"Where?" Danny saw nothing but mile upon mile of sand and rock.
"Way over there they're heading south."
Now she could pick out the small dark blobs, seeming to be swimming slowly through the shimmering haze that hovered above the desert floor. How on earth did he know they were out there? "Who are they... a border patrol?"
"I don't think so. Looks like four, maybe five men with camels; a small caravan of some sort."
Danny shaded her eyes and studied the moving figures. "Bedu. A tiny group of nomads still sticking to the traditional ways."
Bolan nodded. In a way he admired them.
Wandering warriors who had made no compromise.
He could understand that, although to most people, even to other more "progressive" Arabs, it was madness. To Bolan it was a madness worthy of respect. "They must know of ancient paths across the mountains. They're too far west to have skirted the Jebel Kharg."
"I thought this was on the edge of the Forbidden Zone."
"I guess those guys don't read signs or maps. They don't need to, they know where they are. Probably heading down to the fishing villages on the coast to do a little trading," said Bolan. He checked his watch and studied the position of the sun for a moment. "Let's get going. If we stick to that old wadi down there, we can go for a couple of miles before we have to break cover."
"Won't they see us?"
"Yes," admitted Bolan. "But if I sensed their presence, then I expect they already know we're here, too."
Danny knew he was right; no one knows the desert better than the nomads. They repacked the Hog and moved cautiously down the wadi, its sides long since worn down to little more than weak crumbling shoulders. There had been no flash floods here for many seasons.
Bolan drove with care, slowing down on the softer patches so as not to churn up a telltale plume of dust. The foothills of the jebel rose sharply in front of them, and the jagged wall of the main escarpment lay just beyond, its granite cliffs streaked with broad black bands of igneous rock. Several times Danny checked over her shoulder, searching for any sign of the desert tribesmen. They had vanished into the desolate landscape back there as silently as they had appeared.
Sometimes glancing at the map folded in a transparent case on Danny's knee, but more often relying on the aerial surveys he had corrunitted to memory and an intuitive feel for the lay of the land, Bolan navigated the sturdy Hog up the unseen trail toward the brooding heights.
Danny wanted to find out more about this man who exerted such a powerful attraction for her. It wasn't that she needed to rehash stale memories of Nam or even to learn his side of the story she'd first heard from Leo Cameron. If you hadn't been there, then there was no point in talking about it; if you had survived that hell, there was little to say, either. You couldn't add glory to it. You couldn't take away the pain.
They had both been there in it up to their necks.
And that was that. No, she was more interested in what had happened to him after it was all over although, as was becoming apparent, it was not all over for him. And likely never would be.
But this was not the time or place for personal poking about into the past. They would be lucky simply to survive the present. And wasn't that the way it had been back in Nam? Besides, Mack would tell her what he wanted her to know, when he wanted her to know it... She sensed they had much to share together.
"Which way now?" Bolan posed the problem aloud.
A wedge of' reddish rock split the way ahead into a fork.
"Whichever we pick, you'd better get us under cover fast," replied Danny. "There's a..."
"A spotter plane back there," Bolan calmly finished her observation. "I've had my eye on it for ten minutes. Right now I think they're more interested in those camel riders."
Bolan steered the Jeep to the left, drove for about four hundred yards and stopped in the lee of a huge sandstone block. Within moments they had the vehicle draped with the camouflage mesh, which would give nothing away to a plane flying over.
From this elevation they could look down on the vast plain of the Khurabian desert. A couple of swirling yellow columns dust devils, several hundred feet high were moving majestically before the wind, drifting toward the distant coast.
"They'll obliterate any tracks we might have left out there," he commented. "Might even force that plane to return to base."
It was little more than a faintly buzzing speck, dipping and twisting above the plain, like a drowsy summer insect. He checked it through the glasses.
"Must be one of the three spotter planes operated by the KDP, the Khurabian Desert Police. Zayoud's only got a handful of jets in his so-called air force. And his personal Boeing, of course."
"How do you know all this?"
"A friend gave me a rundown on all the forces and hardware at the sheikh's disposal before we left."
"But you talked about choosing sides when the showdown came... so which side are the KDP on right now? Are they staying loyal to Harun, or are they throwing their lot in with Hassan?"
"Good question. We must assume they've gone over to Hassan. I'm not going to wave them down to find out."
Danny still glanced nervously back at the observation craft, trying to keep track of it as it dwindled into the distance, while Bolan fixed his attention on the barrier that loomed in front of them. This giant uplift, the tilted shelf of the Jebel Kharg, almost cut the tiny oil kingdom in two. Aeons ago it had been a solid, continuous obstruction, but over thousands of years it had been scoured by the abrasive sand, split and blistered by the pitiless sun, buffeted by storms, creased by the wind and washed away in places by the infrequent rains.
Bolan scanned the high ground. Somewhere between those contorted ridges was a track through to the sand sea and the Fortress of the Rock. But would the traditional paths, those centuries-old routes of the slaver caravans, still be safe? Would any of them still be open?
Hassan Zayoud had used his viceregal powers to declare this whole corner of the country, from the jebel to the disputed fringes of Khurabi, a militarized zone, off-limits to everyone except duly authorized personnel. The tracks across it were probably blocked with barbed wire, mined or obliterated entirely by detonated landslides... and yet the bedu still knew of a secret way through these hills.
He spotted a movement across the backdrop of the topmost cliff. Had Hassan posted lookouts up there? Bolan swept the peaks with the binoculars.
"What is it?" asked Danny.
"Birds. Small vultures of some kind," Bolan told her. They had seen few signs of life on the trek in: some tracks, droppings, but not the desert creatures that had made them.
Dusty shrubbery and yellowed grass grew in isolated patches along the face of the jebel, sure signs of deep wellsprings and stagnant puddles among the rocks, and where there was water there was life.
"Not much out here," said Danny. "Jerboas, sand hares, the odd snake... maybe a fox or some oryx on the top slopes."
"That's all they need," said Bolan, still watching the patient raptors circling on the updrafts. "Over there, see that swayback ridge? Looks like there might be a trail that doglegs up behind it." He handed the binoculars over to Danny.
"Yes, that looks like our best bet. What's the plan?" There was still an hour of daylight left.
"Let's drive up there. Must be about three miles. If things look clear, we'll try to slip over the top at dawn."
It was better than four miles of hard punishment before they reached the hollowed slopes behind the ridge. In the debris-strewn gully they were well covered from any watchful eyes on the plains far below; in fact, they could only be spotted by someone on the cliffs directly above their position.
The final elevation still appeared daunting. In places the rock face was formidably sheer, but here and there it was scarred deeply by falls and erosion.