Picking up the magazine, he slotted it back into the bottom of the rifle, and pulled the bolt catch back; this time it slid back and forwards again effortlessly. He then very carefully moved the selector into its topmost position and onto safety.
To ensure he’d done it properly, he gave a quick tug on the magazine. Satisfied that it was firmly secured, he release it again, and repeated the whole process twice, on the last attempt managing to catch the chambered bullet as it popped from the side of the rifle.
Happy that he had put in enough practice to remember how to do it in a rush, he ensured the safety was on and shouldered the rifle.
“How are you doing?” Ben said as he strode across the sand towards him, a grim smile on his face.
“Not bad,” he admitted. “I think I have the hang of reloading now, it’s easier than I first thought!”
Ben patted him on the back and went to lead him to the rest of the group, who were starting their climbs towards their elevated positions on either side of the gulley, above the track. Suddenly, he stopped and pointed towards George’s clenched fist.
“What’s that?”
George opened his hand, revealing the round he had caught moments earlier. His hand dived into his pocket, and came back out with two more identical rounds. Looking up at Ben, his face dropped.
Ben laughed and took the rounds from him. “Easy, eh? If you’d practised reloading much longer, you’d have run out of bullets!”
They both laughed as Ben removed the magazine, un-chambered a fourth round, and then proceeded to demonstrate how they could be reloaded into the magazine by pressing them down against the other bullets. The spring loaded mechanism would carry the rounds down into the magazine until the last round sat neatly between the lips of the magazine at the top. He then reloaded the AK-47, reset the safety and passed the rifle back to George. “You shouldn’t need to do that again, because there are three of these fully loaded magazines in your backpack anyway. You won’t need to fire any more than that.”
“And if I do?”
“You won’t.”
Just then, Zahra shouted over at them.
He looked at his watch and cursed in Arabic. “Time, George!”
They were late to their positions, and Patterson was due to arrive in less than forty minutes. Looking up at his friend, he put his hand on the Englishman’s arm and smiled. “Do not worry, my friend. You will be fine. We will also be fine, and we will rescue Gail. In less than an hour, we’ll all be standing here laughing about it, wondering what all the fuss was about.”
George watched as he walked towards the cliff and disappeared over the edge, on his way down to where Zahra had parked the Toyota in preparation. Ben’s car was safely hidden behind an outcrop of rocks further down the track.
He turned towards Zahra, in time to see her taking up position, lying down just behind the cliff’s edge, giving her a perfect view of Ben and the track that led back to the Nile. Leena and Tariq were settling behind some rocks on the left hand side of the gulley, while Manu and Haji had already disappeared on the right.
He stood on the plateau, alone, surveying the scene for more than a minute before Zahra barked an order at him to hide. Doing as he was told, he ran towards the left side of the gulley, and as he climbed up the smooth stones, thought about Ben’s parting comment: In less than an hour, we’ll all be standing here laughing about it, wondering what all the fuss was about.
George had no idea how wrong this would turn out to be.
Chapter 66
Seth Mallus checked his watch impatiently. He then barked a single command and looked at the virtual window behind his desk.
The news channel logo sprung into the centre of the screen, wobbling slightly as if to emphasise the speed of its arrival. In doing so, introductory movies of the latest news stories slid out in all directions, filling the screen. The logo then spun round to reveal the disembodied head of a young lady, with thin librarian-style glasses and hair tied up in a short ponytail.
“Would you like a news roundup, or a specific story?” she said smilingly, her head cocked to one side and an eyebrow lifted in anticipation.
“Give me a summary of everything major,” he mumbled.
“Thought so,” she smirked. She turned round as if to look at the introduction videos behind her, and the camera shifted to her point of view. The videos that had been looping their short introductions in the background fizzled out, to be replaced by a tapestry of a dozen or so smaller videos. One by one they were brought forward, as the avatar gave a running commentary.
“There’s been widespread flooding in Eastern Europe, they’re now in the fourth consecutive day of non-stop deluge in the Carpathian Mountains, which has swollen many of the rivers in the region. Bratislava and Budapest on the Danube are currently the worst affected large cities, while large areas of countryside in Romania and Slovakia are completely underwater.” The video moved from raging torrents of swollen rivers to swathes of people wading knee-deep through murky-brown water, carrying bundles of belongings, children, the elderly and the exhausted. The standing water stretched as far as the eye could see, and power boats littered the countryside, picking up passengers here and there. “A humanitarian crisis is being predicted by the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontières, with thousands of refugees fleeing the worst hit parts, while Austria has closed its border with the Slovak Republic. Vienna is on heightened alert for fears the rainfall will move west in the coming days and the Austrian government is making preparations for large scale evacuations of the city. More than a thousand people are thought to have died already, with that number set to rise as conditions for refugees deteriorate.”
The video dissolved, to be replaced by several bodyguards clearing a way through a heaving throng of reporters and protesters; then emerged an attractive woman in a red dress-suit, smiling and waving as she followed the bodyguards towards a waiting car. “Jane Getty was today cleared of all charges in the Oil-Aid scandal, by a High Court ruling in Canberra. The Australian far-left politician, who made headlines in July last year for her strong support of the Central African Republic’s communist uprising, had been accused of embezzling several billion dollars of funding from the World Bank targeted towards developing infrastructure in Africa. The aid, designed to facilitate the increase in oil production for the region and help meet global energy demands, has so far been very effective in Nigeria, more than doubling its crude oil output to make it the fourth largest oil producing country in the world, behind the United States, Russia and China.”
The video switched to a view of a desolate African town. Burnt out cars littered the sides of the road, barely a dusty track between rows of dilapidated shacks. “Jane Getty, a former advisor to OPEC following Australia’s accession to full membership in 2042, has fought back at her recent critics, who say that her position in Australian politics is untenable, by attacking Prime Minister Humphries directly. In an interview after her court hearing, Ms Getty called Humphries a Puppet of Westminster and a Slave to nineteenth century Imperialism and the Old World, who didn’t have the strength to break away from Europe and forge new alliances in the Southern Hemisphere to help make Australia a truly great nation.” The video cut to a three dimensional pie-chart. “Polls taken directly after the interview showed Getty’s Populist party taking a slight lead over the Australian Labour Party, sparking fears in London that dissolution of the constitutional monarchy, in effect since 1901, could be a real possibility when votes are cast in the New Year.”