Now!'
'Wait!' Azra lurched across the van. 'The weapon!' he exclaimed, picking up the MAC-10 machine pistol and looping the strap over his shoulder, the barrel directed downward. 'All right,' he said, rejoining the others.
'Go!' shouted Kendrick.
The four prisoners crashed into the centre panel of the door as the van lurched over the rocks in the downhill curve. The metal partition gave way, bulging at the seams, moonlight protruding through the wide separations.
'Once more!' roared Yosef, his eyes on fire.
'Remember!' commanded the man now accepted as Amal Bahrudi. 'If we break through, tuck into your knees when you hit the ground. We don't need anyone hurt.'
Again they rushed the half-collapsed panel. The bottom rivets snapped; the metal flew up in the moonlight and the four figures bolted out on the twisting road that led to a desert valley. Inside the van the guard rolled forward with the pitch of the vehicle's descent, his face streaked with perspiration brought about by fear of his own death. He crawled to his knees and hammered repeatedly on the wall of the driver's carriage. A single thud was heard in response. Their assignment for the night was half finished.
The fugitives also rolled, but against the descent, their movements abruptly halted, reversed by gravity, each straining to regain his balance. Azra and Yosef rose first to their feet, swivelling their necks and shaking their heads, instinctively checking their bruises for signs of anything worse. Kendrick followed, his shoulder on fire, his legs in momentary agony and his hands scraped, but all in all, he was grateful for the harsh requirements of backpacking through the mountains and riding the white water; he hurt but he was not hurt. The harelipped Palestinian had fared the worst; he moaned on the stony earth with its pattern of desert grass beneath the road, writhing in fury as he tried to rise but could not. Yosef ran to him, and as Evan and Azra studied the valley below the gruff older man made his pronouncement. 'This child has broken his leg,' he called over to his two superiors.
Then kill me now!' shrieked the youngster. 'I go to Allah and you go on to fight!'
'Oh, shut up,' said Azra, gripping the MAC-10 weapon in his hand and walking with Kendrick to the injured boy. 'Your compulsion to die becomes boring and your grating voice will kill us instead. Tear his shirt in strips, Yosef. Tie his hands and feet and put him in the road. That truck will race back up the minute it reaches the camp below and those fools realize what's happened. They'll find him.'
'You deliver me to my enemies?' screamed the teenager.
'Be quiet!' replied Azra angrily, strapping the machine pistol to his shoulder. 'We're delivering you to a hospital where you'll be taken care of. Children aren't executed except by bombs and missiles—all too frequently, but that's neither here nor there.'
'I will reveal nothing!'
'You don't know anything,' said the man called Blue. 'Tie him up, Yosef. Make the leg as comfortable as possible.' Azra bent over the youngster. 'There are better ways to fight than dying needlessly. Let the enemy heal you so you can fight again. Come back to us, my stubborn freedom fighter. We need you… Yosef, hurry!'
As the older terrorist carried out his orders, Azra and Kendrick walked back to the road hewn from rock. Far below the white sands began, stretching endlessly in the moonlight, a vast alabaster floor, its roof the dark sky above. In the distance, intruding on the blanket of white, was a small, pulsating eruption of yellow. It was a desert fire, the rendezvous that was an intrinsic part of the 'escape'. It was too far away for the figures to be seen clearly but they were there and rightly assumed to be Omani soldiers or police. But they were not the executioners Amal Bahrudi's companions imagined.
'You're much more familiar with the terrain than I am,' said Evan in English. 'How far do you judge the camp to be?'
Ten kilometers, perhaps twelve, no more than that. The road straightens out below; they'll be there soon.'
'Then let's go.' Kendrick turned, watching the older Yosef carrying the injured teenager to the road. He started towards them.
Azra, however, did not move. 'Where, Amal Bahrudi?' he called out. 'Where should we go?'
Evan snapped his head back. 'Where?' he repeated
