‘They’re coming back,’ Kirby said in a shaky voice.
Across the tracks, a slanting column of black smoke was rising from the wreck of the terrorists’ vehicle. The remaining pickup truck, the black Nissan and the Dodge had tracked around in a wide arc and now they were approaching fast for another pass, dust clouds billowing in their wake. Ben watched the black Nissan and instantly knew Kamal’s intention. The terrorist was going to kill every single man, woman and child on board, just to get to him.
Except Ben wasn’t going to let that happen. Not today. He dived back inside the burning train, battled through the smoke to what was left of his and Kirby’s sleeper compartment, found the holdall among the wreckage, dragged it out and grabbed another grenade.
The three vehicles came roaring in across the sand. The black Nissan on the left, the Dodge on the right, the armed pickup in the middle. The.50-cal spurted flame. Bullets chewed through the smashed train.
‘The rocks!’ Ben yelled at the staggering survivors. ‘Make for the rocks!’
People fled in panic as gunfire churned up the sand. A middle-aged man in a business suit was desperately running for cover, clutching an attache case, when a long sustained chattering burst from the machine gun pitched him forward with his arms outflung. Papers from his ripped attache case tumbled across the ground.
But he was the last victim that the gunner would ever claim. The fire control system diode turned green as Ben’s sights locked onto the pickup. The FN blasted its grenade and the truck exploded violently. The other vehicle swerved out of its path as it flipped and rolled.
Ben loaded another grenade. Aimed at Kamal’s Nissan and fired. But the driver somehow managed to swerve out of his line of fire. The grenade impacted on the rusty Dodge and kicked it away like a toy. It blew apart into a million pieces as the fuel tank ruptured.
The Nissan was the only one left now. The driver banked sharply off course and the engine rasped as he accelerated away in the sand, wheels spinning. Ben chased the vehicle with a long burst of automatic fire, the FN bucking in his hands. Then his magazine was empty and the Nissan was disappearing fast into the morning heat haze.
He lowered the rifle. It was over for now. Kamal had taken a battering, down from eight men to three. But Ben knew he hadn’t seen the last of him.
He ran back to the small crowd of survivors huddled among the rocks. Faces watched him, pale and frightened, streaked with dust and tears.
‘Will they come back?’ a woman asked.
‘No,’ Ben replied. ‘They’re gone.’
Suddenly the questions were firing from all sides.
‘I can’t find my wife.’
‘What’s going to happen to us?’
‘How far are we from Aswan?’
Then a small Egyptian man in his late fifties stepped up. His suit was dusty and rumpled, and his long, thin face bore the melancholy look of someone who’d seen a lot of suffering in the past and was resigned to the knowledge that he’d see a lot more in the future. ‘I am a doctor. Let me help you.’
Ten minutes later, the wounded were being attended to as well as the doctor could manage with the limited first-aid kit from the guard’s van. All the water supplies they could find were gathered together in the shade of a rock. Ben used the radio from one of the dead cops to call the attack in to the Cairo police. Emergency teams would be on their way. He gave Kirby the rifle and the holdall to look after as he ran the length of the train, pulling open doors, searching through corridors and sleeper compartments, looking for more survivors. The first carriage he searched was sitting at a crazy angle, propped up against the one in front of it. Inside, he found a frail old man lying splayed out on the sloping floor. His neck was broken. It looked like he’d been sleeping when the crash happened, come flying off his bunk and hit the washbasin. Ben felt deeply saddened by the sight, and his hands were shaking with rage as he lifted the body out and laid it carefully on the ground outside.
In a short time, he found four more survivors in the wreck, three of them walking wounded and one with a concussion, and delivered them to safety among the rocks. But there were more dead than alive inside the train. The driver had taken a bullet as he sat at the controls. The guard nearest to the RPG strike had had his throat blown out by shrapnel, the other had been crushed in the impact of the derailment. All three plainclothes cops had been shot dead. One of them had caught a burst of machine-gun fire across the torso that had separated him into two pieces. The same string of bullets had killed a young couple as they sat together on their bunk.
Eleven bodies in all, not counting the charred remains that everyone knew were still trapped inside the smoking husks of the two badly burned-out and overturned carriages. Their recovery would be the terrible task facing the paramedic teams and fire crew, when they arrived.
Ben arranged the dead in a row on the ground a few yards from the train, and a woman passenger who turned out to be an ex-nurse helped him to cover them with sheets and blankets that they weighed down with rocks. Then he gathered up the weapons from the three dead cops, in case they fell into the wrong hands. Finding a fire extinguisher in the guard’s van, he used it to douse the flames in the carriages that were still smouldering.
Once he was assured that the fires were all out and the survivors were safe, he returned to their sleeper compartment and muttered a quick thanks to God that the fire hadn’t spread that far. Digging through broken glass and wreckage, he retrieved his phone, cash and the laminated photocopy of the Wenkaura map that Claudel had made for him.
As he worked, he wondered how Kamal had caught up with them. Had Claudel betrayed them? It was more likely that Kamal had pressed it out of him somehow. Which probably meant the Frenchman was dead as well-but it was too late to worry about that.
The real concern was that if Kamal had known to come after the train, it was certain he knew where the treasure was. In which case eliminating the opposition wasn’t the terrorist’s only goal. He wouldn’t return to the scene of the crime. He and his remaining men were already heading for the Sudan. It was a race now.
The sun was rising, and it was getting hot. Walking back to the rocks, Ben found the doctor and ex-nurse treating a woman with a lacerated arm. He kneeled down next to them and briefed them on the situation. ‘The emergency teams won’t be long,’ he said. ‘You’re in charge now.’
‘Where are you going?’ the doctor asked.
‘I’d rather not be around when the police get here,’ Ben said.
The doctor’s face creased into a sad, faint smile. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you are. But you saved all these people. If you had not been here…’
‘I wish I could have done more.’ Ben stood up. He hated leaving the scene, but he trusted his improvised medical team to take care of things.
He scanned the horizon. The Nile was no more than a couple of kilometres away. And wherever in Egypt you could find greenery and water, you could find people and supplies. And motor vehicles ready and waiting to be bought, hired or stolen. There was always a way.
He turned to Kirby. ‘We’re moving on.’
Chapter Fifty-One
It was a long, sweltering walk. As Ben strode quickly along with the heavy holdall over his shoulder and Kirby stumbled sullenly in his wake, the sand underfoot became soil and the wispy tufts of yellowed grass became green and lush. Finally, as they topped a rise, they looked down and saw the roofs and winding streets of a small village below them. Beyond that, clusters of palm trees and the glittering blue waters of the Nile, dotted with boats and barges.
Ben was quietly thankful for Kirby’s subdued mood as they headed down a grassy slope towards the first of the buildings. The task ahead of him now was a serious undertaking, and required careful planning. Driving hundreds of miles through the desert was no joke, even under favourable conditions. He’d been counting on picking up supplies at Aswan, and only hoped this village would be able to provide what he needed.
The dusty streets wound between traditional houses and buildings, some of them obviously dating back to medieval times at least. Ben and Kirby were the only Westerners in the place, and drew a few curious glances from
