by Holly Watt
The Hilux slid forward a few more yards and finally, almost apologetically, creaked to a halt. Silence fell.
Casey looked around, hazily.
‘Casey.’ A tinny shout. The phone was in her lap, somehow.
‘Huh?’ She found the phone, picked it up.
‘OK, Casey. Well done.’ Miranda didn’t ask whether they were both alive. ‘Can you drive the car a little bit further away?’
It seemed completely unimaginable to Casey right then. She looked across at Ed. His eyes were closed. There was blood on the window next to him.
‘I can try,’ she mumbled.
She clambered out of the car, ducking down, then peering up.
The pickup was parked up, high above, right at the top of the cliff. Just like at Salama, Casey thought dreamily. Just like at Salama.
Only it was Josh holding the gun now.
He would see her moving.
‘Fuck,’ Casey sharpened.
She ran round to Ed’s side of the car, opened the door, heaved at him.
‘Ed!’ she screamed at him. ‘Ed. You’ve got to move over. I can’t drive unless you move over.’
A bullet hit the ground, a few feet away. They weren’t following them down, not yet. They hadn’t heard the helicopter. Didn’t think they needed to chase. Thought they could cut them off, hunt them down long before they could reach the road. There might be time to get away.
Somehow, deep down, Ed heard her. He tried to move. She unclipped his seatbelt, pushed at him with all her strength. He fought to help her, leaning, collapsing, and somehow they got him halfway across the car.
Casey jumped in, slammed the door, tried the ignition, praying.
The Hilux started. Crossly, coughing, but it started.
Casey battled with the gears, put her foot down. The Hilux creaked forward, struggling like a tired horse in the sand.
‘Come on, baby.’ Casey was leaning forward, urging it on. ‘Come on.’
They managed 400 yards, and then the Hilux stuck in the sand, tyres whirling impotently, sinking deeper. For a second, the engine raced, then stalled into silence.
The helicopter dived in, suddenly, wildly, and Miranda was jumping out, running across, ducking under the shrieking rotors before they had even stopped spinning.
‘Miranda.’ Casey could have hugged her, but there was no time. ‘You came for us.’
‘Of course I came.’ Miranda was almost angry. ‘I would never leave you, Casey.’
The pickup was still at the top of the cliff, just out of range. As Miranda spoke, a bullet cracked overhead. Aiming for the helicopter, the big, vulnerable target.
‘Hurry,’ screamed Casey.
Casey and Miranda dragged Ed out of the car, struggling with his weight. Casey grabbed her rucksack, abandoning everything else.
‘Come on, Ed.’ Miranda could barely be heard against the helicopter. ‘You can do it.’
They heaved him into the back of the helicopter, and the pilot took off as soon as they were in, rotors racing, the helicopter tilting wildly as it spun away. It surged away from the black pickup, and only when they were far out of range of the M24 did it turn; turn and head for Algeria.
42
‘Fucking hell.’ It was Miranda’s voice.
The three of them were lying in a sprawling heap in the back of the helicopter.
Casey looked around blurrily. It was a Bell 206, the workhorse used by everyone from police forces to television crews. She’d hired one once to buzz an MP in his Cotswolds mansion, a palace put on expenses. Lawns like green velvet and the taxpayers’ swimming pool glittering in the sun.
This Bell was screaming over the Sahara, the rotor noise almost deafening.
‘Ed.’ Casey scrambled towards him.
He was half conscious, and Casey ripped apart his shirt, looking for the wound. He had been shot in the shoulder, blood smearing down his arm, across his chest.
‘He’ll be OK.’ Miranda took over. ‘It’s nasty, but he’ll be fine, I promise.’
Miranda reached for the first aid kit, sorted through it briskly and slapped the big field dressing over the bloody mess.
‘Ed . . .’ Casey whispered.
‘I promise you, Casey, he’ll be all right.’
Miranda plunged a shot of morphine into his shoulder. ‘Just a bit of it. It will help.’
They were racing over the desert now, staying low over the golden waves, trying to dodge the radar. The pickup could never track them at this speed.
‘Are you OK?’ Miranda peered at her. ‘I don’t know how you didn’t flip that Hilux.’
‘Me neither,’ Casey said simply. ‘I thought we were going to die. But they didn’t factor in a helicopter. We’d never have got away without it.’
‘Ahmed is flying the helicopter.’ Miranda gestured at the pilot. ‘He’s furious with me, to be perfectly honest. I found him at Tiska airport and told him we were going just up to the border. And then when you said you were being chased, I told him we had to go over.’
‘How did you make him?’
‘He was all right, really. First I told him I had a gun, and would shoot him if he didn’t keep going. But he still said he wouldn’t fly over the border. Then I told him you were a friend, and I had to get you back, and he went for it. The truth works,’ Miranda laughed. ‘Who knew?’
‘Thank you,’ said Casey. ‘Thank you.’
Thank you could never be enough.
‘He said it would be fine flying into Libya, most probably’ – Miranda waved her words away – ‘but things might get a bit hairy when we try and fly back over the border into Algeria. Their air force might not take too kindly to this sort of thing. He says that the jets are supersonic, too, so we won’t even hear them before we are blown to pieces.’
‘Lovely,’ said Casey. She smiled at the pilot, who ignored her.
‘He figures that if we stay low enough, the radar might not pick us up for a bit,’ said Miranda. ‘But things might get a bit lively.’
‘It worked for the Seals, going in after Osama,’ said Casey. ‘Let’s just keep our fingers crossed.’
They were cruising west to Djanet. Ed was drifting back towards consciousness, still hazy from the morphine. Miranda constructed a sling for his shoulder, muttering to herself.
‘Not sure I was paying quite enough attention during this part of the course,’ she admitted. ‘Think I was too busy flirting with that guy from Reuters.’
But Casey was staring out of the helicopter. The desert flowed beneath them, and far below, the road ribboned through the dunes.
She thought of the Gaddafis, racing down that road in those sleek cars. And the refugees, too, on that very same road, step by step by step. Same road, and a different journey.
She thought of them, walking and walking. Not knowing their destiny, but knowing only this: it must be better. Marching into a new beginning, in those long columns of hope: it will be better.
Those small incremental steps look like bravery, later. But it isn’t bravery at the time. At the time, it is only a terrified scramble of decisions. Every time simply: what must I do to survive?
That scream: I will not die here today.
Maybe tomorrow, and who knows where. But not here. Not today. And not now.
You’re so brave, they say after. You don’t know. And I don’t have the words to explain.
Casey gasped as the helicopter jolted sideways for a second, caught in the wind. And there was that flash in her mind. The flash that would be there for ever. A rip, always: a gun firing, a tiny figure crumpling.
A mother racing, so desperate. A father wailing up to the sky. And a little girl, eyes staring at nothing, clutched close for the very last time.
Casey shook her head and glanced across at Ed. He had bled through the bandage already, a strange, hopeful red. Half-sleeping, and twitching at each twist from the Bell.
‘Which would you choose?’ She almost missed Ed’s words.
He was sta
ring ahead, eyes hazy.
‘What?’
‘Would you choose the story, or everything else?’
His eyes were closing, and she waited a long minute to answer.
Then, the whisper. ‘I don’t know.’
Casey sat up again in her seat, her neck aching from the plunge down the scree. The cut on her arm was still raw, barely scabbed.
And so they flee.
Goodbye, and goodbye, and goodbye.
Miranda’s phone went.
‘What is it, Hessa?’
‘Sorry.’ Hessa sounded apologetic. ‘I just thought you would want to know . . . The Bombardier, it just landed in Djanet.’
‘Shit,’ said Miranda. ‘It shouldn’t be back for at least a couple of days. Where did it fly in from?’
‘It was only just over in Nice,’ said Hessa. ‘It was a quick flight down.’
‘Right. OK. Thanks for letting us know.’
Miranda leaned forward, spoke to Ahmed.
He cursed, and changed course rapidly to the north.
‘We’re going to head to Illizi,’ said Miranda cheerfully. ‘Refuel and then keep going. We should have just enough fuel, hopefully. Ahmed’s got auxiliaries, and after that we can hop all the way up to Algiers.’
Ahmed muttered something in Arabic.
‘He said’ – Ed was cheering up – ‘that you’d better be on the side of the angels. Roughly. And that it’s a fucking long way to Algiers.’
‘Convince him we are with the angels,’ said Miranda. ‘Mostly.’
‘Could the Bombardier have been trying to cut us off?’ Casey wondered aloud. ‘God, I would love to know who is on board that plane right now.’
The mountains of the Tassili n’Ajjer rose up sharply as they crossed the border and left Libya behind. There was nothing to mark the border, just wilderness.
Grumbling to himself, Ahmed hugged the hills, the little Bell juddering in the crosswinds as it soared over the rocks.
The editor was walking past Hessa just as she called Miranda.
Salcombe paused briefly, then walked on towards Dash’s office. He tapped on the doorframe.
‘Dash,’ he said. ‘Where are Miranda and Casey at the moment?’
Dash looked up. ‘Not absolutely sure right now, Andrew,’ he said, with perfect honesty. ‘Can I check in with them and get back to you?’
Salcombe stood at the door, waiting. Dash picked up the phone, dialled a wrong number and listened to the tone.
‘No answer,’ he said, dropping the receiver.
‘Dash,’ Salcombe said. ‘I want you to have located them within the next five minutes. Is that clear?’
‘Crystal,’ said Dash. ‘If you wait in your office, I’ll come straight over.’
Salcombe walked to his office, closed the door, waited.
After seven minutes, the editor called his PA.
‘Send in Hessa Khan, please.’
Dash spotted Hessa when it was too late, walking towards the editor’s office. He jumped up, but there was no way to cut her off.
Hessa had never been in the editor’s office before. She sat down nervously.
‘Hessa,’ said Salcombe, silky smooth. ‘Where are Miranda and Casey right now?’
She looked at him, surprised he didn’t already know. She’d kept the secret so carefully, from Eric and all the others.
But the editor was the editor, and he had to know, of course.
As they approached the Illizi airfield, Miranda held her breath, but the little helicopter radioed in and bumped down, casual as a milk round.
A man was waiting nearby, as the rotors slowed. Ahmed waved to him.
‘This is my friend,’ Ahmed said, choosing his words with a pilot’s care. ‘I called him on the radio. It would take too many hours to go to Algiers in the Bell. But he knows. He has a small plane, this man. He will take you there. He will fly you to Algiers.’ Ahmed nodded at the man. ‘I trust him.’
Without waiting, Ahmed sketched them a farewell. He turned and headed to the scruffy arrivals hall. They watched him go.
‘Will he be OK?’ said Casey.
‘I don’t know,’ said Miranda, suddenly flat. ‘I don’t know what we’re leaving him to.’
It was always like this. Journalists rely on the kindness, the generosity, the faith of so many, in one crazed part of the world, or another. And then, one day, the headlines end and the journalists walk away. They go back to their cosy homes in Hackney, and they rarely look back.
Ahmed had quite crossly saved their lives, and none of them knew the consequences he might face.
Better here than in Afghanistan. But . . .
‘I hope he’ll be all right,’ said Ed, watching him stamp off.
The new pilot nodded at them, sideways. He was supervising the refuelling of a little plane, a baby-blue Cessna. Averting his eyes from Ed’s arm and the shredded, blood-soaked shirt, he went through all the careful checks. Then they all clambered on board, hurtled down the runway and raced into the sky.
43
Salcombe stared at Dash stony-faced. The only sign of anger came from his hand, clenched around a fountain pen.
When Dash ran out of words, Salcombe let the silence spread.
‘I am the Editor of this paper.’ Salcombe’s voice was low. ‘I have to sign off on undercover work before anyone goes anywhere. You know that, Dash. You know the rules. This isn’t what we do any more.’
‘I know, and I am sorry.’ Dash put reason into his voice. ‘I should have told you. But they’re on their way back now. They’re most of the way out already. I know it’s been a crazy thing to do, but it’s basically done already.’
‘You knew I would say no,’ said Salcombe. ‘You deliberately went behind my back.’
‘I wasn’t sure,’ Dash admitted.
‘If you run this story, you know what will happen,’ said Salcombe. ‘This will just be publicity for that little operation down there. The people you’ve got so far will disappear into the ether, but others will spring up. It’ll be a new thing to do. A craze like half the things in our wretched travel section. Casey’s article will just be marketing material for these people.’
Dash ducked his head. It was possible, and he’d known that all along. ‘We’ll keep tabs on it, keep chasing and hunting these people down. We have to believe in sunlight as the best disinfectant, otherwise what are we all doing?’
Salcombe was tapping the fountain pen against the desk. The desk had been brought in especially. It crouched, huge and ugly in the room.
‘Is that all, Dash?’
‘For now.’
Salcombe nodded.
Dash walked out of the awkward silence, and over to Hessa’s desk.
‘Hessa.’ He peered over her shoulder. ‘What time is the last flight out of Algiers?’
Her eyes flicked up, and then back to her screen.
‘Direct? There aren’t many,’ she said. ‘Not since all the tourists stopped going.’
Away from Salcombe, he could feel the excitement seep back. He stretched his arms, and breathed deeply.
‘There,’ she pointed. ‘The last flight is an Anglo Air one, leaving at 4 p.m. Takes three hours.’
Dash was looking at his watch. ‘They’re not going to make it to Algiers in time, not in that Cessna. Fuck it. Those bastards can just cruise north in that Bombardier. We’re not leaving them in sodding Algeria for the night.’
‘Let me think.’ Hessa was tapping again.
‘We don’t have time. Henry!’ Dash shouted. ‘Get over here.’
The transport correspondent looked up. He was balding, generous around the middle. Henry had once aspired to greater things, but was now quite happy writing about the battle for the third runway.
‘Dash?’
‘Can you get Peter Collingwood on the phone in five minutes flat?’
Peter Collingwood, the boss of Anglo Air. A rotund chief executive, with deep dimples and calculating eyes.
‘S
ure.’ Henry didn’t ask questions. ‘Got his mobile somewhere.’
Dash marched across to the editor’s office, and spoke loudly and deliberately.
‘I need you to do something,’ he said. ‘It’s for Casey and Miranda. Henry is getting Peter Collingwood on the phone. You’re going to tell him that the Anglo Air flight out of Algiers is going to wait on the runway for three people. I don’t care what laws that breaks, it waits. Is that clear?’
‘Why would he do that?’ asked Salcombe.
‘I don’t care.’ Dash suddenly lost his temper. ‘Charm him. Beg him. Or offer him free advertising. We’re still giving Ferrari free space after that fucking idiot in the driving section put one through a bus shelter on a test drive. We might as well get something useful out of it this time. Or just tell him that three Post journalists will die if that plane doesn’t wait, and we will hang that round his neck for ever.’
‘Poor sod,’ muttered Henry.
The transport correspondent’s mobile was ringing. Salcombe took Henry’s phone and closed the glass door.
‘Right.’ Dash turned. ‘Where have they got to now, Hessa?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, eyes fixed to the screen. ‘I didn’t know . . .’
‘You couldn’t know,’ said Dash. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Miranda say’s they need someone who can crack codes,’ said Hessa. ‘And another thing. That Bombardier just took off from Djanet and it’s heading north.’
They never knew what Salcombe said to Collingwood, but the hulking Anglo Air plane was waiting patiently on the tarmac when the little Cessna bounced down and slewed to a halt. Anglo Air had even summoned one of the border guards, who stamped their passports impassively, never even glancing at the Tinkarine stamp on Ed’s and Casey’s passports.
Anglo, in a burst of generosity, had put them into the business section. To the surprise of the people already sitting in business, tidy with their briefcases.
An air hostess batted her eyelashes at Ed and wrapped a blanket around him.
They were asleep the moment the plane took off, Casey with the three diaries tucked inside her shirt. Trusting the air hostesses with her three shades of eyeshadow, and ignoring the ghost of another girl, who’d smiled the same way, in that blue-eyed long-ago photograph.
