Susan kept changing the picture, showing different sections of desert landscape. ‘If they’re stationary, yes. Everything gets covered with dust and sand in no time. But when they’re moving they’re easier to see.’
Tamara half hoped there would be no sign of the Sudanese army. Then Tab would return in safety to Abéché this afternoon and fly back to N’Djamena tomorrow morning.
Susan grunted.
Tamara saw what looked like a column of ants on the sand. It reminded her of a TV programme she had watched about swarming. She narrowed her eyes. ‘What are we looking at?’
Susan said: ‘Christ Jesus, there they are.’
Tamara remembered thinking that Tuesday evening might be her last with Tab. No, she thought, please, no.
Susan was copying co-ordinates off the screen. ‘An army of two or three thousand men, plus vehicles, all in desert camouflage,’ she said. ‘On an unpaved road, it looks like, so they’ll be slow.’
‘Ours or theirs?’
‘No way to be sure – but they’re east of the camps, towards the border, so they’re probably Sudanese.’
‘You found them!’
‘You tipped us off.’
‘Where’s the Chadian army?’
‘There’s a quick way to find that out.’ Susan picked up the phone. ‘Get me General Touré, please.’
‘I have to tell the CIA,’ Tamara said. ‘Let me write down those co-ordinates.’ She grabbed a pencil and tore a sheet from Susan’s notepad.
Susan began to speak French, presumably talking to General Touré, using the familiar ‘tu’ rather than the formal ‘vous’。 She rattled off the co-ordinates of the Sudanese army’s location, and paused for him to write them down. Then she said. ‘Now, César,’ using his first name, ‘where is your army?’
Susan repeated the numbers aloud as she wrote them down, and Tamara noted them too.
Susan said: ‘And where did you take the press party?’
When Tamara had the three sets of co-ordinates she grabbed a Post-it pad from Susan’s desk tray and went to the map wall. She put stickers at the positions of the two armies and the press party. Then she stared at the map. ‘The press party is between the two armies,’ she said. ‘Fuck.’
Tab was in mortal danger. This was no longer her morbid imagination; it was plain fact.
Susan thanked the Chadian general and hung up. She said to Tamara: ‘You did incredibly well to get this warning to us.’
‘We have to rescue the civilians,’ Tamara said, thinking mainly of Tab.
‘We sure do,’ said Susan. ‘I’ll need authorization from the Pentagon, but that won’t be a problem.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
This was logical, as she had supplied the key information, and Susan nodded agreement. ‘Okay.’
‘Let me know when you’re leaving and where to meet you.’
‘Of course.’
Tamara went to the door.
Susan said: ‘Hey, Tamara.’
‘Yes.’
‘Bring a weapon.’
CHAPTER 15
Tamara put on body armour and requisitioned the Glock 9mm pistol that had saved her life at the N’Gueli Bridge. The CIA station was being managed by Michael Olson, in Dexter’s absence, and Michael did not raise any petty objections of the kind Dexter would surely have dreamed up. Tamara drove with Susan to the military base at N’Djamena airport where they met up with a platoon of fifty soldiers and boarded a giant Sikorsky helicopter that held them all and their gear. Tamara was given a radio with a microphone and a headset so that she could talk to Susan over the noise of the rotors.
The aircraft was full. ‘How are we going to take forty civilians on board for the return journey?’ Tamara asked Susan.
‘Standing room only,’ she replied.
‘Will the chopper take the weight?’
Susan smiled. ‘Don’t worry. This is a heavy-lifting machine, originally designed for recovering downed aircraft in Vietnam. It can hover with another helicopter the same weight strapped underneath it.’
The journey across the Sahara took four hours. Somehow Tamara was not scared for herself, but she was tortured by the thought that she could lose Tab now, today. Just imagining it, she felt nauseous, and for an instant she feared she might throw up in front of fifty tough soldiers. The helicopter flew at a hundred miles an hour, but it seemed so slow as to be almost stationary over the unchanging landscape of sand and rock, and before the end of the journey she came to realize that she wanted to spend her life with Tab. She wanted never again to be separated from him like this, ever.