Resistance (Nomad Book 3)

by Matthew Mather

  The bodies had been dragged to one side and lay beside the fence line of the estate, faces covered.

  “Ahmad will allow us to take two of their weapons,” Massarra said. “He’ll keep the others. We should also take their clothes before his men bury them. It would be better for us if we continued to dress as people local to the eastern Sahara.”

  “A lot of the clothing has been bloodied.”

  “We will salvage what we can. I do not mind the blood. I can clean it off.”

  Jess looked at the crumped bodies. “Was this worth it?”

  “You’ve been fortunate to live a life mostly sheltered from the violence that goes on in places like this.”

  “I saw enough of it in Afghanistan.”

  “I understand that, but this won’t be the end of it.”

  “Is Al-Jawf the right place for us to be headed? Where do we go after that?”

  “We can only see one step at a time right now,” Massarra said as she kneeled down beside the men. She peeled away the layers of their clothing, then paused. “I doubt anyone really has answers to questions as you have. We just do our best.”

  Ahmad approached them with Ufuk and embraced each of them. He spoke briefly to Massarra and she nodded.

  “He’ll go no further,” she said. “He wishes us well, but he’ll not head south. It is his intention to bring his people here and take the machinery north. They will ensure they know the entrance to the complex so they may come back.”

  “Tell him we understand and thank him for his hospitality.”

  Massarra spoke to Ahmad. His expression shifted, tightening, then he nodded. He said something to Massarra and she thanked him.

  “He says to avoid Zuetina. It is much bigger than Sahl and was very busy before the political situation changed. He suspects there will be many people there. Just like the towns on the main road between the coast and Al-Jawf. He urges caution and suggests we avoid the roads.”

  Ahmad went to the Toyota and got in with another of the Bedouin. Two more went to one of the buildings, retrieved shovels and went to dig graves for the dead men.

  “I’ve been through most of what is down there,” Giovanni said. “There are military ration packs—not the best, but nutritious and they don’t take up much space. There are heavier shelters too, all in the Bedouin style. I also found high-powered binoculars and two sets of night vision goggles. That’s the good news. Bad news is, we can’t carry that and a lot of fuel.”

  “Pack as much as possible and cover everything with tarpaulin,” Jess said. “Make sure everyone understands to dress as Bedouin. We have clothing to go round. No exceptions.”

  The use of the shemagh and keffiyeh had been adopted by US troops since the war in Iraq and Jess had worn one herself in Afghanistan. Their versatility in desert and even temperate environments was the principal reason the Bedouin wore them. The Berber tagelmust fulfilled a very similar purpose. British troops over there had even been issued with a shemagh as part of their standard kit. Most wore it folded and wrapped around the face, over the mouth and nose and often with goggles, to keep sand away from the face. Jess had seen it frequently worn by armored and mechanized troops to ward off wind chill caused by being in moving vehicles.

  Massarra added another reason: “And there is a possibility that there are those in Al-Jawf who will be watching for our us. We need to slip into the city with the many who arrive there daily, we must appear to be yet more trucks carrying survivors desperate for a place to live. The more we look out of place, the more danger we will place ourselves in.”

  Instead of using the main road south, which passed through townships like Awjilah and Jalu, they navigated across the open desert, a vast expanse of half-frozen desiccation. If continental Europe had offered the constant threats of survivors driven to violence by desperation, there was no reason to believe that this place—that had seen much lawlessness even before Nomad—would be any better.

  They drove over dunes flattened by oil field excavation, and hardened by the nighttime freezing temperatures and the ash fall. Momentum—and Ufuk’s deference to mathematical gradients—carried them over steeper dunes, giving them traction in the heavy sand and keeping them moving. Above, the two Predator-like drones kept watch. The rest, Ufuk’s smaller units, were disassembled and cleaned, then packed away, resting in the back of both trucks, hidden beneath tarpaulin with the other equipment.

  Jess asked what had been so important about the Sahl for Ufuk to build an installation there, and Ufuk just replied that it was part of his plan to help people after Nomad.

  They covered the distance in a single journey, barely stopping to rest. They began at night, when the cold hardened the ground, and so they could spend as much of the journey as possible unseen. Long hours spent focused on the lines of the dunes, keeping to threaded ridges to minimize the need for climbing, driving and sleeping in shifts, keeping the vehicles moving as much as possible to avoid lower gears and conserve fuel.

  They kept a wide arc around the town of Tazirbu, passing it by more than thirty kilometers, fingers poised on triggers as they swept past.

  When dawn came, shedding its anemic light over the landscape, they had been driving for nine hours. A considerable distance remained. As the darkness that had protected them withdrew, Jess gestured for both pickups to stop.

  She heaved herself out of the pickup, feeling a jab of pain as the ache in her prosthetic’s socket twisted into something sharper. She winced and tried to walk it off. After a moment, she went over to the warm hood of the truck where they’d laid out one of the maps. Massarra, Ufuk and Giovanni joined her while Hector slept in the back seat. Raffa took binoculars to the top of nearby dunes and lay low, watching for signs of movement beyond.

  The same process every time the small convoy stopped.

  “Where are we?”

  “On the eastern fringe of the Rebiana Sand Sea,” Ufuk replied. “About four hours to the rocky plain north of Al-Jawf.”

  Jess nodded. “Then we break for a little while, and go in one last push.”

  The horizon was at first only scattered with, but then soon became dominated by, a jagged line of rock that steadily swelled over hours as they approached. A few hundred feet high, a dark shadow painted on a horizon of ochre-washed gray.

  When finally they reached the base of the gnarled massif, a band of dark rock washed by desert rain and stretching for kilometers in either direction, it was early afternoon. Jess set them to the task of making camp in the lee of a sheltered hollow hidden on almost all sides by rock. It was easier here, the ground a mess of desert pavement silted with ash. They set up the shelters as just heavy flakes of snow whispered through the air.

  Jess and Giovanni climbed up, fingers numb on the cold rock.

  The wind swept around them. At nights, hoarfrost dampened their jackets and wool blankets. Overhead, Ufuk’s drones murmured as they circled high. Jess lifted the high-powered binoculars to her eyes and focused on the scattered structures five miles away.

  Al-Jawf.

  She passed the binoculars to Giovanni.

  “Can’t see much,” he said quietly. “There’s a dune wall the whole way round.”

  “Did you see the tracks?”

  “In the sand the other side? Hundreds. We are not the only ones driving this desert.”

  “Let’s tell everyone to get some sleep. We’ll do some reconnaissance tonight. I’d like to get a feel for the place before we ride on in.”

  “What about Ufuk’s drones?”

  “They can only tell us so much.”

  “We take Massarra with us?”

  “We leave one of the pickups here. Take a weapon each. The M4 has a night-vision scope and there are two sets of night vision goggles. In and out for a quick look.”

  The day dragged on. The snow fell thick but didn’t collect on the ground, just made everything wet. The damp cold enveloped them, even in the lee of the wind, even huddled in their sleeping bags and blankets and thi
ck down jackets, but it was the waiting that exhausted Jess. She tried not to think about the dead teenagers at Sahl.

  When night finally came, Jess roused herself from a fitful half-sleep spent worrying. They geared-up, checking and re-checking equipment. They drove quietly, letting the engine idle for stretches and allowing momentum to carry them across the hard-packed sand. After a few miles, Jess ordered Giovanni to stop.

  They walked the rest of the way.

  In the surreal green shroud of night vision, she could have been back in Afghanistan. The subtle rush of the wind and her own breath were in her ears as they trekked silently over the dusty ground.

  They covered the distance in a little less than an hour, but saw the fringes of the encampment far sooner. Fires lit, blazing in the distance as flickering white against heavy green. The darker outlines of tents and flimsy, shantytown structures and the huddled movement of thickly clad people between them. A scattering of trucks and motorcycles. Voices carrying across the desert.

  They hunkered low as they moved, keeping to the cover offered by undulating dunes, and stopped about three hundred feet away, hidden in the lee of a rising dune, lying down on its high ridge. Jess watched the scene unfold around her as she panned, studying people sitting around a fire, speaking. On the ground nearby was the unmistakable outline of a rifle. She tried to discern what tone their voices carried, whether there was fear or comfort, if she could pick out an accent. Her eyes kept coming back to that rifle on the ground.

  They were camped close to what Jess could now see was an artificial dune wall that stretched into the distance the whole way round the basin in which Al-Jawf had been settled. Beyond it was a road carved into the sand and a second, lower wall.

  “There’s movement,” Massarra warned.

  She gestured to the east and Jess took a moment to see three figures stumbling across the sand. They were running north, toward one flat side of the dune wall. In the distance, a cloud of dust gathered. Jess tapped Massarra on the shoulder and directed her attention to it.

  “Look like a truck to you?”

  Massarra nodded.

  The three figures could probably run the distance in under thirty seconds.

  At the base of the curling sheet of dust, an outline materialized. A vehicle travelling at speed along the road flattened into the sand beyond the dune wall. As it drew closer, Jess made out a pickup with a heavy machine gun bolted to the back, a lone figure standing to the rear of the weapon. She couldn’t tell how many were inside the cab.

  The three figures must have seen the billowing cloud and understood what it was because their pace quickened. They obviously wouldn’t make it. The truck was driving too fast.

  They reached the dune wall as the truck pulled up the other side of it. Lights bloomed from the roof of the cab, flooding the green of the night vision goggles with searing white. Jess lifted them away and watched, cold flushing through her.

  Massarra had already lifted the M4’s telescopic sight to her eye and settled herself into the sand.

  Jess laid a hand on her arm. “They can’t know we’re here.”

  A man dressed in military fatigues and a thick coat got out of the passenger side of the pickup’s cab and began to shout. He carried an AK47, jabbing it forward as he spoke. He gestured for the three figures to come down off the sand.

  Beyond the dune wall, others approached, people from the encampment beyond.

  The machine gunner readied his heavy weapon. More shouting came from the passenger who had now fully emerged from the cab and was steadying his own into his shoulder.

  The three figures on the dune wall froze in place.

  From beyond the wall, those who had come from the encampment began to yell, gesturing for the figures to come down. Shouting too, to the men in the pickup.

  The figures still didn’t move.

  “One of them is child, not more than ten,” Massarra said.

  Jess grimaced and fought her own desire to break cover. “We don’t know what’s happening here.”

  But it was obvious what was happening.

  The man from the pickup edged closer, shouting again, gesturing.

  Eventually they began to move and slowly climbed down toward the man.

  One of them came forward and tried speak to the man, but he waved them away. When they didn’t move, he aimed the assault rifle at them, jabbing it at them savagely. They shrank backward, stepping away.

  He yelled. They didn’t move.

  In an instant it was over. Bright flashes from the rifle’s muzzle. A short burst and sweep. The figures fell into the dirt. The man fired another dozen rounds into the inert bodies and then jumped into the back of the truck.

  Jess’s fingers bit into the cold ground.

  Chapter 6

  Outside Al-Jawf, Libya

  When dawn came, they packed and gathered around the pickups. There were questions when they returned. Jess had been reluctant to answer. Eventually, as Massarra silently packed away the M4 and the rest of her equipment, Jess and Giovanni had explained to Raffa what they had seen. She wondered whether anyone had really slept that night, her own dreams plagued by relentless doubt.

  Since leaving the boat, they hadn’t been able to reach Ain Salah. Was it being on the water that had made his signal stronger? Or was it something else? Maybe something had happened in Al-Jawf.

  “We should approach by road,” Ufuk said now, indicating the road on the map. “We don’t know what the argument was about last night. It will be the least intimidating.”

  “You’re settled on our cover story?” Jess said.

  “The oil belongs to the Zuwayya,” Ufuk replied. “So then does the city. For as long as they can control the refineries that still function, they control Al-Jawf and Kufra. The Zuwayya supported opposition forces during the civil war, as did Turkey. I hope many here, and especially the Zuwayya, will be more generously disposed to Turks.”

  “You think telling them we stowed away on a stolen Turkish freighter to Egypt will be believable?”

  “It’s sufficiently desperate. Nomad destroyed much of the coast of southern Turkey, yet there were parts to the north of the Levantine Sea, close to Iskenderun, that were relatively unscathed. It is conceivable some larger vessels escaped the worst of it. If we must explain further, those who are not Turkish can claim to be international students. There are universities at Çukurova and Gaziantep.”

  “Seems feasible enough,” Giovanni said. “Raffa and Hector are my sons and I worked at a Turkish company as an engineer.”

  “Keep in mind, Jessica,” Massarra said, “they may not appreciate being spoken to by a woman. Not in this region. That limits what I—what we—can do. So I agree, this is the best way. We should do whatever we can to obscure where we have come from. If pushed, say you’re from Canada, rather than America.”

  Jess nodded. Everyone liked Canadians.

  “If we are allowed access to the town,” she continued, “then we camp and try to remain private. Whatever we have to tell the Zuwayya, it will be better if others believe we are local to North Africa or have some association. And even if weapons are carried openly by others, better we do not.”

  “What about Ain Salah?” Giovanni said.

  “We will try to find him,” Ufuk replied. “But we need to keep our cover.”

  They joined the road north of the Al-Jawf, north of the small township of Al Hawwari, the first of the vast, circular irrigation plots. The first thing they saw, as they progressed south, was a wall of ruined cars set either side of the road with a control point directly in its center. Either side of the cars ran a wall of sand—an immense, manufactured dune. Jess tensed as she saw it, memories of the night before rising in her mind.

  Two Toyota pickups stood beside a clutch of buildings to the right of the road, both with machine guns on the back and armed men in uniforms. A short line of other vehicles stood motionless, waiting to enter.

  Two motorbikes ducked beneath the rising barrie
r, and a dusty sedan drew up at the control point ahead of them. The occupants were instructed, via sharp gestures and with harsh directness, to leave the vehicle. They were dragged out and taken to one side of the road.

  Two uniformed men checked the car, looking into the trunk and underneath, lifting the hood and checking the engine. The car’s occupants were questioned. Flushes of desperation on their faces, lips forming words quickly, eyes leaping from one place to another, seeking escape from the prison that had closed around them. Two men and a woman, one of the men much younger.

  Not local to the region.

  The conversation grew heated. Two more men approached, almost lazily, weapons in hand but lowered. On the arms of these, as with all the militia at the checkpoint, there were wide and bright green bands on which there was dark, Arabic script. The occupants of the car were separated and the older man was told to get back in the car. The others were led away, the woman pleading. The car was pulled off the road and into a fenced-off area.

  Now it was their turn.

  One of the uniformed men gestured to them, indicating for Ufuk to drive forward. As he pulled up to the barrier, a man stood by the window and indicated for Ufuk to leave the car. They led him to one side as others began to check the pickup. Jess kept her eyes on Ufuk, her hand wrapped around the butt of the pistol her thigh. A sheen of sweat gathered on her back and her heart felt like it was going to beat through her chest. In the mirror, she saw Giovanni’s pickup being searched too.

  Ufuk spoke in Arabic, and received terse replies. He gestured several times, then returned to the Toyota.

  “What’s happening?”

  A rivulet of sweat drew a thin line down of one of Ufuk’s cheeks. He reached into the center console, fingers trembling, and took out a carton of cigarettes. He went back to the men and handed them over. The conversation continued, but the mood had warmed.

  Ufuk gestured to the Toyota again and brought one of the men over. He reached into the back, lifting part of the tarpaulin. The man reached inside and took out two more cartons of cigarettes.