Alpha Force: Desert Pursuit

by Chris Ryan

  She headed for the grove of stunted date palms. If she could get the Scorpion in amongst the trees, she would be able to surprise him, she was almost sure of it. One good kick to the side of the head would finish what the henbane had started. As Li sprinted away across the desert, the Scorpion stumbled out of the end of the alleyway. He raised the gun to his shoulder and found her in his sights. The barrel of the Kalashnikov wove from side to side as he tried to focus and the back of Li’s head kept appearing and disappearing in the cross hairs.

  With a curse, the Scorpion threw the gun to one side and headed off after Li, pulling his wickedly curved knife from its sheath as he ran. That was all he needed to kill this troublesome girl. He could finish her quickly and quietly, without attracting the unwelcome attention the noise of the Kalashnikov would bring, then he could make his escape.

  The Kalashnikov clattered when it hit the stony desert floor. Li glanced back over her shoulder and saw the Scorpion jogging towards her. The knife in his hand glinted in the moonlight. Li smiled. Now he had been stupid enough to throw away the gun, all she had to do was hide until she had the chance to slip away. She could leave him stumbling about in the desert, while she headed back to the village to warn the others, picking up the Kalashnikov on the way.

  Li reached the oasis and darted in amongst the trunks of the date palms, slipping between them like a shadow. Her confidence faltered as she saw that, close to, the trees were thin and sparse. The double trunks were too slender even for her to hide behind and the ground beneath the trees was flat and open. She glanced back and saw that the Scorpion was closing in. She looked up, thinking about climbing one of the date palms, but the feathery tops would provide little cover, and if the Scorpion spotted her, she would be trapped up there.

  Li turned, desperate to find somewhere to hide. Her gaze swept past the village well, then stopped and returned to it thoughtfully.

  When the Scorpion staggered into the oasis less than a minute later, it was quiet and empty. He frowned and turned in a slow circle, peering between the slender tree trunks, then he did the same again, this time looking at their feathery tops. There was no-one there. The Scorpion walked over to the concrete wall surrounding the well. He put one foot on the wall and peered down into the well. It was a deep well and the moonlight only illuminated it part of the way down. The rest was in darkness.

  The Scorpion straightened, then spotted the bucket made out of a tyre inner tube. The bucket was tied to a long coil of rope, which was itself attached to a rusting metal ring set into the circular concrete wall. The Scorpion sneered at the makeshift bucket. He could not quite believe that this scrawny little village had tried to take him captive. When he had made his escape, he would come back here with reinforcements and make them regret what they had done. He lifted the pathetic inner tube contraption and flung it down the well.

  Li was hiding deep inside the well. She had climbed down without a rope, using a free-climbing technique. Pressing her back against one side and her feet against the other, she had used her legs and elbows to move slowly down into the depths of the well. The shaft was lined with palm trunks and the spaces between the trunks had been filled with a mixture of clay and palm fibre. The surface was ideal for chimney climbing, with plenty of nooks and crannies for her to wedge her feet into. She sat comfortably, below the reach of the moon’s faint light, staring up at the pale circle at the top of the well and waiting for the Scorpion to go looking somewhere else.

  When the bucket came tumbling down the well towards her, Li nearly fell. Quickly, she jammed her elbows into the walls, wincing as the rough surface grated the skin from her arms, then she spread her feet far apart for balance and jinked her body to one side. The bucket caught her hip as it passed and she bit her lip to stop herself crying out with the pain. The bucket careered on down the well shaft and splashed into the murky water at the bottom. Seconds later, it shot past her again, as the Scorpion hauled it up by the rope. Water showered over her, making the walls of the shaft slippery and harder to grip. Li cursed under her breath and held on.

  The Scorpion let the bucket drop a few more times, then hauled it back up to the top of the well and dumped it on the wall. He turned and walked off, kicking stones out of his way as he went.

  Li listened as the Scorpion’s footsteps died away. She waited for a few more moments, but the oasis above her was silent. Her arms and legs were aching from holding herself in position and she dared not wait too long in case the Scorpion was heading back into the village. She shook the water out of her eyes and began to chimney-climb back to the top of the shaft.

  When she reached the top, Li cautiously raised her head above the concrete wall and looked around. The oasis was quiet and empty. She scanned the surrounding desert, then looked towards the village. The Scorpion was nowhere in sight but she could see his Kalashnikov, still lying on the ground beside the last village house and glinting in the moonlight.

  Li nodded with satisfaction, then gripped the concrete lip of the well with her strong fingers and levered herself on to the wall, preparing to head back to the village and warn the others. As she straightened up on the edge of the well shaft, a dark shape rose from behind the low concrete wall and something slammed into her stomach.

  Li gasped and doubled over at the sudden, burning pain in her belly. She turned her head and looked straight into the grinning face of the Scorpion. He twisted the knife in the wound and she cried out and fell to her knees. She felt the knife being yanked out again and she cupped her hand to her stomach. When she pulled it away again it was covered in her blood, shining like black tar in the moonlight.

  Li tried to call for help, but her lungs didn’t seem to work properly and only a whimper came out. Her head was wrenched back as the Scorpion grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled hard, exposing her neck. She kneeled on the concrete lip of the well, clutching at her belly as the Scorpion stroked his bloodstained knife across the pale curve of her neck, preparing to slit her throat.

  Li could feel herself starting to pass out. A red mist was coming down over her eyes. She marshalled the last of her strength, stiffened her arm and sent it catapulting back against the Scorpion’s legs. It caught him squarely across the knees as he stood on the concrete wall beside her. The knife flew from his hand and he staggered backwards. The heels of his cowboy boots slipped over the edge of the well shaft and he windmilled his arms, trying to regain his balance. For an instant it seemed as though he would make it, but the remains of the henbane in his system made his legs fail him at the last second. He fell back into the well, grabbing at Li’s long black hair as he went.

  Li felt a huge pain in her head and her whole body jerked back, following the Scorpion down the well. Then the clump of hair the Scorpion was holding came out at the roots and she sprawled on the wall with the top half of her body inside the shaft. The Scorpion fell without a cry but she could hear his bones cracking as he hit the walls on the way down.

  ‘That’s for Hakim,’ she whispered as she heard the body hit the bottom of the shaft with a dull thud and a splash of water. She hung balanced over the well and a red mist filled her head, then turned to deepest black.

  TWENTY – SIX

  There was a bright light.

  Li swatted at the light with her hand but it wouldn’t go away.

  ‘Li. Wake up.’

  Someone was pinching her earlobe with sharp little nips. Li frowned in annoyance and heard Paulo laugh softly beside her.

  She opened her eyes and squinted up into his face. ‘Will you stop that?’ she tried to say, but all that came out was a moan.

  ‘Hello,’ said Paulo, smiling down at her.

  ‘Where am I?’ asked Li.

  ‘Oh, that’s an original line,’ drawled Hex from the other side of her. Li turned to him in annoyance and wished she hadn’t. She closed her eyes until her head stopped spinning.

  ‘You’re in a private hospital in Rabat,’ said Alex, his face swimming into view above her.


  ‘Rabat?’ asked Li faintly.

  ‘Its the capital of Morocco, dummy,’ said Amber, appearing beside Alex.

  Li scowled again. Here she was, lying in a hospital bed after defeating the Scorpion single-handed and all they could do was insult her.

  The Scorpion!

  Li’s eyes widened suddenly and she tried to sit up. An iron band of pain around her belly made her sink back into the bed again. ‘The Scorpion,’ she whispered. ‘In the well.’

  ‘Not any more,’ said Alex. ‘He’s lying in a morgue.’

  ‘And his men and his mother are under arrest and telling lots of tales,’ added Amber.

  Li gave a satisfied smile. She had vowed to get the Scorpion and his mother and she had succeeded. Her hand reached down, exploring her belly. There was a surprisingly small dressing on the left side of her stomach, which hardly seemed to account for the amount of pain she was in. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘Another original line,’ drawled Hex. ‘They just keep coming.’

  ‘Shut up, Hex,’ said Paulo mildly.

  ‘But I’m allowed to tease her, now she’s out of danger,’ said Hex.

  ‘I was in danger?’ asked Li.

  ‘The knife sliced through your intestines,’ explained Alex. ‘And there was a lot of internal bleeding. By the time Amber’s uncle arrived with the helicopters, you were in a bit of a state.’

  ‘That is an understatement,’ said Paulo, his face becoming serious for a minute as he remembered how they had nearly lost Li.

  When Hakim’s mother had come running into the main square to warn them that the Scorpion had escaped with one of the Kalashnikovs, they had wasted valuable time searching the village before they had discovered Li, lying still and pale beside the well in a spreading pool of her own blood.

  ‘Helicopters,’ said Li, and a vague memory came back to her of three black shapes cutting across the desert sky with their searchlights trawling the ground below. She remembered the blatting of the rotors and Paulo shielding her with his body from the blast of sand as the helicopters landed.

  ‘You were airlifted here and went straight into surgery,’ said Alex. ‘That was two days ago.’

  ‘Two days!’ gasped Li. ‘How did I lose two days?’

  ‘Drugs,’ said Hex briefly. ‘Lots of drugs.’

  ‘Sedatives and painkillers,’ explained Alex.

  ‘And am I OK now?’

  ‘Why don’t we let the surgeon tell you that?’ said Paulo. He moved back and Philippe Larousse took his place, smiling down at her.

  ‘Philippe!’ she cried, then winced as a stabbing pain shot through her.

  ‘That will get better soon,’ said Philippe. ‘I repaired your intestine and stitched you up. You’ve been on intravenous, high-dosage antibiotics to prevent peritonitis.’

  ‘That’s when your belly fills up with all the icky stuff from your punctured intestines and gets infected,’ explained Amber with relish.

  ‘The antibiotics should counteract any infection,’ said Philippe, giving Amber a look. ‘You’re going to be left with a scar in your side, but otherwise you should make a complete recovery.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Li, reaching out to squeeze the French surgeon’s hand. She licked her lips thirstily. ‘Can I have some water?’

  They raised her bed slightly and poured out a beaker of iced water. Paulo held it to her mouth and Li sipped carefully. As she sipped, she spotted a familiar scarred face grinning at her from the bottom of the bed.

  ‘Khalid!’

  ‘He would not leave,’ said Philippe. ‘Not until he knew you were recovering.’

  Khalid moved up to the side of the bed. ‘I have news,’ he said. ‘Amber, her uncle, he give me a—’ He stopped and looked over to Amber for help.

  ‘A grant,’ said Amber.

  ‘Yes! A grant. I am to go to school, then when I old enough, I train to be a doctor. I go back to help in the camps, just like Dr Philippe!’

  ‘That’s wonderful, Khalid,’ smiled Li. ‘You’ll really make a difference.’

  ‘Is a better way, I think, than the path my friends take. They all die for nothing.’

  ‘So it was your friends at the oil installation?’ asked Li.

  Khalid nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Li, remembering the three small body bags in the oil workers’ compound. ‘I wish our minefield footage had been shown. It might just have stopped them.’

  ‘Oh, it was shown,’ said Hex, with a touch of bitterness. ‘But only after the attack on the oil installation. The attack was the big news, not the Sahawari camps or the minefields. It seems we value oil more than people.’

  ‘What about Jumoke and the others?’ asked Li. ‘Where are they?’

  Amber took over. ‘That’s where my uncle is now. He’s gone with the aid agencies to return them to their home villages. Philippe made sure Kesia’s arm was sorted before she went. The aid agencies are going to see what they can do in the villages, with my uncle’s help. No-one should be so poor they have to sell their children in the hope of giving them a better life. Oh, and Jumoke left this for you.’

  Amber laid a square of sugar paper on the bed. Li looked down at it and her eyes filled with tears. Jumoke had drawn a picture of herself standing between her mother and father. All three of them were smiling broadly, and a bright yellow sun shone overhead. Underneath the picture Jumoke had written, ‘Beloved One’.

  ‘We did good,’ whispered Li, looking round at the others.

  ‘We did good,’ agreed the rest of Alpha Force.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Khalid. ‘We – did – good?’ He raised his one eyebrow disapprovingly. ‘That is not correct English.’

  The four of them looked at Khalid, then turned and looked questioningly at Li.

  ‘Bed bath,’ she ordered.

  Minutes later, the two young Moroccan women at the nurses’ station jumped as a series of high screams came from the room at the end of the corridor. They both dropped their charts and began to run towards the closed door, but it suddenly burst open and a young Arab boy with a badly scarred face came running out. He was soaking wet and clutching his shirt to his chest. His eyes were bright with laughter as he skidded past the nurses, followed in quick succession by five people waving dripping flannels. There was a fair-haired boy, a tall black girl, a South American boy who winked at them as he ran past, a green-eyed boy and, finally, the respected French surgeon who had arrived at the hospital by helicopter two days earlier.

  The horrified nurses watched them disappear round the corner at the other end of the corridor, then hurried into the room to check on their patient. Li was lying in the bed, clutching her side and gasping. Tears were running down her face.

  ‘Do you have some pains?’ asked one of the nurses, leaning over her.

  ‘No,’ gasped Li, trying to stop laughing. ‘They all just left.’

  CHRIS RYAN’S TOP TEN TIPS FOR SURVIVAL IN A DESERT

  Near the beginning of this story, Alex gets the rest of the Alpha Force team to recite back to him the basic rules of any survival situation – shelter, water, food and fire – and these four factors certainly are vital for survival in a desert. However, if travelling into a desert anywhere in the world, you really do need to know a little more if you are to survive the merciless heat of some of the hottest areas in the world. Temperatures can rise to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer months!

  1. PLANNING

  First off, never ever set out into a desert region without others knowing your travel plans, how long you plan to be away and the exact route you are aiming to take. Desert regions can be vast (the Sahara covers thousands of square miles!) and it will help in any rescue attempt if you stick to your plans as much as possible.

  Equipment is also vital. When the Alpha Force team set out in the Unimog, they take sand ladders, shovels, spare fuel, plenty of water, communication equipment etc, and Alex is never without his basic survival kit. Members of the SAS are trained i
n survival techniques, yet if setting out on foot into a hot, dry area like a desert, each man would probably carry something like up to 100 lbs (or 45 kg) of equipment – and that would be mostly water and supplies to ensure survival.

  2. WATER

  This is absolutely VITAL to your survival – you’ve all seen the movies of people staggering around in deserts dying of thirst and the heat of the environment will make you lose fluids quickly as heat makes you sweat (sweating is a way of the body trying to cool itself down). Without water, you could only last about two and a half days maximum in a hot desert – and that’s if you stay in the shade and don’t move! On the move, in full sun, without water, you’d be lucky to get as far as seven kilometres before you start passing out.

  Fluid loss will produce a range of symptoms, from thirst, flushed skin, sleepiness and feeling sick to dizziness, a headache and an inability to walk – even a swollen tongue if it gets serious. At the first signs, stop, rest and drink some water. Once I walked until I collapsed, I had really bad dreams, hallucinations and felt really sick.

  Make sure you carry sufficient water with you on any desert expedition, and plan your route to pass by oases, wells and waterholes (these will be marked on maps). Remember, though, that wells may be deep and there might not be a handy bucket available; take a container and some rope with you so you can refill at wells wherever possible. If you are in a group, and you don’t know when rescue might be coming, ration your water to be on the safe side.

  The Tuareg also showed Alpha Force a handy hint too: there could be water available at the lowest point between dunes and you can dig for this, just like they did. Make sure, though, that you wait until it’s dark; if you try digging in full sun, you’ll lose precious fluid through sweating.

  TO KEEP FLUID-LOSS DOWN TO A MINIMUM:

  – Find shade. Get out of the sun. If possible, don’t lie directly on hot sand – try to raise yourself up from its surface so that air circulates all around you.