And then, behind me, the sound of shots, carrying clear and hard on the still night air. The rip and blatter of a machine-gun. Twisting round in my saddle I saw the firefly flicker of the attackers’ guns high up on the black bulk of Jebel al-Akhbar. Distant shouts and cries came to me faintly. More firing, and the sharper crack of small explosions. Three of them. Grenades by the sound of it, The cries faded, the fire slackened. Suddenly there was no longer any sound and I was alone again, riding across an endless dark plain, haunted by the thought of David, wondering what had happened.
The silence and the sense of space were overwhelming now; particularly when the curtain of cirrus moved away and the stars were uncovered. Then I could see the desert stretching away from me in every direction and I felt as lost as any solitary mariner floating alone in an empty sea. Far behind me the Jebel al-Akhbar lifted its dark shape above the desert’s rim, for all the world like an island, and all around me were small petrified waves, an undulating dunescape that seemed to disappear into infinity.
In the darkness, without any stars to guide me, I had trusted to luck and let the camel have its head. Now I saw it had carried me westward — towards the big dunes of the Empty Quarter and Whitaker’s lonely camp. I kept going, not changing my direction. It was a dangerous decision. I knew that. I’d only the one bottle of water and there were no wells where I was heading, no caravan routes to guide me, nothing but empty desert. My decision was based on the fact that Whitaker’s camp was much nearer than Buraimi — and after all he was the boy’s father.
I had two chances — that was all — our own camel tracks and the tracks of Whitaker’s trucks. If I missed both of these, or if they had become obliterated by windblown sand, then I knew I’d never get out of the desert alive. I rode through the night without a stop, guiding myself as best I could by the stars, and when the dawn came, I turned so that the rising sun was behind my right shoulder. If my navigation was right, then I had placed myself to the south of the line between Jebel al-Akhbar and Whitaker’s camp. Some time during the morning my new course should intersect the tracks made by our camels three nights back.
It was the first time I had ridden in the desert alone. The solitude was immense, the emptiness overpowering. The heat, too — it came at me in waves, so that time had no meaning. It seared my eyes and beat against the membranes of my brain. I drank sparingly from the water bottle, rinsing the tepid liquid round my mouth. A wind sprang up and small grains of sand were lifted from the gravel floor and flung in my face, a fine-ground dust that clogged nose and throat and made the simple act of swallowing an agony without any saliva. To look the desert in the face, searching for our old tracks, was like pricking needles into my eyes.
By midday I’d finished the water and still no sign of our tracks. I was trembling then, but not with the heat. I had reached the Sands and the dunes were growing bigger like an ocean’s swell building up against the continental shelf. Dune followed dune and the sense of space, the feeling that this petrified world of sand went on and on without end, appalled me.
A dirty scum formed in my mouth as I rode and my tongue became a swollen, leathery mass. The camel’s pace was slow and reluctant. We had passed no vegetation, no sign of anything growing, and as the sun slanted to the west fear took hold of me, for I knew I was headed into a desert that was four hundred miles across. Memory plagued me with the vision of a stream I knew in the Black Mountains of Wales where the water ran over rocks brown with peat and fell tinkling to a cool translucent pool. The sun sank into a purple haze, and the sense of space, with the dark shadowed dune crests stretched out in endless ridges ahead of me, was more terrifying than the close confinement that produces claustrophobia.
And then a chance turn of the head, a sudden glance, and there it was; a diagonal line ruled faintly across the back of a dune away to my left. I stared at it through slitted, grit-swollen eyes, afraid I was imagining it. But it was real enough — a single, scuffed-up thread scored by the feet of camels and half-obliterated by sand. In the hard gravel at the foot of the dune I counted the tracks of six camels. I had actually crossed the line of our three day old march without knowing it. If the sun had been higher I should never have seen that faint shadow line. I should have ridden on to certain death. I realized then why David had insisted on my making for Buraimi. I had been very fortunate indeed.
I headed into the sunset then, following the tracks, knowing they would lead me to Whitaker’s camp. The camel seemed to know it, too, for its pace quickened.
The sun set and darkness came. I camped at the foot of a dune, not daring to go on for fear of losing the faint, intermittent line of those tracks. The desert lost its warmth immediately. I ate a few dates, but my mouth was too dry and sore to chew on the meat. Tired though I was, I couldn’t sleep. The moon rose just before the dawn and I went on. The tracks became more difficult to follow; at times I lost them and had to cast about until I came upon them again. A wind was blowing and the sifting sand was covering them moment by moment. The sun rose and it was suddenly very hot.
Long before I reached Whitaker’s camp, the sound of the drilling rig was borne to me on the wind. The steady hum of machinery was utterly incongruous in that empty, desolate world. One of his Bedouin guards brought me into the camp and as I slid exhausted from my camel, I saw Whitaker himself coming towards me from the rig.
I must have passed out then, for the next I knew I was lying in his tent and he was bending over me, holding a mug of water to my cracked lips. The water was warm, but its wetness cleaned my mouth, eased the swollen dryness of my tongue, and as I began to swallow, I suddenly wanted to go on drinking and drinking for my body was all dried up. But he took the mug away. ‘Are you alone?’ he asked. And when I nodded, he said, ‘What happened? Is he dead?’
I sat up, staring at him. Something in the way he’d said it … But his face was in shadow and I thought I must have imagined it. ‘He was alive when I left him.’
I
‘I see. So he’s still up there.’ And he added, ‘He’d made his gesture. He’d carried out a successful attack on the wells. Why couldn’t he leave it at that?’
I started to explain about David’s determination to keep the wells from being repaired, but he cut me short. ‘I know all about that. I got the news from Hadd yesterday. My chap said the streets of Hadd were deserted and no man dared venture out of his house for fear of being fired at. He also said that the inhabitants had made a daylight attack on the fort and had been driven off by heavy fire.’
‘There were just the four of us,’ I said. And I told him how Salim had been killed at the outset and Ali fatally wounded.
‘And he’s alone up there now with just Hamid and his brother, bin Suleiman?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘I gather the Emir sent to Saraifa for Sheikh Abdullah. Had his forces arrived before you left?’ And when I nodded, he said, ‘What happened? Were you there when they attacked the fort?’
‘No.’ And I explained how I’d got out just before the attack started. ‘I don’t know what happened. But if David did manage to beat off that attack, there’ll be others, or else they’ll just snipe at him from the rocks until they’ve worn him down or his water runs out.’
‘So he’s got himself trapped.’ And then almost irritably: “What’s wrong with the boy? Does he want to die?’
‘He will,’ I said angrily, ‘if you don’t get help to him somehow.’
‘I’ve done what I can. Yousif was just back from Sharjah and I sent him straight off with letters to Colonel George who commands the Trucial Oman Scouts and to Gorde. It’s up to the authorities now. Fortunately, I don’t think the Emir has any idea yet who it is holding that fort.’