“It must have drawn from a water table somewhere below us.”
Zara nodded again. “During the winter of 1938–1939, when fears of war in North Africa were becoming increasingly frequent, a well was dug near the tree to improve supply demands from Niger and Chad. Do you know what they found?”
Sam shook his head. “What?”
“The roots of the tree reached the water table at a depth of a hundred and eight feet.”
“That’s the well we’re looking for?” he asked.
“No. That well was filled in 1941 by Mussolini’s troops, in an attempt to block supplies from the south. The one we’re looking for is nearby.”
“What happened to the acacia raddiana?” Sam asked.
“The water dried up and with it, all kinds of vegetation.”
Sam grinned. “No. I mean, what happened to the last tree?”
Zara sighed. “Some drunken idiot crashed his four wheel drive into it.”
Sam laughed and glanced around. There was nothing but sand in every direction all the way to the horizon. “Out here?”
She nodded and stopped at the darkened sand. “Afraid so.”
Sam watched as she took in her exact location in relation to the sun and turned to her left. She took small, measured steps forwards. He followed as Zara counted out sixty-five steps and stopped. Without saying a word, she began digging in the sand with her bare hands.
Sam and Tom quickly joined in. Within minutes they’d cleared the top sand and found a large iron cover. The original well probably never had a cover. Sam guessed it was a more recent addition, brought by some traveling smuggler who wanted to keep the trail blocked off to most travelers. Take away a major water supply in the desert and you exclude travel routes.
Sam and Tom pulled on the cover. It was heavy. Even between the three of them, they were having trouble shifting it. They cleared away the rest of the sand. At the base an old padlock barred the entrance.
“Christ!” Zara said. “Who padlocks the only water for hundreds of miles?”
“A new addition?” Tom asked.
She nodded. “Locking the only source of water for hundreds of miles is akin to giving someone who needs it, a death sentence. I can’t even imagine who would do this.”
“Someone who doesn’t want it to disappear.” Sam took the butt of his AK-47 and slammed it into the padlock. On the fourth try, the rusted lock gave way.
Sam helped Tom pull open the heavy, hinged cover and all three of them stared into the well. It looked deep. A lot deeper than he was expecting. Every foot of the hundred and eight below the surface, which Zara had described of the once nearby well, possibly even more. Narrow enough they could easily use the sides to push their legs off and slowly shimmy down to the water, but not too narrow to make it difficult to maneuver. Sam wondered whether they’d be able to climb back out once their feet were wet, afterwards. He decided now was the wrong time to voice his concerns.
“It’s deeper than I was expecting,” Sam admitted.
“It’s a hundred and sixty feet deep,” Zara said.
“There’s a second water table?”
She looked pleased that he’d made the connection, and smiled. “Yes.”
Sam removed the emergency kit he’d taken from Zogbi’s wrecked plane and dropped it on the ground beside the well. His eyes glanced up at something that glistened on the horizon. He squinted against the sun as he tried to make out exactly what he saw.
“What is it?” Zara asked.
Sam sighed. “We have company.”
Tom’s eyes darted to the horizon. He was blessed to be born with 20:10 vision, or a visual acuity score twice as accurate at distance than the average person with 20:20 vision. “There’s three riders on the ridge. No. Wait. Make it four. They’ve crept ahead of the rest of our pursuers. They’re riding camels, pretty quick by the looks of it.”
Zara studied the horizon. “They must have come from Bilma. They’re riding fresh beasts.”
“How long do we have?” Sam asked, turning to Zara’s lifetime of experience in traveling through the region.
“An hour. Maybe less?” she replied.
Sam stared as the riders approached down the sand dune near the horizon. They had crept at least two, possibly even three miles ahead of the rest of their pursuers. They came fast. Their beasts, most likely out from Bilma were fresh and willing to be provoked into moving at speed. Four riders in total. They had come to kill everyone and capture their prize — the book of Nostradamus.
For some reason his mind turned to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, famine, fear and death. There was no way he could determine which one was coming, but all he saw was death. It seemed so unbelievably unfair. After all the distance they’d traveled, they were going to get caught climbing into the ancient well and their hiding spot. Behind those four riders a dust plume spilled high into the horizon. The rest of their pursuers were scattered somewhere between two and three miles behind.
Zara looked up at him as though she could read his concerns. “If you don’t kill them now, they’ll know for certain that we’re in the well.”
Tom loaded the remaining magazine into the chamber of his AK-47. “Then we’ll have to make sure they don’t get to see us go in.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “I’ll check this well out. Zara, you and Tom circle back and make some additional trails in the sand for them to track. Hopefully they’ll think we filled our water flasks, and kept going south, towards Lake Chad. We might still lose them, after all.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sam opened the emergency supply kit he’d stolen from Zogbi’s downed aircraft and withdrew two green glow sticks. He pocketed the first one and then cracked the second one by bending the tube. He watched as the activator, hydrogen peroxide, flowed from its broken ampoule into the phenyl oxalate ester and fluorescent dye, where it mixed and created the chemical luminescence. The stick glowed brightly green. He tucked it into his belt and took one last glance into the distance. The four rider’s had disappeared down a sand dune — he would have to be quick.
He sat down on the edge of the well and placed his left foot forward with his right leg backwards. Using a technique popular with rock climbers called stemming, he began his descent of the well. The concept was to place your hands and feet on opposite ends of the rock walls and push outwards as though trying to push through.
Maintaining as much external pressure as possible, Sam began his descent. He shuffled downwards. Shifting his weight from each side to descend and using his hands primarily for balance. Apart from the risk of a life threatening fall if he slipped, the process was quite simple and didn’t require much effort compared to traditional rock climbing. He didn’t stop to consider the consequences of slipping. If he didn’t find a place to hide soon, Ngige’s men would kill him just as quick.
Within minutes his feet reached the still water at the base of the well. He carefully lowered his left foot into the water, maintaining an increased oppositional pressure with his hands, Sam slowly dipped both legs into the water and then dropped.