Where the hell were Chief and Viktor?
No matter, he realized. Two men, even armed, would stand little chance against six. There would be nothing the two could do. With resignation, Jason watched one of the Tuaregs approach with the coil of rope.
He was only a dozen or so feet away when there was a hiss like air escaping a punctured tire and the Tuareg burst into flame. It was right out of a Stephen King novel. One moment the man was there, the next instant he was a human torch, his flowing thobe a sheet of fire as he screamed and fell to the ground, writhing in his hellish death throws.
With the swiftness of a bat flying out of darkness, Emphani snatched the man’s rifle, swung it around to bring the muzzle to bear. It would have been a futile effort; there were too many Tuaregs for the man to get them all before one got off a fatal shot.
Emphani didn’t have to.
The two men closest to him simply ignited as though someone had put a torch to gasoline soaked cloth. Both jerked in a macabre dance of death as sizzling flames consumed them. The odor of burning meat filled still night air already pregnant with agonized screams.
In seconds, there were three charred forms, only remotely human, smoldering on the ground as starving flames licked away the last remnants of flesh.
It was enough for the remaining Tuaregs. Blinded by the sudden blazes, Jason could only hear terrified yells as bodies crashed through the impenetrable darkness of night in the African brush.
Like a genie out of the bottle, Andrews appeared, smoking flamethrower in hand. “Welcome to the barbecue, Artiste.” He cocked his head, studying what he could see of Jason’s face. “You don’t look all that happy to see me. More like you’re pissed off.”
Jason couldn’t get Momma out of his head. “Good guess. I am.”
“Jesus Christ on a motorcycle, Artiste! I just saved your ass and you’re pissed?”
Jason realized the absurdity. “Not at you.”
“Well, what a relief that is. If there were one around, I’d guess a woman.”
“How astute.”
“There isn’t one within miles.”
“That’s what pisses me off: I’m risking my ass in Mali because she tricked… Ah shit, guess all’s fair in love and war, and she sure as hell isn’t in love with those assholes with the Tesla device.” Jason looked around. “Where’s Viktor?”
“Is here,” came the Russian’s voice. “Looking through the trucks those perhot’ podzalupnaya were driving.”
Russian for “peehole dandruff,” a picturesque epithet and one of the few Russian phrases Jason recognized. The others were largely swear words and the scatological or sexual sobriquets to be heard on any military base no matter the language.
“Anything useful?”
Viktor appeared in the truck’s headlights. They were beginning to dim. “Is nothing but their extra clothes and food spoiled. Smells like someone guano, er, shit. No weapons, nothing.” He bowed his head in mock sorrow. “And no, er, alcohol.”
Jason was walking toward the vehicles with which the Tuaregs had blocked the road. “Let us be thankful for small favors. In the meantime, cut off our lights before the battery runs down and give me a hand here.” He lifted the hood of the first of the two Mitsubishis. “I’m pulling the distributor cap off both. The engines will never crank. If those bastards want to chase us, they’ll have to do it on foot and in the dark.”
45
The Toyota was coughing as though suffering terminal tuberculosis instead of terminal sand ingestion. The twin ruts that passed as the north-south highway had demonstrated why extra tires had been part of the equipment included with the little truck. Twice, jagged shale had forced the four to stop and change them by flashlight. Hours later, the sharp rock that seemed to line every foot of the road was replaced by sand — bottomless, shifting sand. Sand that made eyes sore with grit, clogged noses, and abraded throats as it bogged the truck down to the axles requiring nearly an hour to dig it out. Sand that sucked at the Toyota’s wheels like water. Sand that quickly found its way into the carburetor, necessitating stopping to remove and clean the overwhelmed air filter.
Despite the ache the weight put on his wounded leg, Jason insisted on doing his share of the digging.
“I can see why most people take the boat,” Andrews had grumbled after his third effort at wielding a shovel. “I’d take hippos and crocs over this any day.”
Next to him, Emphani paused long enough to wipe sandy sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “The pinasse was, how do you say, never a bateau mouche anyway.”
“Say what?”
“C’mon, guys,” Jason had intervened. “We can stay here all night gabbing like a woman’s bridge club, or we can get this job done and go home.”
Daylight made visible the change in terrain the four could only guess at in the dark. The lush foliage of the Niger River valley now looked more like Death Valley. Scrubby trees, bushes really, sustained an existence distant from one another. This might have been south of the Sahara, but it certainly looked like the great desert. Instead of the animals of the day before, lizards scurried for protection both from the merciless sun and the intruders in the Toyota. The only other living creatures were occasional herds of sheep or goats, their shepherds eyeing the men in the truck with undisguised suspicion.
Viktor watched a small group of these animals from the open bed as the truck stood still, waiting for them to amble across the road.
“Sheep or goat. Sound the same, look the same, smell the same. How do you know… the… er… different?”
Andrews was carefully measuring out a drink from one of the five-liter jugs of water. “In this climate, sheep have no wool. They look like goats.” He pointed to the animals as they moved away. “But at this angle, you can see the critters have their tails up. Goats. Sheep have tails down.”
Viktor nodded slowly, absorbing this bit of bucolic wisdom. “Tail up, goat. Tail down, sheep.”
So it had gone, monotonous hour after monotonous hour. As shadows awakened and began to stretch, traffic on the road increased: Camels, donkeys, and Japanese trucks, their paint scabrous from sand blasting. The air was not noticeably cooler; but the road, still no more than a trace, firmer. Cresting a slight rise, the yellow mud-brick walls of the city of Timbuktu had come into view, shimmering in the near-desert heat as though viewed through water.
It would have made an impressive painting. Though even if Jason had brought his supplies, there would be scant time or opportunity for artistic endeavors. Even so, Jason was thinking of how to render the chiaroscuro of afternoon shadows on mud brick.
Jason let go of the steering wheel long enough to stretch as the truck stuttered through low city gates. “This city has been here since the 1300s,” he announced.
Then he noted Emphani, his only company in the truck’s cab, was snoring gently.
So much for historical background.
The streets were narrow, lined by one- and two-story mud-brick houses, each with a window over the centered front door from which owl-eyed children stared in wonder. As he began to climb a slight rise, Jason could see roofs consisted of dirt poured over palm matting. He supposed the arrangement was not entirely waterproof; but, here adjacent to the desert, it didn’t need to be.