"Even one is too many," Mek agreed gruffly.
"Where are the rest of your men?"
(on the run for the border. Kept just enough of them with me to handle
the boats." Mek stripped the filthy bandage from Nicholas's chin. Royan
gasped when she saw the injury, but Mek grinned.
"Looks as though you were chewed by a shark."
"That's right, I was,'Nicholas agreed.
WI BE, Mek shrugged. "It needs at least a dozen stitches." He shouted
for one of his men to bring his pack.
Sorry, no anaesthetic," -he warned Nicholas as he forced him to sit on
the transom of one of the boats and poured antiseptic straight from the
bottle.
Nicholas let out a gasp of pain. "Burns, doesn't it?" Mek agreed
complacently. "But just wait until I start sewing."
"This kindness will be written down against your name in the golden
book," Nicholas told him, and with an evil leer Mek broke the seal on a
suture pack.
As Mek worked on the wound, pulling the edges together and tugging the
thread tight, he spoke quietly so that Nicholas alone could hear. "Nogo,
has at least a full company of men guarding the river downstream. My
scouts tell me that he has placed them to cover the trails on both
banks."
"He doesn't know that we have boats to run the river, does he?" Nicholas
asked through gritted teeth.
"I think it is unlikely, but he knows a great deal about our movements.
Perhaps he had an informer amongst your workmen." Mek paused as he
pricked the needle into Nicholas's flesh, and then went on, "And Nogo
still has the helicopter. He will spot us on the river as soon as this
cloud breaks."
The river is our only escape route. Let's pray that the weather stays
socked in, like this."
By the time Mek had tied off the last knot and covered Nicholas's chin
with a Steri-Strip plaster, Sapper had finished inflating and loading
the last boat.
Four of Mek's men carried Tessay's litter to one of the boats. Mek
helped her aboard and settled her on the deck, making sure that she had
one of the safety straps close at hand. Then he left her and hurried to
where his wounded men lay in order to help them into the boats too. Most
of them could walk, but two had to be carried.
After that he came back to Nicholas. "I see you have found your radio,"
he said, as he glanced at the fibreglass case that Nicholas had slung
over his shoulder on its carrying strap.
"Without it we would be in big trouble." Nicholas patted the case
affectionately.
"I will take command of that boat, with Tessay."
"Good!" Nicholas agreed. "Royan will 90 with me in the lead boat."
"You had better let me lead,'Mek said.
"What do you know about river running?" Nicholas asked him. "I am the
only one of us who has ever shot this river before."
"That was twenty years ago," Mek pointed out.
"I am an even better man now than I was then," Nicholas grinned. "Don't
argue, Mek. You come next, and Sapper in the one behind you. Are there
any of your men who know the river to command the other two boats?"
"All my men know the river," Mek told him, and shouted his orders. Each
of them hurried to the Avon he had been allocated. Nicholas gave Royan a
boost over the gunwale of their boat, and then helped his men launch her
down the rocky bank. As soon as the hull floated free they scrambled
aboard and each man grabbed a paddle.
As they bent to their paddles, Nicholas Saw at once that every man of
his crew was indeed a riverman, as Mek had boasted. They pulled strongly
but smoothly, and the light inflatable craft shot out into the main
stream of the Nile.
The Avons were designed to accommodate sixteen, and were lightly loaded.
The ammunition cases that held the grave goods from the tomb were bulky
but weighed little, and there were not more than a dozen people in any
one boat. They all floated high and handled well.
"Bad water ahead," Nicholas told Royan grimly. "All the way to the
Sudanese border." He stood at the steering sweep in the stem, from where
he had a good forward view.
Royan crouched at his feet, clinging to on of the safety straps and
trying to keep out of the way of the oarsmen.
They cut across the current that was scouring the great stone basin
below the falls, and Nicholas lined up for the narrow heads through
which the river was escaping to the West. He looked up at the sky and
saw through the spray that the rain clouds were low and purple. They
seemed to sag down upon the tops of the tall cliffs.
"Luck starting to run our way," he told Royan. "Even with the helicopter
they won't be able to find us in this Weather."
He glanced at his Rolex and the spray was heading the glass. "Couple of
hours until nightfall. We should be able to put a few miles of river
behind us before we are forced to stop for the night."
He looked back over his stem and saw the rest of the little flotilla
bobbing along behind him. The Avons were reflective yellow in colour and
stood out brilliantly even in the mist and murk of the gorge. He lifted
his clenched fist high in the signal to advance, and from the following
boat Mek repeated the gesture and grinned at him through his beard.
The river grabbed them and they shot through its portals into the
narrow, twisted gut of the Nile. The men at the oars stopped paddling,
and let the river take them.
All they could do now was to help Nicholas to steer her through any
desperate moments, and they crouched ready along the gunwales.
The high water in the gorge had covered many of the reefs of rock, but
their presence below the surface was clearly marked by the waters that
humped up in standing waves or foamed white in the narrows between them.
The flood reached up high on either bank, dashing against the cliffs of
the sub-gorge. If an Avon overturned, or even if a crew member were
thrown overboard there would be no place on this river to heave-to and
pick up survivors.
658 95, Nicholas stood high and craned ahead. He had to pick his route
well in advance, and once committed he had to steer her through. It all
depended on his ability to read the river and judge her mods. He was out
of practice, and he had that tight, hard cannonball of fear in the pit
of his belly as he put the long sweep over and steered for the first run
of fast green water. They went swooping down it, Nicholas holding their
bows into it with delicate touches of the sweep, and came out into the
bottom of it with all the other boats following them down in sequence.
"Nothing to it!" Royan laughed up at him.
Don't say itV Nicholas pleaded with her. The bad angel is listening."
And he lined up for the head of the next set of rapids that raced
towards them with terrifying speed.
Nicholas steered through the gap between two outcrops of rock and they
shot the barrel, gaining speed down the chute. It was only when they
were halfway down that he saw the tall standing wave below them over
which the river leaped. He put the sweep across and tried to steer round
it, but the river had them firmly in its grip.
Like a hunter taking a fence they shot up the front of the standing
wave, and then with a sickening lurch plummeted down the far side into
the deep trough. The Avon folded across the middle, the bows almost
touching the stem as she tried to pull through the hole in the river
surface.
The crew were tumbled over each other and Nicholas would have been
catapulted overside if it had not been for his body line and his grip on
the steering sweep. Royan flung herself flat on the deck and hung on to