As the darkened coastline gave way to a mixture of ancient and modern hotels scything along the coast in a glittering string of false emerald and ruby lights, Carter banked the Comanche over the half-lit suburbs around the heavily built-up centre of this, the second largest of Egypt’s cities. The machine cruised calmly through near-total darkness.
‘How are you feeling?’
Carter glanced back at Mongrel, thoughts racing through his mind. He shrugged, turning to gaze out over the poorly lit shanty towns, suburban sprawls
where fellaheen
subsistence workers lived in densely overpopulated crushes of seething humanity. The buildings were crazily crowded masses of mud-brick, breeze-block and red-brick dwellings, built in and around and often on top of other buildings. Between houses stood pens, some with corrugated roofs erected for animals. Some of the narrow streets sported small iron braziers that glowed like tiny fireflies as Carter eased the Comanche in stealth mode over their owners’ unsuspecting heads.
‘About what, in particular?’
‘I don’t know,’ rumbled the large man, rubbing at his eyes. The Spiral agent looked suddenly tired in the weak cockpit glow, huge rings circling his eyes and his face taking on a slightly haunted look. ‘It worry me, that thing what happen with Mila.’
‘You mean killing her?’
‘Yes, and her betrayal of us. It sit bad with me.’ He shook his head, sadly. ‘I know you had to do it, I know you in pain about - Jesus, Carter, a syringe in the eye?’
‘It was the nearest weapon,’ said Carter slowly, carefully. He could remember the pure adrenalin-high ecstasy of Kade’s exultant glee, his joy at seeing the woman fall with blood pouring from her eyeball - and he shivered.
Passing over the last straggling streets they headed south above dark undulating sands, pacing themselves and flying parallel with the Nile. Carter checked his ECube constantly as well as the tag - the TrackingDisc - that Carter had risked his life to attach to Durell’s helicopter as the leader of the Nex made his escape.
The darkness flowed over and around them. For a while Carter remembered his good times in Egypt - the
best
times - and then, making him shudder, Kade’s memories came back to haunt him and he remembered the
bad
times: the killing of his Arab captors in the desert, which was just the beginning of Kade’s all-powerful consuming insanity—
And then the horrors that had come later.
The murders ...
The events that had made Carter a hated, wanted and
feared
man across the whole of Egypt. A man wanted dead not just by the military, but by the civilian population as well...
And I can’t say I blame them, he thought.
If I was them,
I’d
want me dead.
I’d want me crucified on a cross of crumbling bones.
‘What happened down there?’ asked Mongrel suddenly, intuitively, his face lit by an eerie soft blue glow, his eyes focused as if reading Carter’s mind.
‘I’m sure you read the reports.’
Mongrel nodded. ‘Yeah, I read them. I know about the murders in the desert, the killing of twenty Arab captors and how you single-handedly rescue all the Spiral men - but that only tip of iceberg, I thinking.’
‘What do you mean?’ Carter felt a craving for a cigarette. He wanted to feel the nicotine buzz in his veins to help ease the pain from his bandaged arm, his battered bruised body, the stapled bullet wound. He was still carrying the flattened slice of metal in his back and he could feel it pressing against the slope of his ribs. The powerful painkillers seemed to be ignoring his agony.
‘I run several missions in Egypt, in Cairo, Alexandria, Beni Suef, Sohag, Luxor, even over in Port Said at the Suez Canal and as far west as Al-Tor at foot of Mount Sinai. I speak good Arabic, make good Spiral agent in these parts and look damn fine in
galabiyyas
robes and, hell, even enjoy smog that pass for air in Cairo. I can dance with
tahtib,
even do a bit of Sufi dancing and only thing I not like here is damn food, just not never as good as egg and chips back in Yorkshire, bloody funny bits of meat in rolls with God only know what stinking fiddly herbs all black and shrivelled. I know rules of Islam so not make fool of self, and can blend in on streets and can pass as construction worker or
bawwab
without problem. In all this time, for the years I work here and after you finish your run of three missions, they put up wanted posters -
everywhere.
And not just outside police stations, but lining roads, up on big mad billboards usually used to advertise movies. They wanted you dead, Carter. Very dead.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Well, I reckon it must be bad.’
‘It
was
bad,’ said Carter softly, remembering Kade with the long blackened knife and the soft flesh that had parted with such ease ...
‘Well, I know they had your face plastered on bill-boards for what seem fucking
years.
And you look no different - just little bit older and more careworn. I think lot of people remember you. We definitely have to stay covert when we go down there on streets and in desert.’
‘Yes.’
Mongrel stared over Carter’s shoulder, at the ECube. ‘Where it taking us?’
‘We’ll cut across Cairo, then head south and east down over the Eastern Desert. Looks to me like we’re heading just west of Hurghada, near the Red Sea Mountains.’
‘Hmm. I’ve not been there.’
‘Well, you can add it to your list of interesting places visited in the name of demolition, can’t you?’
‘I thinking Carter not in good mood.’
‘Well, you be fucking right. I’ve been shot, come off my bike at eighty per and played “Grate my fucking skin with a gravel road” - a wonderfully fun little game. I’ve been pounded to fuck by God only knows how many Nex and by Jam, my oldest and best friend who just so happens to have become a mutated monstrosity. And then I had to shoot a woman in the throat, which isn’t exactly something that makes me sleep easily at night. You could say I’m a bit fucking
tetchy
.’
‘Mongrel take your point.’
Engines humming, they reached the outskirts of Cairo and within minutes had passed the shanty towns and city buildings - indicated by a proliferation of lights. The Nile snaked through the centre of downtown Cairo; they passed the glittering mosaic that was Tahrir Square and the bright pointing finger of Cairo Tower and flew on past the lights of the Arab League Building, the Cairo Opera House and Gazira Island where Cairo’s money people resided. The Nile was split by lights cutting over the Sixth of October Bridge, and Carter reined in the Comanche. They hovered near Tahrir Square, gazing out over the visual confusion of advertisements for Coca-Cola, Sushi Burgers and AOL that adorned most buildings higher than a single storey and sent a million wavering colours cascading across the night-ebony waters of the Nile.
‘Bad memories?’
Carter nodded. ‘It was being bombed last time I was here. They have rebuilt well.’
‘The Egyptians are a resilient people.’
‘You have to be these days. Jesus, I could do with a cigarette.’
‘Let’s go there and get this done, then,’ growled Mongrel, and Carter eased the Comanche forward. They spun darkly over the bustle of lights and the bumper-to-bumper traffic that filled the roads, pumping out yet more black pollution into the already toxic air. Even from their height they could hear shouts and the general rumble of the traffic, the sounds of a city crammed with people to the point of meltdown.
Carter gradually increased their speed, and the Comanche lifted gently, banked and left Cairo behind. They followed the winding course of the Nile for a while and then cut out over the desert towards Gebel al-Galala al-Qibliya.
‘Long time since I been on the plateau,’ Mongrel muttered.
Carter said nothing; his eyes were dark, haunted with memories ...
Memories of Kade.
The Eastern Desert was far from being a flat and feature-less plain. As dawn broke, its pale tendrils spearing the horizon with a gentle glow and a promise of intense baking oven-heat to come, Mongrel yawned, rubbing at his eyes.
The desert world was a nightmare of sand-baked valleys, hills, mountains, troughs and massive boulders. Huge sheer scree slopes battled with high walls of mountainous rock and gentle undulations of rock and sand.
‘Beautiful,’ said Mongrel.
‘Not when you’re being marched out to be shot.’
‘It’s better to die in beautiful surroundings,’ chided Mongrel, smiling. ‘Better than dying in a sewer in Soho with all the other fucking rats.’
‘Better not to die at all.’
Carter kept the Comanche low and as the sun crept up the sky they cruised across the gradually rising plateau, which sloped upwards from the Nile towards the distant jagged volcanic mountains lining the Red Sea. As they approached, Carter spun the Comanche around and they settled easily into a small basin lying deep with windswept sand. The rock bowl lay scattered with massive oral boulders, each larger than a house and seemingly tossed casually across the basin floor. A few sprinkled date palms, acacias and jacarandas sat half within the shade of several boulders, indicating a water source of some kind.
Carter brought the Comanche down beside a sprawling jacaranda that was not yet in flower, its branches spider-webbing out to the green baked leaves at their tips. The rotors buffeted the tree, and as Carter shut down the engines, so the swirls of rotor-swept sand slowly died with them, settling. Carter leapt out under the baking sun and looked up at the clear deep blue of the sky.
‘Fuck, it’s hot,’ breathed Mongrel, jumping down beside him. ‘How far we got to walk?’
‘Two or three klicks. Maybe a little more, depending on the terrain. I didn’t want to get too close - we don’t know what sort of air support they have. Back in Slovenia they had some serious weaponry but it was all linked close to the quarry. It seems they could have a similar set-up here.’
Mongrel leant his back against the trunk of the tree, and took a long swig from his canteen. ‘You think Jam will still be here? After all, we’ve had to detour and delay thanks to The Priest, that moaning bastard ...’
‘The TrackingDisc led us here, and the bugged helicopter hasn’t moved. There’s always the possibility they’ve travelled onwards, using a different vehicle -’ Carter smiled grimly ‘- and if that’s the case, then we’re probably fucked.’
‘Let’s get moving then,’ grunted the large squaddie, pushing himself away from the tree. ‘Longer we stand talking, more chance they have of escape.’
The two men quickly sorted their equipment, travelling with light rucksacks, black shamags wound around their heads to protect them against the relentless sun.
Walking across the basin floor, they climbed the gentle rocky slope leading up and out to the rising plateau of rock and sand, and then started the short trek in silence, eyes alert and M24 carbines slung across their backs.
It was only when he started walking that Carter realised how weary he was; exhausted, in fact. And now they were heading into the lion’s den - heading towards the enemy with no back-up and no prospect of calling any. Spiral had forbidden Carter to travel to Egypt but though it hurt him deeply to do it, if this was what it took to save Natasha’s life the insubordination came easily.
I wonder if this was how Durell felt?
How Feuchter felt?
To bite the hand that feeds ...
The sun pushed slowly on up the sky.
Carter and Mongrel moved steadily on, using the new ECubes to navigate and hoping that this new model was as secure against Nex digital infiltration as The Priest had promised. Wading through hot sand that came up to their ankles, they climbed ever upwards, tabbing between walls and gulleys of red rock, sometimes dropping into a narrow wadi and negotiating their way forward towards—
The rock basin, and the town that lay within.
Carter and Mongrel knelt beside a large jagged outcropping of rock, which overhung the steep drop ahead of them.
The basin spread out and was filled wall to wall with a town built from stone and mud bricks. Carter rested back on his haunches and Mongrel dropped to his belly as they sweated heavily under the burning sun, gazing down on the activity below.
The basin was perhaps a kilometre and a half square, three sides bordered with steep jagged volcanic walls rising to a high peak over to the north-east. At the head of the basin there was a temple of some kind, a large imposing building built from the red rock of the mountains and faced with marble, the upper layers of which had been stripped off. Ancient carvings, wind-worn and smooth, sat along a balcony above thick circular pillars, and sand swirled around the steps that led down to a main street, which in turn sliced through the heart of the town.
‘Looks like the town built up around the temple,’ said Carter, soothing his parched throat with a gulp of water.
‘Yeah. And look.’ Mongrel pointed. Beside the temple, in a narrow fenced-in and sand-swept yard sat five black helicopters, squat and gleaming and shaded by the high rock walls.
‘Nex,’ said Carter softly, indicating with his canteen.
They moved in patrols through the main street and the narrow side-streets of the town. They moved in twos and threes, dressed in black, heads shrouded in black shamags and carrying machine rifles of various types. They moved easily among the populace of the town who seemed to ignore the Nex, almost accepting them as their own.