Sandfire

by Andrew Warren

  “Charming,” Kimberley replied with a shudder.

  “First, we must secure the camels. We must hammer a stake into the sand, deep, and tether them too it. Thomas, can you do that?”

  Caine nodded. “Sure. I assume they can endure sandstorms?”

  “Yes. Camels have a third eyelid. It protects their eyes when the sand is blowing. They can close their nostrils, and they have bushy eyebrows and eyelashes. They will be fine, so long as we are not separated from them.”

  “And what do we do?” Kimberly asked.

  Caine had been trained in desert survival. He was already dousing some clothes with water from the canteen. He wrapped a wet rag around his mouth and nose, then handed one to Kimberly and Safiya. Safiya nodded when she saw what he was doing. “Kimberley, do as Thomas does. Just breathe normally through the cloth.”

  “You finish with Kimberley,” Caine said. “I’ll deal with the camels.”

  He found the equipment he needed, a hammer and stakes, then bashed two stakes deep into the sand. He took the harnesses of each grunting beast, and secured them to the stakes. Then he returned to Safiya and an increasingly anxious Kimberley.

  Safiya smiled, and said to Kimberley in comforting tones, “We will be fine. Just do as I say, and we will get through this safely.”

  Kimberley nodded, even though she looked no less scared than she had a second before. She looked up suddenly. Caine turned too. The sandstorm was almost upon them, a wall of churning sand that seemed to rise all the way up to the stars.

  “Quick, now! We must not be separated!” Safiya shouted.

  Safiya proceeded to tie a rope around Kimberley’s waist and then her own, securing them together. She moved towards Caine with the rope, when a loud, terrified braying rose over the wind. Caine turned and saw that one of the camels had come loose from its mooring.

  “Wait here,” he shouted. “I’ll be right back!” He ran towards the loose camel, grabbing for the rope that dangled from its harness.

  The wind grew even more wild and forceful.

  Absolute darkness fell over them.

  The noise of the storm was terrifying. The whirling sand stung as it bit against exposed skin. The sky lit up for a brief second, as a bolt of lightning crackled above. Then just as quickly it plunged them back into darkness .

  Caine pulled his head scarf around his face, protecting his eyes as best he could. He looked for Kimberley and Safiya, but he could not see them in the storm. The two women were tethered together, but they weren’t attached to the camels or Caine. The sandstorm was chaotic and disorientating. If either group moved, they might wander apart and become separated.

  “Safiya!” Caine cried out, risking an intake of sand. He should have covered his eyes to protect them, but he had to find the two women before he could protect himself. Grains of sand worked their way under his eyelids, causing his eyes to tear and blink. “Kimberley!”

  Another flash of lightning. For a second, he saw the two women. They were huddled together struggling to remain upright in the howling winds. Then everything was plunged into darkness yet again.

  Sand was building up around his feet. The wind threatened to blow him over. “Safiya!” he called out again.

  Using only touch, he reached into the saddlebags and felt for the guy ropes. When he had one, he tied one end to the camel stake, then the other around his hand. Then he stood, waited for the next flash of lightning. His eyes burned so he kept them squeezed almost closed, but not quite.

  When the next bolt came, he saw Kimberley and Safiya standing where he expected them, desperately trying to hold onto each other. He advanced quickly with his eyes closed, pushing against the wind until he smacked into them. He reached out and grabbed one of the women’s wrists, then pulled her close. He took the rest of the rope and wrapped it tight around her waist.

  “We’re all tethered now, including to the camels,” he yelled through the stinging sand. “We’re safe.”

  “We need to sit with our backs to the sand,” Safiya cried. “Wait out the storm. Also, we are at the bottom of a dune. Sand will build up on us during the night, so we need to keep digging ourselves out. We cannot let it bury us. ”

  Kimberley sobbed. Caine grabbed her and felt her tremble in his arms. He had never seen her this scared, not even during the violence in Sana’a.

  The three of them huddled together. Caine kept his arms around both of them. Their head scarfs were wrapped tightly around their faces, protecting their eyes and ears. The only sound they could hear was the howling wind, surging around them. The only sensation they could feel was sand grinding against their skin, penetrating even the tiniest opening in their clothing.

  The sandstorm lasted hours. No one spoke. Safiya and Kimberley sobbed from loss and fear respectively. There was nothing Caine could do to comfort either of them, except to hold them tight through the long night of terror.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kimberley woke up gasping

  Nightmares of suffocating and smothering quickly faded. In their place, rays of early morning sunlight beamed down through the cinnamon hazed skies.

  She was half buried in the sand. To her surprise, Caine’s taut, muscular arm was wrapped around her.

  She lay still for a moment, enjoying his touch. She remembered now, the sandstorm had terrified her like nothing before ever had. She didn’t know why. She was a surfer and had once come face to face with a bull shark in the Pacific Ocean. She’d been caught in rips, pounded by crashing waves. Neither had scared her as much as the sandstorm had.

  Caine had come to her rescue, held her secure through the worst of the storm. He had stayed with her for hours, taking the brunt of the wind against his back.

  She thought about reaching out and kissing him, to say thanks, and to show him how she felt. Caine wasn’t like other men she’d encountered. She desired to explore him, discover exactly how deep he went .

  Rolling on her back, she turned and looked at his strong, handsome face, now sporting a thick beard.

  He opened his eyes, waking. Those beautiful emerald irises of his seemed to peer deep into her very soul. When he saw her staring back, he smiled. “It’s over now. Are you okay?”

  She didn’t think. She just leaned forward and kissed him, hard.

  She kept her mouth planted on his, exploring the saltiness of his lips.

  Then she realized that he wasn’t kissing back.

  “I’m so sorry!” Consumed with shame, she pulled away and sat up and turned her back on him.

  “Don’t be,” he said kindly.

  “I thought… I thought you felt the same?”

  “I do,” he said, placing a hand on her back. “It’s just… ”

  She turned to face him, not ready to believe what should have been obvious from the onset. “You have a girlfriend?”

  Caine shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  Kimberley stood, arms folded, and walked from him. She was crying and hadn’t realized it. Before anyone noticed, she wiped her tears.

  “Can we…” She choked on her words, feeling like she was fifteen again kissing her first boy. Every person she had dated or kissed since university had pursued her. There had never been doubt about whether a guy was interested in her or not. But with Caine, he wasn’t like other men. She was chasing him. “Can we pretend this never happened?”

  He walked over to her. “I’m in a complicated relationship. It would be unfair to lead you on, and pretend that I am not.”

  She nodded and looked away before she was teary again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  Desperate to change the subject, Kimberley looked around. Safiya was checking on the camels. Kimberley counted four, all of them grunting and complaining, but otherwise unharmed. She cringed, wondering if Safiya had witnessed her embarrassing rejection.

  “I’ve made coffee,” Safiya explained as she approached, acting as if nothing had happened. “And there are dates and bread for breakfast. I’m
going to pray, then we should be on our way.”

  Caine nodded. “Thanks Safiya. I don’t know what we would do without you.”

  She smiled, took her rug and climbed the nearest dune.

  Kimberley couldn’t shake her embarrassment. Now Thomas Caine knew how she felt about him, and how weak she was. She wanted to run and never talk to him again, until she realized that was the reaction of a fifteen-year-old girl. She wasn’t a child anymore. She had to deal with this like an adult.

  She noticed what might be uncertainty edging into Caine’s expression. He touched the back of his neck. He gazed at the tops of the dunes encircling them.

  “What’s up?” she asked, glad that they had something else to talk about.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Just a feeling. Something’s not right.”

  “You get these feelings a lot?”

  He nodded.

  “What happened the last time you got one?”

  “My friend and I were ambushed. She was killed.”

  Kimberley nodded. She found her binoculars in her pack and looked to Caine. “We should take a look then.”

  “Agreed.”

  Caine unwrapped his assault rifle from its protective goat-hair cloth, then checked it to ensure it still worked. The mechanism was clean and sand free.

  He hefted the weapon over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  They climbed the same dune Safiya was praying on, but kept their distance so as not to disturb her. The dune was about two-hundred meters high. The climb was hard work. The sand kept collapsing around their feet, making their progress feel like two steps forward and one back. When they reached the top, they felt the beginnings of another hot and debilitating day in a roasting desert.

  Thousands upon thousands of sand dunes stretched before them, rippling towards the horizon in every direction. The contrast this early in the day between the shadows and the light was stark. She knew the haze in the distance was caused by suspended sand particles left over from the storm. Ripples of wispy clouds decorated the skies, and slivers of bright blue were starting to pierce the fading orange tint. In all her travels, she had never seen anything as beautiful or as scary as the Rub’ al Khali.

  His binoculars raised, Caine scanned the horizon while she looked north. She saw a tiny sliver of light, as bright as a fallen star. She blinked. Something was reflecting back the sunlight.

  “Look over there,” she said, pointing.

  Caine followed her direction, and looked through the binoculars. He lowered them and grinned. “Take a look yourself.”

  Kimberley raised her own binoculars. Within a few seconds, she found the anomaly. The tail of an aircraft, perhaps five or six kilometers distant, jutted from the crest of a dune. “It’s the plane! The sandstorm must have exposed it during the night.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Good eye, Kimberley.”

  When Safiya had completed her prayers, they regrouped. Normally they would set up camp and sleep during the day, but Caine and Safiya both wanted to push on. The plane could disappear again. Better to reach it now than wait until night and lose it forever.

  They set off on their camels. The heat became stifling and draining. Kimberley drank her water faster than she should. Caine kept looking behind him, like he was worried they were being followed. If he saw anyone, he didn't mention it to her. Kimberley didn’t notice anyone following them either.

  After half an hour, they reached the dune crest before the one ahead with the half-buried wreckage. Caine looked down though his binoculars again .

  “That’s it. The tail number matches the plane I’m looking for. Well done, both of you.”

  “Let’s check the wreckage,” Safiya said quickly, “then we can set up camp while we search it.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Kimberley added, feeling confident again. The lingering memory of her early morning embarrassment was beginning to fade.

  They started down the sand dune.

  From nowhere, a bright arc of yellow light streaked across the sky.

  A split second later, the aircraft exploded.

  Kimberly felt a tremor rumble through the sand. A fireball of searing red and orange erupted from the wreckage, disintegrating it utterly. Nothing was left except a burning, blackened hull and a trail of dark smoke spewing up into the sky.

  Caine leapt off his camel, and peered up at the skies.

  “What happened?” Kimberley asked as she took a deep breath. Her newfound confidence evaporated in an instant.

  “Drone!” Caine exclaimed. “It fired a missile at the plane. Split up, because we could be next.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Caine sprinted, AK ready as he scrambled over the dune. The mound of sand didn’t provide much protection, but it was the only cover he had against another drone strike. He watched as Safiya and Kimberley did the same, spreading out so the drone would have to pick them off one at a time. Caine knew it probably had sufficient missiles to complete the job. And if the pilot was patient, he could wait until they regrouped, and take them out with a single shot. Against such a foe, there was nowhere they could run.

  As the seconds and minutes passed, Caine realized fire from above wasn’t coming for them.

  Then he noticed the camels. They seemed more agitated than usual. They huddled as a group, grunting in fear and confusion.

  Another flash of yellow light ripped through the skies.

  The camels didn’t know what hit them. In an instant they were burned to a crisp, and blown into a thousand meaty pieces.

  The drone didn’t need to kill us, Caine thought. The pilot had now effectively stranded them in the desert. Without camels they would die of thirst before they could walk out of there.

  Caine scanned the skies, looking for sunlight reflecting off the aircraft’s metal skin. He considered who might have sent the unmanned drone. With a sinking feeling in his gut, he realized the Saudis and the Yemeni didn’t own aircraft this sophisticated. It had to be one of his own people. Someone inside the CIA wanted the secrets of the downed DHC-6 Twin Otter to remain hidden forever.

  No wonder they hadn’t encountered resistance during their journey here. Caine had inadvertently led the enemy to the Otter. Now they could finish him off, and destroy the plane once and for all.

  There was no other option. He had to call for help.

  Caine reached for his satellite phone… only to find his pocket was empty. He realized, with horror, he had either dropped the phone, or it had been lost in the sandstorm. All he had now was a spare battery in his cargo pants.

  He muttered a curse. Now they really were in a hopeless situation. They wouldn’t see the missile coming. He felt the blood thunder in his temples, and he knew that death was not far away. Not just his own, but Safiya and Kimberley’s death as well.

  He counted down the minutes. When half an hour passed, he began to think that the drone wouldn’t bother with them. Heat and dehydration would be their final executioners.

  “What the bloody hell happened?” Kimberley called across the sands, her voice still quavering in fear. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?” Safiya called out

  “A drone,” Caine shouted. “It took out the plane, then the camels.”

  “American?” Safiya asked.

  Caine nodded. He couldn’t think of a plausible alternative.

  “Look!” Kimberley pointed across the dunes. Three Humvee military trucks traversed the sand on a beeline towards their location. Two of the Humvees were armed with machine guns and one with a belt feed grenade launcher. That meant four men per vehicle; a driver, gunner, a radio operator and a commander. All would be heavily armed professional soldiers .

  Seen through the binoculars, Caine immediately recognized the insignia as Saudi Arabia.

  That must be it, he thought. A conspiracy. The Saudis and the Americans working together, to bury a secret neither side wants exposed.

  “What do we do?” Safiya asked.


  Caine looked at the two women. He saw the fear consuming each of their faces. There seemed to be only one option. “Do you have your abayas?” he asked.

  Both women nodded.

  “Change into them. If they wanted to blow us up, the drone would have finished us off by now. We’re about to be taken into Saudi custody. This will be uncomfortable for all of us, to say the least. But remember, I’ll do everything I can to ensure we’re released.”

  While the women changed, Caine gathered his weapons. He could fight, but that option seemed suicidal. There was no cover in the dunes, and the Saudi weapons were far superior to anything he had. Better to surrender to live to fight another day. Then, on a last-minute whim, he ducked behind the dune out of sight from the Humvees. He buried his pack, which held his SIG P226, along with his knife and some other supplies. The Saudis would have already seen him with the Russian assault rifle so there was no point hiding that.

  The Humvees came to a halt on the side of the dune. All three turret mounted weapons spun around, and lined them up in their sights. Five soldiers leapt from the Humvees. The men spread out and raised their Steyr AUG assault rifles, ready to shoot if ordered too.

  Caine, Kimberley and Safiya marched down the dune, their hands raised in surrender. When they reached the soldiers, they were forced onto their knees. Head scarfs and niqab face veils were torn away from them. Under the heat of the midday sun, they were patted down and searched one by one. All their possessions were removed, including Caine’s AK-47 and spare magazines .

  The only item they ignored was the useless battery for Caine’s missing satellite phone. He looked up at one of the men searching him, a sergeant with big bushy eyebrows as thick as his moustache. Caine was shocked to recognize him as the man who had stared at him in the Indian restaurant, back in Sana’a.

  Satisfied, the sergeant turned and gestured to the middle Humvee.

  An officer stepped out. He was tall and muscular, with a shaved head and a neatly trimmed beard that was starting to grey. His thick hands looked powerful enough to crack walnuts. His biceps were wider than Caine’s calves. A scar ran across the side of his smooth skull, and disappeared around the back of his head. Caine had seen enough such wounds to know it's cause… a deep, near-fatal cut from a combat knife.