'Shit! How close behind us are they going to pass?'
'Maybe two hundred metres.'
'Keep us informed if they start coming any closer.'
Roger.'
As far as we could tell in our baking hollow, there was no wind at all — not a breath that would carry our scent behind us. Besides, five hours had passed since any of us had crossed the line on which the camels were advancing; I couldn't believe that any dog would pick up any traces from that burning sand.
Presently I heard a shout, then another, from alarmingly close quarters. Over the radio link I asked, 'Pat, for Christ's sake. What are they doing?'
'Chill out,' he replied calmly. 'The lead camels are passing you now. They're just wandering on. Now the leader of ali's having the crap of its life. No bother. Sit tight.'
I found I'd unconsciously been holding my breath, so I let it out and inhaled deeply.
'Keeping on,' Pat continued. 'Allah karim. Halfway across… Three-quarters. There must be two hundred altogether. The end of the column's level with you now. Look out, though. The dog's turning in your direction.'
'How far from us?'
'Still the two hundred metres. Stand by… No — it's OK. The dog's OK. He's only having a piss on a tuft of dead grass. That's all he's about. Now he's carrying on.
Herders the same. One herder pissing… Now they're clear. They're squared away.'
'Thanks, Pat.'
'You're welcome. By the way, what's that godawful noise?'
'That's the local vicar clearing his throat, having a gargle.'
'Are his congregation bloody deaf or something?'
'Yeah, I should say they are by now.'
The parade over, everything went dead again, both in the desert and in the camp. The camels vanished into the heat haze, and inside the wire, after their mass bollocking, the inmates dispersed to hangars or classrooms for their morning instruction. I tried to get my head down, but was bothered by the steadily rising temperature. 'What did they predict for us?' I asked fretfully. 'Wasn't it thirty-six? This feels more like fucking forty.'
All the same, I must have dropped off to sleep, because I came to with Tony shaking my elbow and found that two hours had passed.
'Anything doing?'
'The duty officer's been round — a jerk wearing a red sash and carrying a cane under his arm, sticking his nose in everywhere, throwing his weight about. And now they're lining up for the big event of the day, midday prayers.'
From all corners of the camp men were trudging towards the mosque. The wind had got up, blowing into our faces as we watched, and the heat seemed to have eased a fraction. I reckoned that hot air was rising off the desert floor behind us and drawing slightly cooler air down from the north, ultimately from the sea.
At any rate, the breeze had cleared some of the haze, and through our glasses we could see the faithful taking off their boots and socks, which they left neatly set out in a long line before they went in to pray.
'I always wonder how in hell they know whose are which,' said Tony. 'Look at that: three hundred pairs of goddamn boots in a line. Just imagine what a screw-up there'd be if we put a couple of bursts into the tower: they'd be fighting like lunatics to find the right pair.'
But before I could answer another terrible cacophony burst from the loudspeakers as the mullah launched into his chant of'Allah akhbar! Allah akhbar!', and the prayers were under way.
At 1230 the personnel fanned out from the mosque and disappeared indoors again, presumably for lunch, and the next we saw of them, an hour later, they were ready for the off, queuing at the guardroom for the duty officer to sign their exit chits.
'They all get searched when they go out,' Tony said.
'Nobody trusts anybody.'
'But what could they possibly nick?'
'Weapons, ammunition. Anything liftable.' Tony looked at his watch and added, 'Know what? This is the beginning of their weekend. They're on their way already.'
'What about Shitface? I hope he's not going to thin out as well.'
'He is, though. That's him in the white jeep. Don't worry. He'll be back for that special meeting tomorrow.'
The afternoon slowly dragged itself away. The heat hammered in on us, in spite of the wind, and tiny black biting flies hopped around the sand. We squashed dozens of them as they landed on Our bare arms and necks, but every nip from the ones we missed left a red mark and started up an itch. We sweated and drank, sweated and drank, but so great was the rate of evaporation that neither of us wanted a piss all day.
During my stag Tony dropped off again with his shamag spread over his face, and I had a struggle to keep alert. Looking down at his peaceful form, I felt glad that he was with me, yet at the same time wondered if I'd boobed in making legal arrangements for him to become Tim's guardian. If both of us got written off now, my affairs would be in chaos.
At 1530 we heard another call to prayer, but this meeting was poorly attended compared with the morning effort, because most of the faithful had departed in that exodus after lunch. Aside from that there was practically no movement inside the camp, nothing to engage my interest. What kept me awake was the saccession of disturbing thoughts that chased each other through my mind.
The idea of killing someone in cold blood isn't a pleasant one. It is true that I had a personal grudge against our target, for the way he had treated me and Tony, and for his callous, cynical attitude in general.
Yet that alone didn't justify murdering him. To weight the scales against him I mentally threw in the fact that he was financing and supplying the IRA on a massive scale. It was his support — or, at any rate, the support of people like him — that had led indirectly to Kath's death and, now, to the kidnapping of Tim. The flow of money and weapons from overseas was what kept the IP going.
And in any case, I told myself, this isn't a personal matter. The fact that I happen to have a personal involvement is coincidental. The operation is one that the R.egiment has been tasked to carry out, and fate — or luck, or whatever it is — has decreed that I'm the guy in charge. That's all it is: a job to be done.
Trouble was, I had a far more difficult job to do back in the UK. Now we'd got as far as the OP, the topping of Khadduri seemed relatively simple. I felt sure that Tony and I would hack it, no bother. Infinitely more complex was the problem of recovering my family.
As I wrestled with this prospect, my mind kept harking back to the scheme I'd proposed to Pat — that a gang of our lads should take the law into our own hands, spring Farrell from police custody and hand him back to his mates in Belfast. Once again I heard Pat saying, 'You must be fucking mad!' and I realised the plan was probably quite unworkable. Nevertheless, I couldn't banish it from my head — and gradually, as the baking afternoon wore on, it evolved into a new version.
What if I kept the basic idea, but instead of trying to do something unilaterally, I brought the Regiment and the police on side, and got their backing? “gith the cooperation of the police we'd snatch Farrell while he was being moved between gaols, hold him in some safe house, tell the PIIA he was free, and exchange him for Tim and Tracy. But we'd arrange things so he could be immediately recaptured, possibly by putting a bug into his clothes or the heel of one of his shoes, and having a chopper airborne to follow whatever car he got into.
The scheme seemed so brilliant I felt quite lit up, and ceased to worry about the heat or the sand flies. But would the Regiment wear it? Impossible to say. In fact, I supposed, even if the head-shed agreed, authorisation for any such operation would have to come right from the top, from the Home Orifice, the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister. As in Operation Ostrich, permission would have to be completely unattributable, and deniable. Yet why shouldn't it be? Here I was, stewing deep inside Libya, about to.murder a senior army officer with the direct connivance of the British Government. If Whitehall sanctioned the elimination of dangerous foreigners, why should it baulk at a plan that merely ran rings round the II:(A?