Will Adams - The Exodus Quest

'Me?' protested Abdullah. 'Why me?'

'We wouldn't be in this damned mess if you'd followed my orders.'

'You should have been clearer,' muttered Abdullah.

'On the phone? On the phone?'

Abdullah grudgingly took hold of the rope. He gave it a couple of tugs to test it. It promptly rode up the spike and came free. 'Look!' he said.

'Stop whining, will you?' said Khaled, looping it back around, pulling the knot tighter. 'Just climb.'

'Don't worry,' murmured Faisal. 'I'll keep an eye on it.'

Abdullah nodded gratefully. Faisal was the only one he trusted. He fed the rope through his belt, fastened his torch-strap around his wrist, traded his AK-47 for Nasser's pickaxe, which he slung over his shoulder. Then he lowered himself backwards over the edge, like he'd seen on TV, but his boot slipped on the slick rock, he crashed into the cliff-side, hanging on desperately while Khaled and Nasser laughed themselves sick. He was still muttering curses when he reached the relative sanctuary of the tomb mouth.

The cement had formed a crust, but hadn't yet dried underneath. It came away easily when he attacked it with the point of the pickaxe, fragmented grey mush washing down the cliff-face. He made a hole large enough to reach his arm inside and set his torch down at an angle to light his work, then hacked out more cement. Lightning lit up the wadi all around. He braced himself for the crack of thunder, but just before it started he could have sworn he heard a different noise, that of automatic gunfire. He anchored one hand inside the tomb, leaned out and looked up to find out what the hell was going on. But there was no one up top to answer his question.

It was pure luck that Khaled saw the man. He just happened to be glancing back when a lightning bolt illuminated the entire plateau, revealing him crouched some thirty paces away, mobile phone in his hand.

The knowledge of how he'd been tricked was both instantaneous and complete. Instead of fear, Khaled felt only a great and visceral rage. He snatched Nasser's AK-47, turned back towards the man. Darkness had fallen once more, he couldn't see a thing, but he sprayed the horizon all the same, hoping providence was with him.

'What is it, sir?' asked Nasser.

'Company.'

Lightning shuddered again, revealing the man crawling on his belly like the snake he was. 'There!' he yelled, firing another burst. 'Get him.'

Knox fled across the hilltop as gunfire skittered around him, the night illuminated by muzzle flash and a distant strobe of lightning. It went dark again and he flung himself sideways, tumbling down a rift in the hilltop into a shallow lake created by the deluge. He tried to duck beneath its surface as the three men ran up, but the water wasn't deep enough.

'Did we get him?'

'He went down.'

'Then where the hell is he?'

'He must be here somewhere.' Torches probed the darkness, flurried across the water's surface, heavy raindrops glittering golden in their light. 'Who is he, anyway?'

'He must have been in our truck.'

'You think that policeman knows? You think this was a trick?'

'Of course it was a trick!'

'Son of a dog. We're done for.'

'We're not done for! We're not done for! This one's here on his own, isn't he? We just need to silence him. That's all. Once he's gone, no one will be able to find this place. They won't be able to prove a thing.'

'But we-'

A sharp crack; someone had just been slapped. 'Follow my orders, damn you. He's here somewhere. He must be.' One of the men shone his torch around, the beam flashing again over where Knox was half-hidden in the water. But this time the beam stopped, came back, fixed on him. 'There!' he cried.

Knox pushed himself to his feet, splashed up the side of the rift, then fled headlong. But now he was penned between the rift lake and the cliff's edge. Gunfire ripped the night behind him. He threw himself down by the spike of rock, grabbed for the rope looped around it, slithered over the edge, slick wet fibres slipping through his grasp as he fell, wind buffeting him, spraying mist into his face. He finally gained some grip on the rope, his palms scorching as he juddered to a halt, glanced down to see Abdullah standing on a thin ledge below. He shouted something that Knox didn't catch, swung at his ankles with a pickaxe. Knox danced away across the rock face, but his sideways movement pulled the slipknot loose from the spike of rock and suddenly he was in freefall, plunging down the sheer cliff-face towards the rocks beneath.

Naguib was driving almost blind, his sidelights rather than headlights on, only the faint glow of the whitewashed kerbstones to show him the road, steep embankments studded with rocks either side, eyes constantly playing tricks on him, blurs all over the place, his tyres banging the sides, wrenching round the wheel.

They had to have fallen way behind by now. Too far behind. He muttered a prayer and switched his Lada's headlights on full, stamped his foot down on the accelerator. It proved his undoing. A sudden squall lifted up the light car and threw it sideways, aquaplaning them over the kerbstones and then crunching into a boulder, the sickening noise of crumpled metal, seat belts snapping tight against their chests. He and Tarek glanced at each other. No time to waste in recrimination or regret. They jumped out, ran over to the truck that had pulled up alongside, helping hands hauling them up into the back; drenched, bedraggled, feeling rather ridiculous as they found places to sit, and the truck pulled away again.

'Nice driving,' muttered someone, earning himself a laugh. But then another buffet of wind almost sent the truck over the edge, and the laughter promptly died.

Knox hurtled down the cliff-face past Abdullah towards the wadi floor. But he was still gripping the rope tightly in both hands, and its other end was looped through Abdullah's belt, so that the momentum of Knox's fall transferred instantly to him. Knox slammed against the cliff, grabbed rock, let go of the rope. But Abdullah wasn't so fortunate. His knees buckled, his right foot slipped from the wet narrow ledge, his hand was ripped free from its hold inside the tomb. He tumbled shrieking past Knox, clawing the sky, and slapped the rocks beneath with a sickening thump. Then only silence.

A cascade of stones clattered by. Knox looked up to see Khaled on the cliff edge, pointing down his torch and aiming his pistol, squeezing off four rounds that pinged and whined off the rocks. Knox scrambled up to the ledge where Abdullah had been, gaining the protection of a slight overhang. There was a gaping hole in the rock, he saw, big enough for him to squeeze through. He tumbled through to the other side. A torch was lying on the ground. He picked it up and shone it around a chamber, ankle deep in water. He splashed over to a passage leading off and then down. 'Gaille!' he shouted. 'Gaille!'

A cry ahead. A woman's cry: high-pitched, short, terrified. Not Gaille, though. Lily, the other hostage. And panic rather than relief in her voice. He raised his pace, running headlong, almost didn't see the shaft in time, stopped teetering on its waterfall brim, regained his balance, shone down his torch, picked out Lily fifteen or twenty feet below, clinging to the wall, surrounded by a flotsam of crushed water bottles and wooden planks, keeping Gaille's head above the water with the crook of her elbow, but crying out in pain and exertion.

'Hold on!' cried Knox.

'I can't. I can't.'

He looked around for some way to get down to her and then back up again. Any way. He saw an iron peg hammered into the floor, but there was nothing to tie to it. And Abdullah had taken the rope down with him on his plunge.