by Finn Óg
As darkness fell he shook his big bloated head in exasperation at the steaming lumps deposited on what passed for a highway. There was no warning, just instant life-threatening danger every time one of the mountainous gatherings loomed into the blaze of his headlights. He didn’t know what they were or why they were there. Could it be camel shit heaped into pyramids and left on the road? Why would anyone allow that? The east, he concluded, was not Egypt as he knew it.
Headlights presented another alarming example of the oddness of the east. Big Suit couldn’t understand why people drove at night on such treacherous roads without their lights on. In Alexandria there were street lamps and shopfronts and artificial illumination – no need for headlights there. Out here, though, his mind boggled at the madness of the carry-on. It wasn’t as if the passing cars didn’t possess lights – drivers flashed them in the split second before they swerved out to overtake him. A courtesy of sorts, to let him know they were there. So why not run them as a matter of course? How did they not hit these curious objects in the road? Why were bodies not littered along its crust all the way to Suez?
Big Suit had never been to Sinai – he’d never had the desire. The desert wasn’t for him. Hell, he hadn’t even liked Cairo on the few occasions he’d been there. A city by the coast had all he required, but thinking of home while hurtling deeper into the desert with its dangers darkened his mood.
Tassels had screwed him. Screamed at him. Embarrassed him. As soon as that posh doc turned up, Tassels had turned on him. His boss had become Mr Big Balls, barking at him and ordering him around, cursing him for being overzealous with the tools. Big Suit was still seething at his belittlement and of Tassels’ words rattling around his vacuous head.
“Sit there and roll up your sleeves,” Tassels had commanded. Big Suit had complied realising only at the last minute, as the needle was inserted into his arm, that he was to be drained. “Take as much as you need,” his boss had said, as a small pump rocked back and forth exchanging haemoglobin and filling bags for the heart of a rat. He’d faltered and fallen, had been left to lie on the floor of the cell for hours as the doctor and his boss put all their effort into the Libyan, ignoring their fellow Egyptian.
Eventually Tassels had him dragged out and tended to, but not out of concern. He now realised he’d been saved only to complete work that ought to have been done by the rat. All of this for a boat. A dinghy, probably. He didn’t even know if it would fit in his car.
As the miles clicked by he hurtled deeper into a fug of anger. He had an opportunity out here in the sand and his boss would, in the end, learn not to embarrass him again.
Sam wondered whether he could pay to have the family offloaded. He’d amassed a good amount of cash through his previous employment, but his stocks weren’t inexhaustible. Frequently when he’d rescued a woman from a brothel or a bloke from a ship, he’d come across bundles of notes. Often he split them with the poor unfortunate he liberated, but that still meant he’d gathered a substantial safety net for him and Isla. He had it wrapped in bags and cellophane in the bilges of the boat. As such, he wasn’t keen to be boarded – it would be difficult to explain where the money came from. Besides, it had allowed them to go sailing and leave the past behind as far as that was possible. He wasn’t inclined to just hand it over, so he tried to think of another plan.
Big Suit was jumpy even before he caught sight of the glow in the distance. He fished for his own, battered phone in the well beneath the gearstick and wished he’d been as frugal as the other drivers and left his lights off, even in the dark. Whoever was up ahead was sure to have spotted him but he reckoned the fire was at least two miles away. He scrambled to shut off his headlights and then plugged his handset in for a minute to give it some charge. When it lit the glow through the crazed glass began to worry him as he hunted for an old contact. He found what he was looking for – listed simply as 777. His little brag that he knew powerful people in high places. He debated using the rat’s phone to make the call, but then decided that an unrecognised number might go unanswered. He willed his own phone to have a good moment and not cut out. He hit dial and waited.
“Long time,” said a voice at the other end.
“What can I say?” Big Suit tried to sound jolly. “I’m sorry, my friend.”
But the man on the other end had no desire to be kept up to date with Big Suit’s brutality. “You must want something?”
Small talk wasn’t really this man’s forte and Big Suit was grateful for his directness. “Sorry. Yes, Waleed. I want … well, just advice.”
“About what?”
“Are you still in, you know, the unit you were in?” Big Suit faltered, suddenly scared of his own shadow. The three digits stared out of the phone at him: 777. Why had he entered it as that? Why not simply Waleed? He looked at the numbers, instantly worried that the call might be tapped, or that by asking what he was about to ask his phone would be placed on a list somewhere for tracking.
There came a sigh at the other end. “I’m still doing what I did when I left the academy,” his former friend confirmed.
Big Suit adjusted himself, grateful he had such a contact. He and Waleed had once shared a room. The superior intellect of the man had created a role model of sorts for Big Suit. Admiration flowed one way, benevolence the other. Big Suit had respected the man and would have done anything he asked.
Everyone at the academy knew Waleed was destined for much bigger things. He had leveraged Big Suit’s brawn and used it to run his own fiefdom at the academy. Every leader needed foot soldiers and they didn’t come in larger, more dense packages than Big Suit.
“Are you in trouble?” Waleed asked.
“No! No, no. I’m just, well … I’m in Sinai and I wanted a briefing on what to expect or where to go. I hear bad things about this area and I don’t really believe them but—”
“What are you doing in the Sinai Peninsula?” his friend cut in, edgy, almost angry.
“I’ve to collect something for my boss. I …” Big Suit began to doubt the wisdom of his plan.
“You what?”
“I’ve got to collect it in Nuweiba. I thought, wondered really, it might be of interest to you. To your unit.”
“Oh?” said Waleed.
“Yes,” said Big Suit, encouraged by the semblance of interest. “But, you know, I’m in the middle of the desert.”
There was a heaving grunt on the other end. “You came from Alexandria?”
“Yes.”
“Through Port Said?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you cross the canal?”
“Suez.”
“Did you go south from Suez or are you on fifty?”
Big Suit looked at the jagged line on the screen of the rat’s GPS. It made no sense to him whatsoever. “I went east. I was on fifty, I’m about to join fifty-five,” Big Suit said. “It’s the fastest route—”
“Are you armed?”
Big Suit’s heart sank. “I have a revolver?” Big Suit offered.
“What do you want?”
“I wanted to know how safe it is but I think you’ve already answered that.”
“It’s not an area to go driving around on your own, even for a man of your exceptional talents. Big fists are of limited use when you have people prepared to cut off your head.”
“So it’s true, about IS. They are here?”
His friend snorted. “And the rest. The peninsula is riddled with extremists at present – al-Qaeda, Hasm, half a dozen spin-offs, Ajnad Misr, I could go on. We’re currently monitoring eight marauding groups in that area, mostly north of where you are, but the road is not safe, they want to kill soldiers and …”
“Police officers,” Big Suit finished the sentence for him.
“There is no way to negotiate with them. If they catch you, they will kill you. I assume you left your identification back at your base?”
Big Suit stared at his wallet in the thin moonlight on the dashboard. He was
just about smart enough to know how stupid he was. “But I hear this area is swamped with soldiers and your unit?”
Big Suit didn’t dare name it. 777 had an odd reputation. Decades previously it had been disbanded because of disasters dealing with hijacks, and nobody really knew for sure if it still existed but every soldier and police officer had heard of it. Big Suit knew his friend had joined it straight from the academy but didn’t know what his role was or where he was based.
“If I were you, I’d turn around and go back. If you must collect this thing, go south towards El Tor and then cross the desert. The closer to Sharm you get, the greater the number of police to protect what’s left of the tourist industry.”
“I can see a fire on the highway. Ahead of me. Any idea what that might be?”
“Could be a checkpoint – military. Could be Bedouin.”
“Good,” said Big Suit.
“Could be militants.”
Big Suit sniffed. “Do you think so?”
“Who knows? I’ve got to go. Turn back, it’s no place to be on your own with only six rounds in your pocket.”
“Thank you,” Big Suit muttered, but the line had gone dead.
Big Suit fumbled with the gearstick to try and turn the Toyota. The night became black almost instantly as cloud covered the moon, drawing his eye to the glow of the fire in the ahead. Wide as the road was, he almost managed to drop off the edge, which could have been catastrophic for a car of the Corolla’s vintage. He was just finishing the turn when lights flashed in front of him and a large vehicle loomed to a stop. Their bonnets faced one another, the monster truck bearing down on him. Where the hell did that come from? He cursed the practice of driving in the dark like Batman.
The doors of the large vehicle opened and two men dressed in black emerged from either side. Big Suit cocked the old Colt. One of the men took up a stance in the glare of the lights and placed an AK-47 against his shoulder. The other man came around and tapped on the windscreen. Big Suit had no choice but to wind it down.
“What are you doing?” asked the man, and Big Suit heaved a breath of relief as he spotted a beret wedged beneath the epaulette strap on the man’s shoulder.
“I am police,” he blurted. “I have decided to take the road south instead.”
“Police, you say,” said the soldier, as if beginning a fairy tale, “and why would a police officer be out here in Sinai on his own with only a revolver to protect him?” He gestured at the gun wedged between Big Suit’s moistening broad thighs.
“I’m going to Nuweiba,” he said.
“Phone,” said the soldier.
“What?”
“You have a phone,” the soldier’s hand curled in an impatient beckon. Big Suit cautiously handed his wrecked unit over and looked on in horror as it was handed to another man and then placed on the ground before being smashed to pieces with the butt of a rifle.
“Why did you do that?”
“Why are you here, police officer?”
“Official business.” He tried to conjure some authority into his voice but he was shit-scared. What if they weren’t soldiers at all?
“Official business?” inquired the soldier with his sing-song sarcastic voice. “Which is what?”
“Can’t say,” said Big Suit.
“Oh, I think you will say,” said the soldier, “one way or another.”
The chart showed a harbour, probably a marina, on the south-west coast. Sam didn’t have enough detail on his memory cards or his paper maps to say with much clarity as he’d never intended to go anywhere near Crete. Such luxuries were expensive and there was no point in buying charts for places he’d no interest in. He was also too far from land to use data to buy the e-charts, so settled for the miniature before him. There were offshore beaches marked, sandbanks, he imagined, but he needn’t have cared.
Four miles out to sea, sweeping ahead with the binoculars for navigational hazards, he paused on a disturbance. A wash, barely perceptible but he knew what it was: a rigid inflatable, or a big, fast pilot boat. Sam reached down and booted up the radar that confirmed what he already knew – it was headed straight for them. It was doing more than thirty knots, which suggested a certain determination – or a petrolhead skipper. Either way, not ideal. He reckoned they had twenty minutes before the Greeks arrived. He looked around thinking about what to prepare, then realised there was nothing to do but tell the truth.
How quickly the tide turns, thought Big Suit as he sat in the back of an enormous van, the headbanging judder of its motion telling him they had rolled off the highway and were stirring up dust through the desert.
His panic had subsided a little. When the men got him out of the car he’d realised they might not be soldiers at all but militants, jihadis, Islamic State extremists. He’d considered fighting but then the back doors of the van opened and revealed twenty armed soldiers all with AKM assault rifles, official Egyptian army equipment. They obviously weren’t elite troops – the kit looked standard but was well beyond what any desert beard would have. They had proper helmets and goggles. He relaxed a little.
The two men in the front hadn’t arrested him, nor had they bundled him into the back. They’d simply invited him to climb aboard. A gesture with a jag as there was no choice involved. He hadn’t thought to ask why he was being taken away or what the problem was. He hadn’t thought to offer his identification. They’d taken his old revolver from him, sniffing at it with disdain, but other than that he was treated reasonably. And so he sat, silent, unable to think of anything to ask the soldiers that wouldn’t make it look like he was afraid. The soldiers showed no interest in him as together they rattled and banged deep into the featureless desert.
The VHF radio crackled first – a hail. Sam ignored it. He didn’t want a repeat of the container ship fiasco and was determined to show his desperate cargo to the Greek boat and whatever brand of official had been sent to meet them. He imagined it was a coastguard or customs vessel of some sort, so he held his nerve and waited.
Gradually the drone of her engines increased and the boat’s captain resorted to a loudhailer that was equally useless because Sam knew not one word of Greek. Eventually the woman opted for French and then English, at which point Sam raised his arm.
“Lower your sails and prepare for inspection,” she called.
Sam waved back, tapped the autohelm, flicked the halyard trigger and went on deck to gather the tumbling mainsail. Returning to the cockpit he hauled the furlers for the two genoas, deliberately allowing his wounds to weep a little; intending the blood to elicit sympathy. Then he stood and waved the boat over, glancing at the useless idiot in the cockpit who appeared more nervous than at any other time in their journey.
The enormous RIB span a tight circle and aligned itself with Sam’s boat. He caught a bowline before two armed men stepped aboard while the captain came amidship of her own vessel and addressed Sam in broken English.
“Where have you come from?”
“We rescued three people from the sea three hundred miles south-east of here. They need help. I am injured.”
“Nationality?” she quipped, not unfriendly but not as sympathetic as Sam had hoped for.
“Irish. My daughter and I, we are Irish. I think the …” Sam gestured to the man at his side, in a dress, and struggled for a description “… refugees,” he tilted his head, unsure, “could be Egyptian. I don’t know. I don’t speak Arabic.”
“You brought them to Greece – three hundred miles?”
Said aloud, it did seem a bit odd.
“I tried to get a container ship to help them, to take them from us, but they refused.”
“Of course they did,” she said, her hardened stare fixing on him as if he was a dope. “There are thousands of people coming.”
“Are there?” asked Sam, genuinely surprised.
“You do not use radio, no? We tried to call you ten minutes, no answer.”
“I’m trying to save power.”
; “And you have not seen them?” She had turned sarcastic. “Migrants. Floating. You have not seen anything, I suppose,” said the captain, exhausted at what appeared to be a routine rigmarole.
“No,” said Sam, surprise still in his voice.
“You are stranger to workings of the world at present,” she stated scathingly.
“Deliberately. We have been at sea for a long time.”
“Why?” she barked rather than asked.
“Long story,” said Sam, and beckoned to Isla who was now on deck. “This is my daughter. Isla, go to the chart table and get our passports. They’re reddy-brown in colour and have a harp on the front.”
“What’s a harp?” she asked.
“They’re little books with our photographs in them. I need to show them to the lady,” he tried instead.
She disappeared down the companionway.
“ID?” the captain snapped at the man.
He shook his head.
“He doesn’t speak English,” Sam said. “I don’t know very much about him.”
“Of course you don’t. Where are the others?”
The captain’s face fell to the passports Isla had retrieved.
“Get the woman and the girl, please, Isla. Tell them to come up.”
“Is she going to take them away?” Isla’s sadness reappeared.
“To safety,” Sam said, to which the captain snorted and Sam realised things might not turn out as he had intended.
“You’re European,” the captain stated, “and you have …” she paused as the woman and child emerged, the elder still entirely covered, and her face frowned in disgust, “Arabs of some kind. This does not look good for you.”
“Why?” asked Sam, genuinely bemused.
“Did they pay you to bring them here?” she snapped.
“Of course not,” he cut back. “Why would you think that?”
“You don’t work for an NGO?”
