Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

87

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Thursday, 20 July 2006. 1:24 p.m.

The pilot of the BA-609 was Howell Duke. In twenty-three years of flying he had logged 18,000 hours in various types of aircraft under all possible weather conditions. He had survived a blizzard in Alaska and an electrical storm in Madagascar. But he had never felt true fear, that cold sensation that made your nuts shrivel up and your throat go dry.

Until today.

He was flying in a cloudless sky with optimum visibility, squeezing every last drop of horsepower from his engines. The plane wasn’t the fastest or the best he had piloted, but it certainly was the most amusing. It could reach a velocity of 315 miles per hour and then hover majestically in place like a cloud. Everything was going perfectly.

He lowered his eyes to check on the altitude, the fuel gauge, and the distance to his destination. When he looked up again his mouth fell open. There was something on the skyline that had not been there before.

At first it looked like a wall of sand one hundred feet high and a couple of miles wide. Given the few landmarks in the desert, Duke thought at first that what he was seeing was still. Slowly, he realised that it was moving, and it was doing so quickly.

I see the canyon up ahead. Fuck. Thank God this didn’t happen ten minutes ago. It must be the simoon they warned me about.

He would need at least three minutes to land the plane, and the wall was less than twenty-five miles away. He made a quick calculation. It would take the simoon another twenty minutes to reach the canyon. He pressed the helicopter conversion mode and felt the motors slow down immediately.

At least it’s working. I’ll have time to set down this bird and squeeze myself into the smallest space I can find. If half the things they say about this thing are true…

Three and a half minutes later, the landing gear of the BA-609 was settling on the flat ground between the camp and the excavation. Duke cut the engine and for the first time in his life he didn’t bother to go through his final safety check but got out of the plane as if his pants were on fire. He glanced around but couldn’t see anyone.

I have to let everyone know. Inside that canyon they won’t see this thing until it’s thirty seconds away.

He ran towards the tents, although he wasn’t so sure that being inside a tent was the safest place to be. Suddenly a figure dressed in white was walking towards him. Before long he recognised who it was.

‘Hey, Mr Russell. I see you’ve gone native,’ Duke said, feeling nervous. ‘I hadn’t seen you-’

Russell was twenty feet away. At that moment the pilot noticed that Russell had a pistol in his hand and stopped in his tracks.

‘Mr Russell, what’s going on?’

The executive said nothing. He simply aimed at the pilot’s chest and fired three quick shots. He stood over the fallen body and fired three more times into the pilot’s head.

In a nearby cave, O heard the shots and alerted the group.

‘Brothers, that’s the signal. Let’s go.’