‘Madness! All around us, madness!’
‘What did Ahmat say?’
‘To do as you say, but you must wait until his special police arrive. They are two men he trusts completely—your instructions, I believe.’
‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee? The two uniforms who’ve been with me from the bazaar to the Al Kabir?’
‘They are special. One will drive the police vehicle, the other will act as your guard.’
‘Good thinking. I’m really playing out Ahmat’s scenario, aren’t I?’
‘You’re unfair, Mr. Kendrick.’
‘He’s not too shabby himself… Here are the other two prisoners I want in the transfer, in the truck with Azra and me.’
‘Why? Who are they?’
‘One’s a lunatic who’d curse at his own firing squad, but the other… the other is Azra’s beard. He does whatever colour-me-Blue tells him. Take those two away and there’s no one to hold the fort together.’
‘You’re being cryptic.’
‘The rest are breakable, Doctor. They don’t really know anything but they’re breakable. I suggest you take three or four out at a time, put them into smaller cells and then shoot off some rifles into the back wall of this compound. You might find a few fanatics who aren’t so crazy about their own executions.’
‘You are shedding your true skin, Shaikh Kendrick. You’re going into a world of which you know nothing.’
‘I’ll learn, Doctor. That’s why I’m here.’
The sign came! The guard by the van’s door steadied himself, briefly lowering his left hand; he shook it to restore circulation and immediately reached up to grip the crossbar again. He would repeat the action in less than a minute and then it would be the moment for Evan to make his move. The choreography had been created quickly in the compound’s laboratory; the attack was to be swift and simple. The guard’s reaction was the key to its success. Twenty-two seconds later, the guard’s left hand plummeted down again in a gesture of weariness.
Kendrick sprang off the bench, his body a compact missile hammering into the guard whose head crashed against the door with such force that the man’s suddenly hysterical expression became instantly passive as he collapsed.
‘Quickly!’ commanded Evan, turning to Azra. ‘Help me! Get his keys!’
The Palestinian leaped forward, followed by the sergeant-foreman. All together, their shackled hands threw the MAC-10 machine pistol out of the way and ripped the keys from the guard’s belt.
‘I’ll kill him now!’ shrieked the harelipped zealot, grabbing the weapon and lurching forward in the swaying truck, the gun aimed at the guard’s head.
‘Stop him!’ ordered Azra.
‘Fool!’ roared the sergeant-foreman wrestling the weapon away from the young fanatic. ‘The driver will hear the shots!’
‘He is our holy enemy!’
‘He is our holy way out of here, you miserable idiot!’ said Azra, unlocking Kendrick’s shackles and handing Evan the key to do the same for him. The congressman from Colorado did so, then turned to the extended wrists of the sergeant-foreman.
‘My name is Yosef,’ said the older man. ‘It is a Hebrew name for my mother was Hebrew, but we are not part of the Jews of Israel—and you are a brave man, Amal Bahrudi.’
‘I don’t like firing squads in the desert,’ said Kendrick, throwing his shackles on the floor and turning to the young terrorist who would have killed the unconscious guard. ‘I don’t know whether to let you free or not.’
‘Why?’ shrieked the boy. ‘Because I will kill for our holy war, die for our cause?’
‘No, young man, because you might kill us and we’re more valuable than you.’
‘Amal!’ cried Azra, gripping Evan’s arm as much to steady himself as to compel Kendrick’s attention. ‘I agree he’s an idiot but there are special circumstances. Settlers in the West Bank blew up his family’s house and his father’s clothing store. His father died in the explosion and Israel’s Custodial Commission sold both properties to new settlers for next to nothing.’ Blue lowered his voice, speaking into Kendrick’s ear. ‘He’s a mental case but he had no one to turn to but us. Yosef and I will control him. Let him free.’
‘On your head, poet,’ answered Evan gruffly, unlocking the young terrorist’s wrist irons.
‘Why do you say a desert execution?’ asked Yosef.
‘Because the road beneath us is half sand, can’t you feel it?’ said Kendrick, knowing the route they were taking. ‘We just disappear, burned or buried in the desert.’
‘Why us?’ pressed the older terrorist.
‘I can explain me better than I can you: They don’t know what to do with me, so why not just kill me. If I’m dangerous or influential, both the danger and the influence go with me.’ Evan paused, then nodded his head. ‘Come to think of it,’ he added, ‘that probably explains Yosef and the boy; they were the loudest prisoners in there and their voices were probably identified—both are easily distinguishable.’
‘And me?’ asked Azra, staring at Kendrick.
‘I should think you could answer that without my help,’ replied Kendrick returning the Palestinian’s look, a degree of contempt in his eyes. ‘I tried to break away from you when they came after me by the toilets, but you were too slow.’
‘You mean they saw us together?’
‘The student gets a barely passing grade. Not only together but away from everyone else. It was your conference, big shot.’
‘The truck’s slowing down!’ exclaimed Yosef as the van braked slightly, heading into a descending curve.
‘We have to get out,’ said Evan. ‘Now. If he’s going down into a valley there’ll be soldiers. Quickly! We want the high ground. We need it; we’d never climb back up.’
‘The door!’ cried Azra. ‘It must be padlocked on the outside.’
‘I have no idea,’ Kendrick lied, following the scenario as it had been rapidly drawn up in the compound’s laboratory. Rivets had been removed and loosened in two panels. ‘I’ve never been taken prisoner here. But it doesn’t matter. It’s as heet-steel alloy with seams. The four of us rushing together can smash out a partition. The centre. It’s the weakest.’ Evan grabbed the harelipped boy by the shoulder, pulling him to his left. ‘All right, wild man. Hit it like you’re breaking down the Wailing Wall. The four of us! Now!’
‘Wait!’ Azra lurched across the van. ‘The weapon!’ he exclaimed, picking up the MAC-10 machine pistol and looping the strap over his shoulder, the barrel directed downward. ‘All right,’ he said, rejoining the others.
‘Go!’ shouted Kendrick.
The four prisoners crashed into the centre panel of the door as the van lurched over the rocks in the downhill curve. The metal partition gave way, bulging at the seams, moonlight protruding through the wide separations.
‘Once more!’ roared Yosef, his eyes on fire.
‘Remember!’ commanded the man now accepted as Amal Bahrudi. ‘If we break through, tuck into your knees when you hit the ground. We don’t need anyone hurt.’
Again they rushed the half-collapsed panel. The bottom rivets snapped; the metal flew up in the moonlight and the four figures bolted out on the twisting road that led to a desert valley. Inside the van the guard rolled forward with the pitch of the vehicle’s descent, his face streaked with perspiration brought about by fear of his own death. He crawled to his knees and hammered repeatedly on the wall of the driver’s carriage. A single thud was heard in response. Their assignment for the night was half finished.
The fugitives also rolled, but against the descent, their movements abruptly halted, reversed by gravity, each straining to regain his balance. Azra and Yosef rose first to their feet, swivelling their necks and shaking their heads, instinctively checking their bruises for signs of anything worse. Kendrick followed, his shoulder on fire, his legs in momentary agony and his hands scraped, but all in all, he was grateful for the harsh requirements of backpacking through the mountains and riding the white water; he hurt but he was not hurt. The harelipped Palestinian had fared the worst; he moaned on the stony earth with its pattern of desert grass beneath the road, writhing in fury as he tried to rise but could not. Yosef ran to him, and as Evan and Azra studied the valley below the gruff older man made his pronouncement. ‘This child has broken his leg,’ he called over to his two superiors.
Then kill me now!’ shrieked the youngster. ‘I go to Allah and you go on to fight!’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Azra, gripping the MAC-10 weapon in his hand and walking with Kendrick to the injured boy. ‘Your compulsion to die becomes boring and your grating voice will kill us instead. Tear his shirt in strips, Yosef. Tie his hands and feet and put him in the road. That truck will race back up the minute it reaches the camp below and those fools realize what’s happened. They’ll find him.’
‘You deliver me to my enemies?’ screamed the teenager.
‘Be quiet!’ replied Azra angrily, strapping the machine pistol to his shoulder. ‘We’re delivering you to a hospital where you’ll be taken care of. Children aren’t executed except by bombs and missiles—all too frequently, but that’s neither here nor there.’