by Paul Sussman
He snapped his fingers in front of his scarred forehead.
'Is this what I broke my back for? Drained away my life? Believe me, you are not the only one who feels disappointment. Nor the only one who believes he has lost a brother. Not a day goes by, not a minute of a day, when you are not in my thoughts. And not a day goes by when those thoughts are not darkened with regret and anger and bitterness.'
His voice had dropped to a low hiss.
'When I realized it was you out here, I thought perhaps . . . just for a moment . . . after all this time . . .'
His eyes glowed for an instant, then dimmed.
'But no. Of course not. You do not have the strength. You have betrayed me. And you have betrayed God. And for that you will be punished.'
He raised the gun and pointed it at Khalifa's head, finger tightening around the trigger.
Khalifa stared up at him. 'God is great', he said simply, 'and God is good. And He does not need to kill people to prove that. This is the truth. This my brother Ali taught me.'
Their eyes held, five seconds, ten, and then, with a growl, Sayf al-Tha'r squeezed the trigger. As he did so, he flipped the muzzle upwards so that the gun fired harmlessly into the sky. There was a pause and then the boy Mehmet came running into the clearing.
'Take him and guard him,' said Sayf al-Tha'r. 'Watch him closely. Do not speak to him.' He turned and began walking away.
'You're going to destroy it, aren't you?' Khalifa called after him, indicating the stack of boxes behind him. 'That's what these are. Explosives.'
Sayf al-Tha'r stopped and turned. 'What we've got is useless if the rest of the army survives. It's unfortunate, but there's no other way.'
Khalifa said nothing, just stared at him.
'Poor Ali,' he whispered.
They drove hard for ten minutes, Tara glancing constantly over her shoulder for signs of pursuit. When it became clear they weren't being followed Daniel slowed and swung off to the right, up the side of a dune, skidding to a halt at its summit. Behind them the camp had faded to a distant blur, a vague pall of smoke rising above it into the dawn sky. The pyramid rock shimmered orangey-purple in the growing light of day. They gazed at it in silence.
'We can't just leave him,' said Tara eventually.
Daniel shrugged, but said nothing.
'We could call for help.' She pulled the mobile phone from her pocket. 'The police, the army, something like that.'
'Waste of time. They'd take hours to get out here. If they believed us.'
He paused, fiddling with the ignition key. 'I'll go back,' he said.
'We'll both go back.'
He smiled. 'I get the feeling we've had this argument before.'
'Then best not to repeat it. We'll go back together.'
'And then?'
She shrugged. 'Let's worry about that when we get there.'
'Clever plan, Tara. Subtle.'
He squeezed her knee and, with a sigh, clicked the bike into gear, setting off down the far side of the dune.
'At least we've got a nice day for it,' he said over his shoulder.
'For what?'
'Suicide.'
* * *
Initially he took them due east, about a kilometre, putting two huge dunes between them and the valley where the army was buried. Only then did they turn south again, opening the throttle and flying back towards the huge rock, now lost somewhere ahead and to their right.
'We'll run parallel to the valley till we're level with the camp,' he explained. 'At least that way we've got a chance of getting close to it. If we'd gone back the way we'd come they'd have spotted us a mile off. Nothing wrong with staying alive as long as we can.'
They kept their eyes open for any sign of movement on the dunes to either side and, once, Daniel stopped and cut the engine, closing his eyes and listening for anything that might indicate they'd been seen. There was nothing. Just sand and silence and stillness.
'It's like the whole thing was just a dream,' said Tara.
'If only.'
They roared on for another five minutes until Daniel judged they were about level with the camp, whereupon he angled the bike up towards the summit of the right-hand dune. The slope was steep, and they only just made it to the top, the engine whining in protest. The pyramid-shaped outcrop reared in front of them and slightly to their left, two dunes away, with below it, hidden, the camp and excavations. There was no sign of any guards.
'Where are they?' asked Tara.
'No idea. They must have all gone down into the camp.'
He eased back the throttle and took them down, across and up the side of the next dune. There was now only one dune between them and the army. They could hear vague sounds, shouts and hammering. The landscape, however, remained resolutely empty.
'It's eerie,' she said. 'Like the desert's full of invisible people.'
Daniel cut the engine and again surveyed the land in front of them. Then, slowly, he eased his hand off the brake and freewheeled silently down the side of the dune, their velocity carrying them fifty metres across the flat before they finally came to a halt. They dismounted and he laid the bike on the sand.
'We'll go on foot from here. I don't want to risk starting the engine. Too much noise. If anyone sees us . . . Well, there's not much we can do. Run for it, I guess.'
They walked to the foot of the dune and started upwards, eyes fixed on the summit above, dreading the moment when someone would appear and spot them. No-one did, however, and, hearts thudding with exertion, they reached the top and threw themselves onto their bellies, crawling slowly forward over the cool sand until they could gaze down into the valley below.
They were directly above the excavation crater, the vast rock in front of them, the camp away to their left. Droves of men were scurrying frantically to and fro, packing away artefacts – swords, shields, spears, armour – and loading crates onto camels.
'Looks like they're getting ready to leave,' said Daniel, grimacing at the way the objects were being treated. 'Look, they're not even bothering to use straw to pack them. They're just dumping them in the boxes.'
They lay still, surveying the scene. A huge figure was striding among the workmen, shouting and gesticulating. Dravic. Tara felt a spasm of disgust and turned her eyes away.
'What's that?'
She indicated a man down by the edge of the crater, close to the base of the pyramid rock, fiddling with what looked like a small grey box, a confusion of cables tangled around his feet. Daniel's eyes narrowed.
'Oh God!' he gasped.
'What?'
'Detonator.'
A brief pause.
'You mean . . .'
'They're going to blow it up,' he said, his face pale with horror. 'That's what Sayf al-Tha'r meant the other night. It's the only way they can guarantee the value of what they've got. The greatest find in the history of archaeology and they're going to destroy it. Oh Jesus.' He grimaced as though in physical pain.
'So what do we do?' she said.
'I don't know, Tara.' He shook his head. 'I just don't know. If we try to go down here they'll see us immediately.'
He tore his eyes away from the detonator and, raising himself, looked away to his left.
'We might be able to get down further along, beside the camp, but it's dangerous. Someone just has to look up and that's it.'
'We've come this far. If there's a chance of getting down we should try it.'
'But what then? The detective guy could be anywhere. There are a hundred tents down there.'
'Let's just get down, eh?'
He smiled, despite himself. 'That's what I love about you, Tara. Never answer a question today that you can put off till tomorrow.'
He glanced down at the camp again and then, easing himself back from the summit, came to his feet and started along the flank of the dune. Tara followed. They had gone only a few metres when they heard something behind them: a distant thud as of drums being beaten. They stopped, turned, listened. The n
oise grew louder.
'What is it?' she asked.
'I don't know. It sounds like . . .'
He cocked his head, concentrating.
'Shit!'
He dragged her down onto the sand.
'Helicopters!'
They lay still, faces pressed into the dune as the sound grew steadily louder. Soon it was all around them, filling their ears. Sand started to blow off the top of the dune, sheets of it, swirling over them, the wind punching down from above. The first helicopter roared past, no more than ten metres overhead. Another went over, and another, and another, more and more of them, like a swarm of giant locusts, turning the sky dark, on and on, until eventually they had all passed and the down-draught subsided again.
For a moment the two of them lay still, then crawled back up to the ridge and took in the scene below.
Three helicopters were hovering over the valley. The others were coming in to land, half to the south of the camp, the others to the north. As soon as their wheels touched the ground, workers pressed in all around, ready to start loading crates. There was a brief pause and then, as one, the cargo doors slid open. The black-robed men bent to lift their loads. As they did so, suddenly, shockingly, a vicious pulse of smoke and flame erupted from the sides of the helicopters and there was a furious crackle of gunfire.
'What the . . .'
Sayf al-Tha'r's men flew backwards, the crates and their contents shredding under the hail of bullets. The gunfire intensified, now coming from the airborne helicopters too. Black-robed figures were scattering in all directions, bullets sweeping after and over them, cutting them down as they ran. Some tried to return fire, but were picked off almost immediately by the helicopters hovering overhead. Camels thundered madly to and fro, trampling anyone who got in their way.
'It's a massacre,' Tara whispered. 'God almighty, it's a massacre.'
There were shouts and screams, and the whoosh and boom of exploding oil drums. Figures began to leap out of the helicopters, a surge of khaki, crouching low, fanning out, shooting. Black-robed bodies lay strewn across the ground like spatters of ink.
Daniel came to his feet. 'I'm going down!'
She began to stand too, but he clamped his hand to her shoulder.
'Stay here! I'll try to find the detective and get him out. Watch for us!'
Before she could say anything he was gone, sprinting along the ridge and then down towards the camp. At the bottom one of Sayf al-Tha'r's men came running from between the tents. He saw Daniel and raised his gun, but was thumped to the ground by a storm of bullets from above, the sand around him staining red with blood. Barely breaking his stride Daniel stooped, seized the man's gun and ran on into the camp, disappearing behind a veil of smoke. Tara leaned forward, trying to see where he'd gone. Suddenly her head was yanked back and she was looking up at the sky.
'I believe we have some unfinished business, Miss Mullray. I do hope you don't enjoy it.'
'You love him, don't you?' said Khalifa gently. 'Sayf al-Tha'r.'
He was sitting cross-legged on the ground. A few paces away, just inside the tent entrance, sat Mehmet, a gun balanced on his thigh, eyes fixed on Khalifa's face.
'I loved him too once, you know. More than anyone in the world. Anyone.'
The boy was silent.
'I was like you. I would have died for him. Happily. But now . . .' He dropped his head. 'Now there's nothing but pain. I hope you never have to feel that. Because to love someone and then hate them is a terrible thing.'
They sat motionless, Khalifa staring at his hands, the boy staring at Khalifa. A faint thudding came drifting into the tent, growing gradually more insistent. The boy stood and, keeping his gun trained on his prisoner, pushed back the flap.
'Looks like you'll be leaving soon,' said Khalifa.
Outside men were hurrying past. The thud of rotors grew louder, the air vibrating with the sound until eventually it was all around. The boy leaned out and looked up, smiling, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the buffeting of the wind. His prisoner was right. Soon they would be leaving. He and Sayf al-Tha'r. And soon, too, all bad things in the world were going to end. That was why they'd come out here. To make paradise on earth. To do God's bidding. He felt a surge of hope and happiness.
'I'll never hate him,' he said, turning back towards Khalifa, knowing he wasn't supposed to talk but unable to stop himself. 'Never. Whatever you say. He's a good man. No-one ever cared for me except him.' His smile widened. 'I do love him. I will always be at his side. I will never fail him.'
He stared down, eyes bright with love and innocence, and then, suddenly, there was a deafening roar and something ripped through the canvas above. It slammed the boy onto his knees, slicing the side of his head away, spilling blood and brain across his shoulder. For a second he remained like that, teetering, the smile still fixed on his bloodied mouth, and then he pitched face forward on top of Khalifa, knocking him backwards onto the floor. More bullets spat down from above, slamming into the boy's limbs and torso, causing his body to jerk like a marionette, before the helicopters trained their weapons elsewhere and the body was still, fingers bent into claws as though clinging to the edge of a precipice.
For a moment Khalifa was too shocked to move. Then slowly, gingerly, he rolled the corpse away and stood. The roof of the tent was a tangle of shredded canvas, the sandy floor pitted with craters. If the boy hadn't fallen on top of him he'd have been killed, no doubt about it. He bent and felt for a pulse, knowing it was futile, and then ran his fingertips over the boy's eyes, closing the eyelids.
'He didn't deserve you,' he whispered.
Flames had started licking up the back of the tent, filling the interior with smoke. Coughing, Khalifa heaved off his blood-sodden robes and snatched up the boy's gun. He took a final look down at the punctured corpse and then threw back the flap and ducked outside.
The camp had become an inferno. Everywhere there were flames and smoke. Shadowy figures loomed through the haze, some running, others sprawled lifeless on the ground. High above three helicopters hovered, raking the ground with gunfire. An oil drum erupted. The noise was deafening.
He took in the scene at a glance and then began running. He'd gone only thirty metres when a seam of bullets came chewing across the sand from his right, forcing him to dive behind a crate. He started to get up, then ducked again as two khaki-clad figures stepped from the smoke directly ahead, both wearing gas masks. For a moment he thought they'd seen him. Then one signalled to the other and they disappeared back into the maelstrom. Khalifa counted to three, got up and began running again.
He skirted a pile of burning drums, leaped over a smouldering corpse, then glanced up to check the position of the helicopters. One of Sayf al-Tha'r's men staggered out in front of him and collapsed onto the sand, hands clutching his stomach, blood pumping between his fingers. Khalifa dropped to his knees beside him.
'Sayf al-Tha'r,' he cried. 'Where's Sayf al-Tha'r?'
