by J Randall
He could see no water anywhere, nor roads nor structures of any type. His solitary indication of direction was the position of the sun. Even by making an effort to draw on his powerful desire to rescue his friends Derrick could barely repel the despondence that threatened to overtake his mind.
His body was beginning to work in overdrive to cool itself as he descended the dune and reentered the cave to devise a plan.
Making a decision was easier than continuing to experience the humiliation of living in the cave. And existing in the cave under the care of the Iraqis wasn’t living. His colleagues required medical attention and they wouldn’t receive it here.
Having made up his mind, he got up and marched resolutely toward the back of the cave.
Derrick stood above the two guardians, staring at their dirty robes. He listened to the rhythm of their breathing and judged that they were deep in sleep.
He had intended to kill them, but he considered the care they had given the men and changed his mind.
He tapped one of the men with the barrel of the AK-47 he had found in a pile of military equipment next to a Toyota.
Aamir opened his eyes and was shocked to see the armed man standing above him. “What is it, baby? What are you doing up?”
Derrick replied in the man’s native language, “Shut up and don’t say that to me or I’ll kill you!”
The noise woke Hisham and he too was startled to see one of their charges standing over them with a gun.
Derrick threw ropes on the ground in front of one of the guardians.
“You’ll tie your friend’s hands behind his back and then you’ll tie his legs together,” Derrick said with some difficulty, not having spoken an intelligible word since being brought to the cave.
“When you finish lie on your stomach next to him.”
The first man was secured and Derrick adjusted the ropes then tied the second man.
“I have some questions for you and I expect honest answers. Where did the other two men go?”
“Our teachers,” Aamir said with a smile. “They have gone to Baghdad.”
“Baghdad? When will they return?”
“When they want to return,” Aamir answered. “We are but vassals of Allah. Our teachers don’t tell us when they go or when they return.”
“Where is this cave—how far from Baghdad?”
“We are in the Great Desert. We rode here by night in the back of a truck. It took many hours—maybe six or maybe eight. I’m not sure.”
“There’s a missing man. Where else are you keeping people?”
“We know of no others,” said Aamir.
Hisham asked quietly, “Could he mean the one who died?”
“What did he say?” Derrick demanded.
“There was a man brought to the cave a little over a month ago. He was dressed as the others, but he wasn’t breathing. When we asked the driver who brought him here what had happened, he didn’t answer.”
Derrick’s anger was rising. “Where’s the body?”
“The driver was told to bury him outside the cave,” said Aamir, “but we didn’t see where. It can’t be far—he came back to the cave after a short time.”
“You two lie there and keep quiet. I have some things to do, but I won’t be far away.”
Seeing that his friends on the cots were quiet, he hurried to the row of vehicles. When he saw that one of the two Land Rovers was a nine-passenger, his hopes soared. He climbed in and found the key in the ignition. He tried it and was relieved when the engine started. Derrick checked the Land Rover for any visible problems and topped off the fuel tank. He loaded enough water and rations to last for a couple of days—barring unforeseen problems.
Using one of the oil lamps, he searched the vehicles and the equipment stacked next to them.
Examining the transporter that carried the missile, he found what he was searching for—a way to transport the men to the Land Rover. Strapped in behind the crew cabin was a two-wheeled hand truck.
Thirty minutes later Derrick struggled to load the last man, Jake Golden. His desperation to flee the cave overcame his exhaustion.
Everything was ready, but he had to do one last thing.
Derrick went back to the two men tied up on the ground. “We’re leaving now,” he said in Arabic.
“Yes, we know that,” Aamir said. “May I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“Please take care of our babies—we’ll miss them.”
Derrick was surprised at the apparent sincerity of the utterance.
“I know you will. Here, I’ll leave water in a bowl next to your heads. That’s the best I can do.”
Derrick took a quick step and headed for the Land Rover. He was tempted to untie them but left them where they lay.
“Ma’as-salaama, they said softly as he walked away.
Derrick tried to remember what Ma’as-salaama meant…Good-bye, he finally recalled.
Standing before the doors on the inside of the cave, he said aloud, “Boys, it’s all or nothing. Hang on! It may be the ride of our lives.”
He adjusted the sunglasses he had found and pulled firmly on the rope. The doors parted quickly and let the sun stream into the cave. He was glad that he had considered the blinding light and taped gauze over his friends’ eyes.
Quickly he jumped into the driver’s seat and drove out of the cave, following the tire tracks he had earlier noticed in the sand. His instinct told him to drive as fast as the Land Rover would take them away from this prison, but the sand shifting under its wheels warned him to slow down.
The terrain wasn’t flat, but rose and fell, giving the illusion of going in circles.
CHAPTER 21: CHASING TRACKS
THEIR SECOND NIGHT IN THE DESERT Gloria and Nigel had field marched toward their objective, pausing merely to drink a little water. They arrived at the designated coordinates before the sun could lighten the night sky and there dug their hidey hole. They settled in and consumed some of their rations to replace the calories they had burned on the fast trip.
“Nigel, do you want to take first watch or should I? I’m not that tired,” she said, trying to keep her eyes open.
“I’ll take it,” Nigel answered, “You get some kip.”
“Whatever you say.” Gloria crawled into the hidey hole and immediately fell asleep.
At 0830 he woke Gloria. He would have let her sleep longer, but he realized that he had begun to doze off.
“Gloria, it’s time for your shift.” He shook her arm gently.
She woke immediately—a conditioning developed from field experience—and paused a moment to get her bearings. Seeing that everything was quiet, she crawled to the edge of the hidey hole and assumed the watch. Soon she heard the sound of Nigel’s deep breathing and knew that he had wasted no time falling asleep.
The quietness of the desert was disturbed by the occasional high pitched sound of a desert bird, which she was never able to make out.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, the smothering heat caused tiny droplets of sweat to develop on her forehead. They quickly multiplied and formed small rivulets that ran to drop off the end of her nose and chin. Occasionally a salty stream would find her eyes, which she would need to wipe before she could continue her watch.
Gloria panned the landscape with her binoculars and passed by a prominent sand dune approximately a thousand meters distant. As she panned the binoculars back on the return sweep, she passed a figure standing near a rocky outcropping at the base of the dune.
Her mental perception took a split second longer than her visual acuity to register the man and she jerked the binoculars back.
“Nigel, wake up!…Nigel, wake up!” Gloria prodded him with her foot.
Being woken abruptly, Nigel opened his eyes without moving, not knowing whether a scorpion had crawled into the shelter or it was time for his watch.
He moved slowly to the edge of the hidey hole beside Gloria and focused his binoculars in the
direction she was looking.
The man was clothed in a big sheet or light blanket resembling a toga and he wore boots, but he didn’t have the facial features of someone from the Middle East. He was light skinned, with light brown hair and what looked like a four-day growth of beard.
They watched him circle around the dune until reaching the top, where he paused. He appeared to be seeking something, but after a few moments he descended to the position where Gloria had first seen him.
His next act happened quickly, as if taken from the annals of Harry Houdini. He opened the side of the dune and disappeared inside then the opening closed.
“Nigel, did you see that?”
“Yes, I did—if my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Did he pop out of a door in that outcropping?”
“As I was scanning the dune, one minute nothing was there and the next minute I saw him.”
They both continued to scrutinize the few square meters where the man had vanished. “He appeared to be an Anglo.”
Nigel thought for a moment then said, “If he was a midget and we were in Ireland, I would have sworn I had just seen a leprechaun.”
An hour passed and it happened again. A parcel at the base of the dune opened—not a crack this time, but a wide gap.
Watching with utter astonishment, they were mesmerized as a Land Rover painted in the colors of the UN exited from the opening and headed into the desert. The man they had seen earlier was at the wheel, now dressed in Western style clothing. They could see that the Land Rover had four or five passengers and they appeared to be wearing bandages or blindfolds over their eyes.
“What’s the United Nations doing in the desert and why weren’t we briefed about this?” Nigel thought out loud.
“Good question—I was asking myself the same thing.”
Gloria reached for the satellite phone. “Before we do anything else I have to contact New York. We need to get clarification.”
It was after 2 a.m. in New York when Gloria reached the UN communications center. Walter Terrance was unavailable—on a flight to London—and the night duty officer couldn’t rouse his deputy.
She was finally able to get a secure phone number for the Baghdad Monitoring and Verification Center, where Mr. Terrance had given her the name of William Holden as a backup if a crisis arose.
* * *
Bill had hoped that they would make better progress, but considering the condition of the roads in Iraq, he supposed they could be happy they had gotten this far.
Before leaving paved road and beginning their cross-country trek they stopped to check the vehicles and top off the gas tanks.
Bill was startled by the ringing of his satellite phone. The phone was seldom used, but when it was it usually indicated some type of crisis.
“Holden here.”
“Mr. Holden, this is Gloria Caruthers. We’ve never met, but I work for the UN Investigative Agency.”
“I know who you are, Ms. Caruthers. Walter Terrance speaks highly of you.
“I’m a bit pressed for time, so if you tell me what this pertains to, we can both get on with our business.”
Cued that Holden was a man who went straight to the point, she obliged him. “Do you have inspectors working in the Syrian Desert?”
Not understanding her question and beginning to get annoyed, he said, “Ms. Caruthers, all of Iraq is a big desert. Would you be a little more specific?”
“I’m referring to the middle of the desert, where there are no roads, no buildings and nothing for miles around.”
“I’m not aware that my people inspect anything in the middle of the desert, as you put it.”
Gloria asked, “Why did I observe a UN vehicle with five or six people in it no more than twenty minutes ago, heading across the Syrian Desert?”
Bill now realized that he was talking to one of Walter Terrance’s operatives in Iraq and his interest increased.
“Are you on a secure line, Ms. Caruthers?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see any of the men in the vehicle? What I mean is, what did they look like?”
Gloria described the driver.
Epinephrine started to flow through Bill’s blood stream.
“And you say the vehicle had maybe six men in it altogether?”
“Five or six, but I’m unable to describe the others—only that they seemed to have bandages or blindfolds over their eyes.”
“The man driving sounds like one of my missing inspectors. What direction was he headed when you last saw him?”
“By my best reckoning, he was headed toward Ar Rutbah.”
“Ms. Caruthers, I’m parked just outside Ar Rutbah with some of my men. I need your coordinates.
“I also need you to do something that may be essential to saving their lives. Would you follow their vehicle? Not knowing their condition, I suspect it’s not the best, considering how long they have been missing.”
Gloria detected some desperation beneath Bill’s otherwise authoritative utterance. She didn’t hesitate in her answer and acknowledged for the first time that she wasn’t alone. “Yes, we will. We’ll leave as soon as you’re finished.”
Then she gave him the coordinates.
“Thank you, Ms. Caruthers. I’m leaving one of my vehicles here and am heading your way. I hope to see you soon.”
Bill broke the connection and reported the latest developments to his men. Their exuberance could get no higher after hearing the news, except for when they would greet their fellow inspectors.
Three of the Land Rovers headed into the desert with Bill Holden in the lead. The fourth would watch the road and radio them if anyone followed.
* * *
With the satellite phone shut off Gloria brought Nigel up to date.
“What about the cave, Gloria? What if there’s someone else in there?”
“If there was anyone in there, they would have followed the inspectors when they drove out. Holden’s driving this way with some of his men. We may be slower, but I think he’s right. If the inspectors from the cave have a breakdown or get stuck in the desert, they’ll need our help until he arrives.”
Nigel contemplated the situation for a few seconds.
“We’ll take nothing but the essentials. Water’s the most important. Let’s eat something as we travel and leave the rest. We take the weapons, GPS and satellite phone. Everything else gets buried in the hidey hole.”
They collected what they needed, buried their temporary shelter and headed across the desert after the Land Rover.
CHAPTER 22: MIRED IN SAND
DERRICK WILLY CURSED UNDER HIS BREATH. He had been laboring for thirty minutes to clear the Land Rover’s front axels. For every shovel full of sand he cleared it sometimes seemed that two slid in behind it.
In following others’ tire tracks he had felt safe that the sand was firm and would eventually lead him to a road or village.
When he came upon two sets of tracks diverging in different directions, he followed the ones heading east, because he knew that Baghdad was east of the Syrian Desert. But he didn’t realize that the vehicle whose tracks he followed had gotten trapped in the very same spot.
The first thing he had done was to make sure that his passengers were okay. He gave them water, but he could do nothing now about the waste accumulating in their makeshift robes, which served as diapers. He opened the windows to catch the nonexistent draft and rigged sheets as shades to keep the sun out.
His digging continued without progress. His efforts consumed thirty minutes as each movement of the shovel became slower and picked up less sand.
Forty-five minutes then an hour, and Derrick’s movements slackened and became erratic as he pushed sand around the trapped tire.
With the vague but urgent realization that he was the individual hope any of them had for survival, he rested for another couple of minutes, drank more water and took more salt tablets from the supply he had found in the first aid kit.
“Mustn’t ge
t heat stroke. Mustn’t.”
His bouts of dizziness came and went, as did his memories of the cave.
“Should have found the radios. My fault, my fault.”
He had searched every vehicle for the radios that should have been there but couldn’t be found. At moments now, in his delirium, he imagined that he was still in the cave, still searching.
“Hold on! The radios are here. I know it.”
As Derrick continued moving sand, the men in the Land Rover took a strange comfort hearing the unintelligible muttering that flowed through the windows.
* * *
Gloria and Nigel marched through the desert at a steady pace, halving their load as they drank their water. They ignored the sun beating down as though trying to discourage them. The thought that help was on its way sustained them.
Though the desert might have appeared from the air to be flat, in fact it had numerous valleys and ridges.
When they arrived at the place where the tracks went off in two different directions, they had to stop but briefly to see which way the Land Rover had gone.
Ten minutes later they found it.
The driver was unconscious. Nigel pulled him into the limited shade the Land Rover created, soaked a handkerchief in water and laid it over his head.
Gloria gave water to the passengers, whose responses to her questions were unintelligible. Seeing Peter Branham, the missing man from the Investigative Agency, she was both shocked and relieved.
They administered first aid then inspected the vehicle and the progress the driver had made in trying to dig its axels out of the sand.
Nigel checked on the driver again.
“How’s he doing?” Gloria asked. “I gave water to the men inside, but they all seem delirious. I can’t understand a thing they’re saying.”
“He should be okay. He has a nasty sunburn and appears to be running a temperature, but his breathing’s strong.”