The Exodus Quest

I

Knox fled across the hilltop as gunfire skittered around him, the night illuminated by muzzle flash and a distant strobe of lightning. It went dark again and he flung himself sideways, tumbling down a rift in the hilltop into a shallow lake created by the deluge. He tried to duck beneath its surface as the three men ran up, but the water wasn't deep enough.

'Did we get him?'

'He went down.'

'Then where the hell is he?'

'He must be here somewhere.' Torches probed the darkness, flurried across the water's surface, heavy raindrops glittering golden in their light. 'Who is he, anyway?'

'He must have been in our truck.'

'You think that policeman knows? You think this was a trick?'

'Of course it was a trick!'

'Son of a dog. We're done for.'

'We're not done for! We're not done for! This one's here on his own, isn't he? We just need to silence him. That's all. Once he's gone, no one will be able to find this place. They won't be able to prove a thing.'

'But we-'

A sharp crack; someone had just been slapped. 'Follow my orders, damn you. He's here somewhere. He must be.' One of the men shone his torch around, the beam flashing again over where Knox was half-hidden in the water. But this time the beam stopped, came back, fixed on him. 'There!' he cried.

Knox pushed himself to his feet, splashed up the side of the rift, then fled headlong. But now he was penned between the rift lake and the cliff's edge. Gunfire ripped the night behind him. He threw himself down by the spike of rock, grabbed for the rope looped around it, slithered over the edge, slick wet fibres slipping through his grasp as he fell, wind buffeting him, spraying mist into his face. He finally gained some grip on the rope, his palms scorching as he juddered to a halt, glanced down to see Abdullah standing on a thin ledge below. He shouted something that Knox didn't catch, swung at his ankles with a pickaxe. Knox danced away across the rock face, but his sideways movement pulled the slipknot loose from the spike of rock and suddenly he was in freefall, plunging down the sheer cliff-face towards the rocks beneath.