The Colonel in charge of the train looked at his watch. It was just after 1:00 PM and they were moving again after a very brief coaling stop. The engineer seemed intent on making the last bend and heading up past the hills of Minifir before he stopped again. This was a dangerous place, for the Arabs often came here to watch the movement of the trains from the ruins above. The Turkish rail patrols were not so enthusiastic in the rain, and this stretch of the line was not well guarded. It was a good place for an ambush.
He squinted at a streak of bright sunlight as it pierced the dark clouds that still hunched low over the landscape. The sky was beautifully backlit with the mid-day sun, but it only managed to finger its way through the clouds in places, with long amber streaks of gold. The head of the train reached the middle point of the twin hills where a shallow runoff channel made its way down from the cleavage. There was a low rail support arch there that might make a tempting target. The Colonel had read reports about an attack here earlier in the year, and the Arabs, like a bad habit, always continued to bother.
The Colonel leaned out of his coach window, the wind ruffling the careful smear of his oiled hair a bit. He looked ahead to see the engine pass the bridge without mishap, and then something caught his eye a little ways up the culvert of the channel. It was an Arab! His eyes narrowed with suspicion when he saw the man, and he instinctively scanned the hills above for any sign of movement. The train gave a high pitched whistle, adding a note of urgency to the moment. He could see that the soldiers in the open cars at the head of the train were taking notice of the solitary figure as well. Some of the officers were leaning out of their cars with spy glasses to get a better look at the man. The Colonel did not have his handy, but his suspicions were sharpening his senses with each passing moment.
The man was just sitting there. He seemed no more than a solitary Bedu shepherd come down to watch the train pass by. To the Colonel’s surprise, the man began to wave at the soldiers as the cars rolled by, one by one. He was sitting by a low desert scrub, as lonesome and solitary as this single man, its leafless branches waving in the rising wind, even as the Arab waved at the train in greeting. There was almost something impudent in the man’s movements—a haughty sense of ridicule. The Colonel gave much thought to the notion that this could be the escaped prisoner, returned to mock his would be captors one last time. Would the man be such a fool?
Anger burned at the back of his neck, and he pushed himself back into the coach, striding over to pull on the bell. Three harsh clangs were the signal to stop the train. He would have a look and see if this man would wave and smirk at him in the end. When he returned to the window, however, the Arab was gone. The Colonel’s suspicions redoubled, feeding coal to his rising anger.
By the time the long train stopped it had taken his trailing coach and brake car far beyond the point where the Arab had been sitting. The Colonel tramped to his porch and fumed at the brakeman in the last car, shaking his fist at the man. He jumped from the porch, shouting for a sergeant and another officer to join him. A glance at his watch told him that the slow progress of the last hour was putting him behind schedule again. No matter. He would have a careful look at the rail lines at least, and see if there were any telltale signs of hidden wire or explosives.
Why would the man just sit there if he meant to blow up a mine? The question ground on his mind even as his boots crunched the rocky soil of the rail bed. Where could he have gone? He scanned the hills, shielding his eyes from the sudden brightness of the luminous clouds, but saw no sign of movement. A careful search of the rail bed revealed no trace of mischief. Curse the man! His commander, Jemal Pasha was on the next train, probably hurtling south to Deraa by now. This delay was more time than he could afford. He had to clear the line. He had to reach Deraa, or Mafrak at the very least, before his Corps Commander arrived. He could at least report that he had stopped to scout this place, and found nothing of interest or concern here but a lone Arab shepherd. As for the American? He would keep that matter to himself. Perhaps he could assuage the Bey’s curiosity when he reached Deraa by finding him someone soft and willing. With a last reluctant kick of his boot on the sandy soil, he waved at his sergeants and started back to the train.
No one could have been more surprised than Lawrence when he pushed down on the plunger of the exploder to detonate the train. Nothing happened! He pulled it back and plunged down again and again, but the exploder would not ignite his mine. Something must have gone wrong with the wires, he thought, or the gear inside his rusty old box. Now he was fifty meters from the train with eight open cars crammed full of curious Turkish soldiers! He was completely exposed, and there was no point in trying to make a run for it. The Turks would just leap from their train and hunt him down like a rabbit. He had sixty men in the hills above, but this train was laden with nearly two hundred rifles, and a host of overly curious officers who were peering from the windows of the trailing coaches, peeping at him through spy glasses. The mine would have evened the odds, but it did not go off.
He considered what to do, realizing that his only option was to sit exactly where he was and let providence decide. Leave it to fortune and fate, or as the Arabs might say, ‘let it rest in the bosom of Allah.’ He passed a few tense moments, smiling inwardly at the ridiculous quirk that had set him here in plain sight of his enemies, a wholesome piece of fruit, ripe for the plucking. His smile soon became a smirk, then a wave as he warmed to the moment, a feeling of invulnerability cloaking him as the train rolled by.
When it had finally moved a good distance off, he carefully buried his wires. The last cars slid around a bend in the culvert, so he scooped up the exploder, and stole off like a shadow into the hills. This entire mission had been plagued by bad luck! First a loose gun strap at the Yarmuk bridge set them fleeing wildly across the desert with mad dogs, Turks and distressed peasants on their heels. They cut a few telegraph wires but needed more than that to assuage their bruised sense of pride and honor. So they decided to blow up a train, and sat for twelve long hours beneath the sodden twin humps of Minifir. They missed the first one in the thick morning mist but were well prepared to meet the mid-day train from Amman. Now this… The Arabs would soon begin to say that there was an evil eye among them, and that the mission was doomed to failure.
There was nothing to be done, he thought. He would pull them together and they would try again. He looked at the rusty exploder as he made his way to a hiding spot a safe distance from the rail line, wondering what had gone wrong. The clanging of a bell gave him pause. He passed a moment of concern when the train glided to a halt about 500 meters up the line. It was an old, wheezing engine and perhaps they needed more coal to get up a good head of steam. He watched while a small patrol of officers made their way up the rail line to inspect the area. If they discovered his wires he would have to give the signal to flee to the animals and run shamefully back into the desert. Thankfully, they found nothing and the train was soon underway again.
In war, he thought, recalling the words of Caesar, ‘actions of great importance are often the result of trivial causes.’ They would simply have to wait it out and hope for better luck when the next train came down from Damascus. One way or another, he knew, he would strike his blow and bring his Arab brothers home with all the loot their greedy hands could carry.