The Key

47

Badiyat al-Sham, Al Anbar Province, Western Iraq

There was nothing on earth like being in the desert at night.

The same thin air that offered so little protection from the hellish daytime sun let in the absolute cold of space when darkness fell to steal the heat away again. And then there were the stars: billions of them, filling the sky with pinpoints of light and casting a microscopic glow over everything. The Bedouin used the stars to travel at night, their desert eyes accustomed to levels of light that city dwellers could never perceive. The Ghost used this skill now to pick his way over the stony ground and gravel paths, following the line of the dragon’s back into the place the Bedouin called the land of thirst and terror.

The Syrian Desert was over half a million square kilometres of nothing. It spread across the land like a crusted sore, spilling out of Syria into northern Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There were no settlements in the heart of it and no proper roads. During the Iraq War the insurgents had fallen back here, using the prehistoric brutality of the desert environment as their main defence against the technological might of the modern war machine. And it had worked; machinery broke down, dust storms grounded all air support, even hi-tech thermal-imaging systems could be rendered blind by the simple strategy of lying under a blanket on a warm rock. It was impossible to fight people when they had the land and nature on their side.

The insurgents had used the desert as their main base of operations, resupplying themselves with men and equipment that flowed over the leaky and unpatrolable border with Syria. It was only when the invaders had taken all the towns that they moved back to the cities to harry the new government with the more traditional terrorist tactics of roadside bombs and the ever-present threat of kidnap. So the desert was empty again — and yet, as the Ghost rode on through the night, he began to sense that he was not alone.

He saw the first signs of something out of place a few hours before dawn when the cold had chilled the air to crystal clarity and the moon began to rise. It was a dark shape, away in the distance, stretching across the otherwise flat horizon. Dismounting, he approached it on foot, keeping low to the ground so that any watching eyes with thermal-imaging scopes would not be able to see his hot outline against the cold sky.

As he drew closer he saw that the dark shape was actually a shadow, cast by the rising moon and a large mound of rocks and dirt that had been piled high next to a hole in the ground. He dropped lower and crawled towards it, stopping every now and then to listen to the empty silence broken only by the intermittent whisper of night breezes flowing around the jagged edges of the pile of rocks and earth.

The hole next to it was only a metre or so deep, far too shallow to account for the size of the pile that cast such a long shadow. In the middle of the hole a rock the size of a car had been partly excavated, then abandoned, as if whoever had been working there had suddenly lost interest. He moved to the spill pile and carefully picked his way up the side until he was high enough to have an elevated view of the surrounding terrain.

There were several other holes dotted around, each about the same size and depth as the first, each with a large rock semi-uncovered at the bottom. It was as if some huge beast had been digging around for something it had lost. One of the holes was significantly wider and deeper than the rest. He slid down and made his way over to investigate.

The hole was about one storey deep, with a ramp of earth spiralling to the bottom, wide enough for a horse to walk down. At the bottom of the pit was a ragged patch of blackness marking the entrance to a cave. It was one of the quirks of the Syrian Desert that large parts of it were honeycombed with extensive, subterranean cave systems, carved millions of years ago by water flowing through the sedimentary rock. You could hide whole battalions of men and equipment in the caves if you knew where they were. It was one of the reasons the Ghost had evaded capture for so long. If whoever had dug these holes was still around, this was where they would be, sleeping in the cave, away from the biting cold of the desert night.

He watched for a while, but saw no movement other than the creeping line of moonlight as the world slowly turned. There was no telltale tang of woodsmoke in the air to suggest people were there. Whoever had dug these holes, and for whatever purpose, they had gone. The Ghost skirted the edge of the crater then made his way down the ramp, his night-adjusted eyes probing the velvet blackness of the cave as he approached. Once inside, he listened to the deadened sounds, then took a penlight from his pocket and turned it on.

The tiny bulb lit up with all the force of a nuclear explosion and he had to shield his eyes against the light. The cave was empty — no sign of habitation, no sign of anything. It would have taken considerable resources and time to dig down to the cave and, as there was no obvious archaeological or mineral value to the site, there had to be another reason. The fact that the caves were empty suggested they had either been dug out so that something could be put in them, or something had already been here and now it was gone. He took a long last look then flicked off the torch and headed out.

The night seemed darker now and he blinked to restore his night vision as he rose from the crater and studied the ground. He could detect faint footprints in the dirt, skirting the rim and converging on an area where deeper, rutted tracks led away and across the desert towards the eastern horizon, where dawn was already beginning to lighten the sky. He squinted towards it, and checked the stars. Something was wrong. At this time of year the sun rose directly into Gemini, but the patch of light was to the right of it. It was not the dawn but something else, something large enough to pollute the pure darkness of the desert.

And there was only one thing bright enough to do that at this distance. It had to be a settlement.