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Blimey. He was actually serious.
‘Go to hell!’
‘The road to hell, I’m told, is paved with good intentions.’[28] He gave his camel a kick, urging the animal to go faster. ‘So it’s very unlikely I’ll ever find my way there.’
Picking up the speed with a protesting bleat, his camel shot forward. I urged Ambrose on to catch up again.
‘Why didn’t you tell me we had reinforcements? You could have let me know!’
‘Knowledge is power is time is money.’
‘So what?’
He gave me a look that clearly said he thought me very daft. ‘Meaning that if I shared knowledge, that would be tantamount to sharing power or money.’
‘Which you aren’t willing to do?’
‘Naturally. Especially not with you.’
My mouth dropped open.
‘I hate you!’
‘Indeed?’ Raising his gun, he fired a shot at the closest bandit. More shots sounded from right and left. Without my noticing, the rest of our party, and the reinforcements, had caught up. Somewhere I saw Youssef’s proud figure. Then I spotted Karim’s turban, towering over the heads of the others. Oh, how many others! The masses of men and camels around us seemed endless, streaming down the hills from three sides, hot on the bandits’ trail. I caught the eye of a bandit, looking around to see how close we were. His face paled, and a grin spread over mine. Grim satisfaction rose up in me, dispelling my anger for the moment.
‘We’re going to flatten those bastards, aren’t we?’
‘A slightly informal way of putting it. But, on the whole, you are correct.’
Another volley of gunfire went off, and several bandits dropped to the ground.
‘Yes!’ Not having a gun or a sabre, I thrust my fist into the air! ‘Yes! Get the bloody bastards!’
The men behind me gave a cheer, and the next volley went off, felling another six or seven bandits. The remaining bandits pulled out canes and began to beat their camels furiously, forcing them to go even faster.
‘Don’t lose sight of them!’ Mr Ambrose shouted a command. ‘We have to know where they’re going!’
‘Don’t worry, Effendi!’ Youssef shouted back. ‘Those are no racing camels! They cannot keep up that speed for long!’
And he was right. After only a few minutes, some of the bandits’ camels began to falter and stumble. They slowed and slowed, no matter how many blows their masters inflicted on their rumps. A cheer went up from our men.
‘Get them!’ Cries rose up. ‘Get them all!’ Rifles were raised, and another volley of gunfire thundered over the noise of the running camels. We were so close now, almost a dozen bandits fell to the ground, stricken. Out of all of them, only six were left now. ‘Get them!’ One of the men behind me shouted again. ‘Get them all! Fire!’
Mr Ambrose opened his mouth. ‘No! Don’t-’
His voice was cut off by the gunfire. Five bandits dropped to the ground, dead. A last shot sounded, and the very last bandit slid out of the saddle, hitting the ground with a thump. His camel continued for a few more paces, then slowly came to a halt and sank to its knees, exhausted.
The men cheered. Gunshots were fired into the air. More cheers rose up, and more and more - until someone noticed the expression on Mr Ambrose’s face. Well… if I was being honest, it wasn’t an expression, exactly. It rather was what you would get if you deepfroze an expression and sprinkled it with promises of wrath and violence. Slowly, the gunshots stopped and the cheers subsided. When everyone, including, me, Karim and the camels, was absolutely silent and cowering under the glare of our employer, Mr A
mbrose asked in a very cool, controlled voice: ‘Who fired that shot?’
The men looked at each other, dumbfounded. Then one raised his hand. ‘Um… Effendi? What shot?’
‘The last one! The one that killed the last bandit!’
‘Oh.’ The hand sank down again, apparently profoundly grateful it wasn’t attached to the guilty party. A few moments of deadly silence hung over the desert. Unbearably hot as it was, the desert air seemed suddenly ready to freeze. Finally, another hand, slightly trembling, rose from among the men. They parted like a bunch of chickens that had discovered a warthog in chicken costume among their number.
The man was of slightly less than average height, not dark-skinned enough to be an Arab - French or Spanish, maybe? - with a straight, rather short nose, and curly black hair that peeked out from under his headdress. At the moment, sweat was also trickling out from under there, down his forehead.
