‘Are you sure? For all she knows, you’re dead. She might have thought she had nothing else left.’
‘Bullshit,’ Chase snapped, looking back through the sight. There were a couple of Covenant men patrolling inside the circle of Humvees . . . and more Janjaweed on the outside, the two sides regarding each other with clear mutual suspicion. He surveyed the camp’s perimeter. Away from the fires, everything was in flickering shadow.
He sat up and handed the rifle to the surprised Sophia. ‘Here.’
‘You’re giving me a gun?’ she asked, as if expecting some trick.
‘Yeah. I need you to cover me.’ He had donned his black leather jacket when the temperature fell after nightfall; now he removed it and gave it to Sophia as well. For what he was planning, he couldn’t allow the creak of leather to give him away.
‘Why?’
‘’Cause I’m going to rescue Nina.’
‘From there? There must be at least sixty men!’
‘Not for long.’ He drew the Browning. ‘I’m going to get a knife from the truck, then I’m going in.’
Sophia shook her head. ‘Do you seriously think you can just stroll in there, get Nina and walk back out without anyone noticing?’
‘No. I don’t.’ He flicked off the automatic’s safety. ‘Let’s start the violence.’
32
Chase crept across the sand, hunched low. He had watched the camp from the dune long enough to get an idea of the routes of any patrols - and their attitudes to their job.
Both were sloppy. There were only two men strolling the perimeter, clearly bored and annoyed at missing out on the loud, macho camaraderie going on round the fires. They didn’t expect anyone else to be out here. Even obvious hiding places - behind rocks, among gnarled and scrubby bushes - were being ignored.
Their loss.
Chase dropped into a dip, lying flat as he heard plodding footsteps pass. Raising his head, he saw one of the guards heading away, spending more time looking longingly towards the fires than into the darkness of the desert. Nobody in the direction the man had just come. He crawled along the shallow ditch until he reached a long-dead bush, and lay behind it. The nearest tent was about fifty feet away, a pair of horses tethered beside it.
One of the Janjaweed came round the tent - and walked towards Chase.
Chase very slowly lifted his gun. Even in the low light the man would be able to pick out sudden movements.
He was still advancing, one hand hovering near his holstered pistol. Had he seen him? Chase couldn’t imagine how, but he was striding right for the bush. He brought the Browning up, ready to fire.
The man stopped, less than six feet from him, only the twisted branches of the bush between them. He looked down . . .
And opened his fly.
Chase forced himself not to flinch away from the spray as the man unleashed a splattering stream of urine on to the bush. Which just kept coming. How much had the bastard drunk?
Finally, the torrent eased off . . . then started again, a second wind before it finally trickled to nothing. The man made a satisfied sound, then fastened himself up and turned away. By now, the other guard had come round the camp; the two men exchanged a few words before the urinator went back to join his fellows and the patrol trudged on.
Chase disgustedly wiped his face, then peered round the bush. Pisso’s little excursion would work to his advantage: he could follow the new set of tracks straight into the camp without the guards wondering where they had come from.
He waited for both men to move out of sight, then quickly crossed the sands to the nearest tent. He was uncomfortably aware as he traversed the open space that Sophia was almost certainly tracking him through the rifle scope - if for any reason she decided that he had outlived his usefulness to her, he could be dead before he even heard the crack of the Lee-Enfield.
But he reached his destination. Glancing round the tent, he saw the circle of Humvees not far away. He also saw reflections of flames in their windows; they were close to one of the Janjaweed campfires.
Giving the horses a wide berth in case his presence spooked them, he hurried to another tent, then into cover between two of the parked technicals. One of them, a Toyota Hilux pickup, was missing its cab. The bent stubs of metal poking up from behind the gaps where the doors had once been suggested it had rolled over at some point, and rather than waste a still-working engine the Janjaweed had simply sawn off the flattened roof. He glanced inside, seeing the key still in the ignition - with a plastic Hello Kitty key ring dangling from it. He almost smiled at the incongruity, then moved to the front of the truck.
The nearest Humvee was not far away. The men round the fire nearby mostly had their backs to him. Nobody in sight in the other direction. He rose to his full height, looking for signs of movement inside the circle of Covenant vehicles—
One of the Janjaweed emerged from a tent - and saw him.
For a moment, neither man moved. Chase’s gun hand was hidden from his view behind the Hilux. He slowly raised it . . .
The man stared at him disdainfully, then turned and walked away towards one of the other groups of loud, whooping thugs. Chase realised what had happened. The militiaman had assumed he was one of the Covenant troopers - in the shifting orange half-light, his pale, dusty clothes could easily be mistaken for their camo fatigues.
He held back until the man moved away, then strode to the Humvee. He made sure nobody was watching, then dropped and rolled underneath it. The Covenant men inside the circle wouldn’t be as gullible.
He could see one of them approaching. He waited for the patrol to pass, then rolled out from under the Humvee and scurried between two of the domes. He knew where Nina’s tent was, and stayed low as he headed for it.
He stopped as he saw another Covenant trooper sitting on a folding chair outside Nina’s illuminated tent. A TAR-21 rifle lay across his lap. ‘Bollocks,’ Chase whispered. There was enough open space between the tents for the soldier to see him and bring up his gun before he could get close enough for a knife attack, and if he fired a shot the entire camp would be alerted.
He needed another way . . .
He backed up, weaving between the tents as he followed a circuitous route to bring him round behind Nina’s tent, watching for the men on patrol. One passed; Chase darted to his destination and took out the knife. He wouldn’t have long before the other man came round - if he didn’t make it inside in time, he would be in plain view. Jabbing the knife through the fabric at the base of the curved frame, he quickly drew it across to cut a slit. When it was wide enough to fit through, he ducked inside—
The heavy base of a battery-powered lamp came within an inch of smashing down on his head.
‘Eddie!’ squeaked Nina, just barely arresting the blow.
‘Shh! Chase hissed frantically, a finger to his lips. He glanced back through the hole, seeing the patrolling trooper walking past.
Nina put down the lamp beside the slit and hugged him. ‘Oh my God!’ she whispered. ‘You found me, I can’t believe you found me!’
‘I can’t believe it either - we didn’t expect the Covenant to be out here ahead of us.’
‘We?’ She made a face. ‘Oh, so Sophia’s alive too?’
‘’Fraid so. But what about you? Not that I’m complaining, but why’d they bring you along?’
‘They needed me to find Eden, since I was the only one who’d seen the map.’
Chase frowned, noticing a map, several pages of notes and the cylinder she had taken from the frozen city on a folding table. ‘And you told them?’
‘Not . . . exactly,’ she answered hesitantly. He stared at her. ‘What? I don’t know where the damn place is. I was stringing them along!’
‘Yeah, and you strung them along to thirty miles from it!’
‘It’s a big desert!’
‘They’re a big organisation!’
‘Actually, I don’t think they are - they’ve started running out of goons . . . and can w
e discuss this later? Once I’m, y’know, out of here?’
‘Yeah, I think we ought to,’ he snapped as he went to the door flap. The zip was slightly down, giving him an eyehole through which he could see the back of the sitting guard’s head. He hadn’t heard anything - yet.
He moved back to Nina as she gathered her belongings, including the cylinder, and stuffed them into a backpack. ‘Okay, once the patrol goes past, go out and hide under one of the Humvees.’ He realised she wasn’t looking at him, but the door. ‘What?’ He turned his head to see—
‘Shadows!’ hissed Nina, just as he realised what was wrong. The lamp was casting their silhouettes like shadow puppets across the fabric.
Two silhouettes.
And he heard the chair creak as the man outside stood and began to tug down the door’s zip—
Chase hurled his knife as the Covenant trooper looked inside. The blade stabbed deep into his neck with a wet thuk. The man let out a choked, gargling gasp, then toppled through the door. The entire tent shook.
‘Get ready to go,’ Chase told Nina as he pulled the trooper inside and picked up his assault rifle.
Nina dropped to all fours, lifting the cut fabric and peering through.
She saw a pair of boots. ‘Uh-oh.’
The guard outside yanked up the slit, revealing Nina behind it. She looked up at him as he pointed his gun at her face—
Chase fired the TAR-21, sending a sweep of bullets through the tent’s wall above Nina. The Covenant soldier screamed and fell backwards.
‘Get under the Humvee!’ Chase shouted, rushing to the door to locate the other patrolling guard. Nina scrambled through the slit, vaulting the fallen soldier and diving beneath the nearest 4x4. Shouts rose all around, Janjaweed and Covenant responding to the gunfire.
Chase spotted the remaining guard ducking behind a tent. Another burst of fire from the stolen TAR-21, the taut nylon puckering as bullets slashed through it, and the soldier tumbled back into view with several bloody wounds across his chest.
More movement, beyond the Humvees. A group of Janjaweed running to investigate, AK-47s raised.
Chase fired again. Blood puffed from the head of one of the running men, who fell. The others scattered, taking cover behind the armoured vehicles. One militiaman looked round a Humvee and recognised Chase - it was the man who had ignored him earlier, assuming he was a member of the Covenant.
He wasn’t ignoring him now, ducking back and yelling. More men were coming. Chase fired a last couple of shots, felling another Janjaweed, then retreated into the tent and exited through the hole.
Sophia heard gunfire from her vantage point atop the dune. She had been tracking Chase through the Lee-Enfield’s scope until losing sight of him amongst the tents; now, she swept her sights back and forth, hunting for targets.
She found one. ‘Well, well,’ she said as she lined up the crosshairs on the white hair. ‘Goodbye, Mr Callum . . .’
Callum stood with Vogler and Zamal, the latter engaged in a shouting match with Hamed. Covenant troops had moved to protect their leaders, facing off against the militiamen. ‘One of your men shot at us!’ the Janjaweed leader yelled in Arabic.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ Zamal replied, ‘but it wasn’t us.’
One of Hamed’s lieutenants, the man who had seen Chase, ran to them. ‘I saw him! It was a white man, like him!’ He shoved Callum in the chest, knocking him back a step—
Half the man’s head blew apart in an explosive shower that splattered across the crowd of Janjaweed.
For a moment, nobody moved, frozen in shock.
Then the guns on both sides came up.
The Covenant forces, better trained, fired first, taking down eight men in an instant.
But there were more than eight men facing them. AKs blazed, the Janjaweed firing wildly on full auto. Three Covenant troopers went down, spouting blood.
Vogler, Zamal and Callum ran, their remaining soldiers covering them as they fired into the crowd. Hamed dived the other way, using his men as shields. ‘Defensive positions!’ Vogler yelled. ‘Get to the Humvees!’
Sophia humphed at the results of her shot. She tried to track Callum, but the scene below was too chaotic. ‘Arse,’ she muttered, searching for other targets.
Chase joined Nina beneath the Humvee. ‘Not quite what I planned, but it’ll do,’ he said, hearing the thudding bark of AKs against the crisp chatter of the Covenant’s more modern weapons.
‘Great, they’re fighting each other,’ said Nina, ‘but we’re still right in the middle of them! How are we going to get out of here?’
He looked over at the parked technicals. ‘We’ll nick one of those.’
More gunfire and shouting from behind. The Covenant survivors were forming a protective circle, using the Humvees for cover. ‘If we can get to them.’
Chase saw another Janjaweed run from a tent, carrying a rocket launcher. ‘Now’s a good time to try!’ They crawled out and ran for the pickups.
Shots whipped past as a Janjaweed saw them. Chase grabbed Nina and dived behind a tent as more bullets tore through the tattered material. ‘Stay down!’ he told her, switching the gun to full auto and twisting to return fire. The spray of bullets carved across the gunman’s stomach.
A sound, close by, the clack of a rifle’s charging handle. Chase rolled to see another Janjaweed run out from behind the technicals, the fear and confusion on his face replaced by anger as he saw the Englishman.
Chase whipped up his gun, pulled the trigger—
It clicked.
Empty.
The Janjaweed gave Chase a sadistic smile - and a ragged hole blew open in his chest, the impact of a .303 rifle bullet slamming him to the ground.
The echoing crack of the Lee-Enfield reached Chase a moment later. ‘Cheers, Soph,’ he said, dropping the empty TAR-21 and drawing the Browning. ‘Okay, Nina, we—’ He saw one of the Janjaweed hoisting a rocket launcher on to his shoulder, lining it up on the Humvees. ‘—need to get the fuck down!’
He threw himself on to her as the rocket-propelled grenade streaked from the tubular launcher.
It slammed into one of the Humvees, the explosion tearing off the wheels and flipping the whole vehicle end over end amongst the Covenant’s tents. One trooper was torn apart by shrapnel, another crushed under the massive 4x4. It came to rest with its smouldering underbelly pointing into the air at an angle, nose half buried in the sand.
Whoops and cheers came from the Janjaweed. ‘Jesus!’ Nina gasped. ‘Glad you didn’t decide to take that truck!’
‘Didn’t like the colour,’ said Chase. He helped her up, then picked his way towards the technicals, pistol at the ready. Gunfire sounded all around as the Janjaweed moved in on the Covenant, bullets clanking off the Humvees’ armour. Screams pierced the firelit night.
Chase crouched lower, coming round a half-collapsed tent to reach the technicals. He indicated the one with a key in its ignition. ‘That’s our ride.’
‘It’s pointing the wrong way.’ The Hilux was facing into the camp, towards the Humvees.
‘That’s why they invented steering wheels. Come on.’
The militiamen’s attention was focused on the Covenant, nobody watching the fringes of the camp. They reached the first technical, a rust-pocked old Ford pickup. Chase moved round the truck’s rear, seeing one of the campfires, now abandoned, not far away. Waving Nina on, he headed for the decapitated Hilux—
A Janjaweed jumped from the back of another technical near the fire, carrying a case of RPG rounds. He saw Chase - and yelled a warning, dropping the box and clutching for his AK.
Chase snapped up the Browning and fired, hitting the man’s arm and spinning him against one of the petrol cans strapped to the pickup’s side. He reeled back, shrieking, before falling on to the fire in an explosion of flying embers. The shrieks became much louder as he leapt back up, clothes and hair aflame.
Half a dozen Janjaweed ran round the first pickup, guns
raised.
Chase fired again - not at the militiamen, but at the petrol can.
A jet of fuel spurted from the hole - and splashed over the burning man as he staggered in blind agony. Flames surged back along the gushing petrol—
The can exploded, liquid fire sluicing out. The screaming man was consumed, as was a second, larger can, which blew up and bowled the pickup into the approaching gunmen inside a roiling fireball.
Chase reached the Hilux, shielding his face from the heat, and looked round to see if there were any more Janjaweed posing an immediate threat.
There were. A man on the edge of a group near the Humvees pulled the pin from a grenade, about to throw it at the Hilux—
His wrist was blown in half by one of Sophia’s bullets. The severed hand plopped to the ground at his feet, still clutching the grenade . . . which exploded, lacerated Janjaweed flying in all directions.
But there were still plenty more left, and the Covenant troops to worry about as well. Chase looked at the pistol in his hand - then up at the weapon in the pickup’s rear bed. It was an old Kalashnikov PK, a light anti-aircraft gun being used here as a heavy machine gun, a belt of ammunition already loaded.
Definitely more firepower than the Browning.
‘You drive,’ he told Nina as he climbed into the back of the Hilux. ‘I’ll shoot.’
Nina entered the open cab, searching for the key. ‘Cute,’ she said, finding Hello Kitty. ‘Drive where?’
‘I’ll tell you when I’ve shot a big enough hole to fit through!’ He swung the gun round towards the Humvees - and pulled the trigger.
The machine gun roared, the recoil threatening to rip the makeshift mount from the pickup’s floor. Chase held on and swept the PK back and forth. Every fifth round was a tracer, green lines from the Russian ammunition streaking across the camp like lasers, but Chase was barely able to see them through the staccato flames erupting from the muzzle. The flanks of the Humvees cratered, tyres bursting and dropping them with a crash on to their run-flat steel inserts. The onslaught was enough to shatter even the armoured windows.