'You folks drive the Predator?' The pilot was on manual but found time to talk. He wanted conversation: the UAVs were in their coffins behind the bulkhead, with the Ground Control Station and the trailers on which the satellite dishes were housed. Perhaps he thought that a young man with distorting spectacles, tousled hair and short trousers didn't look like any pilot that he, a military man, had ever known. Or perhaps he thought the young woman in her short skirt didn't seem like any sensor operator he'd ever met.
'What we do, as with all Agency business, is rated as classified,'
Marty said.
'Just asking – don't mean to put my nose where it's not meant to be.'
Lizzy-Jo said, 'He's the pilot for what we've got, MQ-ls. I sit beside him and do the fancy stuff – telling the truth, there should be two of me but the guy who's supposed to be-'
'Lizzy-Jo, that's classified,' Marty snapped.
She ignored him. '-supposed to be alongside me is down at Bagram with amoebic dysentery. We have to make do.'
The pilot was almost old enough to be Marty's father. 'Where have you flown, son?'
Marty said that he had flown at Nellis, Nevada, for his training, and out of Bagram, and he looked defiantly at the pilot. At Nellis there had been veteran pilots, and at Bagram from the USAF, and they'd all been spare with words but had not hidden their contempt at his age and appearance. Flying for them was a killing game when the Hellfires were on the pods under a Predator's wings. For Marty, flying was as intellectual a task as working the machines in a kids' arcade. He scowled and waited for the sarcastic retort from the pilot about his inexperience. He didn't get it.
'Perhaps ya'll know all this – in which case you'll say so. Feel the turbulence? That's standard here. We have big winds over the dunes, forty knots or fifty. What I heard, Predator doesn't like winds.'
'It can cope,' Marty said.
'Can't even take off if cross-winds exceed fifteen knots,' Lizzy-Jo said. 'And it's pretty difficult to get decent imagery on screen if it's rough up high.'
'The winds are bad, and then there's the heat over the sand. When you're up we find there's a density-altitude barrier, it's what the heat does. Even if there had been no sandstorm when we were trying to get that Navy pilot at the downed Hornet, the helicopter people were not keen on flying. What I'm saying is, it's difficult territory for aviation. It takes understanding. Nothing moves, nothing lives, you could call it a death trap. It's one hell of an unfriendly place down there, it's-'
The pilot broke off. He was holding his stick tight. The co-pilot came behind Lizzy-Jo and told her to vacate the seat. He replaced her, strapped himself in, and reached across to lock his hands over the pilot's, helping him hold the stick and fight a wind powerful enough to throw the big transporter off line. The pilot didn't loosen his grip on the stick but gestured to his left with his head.
Lizzy-Jo tugged at Marty's arm and pointed port side of the cockpit window.
The darkness below them was broken by a spasm of light. The first light they had seen since the sun had dropped. Not a prick of light in the Rub' al Khali until the brilliance that the aircraft now banked towards. The light was like an inland sea and around it was a wall of blackness, then nothing. Coming closer, the lights broke their solid formation and Marty recognized runway lights, road lights, compound and perimeter lights and buildings' lights.
'God,' Marty said. 'Is that it?'
'That's it,' Lizzy-Jo said. 'That's our new home. How long you sticking around for?'
The pilot grimaced. 'About a half-minute after your offloading is completed, I'll be powered up.'
They went down. The wind shook them. The pilot was good and feathered them on to the runway. They taxied, but the pilot didn't cut the engines when he'd braked. Far at the back they heard the metal scrape of the tail being opened.
The pilot sipped from his water bottle, then smiled at them. 'Take my word, this is hell on earth. I hope what you're going to do is worth the effort.'
Marty said, 'Any mission we are sent on is worth the effort-'
Lizzy-Jo cut in, 'We don't know what the mission is, but I expect someone will tell us when it's convenient for them.'
They went back into the fuselage and gathered up their gear. Two bags for her, one bag and his framed print for Marty. He was subdued. Everything the pilot had said about wind turbulence and heat played in his mind. He was sort of nervous.
They walked down the tail and George Khoo already had the maintenance team at work. They carried their bags to the side and dropped them, but Marty held his picture under his arm. The coffins were rolled down the tail on their trailers.
The pilot was as good as his word. In a half-minute after the last of the gear had been offloaded, the engines were revving to full power.
They walked towards the dirt at the end of the runway, where within a half-hour George had started to supervise the erection of a tent camp.
They were off the track when, without warning, the pickup swerved to the left. The lamb screamed and a goat fell into Caleb's stomach, then kicked with hobbled hoofs to be clear of him. Ahead there was a single low building – no village, no huts, no compound walls.
Caleb crawled to the pickup's tail and jumped. On side-lights, the pickup left. The moon's glow fell on the building. There was a sliver of brightness at one window and another under the door.
Caleb clenched his fist and hammered on the wooden planks. He called out his old name, the one the Chechen had given him.
A bolt was drawn back, scraped clear of its socket. The door whined open.
Caleb went in. On an earth floor at the centre of the room a hurricane lamp threw out a dull light and the stink of kerosene.
Beside it there were three plates with meat and rice on them and on one a half-eaten apple. Beyond the lamp's light, in shadow, stood a pile of olive green wood packing-cases but he could not read the writing stencilled on them. There were crumpled blankets, discarded cigarette packets, boots caked in old dirt and… From the deeper shadows, a shaft of light fell on a rifle barrel, aimed at his chest. As he slowly, and very carefully, raised his arms, the barrel tip of a weapon was pressed hard into the back of his neck. Then he heard breathing close to him and smelt the breath behind him. Away from the rifle there was a scurrying movement and then the lamp was lifted. A man held a hand grenade, the pin gone from it, in one hand and the other held the lamp.
In Arabic, Caleb said, 'If you drop the grenade or throw it at me everyone in the room is killed, me and you – you should put the pin back.'
He heard a little giggle of nervous laughter from the side, where the rifle was. The man put down the lamp, then fumbled in a trouser pocket and replaced the hand grenade's pin. Caleb saw the face of the man, old, tired and thin… The weapon stayed against his neck, but Caleb's right arm was wrenched down. He felt the cloth strip taken from the plastic bracelet. The light was lifted. His arm was released and the weapon dropped from his neck.
Each in his own way, the three men gazed at him. One slipped a pistol into the belt of his trousers. One stacked the rifle against the wall. The elder one grimaced and dropped the grenade into a coat pocket. Then they were eating, but still they watched him – not with awe or fascination, not with wonderment. Their glances were of rank interest and they seemed to strip him bare to the skin. It was as if each weighed his appearance against the value given him. It was, he understood, the first contact with the outer layers of his family. They gave Caleb their names, but spoke indistinctly because they were all eating as if food was scarce. He thought the elder one who had had the hand grenade called himself Hosni; the one with the rifle was Fahd. The man who had held the pistol against his neck and who had examined his wrist said his name was Tommy. They wolfed the food until the plates were clear, then wiped the plates and sucked their fingers for the last of the rice and sauce. Caleb sat at the side in the shadow, leaning against the stacked crates, and his stomach growled.