‘If he did get away.’
Another bullet slammed into the side of the truck.
‘Yeah.’
I looked around for Billson and found him scrunched up behind the rear wheel, making himself as small as possible. Byrne followed my glance. ‘He won’t be much help,’ he said flatly. ‘We can count him out.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Shoot back.’
There was a
thunk
and a soft explosive blast of air as another tyre went. Byrne said, ‘He does that once more and we’re stuck. I only have two spares. See if you can locate the son of a bitch.’
Carefully I raised my head, looking through the windows of the Toyota. I stared at the dune I saw which was about a hundred feet high, and ran my eye along the line of the crest. There was another shot which hit the truck and then I saw a slight movement.
I ducked down. ‘He’s on top of the dune and about twenty degrees to the left.’
‘How far?’
‘Hard to say. Two fifty to three hundred yards. It’ll be an uphill shot.’
‘Uh-huh!’ Byrne adjusted the sight on the rifle. ‘Now let the dog see the rabbit. And, for Christ’s sake, keep that handgun ready and watch our flanks.’
I stood back at a crouch as Byrne pushed the barrel of the rifle through the open window in the door of the truck. I glanced from side to side but nothing moved. ‘I see him,’ said Byrne softly. They fired together and Byrne ducked. The truck shivered on its springs. ‘I think I put some sand in his eyes,’ he said.
There was silence broken only by metallic creakings from the cooling engine and a soft liquid gurgling noise. I was beginning to think Byrne was right when there came another shot and a bullet went right through both open windows of the truck, breaking the sound barrier about six inches above my head with a vicious crack.
Byrne said, ‘I’ll bet he moved. If I can do that again be ready to make a break for it. Then try to out-flank them. If we don’t do something we’ll be shot to bits just standing here.’
‘All right.’
He raised his head and looked up at the dune. ‘Yeah, he moved. Now where in hell is he?’ Another bullet came our way with disastrous effect. It slammed into the tyre on the wheel behind which Billson crouched and there was a
whoosh
as the air escaped.
‘That’s buggered it!’ said Byrne. Paul was whimpering and trying to burrow his way into the soft sand. ‘We won’t get far on three wheels, but I’ve got the bastard spotted.’
He brought up the rifle again and prepared to fire. I said, ‘Hold it, Luke!’ and put all the urgency I could into my voice.
He lowered his head. ‘What is it?’
I knew what that gurgling noise had meant. ‘He’s either got the petrol tank or one of the fuel cans. Can’t you smell it?’ Byrne sniffed the stink of petrol. I said, ‘You shoot that thing and we could go up in flames in a big way. It only needs a spark.’
‘Jesus!’ He withdrew the rifle and stared at me, and the same thing was in both our minds. It would need only a
spark from a ricochet off metal to fire the vapourizing petrol.
I said, ‘I made that mistake in Korea, and I’ve got burned skin to prove it.’
‘I wondered about that puckering on your chest. We’d better run for it then. Different directions. I think there’s only one guy shooting; he won’t get us both.’
‘What about Paul?’
‘He can do what the hell he likes.’
A bullet smashed into a headlight and glass flew.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Immediately after the next shot.’
Byrne nodded.
There was no next shot—not from the rifle, but faintly in the distance someone screamed, an ululating noise of pure agony which went on and on. I jerked, torn from the tension of waiting to run into a greater tension. I stared at Byrne. ‘What’s that?’
The scream still went on, now broken into sobbing screeches as someone fought for breath. ‘Someone’s hurting, that’s for sure,’ he said. There were distant shots, not from the rifle but from pistols in my judgement. Then the screaming stopped and again there was silence.
We listened for a long time and heard nothing at all. After a while I said, ‘I think…’
‘Quiet!’ snapped Byrne.
In the distance was the unmistakable noise of a balky starter turning an engine over. It whined a few more times and then the quieter engine must have fired because the noise stopped. Byrne said, ‘Maybe they’re leaving.’
‘Maybe it’s a trick to get us in the open.’ He nodded at that so we stayed there.
After perhaps ten minutes there was a shout and I looked up at the dune, careful to keep cover. Standing up there was Konti and he was shouting and waving. Byrne took a deep breath. ‘I’ll be goddamned! Let’s go see.’
We climbed the dune and Konti started to jabber at Byrne with much gesticulation. He was very excited and understandably so; it had been an exciting fifteen minutes. He pointed down to the valley on the other side of the dune and he and Byrne walked down with me following because I wanted to know what was going on.
There were tyre tracks down there and someone had shed a lot of blood, perhaps a pint or more. Byrne squatted down and pointed to where a tyre had gone over blood-dampened sand. ‘Kissack,’ he said. ‘That’s the mark I put in his rear tyre.’
‘What happened?’
‘What happened is that you can thank God we picked up Konti yesterday. He probably saved our lives.’
‘How?’
Byrne talked to Konti for a few minutes then said to me, ‘He says there were three men here. From the description he gives they were Kissack, Bailly and another guy, probably an Arab. Kissack and the Arab were up top on the dune with Kissack doing the shooting. Bailly was standing here by the car. So Konti came around here and threw a knife at him.’
‘A knife!’ I said blankly. ‘And that was what all the screaming was about?’ I couldn’t think why. A man with a knife in him didn’t usually make that kind of row, but of course it would depend where the knife hit him. I looked around, then said, ‘How did Konti get close enough to throw a knife? There’s no cover.’
‘You ain’t seen the knife,’ said Byrne. ‘After it hit Bailly it buried itself in the sand. Konti picked it up before he called us.’
He said something to Konti and held out his hand. Konti fumbled about his person and produced the knife, which was like no knife I’d ever seen before. It was about eighteen inches long and made out of a single piece of flat steel an eighth of an inch thick. The handle was a foot long but the
rest of it is hard to describe. It curved in a half-circle and two other blades projected at right-angles with hooks on the end. There seemed to be a multiplicity of cutting edges, each as sharp as a razor. It was very rusty.
‘That’s a
mouzeri
,’ said Byrne. ‘The Teda throwing knife. It’s thrown horizontally from below waist level and it’ll stop a horse going at full gallop. It’s used for hunting addax and oryx but it’ll also chop a man off at the ankles at sixty yards. Bailly didn’t know what hit him, but Konti says it damn near took his left foot right off and badly injured his right ankle.’
I looked at the rusty blades. ‘If he doesn’t die of loss of blood it’ll be by blood-poisoning,’ I observed. What this thing had done to Bailly was enough to make anyone scream.
‘I hope so,’ said Byrne harshly. He took the queer-shaped knife and gave it back to Konti, who grinned cheerfully. ‘Konti says it’s the same knife he used to kill his enemy with in the Tibesti.’ He looked down at the blood on the sand and shrugged. ‘Let’s go see what the damage is.’
The damage was bad. Three tyres shot to pieces and only two spares. But that wasn’t the worst, because the petrol tank had a hole in it. We had refilled from the jerricans not long before the shooting and there wasn’t nearly enough petrol to take us to Bilma even if we had good tyres.
I said, ‘Well, we’ve got plenty water and food. All we have to do is to sit tight until Mokhtar comes along, then we can hitch a ride on a camel.’
‘Yeah,’ said Byrne. ‘Good thinking—but for one thing. He ain’t coming this way.’
Billson had still not got over his fit of the quivers. I couldn’t say that I blamed him; being shot at takes different men in different ways, and Paul had not been the most stable man to begin with. And there was something else that Paul had to contend with which did not obtain under war conditions. He lived with the knowledge that he was being hunted personally, that someone malevolent was pursuing him with intent to kill. Every bullet that came our way had Paul’s name engraved upon it.
And so he was in no shape to take an immediate part in the discussion. Konti, while being wise in desert ways, knew little about the Ténéré; it was not his stamping ground. The same applied to me except the bit about desert ways, and so most of the decisions were made by Byrne.
After the flat statement that Mokhtar was not coming our way I merely said, ‘Oh!’ and waited for what he’d say next.
What he did say was: ‘That
djerba
is going to come in useful. We’re going to walk a piece.’
‘How far?’
He said, ‘I came this way because it’s a short cut and okay for a truck. The camel trail is fifteen miles to the south.’
After leaving Fachi I would have sworn that Byrne had navigated from camel skeleton to camel skeleton but I had
seen none in the last few miles. And he had just given the reason why. ‘Fifteen miles,’ I said, feeling relieved. ‘That’s not far.’
Byrne said, ‘We’ll need to take water—as much as we can carry.’
‘To walk fifteen miles?’
Byrne took me by the elbow and walked me out of Paul’s hearing. He said, ‘It’ll take us the rest of today and all day tomorrow. You ever walked in soft sand?’
‘Not far.’ I looked up the valley. ‘But it doesn’t seem too difficult.’
He followed my glance. ‘The camel trail to Bilma is successful because it follows the grain of the country. You can go up the long valleys between the dunes. We’ll be walking against the grain; you’ll be going up and down dunes until you’re dizzy. It’s fifteen miles across country plus five miles of climbing up and another five miles going down. And there are other things to keep in mind.’
‘Such as?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you if it’s necessary. No point in you worrying about what may not happen. Let me do the worrying.’
He only succeeded in making me uneasy.
The first thing we did was to fill the
djerba
with water from a jerrican, then Byrne looked me up and down. ‘How much weight do you reckon you can carry?’
I remembered army route marches which were not so much for use in these mechanized days as to toughen the men. Officers were supposed to do better than the men. I picked a figure, then hastily revised it downwards as I thought of climbing interminably in soft sand. ‘Forty pounds.’
Byrne shook his head. ‘Too much. A jerrican half-f for you and Paul; that’s about thirty pounds each. Konti can take his
djerba
; he’s used to it.’
We took a full jerrican and split it between two, then made slings so the jerricans could be back-packed, taking care to put in plenty of padding to avoid chafe. Byrne made us take the
djellabas.
‘It gets cold at night.’ I noted that the jerrican he picked to carry himself was full. That would be a killing load for a man on the wrong side of sixty if what he had said about our journey was true, but I said nothing about it. He knew what he was doing.
We then ate and stuffed what was left of the bread and cheese and a few scraps of meat into the breast pockets of our
gandouras.
‘Drink hearty,’ advised Byrne. ‘Water is better in you than out. Any camel knows that.’
When Byrne had spoken of water in the past he had referred to litres or gallons interchangeably, but his gallons were American. I estimated that we moved away carrying eight and a half imperial gallons in jerricans plus what was in the
djerba
which was difficult to estimate—say, nearly twelve gallons in all. It seemed a lot of water to take for a fifteen-mile hike and I wondered what possibilities were lurking in Byrne’s mind.
My memories of the journey I seldom care to reflect upon. The most insistent thing that comes to mind is the soft, yet gritty, sand. A building contractor would have delighted in it because it would be ideal for making high-quality cement and concrete and, no doubt, some sharp entrepreneur will find some way of shipping it out and making a profit. God knows, there’s enough of it. But I can never now look upon an expanse of sand without feeling, in imagination, the cruel tug of that damned jerrican on my back.
We passed the place where Konti had hamstrung Bailly, crossed the valley and climbed another of the dunes which, in that place, were running from sixty to a hundred feet high. I suppose we were lucky in a way because the forward slopes which we had to climb were not as steep as the
reverse slopes. Had we been going north instead of south it would have been much worse.
I watched Byrne going ahead of me across a valley floor and it came to me that there was some significance to that languid, gliding walk of the Tuareg—it came from much walking in sand, using the most economical means possible. I tried to imitate it without much success; you had to have been born with it or trained by the years like Byrne. My feet were more accustomed to city pavements.
We climbed another dune, feet digging into the sand against insistent pull of the back packs, and sometimes slipping backwards. On the crest I paused for breath and looked around. Byrne had well described an
erg
as a sea of sand. The Ténéré was like a still picture of a storm at sea, the waves frozen in mid-heave. But these waves were bigger than any wave of water and stretched interminably as far as I could see.
The sun was setting, casting long shadows into the troughs, and the crest of the dune on which I was standing wound sinuously for many miles until it dipped out of sight. The dunes themselves were soft and smooth, sculptured by the wind, unmarked by footprint, whether of man or animal.
Byrne gestured impatiently and we went slipping and sliding down the other and steeper side. Many times during that awful journey I lost control during these descents. The jerrican on my back would seem to push and I would lose my balance and fall headlong. Luckily the sand was soft and cushiony, but not so soft in individual grains that it wasn’t also abrasive, and the skin of my hands became tender.
If I was suffering like that, what of Billson? I had lived a sedentary city life but had tried to temper myself and keep in condition by gymnastics and fencing. Paul had worked for fifteen years in the same dreary office in Luton and, from what I had gathered during the course of investigating his life he hadn’t done much to keep fit. But the odd thing was that during this time he didn’t complain once. He stolidly
climbed and just as stolidly picked himself up when he slipped and fell, and kept up the same speed as the rest of us, which wasn’t all that slow with Byrne setting the pace.
I was slowly coming to a conclusion about Paul. Some men may be sprinters, good in the short haul and competent in a crisis. Paul might prove to be the reverse. While not handling crises particularly well he was tenacious and stubborn, as proved by his lifelong obsession about his father, and this stroll across the Ténéré was bringing out his best qualities. Be that as it may, he did as well as anyone on that journey, ill-conditioned though his body was for it.
We stopped on top of a dune just as the sun was dipping below the horizon, and Byrne said, ‘Okay; you can take off your packs.’
It was a great relief to get rid of that jerrican which had seemed to increase in weight with every step I took. Billson slumped down and in the red light of the setting sun his face was grey. I remembered that he had been shot in the shoulder not many weeks before, and said gently, ‘Here, Paul; let me help you.’ I helped him divest himself of his back pack, and said, ‘How’s your shoulder?’
‘All right,’ he said dully.
‘Let me look at it.’ His chest was heaving as he drew panting breaths after that last climb and he made no move, so I unbuttoned the front of his shirt and looked at his shoulder before it became too dark to see. The wound, which had been healing well, was now inflamed and red. It would seem that the pull of the jerrican on the improvised harness was chafing him. I said, ‘Luke, look at this.’
Byrne came over and inspected Paul. He said, ‘We drink the water out of his can first.’
‘And perhaps we can transfer some into my can.’
‘Maybe,’ he said noncommittally. ‘Let’s eat.’
Our dinner that night was cold and unappetizing. The stars came out as the light ebbed away in the west and
the temperature dropped. Byrne said, ‘Better wear
djellabas.’
As I put mine on I asked, ‘How far have we come?’
‘Mile and a half—maybe two miles.’
‘Is that all?’ I was shattered. It seemed more like five or six.
‘More’n I expected.’ Byrne nodded towards Billson. ‘I thought he’d hold us up. He still might. I suggest you take some of his water. Do it now before we leave.’
‘Leave! You’re not going on in the dark?’
‘Damn right I am. We’re in a hurry. Don’t worry; I have a compass and the moon will rise later.’
I put half of Billson’s water into my jerrican, reflecting that Byrne was still carrying a full one. He gathered us together. ‘We’re moving off now. So far you’ve not done much talking. That’s good because you needed your breath. But now you talk because it’s dark—you don’t lose contact with anyone and you don’t let them lose contact with you. It’ll be slow going but we need every yard we can make.’
He said something to Konti, probably repeating what he’d told us, then we descended from the top of the dune. It was damned difficult in the dark, and Byrne kept up a constant grunting, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’, sounding like a demented Santa Claus. But it was enough to let us know where he was, and I was encouraged to raise my own voice in song.
At the bottom he rounded us up and we set off across the valley floor under those glittering stars. I sang again; a ditty from my army days:
‘Uncle George and Auntie Mabel Fainted at the breakfast table. Let this be an awful warning Not to do it in the morning.’
I paused. ‘Billson, are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m all right.’
From the left Konti made a whickering noise. He sounded like a horse. Byrne grunted, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’
‘Ovaltine has put them right, Now they do it morn and night; Uncle George is hoping soon To do it in the afternoon. Hark the Herald Angels sing, “Ovaltine is damned good thing.”’
Billson made the first attempt at a witticism that I had heard pass his lips. ‘Were you a Little Ovaltiney?’
I bumped into Byrne. ‘Now we’ve had the commercial,’ he said acidly. ‘Let’s get climbing.’
So up we went—slowly.
I didn’t know then how long we stumbled along in the dark but it seemed like hours. Later Byrne said he’d called a halt just before midnight, so that meant a six-hour night march at probably not more than half a mile an hour. He stopped unexpectedly when we were half way up a slope, and said, ‘This is it. Dig in.’
Thankfully I eased the jerrican from me and massaged my aching shoulders. In the light of the moon I saw Billson just lying there. I crawled over to him and helped him out of his harness, then made sure his
djellaba
was wrapped around him, and built up a small rampart of sand on the downhill side of him to prevent him rolling to the bottom in his sleep. Before I left him he had passed out.
I crawled over to Byrne and demanded in an angry whisper, ‘What the hell’s the flaming hurry? Paul’s half dead.’
‘He will be dead if we don’t get to where we’re going by nightfall tomorrow,’ said Byrne unemotionally.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, an
azelai
don’t stop at sunset like we’ve usually been doing. Mokhtar will push on until about eleven every
night. ‘Course, it’s easy for them, they’re going along the valley bottoms.’
‘How does he navigate?’
‘Stars,’ said Byrne. ‘And experience. Now, I figure to get to where he’ll be passing through before sundown, and I also figure that he’ll be passing through some time during the night. Camels don’t have headlights and tail lights, you know; and an
azelai
moves along goddamn quiet, like. At night a caravan could pass within two hundred yards of you and you wouldn’t know it, even though in daylight it would be in plain sight. That’s why I want to get there when I can see.’
‘See what?’
‘I’ll figure that out when I get there. Now go to sleep.’
I was about to turn away when I thought of something. ‘What happens if we miss the caravan?’
‘Then we walk to Bilma—that’s why we brought all the water. Konti and I would make it. You might. Billson wouldn’t.’
That was plain enough. I dug out a trench in the side of the dune to lie in, and hoped it didn’t look too much like a grave. Then I pulled the
djellaba
closer around me, and lay down. I looked up at the pock-marked moon for a long time before I went to sleep. It must have been all of three minutes.
We drank all of Billson’s remaining water the following morning and abandoned his jerrican. ‘Soak yourselves in it,’ advised Byrne. ‘Get as much water into you as you can hold.’
Breakfast in the light of dawn was frugal and soon done with. I cleaned out the last few crumbs from my pocket, hoisted the jerrican on to my back with distaste, and was ready to go.
Billson said, ‘Stafford, why don’t we put half your water in here?’ He kicked the discarded jerrican with a clang. ‘I could carry it.’
I looked at him in surprise. That was the first time he had offered to do anything for anyone so far. Maybe there was hope of reclaiming him for the human race, after all. I said, ‘Better put that to Byrne; his can is full.’
Byrne stepped over to Billson. ‘Let’s see your shoulder.’ He examined it and shook his head. ‘You couldn’t do it, Paul. More abrasion and more sand in there and you’ll get gangrene. Keep it wrapped up. Let’s move.’
And so we set off again—‘Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen’—the mountain bit was real enough and it was certainly airy on that cold morning, but there were no rushes and the valleys were anything but glen-like, although welcome enough because they gave a brief respite for level walking.