was surprising – what you said to Major Ibrahim. I really was not expecting you to volunteer yourself for this. And never in a million years would I have thought you’d volunteer me to go along with you.’

  The dark eyes regarded him, suddenly as cold and hard as Arctic brown granite. ‘You heard what the major said earlier,’ she snapped. ‘So far these people and the imbeciles in the helicopter have made him look powerless and foolish. That is not a situation that I will allow to continue. He cannot chase and apprehend these men himself. Therefore you and I will do so on his behalf. And so his honour and reputation will be restored. We will do this. Or we will perish in the attempt.’

  Richard paused for an instant, his mind racing. Somewhere along the line he had failed to register just how deep the sergeant’s regard for her commanding officer was, just as he hadn’t really registered how high above the desert sand the roadway actually stood. He felt the lack of Robin, her acute observation and her uncanny insight immediately. She had said nothing but he would have laid handsome odds that she knew exactly how Sabet felt about Ibrahim.

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ he answered after a moment. ‘Let’s go for it: Do, as they say, or die! After you, Sergeant …’

  Nahom and Tsibekti Selassie were sitting side by side in a vehicle that was almost identical to the ones Richard, Sabet and their men were pursuing them in. It was a venerable but virtually indestructible REO M35 two-and-a-half ton, six-wheeled truck that had rolled off the conveyor in Lansing, Michigan, pretty soon after the Second World War. It had passed through service with the American Army and then the Israeli Army, which was why it was in such good condition nearly seventy years after its first deployment. It was the first of the middle pair of a six-truck convoy, third back from the front. The Eritrean twins were seated immediately above the offside rear pair of wheels, on a naked metal bench running along the length of the truck’s aft cargo section with their backs against the flapping canvas side. They were not secured, but they were squashed between Aman and Bisrat Kifle, who were in turn sandwiched between two of the largest smugglers. The smugglers in turn were nursing two of the largest semi-automatic rifles Al-Ayn’s men possessed.

  The trucks were running east, so the twins and the men beside them were looking north – not that there was much to see beyond the three metre gap between them and the canvas on the far side straining in towards them and the grim-faced, heavily armed smugglers sitting in front of it. They all had their keffiyehs over their faces and sunglasses over their eyes. The keffiyehs were up because the wind pushing the hot canvas against their backs was becoming increasingly laden with sand, and the ancient canvas was nothing like proof against it. Indeed, if Nahom squinted a little it was just possible for him to make out the vague outlines of the Gebel el-Tih mountains in spite of the sandstorm that seemed to be gathering in the north through a slowly widening rent in the straining material between the sturdy shoulders of the men sitting opposite him.

  Even if conversation had been possible over the thrashing of the canvas, the hissing howl of the shamaal wind, the grinding thunder of the motor and the relentless rumble of the pair of tyres immediately beneath them, the twins would have had little to say to each other. They had somehow found themselves at daggers-drawn from the moment Aman and Nahom turned up at the convoy, which was parked at the roadside just outside Nekhel’s eastern outskirts, waiting for them. Or rather, suspected Nahom bitterly, waiting for his money belt and the two-faced Aman, who had apparently been as deep as Bisrat in this business right from the start.

  Nahom had managed to give his sister the details of his adventures but instead of the grateful praise he had expected, he had received a telling-off that reminded him of his mother and his two grandmothers all combined.

  Tsibekti sat and seethed silently while her stupid brother sat sullenly at her side. That Nahom’s attempt to buy her freedom had simply led to his own bruised body being added to the human merchandise on its way to market and another fortune raised by their terrified family in the treacherous hands of Al-Ayn and his men! That he should have got himself so dreadfully beaten up and battered on his way to rescue her! Bitten by a snake into the bargain, in
volved in a car crash and left for dead! Relying on the good graces of some Westerner like a beggar in the kasbah! That he hadn’t even thought to arrange some sort of back-up or Plan B in case what had just happened, happened! Indeed, the stupid boy was only still alive because Aman convinced Al-Ayn that Nahom would fetch a good price in the Saudi souk where they were all bound. So, all in all, he was just one more burden to be borne by their poor, terrified, bankrupt parents at home.

  However, there was probably more to it even than Aman’s cunning treachery, she thought darkly – the arrival of a battered Nasr car and a couple of shifty-looking men who had been simply stunned to see Nahom alive – and who had immediately gone into close conclave with Al-Ayn also had something to do with it. If Tsibekti looked past Nahom and Aman sitting beside him, she could see the half-wrecked motor rolling along a few metres behind the truck, in the middle of the convoy. Its lights smashed, its front bumper a distant memory, its side door dented and blood-smeared. Its bald front tyres nakedly on show as it weaved from side to side under the varying strength of the sand-laden shamaal.

  Now it so happened that, although Tsibekti and Nahom were twins, she had been the first born. She was all of thirty minutes older than her brother, and that fact had coloured their relationship all their lives. She was the big sister; he was the little brother. As her mind ranged over their current situation, their likely future and their ultimate fate, Tsibekti began to mellow. Nahom had come after her bravely and suffered three terrible near-death experiences in his attempt to secure her freedom. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, her breast flooded with an aching warmth of affection. How battered he looked, with his head bruised and his face still swollen from the car crash.

  How brave he had been to come after her in such a way, she thought, performing a mental U-turn. To risk death on the boat that had been wrecked on the Blind Reef. To leave the safety of the hospital and come on foot into the desert and the mountains of the south. To come on again, time after time. To risk a charge of theft having stolen this infidel crusader Mariner’s credit cards and to have offered to use them only when the police confiscated the money belt their parents had managed to fill. To have come again as venom and anti-venom were still at war in his veins. To have gone with the men in the battered Nasr, and to have survived the collision with the goat, and yet still to have come on, seeking only to rescue her … Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. But the burning affection for her little brother was replaced by an equally hot determination to get the pair of them out of this predicament. And to make everyone from Al-Ayn to Aman and Bisrat Kifle pay for what they had done to their family.

  Nahom, on the other hand, did not feel any burning beyond that in his eyes, though, like hers, they were overflowing. His mind was still full of brooding resentment against his ungrateful sister and the first stirrings of genuine outrage that he had been betrayed by Aman and Bisrat, who he counted as among his closest childhood friends. He was also angered by the fact that the relentless blast of the south-blowing shamaal was filling his eyes with grit, so that his cheeks were streaming with tears. He was certain that the men opposite, hidden behind their keffiyehs, their rip-off Oakleys and counterfeit Ray-Bans, were all laughing at him and his apparently childish weeping. He had been teased and bullied during his early days of National Service, but he had learned to stand up for himself then and he was not going to allow the experience to be repeated now. He dashed his hand angrily across his face and cleared his vision for a moment. He looked up, paused as his mind shifted gear, and frowned.

  Because the nearest of the red-sand spurs of the Gebel el Tih, visible through the widening rent in the ancient canvas, seemed to have detached itself from the mountain range sometime in the distant past and was rearing up over the elevated roadway they were travelling along like a great wave on the Red Sea that was standing, frozen, just on the point of breaking. As they entered the wind shadow of its near-vertical face, so the air became clearer and Nahom was able to see all too vividly what was just about to happen. He opened his mouth and gasped in a breath to shout out. But because he was wearing the tails of his keffiyeh down, the sand got into his mouth and choked him. By the time he had finished coughing, it was too late in any case.

  Richard and Sergeant Sabet sat side by side on the right-hand side of the lead truck’s bench seat. Her men were in the back but it was one of Captain Fawzi’s men at the wheel. His ID badge said , which Sabet translated as ‘Saqr’. Richard’s shoulder was hard against the passenger door and Sabet was keeping carefully clear of Captain Fawzi’s driver. Every gesture of the silent private’s rigid body made it clear that he did not approve of the woman he was driving, what she was doing and where she was taking them. Particularly as they were driving through a blinding sand storm which made the road immediately ahead very difficult to see – and therefore to follow, even though it was six lanes wide. The sand filled even the near distance with a whirling red fog which danced in a dazzling display of movement so distracting as to make their eyes water. That was driven by a wind which seemed to have come straight from the hottest part of Jahannam – Hell, itself.

  The icy silence was the only cool thing in the overheated cab, Richard thought. Though silence was a misnomer in any case. The wind was roaring southwards forcefully enough to be trying to tear the truck off the road. The coarse sand grains it carried were almost large enough to count as pebbles and were hissing across the metal and glass surfaces all around like an army of tap-dancing serpents. On top of that, the big motor was roaring fit to burst, with the driver Saqr’s foot crushing the accelerator hard against the floor and the hamsa Hand of Fatima good-luck charm that hung from his rear-view mirror obviously working overtime but rattling like castanets as it did so. Conversation was pretty much out of the question, therefore, even had their driver been cheery and garrulous, and Sabet up for a chat. As things stood, it looked like this police private would be one of the more difficult ones for Sabet’s men to whip into line, thought Richard wryly, looking past her rigid profile at Saqr’s equally stern profile.

  But then Richard’s gaze was tempted beyond the sand-blasted window and out into the windy desert. Because the wind died suddenly, as though the gate of Hell had slammed shut. The sand slid down the driver’s window, letting the glass come clear. But all it showed was yet another red rock wall. For a moment he thought that one of the nearby foothills which reared the better part of a hundred feet vertically from the roadside was in some kind of motion. He blinked as his mind tried to come to terms with what he was seeing. ‘Sergeant …’ he said.

  She looked at him. ‘Yes?’

  But by the time she reacted, he was looking straight down the road ahead. In the wind shadow of the red mound sitting to the north of them and reaching for the best part of a mile along the dead-straight Taba highway, the sand was settling out of the air as well as down the driver’s window. The sudden clarity distracted him, particularly as it allowed him to see the tail-end of a convoy of trucks surprisingly close ahead.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Sabet.

  ‘I think that might be them,’ said Richard.

  ‘Yes!’ she agreed, her voice suddenly full of excitement. ‘You!’ She turned to Saqr, the driver, switching into Egyptian Arabic. ‘Can you make this thing go any faster?’

  ‘No,’ he answered in the same language.

  None of which Richard understood, but followed easily through their body language.

  But then, once again, his gaze was tempted out through the window on the driver’s side by a movement that made him swing round to look through the windscreen more closely at the red wall towering over the northern edge of the road. And as he looked, scarcely able to believe his eyes, the crest of the wall came streaming downwards into the still air of its wind shadow. And he understood what was happening. The wall on their left was made of sand, not rock. It was a massive barchan sand dune migrating south under the power of the shamaal. Its characteristic horns – a pair of which normally preceded the
inner, hundred-foot slope, had been blocked by the elevation of the road. The whole thing seemed to have been stopped by the height and width of the elevated six-lane highway. But it was on the move again now, breaking like a hundred-foot surf to come cascading down on to the road. ‘Right!’ he bellowed. ‘Go right!’

  Sabet saw at once what was happening and added her orders in a shout almost as loud as his. ‘Yemeen!’

  Saqr looked arrogantly down at the woman who had the gall to be giving him orders. His patrician nostrils flared. His thin lips parted and twisted, no doubt about to utter something dangerously inappropriate.

  But Sabet prevented him. ‘Shoof!’ she screamed, gesturing ahead. ‘Look!’

  He looked, obeying automatically.

  ‘Bismillah!’ he shouted and swung the wheel right, sending the big truck lurching across the road and down the slope on to the mercifully solid southern sand as the Hand of Fatima cheerily applauded the action.

  The whole wall of the dune to the north was collapsing on to the roadway dead ahead. Driven by the relentless power of the shamaal, tripped up by the elevation of the Suez to Taba highway, the entire dune was toppling over to collapse across the blacktop like a million-ton ocean breaker.

  Nahom looked in simple, horrified disbelief as the avalanche of sand which a moment before had been a seemingly solid cliff came cascading into the roadway behind the truck. Ali and Tariq never stood a chance as ton after ton of coarse red grit smashed down on to the half-wrecked Nasr. One moment it was there, bouncing along with its tyres on show and its smashed headlights jiggling merrily, the next it was gone beneath an expanding explosion of red dirt. Nahom had an instantaneous vision of its roof smashed flat and its bald tyres bursting silently as it was swept sideways and under, amongst the thunder of the catastrophe. Then it – and they – were gone. And the trucks behind it must be buried as well, thought Nahom, stunned. For the whole hundred-foot wall of sand was coming down all at once, apparently right along its entire length, starting in the middle, from the highest point and spreading eastwards and westwards like a breaking wave.