by Gavin Chait
It is the broken outer edge of an aircraft wing.
They slow, walking along the wing, and take up the trail of broken metal polished, pitted and scoured by the harmattan.
These are brutal men, and even they are stilled by the immensity of the carnage. Spread out over two kilometres, the dead hulks of the cargo planes lie broken, blackened and twisted.
They stop behind the shelter of a tailpiece forming a wedged arch against the wind. Sand has piled up on the windward side, and a sheet of sand flies over the top like a wave.
‘We must search them. Some of our cargo must have survived,’ says Ag Ghaly. ‘Split the men up into teams. We will make camp here and wait.’
‘And her?’ asks Duruji.
‘What of her? She waits with me.’
Shakiso is cut loose from her minders and flung into the corner of the arch. The men drop the bulk of their gear, taking only their rifles.
Duruji organizes them into five teams and points them in different directions. He sets a transponder at the wide end of the arch and tests that each group can read it. They must be able to find their way back in the dust.
Ag Ghaly stands alone, watching his men, his hands behind his back.
‘They will return in three hours, Janab,’ says Duruji. ‘We will wait with you,’ indicating the ten men standing in a semicircle outside the arch.
‘Good. I will rest. Make sure the woman does not escape. My intention is not for the kindness the desert will show her.’
Duruji grins, his teeth orange and irregular. ‘She will not escape, Janab.’
Shakiso curls her legs beneath her, watching until Ag Ghaly falls asleep and the men gather too far away to watch her closely.
She eases her fingers into the inside of her boot and feels the comforting handle of her knife. Carefully, she pulls it from its clasp and passes it up between her hands. She turns it until the blade is against the canvas of the straps around her wrists.
Slowly, she cuts.
She freezes each time one of the men looks back towards her, her heart pounding against her ribs, and continues again.
Every few minutes, she tests the bonds. Eventually, satisfied that a quick jerk will free her hands, she shuffles the knife back into her boot.
She stretches as best she can, finds a comfortable position, and allows herself to sleep. She will need to be rested for whatever comes next.
45
‘He was speaking truth,’ says the jihadi plaintively. ‘You saw it. You felt it.’
‘There was nothing!’ says Duruji, his voice burning.
The men are gathered downwind of the tailpiece, braced against the force of the wind. Duruji is watching Ag Ghaly as he sleeps and can see the woman squeezed as far as she can get into the corner of the tail. She is strangely rigid, staring at him. He does not trust her and would sooner have left her behind.
Dust bunches and drives: great fists smashing into the turbulent wall of the harmattan all around them.
Khalil’s death has disturbed the fragile sanity of the men. They feel as if a presence has been unleashed ever since the tawny cat buried its claws and teeth into one of their own. Something once only in Khalil’s fractured imagination now pressing in on theirs. Distorted shapes in the murk disorienting their already exhausted minds.
‘The genii are playing with us, Duruji,’ says another, his head jerking back and forth as he stares into the darkness. ‘Khalil heard the coming of that cat. What have we not seen?’
Duruji does not know how to answer. He feels Khalil’s loss and is surprised by it. There have been many others, men he has known longer, men he first trained with, who have died violently. Mohamoud was the last of those men, the only one left after the chaos of their attack on that airport in Benghazi two years ago. Such is their life. Yet he does not feel as overwhelmed by fear as these men. He has all the reassurance he needs. His Janab is close, and he has resumed his role protecting the man who represents everything he knows.
There was something he needed to remember, though. Something that keeps slipping from his mind, something about the woman – ‘No!’ his voice harsh and abrupt, pushing aside the rifle of the man next to him. ‘He is with us.’
The figure emerging from the dust waves, three shadows roped in behind him.
‘Wait here,’ says Duruji to the remaining men. ‘And be very careful when you see someone. I do not want to be shot when I return.’
Without looking back, he walks out to meet the arrivals. He feels relieved to have something to do, to be out from within the creeping fears of those behind him.
‘What is it?’ he asks. ‘Did you find anything?’
The man looks uncomfortable. ‘Yes, boss, but it is not what we are looking for.’
‘So, keep looking. Why waste my time with this?’
The man looks at his feet.
Duruji has a crushing sense that his fears are being confirmed. The planes never had any cargo.
‘Show me,’ he says.
He ties himself to the end of their rope, and they walk back the way they came, following towards a transponder point the men left behind, the rest of their team grouped around it.
The harmattan is beginning to ease, and soon he can see the gleaming structure of an intact aircraft.
‘This way, boss. The cargo doors are open,’ leading him around the tail and up a slope where sand has half-filled the entrance. Each man must bend and contort slightly to squeeze inside. The unending pressure of the wind is abruptly cut.
They remain roped together as each turns on a flashlight.
‘See, boss, everything has been burned,’ showing him piles of blackened ash that must have been the heroin.
Duruji crumbles some in his hands, feeling it vanish into dust.
‘And here,’ the words spoken in considerable discomfort.
A twisted assortment of metal, gun barrels, ammunition cases and buckled racks lie in a heap further along the hold. Duruji picks up a broken AK-47, turning it in his hands, trying to see whether there is any hope for repair. The buttstock is charred and split, hanging loosely.
‘I said we should never have trusted them,’ he says quietly.
‘Boss?’
‘The arms dealer,’ he says. ‘He sent this garbage. He stole from us.’
‘Maybe, boss, but someone else was here before us,’ leading Duruji back outside.
46
‘Janab, they found something,’ says Duruji.
It is late, the night sky lit up by a profusion of stars visible now that the winds have begun to abate.
Ag Ghaly rises awkwardly, leaning on the wall of the wing as he pulls himself to his feet. ‘What is it? The case?’
‘No, Janab,’ says Duruji, apprehension and doubt. ‘You must see. I am not sure this is good.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Not far. Perhaps thirty minutes.’
Ag Ghaly nods, wrapping his turban around his head. He gestures at Shakiso. ‘Bring her.’
Shakiso stands quickly, keeping her hands locked tightly together.
Duruji confers with the leader of this group of men and takes the lead.
The dark hulk of an aeroplane looms ahead. This one appears to have landed more or less in one piece.
They walk along the wide flank of its main wing which rises high above them towards where it joins to the fuselage.
‘What is this?’ demands Ag Ghaly, his voice curt and abrupt.
They are in the lee of the main wing, on a flat stretch of sand. Six piles of black and red rocks are arranged in a row. Human-scale oblongs of heaped stone.
Silence from the men.
‘Answer me,’ shouts Ag Ghaly.
‘These are the pilots, Janab,’ says Duruji. ‘Someone has buried them.’
‘Who? Where is my cargo?’
‘We do not know, boss,’ says one of the men. ‘We can find no cargo. Someone burned everything inside this aircraft. The weapons are all broken.’
T
he man cowers as Ag Ghaly advances on him.
‘Where’s my mercury?’ shouting and slapping at the man.
‘Janab, what mercury?’ asks Duruji, trying to intervene.
‘The red mercury? Our salvation,’ he screams, his voice a howl of rage and anguish, beating the cowering jihadi with his hands and feet.
‘Red mercury? You’ve been had,’ says Shakiso quietly. She winds herself tightly, compressing herself. Preparing.
‘It must be here,’ shouts Ag Ghaly. ‘Look! Look!’
Shakiso explodes, tearing the last strands of the canvas from her wrists and flinging herself towards the perpendicular wall of the aircraft rising like a cliff-face before her.
‘Stop her!’ shouts Duruji.
‘Too slow,’ she thinks, the sand sucking at her boots as she sprints.
She leaps at the wall. Right foot, left foot, right hand down, left hand just grabbing the top edge of the wing.
For a moment, she feels as if she will fall. A shattering burst of bullets, two of which strike her in the back.
The armour foaming, absorbing the blow, and the momentum adding sufficient to her own, carrying her up and on to the wing.
She rolls along the wide flat surface, trying to breathe. With a cough, she exhales and gasps, pushing herself upright and sprinting to build up speed.
The surface is slippery with dust, but she finds purchase on notches in the fuselage, running up the wall and on to the long broad roof of the plane. She stands to catch her breath and orientate herself.
Below her she can hear shouting and continued gunfire.
She runs towards the cockpit at the front of the plane.
Her ear vibrates, and her implant whispers, ‘Hollis.’
47
Uberti would move the chair, but it is bolted into this exact position. It is comfortable enough, sitting here in the twilight, the bottle of vodka in his lap.
It is almost finished. He would go and get another. There is no time.
They are late.
He is grateful.
In all his years as head of Rosneft, he has not simply sat and enjoyed the pleasure of the estate at Novo-Ogaryovo. This is the first time he has ever watched the sun set through the thickly wooded forest and glow gold where it strikes the river. Autumn is falling to winter, and he can smell the change in the leaves, the crispness of the air. Birds sing and scramble through the branches.
He is not a sentimental man, has never given much thought to anything other than the beast he needs to feed to keep Rosneft safe. That responsibility has been lifted.
Uberti’s crime is worse than treason. European energy prices are falling. The hierarchy of influence and power that binds the Russian state and its vassals depends on Rosneft’s continuing market control. The new orbital power generator has disrupted that authority, revealing the weakness that lies behind all tyrannies.
There is only one punishment in the Russian state due anyone who so betrays a position of influence and trust. Uberti’s will come today.
He waits for a call that only three other leaders of Rosneft have taken.
It is one that all are told to expect when they are appointed. Most have served their term efficiently, if not memorably, and passed on their position grateful to go into peaceful retirement.
Three have suffered to displease their higher authority.
It is an exquisite torture. A symphony of bureaucracy and cruelty.
An old metal telephone is mounted on a table on the wooden porch at the rear of the dacha. It, and the table, is bolted in place. Alongside it is a large wooden easy-chair, also fixed in place. They are weathered and beaten.
The wall behind them is plated in a thick metal sheet.
There are two small dents in it, close together. There should be three.
The second man chose to flee rather than take the call. After what happened to him and his family, the third man did not hesitate. He sat as Uberti does now.
Out in the forest is a hunters’ hide. Since no one may hunt in these protected woods, it is there for a single purpose.
Uberti has walked there on many occasions. He has noted that the view it affords of the porch on the dacha is ideal. The position of the seat places the occupant’s head in a precisely convenient place. He does not know who does so, but the sight through is always cleared of branches which may obstruct the sniper.
There is a telephone mounted on the inside of the hide. A cousin to the one at his side.
He is certain that someone inside that hide is, similarly, waiting for a call.
Only a few more sips and the bottle will be finished.
The phone rings.
‘Thank you,’ he says, picking it up gently.
‘What?’ says a familiar voice.
‘Thank you for the sunset. I was not expecting that,’ he says, and his emotion is genuine.
The voice is brusque, unsentimental. ‘Other matters kept us. That was not for your benefit.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘But, even so. Thank you. I am grateful, and I am sorry it has worked out as it has.’
‘Yes,’ the voice is brittle. ‘Goodbye, Farinata.’
The connection ends.
Uberti smiles, savouring the lingering red and orange through the trees.
The bottle is empty, a cry of birds in the woods, and it drops from his fingers.
48
‘What took you so long?’ asks Shakiso.
‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ says Hollis.
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. We weren’t sure if you were conscious or whether Ag Ghaly’s men would notice your implant.’
‘Something seems to have frightened them. They spend all their time whispering or shouting at each other.’ Shakiso has almost reached the flight deck. ‘They barely notice me, probably forgot about it. Maybe it’s Ag Ghaly? He seems to make everyone around him behave like morons.’
The windows have been smashed, and she slips inside. The floor is ankle-deep in sand rising in a slope to the ceiling and blocking the door. The two pilot’s chairs are serviceable. There is little room for anything else, and she drops into one.
Empty chocolate biscuit packets protrude from around the chair. Shakiso digs a little on either side of her seat and finds two still sealed in their glossy wrappers, which she tears open.
‘You better be coming to get me,’ she says, devouring a biscuit.
‘Look up.’
Above her a drone appears, shimmering briefly as it decloaks its invisibility field. Its surface is pure black. A peculiar lightless hole in the sky, hovering over the flight deck.
Shakiso brushes back a muddy tear. ‘Thanks, Hollis. I knew you’d be there.’
‘We figured they’d come for the planes. I thought you’d probably be able to escape them. I’ll stay on the line and let you know if any of them are getting near.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Ag Ghaly seems to be beating one of his men to death and shouting like a maniac, and the rest are trying to find a way into the plane. You won’t be able to stay there for long.’
‘And who’s coming to get me?’
‘The Senegalese army.’
‘Should I be pleased about that?’
‘Same chaps who were there for Simon.’
Shakiso nods, trembling as her tightly controlled focus wavers.
‘They killed Tuft, Hollis.’
‘No, they didn’t. We found her.’
Alone in a burned-out flight deck on a wrecked plane in the middle of a small war, Shakiso weeps in relief. It is a small thing, and it is everything.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re going to have to move. There’s a chap on the roof heading straight for you.’
Shakiso grabs the edge of the window and pulls herself out. Looking back along the plane, she can see a faint shape leaning into the wind and trying not to slide.
‘How far is the drop?’ she whispers.
‘You should be OK,’ says Hollis.
Duruji appears above her as she leaps.
He shouts in frustration, and spots the drone.
In a single movement, he bends, swings the Igla around his back, and fires. The drone plunges.
Shakiso curls, absorbing the landing along her side, and rolls down the slope of the sand piling up beneath the plane. The drone clouts into the sand behind her and slides until it stops alongside.
‘Great. You still know where they are?’ she says, pushing it off her.
‘Most of them are under our control. It’s only the men around Ag Ghaly.’
‘And me.’
‘Yes.’
Shakiso creeps around the nose of the plane, heading back towards where she left Ag Ghaly. The wind and dust mask her movements. It also hides any of the men looking for her.
She pulls her knife from her boot as she nears the forward edge of the wing.
Ag Ghaly is alone except for a battered form at his feet. He is kicking it, his shouting tremulous and wild.
Duruji drops off the far edge of the wing, his back towards Shakiso. He remains motionless, scanning the howling dust-fogged landscape.
Shakiso is behind him. Her knife is in her hand. The noise of the wind, the stinging rush of sand, would mask her approach.
She tenses.
In the sky and in the earth, a presence, curiosity and anticipation. Something which seems to watch and draw breath even as they draw breath.
Two lives have travelled far and suffered greatly to intersect at this exact moment.
She hesitates.
Crouches low instead.
She is not, after all, the sort of person who can easily choose to take the life of another.
And the presence dissipates.
Duruji sees something in the starlit mist, rushes towards Ag Ghaly.
‘We are lost, Janab. The kuffār have found us!’ His words torn away by the wind. His rifle in his hands. Running with all his strength towards the advancing shadows. Defending with his last breath the man who is his king.
Ag Ghaly, insane with grief, sees only the rifle and a threatening figure racing towards him. He raises his pistol and fires twice.