by Chris Ryan
‘He say, good aim,’ translated Khalid.
Alex nodded and smiled tentatively at the men. They might have dropped their veils, which he took as a good sign, but their AK-47s were still trained on the kneeling group.
The leader gave more orders in Arabic. Three of his men peeled off, running towards the Nissen huts. They were carrying large hessian sacks. The other two stepped forward and, talking casually to one another, began to search the group.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Li, as the watch and opal ring she had only recently claimed back from Amber were expertly removed.
‘They’re here to loot,’ said Hex grimly, as his own watch disappeared into the robes of one of the men. He nodded over at the three who were going through the abandoned Nissen huts, taking anything of value. ‘There’s a long tradition of banditry amongst some Tuareg tribes.’
Paulo gasped. ‘These men are bandits?’
‘Looks like it,’ said Hex.
‘But aren’t they going to help us?’ asked Li as the two men finished relieving them of their valuables and headed off to join the others in the Nissen huts.
Hex nodded over at the six camels, tethered by their nose rings to the chain-link fence. ‘I think that once they’ve taken what they want, they’ll be out of here.’
‘But they can’t just leave us here!’ said Amber.
Alex looked up at the leader, who was now lounging against the gatehouse wall, watching them idly. Would he leave them here if he knew about the Scorpion? The man had reacted with anger when he thought they were hurting Jumoke. Perhaps, if he knew their story, he would help. There was only one way to find out.
Alex turned to Khalid. ‘Khalid, can you tell him who is after us?’
Again Khalid launched into a long stream of Arabic with many hand gestures, pointing north past the bluff, then south in the direction of Samir’s village. He pointed to Samir as he explained what had happened to Hakim, then he gently touched Kesia’s arm, showing the man the bandages. He turned Li’s face for the man to see the cane slash across her cheek and lifted his sirwal to show the weals on the backs of his legs. Finally he came to a stop and sat back down on the sand. The man looked them over impassively.
‘Look over there,’ said Paulo, pointing over to the bluff.
A vehicle had just cleared the northern tip and was heading towards the oil installation in a cloud of dust. It would reach the compound in about fifteen minutes. ‘It is the Scorpion,’ said Paulo. ‘We have just run out of time.’
Khalid started speaking again, pleading with the man. Amber joined in, speaking in French. The leader sliced both hands through the air in a silencing gesture. Slowly he turned to look at the approaching vehicle, then he shrugged, turned away from the group and called for his men. They gathered their haul together, strolled over to the camels and tied the sacks to the sides of the wooden saddles. Once the sacks were secure, the men untethered the camels and looked over at their leader, waiting for the command to move out. The leader began to walk away from the group of children and Alex slumped, feeling the hope drain out of him.
Then Jumoke stood up and hurried after the man. She came up alongside him and slipped her hand into his. ‘S’il vous plaît?’ she said softly. ‘Please?’
The nomad stopped and looked down at the little girl and Alex held his breath.
TWENTY – THREE
The Scorpion’s lip curled in a sneer as he peered through the windscreen of his brand-new Land Rover at the approaching line of camels. Tuareg. Scavengers and bandits. They had been stripping the deserted oil installation. He could see all sorts of stuff hanging from their saddles. There was even a small fridge strapped to the back of the biggest beast.
The men walked alongside the camels, their faces hidden behind their blue turbans and veils. The women rode high on the beasts’ backs in ones and twos, wrapped from head to foot in bright swathes of cloth. The Scorpion glimpsed a group of blue-turbaned children scampering along on the far side of the camels, half hidden by the big beasts. A flicker of interest briefly crossed his face. If he could not find his missing stock of slaves, he would need to find replacements for his buyers. But even if he could persuade a Tuareg to part with his children, they would never make good stock. They were too fierce and independent.
The Scorpion turned away, dismissing the children. Instead he brought the Land Rover to a stop next to the man he judged to be the leader of the group and pressed a button to wind down the window. Instantly, hot, dry air flooded into the car, destroying the air-conditioned comfort within. The Scorpion grimaced with annoyance. When he found his escaped stock, they were going to suffer for this.
The leader and two of his men halted by the car and stared in impassively while the camels moved on by with their slow, swaying walk. The three men were armed with AK-47s, but then so were his men, so he was not too concerned. Without much hope, the Scorpion launched into a description of the children he was looking for, but to his surprise the leader nodded. Yes, he had seen those children. The Scorpion sat up. Where were they now?
The Tuareg pointed back towards the oil installation, then up at the sky. An evacuation helicopter had flown in and taken them all away. The Scorpion snarled and slammed his hand against the steering wheel. He closed the window, put the Land Rover into gear and drove on to check it out for himself. Behind him, the Tuareg walked on through the desert without looking back.
It was not until they reached the Tuareg camp that the leader allowed Alpha Force to unwrap themselves from the brightly coloured sheets they had stripped from the beds in the compound. The Tuareg shouted at the camels and pulled their nose rings until the big beasts went down on to their bellies, rocking violently back and forth as they folded first their front, then their back legs. Alex, Amber, Li, Paulo and Hex slid gratefully to the ground and gazed around the camp, their faces hot and sticky from their time under the sheets. Kesia, Khalid and Sisi slid down to join them.
Beside them, Samir, Jumoke, Juma and his gang unravelled their blue turbans, which were made from torn sections of a roller towel, taken from a bathroom back at the compound. They all grinned at one another. The disguises had worked. They were safe. For now.
The leader of the Tuareg came up to Alpha Force and solemnly handed back their watches and jewellery.
‘Please, tell him to keep them,’ said Amber to Khalid. ‘We can never pay him back enough for saving us.’
Khalid shook his head. ‘He say, you are guests now. He do not take from guests. He say his camp is yours.’
They thanked the leader, who bowed his head gravely, then went off with his men to unload the camels. A Tuareg woman hurried over with a jug of water and a brass dipper. She held the jug while they each took a dipperful of water and drank thirstily. Their throats were dry, their lips cracked by the hot desert wind and the water was cool and soothing. The woman smiled and hurried off again and Alpha Force and the children were left to wander around the camp.
The Tuareg tents were low, oval structures pitched in the lee of a small rise, which shielded the camp from the worst of the desert wind and also hid it from any passing travellers. Containers of water and goat’s milk were propped in the shade of the tents, while thin strips of meat were set out on racks to dry in the sun. Next to the drying racks was the main cooking fire for the camp, where a group of Tuareg women were already busy preparing a goat and couscous stew for their guests.
Amber and Hex wandered over to the fire, followed by Kesia and Sisi. The fire was fuelled with dried camel dung and it seemed to need a lot of puffing and blowing to get it going. Hex went down on his hands and knees and blew until the fire was crackling and he was red in the face. The Tuareg women giggled behind their hands at the green-eyed youth who was prepared to help with the cooking. Hex grinned back at them and settled down next to Amber with his eyes watering from the smoke.
‘Watch it,’ muttered Amber, more than a little jealous. ‘If you make yourself too useful, they might want to keep you.�
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Jumoke, Samir and Juma’s gang went off to make friends with a gaggle of Tuareg children, while Li, Paulo and Alex strolled over to watch the camels being unloaded. Li was fascinated by the big beasts. They crouched in the sand while the men unloaded them, contentedly chewing on the dried fodder their owners had laid out for them and batting their long curved eyelashes to keep the drifting sand out of their eyes. They were all different. One big beast with a coat that was nearly white swung its neck like a snake, trying to take bad-tempered bites out of its neighbours, while a little camel with a deep red coat watched with a mild, long-suffering expression on his long face as the other camels stole most of his share of the fodder.
Once the saddles and saddle cloths were removed, they were revealed to be single-humped camels, or dromedaries. The humps wobbled from side to side as the men urged the beasts to their feet again. The men bent to hobble their front legs with rope, before removing the head ropes that were threaded through the nose rings. The camels wandered off to the edges of the camp to forage for food with the rest of the herd.
The men motioned to Li, Paulo and Alex to follow them over to the largest tent in the camp. A faded carpet had been spread on the sand in the shade of the tent and two large, shallow communal bowls of goat and couscous had been placed in the middle of it.
‘We helped cook it,’ said Amber proudly, passing around big flat ovals of freshly baked bread.
Somehow, the six Tuareg, the five members of Alpha Force, Khalid and all the other children managed to squeeze around the two bowls of food. Alex watched the men carefully. They held the bread between their fingers and used it as a plate, pushing the food on to it with their thumbs.
‘You must only use right hand,’ warned Khalid. ‘Left hand is forbidden.’
Alex nodded, then reached forward and pushed the hot food on to his bread and took a bite. The goat meat had a strong, gamey taste and the couscous was soft and buttery. It tasted wonderful.
After the meal came the ceremony of the tea. The Tuareg men sat back and lit little brass pipes while the leader sat cross-legged and placed a brass tray in front of him. The tray was loaded with glasses into which he put chunks of sugar, hacked from a solid cone with his knife. He then poured green tea into the glasses from a great height, so that the sugar dissolved and the tea frothed up to the rim. The glasses were handed round, drained, then handed back for the next person to use. The tea was sweet and strong and they all had three glasses before the leader of the Tuareg finally sat back and began to talk to Khalid.
Khalid listened, nodded, then turned to Alpha Force. ‘He say, he do not think this man will give up. He wonders, what you do now?’
They looked at one another.
‘We can’t stay here,’ said Amber reluctantly. ‘He’s right, the Scorpion isn’t going to stop looking for us and we don’t want to put these people in any more danger.’
Alex nodded in agreement. ‘So where do we go?’
‘We take Samir back to his village,’ said Paulo simply. ‘That is what we promised to do.’
‘And then we wait,’ said Li darkly.
‘For what?’ asked Hex.
‘For the Scorpion,’ said Li. ‘He’ll turn up at the village sooner or later, to see if Samir has returned home. When he does, we’ll be ready for him.’
Khalid explained their plan to the Tuareg leader. He listened, asked a few questions, then spoke again.
‘He say he know the village of Samir,’ translated Khalid. ‘For now, we sleep. Tonight, he and his men will take us there.’
It was a strange, dreamlike trip they took through the desert that night. The Tuareg had woken them from an exhausted sleep at dusk and given them a meal of bread, dates and tea. Six camels were already loaded and saddled, with head ropes threaded through their nose rings.
While the Tuareg men waited, Amber sleepily administered her insulin injection and Paulo changed Kesia’s bandages, noting with satisfaction that the wound was still clean and free from infection. Once they were ready, the Tuareg men led the camels out of the camp, slipping between the low dunes in their indigo robes like moving pieces of twilight.
The Tuareg’s gliding walk was deceptive. They set a hard pace as they tramped steadily across the desert, eating up the miles. Samir and Jumoke sat together on one camel and Kesia rode a second. The journey developed a gentle rhythm as the camels swayed along on their broad, two-toed feet. Alpha Force and the other children shared the remaining four beasts between them, turn and turn about, sometimes walking and sometimes riding. The moon rose, a million silver stars speckled the dark sky and they moved on in silence, wrapped in their own thoughts.
They only halted twice. The first stop was at the little cairn of stones behind the rise, halfway between the village and the sandstone bluff. Paulo and the Tuareg leader climbed the rise, carrying a length of clean, plain cloth and some thin rope. The other men stood sentinel to the north and south of the rise with their rifles slung across their shoulders. Alex, Amber and Paulo held the head ropes of the camels while Li took Samir and the other children a little way off and sat with them, her arm resting lightly around Samir’s shoulders.
When Paulo and the Tuareg leader descended the rise ten minutes later, they were carrying Hakim’s body, wrapped in the length of clean cloth and secured with the rope. Paulo’s expression reflected a mixture of sadness and peace of mind as he helped to settle Hakim in a specially constructed cradle strung from one side of the little red camel. He was saddened all over again at Hakim’s death, but it felt right to be fulfilling his promise to bring both brothers home.
The second stop was much further on. Two hours before dawn the Tuareg called a halt on the banks of a wadi. The men passed around a girba of water and the leader showed Alex how to dig a deep hole on the outside bend of the wadi. As Alex watched, the hole in the dry river bed gradually filled with water. It was poor stuff, brown and brackish, but the camels drank it readily enough and Alex made a mental note to remember that trick if he was ever unlucky enough to be stranded in the desert without water.
They reached Samir’s village just after dawn. Their camel train had been spotted a long way off, and by the time they approached the straggle of mud-brick houses a hostile group was waiting for them on the edge of the village, armed with rifles.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Amber. ‘Why do those men have guns?’
Khalid explained that there was no love lost between Arab villagers and Tuareg nomads. The name had been given by the Arabs and it meant ‘abandoned by God’. The Tuareg preferred to call themselves Kel Tageulmous in Tamachek, a mouthful which translated as ‘people of the veil’.
‘But why don’t they like each other?’ persisted Amber, eyeing the rifles of the village men as the camels swayed steadily nearer.
‘The Tuareg – this is their land, long time back. They think, Arab not belonging here. The Arab, they have many times the Tuareg raiding their villages.’ Khalid shrugged. ‘Is how it goes,’ he finished.
The tension increased as the camels drew closer to the village. The Tuareg did not help matters by veiling themselves so that only their eyes showed like black stones through a slit in the cloth.
‘After all this, there’d better not be any shooting,’ muttered Hex, watching the village men’s fingers straying closer to the triggers of their rifles.
Suddenly Samir spotted his father amongst the crowd. With a cry, he slid recklessly from the saddle while his camel was still moving. The Tuareg leading the beast reacted quickly and managed to catch Samir before he hit the ground. He set the sobbing boy gently on his feet and they all watched as Samir ran towards his father and jumped into his arms.
The village men did not know how to react. Some lowered their guns; others raised them to their shoulders. The Tuareg tensed and swung their AK-47s from their backs.
‘Khalid!’ hissed Amber. ‘Explain. Fast!’
Khalid stepped forward and began to talk to the village men. Alex realized tha
t he could pretty much guess what point Khalid had reached in the story by watching the changing expressions on the faces around him. They went through a whole range of emotions from disbelief, to anger and, finally, to sorrow.
When Khalid had finished, Paulo and the leader of the Tuareg lifted Hakim’s body down from the little red camel and carried him over to his father. The gaunt-faced man set Samir on his feet and held out his arms for his other son. They laid the wrapped body gently in his arms and he cradled the boy for a moment, his face full of grief.
Finally he raised his head, looked the Tuareg leader in the eye and spoke to him. The Tuareg inclined his head, then took hold of his camel’s head rope and began to lead the beast over to the village well at the centre of the tired little plantation of date palms. The other Tuareg followed, each inclining his head gravely to Samir’s father as he passed.
‘What did he say to them, Khalid?’ asked Alex.
‘He say the best thing to a Tuareg,’ whispered Khalid, his eyes damp with tears in his scarred face. ‘He say, like brother, “our water is yours”.’
TWENTY – FOUR
The Tuareg left an hour later, with their camels watered and their girbas full. Alpha Force watched from the outskirts of the village as the swaying camels and the men in blue robes walked off into the rising heat of the day, but the Tuareg never once looked back.
They buried Hakim in the dusty little graveyard on the edge of the village later that morning. The whole village was there, standing out in the merciless heat of the sun to say their farewells. The women wailed and wept over the grave. Hakim’s mother was inconsolable and had to be supported by two other women as the burial went on. Samir stood on the opposite side of the little grave, dry-eyed now, with his father’s hand resting on his shoulder.
