CHAPTER 18

The sun was low in the sky when Girling and Abdullah rode up the dried river bed that lay in the long shadows of the Horns of Shaytan.

The wadi had known death. It was not just the physical evidence - a camel’s rotting carcass lay a dozen yards away - there was a malevolence there too. Girling felt its imprint deep within the rocks. He almost found himself believing Abdullah’s talk of genies and spirits.

They urged the camels on, following the course of the wadi deep into the mountain range.

After many miles and with the light diminishing, Abdullah pulled up his camel and the beast sank to the ground.

‘What are you doing?’ Girling asked.

‘We camp here for the night.’

‘No, my friend. We do not rest until we have found the halikubtar.’

Abdullah raised his hands to the sky. ‘We have searched for hours with no sign of it. Perhaps those who gossiped in the market were mistaken.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Girling said. But inside, he was beginning to have his doubts.

‘And it is almost dark,’ Abdullah said.

‘But not quite.’

‘I should never have told you about the halikubtar, ya majnoon.’

‘Think of the money, Abdullah.’

The bedouin groaned. ‘What good is money in this devilish place?’

They rode for another half-hour, until the light was so poor Girling could see scarcely a few yards ahead. Then, without warning, Abdullah stopped.

Girling no longer had the stomach to argue. ‘Khalas,’ he said.

In the gathering gloom, the bedouin scurried down the side of a sandy depression in the wadi bed and was lost from sight. A moment later, Girling heard a muffled shout.

‘Come quickly, ya majnoon.’

Girling slid off his saddle and stumbled after him. He tripped over the edge of the hole, the sharp drop taking him by surprise. He tumbled down its side to land at Abdullah’s feet.

Abdullah threw his arms out expansively, gesturing to the dimensions of the hole. ‘Is not this great trough the work of the djinn, ‘agnabi?’

Girling said nothing.

‘Tell me, ‘agnabi. How was it made?’

Girling looked around him. It seemed an unnatural hole in the otherwise flat river bed. ‘A flash-flood perhaps.’ Then his bare foot touched something hard but smooth beneath the surface of the sand. ‘This was made by man, not spirits.’

He pulled a lighter from his robes and flicked the flint, the sparks like tracer in the darkness. The flame danced in the light, warm breeze that blew in from the far-off shores of the Red Sea.

The hole was big, probably thirty feet across. And deep.

He reached down and pulled the object from the sand and held it up to the light. Its geometry was almost perfect; a block of aluminium, two feet long and rectangular, with over thirty holes drilled into one face. He ran the light up and down the sides free of the perforations and saw the burnished identification plate, its Cyrillic indecipherable but for the serial number and the machine for which it was intended, a Mil Mi-24J.

The hole was big, because a helicopter had crashed here and then been removed. The flare dispenser he held in his hands, its thirty-two cartridges devised to seduce heat-seeking missiles away from their intended target, had been missed by the salvagers.

His thrill turned to disappointment. Girling had been positive he would find an American helicopter. But instead it was Soviet. And the Egyptians had Soviet-built helicopters coming out of their ears.

He let the flare rack fall to the ground and mounted the slope towards the place where they had left the camels.

Abdullah had been watching him expectantly. ‘There was a halikubtar here, ya majnoon?’

Girling turned to him. ‘Yes, my friend. You did well.’

‘Then why are you not pleased?’

‘I was hoping we would find a different machine. But ma’lesh.’ No matter. ‘My search is over.’

When Abdullah came over the lip of the depression, he found Girling standing perfectly still, as if something had turned him to stone.

Girling swung round. There was a look of awe on his face. ‘My God,’ he whispered in English. ‘The Russians are here too.’ He let out a whoop of glee that echoed off the valley walls. ‘The Russians and the Americans are here. They’re working this thing together.’

Everything came together in a whirl. The Ilyushin at Machrihanish, Stamen’s visit to the Soviet Embassy the day he was taken, the fact that he had interviewed the Sword over a decade before in that distant corner of the once mighty Soviet Empire, Afghanistan. And now this Mi-24J, a helicopter so new that it wasn’t even listed in the reference books. ‘The Egyptians don’t have any Mi-24s - they never did.’

Abdullah rushed round to confront Girling, but the journalist was so absorbed he could not see him.

Girling laughed out loud. ‘This rescue mission’s a joint operation. They’re both going in together to get the Angels of Judgement. Because the Soviets know who the Angels of Judgement are, they have done all along. This is the New World Order at work.’ He did a little jig in the sand. ‘The Russians know where the Angels of Judgement are, but the Americans don’t. That’s why Ulm came looking for me. He wants to know for himself, because the Russians won’t tell him.’

Abdullah stared at him, horrified. ‘Are you possessed?’

Girling stopped dancing. ‘We found the right hali-kubtar after all,’ he said, reverting to Arabic. And not just the right helicopter. His mind was spinning so fast he didn’t know how to stop it. One piece of metal, a flare dispenser, had unlocked an Aladdin’s cave of information. Not least, it pinpointed Stansell’s source for the story. It hadn’t been the Israelis, the Americans, or the Brits. Lazan had been right. It was the goddamned Russians who’d told him about the Angels of Judgement.

He clapped a friendly hand on the bedouin’s shoulder. ‘So let’s eat.’

They made a fire from wood washed down by flash-floods from the mountains. Abdullah brewed tea, dark brown and sweet, in an old biscuit tin that he kept inside one of the saddlebags. Another yielded their meal, a bag of foule beans that Abdullah mashed into a paste, mixing in maize oil as he went. When he had finished, he motioned for Girling to scoop the glutinous mixture from the bowl with his fingers and gave him some bread to add sustenance to their helpings.

The food was just enough for Girling to forget his hunger and he lay down on the camel blanket. Above him the Milky Way shone with a magical clarity, the pinpoints of light dimmed only by the periodic contrast of shooting stars.

He felt a sudden burning wish for Mona to be there beside him. He would have loved more than anything to have shared this moment with her, to talk it through with her and listen to her soft words of wisdom. He wondered whether she would have seen things the way he saw them. He hoped so, for to him the evidence was indisputable. Stansell had learned of the Angels of Judgement during the cocktail party at the Soviet Embassy, probably from a Russian diplomat who’d got pissed out of his skull and spilled the beans by mistake. On the face of it, Stansell already had his scoop, but being the sort of journalist he was, he had to take it one step further. The name of the Sword had triggered a hunt through past volumes of Dispatches until he struck gold and traced the Sword back to Afghanistan. Knowing of

the links that bound Muslim fundamentalist organizations from around the world, he’d gone to tap a source in the Brotherhood, perhaps the Guide him-self, to push the story that extra bit along. Yet that determination to go further than he ever needed to go had cost Stansell his life. The Brotherhood must have snatched him, knowing that Stansell, more than any-body else, threatened the Angels’ whole operation.

Girling had never believed in anything like an afterlife, but under such a sky, on such a night, it was difficult not to feel that something existed out there for Mona and Stansell. He wondered whether her killer, Abu Tarek, was watching the sky that night. And whether he would ever be given the chance to make Abu Tarek pay.

Abdullah stoked the dying embers. As he did so, Girling saw him shiver.

‘What is it, my friend?’

‘I will get little sleep tonight.’

‘There is nothing to fear from this place.’

‘It is your soul that frightens me, ‘agnabi.’

Girling sat up.

‘Something troubles you,’ Abdullah said. ‘Many times I have felt it while we were riding.’

Girling felt compelled to answer.

‘I lost my wife some years back,’ he said. ‘There is still pain.’

‘How did she die?’

Girling told the story of Asyut and the manner of Mona’s death.

‘I have heard of these people from the towns and cities who do wrongs in the name of our belief.’

‘I cannot forgive them, Abdullah.’

‘Then you will never truly live again, my friend. There is only one path to true happiness and that is forgiveness. Forgive and your pain will cease.’

‘If Islam is vengeful, then so am I,’ Girling said.

‘God says that evil should be rewarded with like evil,’ Abdullah said. ‘But the Koran also says that he who forgives and seeks reconcilement shall be rewarded by God.’ He paused. ‘It is for each man to choose his path. You should make peace with the world, ‘agnabi. That is yours.’

‘That is easy to say, my friend.’

Abdullah sighed and lay back on the sand to sleep. ‘My heart is heavy for you, ‘agnabi.’

The light wind that had brought with it the heat of the Red Sea by day had turned colder and Girling pulled the blanket more tightly around his shoulders. Try as he might, sleep evaded him until the small hours before dawn.

The sound cut into his dreams before Abdullah’s rasping whisper roused him. He had not stirred before because he was convinced that the swishing noise of the blades only existed inside his head.

Girling’s eyes snapped open. The sky had lightened in the east. He had been asleep for an hour, maybe two.

Abdullah shook him hard. His voice was tense. ‘That sound. What is it?’

The canyon reverberated as the blades carved through the air towards them.

It took Girling a moment to focus his mind, a moment longer to appreciate that he, Abdullah and the camels were out in the open, clear of cover.

Girling knew that wherever the machines were going, their course would take them right overhead.

He threw the blanket off his body and sprang to his feet, thinking blindly that it would be enough for him and Abdullah to run for the shelter of the rocks close by. But then he remembered the camels.

Could he risk leaving them out in the open, while he and Abdullah cowered behind the rocks? The camels were alert, their ears twitching to each blade beat that echoed off the rocks. It was as if they sensed he might leave them behind.

‘We must move the camels behind the boulders,’ Girling yelled.

He dragged the first camel to its feet. A moment later Abdullah was by his side.

They cajoled the creatures, their gangling legs resisting attempts to hurry them as the sound grew in Girling’s head and the sand was whipped up by the rushing wind.

‘It is Shaytan. He is coming for us,’ Abdullah said, gasping, eyes wide with fear.

‘No, not Shaytan.’ But Girling was too breathless to explain.

They dragged the camels behind the nearest cluster of rocks just as the first helicopter swept round the bend in the wadi, the downwash from its rotors sending dust devils spiralling into the air.

The big machine roared past their position, its pilot holding a resolute course a few feet above the centre of the wadi bed. Girling recognized it as a modified Jolly Green, the fabled MH-53J Pave Low III of USAF special forces. It was so close that he could see the concentration on the pilot’s face; so close that the monotone star and bar was easily visible on the fuselage.

The MH-53J was followed by three more, each flying with the precision of the first.

Girling saw the special modifications - refuelling probe and radar system in the nose, the miniguns protruding from the open cabin door - and knew that these helicopters were training for no ordinary mission.

When the last MH-53J had thundered past, he sprang out from behind the rock and watched as it skittered down the wadi like a giant dragonfly, eventually pulling up over the cliffs and disappearing from view.

He stood there, waiting for the din to recede, but the sound of their engines did not disappear into the desert as he thought it would. He could hear them roaring beyond the wall of the wadi.

Girling began to sprint for the cliffs just as the gunfire started.

Abdullah was behind him, rifle in hand. They reached the flat summit together and ran across the plateau, stopping only at the abyss that lay on the other side. What Girling saw took his breath away.

The helicopters were circling like vultures a few feet above the tops of the cliffs at the head of the wadi. Every second or so, a belch of flame leapt from the cabin doors, accompanied by a sound that ripped apart the last vestiges of the night.

The gunners were pouring fire into the ground at the base of the cliffs. The shooting was well disciplined, each burst aimed with pinpoint precision -Girling could tell as much by the isolated puffs of dust that jumped from the ground.

One of the helicopters broke away from the group and came in to a hover a few feet above the cliffs at the end of the valley. Girling was dimly aware of shadows scurrying from the open cabin door.

Two more helicopters broke away, but Girling only tracked their passage on the periphery of his vision. A complex at the base of the cliffs was beginning to take shape as his eyes grew accustomed to the light. It was as strange as any he had ever seen. Its rigid geometry looked incongruous against the desert setting, but the fact it was fifty kilometres from the nearest outpost of civilization made it absurd.

It was a perfect square, its sides some fifty yards long, its walls approximately fifteen feet high. In its midst was a great courtyard, covered, in part, by a flimsy roof. There were a number of outhouses scattered round it, all whitewashed. Beyond the out-houses a trench enclosed the cluster of buildings.

More details leapt into focus. In one of the corners he noticed a minaret set starkly against the rocky backdrop, a building within the building at its base.

Girling turned to Abdullah. ‘What is this place?’

‘I do not understand,’ Abdullah replied. He had to shout over the gunfire. ‘It is a caravanserai.’

Girling had never seen one close up.

‘Did you know about this caravanserai here?’

‘No, ya majnoon.’ There was a mixture of puzzlement and anger on the bedouin’s face. ‘A caravanserai is the desert’s own miracle, a sacred place, where even rival tribes forget their differences.’

It was only when Girling looked at one of the walls side-on that the pieces fell into place. ‘Look,’ he shouted. ‘Your caravanserai is made of wood.’

Before Abdullah could ask him the purpose of such an edifice, the two Sikorskys that had broken away thirty seconds earlier swept in low and fast from the open end of the wadi. Their noses reared as the pilots bled off the excess speed. Then they began to settle on the expanse of dust between the caravanserai and the two outhouses. Even before their wheels brushed the ground men leapt from their ramps.

A group of eight soldiers rushed to one of the outhouses amidst covering fire from the helos circling overhead. Accurate sniping fire came from the men who had been deposited earlier on the clifftops.

The soldiers were difficult to spot, dressed as they were in black, gas masks and hoods on their heads.

There was a flash like a firecracker detonation and the outhouse door blew off its hinges. Two men scurried inside. Another group dished out similar treatment to the second outhouse in a mirror-image operation. The second door blew open just as the first group of soldiers began hurrying back across open ground towards the helicopters. Each soldier supported mannequins, all dangling legs and dead weight. The second group reappeared and from somewhere a star-shell rose into the sky, bursting in an incandescent shower of green phosphor.

The two Sikorskys lifted off from the ground and peeled away.

There was so much action that Girling did not know where to look. At the head of the wadi, the second pair of Sikorskys began to lower over the caravanserai, ropes spilling from their bodies like disembowelled entrails. In an instant men were abseiling to the ground.

It took, perhaps, less than two minutes for the soldiers to clear the rooms with gunfire and grenades. This time, they did not reappear with mannequins. As he watched, the caravanserai was torn apart.

Another star-shell, red this time, burst in the sky. The Sikorskys reappeared and, once more, the ropes fell from the cabins. The helicopters pulled away, clearing the cliffs just as a series of explosions blew the building apart.

Then the noise ceased, leaving only a ringing in Girling’s ears.

Shabanov jumped from the side door of his MH-53J onto the tarmac at Wadi Qena. The other three helicopters swept down from the sky one by one, each separating by a hundred yards as it lowered wheels to the ground.

The Russian had exchanged his Soviet combat fatigues for American ones. It had been decided that since they were using US helicopters they would standardize on US military equipment, right down to the uniforms. Apart from anything else, it would lead to fewer identification problems when they took the Sword’s caravanserai for real.

Shabanov waved to his pilot and took a last admiring look at the MH-53J. With mid-air refuelling, it was big enough to ferry them all the way into and all the way out of the target area and yet Soviet pilots who had flown it, his Soviet pilots, said it performed like an agile combat helicopter. Remarkable. Would that their own technology were as good.

When he turned to the other Sikorskys, two of them were already trundling across the tarmac to their hangars leaving Ulm’s machine alone, facing his, the two birds looking like overweight gunslingers at a dawn showdown. He watched Ulm swing out of the co-pilot’s seat, drop to the ground, catch sight of him and start walking over.

They met half-way.

‘Well?’ Ulm said.

Shabanov pulled off his helmet and ran a gloved hand through his bristle length hair. ‘Tell Mr Jacob-son to alert the KC-130 tankers. We’re ready to go as soon as General Aushev gives the all clear.’

‘When could that be?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine, Elliot. When the weather’s fine, when the hostages are all in the optimum position, when the Angels are asleep, when the gods smile...’

‘That could be weeks.’

‘Or tomorrow.’ Shabanov breathed deeply. He felt good. ‘You can tell Mr Jacobson we’re ready, Elliot. For the moment, that’s all that matters.’