Helm were gone, this treasure could be his alone; there was no longer
any other person to stand in his way, other than the fleeing shufta led
by Mek Nimmur and the Englishman. And he had overwhelming force on his
side and the helicopter at his command.
if only he could pin the fugitives down, Nogo was certain he could wipe
them out. There must be no survivors, no one to carry tales to Addis.
After Mek and the Englishman and all their followers were dead it would
be a simple matter to spirit his booty out of the country in the
helicopter. There was a man in Nairobi and another in Khartoum whom he
had dealt with before; they had bought contraband ivory and hashish from
him. They would know how to market the booty to best advantage, although
they were both devious men. He had already decided that he would not
trust it all to one person but would spread the risk, so that even if
one of them betrayed and cheated him His mind raced off on another tack,
and he savoured the thought of great riches and what they could buy for
him. He would have fine clothes and motor cars, land and cattle and
women - white women and black and brown, all the women he could use, a
new one for every day of his life. He broke off his greedy daydreams.
First he had to find where the runaways had vanished to.
He had not realized that Harper and Mek Nimmur had inflatable boats
hidden somewhere near the monastery.
Hansith had not informed him of that fact. He and Helm had expected them
to try to escape on foot, and all the plans to head them off before they
could reach the Sudanese border had been based on that assumption. On
Helm's orders, he had even set up a reserve fuel dump near the border
where they expected Mek Nimmur to cross, from which they could refuel
the helicopter. Without those supplies of fuel he would long ago have
been forced to give up the chase.
Nogo had placed his men to cover the trails leading along the river bank
towards the west, and he had not even considered guarding the river
itself. It was quite by chance that one of his patrols had been in a
position to spot the flotilla of yellow boats as they came racing
downstream. However, there had not been enough warning to enable them to
set up an effective ambush, and they had been able to fire on the boats
only briefly before they escaped. They had not inflicted serious damage
on any of the boats - at least, not enough to stop them getting through.
Immediately the company commander had radioed his report of this contact
with Mek Nimmur, Nogo had started ferrying men downstream to the
Sudanese border to cut off the flotilla. Unfortunately, the Jet Ranger
could carry no more than six fully armed men at a time, and transporting
them had been a time-consuming business. He had only succeeded in
bringing sixty of his men into position before night had fallen.
During the night he fretted that the flotilla was slipping past him, and
with the dawn they were in the air again. Fortunately the cloud had
broken up during the night. There was still some high cumulus overhead,
but they were now able to fly low along the river and search for any
sign of Mek Nimmur's flotilla.
They had first flown back along the river on the Ethiopian side of the
border, as far as the point where Mek Nimmur and Harper had been fired
upon. They had picked up no sign of the boats, so Nogo had forced the
pilot to turn back, cross the border and search the Sudanese stretch the
Nile. But Nogo had only been able to persuade his pilot to penetrate
sixty nautical miles along the Nile into the Sudan before the man had
rebelled. Despite the Tokarev pistol that Nogo held to his head, he had
banked the jet Ranger into a 180-degree turn and headed back low along
the river.
By now Nogo knew he had been defeated and ourwitd. He brooded unhappily
in the front seat of the helicopter ter beside the pilot, trying to
fathom out what had happened to his quarry. He saw the tall smokestack
of the abandoned sugar-mill at Roseires poking up into the early morning
sky, and he glowered at it angrily. They had passed the mill only a
short while before on their way downstream.
"Turn in towards the north bank," he ordered the pilot, and the man
hesitated and glanced at him before he obeyed..
They passed directly over the building, flying lower than the chimney.
The factory was roofless and the windows were empty rectangles in the
broken walls. The boilers and machinery had been removed twenty years
previously, and Nogo could look into the empty shell. The pilot hovered
the aircraft while Nogo peered down, but there was no place where anyone
could hide, and Nogo shook his head.
"Nothing! We have lost them. Head back upstream." The pilot lifted the
machine's nose and turned away towards the river, obeying the order with
alacrity. As the aircraft banked steeply, Nogo was looking down directly
into the overgrown canefields verging the river when a flash of bright
yellow caught his eye.
"Waid' he shouted into his mike. "There is something 9 there. Go back!'
The helicopter hovered over the field, and Nogo gestured urgently
downwards. "Down! Put us down."
As soon as the skids touched the earth, the stick of six heavily armed
troopers dived out of the rear cabin and raced out to take up defensive
positions. Nogo clambered out of the front door and ran into the
overgrown bed of tall cane. One look was all he needed. The yellow boats
had been deflated and folded and hastily covered. The earth around them
had been churned up by booted feet.
The tracks led away inland. The men who had made them had been heavily
laden, for they had trodden deeply into the soft, sandy earth.
Nogo ran back to the helicopter and thrust his head in through the open
cabin door. "Is there an airstrip near here?" he shouted at the pilot,
who shook his head.
"There is nothing shown on the chart,, "There must have been one. The
sugar'mill would have had a strip."
"If there was one, it must have been decommissioned years ago.
"We will find it,'Nogo declared. "Mek Nimmur's tracks will lead us to
it." He sobered immediately. "But I will have to bring up more men.
judging by his spoor, Mek Nimmur has at least fifty of his shufta with
him."
He left his men at the sugar-mill and flew back to the border with an
empty rear cabin to pick up the first load of reinforcements.
'ñDig Dolly! Come in, Big Dolly. This is Pharaoh.
Do you read?" Nicholas put out his first call an MD hour before sunrise.
"If I know the way jannie's mind works, and I should, he would plan to
make his approach flight in darkness and arrive here as soon as there is
enough light to pick up the strip and land."
7L 111.7- 7 -7
"If the Fat Man comes," Mek Nimmur qualified.
"He will come," said Nicholas confidently. "Jannie has never let me down
yet." He thumbed the microphone and called again: "Big Dolly! Come in,
Big Dolly."
The static hummed softly, and Nicholas retuned the set carefully. He
called again every fifteen minutes as they huddled around the set in the
dark under the acacia trees.
Suddenly Royan started to her feet and exclaimed excitedly, "There he
is. I can hear Big Dolly's engines.
Listen!'
Nicholas and Mek ran out into the open, and turned their faces upwards,
looking into the north.
Nicholas exclaimed sud
"That's not the Hercules, denly. "That's another machine." He turned and
faced southwards, towards the river. "Anyway, it's coming from the wrong
direction."