"This way!" he ordered urgently. The knife ripped down to the base of the tent. "Come! Now! The camp is being attacked!"
"Why should we come with you?" Rafi asked, the gun still pointing straight at the man. From where he stood Holliday could see that Rafi's grip on the weapon was firm and unwavering. The gun wasn't shaking. Holliday smiled bleakly. The lesson had been learned. It seemed that Rafi had overcome his squeamishness.
"There are five big helicopters out there. More than a hundred heavily armed men." Tidyman said. "Unless you come with me, you will die."
"With you we'll live?" Holliday asked.
"I know a way out of here," said Tidyman.
"Why should we trust you?" Rafi asked.
"Because I'm the only chance you've got."
Rafi turned and glanced quickly at Holliday, the weapon in his hand still immobile. Holliday gave him a quick nod. He knew Tidyman was right. With nowhere to go a hundred enemies was too many; they'd be slaughtered along with the rest of the Tuaregs. For a moment he considered who the attackers might be and then put the thought out of his mind. There would be time for that kind of analysis later. If they managed to survive, that is.
"Lead the way," he said to Tidyman.
Rafi lowered the M9. Tidyman's face withdrew from the floor-to-ceiling slit in the wall. Rafi and Holliday followed the Egyptian out into the cloaking darkness.
Tidyman was dressed in military attire, all black like the commandos but with a beret instead of a balaclava. He carried a holstered pistol but no other arms. Leading the way he crept between the hutlike tents, working his way toward the sheep and goat enclosure on the western side of the camp.
Behind them there were bursts of sporadic gunfire and the choked screams of dying men. Camels shrieked, panicking and tearing at their picket lines, unable to do anything more than stagger into each other with their hobbled legs. Fires sprang up as tracers burst against the tents and rifle grenades found their targets.
Holliday caught a flicker of movement on his left and turned. A figure rose up out of the darkness, an indigo-robed Tuareg-Elhadji. He was carrying a straight sword, four feet long with a simple wooden crosspiece and grip, the nicked blade glinting as it swept down in a deadly arc.
Holliday had a brief flashing memory of a black-turbaned Taliban officer wielding an immense curved pulwar in the ruins of a village just outside Kandahar years before; he did exactly what he'd done then: ducked. He rolled to one side, keeping low to avoid Elhadji's backstroke, then came up on his knees, tearing the commando knife out of its sheath and sweeping it into the fluttering of the Tuareg's robes, cutting through the fabric and slicing into the tendons at the back of his legs, crippling him. As Elhadji fell he managed to slide a lethal-looking dagger from his right sleeve, bringing it up toward Holliday's stomach. Holliday reared back but he knew it was too late; the Tuareg was going to gut him.
A single shot rang out and Elhadji was thrown backward, the right side of his face disintegrating, his turban unraveling in a mess of blood, brains and hair. Holliday looked up. Rafi stood over him, one hand extended, the other holding the smoking pistol.
"Point and shoot, right?" the Israeli archaeologist said, grimacing.
"Point and shoot," Holliday said, taking Rafi's extended hand and pulling himself up.
"Come on!" Tidyman hissed.
They reached the sand rampart and struggled upward after Tidyman. Reaching the summit, Holliday looked back. Much of the camp was on fire now, and Holliday could see the silhouettes of the Tuaregs etched against the flames. Lines of tracers marked the attacking commando force, and from the spitting spiderweb of light Holliday could see that the attackers were herding the native force against the far eastern wall.
As Holliday watched he saw a new line of fire from the top of the far rampart. The firing came from at least a score of heavy weapons. It was an ambush; a squad had been lying in wait, catching the Tuaregs in a deadly cross fire.
Holliday turned again. They were in exactly the spot they'd been that morning, except now the area between the rampart and the almost invisible runway was blocked by five hulking helicopters in red and white livery. They were Augusta-Westland Merlins, as Holliday had thought. A Merlin variant had just been tested as a replacement for the president's Flight One. Holliday knew they had just about the longest range of any medium-sized transport chopper on the market.
Tidyman crouched and Holliday followed suit, pulling Rafi down with him. Standing, they'd be perfect targets, silhouetted against the rising flames behind them.
"What now?" Holliday whispered to Tidyman.
"There," said the Egyptian, pointing along the parapet. "Keep low."
Tidyman began to run along the sand- pile wall, heading for the northeast corner of the structure. Holliday followed, keeping low as he'd been instructed, checking every few seconds to see if anyone left with the helicopters had seen them. Rafi brought up the rear. The only thing obstructing their run was the body of a Tuareg guard, his throat slit by one of the commandos. They stepped over his body and followed after Tidyman.
They reached the corner of the wall and the Egyptian pointed down to the ditch below them. Waiting on the other side of the dry moat was a Russian jeep, an open version of the old UAZ-469 Goat they'd purchased in Mersa Matruh. There was a big machine gun on a pivot mount in the rear. It looked a lot like the Libyan army vehicle they'd seen patrolling that afternoon, but much older.
"Can you work that?" Tidyman asked, pointing at the big machine gun, his whisper hoarse.
"Probably," said Holliday, peering down. It looked like an American MP-40 but even bigger, probably a Soviet-era Russian Kord. But a machine gun was a machine gun, and the Russians had always had a knack for making their weapons simple, strong and easy to use. That's why the AK- 47 was the Coca-Cola of automatic rifles.
"You'd better be able to shoot it," warned the Egyptian. "Those helicopters are in our way and they're sure to have left someone back to guard them."
"Behind you!" Rafi yelled.
Holliday swiveled, bringing up the machine pistol he'd stripped off the dead commando in the tent. A commando was charging up the hill, another man right behind him. As Holliday fired the charging man looked up.
"Cazzo merda!" the commando whispered, lifting his own weapon.
Holliday squeezed the trigger on the MP5 and blew the man back down the hill in a dead tumbling heap. The second man stopped in his tracks, bringing up his own machine pistol, and Holliday turned the weapon on him, firing until the clip was empty. Behind the dead man at the base of the wall a trio of commandos looked up.
"Go!" Holliday bellowed, turning again and throwing himself over the edge of the sloping sand wall as a hail of fire buzzed up from the squad below. He tumbled down the sand, losing his footing and rolling down toward the shallow ditch at the base of the rampart.
He reached the bottom with a heavy thump that knocked the wind out of him. As he climbed to his feet and clambered up the far side of the moat he felt a searing sting of heat as a bullet plucked at the sleeve of his shirt. More slugs twitched into the sand all around him as the commandos high above him tried to pick him off. He reached the truck, threw himself into the back and grabbed the pistol grip below the heavy machine-gun mechanism and swung the weapon around on its pivot.
As Tidyman started the truck and pulled away, Rafi beside him, Holliday dropped the firing lever, locking the belt feed in place, flipped off the safety and angled the gun upward. He checked that the belt feed was running smoothly down into the big ammunition box on the right-hand side of the heavy weapon, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.