He clapped a friendly hand on the bedouin’s shoulder. ‘So let’s eat.’
They made a fire from wood washed down by flash-floods from the mountains. Abdullah brewed tea, dark brown and sweet, in an old biscuit tin that he kept inside one of the saddlebags. Another yielded their meal, a bag of foule beans that Abdullah mashed into a paste, mixing in maize oil as he went. When he had finished, he motioned for Girling to scoop the glutinous mixture from the bowl with his fingers and gave him some bread to add sustenance to their helpings.
The food was just enough for Girling to forget his hunger and he lay down on the camel blanket. Above him the Milky Way shone with a magical clarity, the pinpoints of light dimmed only by the periodic contrast of shooting stars.
He felt a sudden burning wish for Mona to be there beside him. He would have loved more than anything to have shared this moment with her, to talk it through with her and listen to her soft words of wisdom. He wondered whether she would have seen things the way he saw them. He hoped so, for to him the evidence was indisputable. Stansell had learned of the Angels of Judgement during the cocktail party at the Soviet Embassy, probably from a Russian diplomat who’d got pissed out of his skull and spilled the beans by mistake. On the face of it, Stansell already had his scoop, but being the sort of journalist he was, he had to take it one step further. The name of the Sword had triggered a hunt through past volumes of Dispatches until he struck gold and traced the Sword back to Afghanistan. Knowing of the links that bound Muslim fundamentalist organizations from around the world, he’d gone to tap a source in the Brotherhood, perhaps the Guide him-self, to push the story that extra bit along. Yet that determination to go further than he ever needed to go had cost Stansell his life. The Brotherhood must have snatched him, knowing that Stansell, more than any-body else, threatened the Angels’ whole operation.
Girling had never believed in anything like an afterlife, but under such a sky, on such a night, it was difficult not to feel that something existed out there for Mona and Stansell. He wondered whether her killer, Abu Tarek, was watching the sky that night. And whether he would ever be given the chance to make Abu Tarek pay.
Abdullah stoked the dying embers. As he did so, Girling saw him shiver.
‘What is it, my friend?’
‘I will get little sleep tonight.’
‘There is nothing to fear from this place.’
‘It is your soul that frightens me, ‘agnabi.’
Girling sat up.
‘Something troubles you,’ Abdullah said. ‘Many times I have felt it while we were riding.’
Girling felt compelled to answer.
‘I lost my wife some years back,’ he said. ‘There is still pain.’
‘How did she die?’
Girling told the story of Asyut and the manner of Mona’s death.
‘I have heard of these people from the towns and cities who do wrongs in the name of our belief.’
‘I cannot forgive them, Abdullah.’
‘Then you will never truly live again, my friend. There is only one path to true happiness and that is forgiveness. Forgive and your pain will cease.’
‘If Islam is vengeful, then so am I,’ Girling said.
‘God says that evil should be rewarded with like evil,’ Abdullah said. ‘But the Koran also says that he who forgives and seeks reconcilement shall be rewarded by God.’ He paused. ‘It is for each man to choose his path. You should make peace with the world, ‘agnabi. That is yours.’
‘That is easy to say, my friend.’
Abdullah sighed and lay back on the sand to sleep. ‘My heart is heavy for you, ‘agnabi.’
The light wind that had brought with it the heat of the Red Sea by day had turned colder and Girling pulled the blanket more tightly around his shoulders. Try as he might, sleep evaded him until the small hours before dawn.
The sound cut into his dreams before Abdullah’s rasping whisper roused him. He had not stirred before because he was convinced that the swishing noise of the blades only existed inside his head.
Girling’s eyes snapped open. The sky had lightened in the east. He had been asleep for an hour, maybe two.
Abdullah shook him hard. His voice was tense. ‘That sound. What is it?’
The canyon reverberated as the blades carved through the air towards them.
It took Girling a moment to focus his mind, a moment longer to appreciate that he, Abdullah and the camels were out in the open, clear of cover.
Girling knew that wherever the machines were going, their course would take them right overhead.
He threw the blanket off his body and sprang to his feet, thinking blindly that it would be enough for him and Abdullah to run for the shelter of the rocks close by. But then he remembered the camels.
Could he risk leaving them out in the open, while he and Abdullah cowered behind the rocks? The camels were alert, their ears twitching to each blade beat that echoed off the rocks. It was as if they sensed he might leave them behind.
‘We must move the camels behind the boulders,’ Girling yelled.
He dragged the first camel to its feet. A moment later Abdullah was by his side.
They cajoled the creatures, their gangling legs resisting attempts to hurry them as the sound grew in Girling’s head and the sand was whipped up by the rushing wind.
‘It is Shaytan. He is coming for us,’ Abdullah said, gasping, eyes wide with fear.
‘No, not Shaytan.’ But Girling was too breathless to explain.
They dragged the camels behind the nearest cluster of rocks just as the first helicopter swept round the bend in the wadi, the downwash from its rotors sending dust devils spiralling into the air.
The big machine roared past their position, its pilot holding a resolute course a few feet above the centre of the wadi bed. Girling recognized it as a modified Jolly Green, the fabled MH-53J Pave Low III of USAF special forces. It was so close that he could see the concentration on the pilot’s face; so close that the monotone star and bar was easily visible on the fuselage.
The MH-53J was followed by three more, each flying with the precision of the first.
Girling saw the special modifications — refuelling probe and radar system in the nose, the miniguns protruding from the open cabin door — and knew that these helicopters were training for no ordinary mission.
When the last MH-53J had thundered past, he sprang out from behind the rock and watched as it skittered down the wadi like a giant dragonfly, eventually pulling up over the cliffs and disappearing from view.
He stood there, waiting for the din to recede, but the sound of their engines did not disappear into the desert as he thought it would. He could hear them roaring beyond the wall of the wadi.
Girling began to sprint for the cliffs just as the gunfire started.
Abdullah was behind him, rifle in hand. They reached the flat summit together and ran across the plateau, stopping only at the abyss that lay on the other side. What Girling saw took his breath away.
The helicopters were circling like vultures a few feet above the tops of the cliffs at the head of the wadi. Every second or so, a belch of flame leapt from the cabin doors, accompanied by a sound that ripped apart the last vestiges of the night.
The gunners were pouring fire into the ground at the base of the cliffs. The shooting was well disciplined, each burst aimed with pinpoint precision — Girling could tell as much by the isolated puffs of dust that jumped from the ground.
One of the helicopters broke away from the group and came in to a hover a few feet above the cliffs at the end of the valley. Girling was dimly aware of shadows scurrying from the open cabin door.