Ice Claw (33 page)

The sandstorm’s ferocity was not as violent at this time of year, so it did not scour the soul of anyone caught unaware. The dust swirled, bending heads, covering eyes, a shield behind which enemies could hide. And Max Gordon’s enemies were close.

Dark-eyed, blue-skinned men who lived in the wilderness, whose ancestors fought vicious and brutal battles and who still lived by these skills, crept closer to the town’s walls. There were still places a 4×4 could not go as easily as a horse, and as the sand buffeted the town’s walls, half a dozen of these desert warriors threw covers across their horses’ eyes and muzzles. Their own turbans, several meters of blue gauze wound across their faces, not only kept the sand from penetrating their mouth and nostrils but also, according to their beliefs, kept evil spirits from entering their body.

Their grappling hooks snared the walls. While two men
held the horses’ reins, four of the blue-skinned warriors began to climb.

Fauvre’s concern lay not only with the fever-stricken boy but also with Aladfar, who had been forgotten in the turmoil and was still caged. As he turned his wheelchair onto the ramp that would take him down to the tiger’s pit, he saw the dust clouds take the edge off the stars as the first wave of sand spilled over the town walls.

Out of the blurred night, ropes dropped down; the wind caught the intruders’ billowing robes. Fauvre knew these assassins would have struggled to scale the height of the walls, and their intense determination meant they were here to kill.

The big cat was already on its feet as Fauvre hurriedly unlocked Aladfar’s pen. He took the length of chain hanging on a hook and whispered a soothing murmur to the tiger. Clipping the snap-hook to Aladfar’s collar, he turned the wheelchair and urged the beast on.

The tiger’s sharpened senses picked up on his old master’s urgency. It was as Fauvre hoped—the loping tiger could easily pull him along faster than he could move under his own power.

“On, Aladfar, on. You can save us all.
Très bien, mon ami
. Well done. That’s it, faster.”

The distant figures separated, quartering the town—searching. Fauvre saw they were armed, some with rifles, others with AK-47s. They stopped, knelt down in the sand and each pulled something that looked like a short pole from its place on his back. A moment later small flames licked the end of these sticks—tar-soaked rags, which then burned
fiercely. These flames would offer some protection against Fauvre’s wild animals.

By now Fauvre and Aladfar had reached the wall of the building where he had treated Max. His fingers scrambled for the wall switch’s cover, but Aladfar’s strength tipped him from his wheelchair. The tiger was pulling him away from the alarm button.

He let the chain’s leather handle go, saw Aladfar lope into the night and crawled towards the wall. Arms outstretched, he managed to reach the windowsill, his back and arm muscles powering his lower body upwards, and in a desperate lunge reached for the switch.

The side of his fist hit the knurled red button, and a slow moaning wail began to fill the night air. Within seconds the old air-raid alarm siren howled at full volume.

Max sat bolt upright. Released from the deepest of sleeps, he felt as if he’d been given an intravenous drip from a bottomless well of nature’s energy.

Canvas flapped, a gritty scuttering of dirt rasped across the roof, and somewhere in the night a tiger roared. Max instinctively raised his hands to his throat. The pendant was missing. Max saw the frayed rope on his wrists—he had been tied, but someone had cut him free and sliced through the pendant’s cord.

As the siren wailed Max was already out of the tent. A veil of sand swept away from the starlit sky, the swirling dust shifting as quickly as it had arrived. Fire singed the darkness—he
counted three, no, four men with burning torches. Men with blue turbans wrapped around their faces. An orange blur, the perfect camouflage, streaked across the shadows. Aladfar! Was that why the siren’s cacophony deafened him, because the tiger was loose? No! Those Arabs were armed. This was an attack.

Max ran hard across the compound towards Fauvre’s quarters. The intruders searched buildings quickly and thoroughly, one of them headed for the tents. Straight towards Max. The man’s strength was apparent, and Max would be hard-pressed to fight on the warrior’s terms. He sidestepped, ran across the edge of a parapet, the pack of Ethiopian wolves swirling below in the pit’s shadows like piranhas in a dark river. The man followed him, matching his sure-footedness pace for pace. He tossed the flaming torch into the wolves’ enclosure, scaring them into a frenzy, perhaps hoping to unnerve the boy a few meters ahead of him, who now kicked dust, leapt onto a two-meter-high concrete drainage pipe, ran to its end and jumped onto a steel girder that lay across old rusted cars.

Max heard the powerful man pounding across the dirt behind him. He had deliberately slowed, as if faltering, wanting the man’s thundering energy to help defeat him. The warrior couldn’t help but let out a cry of victory as he lunged right behind Max, the sword making a lethal whisper through the air. Max spun, leapt for one of the rusting girders, felt the coarse metal under his grip and swung his body to one side. The man’s downward slash tipped him off balance and, as he fell forward, the sword smashed into the old car. As steel met steel, the warrior’s blade snapped. His shoulder took the
brunt of the impact as he fell, and for a moment he lay stunned.

Max wasted no time. Using the girder as a back brace, he kicked a nearby oil drum onto the man. He heard a grunt, saw the man slump but then get quickly to his knees.

And all Max could see were his eyes, wild with hatred and anger. The slap of flesh against metal was audible as the warrior pulled the AK-47 into his hands. Max dived, full length, away from the man, into the dirt on the other side of the wrecked car, as a roar of gunfire shattered through the sound of the siren. Clanging ricochets screeched as bullets slammed into the steel beam where Max had been seconds earlier.

As Max hit the ground, he took the impact on the palms of his hands, curled his body, tucked in his neck and rolled into the dirt, twisting and squirming as fast as he could towards another wrecked car that stood on blocks. He caught a glimpse of the warrior holding the gun above his head and firing wildly over the top of the car that momentarily stopped him from chasing Max. But then he saw the man clamber across the hood.

Max was boxed in. With no other option, he dived headfirst into the car, knowing the man would spray it with gunfire. Mind blurred, ears ringing from the gunfire and siren, he felt himself fall into the carcass. There was no escape now.

A chattering thunder shattered metal, punching holes into the old car, the bullets’ mushrooming impact scattering lethal shards as the bodywork punctured. The man kept on coming, kept on firing, a stalking assault to murder the boy.

The metallic screams stopped when he ceased firing and stood, weapon still at the ready, gazing through the gunfire’s
smoke that clung to him. He peered forward, looking for the bloody remains of his victim. But the wreck was empty. There was nothing inside. No floor pan, no steering wheel, just a hulk.

He didn’t hear the scuff of dirt behind him, but he felt the sudden agony as a scaffolding pole was slammed against his back, and then, as he fell to his knees, the realization flashed into his mind that the boy had rolled clear beneath the wreck and got behind him. Max hit him again—a baseball-bat swing that clipped the man’s turban and floored him. At last the man went down and stayed down.

Max ran back towards the buildings. Fauvre lay in the dirt, pushing with all his strength to right the overturned wheelchair. Max had never felt fitter or stronger. Righting the battery-powered wheelchair, he grabbed the man under his arms and dragged him into the seat.

“Aladfar is loose!” Fauvre gasped.

“I saw him. But these men …”

“Tuareg!”

Max had heard of them. Horsemen warriors, old enemies of the French colonial powers and the Foreign Legion, they had a fearsome reputation. They were known as the Blue People—their skin stained by the indigo dye used to color their
gandouras
, traditional robes worn over white kaftans—their faces and heads were covered by black or blue turbans. The blue dye soaked into the skin, giving them protection against the desert heat, locking in the body’s moisture. And gave the warriors a wild-eyed ferocity that could chill the bravest of men.

“Behind you!” Fauvre yelled.

One of the Tuareg had run around the edge of the building, the flaming torch alerting Fauvre before the man stepped into view. There was no time to think. Max grabbed the nearest weapon he could find—a pitchfork. The warrior slashed the flaming torch across him with one hand while reaching for the AK-47 slung on his back. Within seconds his free hand had brought it to bear. Max had escaped one assault-rifle attack, but there was no protection where he stood now. And Fauvre was helpless.

No time to be squeamish—Max lunged, aiming for the man’s arm. The attacker jigged to the left, but one of the pitchfork’s tines jammed itself into the end of the gun’s barrel. He couldn’t shoot now, not without it blowing up in his hands. Max twisted and pushed, felt the gun yank free, but now the pitchfork was useless. The man grunted in disbelief and rage and reached for the curved knife sheathed on his waist, slashing left and right. Max gave ground, desperately trying to stay away from the cold metal that burned bloodred from the reflection of the flaming torch.

Max stumbled and fell—at least, that must have been how it looked to his attacker. Max knew it was difficult to assault a victim who is rolling round on the ground. Denied a slashing attack, the man would have to commit himself to reaching down to try and stab Max. Which he did. Max swung his right arm in a powerful curving arc and let loose the rock he had snatched up. The blow stunned his attacker, throwing him back on his heels. Losing balance, he thudded into the ground. The burning torch arced away, the knife dropped into the dirt. As Max sprang to his feet, Fauvre had
already maneuvered the wheelchair and caught the groggy man from behind, his muscled arms encircling his throat, choking the air from his lungs. The warrior slumped.

“I’ll tie him, Max. You must get away. You must hide. I saw another three men. They have come for you!”

Fauvre was already binding the man’s arm, using the length of turban, but no sooner had he warned Max than a whoosh of flames sucked air into the storeroom and spewed out a fireball of burning straw.

Max got between Fauvre and the fire, pushing him to safety as another tongue of flame licked out into the night. They beat burning embers from their hair and clothes. Soot streaked Max’s face—he looked like a commando on a night raid.

“I can’t hide, Laurent. We can beat them! They won’t be expecting a fight. Abdullah and his man are here somewhere. We outnumber them.”

Fauvre looked past his shoulder and shouted—a guttural mixture of French and Arabic. Max spun round. Aladfar snarled, his body crouched in fear by the roaring grain store. The mayhem of the night’s terrifying sounds of gunfire and the scent that only men give off when they hunt had confused the big cat and he had run back to the one man who had ever commanded him.

Fauvre’s extended hand and his words held Aladfar’s gaze. Like a domesticated dog, the tiger slunk to the shelter of the stone wall.

“Where’s Sophie? Have they taken her?” Max shouted above the roar of the fire.

“I don’t know. She could have outrun them.” A father’s anguish caught hold. “Find her, Max!”

Max moved, but not before Fauvre’s iron grip caught his arm. Once again the man spoke rapidly to Aladfar. Urged him, caressed him with a language that soothed the animal’s fear.

Gunshots and screams, yells of confusion and threats, echoed across the Tears of Angels. Hunting dogs yapped, big cats roared and monkeys screamed as the ear-bashing siren continued to throw its noise across the desert. Aladfar was on his feet, eyes searching the night, jaws open, panting with excitement. Fauvre reached down and picked up the chain.

“Take him and find my daughter,” he said to Max, pushing the leather grip into his hand.

Max grasped it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have a three-hundred-kilogram tiger on the end of a chain in the middle of a night attack by ferocious Tuareg.

The store was an inferno; sparks leapt upwards to join the stars. Max and Fauvre coughed from the acrid air. Before Max could answer, Fauvre turned his wheelchair, leaned down and grabbed the warrior’s knife.

“I’ll get help!” Then he was gone.

Five meters of lightweight chain joined them. Max ran and the chain tightened as Aladfar kept pace with a boy who ran like an animal—a loping gait, nowhere near full stretch, but ready to respond to unexpected danger.

In the flitting shadows Max saw Abdullah fighting one of the Tuareg. The big man grappled with the attacker, grabbed his clothing, lifted and half turned him, then slammed him into the ground—a powerful wrestler’s throw that knocked the man unconscious.

Three down—one to go.

He was wrong. The sounds of fighting had reached the remaining two horsemen on the other side of the wall, and as any warrior wants nothing more than to join the conflict, one of them scaled the wall into the compound.

Max and Aladfar ran across a stone causeway, a small bridge that separated different animal pens. A nightmare figure ran screaming at them from the darkness—a shrouded warrior hurling himself forward, a curved sword in one hand, a flaming torch in the other.

Abdullah heard the man’s battle cry, turned in alarm and saw the determined attack on Max. His bellowed warning was swallowed by the siren. He had seen another warrior drop down from the wall and cut in from Max’s flank, running silently, sword held above his head, ready to slash down and kill.

Max heard a heart-stopping roar. Aladfar attacked, leaping meters towards the first charging warrior. The force of the tiger’s lunge pulled Max off balance just as the second man came at him from his blind side.