Page 264 of The Black Trilogy

We’d arrived in a tented village in the shade of a cliff, neat and tidy with a small oasis off to the side. The oasis I’d been looking for since I shot out of the plane over a week ago.

Thank goodness.

A few of the villagers came out to stare at me, children hiding behind their mothers and men staring me up and down. Then there was a commotion, and the small crowd parted as a man strode forward through their midst.

“Emerson?” the man asked, sounding a little surprised to see me. I couldn’t think why.

“Hi, Salah. It’s been a while, so I thought I’d drop in.”

I’d first met Salah a decade ago when Black brought me to Jordan for my first bout of desert survival training. He’d been young, maybe twelve, when I found him slumped under a scrubby acacia tree, freshly bitten by a puff adder.

Being the good Girl Scout I was, I fished the vial of anti-venom out of my backpack and administered it before the symptoms got too bad. His father, and of course Salah himself, never forgot. We’d kept in touch over the years, and I stopped in to see him when I was in the area. Although usually my visits were slightly better organised.

“Emerson,” he said again, reaching me and shaking my right hand with both of his. “How have you been? You look so thin.” He turned to the waiting women and shouted in Arabic for them to prepare a feast.

“I’ve not had such a good time lately. Black died.” Might as well get that out there.

He bowed his head. “I’m so sorry. He was a good man. So you’re on your own?”

“Yes, just me. I need to ask you for a favour. Well, two actually. Firstly, can I borrow your phone? And secondly, I need to get back home.”

“The second I can help with, but the satellite phone that you bought for me is not working. It will no longer turn on. Kaput, is that what you say?”

Great. Just great. Nate must be doing his nut, and I was desperate to know what happened to Logan and Jed. Did they get out okay? Escape would have been tough enough under normal circumstances, and with the state of Jed’s leg, the situation had been even more messed up than usual.

And what if my team thought I was still in Syria? They’d try to come in after me, which would be not only dangerous but also completely pointless now I was hundreds of miles away.

But what could I do? Nothing right now but rest. I needed to save my strength for the journey home.

One of the women returned with a pot of sweet, spicy Bedouin tea, which she poured into tiny glass cups. Over that, and then a dinner of bread and well-salted goat stew, I worked out a plan to get home with Salah.

“I will send men to the town tomorrow to organise things.”

“I need a boat to get across the Gulf.”

“You want to go to Egypt?”

“Yes, to Dahab.” The town lay west of Jordan and about sixty kilometres down the coast. It would be a long trip.

Salah nodded slowly. “For you, I will arrange it. Do you want to leave with the men?”

I shook my head. “No, I can’t afford to spend time in town. I don’t have any paperwork, and I’m not sure who might be looking for me. I’ll need them to call a friend with a message, though.”

“Very well. They will prepare the transport, and you can leave when it is ready.”

As night fell, Salah provided me with blankets and a tent, and I got my first full night of sleep in almost a fortnight.

I woke feeling vaguely optimistic, but the morning brought bad news. Two of the Bedouin rode into the camp just after dawn to let us know there was a sandstorm approaching. Everyone scuttled around, tying things down and moving the animals to shelter as best we could. Within minutes, the winds arrived, kicking up sand everywhere and reducing visibility to zero. The storm was a nasty one, lasting through the day and part of the night. All we could do was shelter in the caves at the base of the cliff while the winds raged overhead and wait for it to blow itself out.

The next morning, the sky was calm again, blue without a puff of cloud, but the storm left behind a layer of sand and dust that covered everything. As promised, Salah sent a couple of his tribe out on camels to the nearest town to organise my transport while the rest of us set about clearing up the mess. I’d given them Nate’s phone number and a short message: Valkyrie lives to ride again. Nate would understand what that meant and call off the troops.

At sunset, the riders returned. “The boat is arranged for the night after next,” the older one said. “It was the soonest the captain agreed to go.”

“Did you get through to my friend?”

He shifted from foot to foot and looked at his feet. “We lost the paper.”

For pity’s sake, they had one job. Well, two, but neither of them was particularly difficult. Still, I couldn’t do much about it now. I’d just have to hope Nate had his sensible head on.

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