The Sea and the Sand

by Finn Óg

  And yet every day he had to deal with some general in Cairo screaming at him, demanding to know why the jihadists were able to strike with impunity in his area. It was all he could do to refrain from pointing out that “his area” was the size of some European countries. He was, in effect, supposed to secure over twenty thousand square miles with an inconsistently trained force. Waleed had some excellent, elite even, operators at his disposal but he also had an army of idiots more interested in money than following orders. Some could change direction with the sniff of a gnarled American dollar, like a kid to candy. Such men put smiles on smugglers’ faces. Waleed had tried to stamp out that behaviour by imprisoning those caught taking baksheesh. The guilty were incarcerated in the incubator back at base along with his old classmate.

  The big man’s suit would be pretty grubby by now, Waleed thought, in the tin can in the desert. It was hot in there by day and very cold at night. He experienced a minor pang of guilt at having left his former friend to languish as he had but until the bombing was cleared up and all evidence extracted and analysed, there was no way Cairo would allow him to return to his headquarters. His bosses in the capital wanted to know where the explosives had come from, who had made the vest, which group was involved and how to strike back. The new president had a political point to make and make it he would. Some desert gathering would suffer as a result of the attack whether they had anything to do with the bombing or not, and so Waleed felt compelled to make an educated guess as to who had been responsible for blowing up the bus. It was the only means he had to prevent some innocent Bedouin tribe being incinerated from the air by the Egyptian air force.

  And that meant remaining in Arish and fending off the colonels until he was as sure as he could be. And that meant leaving Big Suit under a hot tin roof many miles from home, and from him, until his job was done.

  The chart just didn’t have enough information. All Sam had to go by was the depth sounder, which indicted over one hundred feet of open water beneath them. They’d turned to port out of the harbour and motored towards the church. The offshore breeze was stiffening in their favour, which meant that the dinghy should be floating well off the coast by now. Isla had the heavy binoculars at her face hunting the surrounding sea for the little white RIB.

  It was Sam who saw it first and turned Sian towards it. The plan wasn’t without risks, but he left the engine running in neutral as he and Isla grabbed the small boat with the pole and hook and climbed down into her. He didn’t want to drop the anchor – he didn’t have time and he couldn’t afford the possibility of a snag potentially leaving them like sitting ducks within view of the church.

  They fired up the outboard engine and scudded across the waves. Just as they were about to reach the rocks he saw Father Luca emerge from the church with Sadiqah and her mother, both newly attired and, Sam imagined, washed – the mother’s hair looked wet. Luca ran as if he had just alighted from a helicopter. They clambered over the rocks and into the little boat.

  “Gotta go, Luca. I’m worried the big boat could run aground or hit a rock. I haven’t got the right charts,” Sam shouted as he turned the little RIB.

  “God bless!” shouted Luca.

  Sam pushed the throttle to settle the tender back onto the plane, the wind at their transom. Within a minute they were all back where they had started, aboard Sian. Sam hooked the little boat onto the davits and winched her out of the sea. Then he turned the yacht west, hoisted and unfurled all three sails, gunned the engine and made off quickly.

  He settled behind the wheel and caught Sadiqah and Isla in the light of the companionway jumping up and down, delighted, before hugging. It gave him a great sense of peace to know he and his daughter had done the right thing and to see her so happy.

  But there were stories to come and with them blew trouble.

  The driver stared at the dying phone on the dashboard and called his boss directly. He’d never had reason to make such contact before and was nervous. He introduced himself as the man sent east with a mobile and GPS and tried not to inquire about the whole curious business.

  “What are your orders, sir?”

  Waleed sighed. He hadn’t thought it through. In truth he’d all but forgotten about Big Suit’s electronics. He’d been trying to throw a spanner in the works for any police officers who might be trying to geolocate him. The last thing Waleed wanted was a bunch of crooked cops blundering into his headquarters asking questions. On the other hand, with hindsight, he didn’t particularly want them speeding across Sinai either or being picked up by militants and executed at the roadside. That would just bring more headaches.

  That said, he needed to know what Big Suit had been up to, and the nasty business his former friend had got wrapped up in had to be stopped. Friends of Waleed’s family had taken to sea at the hands of people traffickers – Copts fleeing moderate persecution never mind the extremist shit flowing into Sinai from Iraq, Syria, Saudi and Afghanistan. He felt the weight of that responsibility. To protect his people he had to stop the extremists. To stop the extremists gaining traction he had to help tackle the corruption they thrived on. The beards and their ideologies were only strengthened because so many officials in Egypt were on the take.

  “Where are you?” he asked the driver.

  “Near Nuweiba, sir,” said the driver.

  The eastern edge of Egypt. Waleed considered the facts: no ordinary plod would risk going that far – at least not for a colleague, it was just too dangerous. So to eliminate the phone and its signal there might well draw the matter to a close. If the phone went dark in Nuweiba, perhaps Big Suit’s brave pals would conveniently forget about him and consider him lost.

  “Ok,” said Waleed. “Make sure the devices acquire a satellite fix or a phone mast then destroy them.”

  “Sir?”

  “Just do what I say,” Waleed barked. “Then get back to base and call me when you see the prisoner.”

  “The prisoner, sir?”

  “The enormous man who we brought in at the same time as the GPS and the phone.”

  “Sir,” said the driver who stared at the kit, glistening and valuable.

  The phone was already dead. Nothing he could do about that. He stepped from the lorry and placed the handset in front of a huge wheel, clambered back into the cab and drove forward lamenting the loss in revenue. His attention turned to the GPS but he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the process. Someone would give him a few dollars for that, he thought. He wrapped the cable around the device and went in search of a foreigner.

  Thirteen

  He stood malcontented at the wheel. A full day of frustration had fizzed close to the surface before Sam admitted he’d had enough. The more he thought about the risks he’d taken to retrieve the woman, the angrier he became. The jeopardy for Isla had been huge, something he hadn’t given due consideration. His negligence spurred him to deflect the blame and march down the steps into the saloon to bang on the door of the forepeak.

  “Hello?” he heard the woman say.

  “It’s time to talk. This isn’t a cruise liner, love,” Sam barked and marched right back the way he’d come. The kids were in their bunks and he could hear chatter and laughing.

  In the cockpit he trimmed the sails and waited knowing she would emerge. He was accustomed to command after all. He was used to people doing what he told them, and he had, by osmosis, learned to deliver an order that would be followed. It took half an hour but eventually the woman climbed the steps and took a seat under the spray hood refusing to meet his stony glare. She looked angry, which only served to infuriate him further. He couldn’t compute her hostility towards him given that he felt he had gone above and beyond to help her.

  “So are you going to say anything?”

  She had fashioned a headscarf from one of the tops he had bought her. She was wearing the tracksuit – the type that people who never played sport wore, which looked stylish enough on her, Sam supposed. It was the sort of tracksuit a young mum with
loads of money would be seen in, and she carried it off well now that she was out of her sackcloth.

  “You’re just going to stay silent?”

  She turned and stared hard at him but gave no indication she intended to speak.

  “Like, seriously, what’s with the attitude? We picked you up, saved your daughter, I got cut to shite in the process and you’re refusing to speak to me?”

  Her face darkened. “You are British military,” she spat, livid with rage.

  “What?” he said, suddenly on shakier ground than he had anticipated.

  “You are army,” she repeated.

  Sam faltered. “I’m an Irishman sailing with his kid, that’s all.”

  “You lie to me,” she said. “Sadiqah told me. The children talk so much. You are SAS soldier.”

  “I am not SAS and never was,” he said, glad to be able to tell the truth. Sort of.

  She looked at him oddly, trying to distinguish fact from lies. Her head tilted slightly, then, by a tiny fraction, her eyes softened.

  He decided to capitalise upon her subtle wilt. “What difference would it make anyway?” he said, a minor pang of conscience stiffening his neck as he deliberated on how much to tell her. He needed to know how the land lay before he allowed her any distance into their lives.

  “Britain force-ed us into sea,” she said, bitterness weeping from her. She looked up at him again, her eyes awash. “The cowards. Britain and America. They bomb us from sky. They driving us to civil war. All normal is gone, burn-ed by fighter plane.”

  “Hold the fucking boat just a minute here,” Sam said. “Where are you actually from?” Although he knew instinctively from what she had said. And that was bad news.

  The woman looked at him, the truth dawning. “You do not know?”

  “I think I know, now. Now that you’ve talked about bombing.” Sam made a mental note to listen to and trust every word his daughter uttered from now on.

  “You not have guessed before?” the woman said, curious now.

  “I stopped thinking about it. Why do you think I’m a soldier?”

  “Because of job. Isla tell Sadiqah.”

  “Told her what?”

  “Sadiqah say you are special soldier who taking peoples to safe places.”

  “And Isla told her this?”

  “Of course. Children tell truth.”

  Isla was like a little sponge. She wasn’t far off the mark.

  “So just what is it you think I do – or am?”

  The woman turned profile and stared out to sea considering her words. “Mercenary. You make-ed money from migrant.”

  “Seriously?” asked Sam, incredulous. “You think I’m some sort of trafficking bastard?”

  “You are not?” she said, her tone suggesting that’s exactly what she thought he was.

  She turned to stare at him as the wash and motion of the boat filled the silence between them. Sam didn’t know what to say. He struggled to make sense of the enormity of the misunderstanding and the length of time it had endured as they’d sailed together across the Med.

  “Is that why you denied knowing me in the church?”

  “I am not knowing you,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Well, that much is obvious,” he grunted quietly.”

  “You knew where we are. In sea. You finding us. Boat sink-ed then you come from darkness …” she trailed off as she picked through her thoughts.

  Sam just shook his head at her reasoning but didn’t know what to do other than allow her to continue.

  “Now I do not know. You have child. You love her, I can see. I do not know what you are. But I see how you move. I see violence. I believe you are British army. I believe that. You are very …”

  “Finish it,” he prodded her. “Get it all out.”

  She flashed her eyes at him and used a word far out of keeping with her broken English. “Capable.”

  Sam stood silent for a long time but eventually allowed her one utterance. “I’m not capable,” he said softly, “of what you’re describing.”

  Pass a border crossing in one direction, prepare to face hassle. Pass it headed the opposite way, nobody cares. It amused Habid that his operation used borders to bring people together when their fundamental design was to keep people apart. It appealed to his twisted sense of gratification and justice.

  There was always an imbalance: one side of the invisible line was better off than the other. If that wasn’t the case, there would be little requirement for the demarcation in the first place; not where the people on either side spoke the same language and practised the same faith. It all came down to money. For as long as he could remember Habid had been deprived of cash by the very people who were currently paying for his wretched services. He was now accustomed to getting what he was due.

  And so he strolled from Egypt into Libya without hassle through an official checkpoint as opposed to the line in the sand he had used on his outward journey. He nodded and smiled and nobody cared. And then he evacuated his bowels and bought enough food and water to see him though the seven-hour journey. He boarded a minibus, paid his fare and struck out for Benghazi. There he would retrieve his precious papers, his passport to wealth, his leverage, his loathing, his pension, his gold.

  Sam’s gaze fell to the horizon where the sun was languishing just before it flicked off the lights. He had tried not to think about it but seeing the blossoming friendship between his child and the rescued kid had nudged a worry given where these people were from, what had they seen and what that might mean for Isla.

  Sam had believed in the notion of preparing kids to take care of themselves, but that was before Shannon had died. It worried him that the only person of her own age Isla spent any time with was a child who may have seen equally bad – or perhaps worse – stuff. The root of his concern was their point of departure. Libya was a place with which he was to an extent familiar. It was not a destination of mixed emotions for Sam. It was not like Gaza, which had been grim and wonderful in equal measure. He had, after all, met his wife in Gaza, amid horror. In Libya, he had met only horror.

  Years had passed since his first visit. His superiors had largely kept him in the dark at the time. His orders had been both clear and vague. Clear in that he was to make sure an intelligence officer was safely delivered to a particular destination; vague about why he needed to be delivered at all. Sam had eventually been told what it was all about.

  Sam had taken four good men and a spook from the sea deck of an aircraft carrier into one of the Special Boat Service’s custom-built FICs. The Fast Interceptor Crafts were ideal for such operations because in the relatively flat waters of the Mediterranean there’s no need for wave-cutting boats, which, although fast, have limited ability to launch other shore-going vessels. Besides, the Interceptors could pass undetected beneath most radar scans.

  The bosses had relished the opportunity to deploy the FIC as opportunities outside training missions had been few, but, still, Sam couldn’t figure out why the Security Service hadn’t opted to fly the spook into Libya given that the place was awash with white European oil engineers. It was well above his pay grade to worry about it, though, and given that he’d only ever used the FIC in training he was as keen as anyone to get aboard and use it in anger.

  After a spine-crushing three-hour blast at just under sixty knots, the coxswain rounded the boat’s transom towards the Libyan coast and the inflatable Raider was launched. A skittery boat, not as easy to handle as its rigid-hulled big sister, but much less detectable and easier to carry across the sand than a solid craft. From there, the crew was down to three: Sam, a sergeant and a spook.

  Ashore, the sergeant was left to conceal the boat under strict orders to extract if a predetermined time elapsed. Then Sam and the intelligence officer stripped to their crumpled underclothes and made for the shadows around the edge of the city. From that point on it was an intel op.

  Sam was happy to accede responsibility. The spook was a fit-looking th
irty-something by the name of Dyer. To Sam’s surprise he’d turned out to be a Northern Irishman just like himself, and although they didn’t talk much all the signs were that he was cautious and hard enough to get the job done. He took direction when command rested with Sam and through gesture and the odd smile betrayed his sensibilities. Sam had caught his eyebrow rising just a jot during the briefing as an overzealous and under-witted senior officer from an unidentified agency had tried to impress upon them the consequences ‘for Her Majesty’s Government’ should things go awry. Sam felt at ease when the operation reverted to Dyer. If things went bad, he was confident they could make a fist of it together.

  Her face was set. Stern. Dignified.

  They sat for hours. The only movements were Sam’s carving the boat through the waves making west, almost thirteen nautical miles in absolute silence. Sam’s hands instinctive on the wheel, it spinning and adjusting as he lessened his grip allowing the hull’s shape to do its job. The air hadn’t cleared but it was thinning, and he allowed some hope that the anger would eventually lead to some form of truce. They refused to look at one another all that time, which helped each formulate their thoughts. The breakthrough came with a distraction.

  “Daddy, how long till we stop again?” Isla’s raggedy head appeared at the companionway.

  “A long time, Isla. Don’t start asking all the time. We won’t stop again until we run out of food or water.” Things Sam had intended to sort out while ashore until events had rather overtaken him.

  “Well, what can we do?”

  Sam was instinctively frustrated by the question, then turned it to his advantage. “You can put on your harness and life jackets and teach Sadiqah how to sail. You can teach her mammy too,” he said, not glancing at the woman. From the corner of his eye he could see her shift slightly, her feet shuffling on the lip of the locker she had wedged herself against. The suggestion stirred her to speak, to verbalise something she’d evidently been thinking about.