Desmond Bagley - Flyaway

He turned back to Atitel and money changed hands. When the Tuareg had gone I said, 'That money was Algerian.'

Byrne looked at me in surprise. 'Yeah; because we're in Algeria.'

'When did that happen?'

He grinned. 'Remember the detour we took to lose Lash? Well, it took around the border posts, too. You're okay, Max; you're legal in Algeria.'

'But Billson may not be.'

He grunted. 'Relax. There's a hell of a lot of desert between here and Tarn; the word may not have filtered through.' He held up the photocopies. 'Mind if I hang on to these? I have some figuring to do.' I nodded. 'Where's Paul?'

'Still in the shower.'

He laughed. 'I told you a guy could drown in the desert.' Then he sat at the table, took out his stub of pencil and began making calculations on the back of. one of the photocopies, referring constantly to the specifications of the Northrop 'Gamma'.

We didn't start next day or even the day after, but the day after that. Byrne grumbled ferociously. 'Sometimes these people give me a pain in the ass.'

I grinned. 'I thought you were one of them — a proper Targui.'

'Yeah; but I revert to type at times. I'm thinking of Lash and Kissack. I don't know how badly they were sanded in, but it won't take them forever to get out. I want to get clear before they get here.'

'What makes you think they'll come to Djanet?'

'Only place they can get gas.'

But it gave me the chance of unwinding and relaxing after the heavy pounding in the Toyota. And I slept in a bed for the first time since leaving Algiers — the hotel mattress wasn't much harder than the sand I'd become accustomed to. And we all had a few welcome beers.

On the third day after arrival we drove out of Djanet in the Toyota and we still hadn't seen Lash. I said, 'Perhaps he's still out there where you stranded him.'

'My heart bleeds for him,' said Byrne. He cocked his head and looked back at Paul. 'What do you think?'

'I hope he rots,' said Paul vindictively. 'Kissack, too. All of them.'

Paul was becoming bloodthirsty, but it wasn't too surprising. It's hard to be charitable towards people who shoot at you without telling you why.

We drove towards the mountains, towards steep cliffs which reared up like a great stone barrier. At last we bumped to a halt in a grove of tamarisk trees among which donkeys were grazing, Atitel and Kami waved in greeting as we got out Byrne grunted in disgust. Those goddamn animals should have been loaded by now.'

'Where are we going?'

His arm rose forty-five degrees above the horizontal as he pointed and I got a crick in my neck as I looked up. 'Up there.'

'My God!' The cliffs rose vertically for about two thousand feet and Byrne was pointing to a cleft, a ravine which cut into them, leaving a v-shaped notch at the top which looked like a gunsight. 'I'm no bloody mountaineer.'

'Neither is a donkey and any man can go where a donkey can. It's not as steep as it looks.' He cocked an eye at the sun. 'Let's get started. I want to be at the top before nightfall.'

He chivvied Atitel and Hami into loading the donkeys. The goatskin djerbas of the Tuareg were kinder to the animals than the jerricans which held the rest of our water supply because they caused less chafe, but there weren't enough djerbas and so the jerricans had to be used. Most of the load was water for man and animal.

'I'm figuring on ten days,' said Byrne. 'Course we may be lucky and find a guelta — that's a rock pool — but we can't depend on it. Now you see 'em, now you don't.'

So we loaded water and food for five men and seven donkeys for ten days, and Byrne added a cloth-wrapped parcel which clinked metallically. He also added the Lee-Enfield rifle to the top of one load, being careful to strap it tight. 'I'll be back in ten minutes,' he said, and got into the Toyota and drove away.

I watched him out of sight, then turned to Paul 'What about this? Think you can make it?'

He looked up at the cliffs. 'I think I can; I won't be carrying anything. Not like when we were crossing the dunes in the Tenere.'

His face was drawn and pale in spite of the tan he had acquired. I don't think he had been a fit man even when he left England because his life had been sedentary. Since then he had been shot and nearly died of exposure, and what we had been doing since had been no rest cure. I said, 'Maybe it would be better if you stayed. I'll talk to Byrne about it.'

'No,' he said sharply. 'He'd agree with you. I want to come. There may be — ' lie swallowed — 'may be a body.'

The obsession which had driven him all his life was nearing its culmination. Within only a few days he had the chance of finding out the truth about his father, and he wasn't going to give up now. I nodded in agreement and looked up at the cliffs again. It still looked a killer of a climb.

Byrne came back on foot. 'I've put the truck where it won't be found easily. Let's move.'

I drew him on one side. 'Have you been up there before?'

'Sure. I've been most places.'

'What's the travelling like once we get on top?'

'Not bad — if we stick to the water-courses.'

'Water-courses!' I said incredulously.

'You'll see,' he said with a grim smile. 'It's the damnedest country you're ever likely to see. Like a maze — easy to get lost. What's your point?'

'I'm thinking of Paul.'

Byrne nodded. 'Yeah, he's been on my mind, too. But if he can get to the top here he'll be okay.'

'Tassili n' Ajjer,' I said thoughtfully. 'What does that translate as?'

'The Plateau of Goats — not that I've ever seen any. A few wild camels, though.' He shook his head irritably. 'Let's move, for God's sake!'

And so we started. It wasn't bad at first because we were on gently rising ground approaching the base of the cliffs. When we got to the ravine it was bigger than it looked at first, maybe half a mile wide at the bottom and narrowing as it rose. There was a path of sorts which zig-zagged from side to side so that for every hundred yards of forward travel we walked perhaps six hundred. And climbed, of course, but not as much.

It was a steady toil which put a strain on the calf muscles and on to the heart and lungs, a battle for altitude. It wasn't any kind of a mountaineering feat, just damned hard work which went on and on. There was no sound but the steady rasping of breath in my throat, the occasional clatter as a stone was dislodged to go bounding down the ravine, and the clink of a jerrican as it hit a rock. Sometimes a donkey would snort but no one had breath for talking.

I think we would have made the top quicker had it not been for Paul who held us back. We stopped frequently for him to catch up, and waited while he rested. It gave me time to rest my own lungs, for which I was thankful. Atitel and Hami didn't seem worried by the effort; they would smoke a half-cigarette and carefully put away the stubs before resuming the climb. As for Byrne, he was all whipcord and leather, as usual, but his nose was beakier and- his cheeks more sunken than I had noticed before.

So it was that it took us over four hours to climb two thousand feet and I doubt if the ground distance we had covered would be more than a mile and a half when measured on a map. As soon as the ground began to level we stopped and within minutes Atitel and Hami had the inevitable miniature Tuareg camp fires going and water on the boil to make tea. I said breathlessly, 'Are we there?'

'Nearly. The worst is over.' Byrne pointed towards the setting sun. 'I reckon you can see over eighty kilometres from here.'

The view was fantastic — dun-coloured hills close by changing to blue and purple in the distance. Byrne pointed towards a jumble of dunes. 'The Erg d'Admer; all that sand was washed down from the plateau. Must have been one of the biggest waterfalls in the world right here — a fall of two thousand feet.'