Sam said, “You can relax, Tom. The pilots no longer in the mood to fight.”
Tom asked, “Does he need medical help?”
“I think he’s past anything modern medicine can do for him.”
“Do you want me to come inside?”
“No. Wait outside. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Sam looked past the grotesque remains of the pilot and reached for two unopened bottles of water in the compartment behind him. He glanced at the open tail spacing for any food. And found the emergency rations bag. Inside were another two bottles of water, several packets of dehydrated food, some medical supplies, and three glow sticks. He picked up the bag and climbed out of the broken wreckage.
He let the door close and then quickly opened it again, because he heard the familiar static of the aircraft’s radio.
“Come in Zogbi! Come in Zogbi!”
Sam’s eye’s darted toward the writing on the side of the aircraft.
It read, Zogbi’s Chartered Flights.
“Zogbi. We copy your last transmission. Three people spotted sixty miles south-east of Bilma. We’re on our way. We’ll have men there within five hours. Good work!”
Sam felt bile rising in his throat. His good mood had already deserted him. He turned around to face Tom and Zara. “We might have a problem.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sam looked at Zara’s face. Her usually hardened façade had been chipped. Her overtly self-centeredness had been tarnished by the prospect of getting them all killed. Her hazel-green eyes welled up, but no tears fell.
She said, “I’m sorry to get you and Tom killed.”
Sam shook his head. “Not yet, you haven’t.”
“There’s at least five hundred men charging towards us on camels. They’re tired, they’re thirsty and their greedy. Driven by the dream of great riches that capturing us will provide there’s no way we’ll outrun them all the way to Mao.”
“What about the waterhole?” he asked.
“The well is covered with a steel door, which in turn is filled with sand to maintain secrecy, but the trackers will find it quick enough. Heck, someone amongst them would even know about its existence already.”
“That’s okay, where I’m planning on hiding, they won’t follow.”
She asked, “How?”
“You’ll see. Just find me the well, and I’ll find you a place to hide for eternity.”
“That’s it. I’d rather not have to die there.”
Sam said, “Neither do I. Our agent spoke of an ancient place of sanctuary, hidden beneath the sea of sand, where he and his counterpart could make the regular trade of diamonds without anyone ever finding them. A place, I’m now guessing was in fact built by the Garamantes we both were led to believe never made it this far south.”
“They’ll track our footprints to the well.”
Sam shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, they’ll never find us inside.”
“If they’re certain we went in there, they’ll dig the place out with their bare hands.”
“No they won’t. They’ll try to circle outwards, searching for our tracks again. The entire place will be covered in footprints, and they’ll keep scratching their heads over how they lost their greatest prize after getting so close.”
“What if you’re wrong and this is just a well like any other?” she asked.
Sam crossed his arms. “Then we’ll die there.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Four hours later, they were getting close. Zara made several mental notes about their location as she descended the sand dune. They might reach the well within the hour. Her mood was developing a second wind. If they could reach it in time, and Sam Reilly was right about the smuggler’s cave, she might still get out of this alive.
Distracted by her thoughts, she didn’t see the desert horned viper. It was half buried in the sand with just its head sticking out. Its supra-ocular horns stood upwards like the horns of the devil. Startled, the normally relatively placid creature, began rubbing its scales together making a distinctive rasping sound.
It was the sound, more frightening than a rattlesnake, which startled Zara.
She screamed a vicious oath and jumped out of its way. She ran twenty or more feet down the sand dune before she landed on her side and rolled. When she came to a stop, she quickly stood up and looked back up the sand dune, where she could already see the snake rapidly sidewinding in the opposite direction.
Zara breathed in and gently exhaled. She’d never been particularly frightened of snakes, but nor was she very fond of an early, and painful death by poisoning. She reached for her bag and swore again. It was still twenty feet up the dune.
She quickly climbed to retrieve her bag. Picking it up, she noticed it was lighter than it should have been.
The book’s missing!
Her eyes scanned the area and found the book of Nostradamus half open in the sand. She ran over and grabbed it, quickly brushing the sand off before placing it back in its casing. She then stopped, and caught her breath, because a small sheet of folded paper fell out of the codex.
Zara picked the paper up and unfolded it. Tiny holes in the paper formed in the crease, suggesting it had been that way for centuries. She glanced at the paper and shook her head. It was a carefully scribbled note written in the same hand as the other one allegedly by Nostradamus.
She began reading it…
Today you will meet a man who has traveled from someplace far away. He has been sent to this land for a very specific purpose. You must not let him complete that purpose. No matter how much you might want him to.
She finished reading the second half of the note, unable to believe what was written, and yet certain it was true.
“What are you reading?” Sam interrupted her.
She smiled. “Re-reading actually. It’s another note Nostradamus left me. But like everything so far, I don’t quite know what to make of it.”
He asked, “Can I help?”
She folded the note, slid it inside the binding and locked the codex again. “No. This I have to do on my own.”
“Okay.” Sam stood up from their five minute rest stop and continued walking south.
She watched him leave. His feet sank heavily into the sand as he stepped. She knew Sam could never see the note. If he ever saw the second half of the note he would never trust her again.
How could he? She bit her lower lip. I don’t even trust myself with the new information.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sam ran downwards along the gradually declining sand until it leveled out. His blue eyes scanned the region, searching for a sign of the well Zara had told him about. The entire region was filled with sands which softly undulated into constant waves of perfect dunes. The sand, once eroded from the Air Mountains and Ténéré Mountains, had been carried along the plains for thousands of years.
Unable to see anything but sand, he turned to face Zara. “Where is it?” Sam asked.
Zara smiled. “Right in front of us.”
“Where? I don’t see anything?”
“I’ll show you. See that spot over there, where the sand looks like it’s been recently burned by fire?”
Sam glanced at it and nodded. It could have been a place where local nomads had recently used a fire to boil their tea. Definitely nothing explicit enough to be used as a landmark, unless you already knew exactly what you were after.
Zara walked slowly towards the darkened sand. “It used to be the site of the Tree of Ténéré — what was once considered the most isolated tree on the planet. An ancient acacia raddiana. The last remnant of trees within the region when the Erg of Bilma was still a wet-region, flowing with life. Acacia raddiana have been known to commonly live upwards of 650 years, but this one might have been around much longer. Until recently, it, along with the Arbre Perdu, or Lost Tree in the north were the only trees noted as landmarks on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000.”