A Hundred Thousand Dragons (35 page)

Kazim came into the arena, his machine gun cradled in his arms. He hated this place with its brooding temple and the black open mouths of the doorways. He hated how his soft footfalls echoed like a march of bandaged feet and how his breathing whispered back at him in ghostly mockery. Kazim knew there were ghosts here.

He swallowed hard and felt the knife in its sheath at his belt, reassured by the familiar feel of the corded handle. The boss wanted him to use the knife and not bullets. He'd rather use bullets. The most intense pleasure Kazim had ever known came from playing a raking burst of fire over human flesh, seeing how the body lifted, twitched, danced and splattered.

That was real power. That was modern, that was progress, that was American, that was good. Maybe the boss would let him kill the pilot. He wanted to kill the pilot. But as for now . . . He had to use the knife.

He grinned in anticipation. The knife was nearly as good as a gun, if the victims were tied. Not as intense but a more thoughtful, inventive pleasure. The moment could be made to last. The man first. He could be carved up, then left to watch as the woman writhed in helpless submission. Kazim licked his dry lips. He wanted the woman with her soft white skin. He wanted to feel her shrink under his hands. And, afterwards, he'd kill her. The thought of that pleasure made his blood pound. She would live a long time, dying bit by delicious bit.

He rounded the spur of cliff where his victims should have been trussed up like chickens. He swore as he saw the cut ropes lying on the ground. The cliffs took his words and gave them back to him in fragments. He froze. Mixed in with the obscenities was another sound, a harsh rumbling laugh. It was as if the rocks themselves were laughing.

He gripped the tommy gun and turned very slowly. In the middle of the arena was the altar. The dead man, Vaughan, whom Kazim despised, should have been lying beside it. But he wasn't lying down, he was standing up. He leaned over the altar, his eyes wide open, staring into Kazim's soul. Between his hands was the skull.

Kazim gave a little moan of fright. With a rasping noise as the bone scraped on stone, the dead man moved the skull. Kazim cried out, a jerky whimper of terror.

Then the skull spoke. ‘Go. Go. Go.'

It was the one word, first whispered and then rising to a shout and echoed, echoed in a terrifying wave of sound.

Kazim whimpered once more and that ghastly noise, the bone scraping on the stone, rasped out again as the dead man moved the skull.

Kazim brought up the tommy-gun. His fingers, slippery with sweat, closed over the trigger, sending bullet after bullet thudding and ricocheting into the stones, the dust, the altar, in a jerky arc of destruction. The dust billowed up in a blinding sandstorm and through the clouds of grit and sand, his eardrums punched with sound, Kazim saw the dead man fling his arms outwards and fall, the skull rising high in the air, shattering to a million flying chips of bone. Kazim kept the trigger pulled hard back until every bullet had gone. The gun clicked uselessly. Then he heard the scream.

It started as on a high pitch and got higher. The cliffs screamed back. Kazim felt himself scream, heard his own voice, thin against the scream of the violated skull and malevolent cliffs.

Through the billowing clouds of dust, a man loomed towards him.

For a few hundredths of a second, Kazim saw the jerky movements, the outstretched hands, the shambling walk, then, with a scream louder than even the scream of the skull, he ran.

Jack leaned on the cabin door of the aeroplane and unscrewed the cap of his water bottle. He had taxied the D.H.9 out of the cave, close to the lorry. He and the Arab had heaved nearly fifty of the heavy canvas bags into the cabin. Von Erlangen, sitting in the shade, his back to the cliff, watched them, his rifle beside him and his revolver in his hand. Jack didn't know where Kazim was but all he could hope was that Arthur and Isabelle had managed to get free and somehow get to safety. He paused with the cap of the canteen in his hand. Faintly, like a distant rumble of thunder, came a booming, repeated noise.

Von Erlangen jerked his head up, listening intently. His lips thinned as the noise rolled on. ‘Fool,' he snarled. He looked to where Jack and Amir had stopped, listening. ‘Get on with it,' he said, in icy anger.

Jack, his stomach leaden, picked up another bag. That had been machine-gun fire. He hefted the bag in his hands, feeling fury course through him. He could hurl the bag at Amir, try and get to Von Erlangen . . . The revolver was aimed steadily at him and, stupefied with despair, he put it in the cabin with the rest.

They heard Kazim before they saw him, his feet thudding on the ground. Amir jumped down from the lorry, yelling out a string of Arabic. Kazim ran towards him, his face a ghastly pallor. He stumbled against Amir, tried to speak and managed a few jumbled words. Amir shrank back from the terrified man, then, with a sudden movement, they both leapt into the cab of the lorry.

‘Stop!' yelled Von Erlangen. He shouted a volley of orders but his words were lost in the growl of the engine. The lorry accelerated away, bumping wildly over the uneven ground, sending up vast clouds of dust. Von Erlangen brought the rifle up to his shoulder and fired. The bullet pinged off the cab of the lorry. Von Erlangen fired three more bullets, but the wild progress of the lorry and the billowing dust made it impossible to aim.

He whirled as Jack approached. ‘Keep your distance!'

Jack tried to keep the joy out of his voice. He didn't know what Arthur and Isabelle had done, but they had done
something
. They were alive! Or, at least, he thought, sobering, they had been before that burst of machine-gun fire. ‘I just wondered what all the fuss was about.'

‘Stupidity,' said Von Erlangen between clenched teeth.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw a little movement where a camel-thorn bush clung to an outcrop of rock by the base of the cliff. He walked away from the bush, keeping Von Erlangen's attention away from that flicker of movement. ‘Well, there goes the rest of the gold,' he said, watching the cloud of dust.

‘Thank you for stating the obvious, Mr Haldean,' Von Erlangen said sharply. He flexed his fingers. ‘I shall look forward to meeting those two again. In the meantime, we might as well go. Is the aeroplane ready?'

‘As ready as she can be,' said Jack. ‘Where are we flying to, by the way?'

‘Turkey. Scutari. I have useful friends there.'

Jack nodded. ‘The Black Sea, eh? I'll have to plot a course. We don't want to fly over Cyprus if we can help it.' Taking maps and compasses from the cockpit, he sauntered back to the cliff, and settled down, apparently working out distances.

A whisper sounded from the rocks behind him. ‘Jack, we're here.' It was Isabelle.

Jack took out a cigarette and lit it with what he hoped was idle unconcern. With the hand holding the match shielding his mouth, he risked a whisper back.

‘How did you scare off Kazim?'

‘Arthur propped up Vaughan's body against the altar and put the skull in his hands. He picked it up with his jacket. He didn't touch it. We had some rope underneath it. We hid behind the altar, pulled on the rope and made the skull move. Kazim was frightened rigid.'

‘He blasted away on his tommy gun. He used all his ammo,' whispered Arthur. ‘Then Isabelle screamed and he thought it was the skull.'

‘There was no end of dust and Arthur lurched towards him, walking like something that had risen from the tomb.'

Jack smothered a grin behind his hand. ‘Good work. They've run off, so that's two down.' He glanced up at Von Erlangen and risked another whisper. ‘You'll be safe. If I've got to go the distance, best of luck. Thanks for being here.'

After a few more minutes, he gathered together his papers and strolled back to the aeroplane. ‘You'll have to swing the propeller,' he said to the waiting Von Erlangen. ‘I'll start the ignition and when I shout
Contact
, give it a good heave.'

Von Erlangen climbed into the plane and stood inside the open door of the cabin. The gun hadn't left Jack once. ‘Mr Haldean, I do not intend to be left outside the aeroplane. You can swing the propeller. I have seen it done many times.'

‘Just as you like,' said Jack, getting in to the cockpit and setting the switches.

It had been worth a try but he wasn't surprised it hadn't worked. Von Erlangen evidently thought he might fly off and leave him stranded. With the heavily laden plane, there wasn't a hope. Unfortunately, although Von Erlangen didn't know that, he evidently knew enough about aircraft to avoid the deadly arc of the propeller.

With the switches trembling on contact, he swung the engine into life and made a jump for the cockpit.

‘You'd better sit down and strap yourself in,' he shouted back to Von Erlangen in the cabin, raising his voice to carry over the noise of the engine. ‘We're going to run into bumps.'

‘Bumps?' yelled Von Erlangen.

‘Bumps,' shouted Jack, bringing the engine up to full power. ‘Irregular variations in the air. Makes you go up and down. Bumps.' The plane lurched forwards. ‘Suit yourself,' he called over the steady thrum of the engines. ‘I don't mind if you fall out.' He didn't know if Von Erlangen had strapped himself in but a glance behind showed him that he'd stepped back from the cabin door.

As the plane taxied away, Arthur and Isabelle came out from their hiding-place. The wheels of the D.H.9 juddered across the sand, faster and faster. ‘I don't understand it,' Arthur said, a line creasing his forehead. ‘That's not the runway we marked out.' He voice strained in sudden anxiety. ‘What the devil's he doing? He'll hit those rocks if he's not careful.'

Isabelle held her breath as the plane lifted, bumped and lifted again with daylight under the wheels, inches from a long outcrop of rock. She gasped in horror as the D.H.9 brushed its wingtip against the boulders.

They could see Jack struggling to get out of the cockpit. The plane slewed to one side, catherine-wheeled round, then, with a ghastly, lazy motion turned over and over, spinning across the desert on its wings like a rolling cross, before plunging its nose into the sand, engine screaming. There was a sharp, intense noise as if the sky had ripped apart, then flames and black smoke leapt high into the air. Jack was flung out and lay motionless on the sand. With a shattering roar, the aeroplane exploded.

‘Come on!' shouted Arthur, sprinting faster than he had ever run before. Under a deluge of burning wood, twisted shards of metal and floating scraps of fabric, they got to Jack and taking an arm each, dragged him away. A second explosion blasted them off their feet and hurled them against the cliff. Bruised and shaken, they lay blind, deaf and helpless in a blizzard of whirling shale, sand and debris.

After a long time, Arthur lifted his head. ‘Isabelle, are you all right?'

‘I . . . I think so,' she said shakily. ‘How about you?'

‘OK.' He got to his knees, bending down anxiously to Jack.

Jack's eye's flickered open. ‘Is he dead?'

Arthur looked at the blazing skeleton of the aeroplane, a black and red outline in the clouds of burning oil. ‘He's dead, all right.' The wind shifted, bringing a gust of black smoke that set him coughing. ‘Can you walk?'

‘My leg hurts. I'm sorry. I don't think I can.'

Isabelle winced as she saw how Jack's leg had twisted. It was broken for sure. ‘How do you feel, Jack?' she asked anxiously.

‘Feel?' With her help, he sat up, looking at the fiery cross that was the remains of the aeroplane. ‘I feel . . . I feel free. At last.' A faint smile twitched his mouth. ‘And sore.' He reached for Isabelle's hand. ‘I'm sorry. It was the only way.'

There was water and food in the cave, left from their stockpile of the night before, but as the day lengthened, Jack's condition worsened. They bandaged his leg as best they could and used part of their precious water supply to keep him cool but, despite their efforts, his temperature rose and he moved restlessly on his makeshift bed, muttering in delirium.

The sun sank to the west and a thin purple line showed the horizon. The purple line vanished and, under a thick blanket of stars, night fell on the tombs of the Nabateans.

After the heat of the day came the bitter cold, kept only partly at bay by the flames of a camel-thorn fire. Jack, semi-conscious, tossed and groaned. As the night wore on, his temperature subsided, and Isabelle thankfully realized he was drifting in and out of sleep.

Much, much later, when the stars had disappeared beneath the horizon, far above, in the immense black velvet bowl of sky, came a shooting star, and another. Jack, restless and senses on edge, clutched Isabelle's arm. Jerked back to full wakefulness, she bent her head to listen to him.

‘The stars, Belle, the stars! Can you see them?'

Blearily she looked up at the stars. ‘They're beautiful, Jack.' She stroked his forehead, trying to comfort him. ‘Go back to sleep.'

He laughed. ‘Don't you see? It's the sun. We're safe, Belle. We can't see the sun, but they're high enough.' His voice broke. ‘The sun.
It's catching the wings of an aeroplane
. It's the RAF. We're safe.'

And he rested against her arm.