First Strike by Dean Crawford

Author:Dean Crawford [Crawford, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fictum Ltd
Published: 2018-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

XXIII

Tininai, Masrata District

Libya

April 14th

The nights were cooler than the day, allowing Sarah to move small distances with Aya in tow, following the Eshmikh Road east but staying out of sight of the traffic. With a little water and some meagre food gleaned from tubers, they had survived for six nights in the wilderness and Aya, although still weak, was able to walk now.

Sarah had used every ounce of her ingenuity to help them to survive in this harsh, unforgiving desert, recalling all that she had learned as a child from her Bedouin forefathers. At night, she had set their water bottle out against a rock at an angle. She had then angled fronds from date palms amid small oasis within the desert toward the mouth of the bottle, directing what little morning moisture there was to run down the leaves as it condensed in the cool morning air and into the bottle.

She had burrowed for tubers and other sustenance that she knew existed deep beneath the desert sands, collected insects that she had eaten alive along with Aya, a valuable source of protein in this lifeless wasteland. Occasionally she risked moving into small homesteads and farms, stealing what little she could find to help them survive.

Yet, despite the apparently lonely landscape, she knew that they were far from alone.

They had heard the warning cry on the very first day, as they had crawled away from the body of the soldier whom she had killed. They had been perhaps a few hundred yards clear when the body had been found. She had heard the vehicles converge on the site and had known that sooner or later they would find her tracks. Aya had been too weak to walk and so they had been forced to slide and crawl through the blistering heat, staying low in ditches and old tank berms or cutting through wadis where their tracks would be harder to follow.

Through all the misery, their one saving grace had been the coming of darkness. As the sun sank swiftly below the African horizon, so the soldiers so close behind them were forced to abandon the chase until dawn, and Sarah made the most of the opportunity. Fortified by the small amounts of water they had consumed and protected by the rifle, they had walked through the night and put several miles between them and the Libyan soldiers. The movement had also been necessary to stave off the cold, the deserts freezing at night and hoar frost often forming in the hours before dawn.

But the Libyans had not yet relinquished the chase.

Sarah had been stunned at their persistence, especially considering that she knew her husband had been captured. Her brave Ibrahim’s self–sacrifice had allowed her the chance to flee, but she could not understand why the Libyan soldiers had not given up. Perhaps, she conceded, her husband’s suffering had been too much and he had been forced to talk, but that seemed unlikely. He would never have willingly betrayed his daughter while they were still free, that much she knew for certain.

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