The Templar Heresy

17

‘I think there’s a truck behind us,’ Bronson said. ‘It’s quite a long way back, but it looks as if it’s travelling pretty quickly.’

Angela and Stephen both turned round in their seats to stare out of the side windows of the Toyota.

‘Are you sure?’ Stephen asked. ‘I don’t see anything.’

But even as he spoke those words, he saw a dark-coloured vehicle appear on the crest of a dune over to their right and then disappear from view as it drove down into the dip below.

‘Now I see it. It could just be a supply vehicle of some sort,’ he suggested. ‘Or even a bunch of Bedouin on their way somewhere. We needn’t assume the worst.’

‘Of course it could,’ Bronson agreed, ‘but I really don’t want to take the chance that it isn’t, so I’m going to keep up the speed and maintain a decent distance in front of it.’

It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. Trying to hide among the dunes was never going to work. The only thing that could save them, assuming that Bronson’s concern about the possible identity of the people in the vehicle was correct, was speed. That it would make them visible to their pursuers was both inevitable and unavoidable.

He pressed his foot down on to the accelerator pedal and watched as the needles on the speedometer and rev counter rose in a synchronized movement.

‘You’re kicking up a big cloud of dust again,’ Angela warned him.

‘I know. But there’s nowhere we can hide out here, so what we have to do is move as quickly as we can. We can’t hide but we can run.’

Although there was no way of keeping out of sight, Bronson did his best, sticking to the dips between the dunes rather than driving up and over the crests.

But it was quickly obvious to all of them that the intentions of the people in the lorry behind them — and it was now closer and its size and shape could be seen — were probably hostile, because as soon as Bronson had increased speed, so did the other vehicle.

‘Hang on,’ Bronson said grimly, accelerating down the side of a dune and on to the level ground at its base. ‘This is going to get rough.’