The Red Syndrome (39 page)

"Nobody's chasing us; that's the best sign," I answered. "There was a
scary moment when I heard noises like a bunch of things falling while I
was wrestling with the Jeep.

"It was us," conceded Oded. "We accidentally dropped a bunch of the
jerricans."

"Hell," I said, "I thought we'd be caught red-handed. Thank God these
villagers work hard and sleep tight."

I moved the gearshift into first and moved ahead slowly, as if we were
tiptoeing away.

"I managed to steal two matchboxes and two shovels from the grocery,"
said Arnon. "They could come in handy."

"Are you sure we're going in the right direction, heading east?" asked
Oded.

"As far as I can remember, we came in from the other way. I was brought
from Tripoli, which should be northwest of here. So generally speaking we
should be okay."

I kept the engine in low torque until we were no longer within hearing
distance of the village, and then accelerated gradually. It was dark, and the
road conditions did not allow speeding. I hadn't come this far and survived this much to be killed in a car accident.

The jeep's engine suddenly died. All at once everything went quiet. The
jeep rolled for a few more seconds and stopped.

"What happened?" asked Arnon.

"I have no idea," I said. "The engine just died."

I got out and lifted the hood. It was so dark I could barely see the
engine. I sent my hand slowly to check the wiring; maybe a connection
had worked loose. I couldn't find anything. A warm breeze came, but the
silence around us and the black shadows of the nearby hill gave me a chill.
We were just a few miles from the village. Unless we got going soon, we
could be found easily.

"Do we have gas?" asked Oded.

"When we left, the fuel gauge indicated half full. We couldn't have consumed that much already. But let's check." We unloaded one jerrican
and filled up the tank. I hot-wired the engine again and, after a few
repeated pumps of the accelerator while we held our breath, the engine
roared to life. We jumped in and continued with our journey. "This gauge
must be broken," I said. "In fact, it's stuck. It didn't change when we filled
up the tank."

"How far do you estimate the Egyptian border is?" asked Oded when
he'd calmed down.

Arnon turned his head toward his colleague, who sat cramped on the
back bench. "I don't know exactly, but I assume less than two hundred
miles," he answered, still sticking to English.

"It's okay, we can speak Hebrew now," I said, and the resulting laughter
eased some tension. "Why do you assume that?"

"Because everyone was telling us how far we are from Egypt. I think
they were deliberately exaggerating."

"I think Dan is right. The dialect they use here is Egyptian Bedawi,
which may indicate we're closer to Egypt than we think."

When we were about ten or fifteen miles from the village, I tried to
determine our location. The "main road" was just a plateau, as wide as we
could see, though we couldn't see much. To maintain course, I followed
the tracks of vehicles that had gone down the road before, hoping they
had also aimed northeast. Ten minutes later I turned on the headlights.
It was far too dangerous to drive in such complete darkness without
lights, maps, or navigational equipment. Driving over a cliff is easy, and
then it's too late to go back.

The light made it easier. It calmed us down, although we were still
quite tense. It was a strange feeling, driving in such an enormous, empty
space, alone in the desert, in complete darkness but for our headlights,
with no road nor any sure direction.

"How long do you think we've been gone?" I asked, breaking the
silence.

"About an hour," said Arnon. "Since we took the village's only motor
vehicle, and without a telephone, it'll be awhile before they can alert the
-" He paused. "Who are they in fact going to notify? The Libyan police? I don't think they even know we're in Libya; the Slaves of Allah? I suspect they don't have a regular post nearby."

"Maybe all they have is some loose contacts in Tripoli. But who
knows?" said Oded.

"It's a good question," I said. "Maybe the army, since they control
everything here, but I wouldn't write off the Slaves of Allah so fast. I'm
sure they're spread all over."

We drove awhile in silence. I was too tense to talk. The horizon was
slowly getting brighter behind the hills, and in a few short hours the sun
would begin to rise. The dirt road we were taking was more and more difficult to navigate, although we could see better now that we'd become
accustomed to the darkness. The terrain was confusing, ranging from
sand dunes to salt marsh to gerbel, a highly fragmented rocky terrain.
Some areas were flat, while others were undulating plains of gravel or
sand. There were several low mountain ranges as well as numerous dry
creekbeds that widened out into plains. The air was cool, probably fifty
degrees, but I knew it wouldn't last; soon the temperature would climb to
ninety or so. Winter in the desert.

"We should stop for the day," I suggested. "It would be faster to travel
during the day, but for us it could be too dangerous. We could be
spotted."

Neither Oded nor Arnon objected, so I pulled the jeep behind a low
hill, in a depression between the dunes next to a bush. I jumped out,
stretched my arms, and immediately inhaled a strong smell that reminded
me of my childhood days in Tel Aviv: The bush was in fact a mimosa
eucalyptus, a tree with yellow flowers, thorny branches, and an intoxicating smell.

"I want to make sure we're heading in the right direction," I said.

"We don't have a map or a compass, and I didn't see any road signs,"
said Arnon, not hiding his skepticism. "How can you navigate when each
hill looks like every other hill?" Apparently desert survival had not been
part of Arnon's Mossad training.

It had been part of mine. I looked at the sky; the sun had come out
from behind the hills. "I can do without a compass or maps," I said. I took the shovel from the back of the jeep and stuck it vertically in the sand. I
marked the top of its shadow with juice squeezed from the mimosa
flowers. Approximately fifteen minutes later I placed the shovel's stick in
the ground, marking the tip of the new shadow position. I drew in the
sand a straight line that joined the two points. "One end is east, and the
other west," I solemnly declared. "Anyway we can always tell by looking
at the position of the sun."

"So are we going in the right direction?" Oded asked.

"I'm sure we're heading generally toward Egypt," I said. "But whether
that's the right direction, I don't know. You saw that the `main road' we
took was in fact ten miles wide."

"It seems a kind of natural passage through the desert rocky hills," said
Oded. "But we're nearing the deep desert that divides Libya and Egypt;
we might be faced with a mountain of sand. This jeep won't be able to
pass over it, and we'd never make it on foot."

"Do you know of anyone who's made it?" asked Arnon. "I'd hate to find
out that crossing Antarctica in the winter would have been easier."

"I know of only one successful east-west crossing of the Great Sand
Sea. But that was far south of here," said Oded.

"Then what do you suggest?" I asked Oded.

"My guess is that we'll avoid the Great Sand Sea if we aim north," he
answered.

"Well," I suggested, "I know U.S. military reconnaissance satellites monitor these areas to track army movements. Libya is a hostile power, Khadafi
is unpredictable, and Egypt is a U.S. ally. If we can get there, we could
attract their attention somehow."

"We can only hope the U.S. has intelligence showing that we were
exiled here; otherwise, we'd probably be regarded by the satellite sensors
as nomads on their camels, and ignored."

"Can we try to attract their attention now? Why wait?" asked Arnon.

"Good point. Why wait?" agreed Oded. "We could make some activity
and hope."

"I think we should get as close as we can to the Egyptian border first.
Anyway, rescue can come only from the Egyptian side."

Oded checked the ground by kicking it with his toes, and picked up
some sand in his palm.

"What are you doing?" asked Arnon.

"Looking for the right spot to dig in," I answered for Oded.

Oded nodded. "In the desert, the surface temperature could be almost
twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the air. We'd better dig in."

I pointed toward a brownish spot. "We should break through the crust
here," I suggested. "Once we dig down two feet we get into soft sand,
where it could be twenty degrees cooler. Let's build a desert shelter."

I took one shovel and started digging; Arnon took the other and commenced efforts several feet away. Within an hour and a half we had dug
a trench two feet deep, seven feet long, and six feet wide. Oded piled the
sand we'd dug around three sides of the trench, creating a mound.

"Take your shirts off," I said, while taking off mine. "We need to tie
them together to use as cover."

Oded and Arnon crawled in, while I secured the makeshift cover with
rocks. I dug in deeper near the end of the trench, which we left without
a mound so that we could get in and out more easily. We crawled in. The
air was indeed cooler inside.

"I'm dead tired," I told Arnon, who was so close to me I could smell his
breath. It smelled of hunger. "You know, the Bedouins say that the desert
is like a bad spouse: hot during the day and cold at night."

I looked to my left. Oded was already sound asleep. I closed my eyes.

Oded woke first, Arnon and I soon after. We removed the makeshift
cover we'd put over our trench. My muscles were stiff and my bones
aching, but we had had a much-needed rest. We each ate ten dates and
shared one of the two pita breads we'd hidden in our pockets.

"I'm worried about the safety of the water. We could all get sick, but we
must get liquids or we're in real trouble."

We looked at each other, and drank the foul-tasting water out of a container. I didn't know whether the taste was so bad because the container
was dirty, the water polluted, or both.

"Where are we?" asked Arnon.

"The odometer isn't working, but I think we drove eighty to ninety
miles in about five or six hours. Not bad given the darkness and the conditions of the road," I said.

"Look at that," said Oded calmly, but I sensed a small degree of excitement in his voice. He pointed toward something moving in the sand.

A snake," I said jumping to my feet. It was approximately two feet long
and moved slowly in the sand away from us.

"A sand viper," said Oded. "It usually avoids confrontations and doesn't
bite unless it senses danger."

"And when it does?" I asked.

"The venom is hemotoxic; it attacks your blood circulation, destroys
blood vessels, and you die from internal bleeding. But if we catch him, he
could be a nice meal."

"I'm not that desperate," said Arnon. The wind started blowing
stronger, hurling dry bushes into the air. Sand was getting into our eyes.

"A sandstorm is coming," shouted Oded. "Let's get under cover."

The wind became wilder, and the surface of the dunes was awash with
billowing sand. The wind sounded like ocean waves breaking on a beach.
Arnon ran to our trench.

"No," shouted Oded, "we'll be buried alive, go to the jeep." We jumped
inside and closed the canvas door.

"We must cover the hood, or sand will get into the engine and radiator," I said. I ran outside and chased down our shirts, still tied together
and barely held down by a rock near our trench. I tied the shirtsleeves
over the jeep's radiator. Howling winds whipped up sand, which flew
through the cracks in the jeep's fabric top to our faces and hands and got
into our eyes, noses, and mouths.

"We must drink," shouted Oded; "these storms suck up any drop of moisture in the air. If you have difficulty breathing, let me know. Most of the time
it's caused by a rise in the atmospheric electricity as a result of the sand friction. Don't panic."

Although the jeep's canvas doors were closed, sand and dust still flew
in, causing our heads to ache and making us cough. We felt nauseous. We
sat in the jeep with our heads down. There was no point in talking because the sound of the storm drowned out everything. One long hour
later, the wind subsided.

"Let's go," said Arnon. I looked at the sun; soon it would disappear
behind the hills in the west. I shorted the switch by crossing the wires
again. The engine cranked twice, and stopped. I tried again while we held
our breath. Nothing moved; only the accelerated rhythm of my heart.

I lifted the hood. The coil cable was loose. I fastened it, tried again, and
the engine came to life. I shifted into front-wheel drive and we were
slowly able to uproot ourselves from the dune, with the double manpower
boost of Arnon and Oded pushing.

Although the sandstorm had ended, the air was still full of dust that
blanketed our faces, our ears, nostrils, and mouths. Oded looked like he'd
fallen into a barrel of flour: His face was almost completely white. "You've
aged," I said, smiling.

"You should see yourself," he said, trying to clean his face with his
hands. I looked at the side mirror; I was as thoroughly covered with the
fine dust as my two partners.

After driving for an hour, just before sundown, I realized we were going
nowhere; in fact, I was afraid we were going in circles. Some sights I saw
resembled others we had passed earlier - similar hills and desert trees. I
stopped the jeep.

"What happened?" they both asked.

"I'm not sure where we're going, and we can't go on like this. We'll use
up all of our fuel. We need to be certain where we're going."