An armed man guarded the vehicle park. Inside the fence was a small wooden hut where he spent most of the cold night. No doubt the vehicle keys were kept in the hut. The cars were fuelled from a tanker next to the hut; when the tanker was getting low, another arrived.
A plan slowly took shape in Abdul’s mind. It might not work. He would probably be killed. But he was going to try.
First he had to wait, and that was hard. Everyone was still awake, slaves as well as guards. Al-Farabi would be with his men, talking and drinking coffee and smoking. Abdul’s best chance would come in the middle of the night, when they were asleep. The hard part was that Kiah had to spend several hours in the brothel. There was nothing he could do about that. He just hoped al-Farabi would be tired from his journey and retire early, postponing his visit to Kiah until another night. If not, she would suffer his attentions. Abdul tried not to think about it.
He lay in his place in the shelter, refining his plan, foreseeing snags, waiting. His companions lay down. Naji kept trying to leave the shelter to go in search of his mother, and Esma had to hold him down. He cried inconsolably, but eventually dropped off, lying between Esma and Bushra. The night became cold and they all wrapped themselves in blankets. The exhausted slaves went to sleep early. The jihadis probably stayed awake longer, Abdul guessed, but eventually they, too, would go to bed, leaving just a few on guard.
Tonight Abdul would almost certainly have to kill people, for the first time in his life. He felt surprised that the prospect did not dismay him more. He knew the names of many of the guards at this camp, just from listening to their conversations, but that did not make him feel any empathy. They were brutal slavers and murderers and rapists. They deserved no mercy. It was the effect on himself that worried him. In his fighting career he had never inflicted a fatal blow. He felt there must be a big difference between a man who had killed and one who had not. He would be sorry to cross that line.
Deep sleep, during which it was difficult to wake the sleeper, generally occurred in the first half of the night, he knew. The best time for clandestine activity was around one or two o’clock, according to his training. He lay awake until his watch said 1 a.m., then he quietly got to his feet.
He made little noise. In any case, there were always sounds in the shelter: snores, grunts, incomprehensible phrases muttered in dreams. He did not expect to wake anyone. However, when he glanced at Wahed, he noticed that the man was fully awake, eyes wide open, lying on his side, watching him, his cigarettes on the ground beside his head as always. Abdul nodded, and Wahed nodded back, then Abdul turned away.
He looked outside. There was a half-moon, and the camp was brightly lit. The window of the hut in the vehicle park shone with a yellow glow. The guard himself was not in sight, so he had to be inside.
Abdul moved deeper into the slave quarters then turned, walking parallel to the fence but keeping out of sight behind the shelters. He trod softly, scanning the ground for obstacles that might cause him to stumble and make a noise.
He kept his eyes peeled for guards. Looking between the shelters to the fence, he saw the flash of an electric torch, and froze. A guard was being conscientious, patrolling his beat and shining a light into dark zones. The guard inside the pit compound came to the fence to talk to his comrade. Abdul watched, silent and still. The two guards parted, neither having looked towards the slave quarters.
Abdul moved on. He came across a grey-haired man urinating, eyes half closed, and went by without speaking. He was not worried about other slaves seeing him. None of them would do anything even if they guessed he was planning to escape. No slave ever had contact with a guard unless it was unavoidable. The guards were violent men who were bored, a dangerous combination.
He drew level with the guards’ compound. Three hundred yards farther along were two gates, a wide one for vehicles and a regular-size gate for people. Both were chained up and a guard stood just inside. From where Abdul stood, half hidden by a tent, the guard was a dark shape, upright but still.
The makhur stood inside the fence between Abdul and the gate, but closer to the gate. It was white, rather than pale blue, in the moonlight.
At this point Abdul had to start taking serious risks.
He walked quickly to the fence and, without hesitation, scrambled up the wire mesh and jumped over the top of the panel and landed on both feet and lay flat on the sandy ground.
If he was spotted now he would be killed, but that was not the worst of his fears. If this attempt failed, Kiah would spend the rest of her life as a sex slave to the jihadis. That was the prospect Abdul could not bear to contemplate.