They remained in the grove of trees all day, dozing fitfully in the extreme heat. No one had the energy to talk. As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, they had dinner—chickpeas and cheese, as Mekky had promised—then saddled and packed the camels for the evening ride.
They rode and rode, the days and nights blending together. The black hills and the winding dry washes never seemed to end, with heat rising off the sand, the camels endlessly plodding. Once in a while a bizarre mirage would appear—shimmering lakes with waving grass; trembling ridges and mountains that vanished as one rode toward them. Mekky rationed their water, their tea, and even their bread and cheese, keeping them in a constant state of hunger and thirst. The water, carried in the packs, sometimes became too hot to drink and had to be set out in an open bowl to cool by evaporation before it could be consumed. This was far worse, Gideon mused, than any trip he had taken in his life. Even when he’d been at sea with Amiko a few months earlier, searching for the Lost Island, they had booze, good food, and beds to sleep in. Garza had fallen completely silent, no longer giving Imogen the third degree, while Imogen, too, remained quiet. It was too hot; conversation took too much energy. The songs Mekky sang periodically to the camels—mournful, wailing tunes that rose and fell—were the only diversion amid the endless black hills.
On the third day of the journey Gideon saw, rising over the tops of the hills, a triple-peaked mountain the color of mahogany, surrounded by lesser peaks, Soon, layer after layer of other mountains came into view, mounting to the horizon. The central peak, Mekky told them, was Gebel Umm. They would reach its foothills on the fifth morning, after sunrise. Finally, Gideon thought, they were approaching their proximate goal. What lay after was beyond imagining.
On the fourth day, they stopped at midnight to camp in a place where four wadis came together. It was a place Mekky identified as Bir Rabdeit. It consisted primarily of a dense stand of tamarisk trees surrounding an ancient stone well, now drifted full of sand. Nearby was a stone corral. Under a sandstone overhang, Mekky—after warning the three to beware of vipers—showed them a panel of rock art of men with spears riding camels, along with faded paintings of antelope and Barbary sheep. The images were decorated with mysterious geometric designs. After a subtle nudge from Gideon, Garza got out his camera and took a series of pretend photos. They went to sleep as usual, rolled up in their galabeyas.
Gideon woke with a start at dawn, torn from a rapidly receding dream of swimming with a naked woman in the pool atop the Gansevoort Hotel. He sat up, blinking. The sun was already close to rising; it was very late. He glanced at Garza, still sleeping, and then all around—and then he realized something was terribly wrong. The two of them were alone. Again he looked around in a panic; he saw nothing but sand beyond the rug they were sleeping on and some items scattered on the ground. The camel jockey and the woman were gone, along with the camels, supplies…and their water.
Everything was gone.
20
GARZA ROSE ABRUPTLY at Gideon’s shout and looked around wildly. “What the hell?”
“We’ve been robbed.”
Garza exploded. “It’s Imogen,” he said. “I knew something was wrong with her from the start. The way she arrived so conveniently. The way she bid up the price of the camels. The way she insinuated herself into our expedition.”
Gideon didn’t answer, but he had to admit to himself that Garza was probably right. “They took all the water,” he said.
“Sons of bitches.”
As Gideon looked around at the landscape of sand and rock stretching to the horizon, the gravity of their situation began to sink in.
“This was carefully planned,” Garza said. “They must have conspired to dump us in the worst possible place: eighty miles from Shalateen, thirty miles from the mist oasis. They left us where they were sure we’d die. And they took our water.”
Gideon shook his head. “It seems like a lot of work just to steal our money and a few hundred dollars’ worth of stuff.”
He felt sudden heat on his face as the sun peeked over the eastern foothills, casting long shadows.
“We’d better get the hell out of here,” Garza said.
“We can’t travel without water. We should dig out the well.”
“Water could be twenty feet down, if it’s there at all.”
Gideon looked at Garza, saw incipient panic in his eyes. “The only sure water is eighty miles back. We’d never get there alive. Our only option is to dig—unless you’ve got a better idea?”
Garza shook his head.
Gideon walked over to the stand of tamarisks beside the old stone well. A circular wall encased the well, and a stone staircase had been built in the side, spiraling downward. The sand had drifted into the well to within about five feet of the top.
“We need to rig some kind of system,” said Garza, coming up beside him. “We can make buckets from that rug.”
It took them half an hour to cut up the thin rug and fashion two buckets from it, stitching the pieces into containers. They tore their headcloths into strips and braided them to make ropes. Even as they worked, the sun was rising and the heat building.
“I’ll fill the bucket with sand,” Gideon said. “You haul and dump.”
He climbed down the short staircase and began scooping sand into the bucket with his hands. When it was full Garza dragged it up and dumped it, while Gideon filled up the second bucket; and while Garza hauled that up, he filled the first bucket again.
The sand was loose and dry, and it refilled the hole even as Gideon scooped it out. He soon realized he couldn’t just dig a hole in the sand—they would have to clear out the entire well, wall-to-wall. It was backbreaking work, and as the heat of the day mounted it became almost intolerable. Gideon’s thirst grew rapidly.
By noon, they had brought the level of sand down only four feet, with no sign of moisture. They were both nearly dead from exhaustion, heat, and thirst. They switched jobs several times, and their hands were now raw from scooping the hot sand.
“We can’t keep this up,” said Gideon. “We need to knock off for a while.”
Garza agreed silently, dumping the last bucket while Gideon dragged himself up the staircase a little dizzily. He felt close to hyperthermia. The well had been like an oven, the air dead and unmoving and full of dust. Silently they shuffled over to a large tamarisk and flopped down in the shade.
Gideon looked at his partner. He was like a zombie, his face mottled with dust and sand that had caked onto his perspiration. His eyes were bloodshot. Gideon figured he probably looked as bad himself.
As he sat with his back against the tree, he closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. His lips were cracked and his tongue was a hunk of dry plaster in his mouth. It was frightening how quickly they had become dehydrated. His thirst was all-consuming. He could hardly think of anything else.
“What now?” Garza managed to say.
“We wait for dusk and resume digging.”
In silent response Garza held up his hands, which were swollen, the skin cracking. Gideon glanced down and saw his own hands were in a similar state.
“Maybe we should make a dash for the mist oasis,” Garza said. “There must be water there.”
“Thirty miles in these mountains? That would kill us for sure.”
The sun was directly overhead now and the temperature in the shade was at least a hundred and twenty degrees. No matter what they did, Gideon thought, they were probably going to die.
It would be wonderful to go to sleep, to lose consciousness, but the raging thirst made that impossible. It was obvious they weren’t going to find water in the well; nor could they go forward to the mist oasis or back to Shalateen. There were no other options.