Breakfast was strong black coffee and taguella, a thick crepelike bread made from millet flour and goat's milk but without sugar. A Tuareg brought them the overnight bags they'd brought with them from Siwa and they changed into fresh clothes. After that, just as Alhazred had promised, they were given the run of the camp. Holliday was the first to decipher the site's design.
"It's a Roman castra," he said after a few minutes of walking through the camp. "A square inside a sand rampart and a dry ditch. About three hundred by three hundred and all the tents laid out in rows. That big tent in the middle is probably Alhazred's. It's a military formation. The first real attempt at urban planning." They climbed up the sandy hill at the south side of the camp. A Tuareg guard patrolling the top of the rampart with a rifle slung across his back eyed them speculatively. Like targets. Or prey.
"New weapon from the looks of it," said Rafi as they reached the summit of the sandy wall. "Alhazred equips his people well."
"It's a C7 assault rifle," said Holliday. "Knockoff of the U.S. Army M-18. Canadian again."
"Tidyman was raised in Canada and Alhazred's mother was Canadian as well; they must have lots of connections there. I know they have a big Lebanese immigrant population; it's been that way for a long time."
"Canada, the terrorist's Switzerland," replied Holliday, looking down at the camp. "Easy to get into on a visitor's visa and the border is a four-thousand-mile sieve. You can walk through a wheat field in Saskatchewan and not even know you'd crossed into Montana." He shook his head wearily. Holliday knew a few Homeland Security types who'd told him that between terrorists and high-grade marijuana, the Canadian border needed a fence even more than Mexico. "During the Vietnam War they said more Russian spies crossed into New York State at Niagara Falls than anywhere else. Couldn't go on a tour bus without running into some guy in a Hawaiian shirt named Vladimir."
"Funny place," said Rafi, a slightly wistful tone in his voice. "There was a beautiful girl in one of my classes at university named Joy Schlesinger. She had the greatest… Anyway, she came from some place called Medicine Hat. What is a medicine hat?"
"I don't have the slightest idea," said Holliday, distracted. He turned around and looked out across the open stretch of sand between them and the ragged promontory of rock that separated the camp from the main desert beyond. The camp had been situated about two miles from the foot of the dark, stony crags. Far enough away so that the steep cliffs offered no strategic high ground. An enemy could be seen coming from miles away. He turned again and looked at the Tuareg guard. As well as the rifle he had a pair of Leupold 10?50 binoculars. Holliday turned toward the distant hills. He squinted and shaded his eyes.
"What are you looking at?" Rafi asked.
"Look out here," Holliday instructed. "What do you see about five hundred yards out?"
"Sand," Rafi answered. "Blindingly white sand."
"Look closer."
Rafi thought he could make out a slightly darker strip in the bright hot sunlight.
"A road?"
"Except it doesn't go anywhere," murmured Holliday. "Look."
Rafi stared. The "road" looked like a line of hard-packed sand about half a mile long, parallel to the camp.
"What kind of road doesn't go anywhere?" The archaeologist frowned.
In the distance, overhead, there was a faint mosquito whine that grew louder with every passing second.
"A runway," said Holliday, glancing up. "These guys have got a plane."
A minute or so later, coming from the west and dropping down from the high plateau to the south, the aircraft appeared, an old design with two booms creating twin tailplane assemblies. As it began its approach to the runway the guard on the parapet grew very agitated, unlimbering the rifle from his back and rushing toward them, brandishing the weapon.
"Edh'hab! Edh'hab!" the man screamed.
"I think we're supposed to get off the rampart," said Rafi.
The plane's wheels touched down and the propeller sounds deepened as the pilot backed the engines. The guard stopped, lowering the weapon and aiming it at them.
"I think you're right," agreed Holliday. They scrambled down the sandy hill. Above them the guard seemed to relax. Holliday and Rafi made their way between two rows of igloo-shaped tents and walked toward the big camel enclosure close to the center of the camp.
"What was that all about?" Rafi asked. He turned his head and looked up at the guard. The Tuareg had gone back to patrolling the rampart.
"I don't think we were supposed to see the plane," said Holliday.
"Why not?" Rafi said. "It's not like either one of us can fly."
"I flew in planes like that all the time in Vietnam," said Holliday. "It was a Cessna Skymaster. They called them O2s in-country. They bird-dogged downed pilots and worked as forward artillery spotters. They used to take me and my men into Cambodia and Laos. They even made a movie with one in it. Bat 21, I think it was called. Danny Glover and Gene Hackman, our French cop's favorite actor.
"Popeye-goddamn-bloody-Doyle," said Holliday, doing a fair imitation of Louis Japrisot, the police captain in Marseille. "Gene 'ackman this, Gene 'ackman that!"
"Could it get us out of here?" Rafi said.
"I think it had a range of about twelve hundred miles. It would get us across the border back into Egypt, probably Tunisia. If either one of us could fly, that is."
"We can't," said Rafi thoughtfully. "But Peggy could; she's got her pilot's license, doesn't she?"
"I don't know if she's rated for twins though; the Skymaster's a push-pull."
"Better a single-engine pilot than none at all."
"We'd have to find her first," said Holliday.
"Isn't that why we're here?" Rafi said, the words a challenge.
By four thirty in the afternoon they were no farther along in their search for the elusive Peggy. The only thing they'd accomplished was a slightly more accurate count of the number of people in the camp-220-and the fact that a mixed herd of goats and sheep smelled even worse than an equal number of camels. It amazed Holliday that goats and camels both gave sweet milk but smelled so nauseatingly foul, like a combination of raw sewage and a kid's wet wool mittens roasting on an old-fashioned radiator.
Rafik Alhazred caught up with them just as they were heading back to their assigned tent. Wearing an outfit much like the one he'd had on the day before, he was at the wheel of a brand- new dusty white 200 Series Toyota Land Cruiser without a nick or a ding on it. The big truck looked as though it belonged in a suburban driveway. The sign on the door read: Fezzan Project-Libyan Dep't of Antiquities British Academy King's College, London Society for Libyan Studies
There was Arabic text below that was presumably a translation of the English above.
"The truck is mine but the sign's authentic enough," said Alhazred. "Change into the robes you arrived in, a little protective coloration. Hurry, please," he added. "I'll wait here."
Holliday and Rafi did as they were told and piled into the truck, robed from head to toe, including the muslin veil across the bottom part of their faces. A real Tuareg crouched in the rear cargo compartment. He wasn't visibly armed but Holliday was sure there was some kind of weapon hidden in the indigo folds of his native costume.
"If we get stopped you say nothing. Speak, and my friend Elhadji back there will slit your throats, quick as a wink. Don't worry-my site identification is perfect. The dig has been in operation for more than a decade; field-workers come and go all the time; no one knows anyone anymore, which is to our benefit."
Alhazred drove out of an opening in the north rampart that boxed the camp, then immediately turned east, heading toward the neck of the fifteen-mile-long valley, the dark, ominous basalt crags quickly closing in.