Hammond Innes - The Doomed Oasis

Orders whispered in the night, the dark trucks spewing men out on to the sand; the area of our camp was suddenly full of movement, an ant-heap settling to sleep, and a voice at my elbow said, “Ullo Mister Grant. Is Ruffini.’ His pudgy hand gripped my arm, patted my shoulder, words tumbled out of him. They had rushed him up to this Company to get him out of the way. He’d been made fabulous offers by several newspapers. ‘I am lucky, eh — lucky to be a journalist and out ‘ere at this minute?’ But I think he was a little scared. He was certainly lonely. His knowledge of the Arabs was based on Mussolini’s shortlived empire.

A bare two hours’ sleep and then the dawn breaking … Another day, and the ant-heap stirred and came to life, little groups of men forming and re-forming, an ever-changing pattern against the blistering yellow of sand and gravel. And standing there on the rim of the desert to the south-east, the Jebel al-Akhbar — black at first against the rising sun, but soon dun-coloured and bare. No sound, no movement to be seen through the glasses. And the desert all around us, that was empty and silent, too.

And then that solitary shot. We were sitting under a canvas awning, rigged from the side of the headquarters truck, and drinking tea. We all heard it, a sharp, faint sound from the direction of Jebel al-Akhbar. But when we looked through the glasses, there was nothing to see, and there was no further sound; just that one isolated shot. The time was 1034.

We had no reason to regard it as any different from the other shots we had heard, though afterwards we realized the sound had been slighter. We settled down again and finished our tea, an island of men camped in a void, waiting whilst the sun climbed the brassy sky and the oven-lid of the day’s heat clamped down on us, stifling all talk.

Only Ruffini was active, trotting sweating from one to the other of us, tirelessly questioning, endlessly scribbling, staring through creased-up eyes at the Jebel al-Akhbar, and then finally badgering Berry until he had given orders for his copy to be transmitted over the radio to Sharjah.

And then, just before midday, the dead stillness of the desert torn apart by the buzz-saw sound of a helicopter. It came sidling in from the north, a strange aerial insect painted for desert war, and in the instant of its settling the whole camp was suddenly changed to a single organism full of purpose. With Ruffini I stood apart on the edge of this ordered turmoil and watched the man responsible for it, surrounded by his officers, standing with his legs straddled, head thrown back — a man conscious of the dramatic quality of the moment.

Ruffini noticed it, too. ‘El Colonello — ‘e is going to war.’

But my attention had shifted from Colonel George. Coming towards me from the helicopter was the squat, battered figure of Philip Gorde. ‘Grant.’ He was leaning heavily on his stick as he faced me. ‘Where’s Charles Whitaker? What’s happened to him?’ And when I told him what we feared, he said, ‘Christ Almighty man, couldn’t you do something?’ But then he shrugged. ‘No, of course not. Bloody politicians!’ he growled. ‘Always too late making up their minds. Hope we’re in time, that’s all.’ He was staring at me out of his bloodshot eyes. ‘I gather he’d moved his rig up to the border. He’d started to drill, had he?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish I’d known that earlier.’ He looked tired, his face liverish. ‘Not that I could have done anything to help him,’ he added heavily. ‘It’s a hell of a situation. And that boy of his a bloody little hero. Doesn’t he realize what he’s doing to his father — or doesn’t he care? God!’ He was jabbing at the ground with his stick. ‘Well, we’ll just have to hope we get there in time,’ he said again and he stumped off to talk to Colonel George.

The cluster of officers was breaking up now; voices shouting orders, men running, the whirr of starter- motors, the roar of engines, a Land-Rover disappearing in a cloud of dust.

‘Ah, there you are, Grant.’ The Colonel, neat and dapper, cool almost in the torrid heat, came towards me. ‘The boy’s still alive, I gather.’

‘There was a shot fired … ‘

‘So Berry tells me. We’ll just have to hope for the best. I’m sending a small force up to take over the fort. The rest of the outfit will move direct on Hadd. Berry’s gone ahead to make contact with the Emir. You and Ruffini can ride in the headquarters truck.’

The column was lining up now and ten minutes later we were on the move. ‘If he is still alive, it is a great story, eh?’ Ruffini said. ‘You think he is still alive?’

‘How the hell do I know?’ But Berry had given him four days. I was pinning my hopes to that.

‘Well, it don’t matter — alive or dead he is a hero. And this is the biggest story I am ever writing.’

That was all Ruffini saw in it — a newspaper story, nothing more. And Gorde hating David because I hadn’t had time to explain his motives. I felt suddenly sad, depressed by the thought that David’s action would be misunderstood. How could you explain to men like Gorde what Khalid’s death had meant to him, how he’d felt when he’d seen the people of Saraifa forced to leave the oasis?

Half an hour later the column halted. We were close under the Jebel al-Akhbar. Time passed and nothing happened. The wait seemed endless. And then suddenly the Colonel’s Land-Rover came roaring down the column. He had Gorde in the seat beside him. ‘Jump in,’ he called to me. ‘Ruffini, too. The Emir has agreed to meet me at the first well.’ He was in a mood of boyish elation, a reaction from nervous tension. The column was moving again now and several vehicles had swung away and were headed for the camel track on the north side of Jebel al-Akhbar.

We reached the head of the column just as it breasted the shoulder of the Jebel. There once more was Hadd, jammed against the limestone cliffs, with the Emir’s palace flying the limp green flag and the fort stark against the sky above it. ‘Hell!’ Colonel George signalled his driver to stop and Berry’s Land-Rover drew up alongside. The column ground to a halt behind us. ‘I don’t like it,’ the Colonel said. Too quiet.’

Between us and the crumbling walls of Hadd there wasn’t a living soul; no sign of Sheikh Abdullah’s askaris, no vestige of the camp we’d seen two days before. Even up by the date gardens nothing moved. AH the Wadi Hadd al-Akhbar, as far as the eye could strain through the glare and the mirages, was empty of human life.

The blighter’s up to something. What do you think, Berry?’

‘I think we’d better be prepared for trouble, sir. I told you I didn’t like the speed with which he saw me, the crafty look in his eye.’

The Colonel nodded. ‘Go ahead then.’

The orders were signalled and the column fanned out across the level gravel plain, whilst we drove straight to the first well. Behind us the Bedouin Scouts leapt from their trucks and spread out over the sand — mortars and machine-guns, ammunition. And not a shot fired at us. We sat in the Land-Rover, roasting by the shattered parapet of the well, and the tension mounted with the uncanny silence. Nothing stirred anywhere.

A full hour the Emir kept us waiting there in the blazing sun. He judged it nicely. A little longer and Colonel George’s patience would have been exhausted. And then at last life stirred in the mud-dun town, a scattering of figures moving towards us across the flat, shelved expanse of gravel that lay between the well and the walls; old men and children — not an armed man amongst them. ‘He’s going to play the injured innocent,’ Gorde whispered in my ear.

The old men and the children had closed around us. Some had empty drinking bowls, others goats’ skins; they whined and begged for water as they had been told to do. ‘My heart bleeds,’ Gorde snorted with contempt. ‘Ah, here he comes.’