Far offto the right, in a little compound of its own, we could see the comms facility that Gus had given us as a secondary target. The white dish aerial was pointing nearly straight up.
'That damn thing's farther off than he reckoned,' I said.
'What did he tell you?' Tony asked.
'He said two-fifty metres from the wire. It's got to be three-fifty at least. It's still in range, but not by much.
Anyway, it's non-essential. We'll see what happens when the time's ripe.'
As the camp came slowly to life, Tony's earlier tour in Abu Dhabi proved invaluable, because he was able to interpret all the small events we witnessed. Apart from the jingli, the earliest arrivals on the scene were bread and milk vans, which pulled up by the guardroom on the far side from us and then, after long delays, drove in to various buildings which were obviously messes.
'What's all the fuss on the barrier about?' I asked.
'Typical,' Tony replied. 'The guys on duty have to assert themselves somehow and show they're superior to the ignorant drivers. So they give them a hard time, even though they see them every day. You watch in a minute, when the rank and file arrive. But, Jesus… look at this.'
'What is it?'
'See that long building with the green roof? Look right over the top of it.'
'Got it. motor blades.'
'Yep. There's a goddamn chopper parked there.'
'Let's hope it's gone u/s. We don't want that bloody thing overhead.'
Soon after seven o'clock, a stream of ordinary cars and land cruisers began rolling down the approach road and on to a big car park outside the wire. By then a man with a mill-board was scuttling about, trying to reserve the spaces nearest the fence, and evidently taking flak from the drivers he chased away.
'See that?' said Tony. 'The bastards are so idle they won't walk a step if they don't have to.'
'Why don't their drive in, though?'
'Against the rules. Bad security. Nobody trusts anybody. I mean, any of these guys might have a bomb in his vehicle and park it next to the headquarter block.
One of them might try to top the colonel.'
Within twenty minutes some sort of physical training was taking place. A long straggle of men in shots and trainers came trotting round the track inside the perimeter, with one instructor leading and another trying in vain to drive on the laggards at the back. The front dozen or so were actually running, but everyone else was walking. A few of the guys were mock- fighting, hitting out and kicking at each other, but most of them were simply chit-chatting as they ambled along.
'What tossers!' I cried. 'What a fucking shower!'
'They are,' Tony agreed. 'But if you quizzed any of them they'd swear they.run a marathon every morning.'
At ten past eight, after that virtuoso display, the camp went dead as everyone disappeared indoors for showers and breakfast. By eight-thirty our active night had begun to tell on us. The sun, striking into the OP from our right, was already seriously hot, and, with no action to watch, we both felt tiredness attack.
'Get your head down while there's nothing happening,' I told Tony. 'If any action starts up I'll wake you. '
He shaped to argue but I more or less ordered him to sleep, and in a couple of minutes he was 6ut, lying along our right-hand wall. Looking down at his dark Puerto R.ican complexion, I thought that in an emergency he might pass for an Arab, especially at night.
When I squinted up at the sky through our roof of cam-net and thorns, I wished we'd been able to create something more solid in the way of a sun-shade. The best remedy was to tie my sweater horizontally to the underneath of the net, but even in the shade I could feel the sweat going out of me like steam, and I wanted to drink all the time. We'd each brought two belt-bottles full of water, and a gallon can as a back-up, and I knew we were going to need strict discipline to stop us running out.
At nine-twenty people started drifting on to the drill square, apparently for some sort of parade. Jinglis carried out armchairs and set them in position on a dais under a pointed wooden roof, and various slovenly-looking characters drifted about.
I was just thinking there was no point in waking Tony until the show began, when suddenly I saw something that grabbed my attention. Out of the front door of the accommodation block came four armed men, obviously guards, who formed up, two either side of the entrance. A moment later a big, heavy fellow in white drill shirt and trousers appeared, carrying a peaked cap in his hand. If he'd had the hat on his head I might not have recognised him. As it was, I gave Tony a kick and cried, 'Eh! Eh! Eh! Look at this!'
He was up beside me in a second, binos glued to his eyes. 'Shitface!' he exclaimed.
'Christi' I felt my heart pounding with a surge of adrenalin. 'If we had the sniper rifle we could drop him here and now without ever going through the wire.'
'Yeah — but the marathon runners would be out after us.
'I don't think they'd catch us. But if they got the heli airborne, we'd be deep in the shit.'
We watched fascinated as Khadduri smirked to right and left, apparently making small talk to his bodyguards.
Then he settled his cap on his head and set offalong the front of the building, heading for the parade.
'Doesn't change, does he?' said Tony. 'Great sense of humour. Remember how he used to laugh when he was hitting you on the arm?'
'Will I forget it?'
Soon the parade had formed up, but we never had a clear view of it because a thick heat-haze had begun to shimmer and shudder above the ground. Through the fuzz we saw the officers take their places in the arm chairs, with Khadduri in pole position at the right-hand end of the line. In front of them the rank and file sat on the deck in rows, cross-legged; and a tall man in white robes, who could only be the mullah, moved up and down the ranks bellowing into a microphone, his torrent of abuse outrageously magnified by the loudspeakers.
'What's he bollocking them for?' I asked.
'Anything he can think of- being late, not saying their prayers enough… Look how they're cringing.'
As the priest advanced on each man, shaking his fist and roaring insults, the guy would bow his head in submissiol until it touched the ground. It was like an amazingly hammy theatre show, and I was loving every minute of it, when a call on the radio jerked me back to the task in hand.
'Watch yourself, Geordie.' It was Pat.
'What's the problem?'
'Camels. There's a bloody great herd coming across behind you from the left. They're going to pass between you and us.'
'Is there anybody with them?'
'Can't tell yet. They're streamed out over hundreds of meters. We can't see the back often.'
'What are they doing, running?'
'No, no — just grazing on. Stand by till we see the end of the line.'
I looked at Tony. He was pointing at his bergen, asking with his eyebrows if he should stuff everything into it. I shook my head and whispered, 'Not yet. This must be the lot we passed in the dark, when Whinger smelt that fire.'
If we got compromised, all we could do was to leg it back to the LUP, jump on the quads and scoot away into the desert, having called for immediate helicopter evacuation. But that would be a disaster — the end of the operation.
We waited a couple of minutes. I could feel sweat running down my backbone. Then Pat came up with.
'There are two herders, a man and a boy.'
'Have they got a dog?'
'Wait one… Yes. There's one dog, like a big grey lurcher.'