Read Chapter 2: — THE SECOND FLIGHT

The journey to Almar took seventeen hours and one change of aircraft.

At the transfer airport Daniel downloaded weather data, cultural briefings and the latest project notes. He read while other passengers shopped, slept and queued for coffee. By the time his second flight boarded, three things were clear.

The site was hotter than expected.

The schedule was worse than reported.

And the phrase “interpersonal difficulties” appeared often enough in the internal notes to mean somebody had been shouting at somebody else for weeks.

At Almar International Airport, a man in a yellow hard hat stood by arrivals holding a sheet of paper that read DANIEL MERCER in block capitals.

“Mr Mercer?” he asked in English.

Daniel answered in Arabic.

The man’s entire face brightened.

“You speak properly!”

“Badly, according to every teacher I ever had.”

“My name is Samir Haddad. Today you are my favourite British person.”

Before Daniel could respond, a low voice behind him said, “That’s a competitive category.”

A slim engineer in dark work trousers, a loose sweatshirt and a baseball cap stood with a carry-on bag. The cap shadowed most of the face.

“Maya Bennett,” the engineer said. “Structures. Three years.”

Daniel assumed from the voice and clothes that Maya was a young man and thought no more about it.

Their final passenger was waiting in the vehicle outside.

Toby Reed had curly auburn hair, expensive trainers, a brand-new laptop and the restless enthusiasm of someone who had graduated with distinction and not yet met a machine that refused to behave.

“Finally,” he said. “I’ve redesigned two bridges while waiting for you.”

“On the laptop?” Daniel asked.

“In my head.”

“Safer.”

They drove out of the capital and into a landscape that seemed to burn at the edges.

The motorway gave way to service roads, then graded desert tracks. Red-gold dunes rose like frozen waves. Heat trembled above the surface. The wind carried fine sand that clicked against the windows.

Samir talked constantly, relieved to have someone who could follow his Arabic without forcing every sentence through English.

“The formation keeps disappearing,” he said.

Daniel thought he had misunderstood.

“Disappearing?”

“Not all of it. Enough.”

Maya turned from the passenger seat.

“What does he mean?”

Daniel translated.

Toby laughed once, then realised nobody else was joking.

Samir explained that the existing sand-control measures had not been enough. A recent storm had buried sections, scoured others and damaged temporary works. Temperatures above fifty degrees Celsius were creating additional material and labour problems.

Daniel watched the dunes.

He had spent his career being told that the ground was the first truth of any railway.

Here, the ground moved.