The arrival of his drivers increased the population of Quallene significantly. It was barely a wide spot in what the Algiers government probably defined as a road. A dozen decrepit buildings housed an unknown number of people who, being intelligent and non-British, were staying inside and hidden away from the midday sun.
He stuck his arm out the window and rotated it in big circles, signalling the truck drivers behind him to keep their units rolling.
He drove on through the village and picked up speed to nearly forty kilometres per hour. The speed was positively exhilarating after the twenty-five kilometre per hour average they had managed.
Twenty kilometres beyond the town, he veered off the road, which was not actually a courageous act. The road was quite similar to the non-road. It was composed of hard-packed earth, and the dried-out weeds and shrubbery — akin to miles and miles of skeletons — suggested that vehicles did not normally travel there. The region was hilly, if three-or four-meter-high mounds could be called hills.
Keeping an eye on his rear-view mirror, so as not to lose any of his charges, Formsby wheeled the Land Rover several kilometres to the north, weaving around the mounds. When he found a place that was relatively flat and isolated from every other living thing on earth, he stopped and parked. Shutting off the engine, he got out and stretched.
The sun beat mercilessly on his head, and he reached back in the truck for his wide-brimmed safari hat. His physical movement felt restricted by the build-up of dirt that had stiffened his jacket and pants. His boots barely cracked the surface crust of the earth.
“This is it?” his companion asked, as he too exited the truck.
“I believe it may well be the place, Jacque.”
Jacque — his only name — claimed to have served in the French Foreign Legion, and it may have been true. His appearance was disreputable enough that Formsby had kept his 9 millimetre Browning automatic holstered by his side for the entire trip. His sleep had come in gasps.
Jacque went off to guide the semi-trucks into a militarily rigid parking line, and Formsby took a long walk northward, stopping to urinate on a bush that begged for any kind of moisture.
After gauging the area in all directions with his sharp eyes, Formsby decided it would do, then walked back to the trucks.
“All right, Jacque, we can unload.”
It took almost an hour for the men to unload and set up the canvas wall-tent, the single cot, the cooking table and propane grill, the propane-powered refrigerator, and the portable shower. He got his boxes of provisions and his M-16 rifle out of the Land Rover and put them inside the tent.
Formsby thought the shower a nice touch, and he was not worried about water. He had brought along ten thousand gallons of water, figuring the Central Intelligence Agency would not balk at the cost so long as they did not know about it.
When the campsite was finished, the single canvas tent appearing rather forlorn alongside the big trucks, Jacque approached him.
“I think that does it, Mr. Jones.”
Formsby was going by the name of Nevada Jones, a superlative touch of The Carpetbaggers and Indiana Jones, he thought.
“I believe it does, Jacque.”
He pulled the envelope from inside his shirt, and handed it to the former Legionnaire.
Jacque counted it. “Ten thousand American. That is correct, Mr. Jones.”
He had arranged to pay Jacque in ten thousand dollar increments, at intervals of every five hundred miles. Jacque knew he had a money belt wrapped around his waist, but Jacque also knew he had the Browning automatic, and Formsby had refused to allow any of Jacque’s colleagues to carry weapons on this journey.
“Very well,” Formsby said. “Now, you may take the tractors and the Land Rover and go back to Quallene. On the seventh of August, when you return here, you will receive the final fifty thousand.”
“Plus the water?”
“And whatever is left of the water.”
While the men were unhitching the tractors from the trailers, Formsby went inside the tent, dug around in one of his cardboard boxes, and came up with four square plastic boxes. He also found ten fragmentation grenades.
When he emerged from the tent, Jacque studied him for a few minutes before asking, “What are those?”
“These are infrared beam and motion detectors. I shall put them on my perimeter, and anyone who gets close receives the gift of explosively propelled shrapnel.”
“I see,” said Jacque.
And Formsby was certain that he did. Their agreement was that Formsby would be left without a vehicle, to insure that he would be present on the seventh of August with the balance of the payment. Formsby was adding to that agreement by insuring that neither Jacque nor any of his seventeen friends came calling in the night prior to the seventh.
He was relieved when the truck tractors and the Land Rover finally departed. He had not slept well during the long days of the journey.
As soon as the last truck disappeared, Formsby went to the refrigerator standing next to the tent, unlocked it with a key, and unwrapped the air-bubble packaging from a bottle of Molson ale.
He drank it in three long swallows, then opened another bottle.
Just in case Jacque had doubled back to check on him, Formsby spent some time playing out his role of security manager by siting the motion detectors and grenades at four corners around his campsite. The detectors did not really set off the grenades, but their transmitters would alert him if intruders entered the area.
And he knew how to set off grenades on his own.
The shower was erected next to the water tanker, and Formsby connected a hose from the tanker’s pump to the holding tank above the shower. He filled the tank with the gasoline-powered pump, then stripped off his clothes and took a shower that lasted twenty minutes and cost seventy gallons of a commodity very precious in the desert. Then he shaved and took another short shower.
Padding naked across the hot sand to the tent, he entered and dressed in fresh Levi’s and a white sport shirt. He felt immensely better, recharged, and ready for action.
The action was confined to stripping the M-16, cleaning it, and priming it with one of twenty magazines he had with him. Then he cooked himself a dinner of brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes and brown gravy, and rare roast beef. He topped it off with a bottle of 1978 cru bourgeois red Bordeaux. The CIA had paid for it, and he enjoyed it.
On the twenty-sixth of July, Formsby emerged from the mosquito netting protecting his cot, made coffee and a poached egg for breakfast, then unchained the Caterpillar tractor and got it running after several false starts. He climbed down to lower the ramps from the flatbed trailer, then backed the bulldozer off and tested his rusty knowledge of the controls for both the tractor and the bulldozer blade.
While the Cat idled, he broke ice cubes from four of the trays in his refrigerator and made up a jug of iced tea. He refilled the trays with water, put them back in the freezer, then got his safari hat.
Formsby spent eleven hours driving the Cat east and west, then had liver and sautéed onions for dinner.
On the twenty-seventh, he devoted another seven hours to levelling a two-kilometre-long, thirty-metre wide strip through the mounds of earth. To Formsby, the rough airstrip looked like a scar on a land that knew far too many scars. In a month, no one would ever know it had been there. When he was done, he parked the Cat back on its trailer and chained it down again. Formsby might not have been a superb craftsman, but he liked to put his tools back in their proper places.