Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

David was staring at the distant line of the mountains and for a moment I thought he hadn’t heard my question. But then he said, ‘It isn’t easy to explain to somebody who has never been to Hadd.’

‘I’ve flown over it,’ I said.

He looked at me then, a sudden quickening of interest. ‘Did you see the fort of Jebel al-Akhbar? Did you see how the town is backed right into the rock?’ And when I explained how I’d passed close over it in Gorde’s plane, he said, ‘Then you know the situation. That fort is the key to Hadd. Who holds that fort holds the people of Hadd in the hollow of his hand. It’s as simple as that.’ He was suddenly excited, his eyes bright with the vision of what he planned to do. ‘When there was trouble here before the Trucial Oman Scouts moved into the fort and that was the end of it.’

‘We’re not the Trucial Oman Scouts.’ I thought it was time he faced up to the facts. There are six of us, that’s all. We’re armed with rifles and nothing else. And our ammunition is limited.’

‘There’s ammunition for us in the fort,’ he said. Two boxes of it and a box of grenades.’ Apparently he and Khalid had found them left there by the TOS and half-buried under a pile of rubble. They were out hunting as the Emir’s guests and had taken refuge in the fort during a sandstorm. ‘It’s a long time ago now,’ he added, ‘but I think we’ll find the boxes still there. We buried them pretty deep. As for numbers … ‘ He gave a little shrug.‘One man, well armed and determined, could hold that tower for as long as his water held out.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Water. It always comes back to water in the desert, doesn’t it?’ And he slid to his feet and gave the order to move.

As we rode he pointed out the fort to me, small as a pinhead on top of a hill that miraculously detached itself from the line of the mountains, standing clear in the last of the daylight and much nearer than I had expected. ‘Dawn tomorrow,’ he said, ‘that’s where we’ll be.’ He looked very much like his father as he stared at me, his youthful features set in the grimmer mould of an older man. ‘God willing!’ he breathed. ‘And when we’re there you’ll understand.’ He rode on then with his four Wahiba, talking with them urgently in their own tongue and leaving me to ride alone, prey to my own forebodings.

Dusk fell and merged imperceptibly into night. The stars lit our way and in no time at all it seemed, there was the Jebel al-Akhbar, a black hat of a hill bulked against the night sky. We rode slowly in a tight little bunch. The time was a little after ten. ‘We’ll water our camels at the well on the outskirts, fill our water bags … ‘ David’s voice was taut.

‘And if there’s a guard?’ I whispered.

‘We’re travellers from Buraimi on our way to the coast. Bin Suleiman will explain. He’s known here.’

‘And after we’ve filled our water bags?’

‘Ssh!’ The camels had stopped at a signal from Hamid. We sat still as death, listening. There were rock outcrops ahead and the dim shapes of buildings. A solitary light showed high up on the slope of the hill, which now towered above us, a dark mass against the stars. Somewhere a goat bleated. There was no other sound.

A whispered word from David and we moved forward again. The well-head appeared, a simple wooden structure topping a crumbling wall of mud and stone. We dismounted and the leathern bucket was dropped into the depths. The wooden roller creaked as it was drawn up. One by one the camels were watered; one by one the skin bags filled. And all the time the wood creaked and we stood with our guns ready. But nobody came. The solitary light vanished from the slope of the hill, leaving the whole town dark as though it were a deserted ruin. Salim and Ali left with the camels and David went to work with cartridges of explosive and detonators. And when he’d mined the well, we went forward on foot, running the thin line of the wire out behind us.

The second well was close under the walls and there were camels couched near it. We could hear them stirring uneasily, could even see some of them, dark shapes against the lighter stone. A man coughed and sat up, dislodging a stone. The sound of it was magnified by the silence. And then I saw his figure coming towards us. Hamid and bin Suleiman moved to intercept. They talked together in whispers whilst David went on working and I helped him, glancing every now and then over my shoulder, expecting every moment to hear the man cry out and raise the alarm.

But nothing happened. The camels quietened down, the man went back to his interrupted sleep and David was left to complete his work in peace. He worked fast and with absolute sureness, but it all took time. It was past midnight before he had finished and a paler light above the mountains warned that the moon was rising.

As we trailed our wire towards a gap in the crumbling walls, two shots sounded far out in the desert behind us. We checked, standing there motionless and sweating. But there were no more shots. ‘Somebody out hunting gazelle,’ David whispered. They do it at night by the lights of their Land-Rovers.’ And we went on through the gap which led to a narrow alley. There were no doors to the buildings on either side, only window openings high up. The alley led into the market place. More camels, some goats and figures asleep against the walls of the houses. The well was on the far side. There was a baby camel there and a small boy lay curled up beside it. The camel, its coat fluffy as a kitten’s, rose on straddling, spindly legs and gazed at us in amazed silence. The boy stirred, but didn’t wake. A dog began to bark. I caught hold of David’s arm. ‘You’ve done enough surely,’ I whispered.

‘Scared?’ He grinned in the darkness and shrugged me off. ‘We can’t climb to the fort till the moon’s up.’ And he squatted down in the dust and went to work. The boy suddenly sat up, staring at us round-eyed. I thought, My God! If he kills that child … But David said something and the boy got slowly to his feet and came hesitantly forward, gazing in fascination. David gave him the wire to hold. A man moved in the shadows by an archway. The boy’s father. As he came forward, other figures stirred. A little knot of men gathered round us. But the boy sitting there in the dust beside David, helping him, made it all seem innocent. They stood and watched for a while, talking with Hamid and bin Suleiman, and then they drifted back to their sleep.

The moon rose. The mud walls of the houses on the far side of the open place stood suddenly white, and moment by moment the dark shadow-line retreated until it touched the base of the buildings and began to creep across the ground towards us. At last David tied his mine to the well rope and lowered it down. We left then, and the boy came with us, trailing the baby camel behind him. Other figures followed us, curious but not hostile. They don’t belong to Hadd,’ David whispered. They’re Bedou in from the desert to sell camels. Otherwise we’d never have got out of there alive.’

‘What did they think we were doing?’

‘I said we were testing the wells before installing pumping equipment. They know all about pumps. They’ve seen them in Buraimi and also in Saraifa.’ By the second well we picked up the line of our wire, clipped on another coil and trailed it to the limit up the hill just outside the walls. There David fastened it to the terminals of the plunger, and then he handed it to the boy and told him what to do. ‘He’ll tell the story of this moment till the end of his days.’ He patted the boy on the shoulder, smiling almost cheerfully as he turned and left him.

We climbed quickly, came out from the shadow of the wall on to the moonlit slope of the hill and on a rock, well above the rooftops of the highest houses, we halted. The boy was squatting there beside the detonator, his face turned towards us. David raised his hand above his head and then let it fall. The boy turned away and his shoulders hunched as he thrust down on the plunger.