Crawford said uncomfortably, "Thanks, Dave, anyway. That was quick thinking."
"Thank God," Donaldson said, coming up, his wrinkled face scowling unhappily, first at the dead man at their feet, and then at the one almost a hundred yards away. "Are these local men? Where were your bodyguards?"
Cliff Jackson skidded to a halt, after rounding the tent. He'd heard only the last words. "What bodyguards?" he said.
Moroka looked at Crawford accusingly. "El Hassan," he said. "Leader of all North Africa. And you haven't even got around to bodyguards? Do you fellows think you're playing children's games? Gentlemen, I assure you, the chips are down."
VI
El Hassan's Tuaregs were on the move. After half a century and more of relative peace the Apaches of the Sahara, the Sons of Shaitan and the Forgotten of Allah were again disappearing into the ergs to emerge here, there, and ghostlike to disappear again. They faded in and faded away again, and even in their absence dominated all.
El Hassan was on the move, as all men by now knew, and he, who was not for the amalgamation of all North Africa, was judged against him. And who, in the Sahara, could afford to be against El Hassan when his Tuaregs were everywhere?
Refugees poured into Tamanrasset for the security of Arab Legion arms, or into In Salah and Reggan to the north, or Agades and Zinder to the south. Refugees who had already taken their stand with the Arab Union and Pan-Islam. Refugees who were men of property and would know more of this El Hassan before risking their wealth. Refugees who took no stand, but dreaded those who drank the milk of war, no matter the cause for which they fought. Refugees who fled simply because others fled, for terror is a most contagious disease.
Colonel Midan Ibrahim of the crack motorized units of the Arab Legion which occupied Tamanrasset, was fuming. His task was a double one. First, to hold Tamanrasset and its former French stronghold Fort Laperrine; second, to keep open his lines of communication with Ghademès and Ghat, in Arab Union dominated Libya. To hold them until further steps were decided upon by his superiors in Cairo and the Near East—whatever these steps might be. Colonel Midan Ibrahim was too low in the Arab Union hierarchy to be in on such privy matters.
His original efforts, in pushing across the Sahara from Ghademès and Ghat, had been no more than desert maneuvers. There had been no force other than nature's to say him nay. The Reunited Nations was an organization composed possibly of great powers, but in supposedly acting in unison they became a shrieking set of hair-tearing women; the whole being less than any of its individual parts. And El Hassan? No more than a rumor. In fact, an asset because this supposed mystery man of the desert, bent on uniting all North Africa under his domination, gave the Arab Union, its alibi for stepping in with Colonel Ibrahim's men.