Flyaway

That's buggered it!' said Byrne. Paul was whimpering and trying to burrow his way into the soft sand. 'We won't get far on three wheels, but I've got the bastard spotted.'

He brought up the rifle again and prepared to fire. I said, 'Hold it, Luke!' and put all the urgency I could into my voice.

He lowered his head. 'What is it?'

I knew what that gurgling noise had meant. 'He's either got the petrol tank or one of the fuel cans. Can't you smell it?' Byrne sniffed the stink of petrol. I said, 'You shoot that thing and we could go up in flames in a big way. It only needs a spark.'

'Jesus!' He withdrew the rifle and stared at me, and the same thing was in both our minds. It would need only a spark from a ricochet off metal to fire the vapourizing petrol.

I said, 'I made that mistake in Korea, and I've got burned skin to prove it.'

'I wondered about that puckering on your chest. We'd better run for it then. Different directions. I think there's only one guy shooting; he won't get us both.'

'What about Paul?'

'He can do what the hell he likes.' A bullet smashed into a headlight and glass flew. 'All right,' I said. 'Immediately after the next shot' Byrne nodded.

There was no next shot – not from the rifle, but faintly in the distance someone screamed, an ululating noise of pure agony which went on and on. I jerked, torn from the tension of waiting to run into a greater tension. I stared at Byrne. 'What's that?'

The scream still went on, now broken into sobbing screeches as someone fought for breath. 'Someone's hurting, that's for sure,' he said. There were distant shots, not from the rifle but from pistols in my judgement. Then the screaming stopped and again there was silence.

We listened for a long time and heard nothing at all. After a while I said, 'I think…'

'Quiet!' snapped Byrne. In the distance was the unmistakable noise of a balky starter turning an engine over. It whined a few more times and then the quieter engine must have fired because the noise stopped. Byrne said, 'Maybe they're leaving.'

'Maybe it's a trick to get us in the open.' He nodded at that so we stayed there.

After perhaps ten minutes there was a shout and I looked up at the dune, careful to keep cover. Standing up there was Konti and he was shouting and waving. Byrne took a deep breath. 'I'll be goddamned! Let's go see.'

We climbed the dune and Konti started to jabber at Byrne with much gesticulation. He was very excited and understandably so; it had been an exciting fifteen minutes. He pointed down to the valley on the other side of the dune and he and Byrne walked down with me following because I wanted to know what was going on.

There were tyre tracks down there and someone had shed a lot of blood, perhaps a pint or more. Byrne squatted down and pointed to where a tyre had gone over blood-dampened sand. 'Kissack,' he said. 'That's the mark I put in his rear tyre.'

'What happened?'

'What happened is that you can thank God we picked up Konti yesterday. He probably saved our lives.'

'How?'

Byrne talked to Konti for a few minutes then said to me, 'He says there were three men here. From the description he gives they were Kissack, Bailly and another guy, probably an Arab. Kissack and the Arab were up top on the dune with Kissack doing the shooting. Bailly was standing here by the car. So Konti came around here and threw a knife at him.'

'A knife!' I said blankly. 'And that was what all the screaming was about?' I couldn't think why. A man with a knife in him didn't usually make that kind of row, but of course it would depend where the knife hit him. I looked around, then said, 'How did Konti get close enough to throw a knife? There's no cover.'

'You ain't seen the knife,' said Byrne. 'After it hit Bailly it buried itself in the sand. Konti picked it up before he called us.'

He said something to Konti and held out his hand. Konti fumbled about his person and produced the knife, which was like no knife I'd ever seen before. It was about eighteen inches long and made out of a single piece of flat steel an eighth of an inch thick. The handle was a foot long but the rest of it is hard to describe. It curved in a half-circle and two other blades projected at right-angles with hooks on the end. There seemed to be a multiplicity of cutting edges, each as sharp as a razor. It was very rusty.

'That's a mouzeri,' said Byrne. 'The Teda throwing knife. It's thrown horizontally from below waist level and it'll stop a horse going at full gallop. It's used for hunting addax and oryx but it'll also chop a man off at the ankles at sixty yards. Bailly didn't know what hit him, but Konti says it damn near took his left foot right off and badly injured his right ankle.'

I looked at the rusty blades. 'If he doesn't die of loss of blood it'll be by blood-poisoning,' I observed. What this thing had done to Bailly was enough to make anyone scream.