Tracks (25 page)

Christine smiled to herself in
the dark.  It would be the second time she would kiss an Israeli that day.

“What is make out?” she asked,
playing ignorant.

The trooper looked at her for
the first time. 

“You know.  Kiss, be
lovers,” he said flashing an
embarrassed
smile.

“OK,” Christine said
playfully.  She liked his looks.  He had a handsome face and a
good-natured demeanor.

“What’s your name,” she asked
him.

“Gidi,” he said.  “It’s
short for Gideon.”

She wanted to ask him all
sorts of questions. Where was Kasuma? Where was the Egyptian patrol boat? 
Who was waiting for her on the other side? 

But she figured it would be
prying.  She did not want to put him on the spot and make him uneasy in
case he could not tell her things, so she decided to keep quiet. 

They sat in silence for a
while, the waves cyclically washing over the cooling sand.  It became
entirely dark with the exception of the half moon and city lights in the distance
around the tip of the Gulf and behind of them at the resort.  Their
target, the blinking, bobbing light in the dark waters was clearly visible.

Suddenly two men in uniform
appeared from the hotel side and Gidi pushed her gently back on the sand and they
kissed.  The guards passed by them, and continued toward the fence in what
seemed like a routine patrol.  Christine and Gidi held their kiss until
the guards were out of sight then laid on their backs for air.

“They’ll be back,” Gidi said,
staring into space.

“I don’t mind,” Christine
heard herself say.  His flesh, the ambiance, the circumstance, the danger,
all made her body suddenly passionate and she realized, in the midst of all the
excitement, how long she had been without a man’s affection.  His kiss was
intimate, of that she was certain, and not just for the sake of covering up
their intentions. 

He turned on his elbow and
looked at her and for a moment she imagined them, two lovers on an exotic vacation
island.  Unlike the backpacker who rudely stuck his tongue in her mouth
when she kissed him in the taxi, this man’s touch was gentle, respecting.

Neither of them spoke.
Christine remained on her back, staring at the stars all but oblivious to her impending
endeavor.  She felt confident.  The young Israeli frogman would
protect her, get her out.  She glanced at him then turned to him and
gently touched his bare shoulder.

“Kiss me again,” she
whispered.

He hesitated but she stretched
her neck offering her lips.  When the guards returned the entangled couple
looked quite authentic.

Twenty minutes later, they
were in the water.  Christine could swim but was no match for the trained
Navy diver and he considerately kept pace with her as she fought the incoming
tide.

They aimed for the blinking
light.  The water suddenly seemed dark and threatening to Christine, the
farther they journeyed from the beach.  Certain marine creatures and the
lack of solid ground under her feet frightened her and she quietly thanked
whoever schemed to have a frogman assist her.

Once past the incoming tide it
became a little easier to swim in the Gulf’s relatively calm waters but it was
cold and after a while Christine felt her limbs begin to chill.

Then Gidi motioned for her to
stop. 

“We reached the fence,” he
whispered, bobbing in the water.  “We need to dive here and you need to
hold on to me while I get us through this.”

Christine could not detect
anything in the water but she obeyed.

He had produced a pair of
swimming goggles each and strapped a knife and a small flashlight to his ankle
shortly before they set out.  Now he was preparing to use them.

“Wait here,” he instructed and
before Christine could object disappeared under water.  It must have been
a full minute before he resurfaced.  To Christine it registered
abandonment, as she remained helplessly frozen in her spot. 

“You OK?” he asked, out of
breath, when he finally surfaced.  Christine could barely nod and before
she could recover, he had dived again.

When he came out the second
time, he motioned for her to hold on to him.  “Put on your goggles and
take a deep breath,” he said in her ear,
then
plunged,
Christine holding on to him for dear life.

There was total darkness
underneath but for the narrow strip of light Gidi’s flashlight produced. 
Suddenly they were next to a huge underwater fence stretching endlessly in all
directions, Gidi’s strong arms
lunging
them toward it,
parting it, then slithering through it, Christine slipping through right behind. 
She could see the flashlight illuminating a metal ball of some kind, which Gidi
avoided and kept going straight for a few seconds, then finally he shot up to
the surface.

Christine thought her lungs
would burst as they emerged.  She held on to Gidi choking and coughing
until she got her breath restored.  Then she put her arms around him and
kissed him on the mouth.

“Are we through?” she asked,
out of breath.

“Look there, another few
hundred meters,” he gestured.  She followed his gaze and saw the blinking
light on top a silhouette of a boat bobbing against the faint thread of lights
shimmering from the Jordanian port town of Aqaba.

“Let’s go,” he said and they
carried on swimming until they reached the Israeli Navy boat waiting for
them.  Two strong pairs of hands fished her out of the water and soon they
were on deck, wobbly and shivering.  A warm wool blanket was thrown around
her shoulders and someone handed her a cup of steaming tea.

“Drink up lady, you’re safe,”
she heard a familiar voice call out. 

It was Sam.

Christine let out a muffled
cry of relief and joy cuddling up to him as he embraced her.

“Good to see you,
Chris.”  He spoke in her ear, rubbing her blanket to get her warm.

“G-Great t-to s-see y-you
Sssammy
,” she said, teeth chattering as she tried to sip
her tea.  The few sailors gathered around them now made way as a short
stocky man in military fatigues with a beard and a captain’s hat stepped in
front of her.

“Welcome,” he announced in
lame English. “You may use my quarters to dry and wash up.”

“It’s very generous of you
Captain,” Sam said speaking for Christine who managed an awkward smile, her
teeth still chattering. 

Gidi appeared by her side,
covered with a wool blanket of his own. 

“Want to wash up with me?” she
said softly to him out of everyone’s earshot.

He smiled at her, the water
drops on his wet face glistening, his eyes playful.

“Sam Baker,” Sam said,
introducing himself. 

“Gidi.”
 
Gidi shook Sam’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks for bringing her
safely to us.”

“My pleasure,” Gidi said
glancing at Christine.

“Let’s get these folks to
shore,” the captain declared as the sailors dispersed.  The ship, which
had been idle, now came quietly back to life.  It gently turned and headed
north, to Eilat, a journey that would take all of twenty minutes.

Christine took the Captain’s
offer and disappeared below deck.  Sam and Gidi remained on top.

“Who are you guys?”  Gidi
asked Sam.

“Small group trying to do a
big job,” Sam replied philosophically.

“Will you succeed?”

“Probably
not.
  We’ve already failed. 
Got
one of us killed.”

“That never stopped anyone
here,” Gidi observed.  “Hundreds die every year for this country.”

“It’s a high price to pay.”

“It was much higher when we
didn’t have a country.”

“I guess it was,” Sam remarked
thoughtfully, thinking about Michele and Sammy and what price he was yet to pay
for his tragedy.

The boat was inching closer to
the port, the lights of Eilat getting brighter and more resolute.

“Take good care of her,” Gidi
was saying. 

Sam was thinking of Elena.

“Who,
Christine?
We will,” he said absentmindedly, smiling at
the young Israeli.  “I won’t let her out of my sight.”   

“Good luck to you,” Gidi said
as he let the wool blanket slide off his broad shoulders on to the deck.

Then he jumped into the water.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

Clair was devastated when she
learned Jack had been caught.

She and Ibrahim had waited all
day and half the night before Faraj appeared.  He was brief with the grim
news.

He had hidden in the gorge and
seen the soldiers capture Jack, handling him quite roughly.  He did not
elaborate how rough.  Jack had hurt his knee and was crippled.  There
was nothing Faraj could do.

For the next two days Clair walked
in a haze of guilt and worry.  The boulders, the steep slopes, the dust,
the sand, even the heat did not phase her.

Jack was going to pay for her
mistake.  Jack was going to pay for her stubbornness and
carelessness.  Not only had she disregarded Christine’s warnings and got
herself arrested in Dahab, she then insisted they take Ibrahim along and by so
doing, got everyone in trouble.   

She did not think she could
cope with the guilt but at the moment there was nothing she could do.  If
they ever managed to get out of this treacherous desert, she thought she was
willing to sacrifice herself to free Jack.  She’d go back and take the rap
for him.  Ibrahim could stay close by with his father.  It was her
and her son alone in the vast desert in the hands of a young Bedouin to see
them through to a spot where supposedly someone will be to rescue them. 

It almost seemed far-fetched.

It would mean Christine had
made it to the coast and managed to get the map and information across the
border where others were waiting to organize a rescue team to be sent back
across the border to bring herself and her son to safety.

Clair did not even want to
consider how many things could go wrong and even more terrifying, how many
things needed to go right for them to make it.

If the past month was any
indication, the chances of them fleeing Egypt were next to none.  She had
certainly done everything wrong and now Jack was a prisoner.

But she kept pushing, her feet
doing the walking, her mind busy with reprimand and self-pity.  She had to
at least be strong for her son who was beginning to lag, dragging his feet.

They were climbing a ridge,
the dark rock surface burning underneath their feet, the sun blazing over their
heads.  Faraj had promised it was the last ascent but he had promised that
before and they kept climbing. 

Water was getting short. 
They had been trekking for six days since that wretched road they had to pass,
and it seemed to Clair no end was in sight.  Twice they stopped at small
Bedouin sites for water and food but kept right on going, afraid to miss the
rendezvous time they had agreed with Christine.

Faraj was a good guide but he
had his shortcomings and without Jack, Clair constantly worried that at some
point, he would decide to abandon them.  She had an extra fifty francs in
her possession and kept it for just such an emergency. 

Faraj’s greatest shortcoming
was that he had no regard for time.  He had no sense of it and did not
need it.  He understood that they had to get somewhere but could not understand
their haste.  Another week would not have made any difference in his eyes
and Clair had to constantly beleaguer him to move on.  Atop the ridge they
finally saw the sandy flatlands that led to the Israeli border.  It filled
Clair with hope.  Faraj smiled at her, flashing his crooked brown teeth.

“Not far now,” he said
pointing down to an imaginary point.

Ibrahim translated, pointing
himself in the direction of where Faraj had pointed but Clair could not see
anything other than the bare ridge descending to a dry brown-yellow plateau.

“Where?” she asked, spreading
her hands in despair, the sun boiling her kafiya over her head.

Faraj was still smiling.

“I will take you. 
Half a day, no more.”
  He took out the oilskin water
canteen and drank.  Ibrahim did the same.

There was no shade where they
stood so they began to slowly descend the ridge.  The rock face was steep
and smooth at the top.  It made it difficult to get a foothold. 
Sliding down was out of the question because of the absorbed heat emanating
from the exposed dark rock.  Gingerly they
treaded
down careful not to risk a fall that was several meters to spiky boulders down
below.

An hour later they rested
under a large boulder that provided some shade.  Ibrahim let Clair sip
some water then squeezed the rest of their canteen dry, looking inquiringly at
Faraj.

“Down there, much water,”
Faraj said, squeezing his own canteen dry. 

They kept moving, the track
leveling out a bit allowing greater progress.  Faraj led them through an
erratically narrow gorge they had not seen from above, their progress slowing
through a series of dry cascades, which had to be carefully negotiated.

At the bottom, the ground
leveled and they moved perpendicular, along the cliffs, the flatlands now
directly below.

Faraj stopped for a moment and
pointed. 

“Israel,” he said but Clair
could not distinguish where the border lay until she noticed a faint dust trail
in the distance.  “Army patrol,” Faraj said smiling again. 
“The border.”

Clair began to feel her thirst. 
Her mouth felt as if it had cracks in it and her tongue began to swell. 
In the extreme heat they had not drunk for several hours and it was beginning
to show. She tried to wet her lips with her tongue but produced no saliva.

“Take us to water,” she
pleaded, too exhausted to rejoice.

They kept moving along the
cliffs,
dust from the flat lands was now blowing in their
face.  They moved slowly careful not to stumble and fall down the slope
below.  Ibrahim was faltering again lagging behind, barely able to walk.
Clair waited and took his hand supporting him.

Faraj had disappeared ahead
around a towering cliff. When they reached the cliff and rounded it they saw a
sight that took their breath away.

As if by some magic, the
yellowish-brown landscape turned lush green.  Amidst the scorched,
sun-stroked desert environment they had reached a gorge alive with water. 
It was a rocky gorge almost hidden from view that cut deep into the rock face
for about a kilometer.  Its bottom was smooth rock while its steep sides
filled with vegetation, the spring water flowing in a narrow channel along the
center of the gorge creating a small waterfall at the entrance where Faraj was
standing, soaking wet, gulping the flowing fresh water.

It was a scene Clair would
never forget.  She and Ibrahim squealed with joy and joined Faraj at the
waterfall.

“Is this where we wait?” 
Clair asked Faraj after they had all quenched their thirst and lay on the cool
rock face.

“Further in there are dates
and figs with many places to hide,” Faraj explained.  “It is where we need
to be.”

Clair took that for a
yes.  She had no desire to move another inch in the arid desert and was
thinking she could stay in this theatrical gorge forever, if need be.

*****

The mini-bus reached Eilat in
the evening.

They all checked in at the
Queen of Sheba and then gathered at a conference room Kessler had prearranged.
The room was windowless with a long conference table in the middle.  An
assortment of food trays and drinks were stacked against the walls, and the
group hungrily loaded white china plates with exotic Middle-Eastern
cuisine.  They sat around the large conference table, eating and
informally chatting away.

Mai-Li sat by Harley dipping
small pieces of pita-bread in Labaneh spread sprinkled with olive oil and
Zaatar.   

“This is heavenly!” she
remarked.  “Ever had this?”

“I did, in Jordan a couple of
years back.  Why don’t you try this,” he said, handing her a Falafel
ball.  “Dip it in this humus.  It’s a treat.”

For Mai-Li it was a first
acquaintance with Israel and the Middle East; the rest of the crew had been
there before.

Mike Devlin and Malcolm
Rolston were reminiscing on old times they had when the two of them visited the
Gaza strip on a regiment rescue mission that had almost gone bad.  As
events heated up in Gaza, they were sent to pull out a British diplomat who had
upset the Islamic Jihad movement and had gotten himself trapped and threatened
in a war zone near Rafiah.  They were dispatched from a submarine, swam
roughly two kilometers to shore and had to covertly find the diplomat and
escort him to Israeli territory.  They found him holed up in a run-down
youth hostel thanks to a short wave radio he had in his possession, one he had
used to call for help.  As they escorted him, dressed up as Arabs through
the streets of Gaza, hunger got the better of them.  They had stopped at a
food stand and ordered three Kebab pita sandwiches, before continuing on. 
They were nearly shot at by the Israelis at the border checkpoint, as they
scooted through avoiding inspection, sandwiches in hand.  Luckily, a
Shabac operative aware of their
actions,
was there to
restrain nervous triggers.

Lizard O’Leary, Lieutenant
Brian Copeland, and Jimmy the driver were all acquainted with Israel on
separate
occasions,
mainly as a launching pad to SAS
Middle Eastern operations and all were familiar with foremost Israeli Special
Forces units.

Kessler arrived shortly after
everyone had sedated their hunger, loaded up a plate and sat down nimbly next
to Harley.

“Great news,” he said, biting
into a watermelon, addressing Mai-Li. “Christine made it out.  She’s
already here.  Sam and Natasha are with her.  They’ll come in soon.”

Harley squeezed Mai-Li’s
shoulder. 

“We’re all happy for you,” he
said, his men nodding around the table.  They had been given a full update
by Kessler on the way down and knew all about the complex operation of
liberating Christine.  Mai-Li had been quite anxious and could breathe a
little easier now.

“We’ll start the briefing just
as soon as they get in here,” Kessler announced, mouth full, referring to the
planned final coordination meeting before they set out to bring back the “Sinai
fugitives”, a name Harley’s men had come up with in the mini-bus for the four
who had been wondering around the Sinai for over three weeks, Christine
included.  They were already aware of Ortega’s fate, ever since Mai-Li had
approached them for help.

Copeland produced a laptop
with a portable overhead PC projector and began hooking it up.  A few minutes
later Sam and the two women came in.

All eyes were on them, the
chatter in the room all but ceased, except for Kessler who was still dipping
away at the various salads.

Christine looked
transformed.  Mai-Li had not seen her for several months and she noticed
the dramatic change.  Her color was dark brown and she was noticeably
thinner and firmer than how Mai-Li remembered her.  She was obviously very
tired but incredibly resolute, her look conveying newfound insight and
determination.  Next to her, in stark contrast of color, the fair Natasha,
though taller, looked almost her opposite image.

Mai-Li got up and embraced
each of them, Sam being last.  Then she made the all-round introductions
and everyone settled in around the table, Sam and Natasha stopping by the
buffet to grab some food and serve Christine who was hungry but too exhausted
to stand.

The overhead projector came to
life onto a white screen across the room as Copeland displayed a scanned
version of the map Christine had given the Bedouin contact who had smuggled it
out.  Kessler, who had just finished eating, offered to begin by giving an
overview of what had transpired.

“Of course, the major unknowns
are: can the Bedouin guides get them to the right spot and will they make it in
time?” he concluded and offered Christine the floor.

“I’m sure the guides can get
them there,” Christine informed the group, “they were the ones who suggested
the spot.  The big unknown is at what time.  As you know they have no
regard for time up there and the route is murderous, but I’m confident Jack
will push them.”

“From the spot you left them,
how long did they figure it would take them?”  Harley interjected.

“At the rate we were going,
barring snake bites or injuries, roughly ten days.”

From the inquisitive looks on
people’s faces she knew she must elaborate on the snakebite part, which she did
in short detail.

“When I left, Ibrahim was
doing much better,” she concluded, “so I guess he wouldn’t have held them up.”

“The Bedouin saved his life,”
Natasha observed.

“It’s survival out there,”
Harley was saying. “They mostly get by without hospitals.”  He got up and
took the floor, pointing a laser pointer at the map.

“Since we don’t have any new
information,” he said eyeing the people around the table as if making sure, “we
have to assume they’ll arrive on time, so we leave from here at 21:00 hours
tomorrow night.”  He pointed at the map to a spot on the border roughly
twenty kilometers north west of Eilat.