The Old Trade of Killing

by John Harris

  ‘Keep it going!’ I was screaming. ‘Keep it going!’

  The rear wheel, now also almost in space, was spinning uselessly, while the inside wheel threw up loose sand in a gritty shower that filled our mouths and eyes and nostrils. By the light of the torch I saw the whole edge of the track begin to crack and crumble in front.

  ‘Jump!’ I screamed.

  I saw Morena’s face, a quick blur of white as he looked out of the window, then it disappeared once more as he struggled to hold the vehicle on the track.

  ‘Jump, you fool!’ I yelled again.

  As the front wheel dropped and the bonnet canted downwards at a fearful angle, I ran forward, still screaming at Morena to jump, and I saw him fall against the wheel, his head jerking forward. The engine howled as he made one last effort, then he scrambled from the cab, knocking me flying. The yellow dirt flew as the wheels tore at the edge of the track, then the nose of the van dropped in an excruciating lurch.

  Clouds of dust rose as it dipped again, and the wheels carved deep grooves into the lip of the track, then it slid forward with a terrifying screeching sound, with bits of scrub and a shower of yellow rock and stones cascading in front of it, and surged down the slope in a fearful plunge, plummeting forward in a dust-enshrouded slide with the awesome grandeur of its own tremendous size.

  We saw it bounce, incredibly high considering its weight, roll over and bounce again, with the roof breaking adrift in splinters and all the equipment flying out at angles, and listened to the crunching and the rending of woodwork and the moaning of torn metal as it rolled over and over and over, flinging soil and stones and sand up like a great animal in a dust-bath.

  At last the noise stopped and we climbed to our feet, still spitting out the sand, all of us silent and awe-stricken, and I saw Phil was crying softly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We hadn’t any option. We had to try it.’ She shrugged, curiously untouched by the disaster in spite of her tears. ‘We’ve got the pictures,’ she said. ‘The rest doesn’t matter.’

  For a while we stood in a group, staring down the slope. Further down, it levelled off and the van lay on its side just below us with its nose buried in the earth, the ground wrenched away by its fall into a big swathe of torn soil and scattered stones. At first it seemed a calamity, then I realised that we’d lost nothing of real importance.

  I told Nimmo and Leach to go down the slope with torches to see what they could salvage, and Nimmo set off at once unquestioningly. Leach hung back, staring downwards, one hand picking at the raw spot on the end of his nose. When he didn’t follow, Nimmo stopped and looked back, waiting.

  ‘I can’t get down there,’ Leach said slowly in a whine. ‘My leg’ll go. I can’t ’ardly bend it already.’

  ‘Get down,’ I said.

  ‘Look’ – his voice rose angrily – ‘we’ve got all we want! Let’s go! It’ll be daylight soon and them bloody Wogs’ll be after us soon!’

  ‘Get down, you bastard,’ I told him, ‘before I knock you down.’

  He stared at me for a second, while the others watched silently, then he turned, limping heavily to impress us all with his suffering, and began to climb down among the rocks after Nimmo.

  I watched him for a second, then I gave the revolver to Phil.

  ‘Sit in the lorry,’ I said. ‘If anybody tries anything, use that. Can you do it?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll try,’ she said.

  The constant strain of having to watch all the time, not only for Ghad Ahmed but for Leach also was beginning to weary me. It required so much forethought to remember that he wasn’t to be trusted and to take precautions all the time so that he couldn’t simply slip away.

  With Morena, I followed the others down the slope and we managed to salvage a few unpunctured water cans, a tent and some food. We’d not come off too well with the petrol because two of the jerricans had bounced out of the van, and one had been punctured and the other simply flattened, but Morena scrambled back up the slope and topped up the tanks of the other vehicles to the limit from a sound can, then we siphoned the contents of the van’s tank into the half-empty container. Finally, he took off his shirt and emptied on to it the contents of the big tin of tea we carried, and filled up the tin with the rest of the petrol from the tank. Then, quietly, efficiently, not wasting time or energy in telling us what he was doing, he tied up the tea into a bag with the sleeves of the shirt and started up the slope.

  The sky was distinctly lighter by this time and I was growing worried now about being caught on the track. We were all exhausted with labouring up and down the slope, but nobody questioned what I told them to do – not even Leach, now. It was just as though we were right back where we’d been twenty years before, with me in charge and Morena to back me up with his stripes.

  With the sky paling into a yellow light along the eastern horizon, and the earth sweet with the scents left behind by the darkness, we reached the surface of the desert, and at last felt able to breathe and stretch our aching limbs without those constricting walls of the Depression hemming us in. The surrounding land stretched away to infinity, empty and silent and menacingly beautiful.

  We stopped the two vehicles alongside each other among the scattered rocks, and boiled tea on the primus and opened a couple of tins of bully beef, eating it off hard biscuits with our fingers.

  I could see the blunt form of Morena against the Land Rover, his socks over his ankles, dusty, shabby and stooping with tiredness, sharing a cigarette with Nimmo. Leach, big and fat and cumbersome, his shirt damp with sweat, sat on the sand, his back against the wheel of the lorry, his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging down, a blue whorl of smoke rising slowly from the cigarette between his fingers.

  Phil came towards me as I stood by the tailboard, cradling a mug of tea in grimy hands. She looked tired and dusty as her eyes searched my face. ‘Are we going to be all right now?’ she asked quietly.

  I shrugged. ‘We’ve got room to move,’ I said.

  ‘Will Ghad Ahmed know that we’ve got the money?’

  ‘If he doesn’t, he damn soon will. As soon as he knows we’ve gone. He’ll send someone down to make sure.’

  ‘What do you think he’ll do?’

  ‘Try to get it back. There’s a police post at Qalam and another at Breba, so he won’t want us there. Not now. If he’s half as smart as I think he is he’ll sit where he can force us off the road – so that he can get rid of us in safety.’ I shrugged. ‘But Ghad Ahmed’s not the only one who wants us in the desert. So do I. It’s too big to search easily and as far as we know he’s only got two jeeps and some camels.’

  ‘Shall we be all right for water?’

  With the sun coming up over the spiked-grass ridges and throwing sudden elongated shadows across the sand, I lit a cigarette and tried to sound optimistic.

  ‘We’ll manage if we’re careful,’ I said. ‘It’ll mean no washing and things like that because we’ve got to keep all we’ve got for drinking and for the radiators. Still,’ – I managed a smile in an effort to reassure her – ‘we’ll be all right. We know how to live in the desert. We’ve done it all before.’

  She looked up. ‘Twenty years ago,’ she reminded me.

  My smile faded and I eyed her soberly. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Twenty years ago.’

  Seven

  We set off northwards as soon as we’d finished eating, taking a big swing towards the west to get away from the road. The desert was a vast place, unromantic and arid, but big enough to hide us as well as Ghad Ahmed and I was relying on that.

  We lurched along slowly, with Leach on the back of the lorry searching the dusty track ahead. I didn’t trust him at the wheel of either vehicle – not now he’d got elbow room to get away – so I gave him the job of keeping his eyes skinned for the dust-cloud in the still air that would show where Ghad Ahmed and the stolen jeeps were.

  Morena rode with Nimmo in the Land Rover behind, while Phil sat alongside me in the lorry. We all of
us had some sort of weapon – except Leach, whom I wouldn’t have trusted now with a peashooter. Perhaps it was that more than anything else that made me realise how difficult it was going to be.

  Phil had been right. It was the same desert, the same sun, the same sky and the same sand, almost the same vehicles and weapons. But we weren’t the same men. It was a long time since there’d been any light-hearted laughter, and there was no nostalgia now because we weren’t dreaming it any more. We were living it again, in harsh black and white, and this time we hadn’t every scrap of equipment that an anxious government could give us, and lorries that had been serviced by experts in good workshops. We had old vehicles, which had probably been rotting in War Department dumps for longer than they ought and only half the equipment we needed. And, what was worse, we had a woman with us to be responsible for, and, last of all, treachery within our own lines.

  The land was like a huge beast stretched in the sun, tawny-coloured, a dead land, empty of life and sound, even empty of echoes, so that the sound of the engines seemed to wing away into the distance with nothing to throw it back in that friendly note of close-grown land. The dust that was coming up irritated the membranes of the throat and nostrils and it was already hot and uncomfortable in the cab, but I felt much more at home now with the feeling of spaciousness about me.

  Glancing back, I saw the tyres tracing delicate little ribbed marks in the sand, and the darker strip of the camel track fading away behind us. Already it was impossible to see even the rocks that marked the lip of the Depression, which had faded into the general yellow flatness of the desert.

  ‘We have one advantage,’ I said. ‘It’s harder to find than be found, and this time the enemy’s not got aircraft to spot us from the air.’

  It was slow going over the soft surface and more than once we had to stop to get sand-mats under the wheels of the lorry. It was bad enough to do that alone, but, all the time, too, I had to make sure that the vehicles were properly immobilised and that Leach was nowhere within reach of them. Nimmo worked like a madman, slaving in the hot dry air as though he didn’t even notice the sun beating down on his bare shoulders, while most of the time Phil waited near the Land Rover with the revolver, or sat behind the wheel of the lorry as the rest of us worked. I was hoping she wouldn’t have to struggle like the rest of us, but if she had to I was trying to conserve her strength as long as I could.

  We stopped at midday for food, because we were all empty-bellied and faint after the work we’d done. I searched for a little hollow between two dunes, and sent Leach up to the top of the highest one to keep his eyes skinned.

  ‘Why me?’ he demanded in a whine.

  ‘Why do you think?’ I said. ‘Because I can’t trust you anywhere else.’

  ‘It’s always me. And I can’t walk properly. You know I can’t.’

  ‘That’s the cross you’ve got to bear,’ I said unsympathetically. ‘But you made it. You can wear it.’

  He picked at his peeling nose and his hand strayed down to his puffed knee. ‘You might at least give me one of them rifles,’ he said, his eyes shifty. ‘Then if I see somebody coming I can stop ’im.’

  ‘No dice, Tiny. You asked for it. You’ve got it. Get cracking.’

  He went off muttering, his feet sinking ankle-deep in the soft sand as he climbed. But I knew he’d keep a good lookout for us, for the simple reason that he wanted to get back to safety, too. He’d probably make his chance later, but until then he had no desire to walk or fight his way home.

  We pooled our cigarettes, which were in short supply now because most of them had gone up in the blaze in the Depression, and we ate our meal without saying much, sitting alongside the vehicles, and trying not to move more than necessary because of the heat.

  ‘We’ll keep on our present course for another sixty miles by the clock,’ I said to Morena as we studied the map. ‘Then we’ll try to edge over towards the road. By that time we should be well north of Qalam. There’s a well at Bir Baku, and though it’s not much good for drinking, if I remember right, we can use it for the radiators.’

  Morena wiped his spoon on the seat of his pants and scoured his plate with clean soft sand.

  ‘Which,’ he said flatly, ‘will be a good thing.’

  The way he said it made me look quickly at him. ‘Something wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Radiator’s leaking,’ he said shortly. ‘On the lorry.’

  The lorry was an ex-WD vehicle and had probably lain in vehicle pool after vehicle pool, deteriorating all the time as it made the rounds, and I knew he wasn’t exaggerating.

  ‘Can’t you repair it?’ I asked.

  ‘No such luck. Not on the move. I can fix something but it won’t last long. It’ll drip. I’ve got a can under there now.’

  Everybody became silent at once and we heard the distinct plop-plop of dripping water above the tick and creak of the cooling engine.

  By this time it was so hot that you couldn’t put your hand on the metal sides of the vehicles, and our movements were sluggish as we began to put the equipment back. I was just on the point of sending Nimmo up to relieve Leach when I saw him back down slowly from the lip of the ridge and make a sliding descent down the hill, his feet kicking up puffs of dust as he approached.

  Everybody stood up and watched him and he stopped in front of us, panting, the sweat drying in the dust on his face. ‘There’s a jeep out there,’ he said. ‘Between us and the road.’

  ‘Only one?’ I asked.

  ‘Just one.’

  I went up the slope with him, feet sinking in the soft sand, and threw myself down just behind the lip of the dune. In the distance I could see the dust of a vehicle that was churning southwards at a laborious pace, hanging in the windless air like yellow smoke. It seemed to be moving back the way we’d come.

  ‘Watch it,’ I told Leach. ‘I’ll send you some grub up.’

  I sent Nimmo up with a mug of tea and some biscuits and bully beef while I spread a blanket on the sand and laid the map on top of it again.

  ‘We’ll sit tight for a while,’ I said. ‘We’d be best to sit tight. If we can see their dust they could see ours. We’ll just lie low until dusk and then move. Keep your voices down and no slamming of doors. You can hear ’em a mile away.’

  We settled down to wait, clinging to the sides of the vehicles where there was now the beginning of a faint shadow. I sent Nimmo up after a while to relieve Leach, and then Morena. When it had grown cooler I asked Phil if she’d take a turn.

  ‘We’ve a long way to go,’ I pointed out, ‘and this is one job you can do. Will you have a try?’

  She nodded, her eyes dark and heavy, and strangely remote. ‘Don’t shout if you see anything,’ I told her. ‘Just come down and tell us. There’ll be enough time to do it without hurrying. Keep your head down, though, and remember they’re watching as well as we are. I’ll fetch you down just before we leave.’

  Her eyes flickered anxiously. ‘You won’t forget me, will you?’

  I put my hand on the soft flesh of her arm. ‘Not on your life,’ I promised.

  The night came suddenly, as it always did. One minute the outlines were sharp and clear, orange-coloured in the setting sun, then the sky was full of brilliant saffron streamers and the orange had changed to pink and then purple, and then suddenly it was difficult to see things sharply and finally not at all.

  I left Morena in charge, with instructions to watch Leach, and walked up the soft slope towards Phil. The sky seemed remote with a few early stars pricking the green-blue dome, and the land was a dark sepia-purple wash, empty and soundless and still. The air was thankfully cooler, and the sky paler than the land now, and dew had laid the dust so that there was the old familiar sweet smell in my nostrils. Down in the valley I could hear the faint reedy notes of Morena’s mouth organ.

  I flung myself down alongside Phil in the darkness and she gave a little cry as she saw me.

  ‘Oh God!’ she gasped in relief. ‘I didn’t he
ar you. I’ve been waiting here ever since it grew dark for someone to come and fetch me. I thought you’d forgotten. If you’d started the engines I think I’d have died.’

  I lay on the sand beside her, staring cautiously over the lip of the dune.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ she said.

  I put one arm round her and drew her to me, still staring across the top of the dune. ‘Lights,’ I said.

  She moved closer. ‘There’s nothing,’ she pointed out. ‘I’ve seen nothing.’

  She was close against my side so that I could feel the soft living breathing vitality of her body, and the desert seemed to be quivering with its own breathless stillness. There were no engine noises, no voices, nothing that indicated Ghad Ahmed was near.

  ‘Come on,’ I said.

  I climbed to my feet and pulled her up after me. She was lighter than I thought and came up into my arms, her bosom brushing my shirt. For a second she stared up at me and I could see her face pale in the starlight, her eyes wide, her lips parted a little. Then I smiled and patted her shoulders.

  ‘Later,’ I said.

  She didn’t reply, but she took my hand, holding it tight, and we slid down the slope together, ankle-deep in the dust.

  Morena was waiting by the cab of the lorry, cleaning the tommy gun we’d captured during the fight in the Depression, and Nimmo was in the Land Rover, holding the rifle. Leach was sitting on the sand, smoking and staring sullenly at his feet.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  Morena put aside the gun. ‘No lights?’ he asked.

  ‘No lights. We’ll do this in darkness and chance soft sand. Ghad Ahmed must know we’ve got out of the Depression by now and he’ll have his camel-boys on every scrap of high ground looking out for us.’

  The desert was a dead flat mottled expanse, smooth as water, over which the night had descended like a curtain, with nothing to see ahead but mysterious purple blackness that stretched to the horizon and the splendid stars.