Page 41

“It will have to be pulled back, sayidi . I have many brothers.”

The distance had closed to eight feet when the Bedou’s arm came up. He fired in the SAS fashion, two round bursts, pause, two rounds, pause ... The major was hit in the heart at a range of eight feet. A slight move of the AK to the right caught the lieutenant in the breastbone, causing him to fall on the driver, who was rising from his tattered front wheel. When the man straightened, he was just in time to die from the third pair of bullets in the chest.

The noise of the firing seemed to echo in the dunes, but the desert and the road were empty. He summoned the three terrified students from their hiding places.

“Put the bodies back in the car—the driver behind the wheel, the officers in the back,” he told the two males. To the girl he gave a short screwdriver, its blade honed to a needle point.

“Stab the petrol tank three times.”

He looked to his spotters. They signaled nothing was coming. He told the girl to take her handkerchief, wrap it around a stone, knot it, and soak it in petrol. When the three bodies were back in the car, he lit the soaking handkerchief and tossed it into the pool of petrol spurting from the tank.

“Now, move.”

They needed no further bidding, running through the sand dunes to where he had parked the four-wheel-drive. Only the Bedou thought to pick up the plank and bring it with him. As he turned into the dunes, the main body of petrol in the burning car caught and fireballed. The staff car disappeared in flames.

They drove back toward Kuwait in awed silence. Two of the five were with him in the front, the other three behind.

“Did you see?” asked Martin at last. “Did you watch?”

“Yes, Bedou.”

“What did you think?”

“It was ... so quick,” said the girl Rana at last.

“I thought it was a long time,” said the banker.

“It was quick, and it was brutal,” said Martin. “How long do you think we were on the road?”

“Half an hour?”

“Six minutes. Were you shocked?”

“Yes, Bedou.”

“Good. Only psychopaths are not shocked the first time. There was an American general once, Patton.

Ever heard of him?”

“No, Bedou.”

“He said that it was not his job to ensure that his soldiers died for their country. It was his job to make sure the other poor bastards died for theirs. Understand?”

George Patton’s philosophy does not translate well into Arabic, but they worked it out.

“When you go to war, there is a point up to which you can hide. After that point you have a choice. You die or he dies. Make your choice now, all of you. You can go back to your studies or go to war.”

They thought for several minutes. It was Rana who spoke first.

“I will go to war, if you will show me how, Bedou.”

After that the young men had to agree.

“Very well. But first I will teach you how to destroy, kill, and stay alive. My house, in two days’ time, at dawn, when curfew is lifted. Bring school textbooks, all of you, including you, banker. If you are stopped, be natural; you are just students going to study. True, in a way, but different studies.

“You have to get off here. Find your way into town by different trucks.”

They had rejoined the tarred roads and reached the Fifth Ring Motorway. Martin pointed out a garage where trucks would stop and the drivers would give them lifts. When they had gone, he went back to the desert, uncovered his buried radio, drove three miles from the burial site, opened the satellite dish, and began to talk on his encrypted Motorola to the designated house in Riyadh.