‘Nigeria,’ said Jumoke.
‘Us too,’ said the boy sitting next to Li. ‘I am Juma and these three are Ajani, Zaid and Rafiki.’
The other three boys nodded but did not speak. Li nodded back to each of them and made a mental note to remember that Juma was the leader of that particular foursome. If she could get Juma on her side, the others would follow.
‘I am Kesia,’ said one of the two older girls who were sitting together in the far corner of the truck. ‘And this is Sisi.’
‘We are from Benin,’ said Sisi, looking at Li from under her lashes with a coy smile.
Li watched this performance with a puzzled frown until she remembered that, as far as Sisi was concerned, she was a boy called Liang. Li felt a blush spreading across her face and hastily looked away. She met Khalid’s amused gaze and raised her eyebrows at him, then casually hooked the locket from her shirt and twisted the chain around her finger. Khalid looked down at the locket, then back to her face, his eyes full of a sudden hope. He knew the locket contained a hidden tracker device and Li could see that he understood exactly why she had made a point of showing it to him.
The Unimog’s engine started up, the vehicle lurched forward and Li nearly slid off the bench. Hastily, she shoved the locket back under her shirt and grabbed on to one of the struts supporting the canvas covering. The dog flopped down on to the floor, lying full stretch between the benches and resting its muzzle on its front paws. Li gave the animal a shove to get it off her foot and it rose to its feet again and gave her a yellow-eyed stare. It was a big, lean animal, high in the shoulder, and its long muzzle was on a level with her face as she sat on the bench seat.
Li returned the stare and the dog began a low, rumbling growl in the pit of its belly.
‘Don’t look it in the eye,’ warned Khalid, following her lead and speaking in French. ‘It bites if it thinks it’s being challenged.’
The growl turned into a snarl and the dog’s muzzle wrinkled back, pulling away from a set of sharp, saliva-coated fangs. Hastily Li looked down at her feet. The dog rumbled for a while longer, then pushed its snout into her neck and sniffed suspiciously. Li held perfectly still, aware that the dog’s sharp, curved teeth were centimetres from her jugular vein.
It seemed an age before the dog subsided to the floor again. Li let out her breath and slumped back, trying to ignore the heat and the stink and hoping the rest of Alpha Force were right on her tail.
T
WELVE
While Alex, Li and Amber took the quads to reconnoitre the village, Hex had found a rock in the shade of the dune that gave him a view of the village. He was sitting with his palmtop activated, ready to call for help if things went bad, but he was not expecting any trouble. Alpha Force were all trained in covert surveillance techniques, but Alex was a natural. Keeping out of sight of the slavers would be no problem for him.
Hex focused on the slavers’ Unimog once more, but nothing much was happening. He yawned, lowered the binoculars and gazed around the quiet camp. The Monster was parked directly below the towering dune, in the shelter of the wadi. Paulo was sprawled out on the back seats of the cab, deep in an exhausted sleep after his day of extreme driving. A container of water was coming to the boil on the stove that Hex had positioned on a patch of flat ground; five silver-foil packages were lined up beside it.
His stomach gave a loud rumble as he looked down at the boil-in-the bag rations. After a day without food they actually seemed appetizing. He caught the faint note of an engine starting up and turned to look across the plain to the village. He did not need the binoculars to see the Unimog pulling out and heading north in a cloud of dust. The two smaller clouds of dust heading his way must be the quads. Hex grinned, put his palmtop down on the rock next to the binoculars and sprinted down to heat up the food.
As he busied himself at the stove, Hex was vaguely aware that the wind was getting up, but in the lee of the massive shoulder of the dune he was protected from both the sight and the noise of the approaching sandstorm until it was right on top of the camp. The whirling mass of red sand and hot air blasted over the crest of the dune and swirled in from either side in the space of a second. Hex barely had time to jump away from the pot of boiling water as it overturned.
He yelled in shock, but his yell turned into a choking cough as his mouth and throat filled with sand. His eyes felt as though they had been stuck with needles. He closed them tight against the storm, wincing as the sand already trapped under his lids scraped across his corneas. Blind and choking, Hex stumbled in what he thought was the direction of the Unimog until his foot stepped out into thin air and he tumbled down into the stony bottom of the wadi. With a groan he picked himself up again, but he had lost all sense of direction and could not decide which way to go. If he headed the wrong way, he could be staggering along the stony bed of the wadi until he collapsed. As he stood there, hunched against the howling storm and trying to see out of his streaming eyes, a dark shape loomed up beside him.
It was Paulo. He had wrapped his headcloth round and round his face like a bandage and plonked a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. Hex had never been so glad to see the big South American, even if he did look like a cross between a mummy and the invisible man. Hex grabbed Paulo’s arm and allowed himself to be guided to the Unimog and up into the shelter of the cab. Once he was in, he collapsed across the front seats, coughing up sand and wiping his streaming eyes as Paulo climbed in after him and pulled the heavy door shut.
It was nearly dark inside the cab. The wind was strong enough to rock the big vehicle on its wheels and the sand hissed and rattled against the metal bodywork, but at least it was possible to breathe again. Hex took several deep, sand-free gasps of air, then sat up and looked across at Paulo.
‘Thanks,’ he said gratefully over the noise.
‘The others?’ asked Paulo, unwinding his headcloth.
‘Last time I looked, the Scorpion’s Unimog was heading north and the quads were heading back this way,’ said Hex.
‘Into the storm,’ said Paulo.
‘Yeah, but I’m sure they would’ve seen it coming and turned back to the village. They’ll be sitting this out just like we are.’
Paulo nodded, but his face was worried as he stared out into the storm. ‘I wish we could be sure,’ he said.
Hex smiled as an idea hit him. ‘We can,’ he said.
‘How?’
‘The tracker unit,’ said Hex. ‘It’s in the door pocket next to you.’
Paulo pulled out the slim black box, opened up the lid and extended the telescopic aerial. Hex leaned in as he activated the screen. A grid appeared, with compass bearings and a distance scale in the top corner.
‘That’s us,’ said Hex, pointing to a bright green double blip in the centre of the grid. ‘And that’s them,’ he added, pointing to another green blip over in the north-west quadrant of the screen. ‘See? That’s exactly where the village is. Told you they’d be holed up there.’
‘So what is that?’ asked Paulo, pointing to a third, smaller blip nearly at the top of the screen, heading north.
Hex frowned, then looked back to the blip in the village. He studied it more closely and realized that it was made up of two flashing green lights, not three.
‘Did you say the Scorpion was heading north?’ asked Paulo.
The same thought hit them simultaneously. They shared a horrified glance, then turned back to the tracker unit. The single blip was nearly off the screen now.
‘The Scorpion’s got one of them,’ said Hex.
‘Which one?’ asked Paulo, staring at the single blip. ‘And how can they still be moving in this?’
‘The storm can’t have caught them yet,’ said Hex.
The blip reached the edge of the screen and winked out. Paulo thumped the dashboard in frustration. ‘Quickly! You must call the authorities and give them the Scorpion’s position. Maybe they can head him off from the north.’
Hex nodded and reached for his palmtop, but the pouch under his shirt was empty. A chill ran through him as he remembered that he had left his palmtop on the rock just before the storm hit. ‘It’s out there,’ he said quietly. ‘On the rock where I was sitting.’
‘
Inferno!
’ cursed Paulo. He peered out through the windscreen, trying to judge whether he could make it to the rock without getting lost. He never had the chance. Suddenly the whole vehicle shuddered as something hugely heavy fell on top of them with a massive whump. The cab was plunged into darkness and the noise of the storm stopped in mid-howl as though a switch had been flicked.
‘What the hell. . . ?’ Hex ducked as the metal roof of the cab groaned, then folded downwards in a V shape above his head. It came to a stop just above the headrest of the middle seat. The windscreen buckled under the pressure with a crack like a starter pistol and the glass splintered into a spider web of fine cracks.
Paulo reached for the door handle and yanked it back, but the door would not budge. Hex tried his door with the same result. They stared at one another and their eyes were wild in the dim, green light from the tracker screen. Neither of them could explain what was happening and that scared them.
‘Window,’ panted Hex. ‘Try the window.’
Paulo grabbed the handle and gave it a powerful wrench just as Hex finally realized what had fallen on to the Unimog.
‘No!’ yelled Hex, but he was too late. Paulo’s window slid halfway down and an avalanche of sand poured into the cab. It filled the floor well and reached their knees with frightening speed. By the time Paulo had managed to force the window almost closed again, the sand was up to their hips.
‘Dios!
’ yelled Paulo, holding the tracker unit out of the way of the sand. ‘What is happening?’
‘It’s the dune,’ said Hex. ‘The base was right up against the side of the wadi. A whole section must’ve been ready to collapse into it and the storm just pushed it over the edge.’
Paulo swallowed and peered across at Hex in the dim, green light from the tracker screen. ‘The dune has fallen into the wadi? Onto us?’
Hex nodded. ‘Some of it at least.’
‘How much is “some”?’ asked Paulo, staring at the solid wall of sand that pressed against the cracked windscreen.
Hex shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But one thing’s for sure. We’re buried.’
T
HIRTEEN
‘I don’t understand it.’ Amber stared down at her GPS unit, then up at the empty space in front of the dune. ‘This is supposed to be accurate to within fifty metres. They should be here. The wadi should be here and they should be parked in it. But there’s nothing!’
Alex pulled his headcloth away from his face and stood up on his quad to get a better view. The sun was only just over the horizon and it was difficult to tell the difference between substance and shadow. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he looked around. He could not quite believe what was happening. Li had been taken away in the Scorpion’s Unimog while he and Amber had been pinned down all night in a ferocious sandstorm – and now Paulo and Hex had disappeared too. The situation just kept on getting worse.
Alex shook his head, then turned his quad and raced along the edge of the dune base, looking for tyre tracks. He rounded a curve in the side of the dune and a chasm opened up in front of him. With a curse, Alex swung the quad hard to the right, leaning into the turn with all his might. His rear left wheel skidded over the edge of the wadi and the quad started to tip. He found some extra power in the motor and forced the quad away from the edge. He came to a halt well away from the dune and scrambled from the machine.
By the time Amber caught up with him, Alex was standing on the bank at the place where he had nearly lost control of his quad. ‘Look at this!’ he called to her as she climbed from her machine and hurried over. ‘I don’t understand it. Here’s the wadi at the base of the dune, but it stops dead, right there, as though it ran into a wall.’
‘Or the other way round,’ said Amber softly, staring wide-eyed at the section of dune they had just skirted.
‘What?’
‘I think I know where they are, Alex,’ said Amber, her voice high with fear.
‘Where?’ asked Alex.
Amber pointed at the new curve in the dune. ‘Under there.’
They raced back to their original position and turned off the quad engines. ‘This is it,’ said Amber, studying the screen of her GPS unit. ‘This is where we left them last night.’
‘Listen!’ said Alex. ‘Did you hear that?’
They both stood stock still, holding their breath. Very faintly, from the slope directly ahead of them, came the sound of a truck horn. They threw themselves at the slope and started digging feverishly, scooping the sand out with their bare hands and sending it arcing back between their legs. The horn sounded again, louder this time, and they threw themselves into the digging with renewed effort.
‘Got something,’ panted Amber as her hand connected with metal. She brushed the sand away and revealed part of the roof of the Unimog cab. Quickly they found the edge of the roof then cleared the sand away from the side window. It was partly open, but the opening was blocked with sand. Alex knocked the sand away and peered inside. It was still too dark in the cab to see anything but there was no mistaking the sour air that sighed into his face.