Midnight Runner - Jack Higgins [37]
"In effect, an army camp. We have young Arabs from all the main Arab states. We teach them basic weaponry skills with rifles and machine guns, plus more sophisticated weapons such as shoulder-fired missiles."
"What about bomb-making and explosives?"
"Yes, that, too, though it's pretty basic. Mostly how to use explosives effectively with timer pencils. There's a limit to what we can do. It isn't exactly up to Provisional IRA standards. We usually have around fifty in the camp, mostly men, but a few women pass through. They do eight weeks here and then go back home and pass their knowledge on."
"Who are the instructors?"
"Mostly Palestinians."
"Are they up to it?"
"Good help is hard to find. The chief instructor is first class, though, Colum McGee. He was in the IRA for years."
"So what's the purpose of all this?"
"To have lots of reasonably trained young revolutionaries scattered throughout the Middle East, youngsters who would happily overthrow their governments, who hate capitalism and the wealthy."
"But, Kate, you're a capitalist and you are unbelievably wealthy. And yet you want to destabilize the lot. It doesn't make sense."
"It does if you want revenge, darling, it does if you want revenge."
"And how do you achieve that?"
"Later, Rupert. When the time is right." She glanced down below where sand boiled in a great cloud. So Ben Carver had been right. A desert storm was brewing.
V illiers and his men were well into the hill country, passing between those great ocher cliffs, making for the pool at Hama. For some time as the wind increased in force he had been aware of the fine particles of sand being carried with it, and he and his men had covered their noses and mouths with scarves.
As they approached the pool, he said to Achmed, "We'll stop and replenish the water bags."
"As the Sahb commands."
Achmed got out with two Scouts, but Villiers stayed in his seat, sheltering behind the windshield, lighting a cigarette in cupped hands. Achmed and the two Scouts filled the goatskin bags and were turning to bring them back to the Land Rovers, each man carrying two, when there was the crack of a shot, and a bullet hole appeared in the bag Achmed carried in his left hand and water spilled out. The three men dropped the bags and ran for the shelter of the Land Rovers and crouched, weapons ready.
"No return fire," Villiers said.
The wind moaned, more sand carried with it. Achmed said, "Look, Sahb, there are tire marks in the sand, a Land Rover for sure. Someone has passed this way before us. Maybe Abu." Villiers started to get up and Achmed pulled him back. "No Sahb, not you."
"I think it is Abu, but if he could hit the goatskin he could have hit you. He can't shoot me because the Countess wants me alive. This means he's just been playing with us. I'll prove it to you." He stood up and called in Arabic, "Abu, have you no honor? Are you afraid to face me?" He walked out into the open. "Here I am, where are you?"
The visibility was greatly reduced now. They heard the sound of an engine starting up and a vehicle drawing away.
"He has gone, Sahb," Achmed told him.
"And we should go, too, and reach shelter. It may be a while before this blows over."
A t the end of the pass was a crumbling fort left over from the old days. The stables still had a roof on them, the Land Rovers drove inside and they all dismounted.
Villiers said to Achmed, "Get the spirit stove going. Coffee for you and tea for me. A can of food for each man. They can choose what they want."
"As the Sahb orders."
Villiers looked out as the sand was whipped up into a fury and wondered how Abu was getting on out there but, even more, wondered what he intended.
T he Scorpion made Fuad before the sandstorm reached full intensity. Rupert was aware of the palm trees of the oasis below and his trained vision took in the crude blockhouse. The firing range beyond it, and many Bedu tents of the kind had evolved over the centuries to handle the vagaries of the Empty Quarter, including