place anyway, he wondered. What’s the point?
Back outside, he sucked in clean air, then went to the equipment room to crank the generator to life and switch on the lights. He paused at the mess tent to dip the hem of his kaftan in some vinegar, then returned to the tomb. This time, with the lights on and the vinegar-soaked material over his mouth and nose, he confirmed what he feared: the captives were gone.
Spinning on his heel, he ran back up the stairs and out into the wadi, shouting, “The prisoners have escaped!”
Con and Mal were still in the bunk tent and seemed unimpressed with this news. “Pipe down, will you?” muttered Mal, a hand to his head. “It’s too early to be yelling like that.”
“What’re you on about?” asked Con.
“The prisoners aren’t in the cell. They’re gone. They must have escaped somehow.”
“You sure?” Mal regarded him with suspicion.
“Of course, I’m sure. Idiot!”
“Okay, okay, keep your shirt on.”
“What about the other two?” asked Con. “They still there?”
“Which other two?”
“The dead ones. Who do you think?”
“Yeah, they’re still there.”
“They still dead?” wondered Mal.
“Shut up,” snarled Dex. “I’m warning you.”
“They can’t have got far,” Con said. “We’ll find ’em.”
“You better hope so-and before Tav gets back. He won’t like this.”
The three trooped out into the canyon.
“I’ll get Baby,” said Con. “Maybe she can track them down.”
“I doubt it,” said Dex. “Leave her. Go get the guns instead. Those two yobs don’t know their way around the wadi, so we should still be able to catch them before they work out how to get out of here.”
Armed and keen to recover their charges, the three Burley Men set off to work their way along the two main branches of the dry ravine. “Mal, you check out the back way,” ordered Dex. “And, Con-you come with me. We’ll take the big wadi.” The other stood looking at him. “Well? Let’s get cracking.”
Mal turned and soon disappeared along the winding path that was the canyon bottom. Dex and Con made their way towards its mouth, moving quickly, senses alert to any stray sight or sound. They passed the burial niches of a former age and civilisation, quickly searching those large enough to hide a fugitive or two.
After walking at least halfway to the end, they stopped to reassess the chase. “Maybe they went up over the top,” suggested Con. “If they’d have come this way, we would have picked up some trace of them by now.”
“Could be you’re right,” agreed Dex. “And we would have heard Mal’s signal if he’d found anything. Let’s go back. There’s a cutting back there at the bend. We can climb up that way and have a good look ’round.”
The two retraced their steps, following the undulating gorge back towards the camp. At the bend-a great curving bank of mottled sandstone-the wadi made a lazy quarter-circle from southwest to a more northerly direction. A deep natural crevice in the rock face had been widened by the tomb builders at some time in the past, and shallow steps were cut in the stone to form a crude staircase leading up out of the wadi to the plateau above. The two scrambled up the crease, eventually gaining the top. Whatever they hoped to glimpse from that high vantage, they did not see.
A quick scan of the surrounding area revealed only the drearily unchanging landscape: sun-blasted rocks and shattered hills stretching into the heat-dazzled distance in every direction. Of the fugitives there was neither sign nor trace. Still, they waited awhile, shielding their eyes from the sun, surveying the empty, dun-coloured landscape for any sign of movement-any sign of life at all.
There was nothing.
“Now what?” Con wanted to know. He wiped the sweat from his face. “If they were anywhere around we’d have seen ’em from up here.”
“We should get back to camp,” Dex said. “Tav will return soon. We’ll have to give him the bad news.”
“Burleigh ain’t going to be happy,” Con observed.
“No. He won’t be happy.”
“It ain’t our fault.”
Dex shrugged.
“It ain’t,” Con insisted.
“You tell him that. You get on so well with him. He listens to you, right? You can tell him how it wasn’t our fault the prisoners let themselves out while we were asleep.”
Con muttered an oath under his breath.
“Let’s get back.” Dex started for the rock-cut staircase leading down to the wadi floor.
“What’s so almighty important about those two anyway?” Con asked, growing sullen. “They didn’t look like no threat to me. Pretty near hopeless, in fact.”
Dex shrugged again. “I guess that’s another thing you can discuss with the boss. Me? I keep my mouth shut and do as I’m told. The boss has his ways. I stopped trying to figure it all out years ago.”
By the time they reached the camp, Mal was waiting for them. His search had been no more successful, and he had nothing to report. “Looks like they got clean away,” Dex concluded.
“Looks like,” agreed Mal. “I’m starving. I’m going to get something to eat.”
“Good idea,” agreed Con.
The two started for the mess tent. Dex, with nothing better to do, followed.
The sun had long since passed midday by the time Tav returned. The men heard the rattling sputter of the truck echoing down the canyon long before it came into view. They instinctively assembled themselves before their tent, weapons at their sides, to await his arrival. The claptrap vehicle came to a dry, scrunching halt in a cloud of dust. The door swung open, and Burleigh’s right-hand man stepped out. One glance at the others standing at loose attention roused his suspicions. “What is it?” he asked. “What have you done?”
“It’s the captives,” replied Dex.
“Are they dead, then?”
“They’re gone.”
“Gone…” His glance took in the others who hung back, waiting to see how he would greet this news. Tav frowned.
“Escaped.”
“I see.” Tav’s eyes narrowed; his frown grew fierce.
“We searched both ways up and down the wadi,” volunteered Con. “We even went up top. We searched half the morning, but we couldn’t raise so much as a footprint.”
“You looked everywhere? You’re sure?”
“Everywhere,” confirmed Dex. “I swear it.”
“Then there’s nothing to be done about it now,” concluded Tav. “Strike the camp. Load it up-everything. Boss wants it all cleared out. We’re done here. We’ve got until sunset, so jump to it.”
“What do we tell the boss?” asked Con.
“The truth,” replied Tav.
“He won’t like it.” Con had an uncanny ability to grasp the obvious. And of all the implications of the situation, this was the one that had taken firm root in his mind. “He won’t like it at all.”
“I don’t expect he will,” confirmed Tav.
“Then I say we don’t tell him.”
“We have to tell him,” countered Mal.
“Why?” demanded Con.
“He’ll find out eventually,” suggested Dex.
“So? If he ever does find out, we just say they were still alive when we left here. They must have got out somehow after we packed up.”
“That might work,” agreed Dex. “I’m with Con. Telling Burleigh they escaped will only get us in trouble, and it won’t make a bean’s worth of difference anyway.”
