A Devil Is Waiting - Jack Higgins [83]
“I don’t know. It could be nothing. He returns to Hazar and goes about his business, flying to Rubat to pick up cargo for Gila, so it is only by chance that he is here not long after the Hawker landed. As far as he knows, I didn’t get off and the plane had a legitimate reason to be here. You could argue that perhaps I was on board all the time, but that won’t help people like Ferguson unless they know where the Hawker is going, and they don’t.”
He took a sip of coffee. “On the other hand, I don’t trust people who ask nosy questions.” He turned to her. “Contact his partner, this Hakim, at Gila. Tell him Gregory Slay is a threat to Al Qaeda and must be disposed of at once. Is he reliable?”
“A dedicated jihadist.”
“Then tell him that Allah is great and he is privileged to have been given this task. You will not say my name.” He smiled. “I am not worthy of even being mentioned.”
“At your orders, master.”
The wind was coming in forcefully from the desert beyond the town, stirring the sea into waves, the Monsoon pitching on its two great anchors, the one at the stern, the other forward. He stood there gripping the rail, looking out to sea, thinking of Slay flying in such weather. A good man, and there was much to admire in him, but this was war and he was on the wrong side.
Fatima appeared. “It is taken care of. Hakim says he knows his duty.”
“Thank you, Fatima,” he said calmly.
A sudden fierce gust dashed sand in his face, and she grabbed his arm with surprising strength. “You will come in now. You could damage your eyes. Such behavior is foolishness when so many depend on you.”
His smile was unlooked for and unexpected. “Why, Fatima, you are quite right. I stand corrected.”
He passed inside, and she closed the shutter.
THIRTEEN
During the run from Rubat, the wind had increased considerably, picking up more and more sand, but it wasn’t at the stage where it was giving Slay any serious trouble, although he thought it likely that might happen. His mobile sounded, and once more it was Roper.
“It’s me again. Did you really mean that about the sandstorm?”
“It’s shaping up to one now. This is the last place God made,” Slay told him. “In other places, people go to market to buy food. Here down on the border with Yemen they go to market to buy arms. Anything from a general-purpose machine gun to a pistol for your pocket, and most things in between. It’s a savage old world.”
“Are you regretting you ever went there?”
“I didn’t have much choice, old son—the cutbacks in the military in the UK saw to that.” A violent wind rocked the Scorpion. Slay managed to control it. “All of a sudden, it’s getting interesting. I’ll check in with you later.”
“I’m open at all hours.”
Slay tried going up above the storm and seemed to do better, so he increased speed and pushed on until in the distance he saw three or four derricks next to various trucks, cars, and prefabricated buildings. He dropped to where red and green lights marked the landing site, and he put down.
Sand was beginning to coat everything like a different kind of snow; he noticed that as three men manhandled a trolley toward him, the foreman leading. Slay got out of the pilot’s seat, opened the side door, and jumped out.
“Help yourselves,” he shouted to the foreman in Arabic. “Where is Hakim?”
The men were already transferring the cargo. “He’s gone,” the foreman shouted back. “He said he thought it was going to get worse. I told him he should stay until it blows over, but apparently he needed to get back to base.”
“Damn fool,” Slay said.
“That’s what I thought. You’ll be staying, then?”
“No, I’m a damn fool, too.”
The men had finished their task, were driving the cargo away. The foreman said in English, “It’s your funeral—isn’t this what you British say?”
He was laughing as he followed his men into the buildings. Slay closed the main door of the