The Heretic's Treasure (37 page)

Except Ben wasn’t going to let that happen. Not today. He dived back inside the burning train, battled through the smoke to what was left of his and Kirby’s sleeper compartment, found the holdall among the wreckage, dragged it out and grabbed another grenade.

The three vehicles came roaring in across the sand. The black Nissan on the left, the Dodge on the right, the armed pickup in the middle. The .50-cal spurted flame. Bullets chewed through the smashed train.

‘The rocks!’ Ben yelled at the staggering survivors. ‘Make for the rocks!’

People fled in panic as gunfire churned up the sand. A middle-aged man in a business suit was desperately running for cover, clutching an attaché case, when a long sustained chattering burst from the machine gun pitched him forward with his arms outflung. Papers from his ripped attaché case tumbled across the ground.

But he was the last victim that the gunner would ever claim. The fire control system diode turned green as Ben’s sights locked onto the pickup. The FN blasted its grenade and the truck exploded violently. The other vehicle swerved out of its path as it flipped and rolled.

Ben loaded another grenade. Aimed at Kamal’s Nissan and fired. But the driver somehow managed to swerve out of his line of fire. The grenade impacted on the rusty Dodge and kicked it away like a toy. It blew apart into a million pieces as the fuel tank ruptured.

The Nissan was the only one left now. The driver banked sharply off course and the engine rasped as he accelerated away in the sand, wheels spinning. Ben chased the vehicle with a long burst of automatic fire, the FN bucking in his hands. Then his magazine was empty and the Nissan was disappearing fast into the morning heat haze.

He lowered the rifle. It was over for now. Kamal had taken a battering, down from eight men to three. But Ben knew he hadn’t seen the last of him.

He ran back to the small crowd of survivors huddled among the rocks. Faces watched him, pale and frightened, streaked with dust and tears.

‘Will they come back?’ a woman asked.

‘No,’ Ben replied. ‘They’re gone.’

Suddenly the questions were firing from all sides.

‘I can’t find my wife.’

‘What’s going to happen to us?’

‘How far are we from Aswan?’

Then a small Egyptian man in his late fifties stepped up. His suit was dusty and rumpled, and his long, thin face bore the melancholy look of someone who’d seen a lot of suffering in the past and was resigned to the knowledge that he’d see a lot more in the future. ‘I am a doctor. Let me help you.’

Ten minutes later, the wounded were being attended to as well as the doctor could manage with the limited first-aid kit from the guard’s van. All the water supplies they could find were gathered together in the shade of a rock. Ben used the radio from one of the dead cops to call the attack in to the Cairo police. Emergency teams would be on their way. He gave Kirby the rifle and the holdall to look after as he ran the length of the train, pulling open doors, searching through corridors and sleeper compartments, looking for more survivors. The first carriage he searched was sitting at a crazy angle, propped up against the one in front of it. Inside, he found a frail old man lying splayed out on the sloping floor. His neck was broken. It looked like he’d been sleeping when the crash happened, come flying off his bunk and hit the washbasin. Ben felt deeply saddened by the sight, and his hands were shaking with rage as he lifted the body out and laid it carefully on the ground outside.

In a short time, he found four more survivors in the wreck, three of them walking wounded and one with a concussion, and delivered them to safety among the rocks. But there were more dead than alive inside the train. The driver had taken a bullet as he sat at the controls. The guard nearest to the
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strike had had his throat blown out by shrapnel, the other had been crushed in the impact of the derailment. All three plainclothes cops had been shot dead. One of them had caught a burst of machine-gun fire across the torso that had separated him into two pieces. The same string of bullets had killed a young couple as they sat together on their bunk.

Eleven bodies in all, not counting the charred remains that everyone knew were still trapped inside the smoking husks of the two badly burned-out and overturned carriages. Their recovery would be the terrible task facing the paramedic teams and fire crew, when they arrived.

Ben arranged the dead in a row on the ground a few yards from the train, and a woman passenger who turned out to be an ex-nurse helped him to cover them with sheets and blankets that they weighed down with rocks. Then he gathered up the weapons from the three dead cops, in case they fell into the wrong hands. Finding a fire extinguisher in the guard’s van, he used it to douse the flames in the carriages that were still smouldering.

Once he was assured that the fires were all out and the survivors were safe, he returned to their sleeper compartment and muttered a quick thanks to God that the fire hadn’t spread that far. Digging through broken glass and wreckage, he retrieved his phone, cash and the laminated photocopy of the Wenkaura map that Claudel had made for him.

As he worked, he wondered how Kamal had caught up with them. Had Claudel betrayed them? It was more likely that Kamal had pressed it out of him somehow. Which probably meant the Frenchman was dead as well-but it was too late to worry about that.

The real concern was that if Kamal had known to come after the train, it was certain he knew where the treasure was. In which case eliminating the opposition wasn’t the terrorist’s only goal. He wouldn’t return to the scene of the crime. He and his remaining men were already heading for the Sudan. It was a race now.

The sun was rising, and it was getting hot. Walking back to the rocks, Ben found the doctor and ex-nurse treating a woman with a lacerated arm. He kneeled down next to them and briefed them on the situation. ‘The emergency teams won’t be long,’ he said. ‘You’re in charge now.’

‘Where are you going?’ the doctor asked.

‘I’d rather not be around when the police get here,’ Ben said.

The doctor’s face creased into a sad, faint smile. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you are. But you saved all these people. If you had not been here…’

‘I wish I could have done more.’ Ben stood up. He hated leaving the scene, but he trusted his improvised medical team to take care of things.

He scanned the horizon. The Nile was no more than a couple of kilometres away. And wherever in Egypt you could find greenery and water, you could find people and supplies. And motor vehicles ready and waiting to be bought, hired or stolen. There was always a way.

He turned to Kirby. ‘We’re moving on.’

It was a long, sweltering walk. As Ben strode quickly along with the heavy holdall over his shoulder and Kirby stumbled sullenly in his wake, the sand underfoot became soil and the wispy tufts of yellowed grass became green and lush. Finally, as they topped a rise, they looked down and saw the roofs and winding streets of a small village below them. Beyond that, clusters of palm trees and the glittering blue waters of the Nile, dotted with boats and barges.

Ben was quietly thankful for Kirby’s subdued mood as they headed down a grassy slope towards the first of the buildings. The task ahead of him now was a serious undertaking, and required careful planning. Driving hundreds of miles through the desert was no joke, even under favourable conditions. He’d been counting on picking up supplies at Aswan, and only hoped this village would be able to provide what he needed.

The dusty streets wound between traditional houses and buildings, some of them obviously dating back to medieval times at least. Ben and Kirby were the only Westerners in the place, and drew a few curious glances from the garbed natives. Wandering into the centre of the settlement, they came across a wide open square filled with people and livestock and market stalls. Men in white, brown and lilac robes, swathed in desert headgear, standing alongside their camels and goats tethered up for sale. A small herd of mules stood placidly chomping on a pile of silage that was being forked down from an old trailer. The hazy air was filled with the animated chatter of traders and punters as they negotiated and bartered, the rasping croak of camels, the braying of donkeys. If it hadn’t been for the occasional truck rumbling by, and the couple of dusty old motorbikes parked at the edge of the marketplace, the scene could have belonged to any century stretching back to Biblical times and beyond.

Ben and Kirby wandered through the throng, eagerly followed by a stream of children all with something to sell and jubilant at finding strangers in their village. Kirby was staring around him in fascination, as though he’d landed on another planet. Walking up to a tethered camel and stroking its bony flank, he collected a generous jet of spit in the eye from the animal and a stream of abuse from its owner.

Ben grabbed his arm. ‘You’re embarrassing me.’ Kirby pouted and wiped his face with his sleeve as Ben led him away to search for supplies. At a provisions stall, Ben bought a large jar of honey, some tea, a big bag of dried goat meat in strips, nuts and desiccated fruit. ‘Fresh food spoils fast in the desert,’ he explained to Kirby.

The historian frowned in puzzlement at the jar of honey and was about to ask what it was for, but Ben was already deep in discussion with the stall’s owner. The trader smiled and pointed as he replied in quick-fire Arabic.

‘What was that all about?’ Kirby asked as Ben led him towards the edge of the market.

‘I asked him if he knew where I could buy a vehicle good for the desert, and he told me that his cousin, Mohammed, runs a garage at the far side of the village.’

‘Where the hell are we, anyway?’

‘About three days’ drive from where we need to be. So walk a little faster.’

An hour later, Ben was sitting in a shady back office over a tall glass of lime juice with his new friend, Mohammed, and shelling out Egyptian currency for what he hoped was their ideal ticket to the wilderness of the Sudan. Mohammed had three off-road vehicles for sale, and the one Ben had picked out was an ex-Libyan military Toyota. It was ancient and primitive, and large areas of its matt-green bodywork had been badly dented and restraightened with a hammer more than once; but it was all set up for desert driving with high-level suspension, new sand tyres, a spare wheel on the back and another on the bonnet, a full toolkit including a military folding shovel, and eight large metal jerrycans. You could never carry enough spare fuel in the desert, and Ben had Mohammed fill them to capacity as well as the tank.

It took another hour to gather together as many supplies as Ben could find-plastic litre bottles of Baraka mineral water and two belt canteens, compass, firelighting kit, a compact solid fuel stove, two small aluminium pots and two tin mugs, and goatskins for the cold desert nights. A spice merchant sold him some small vials of geranium and lavender oils to deter mosquitoes and other insects-an old trick Ben had learned in the army, just as effective as any chemical repellent. Lastly he bought a pair of loose-fitting cotton tunics and two Bedouin headscarves for them to wear.

‘I’ll look like a tit in that,’ Kirby complained.

‘You already do. And you don’t want to be in the desert sun with your head exposed.’ Ben loaded the last of the stuff into the back of the truck and slammed the tailgate shut.

‘I’d kill for a cold pint of beer,’ Kirby said mournfully.

‘This is a Muslim village. Try finding a bar. Also, you don’t want to be drinking alcohol in the heat. You’ll dehydrate in seconds. And watch your piss. If it starts to turn deep yellow, you’re not drinking enough water. Remember, if you get sick, I’m not carting you back to civilisation. I’ll leave you where you drop, and the sand spiders will have you.’

‘Thanks a million, friend.’

‘It was your decision to come along.’ Ben climbed into the Toyota, slammed the door and fired up the engine. Kirby hauled himself up into the passenger seat.

It was midday-the worst time for setting off into the desert. In an ideal situation, Ben would have waited another four hours-but this wasn’t an ideal situation. Kamal already had a long head start on them and there was no time to waste.

Ben pointed the Toyota southwest and they set off. It wasn’t long before they left the verdant Nile corridor behind and were heading into the wilderness. They drove along with the windows wide open, but the air blasting in was impossibly hot. Kirby constantly fanned himself with the laminated map, slumped in his seat, his hair plastered and dripping with sweat. After a while he fell asleep, and Ben focused on driving.

For the first few hours, the road was metalled and quite busy in places with huge trucks that flew along, with scant regard for other traffic. Ben cautiously passed a couple of military patrols, but nobody stopped him.

Hours passed, Kirby slept on and Ben kept pushing the Toyota hard and fast. Later in the day, the road had thinned out to a track. An hour after that, Ben was driving on sand and forced to keep his speed down to reduce fuel consumption. Kirby drifted in and out of his doze, and they barely spoke. Only once every few hours did they see another vehicle passing the other way. The terrain was as flat as the sea, stretching out to infinity all around. It was more like navigating a ship than driving a car. With no visual references it was all too easy to drift off course, and Ben had to keep checking the compass to maintain their southwesterly bearing.

A tiny dot on the horizon. He watched as it grew larger, until the shape of the armed Land Rover was shimmering close in the heat haze. The vehicle flashed at them to halt. Soldiers climbed down, guns slung low.

‘Who are they?’ Kirby asked anxiously.

‘Egyptian army.’

‘What is this, a shakedown?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What’ll we do?’

Ben said nothing to that.

The officer in charge swaggered casually up to them and leaned on the door sill. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator sunglasses. ‘Salaam Alaykum.’

‘Alaykum Salaam,’ Ben replied with a respectful bow of the head.