The Caliphate Page 15

  ***

  Steve made calls to the office of tourism in order to establish his official presence in Timbuktu and try to avoid the high degree of red tape he had been warned about by the cultural attaché. Then, wanting to begin both his cover and his CIA assignments, as well as try to get a fix on Kella’s relatives, he went to the airport to rent a plane.

  The airport was deserted, other than a few Malians who seemed to call it home. He headed for the control tower. It was an incongruously elegant piece of architecture consisting of a long neck rising out of an administrative building at a sixty-degree angle to support the control room forward of the tower.

  Overdone, Steve thought. Like having an army to protect a bank with no funds.

  He reached the control room but found himself alone. He eventually went back to his car. Just as Atrar was putting the car in gear, a pick-up truck pulled. He told Atrar to wait while he got out and went up to the other car as the driver stepped out. The man was in his late twenties and sported a stubbly beard. Steve determined immediately from his speech that he was Australian.

  “No, mate, there are no Hertz-rent-a-plane outfits here. The only private aircraft at the airport is shared by several NGOs. That’s non-governmental-organizations to you, mate, if you’re new. It’s a Cherokee Six, a Piper. You’re talking to the owner and pilot.

  “I’m Campbell,” he added. “What is it exactly you want, Yank?”

  Steve explained his photojournalist status and said he wanted to use the aircraft for half a day or so for a reconnaissance of the area around Timbuktu, looking especially for Tuareg camps he could visit by car later.

  “I’ve got a pilot’s license and could fly your plane but, for the first time, I could use a pilot who knows the neighborhood.”

  “You’ve got a deal, mate. How about tomorrow morning?”

  They settled on the price.

  “Great. There’ll be one other passenger.”

  Campbell walked toward the field while Steve told Atrar to drive back to town.

  17. Mali: Aéroport de Tombouctou

  Steve and Kella waited for Campbell. When he showed up, forty-five minutes late, Steve thought he smelled the sweet odor of marijuana from Campbell’s clothes. He leaned in for a closer look. His eyes were indeed a bit bloodshot.

  “Have a late night last night?” he asked, wondering if the Aussie was one-hundred-percent together.

  Steve saw Kella’s concerned look and squeezed her arm in reassurance. Campbell laughed.

  “The biggest secret about Timbuktu is the party scene. I’m not staying here for the money.”

  They got settled in the Piper Cherokee, a six-seater, with Kella sitting behind the pilot.

  “We’re looking for a place just north of Lake Faguibine,” she said. “Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes, it’s west of here about a hundred miles.”

  “Then I’d like to fly over any Tuareg camps within, say, a hundred-mile radius of Timbuktu.”

  “You got it,” Campbell said, pushed on the throttle.

  The plane picked up speed down the runway and Steve quickly sensed something was missing: He hadn’t seen Campbell go through the take-off check-list. With the plane still on the ground but gaining speed, the engine sputtered for a couple of seconds but resumed its normal operation. Steve, on the pilot’s right, looked at Campbell and asked, “What’s that?”

  Campbell didn’t answer. He pulled back on the control and lifted the plane off the ground. At three-hundred-fifty feet altitude, the engine coughed again, alternating between no power and normal function for several seconds and then stopping completely.

  Kella leaned forward to Steve.

  “I don’t like this. Christopher?”

  At almost the same time, Steve said sharply, “We’d better land.” He expected Campbell to keep going straight and land on the hard desert floor in front of the runway. Instead Campbell initiated a sharp turn to the right.

  “No, we’re not high enough!” Steve yelled, and wrestled the yoke from Campbell’s control to get out of the turn before the plane stalled.

  “Oh my God! What’s going on?” Kella shouted from the back as she looked at the ground rushing toward her.

  The plane swiftly lost lift and altitude as the wings became almost perpendicular to the ground.

  Kella yelled, “No!”

  Campbell, fighting back Steve’s pull on the yoke, shouted, “Drongo Yankee!” But Steve was too strong, and Campbell relinquished his hold. The plane was only thirty feet from the ground before Steve managed to return the wings to a horizontal position. Their sharp descent became a glide toward the sand.

  Steve glanced down at the fuel selector controls and noticed the setting was all the way to the left, on the off position. With his left hand, he quickly moved the setting to number 3 position, the left main tank, going right past the number 2 setting for the left wing-tip tank.

  Barely ten feet off the ground, the engine came back to life. Steve moved the throttle forward, gently at first gently, but when the wheels touched the ground he forcefully pushed on the throttle and the Piper jumped up, the engine no longer coughing.

  At a thousand feet, Steve turned the plane around and circled the airport but kept climbing. He reached two-thousand feet and the engine seemed to be functioning normally.

  “What do you say? The engine sounds okay. I vote for going on. The sand looks pretty hard. If we have to, we could glide down. Your radio works, right?”

  Campbell nodded but without enthusiasm and Steve added, “I’ll do the piloting and you be the navigator.”

  “Look Yank, I’m still the captain,” Campbell protested, his face white and sweaty.

  “I know that, and you are in charge. But you have to agree you’re not at your best this morning. Right? That must have been a helluva party last night. You don’t put a plane in a tight turn like that at less than at least seven hundred or eight hundred feet. We were barely off the ground, with no power! You could have killed us. You’re still under the effect of whatever you smoked.”

  Steve smiled at the Australian to keep the situation as calm as possible.

  “Let’s watch that fuel-selector switch. Did you gas up this morning? Are the tanks full?”

  “The tanks are not full but we’ve got at least two hours of gas. Okay, okay, head directly west at two-seven-five degrees.”

  Steve was sure Campbell didn’t want to lose the fee.

  “How did the fuel selector get to the off position?”

  “You must have hit it with your knee.”

  “I don’t think so,” Steve said firmly, convinced now that Campbell hadn’t gone through his checklist.

  He looked back at Kella and gave her a reassuring smile.

  “You okay back there? Having fun yet?”

  She did not smile.

  “This is not a joke. We almost crashed. I think we should go back and forget about this.”

  “We can do that,” Steve said. “But I think we fixed the problem. The fuel selector was set on an empty tank. We’re okay now, right Campbell?”

  He sulked and said nothing. Steve again looked at Kella.

  “I’m for going ahead. We’re okay, really. I’ve got things under control.”

  “I hope one of you knows what he’s doing,” she said.

  ***

  Timbuktu was still visible to the north as they flew over a track that headed first to the west and then to the southwest, paralleling the Niger River. As far as the eye could see, the only traffic consisted of one truck heading west. However, there were scattered small groups, some with a camel or a donkey or two.

  Soon Lake Faguibine was visible in the distance. Indeed, on the northern side was an outcropping of rocks rising a couple of hundred feet above the desert. Between the northwest side of the lake and the rocks were palm trees and bushes. Steve lowered his altitude and could see several camps among the trees. The black tents, the whites and blues of the men’s clothing, and the bl
acks of the women’s, together with the green of the vegetation starkly contrasted the otherwise monotonous color of the sand.

  “They’re Tuaregs,” Kella said. “That’s where the marabout told me I would find Azrur and Thiyya.”

  Steve came down to a hundred feet above the camp and waggled the plane’s wings in a friendly gesture.

  “Here, put an X on the map so we can find them again,” he said, pointing the plane on an azimuth of forty-five degrees heading toward the oasis of Dayet en Naharat, to start a wide northern arc around Timbuktu. They soon reached the track that led to the oasis and followed it north until they overflew it. They then headed directly east and soon reached the oasis of I-n-Alei.

  Off to the east about four miles sand and dust swirled into the sky. Curious, Steve headed for it, skirting the cloud on its southern side. A convoy of trucks and jeeps apparently coming from I-n-Alei was at the source of the disturbance. The trucks were loaded with barrels and with goats and cases of vegetables.

  “Where do you think they’re going?” Steve asked Campbell, who shrugged.

  “I’m not sure I want to know. They look military, probably the Malian army resupplying its desert troops somewhere.”

  “Well, let’s see,” Steve said as he directed the plane to follow the desert track being used by the convoy. Thirty miles farther, flying at a thousand feet, they could see the outlines of a camp. There were vehicles, several large tents, and a group of men in single line getting food and water—a chow line. It was lunchtime. There was another group doing push-ups and calisthenics.

  Steve could also see an obstacle course and a rifle range. The men in line had weapons and a few pointed them toward the plane, others waved their arms for the intruder to leave their space, and others appeared to be shouting. A black flag flew at the top of a pole in the middle of the camp.

  “What’s that?” asked Kella from the back of the aircraft.

  She leaned forward and pointed to the far end of the camp where they could see an airstrip about a thousand feet long. As Steve looked toward where she pointed, a small plane about half the size of theirs was taking flight from the airstrip. Steve banked the plane to circle the camp and headed higher.

  “Looks like a UAV, an unmanned air vehicle. It’s too small for a pilot. But big enough to carry other stuff, like cameras, machine guns, even missiles,” Campbell said. “I’ll take over here, I feel fine,” he added with a new air of authority, and Steve reluctantly relinquished control of the plane to the Australian.

  The UAV was also gaining height, and it soon was only about a half-mile away but clearly heading toward the Piper at an altitude of thirteen-hundred feet, only two-hundred feet below them. As it got closer, they noticed it had no identifying number, only a black rectangle on its tail.

  Campbell climbed to keep some distance from the UAV until the ground controller made his intentions known, which he did quickly. Heading toward them at right angle, the UAV shot a hail of bullets their way. The bullets were high, Steve noted, because some of them were tracers, bullets modified with a pyrotechnic charge that burn brightly making the path of the bullet visible to the naked eye, giving the shooter a way to correct his aim.

  Campbell headed higher while Steve got out his camera and shot photographs of the camp and of the UAV that continued to follow them, firing an occasional burst.

  “Let’s get out of here!” cried Kella.

  This was advice Campbell took gladly and pointed the aircraft south gaining speed. After ten minutes, the UAV turned back.

  “What the hell was that all about? I never saw that camp before,” Campbell said. “What kind of flag was that?” he asked.

  “It only needs a skull and cross-bones,” said Steve, suspecting that they had just flown over a Salafist installation, an open secret the Malian Government was choosing to ignore.

  ***

  On their way back to the airport, they flew over Timbuktu. It was clearer from the air that the city of legends was struggling to survive. The sands of the Sahara, with the patience of centuries and the power of the wind, were trying to smother the city. Houses on the outskirts of town acted as a barrier to the slow but irresistible juggernaut of rock ground by the elements into tons of minute granules and moved at the command of the wind. Heading north was a caravan of at least fifty camels, with two Tuaregs walking in front and a few others near the middle and the rear of the caravan. Steve wondered if they were going to Morocco.

  After a surprisingly smooth landing Campbell said, “I went through a difficult patch back there but, hey, thanks mate, I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t think straight. I shouldn’t charge you anything for this flight but you must understand, my bank account is a little low right now.”

  Kella got out of the plane as quickly as she could and, without another word, headed toward their car.

  “Well, it was a memorable flight. I don’t like getting shot at,” Steve answered.

  Boy, had his life changed. His CIA briefings had obviously been incomplete. He wondered what other surprises were out there.

  18. Timbuktu: Hendrina Khan Hotel

  The next day, Steve and Kella had breakfast together. They were planning on an early start, and the dining room was otherwise empty. They sat at a table against the wall.

  Kella wore khakis and a white t-shirt, over which she had an open, light-blue shirt with long sleeves rolled up above the elbow where she buttoned them down. Her black hair was pulled back, and Steve noticed that her only make-up was a light trace of lipstick as protection against the sun. She looked rested and fresh faced.

  She put her tan bush hat on one of the other chairs at their table and took a sip of her orange juice.

  “I’m really excited about seeing my cousins again. This is going to be a good day. Do you think we’ll get there today? I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want to fly with that Aussie again. Yesterday was a miserable day. I thought we were going to die before we even left the airport.”

  “I’m sorry,” Steve said, “but we did find the Tuareg camp. Your marabout knew what he was talking about. We should get to your relatives early tomorrow.”

  Atrar loaded their backpacks, two large plastic containers of water, and a cooler that Kella had found in the Timbuktu market in which she stocked flat bread, fruits, and a chicken she had persuaded the hotel to cook for them. At the time, Steve had said the cooler looked ideal for the beer, but he had lost the argument and sent Atrar to find another cooler. So they left with his-and-hers coolers.

  The camp was about a hundred miles due west, as the crow flies. However, by land, it was more like one-hundred-fifty miles, since Atrar wanted to use tracks as long as he could before heading out across the desert. On the way, Kella talked about her early childhood as a nomad tending the goats, pounding millet into meal, seeing the world from the top of a camel when the clan changed grazing areas and desert wells and, when possible, attending school.

  “As a kid,” she said, “I did a lot walking when we changed grazing areas. Now, I’d rather ride, thank you very much. Although I do jog for exercise, I really hate it—so boring.”

  “What about women’s role in the tribe?” Steve asked. “You hinted at it in Paris. It sounded very different from the Muslim tradition.”

  “You’re right. In the Tuareg tradition, ancestry flows through the female line. My mother and her mother always had positions of leadership. That didn’t mean necessarily that I would also have been a tribal leader. But, in a way, it was mine to lose.”

  ***

  They spent the night in Goundam, a town surrounded by several lakes created by the Niger’s annual floods.

  Before they left the next morning, they had coffee at the hotel on a deck overlooking a tributary flowing into the Niger where a family of hippopotami was bathing.

  A young American couple joined them. The man wore a white shirt with a pouch slung across his chest bandoleer-style. The woman wore khakis and a long sleeve shirt, also white. It see
med big for her as if it belonged to her companion. The newcomers introduced themselves as John and Elise West, a brother and sister team of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—Mormons—in the last few days of their two-year proselytizing mission.

  Steve asked the waiter to set the table for two more people.

  “All Mormons go on a twenty-four-month mission normally right after high school,” John explained. “We took French at Highland High School in Salt Lake City. Then, before we left Utah, we picked up some Bambara, the dialect of the dominant Malian tribe, at the LDS language center. Elise has a knack for languages and she learned Tamasheq after we got here.”

  Kella and Elise exchanged a few words in Tamasheq, each surprised and delighted that the other spoke the language.

  “We could have been sent to Poughkeepsie or to Vladivostok, just about anywhere,” John said, as the waiter poured coffee for the four of them. “But we were sent to Mali and here we are, on the edge of the Sahara. We normally work out of Beautiful-Downtown-Timbuktu-on-the-Niger.”

  “I’ve dreamed about a mission like this since I was fifteen,” Elise said. “It’s important for all of us to spread Jesus’s word.”

  Kella had been listening closely, leaning back in her chair. She took a sip of her orange juice and asked, “This is so interesting. Are there other Western organizations around Timbuktu?”

  “There are at least a dozen NGOs in Mali with different goals, humanitarian, medical, religious, and sometimes, political. The United Nations has its groups. The United States has the Peace Corps; Medecins-Sans-Frontieres is here. Cuba has medical technicians; the International Red Cross also.”

  Steve looked at his watch and asked, “How about Muslims? Have you met anyone from IMRA?”

  The Wests glanced at each other and John said, “Yes, Sunnis. They don’t mix with the rest of us. Although their boss, Tariq al Khalil, claims Belgian nationality, I’ve heard that he has little use for Europeans. We’ve never met those people.”

  “But what do they do here?” Steve persisted.