Scimitar SL-2 (26 page)

He had visited this remote burning landscape only once, and had recoiled from it, as most black Africans do. But he understood that those endless sands represent the very fabric of the Muslim world. He understood, remotely, that his own tiny coastal community was somehow joined by the swirling dunes of the Arabian desert, to the great Islamic nations of Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf States. And he knew it was timeless. And that it mattered. And he respected his visitors from the far ends of the Muslim kingdoms.

The Captain observed that General Rashood had an extremely pronounced English accent, and asked if, like himself, the General had attended school in the British Isles.

Ravi, who was desperately tired after a 20,000-mile voyage from communist China, could think of a thousand reasons not to tell anyone of his background. But he smiled and opted for mass confusion. “No, Captain, I did not,” he said. “I went to a school in Switzerland. They taught me to speak like this.”

“I see,” he replied. “But I expect you noticed that I too speak like you, and I did go to school in England. Charterhouse. And from there I went to Oxford University…studied engineering at St. Edmund Hall, but my main achievement was to play golf for the University against Cambridge. Twice. Once as Captain.”

Ravi, who was almost nodding off in the hazy African heat after the rain, jolted himself back into the conversation and offered, “You’re a Carthusian, and you got a Blue for golf? That’s impressive.”

“I did,” said Camara, who was momentarily bewildered by his guest’s instant grasp of his elite education, especially the fact that Ravi knew, esoterically, that “Old Boys” of Charterhouse are known as Carthusians.

But he continued, “They taught me to play at school, and when I arrived at Oxford I turned out to be one of the best players. I really enjoyed it…very jolly people. It was funny, but they could never get a firm grip on my full name, which is Habib Abdu Camara, and when the team list was posted each week, they used to write me in as ‘The Black Man.’ ”

“Christ, if they did that these days they’d all be in the slammer,” said Ravi, smiling.

Captain Camara laughed. “I suppose so, but they meant no harm. And even I thought it was funny. All of them have stayed my good friends.”

“You still see them?” asked Ravi.

“Well, I came down from Oxford seventeen years ago. And we did have a reunion for several years at the public schools golf…You know, the Halford-Hewitt Tournament down at Royal Cinque Ports in Deal. Of course, we were all playing for different schools, but at Oxford, when we were together, we did beat Cambridge twice, and we’re all rather proud of that.”

“You stopped going to the Halford-Hewitt?”

“Not entirely. But my Navy career here prevented me from playing for Charterhouse for many years. Matter of fact, I’m going back next year. It’s funny, but you see the same chaps, year after year, playing for their old schools. We’ve been in three semifinals against Harrow and I don’t think either team hardly changed.”

Ravi stiffened at the mention of his old school, but the chatter-box Captain of the Senegalese Navy had seized the moment to expound on his golfing career to someone who appeared to know what he was talking about.

“Great matches we had against the Harrovians,” he said. “Chap called ‘Thumper’ Johnston was their captain. His real name was Richard Trumper-Johnston, but he was a very fine player. He beat me twice, both times 2 and 1, dropped long putts on the eighteenth…he wasn’t so good at foursomes.”

Again Ravi found himself nodding off. But he jolted back, trying to sound as if he’d been listening. And uncharacteristically he came out with an unguarded sentence, “Thumper Johnston? Yes, he went back to Harrow as a housemaster, taught maths.”

“You sure you didn’t go to school in England?” asked the Captain. “I know you Middle Eastern officers, very secretive men. Reveal nothing. But many of you went to school in England, especially Harrow…Thumper Johnston and King Hussein, eh? Ha, ha, ha.”

Captain Camara’s wide face split into a huge grin. “I think I catch you, General. But any friend of Thumper’s is a very good friend of mine. I keep your secret.”

“I didn’t say I knew him,” said Ravi. “I just know of him. My father knew him.”

“Then your father went to Harrow?” said the Captain. “
Someone
must have gone to Harrow…to know Thumper. He’s never really left the place, except to play golf.”

Ravi smiled, and he knew he had to admit something. Anything to shut this idiot up. “My father was English, and I think he played against Johnston in the Halford–Hewitt. I just remember his name.”

“Your father played for Harrow?” asked Captain Camara.

This was a critical moment. “No, he played for Bradfield,” said Ravi.

The Captain pondered that for a moment, doubtless, thought Ravi, assessing the absurd notion that an Englishman named Rashood was sufficiently impressed by the play of an opponent, Thumper Johnston, in the Halford-Hewitt to regale his son with the man’s career as a schoolmaster.

No, I don’t think he’s going to buy that,
Ravi thought.

And sure enough, Captain Camara came back laughing. “Ahhah,” he said. “I think I find you out. You are a highly classified Old Harrovian Submarine Commander…You come out of nowhere…out of the ocean…and I check you out in England next year, maybe with Thumper in person…now I give more tea to my friends from deep waters.”

Shakira, who was even more tired than Ravi, had actually fallen asleep, and had missed the entire conversation. She awoke just in time to hear Ravi say, “You should have been a detective, Captain, but you have this case wrong…”

“Then how come you know Thumper, the Harrovian maths master!” cried Captain Camara, laughing loudly. “You are rumbled—by the Black Man from Oxford…Ha, ha, ha!”

Even Ravi laughed, silently cursing himself for his carelessness.
He declined more tea, and asked if they might make their way to the airport. Since Shakira was so tired, she would probably sleep all the way home.

“Of course,” said the Captain, jumping energetically to his feet. “Come…I’ll call Tomas to carry the bags to the car…It’s parked just over there.”

They walked across the quay to a black Mercedes-Benz Naval staff car that carried small flags fluttering in the evening breeze on both front wings—the green, yellow, and red tricolor of Senegal with its single green star in the center.

Captain Camara drove to the airport in a leisurely manner, out to the Atlantic Peninsula north of the dockyard where a Lockheed Orion P-3F in the livery of the Iranian Air Force awaited them. The Captain parked the car and insisted on walking out to the aircraft and carrying Shakira’s bag. She climbed up the steps to board and Ravi followed her, now carrying both bags.

They waved good-bye to their escort and watched him stride away towards the car. And quite suddenly, Ravi moved back to the top of the aircraft steps and called out…“Captain…come back…I have a small gift for you in my bag…I forgot about it.”

Captain Camara grinned broadly and turned back towards the aircraft, as Ravi knew he would. He ran swiftly up the steps. They were agile, nimble strides, the last he would ever make. They were the strides that would end his life.

He entered the cabin and made his way to the rear of the aircraft where Ravi was fumbling in his bag. And with the speed of light, the Hamas assault chief whipped around and slammed the hilt of his combat knife with terrific force into the space between the Captain’s eyes, splintering the lower forehead.

Then he rammed the butt of his right hand straight into the nostril end of the Black Man’s nose, driving the bone into the brain. Captain Camara had played his last round. He was dead before he hit the floor. Shakira stood staring in amazement at the departed three-handicapper, spread-eagled in the aisle, presumably already on his way to the Greater Fairways.

The pilot, who had not seen all of this action, was fairly astonished too, and he walked down the center aisle in company with his first officer.

“General Rashood?” he said, saluting. No questions. Military discipline.

“Sorry for the mess,” said Ravi. “Put his head and shoulders in a garbage bag, will you? We’ll throw him out either over the desert or in the Red Sea. I’ll let you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, Captain. You’ll understand this was a classified operation. This man knew too much about us. He was a menace to Iran, and a danger to Islam. Also he was about to reveal my identity as a Hamas Commanding Officer to the British. That was out of the question. Plainly.”

“Yes, sir. I understand. But I’ll have to slow down and lose a lot of height if we’re going to open the rear door. Just let me know when you’re ready. We fly at around 28,000 feet. I have some hot coffee on board, and some sandwiches. We can get something better around 0100 when we refuel at Aswan.”

“Thank you, Captain. I think we better get the hell out of here now. Before someone starts looking for the head of the local Navy.”

He and Shakira returned to the front of the aircraft and strapped themselves into the deep leather seats usually occupied by observers and computer technicians on the Orion’s early warning missions over the Arabian and Persian Gulf areas.

The pilot, Captain Fahad Kani, drove the aircraft swiftly into the takeoff area, scanned the deserted runway in front of him, and shoved open the throttles without even waiting for clearance. The Orion rumbled forward, gained speed, and climbed into the early evening skies, out over the Atlantic.

He banked right, to the north towards Mauritania, then banked again to a course a few degrees north of due west, aiming the aircraft at the southern Sahara. It was a course that would take them across the hot, poverty-stricken, landlocked African countries of
Mali, Niger, and Chad, and then the northern Sudan. An hour later, they would drop down into the green and fertile Nile Valley, way upstream from Cairo at Aswan, home of the High Dam.

Ravi was unable to make up his mind whether to deposit the body of Captain Camara in the burning sands of the Sahara, hoping it would either be devoured by the buzzards or be covered forever by the first sandstorm; or to go for the ocean, where the blood from the Captain’s shattered nose would ensure the sharks would do his dirty work on a rather more reliable basis.

Trouble was, he was not sure if there
were
sharks in the Red Sea, and the body might wash up on the shore. Also, he knew that timing was critical in a high-speed aircraft, and that heaving a dead body out of the door would not be easy. He did not relish the prospect of a foul-up, in which the carcass of the former head of the Senegalese Navy landed in the middle of Jeddah. Ravi opted for the buzzards.

He and Shakira were almost too tired to eat anything. But the coffee was good and they each ate a small chicken sandwich with tomato on pita bread, before falling asleep.

Two hours later, Ravi, who never slept longer than that, awoke and checked their whereabouts with the pilot. Right now they had crossed the Mauritania border and were flying over Mali. Ravi had consulted his treasured
Traveler’s Atlas,
a small leather-bound pocket edition with pages edged in gold, a gift from Shakira. And he had selected his spot for the Camara heave-ho.

It would take another three and a half hours to get there, and he instructed the first officer to wake him and then prepare to slow the aircraft down, losing height to around 5,000 feet for the ejection.

He went back to the sleeping Shakira and held her hand, but he dozed off only fitfully himself, as they flew above the mountains of northern Chad. A few minutes later, they entered the airspace over the Libyan Desert, one of the loneliest parts of the Sahara, 750,000 square miles, stretching through northwestern Sudan, western Egypt, and eastern Libya.

Ravi had chosen a 100-mile-wide area of unmapped sand dunes between the oases of Ma’tan Bishrah and Ma’tan Sarah. There was not a town for 100 miles in any direction. Down below, in this burning, arid, uninhabitable Al Kufrah district, the temperature hovered around 105 degrees.

Only the GPS could tell the pilot precisely where they were, and Captain Kani was watching it carefully. Ravi, with the first officer, dragged the body to the rear door, as they came down through 10,000 feet and slowed to a just-sustainable 190 knots.

Ravi and the airman were both standing, strapped in harnesses attached to the fuselage. And as they approached the drop zone, they both heard the Captain call out…
“ONE MINUTE!”

The first officer unclipped the door and pulled it sideways to swing it open. The noise was deafening, as the wind rushed into the gap. Both men held on and shoved the body into the doorway with their boots.

“NOW!” yelled the Captain, and with two more good shoves, they rolled the former Oxford University golf captain out into the stratosphere, watched the body fall towards the desert floor, and then hauled the big aircraft door shut, fast.

“
Okay, Captain…as you were!
” called Ravi. And they both felt the surge, as the Orion angled slightly upward, and accelerated towards its cruising height. As a measure of her desperate exhaustion, Shakira never stirred.

As a measure of his profound relief at having eliminated the talkative Senegalese sailor from all contact with the Harrovian Golf Society, Ravi poured himself another cup of coffee.

Captain Kani pressed on across Africa’s fourth largest country all the way to the border with Egypt, about 550 miles shy of the Nile Valley. “Little more than an hour to Aswan,” called the Captain. “And that’ll be the first 3,000 miles behind us.”

“How far’s that from home?” asked Ravi.

“It’s around 1,500 miles from the Nile to Bandar Abbas. ’Bout another three and a half hours. We’ll be on the ground in Aswan for about an hour.”

Ravi slept while the Orion inched its way across the desert, awakening only when they could see Lake Nasser, the 350-mile-long stretch of water that started backing up against the southside wall of the High Dam when they halted the natural flow of the Nile.

They came in over the 1,600-square-mile artificial lake, dropping down into the flat, barren brown terrain west of the river, and landing at the little airport, which stands 16 miles from Egypt’s southernmost city. It was 0100 back in Senegal, but three time zones later, it was 0400 here in the land of the Pharaohs.