Caine recognized the man immediately from the intel files he had studied back at Langley. Colonel Sulieman Rashid, a senior military intelligence officer of the Royal Saudi Land Forces. The reports said that Rashid was based in one of Saudi’s missile compounds. He was charged with investigating, interrogating and torturing any employees who might be leaking secrets of the Saudi’s missile program.
It was also rumored that Rashid had led numerous covert operations across the Middle East. He had shut down several HUMINT gathering operations in the area, assassinating more than two-dozen CIA and Mossad agents in the process.
“Thomas Caine,” he said. He spoke practiced English, in an emotionless monotone. “I suppose I should thank you for leading me to the plane.”
Caine focused his stare on Rashid. “You didn’t take out the plane yourself. The Americans did, with one of their drones. You're working with my people, aren’t you.”
Rashid forced his lips into a thin smile. “You are trying to turn my own soldiers against me, Caine. Make them think I have been reduced to an American puppet.” He paced around Caine in a tight circle. “It won’t work. You fail to understand this is a sanctioned operation, approved by both our governments. My men already know this. We don’t want the world to know about it, of course, hence the need to maintain secrecy.”
“So you used the Houthi rebels as scapegoats, right? Framed them for stealing medicines from the Yemeni people?”
He grinned again. His smile appeared strained, and Caine sensed it was difficult for the man to express any emotion, even smug victory. It was like he was forcing himself to gloat.
Caine had read that several years back, Rashid had been stabbed in the base of his skull, hence the scar. Rashid should have died. Yet here he was. Caine didn’t know how he had managed to survive. But the lasting mental and physical trauma from a wound like that could change a man in many ways… none of them good.
“Yes, Mister Caine, you are correct. They said you were a good agent. I can see why. It is a pity your own CIA betrayed you. Led you into the Empty Quarter as a sacrificial lamb. Well, you’ve served your purpose now.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
Rashid paused, then said, “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. After all, you won’t live out the day. My contact is Jarod Foster. He tricked you, didn’t he? Led you to believe he died when the plane was shot down. He’s fooled all of us, but don’t worry… I’ll find him.”
Caine paused. He hadn’t considered this possibility. He’d made assumptions based on what he learned from Emily Argyle. But Forster had duped her from the start. Suddenly, a large dimension of this mystery made sense. “So it was Forster who took out Delbridge?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You said you had to find him? Why is Forster hiding from you, if you two are partners?”
“If this goes wrong, if we are exposed, Forster needs to understand that I can expose him too.”
Rashid nodded to two of his soldiers, one of them being the sergeant with the thick facial hair. He rattled off some instructions in Arabic. Caine couldn't understand his orders, but he watched the men salute and split up. They trudged off through the sand, heading towards the smoldering wreckage and the dead camels.
Then Rashid turned back to Caine. “If Iran thinks they can claim new Persian territory in the Arabian Peninsula, using subversive groups like the Houthis, they are very much mistaken. By framing them for the stolen medicine, we prevent their cause from gaining sympathy. You came all this way to die, just so both our governments could plug a minor leak in a sanctioned operation.”
“So what happens to us now?” Caine asked.
Rashid took a moment to consider his response. He watched the soldiers in the distance, combing through the sand.
“I could just shoot the three of you in the back of the head,” he finally said, again with no emotion whatsoever. “That is the simplest solution. But my men are tired from driving around the desert searching for this plane. I have promised them that you will suffer for their inconvenience. Leaving you here to die of thirst seems like fitting punishment.”
Caine said nothing. It wasn’t a great alternative to a fast execution, but far better than being dead. His hand brushed against the satellite phone battery in his pocket. He wondered how he could use that to his advantage. The soldiers had missed it and he wasn’t about to remind them of the fact.
The two soldiers returned. The sergeant was carrying Caine’s field pack, a large grin etched across his face. Caine’s heart sank.
“You were correct sir,” he said to Colonel Rashid. “Caine did indeed bury equipment.”
“Very good Sergeant Aziz.” Rashid looked to Caine again, his expression blank and empty, devoid of any emotion. “I suppose we should be leaving you now.”
“Just one more question?”
Rashid’s stare seemed unfocused and distant, even though he was looking directly at Caine.
“You kidnapped this mother’s two sons when you attacked her Bedouin camp. At least tell her their fate. ”
Safiya gasped, then quickly brought her emotions under control. Kimberly gripped her hand. The two women hung their heads, not wishing to make eye contact with the uncaring, monstrous man who stood before them.
“Very well.” Rashid made a signal to his men that it was time to move out. “Al Qaeda has them. Those that survive Khaldun’s brutal training will become his new recruits. She can pray to Allah that death, a far kinder fate, awaits her sons.”
“You’re making deals with Ahmed Khaldun now? An Al Qaeda regional commander?” Caine asked. He had heard of this particular Yemeni terrorist. Khaldun was an explosives expert, with a knack for evading American surveillance. He had escaped many attempts to hunt him down.
“Don’t be naïve, Caine,” Rashid replied. “We all make deals with the devil when it suits our purpose. Remember your history. The United States backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War in the eighties. Then they turned against him and invaded his country in the two Gulf Wars.”
Rashid walked back to his Humvee while his men kept Caine, Safiya and Kimberley in their sights. Then returned to their respective armored vehicles, and drove off into the desert.
When they were far from sight, Caine stood, gritting his teeth hard. He had been betrayed, set up not only by the Saudis, but by Forster. A man he had never met. A man who was using Caine for his own unscrupulous ends, and who had betrayed his own lover, Emily Argyle. A man who had sent her to her death.
But those were all moot points now. They had no water, no weapons, food, transport or means of communications. They might last through the day and the night if they were lucky. But after that, thirst would kill them.
“What do we do now?” Kimberley asked hopefully.
Caine was about to answer, when Safiya spoke.
“There is something I didn’t tell either of you. If Allah is willing, something that might save us all!”
Chapter Twenty-One
“One of the passengers walked from the crash,” Safiya explained. “He still died after he bled to death. But he managed to walk to a small rock formation, west of here.”
Caine looked at her, surprised. “Why are you only telling us this now?”
“I needed to hold something back, just in case you wouldn't help me find my children. Information I could bargain with. But now… I saw what you did. You tricked that soldier into telling you where my children are. I… I thank you.”
Caine glared at her, not sure how he should react to this revelation.
“If you're having a go at Safiya for holding back information, just look in the mirror,” Kimberley interrupted. “How long did it take you to tell us your real name?”
“Okay,” Caine said quietly. “Safiya and I both haven’t been completely honest here. I get that, and we each had our reasons. But right now, we need to find a way out of our situation here, or we’ll be dead within the next forty-eight hours.”
He
could feel the sweat running off him. The dry heat had to be more than a hundred degrees, and there was no shade. Without water, they wouldn’t last long.
“Do either of you have water on you?” he asked.
The two women shook their heads.
“What about the camels?” Kimberley asked. “Could we survive eating camel meat?”
“They were burnt to cinders, there’s nothing left but ash. Plus I’m pretty sure the chemicals in Hellfire missiles would be toxic.” Caine turned to Safiya. “Who was this man? The one who walked away from the crash?”
Safiya shook her head. “I don’t know who he was. He was dark skinned, like an African man.”
Caine considered this information. Jarod Forster was African-American. But according to Rashid, Forster was still alive. He wasn’t on the plane when it went down…
Safiya continued speaking, her voice dry and hoarse. “He managed to walk from the wreckage. I saw his body huddled in some rocks, but before I could reach him the sandstorm hit.”
Caine thought for a moment. “So his body might still be there, with provisions, weapons and a means of communication?”
The Bedouin woman gave him a confused look, then shrugged. “Maybe… I do not know."
“Can you take us there?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
They climbed a dune. Together they scanned the western horizon. Eventually Kimberley spotted the rocky embankment, jutting up from the sand. Caine guessed it was perhaps three, maybe four miles distant.
They took off at a brisk pace, walking along the tops of the dunes as much as they could so they didn’t lose sight of the rock. Caine’s tongue felt thick and swollen. He was thirsty, desperate for a drink. He pushed those thoughts aside and kept marching. Caine knew the man Safiya had seen, whoever he was, might be their only hope. But first they had to find him. He would either have water on him… or he wo uld not. When all their problems were broken down into their component pieces, it was that simple. Fix one thing at a time, then move onto the next.
Caine glanced at the two women marching alongside him. To Safiya and Kimberley’s credit, they kept pace with him, and never complained once. He knew that they too must be desperate to quench their thirst.
Walking was not easy. The sand was soft and treacherous, especially when they needed to climb a dune. A journey that would have taken an hour on solid ground took three through the shifting desert.
When they reached the rock outcropping, Caine could see it was about six-hundred feet long, thirty feet wide and about twenty feet high. The rocks themselves resembled dried honeycombs. Dead grass grew in clumps around the base of the steep sandstone edges. Caine saw no signs of the corpse. Whatever tracks the man had left would have been blown away by the winds long ago.
“Where did you see him?” Caine demanded of Safiya. “Which crevasse?”
Safiya shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Try,” he insisted. Caine knew he was pushing her, but the alternatives weren’t pretty for any of them. He was already becoming light headed from thirst. “The body will be buried. There are only so many times we can dig before we lose our strength. We have to narrow our search.”
She nodded, finding her courage. “Let me take a closer look.”
As he examined the rocks, Caine identified petroglyphs on their jagged faces. The stylized carvings depicted men, camels and oryx. They could have been thousands of years old, for all Caine knew.
Safiya examined each rock face with him, searching for anything familiar. Caine could see she was having a hard time. Too much had changed since the passing of two sandstorms. He scanned the rocks with a critical eye. He tried to guess where he would have hidden, if he were the one alone in the desert, bleeding to death .
He quickly identified three possible locations, and pointed them out to the women.
“Alright, we'd better get started, Kimberly and Safiya, you take those two sections over there. I’ll start at those rocks in the middle.”
The two women nodded, and they split up. They each began scooping into the mounds of sand that had blown up against the rock faces. They had only their hands to work with, and the labor was exhausting under the brutal sun. He lost track of how long he’d been digging. Was it a few minutes… an hour? More?
Suddenly, he heard Kimberley call out.
“Thomas!”
“What did you find?”
“A locket.”
Safiya and Caine ran to Kimberley. She had discovered a locket hanging from the rock. He opened it, and found a tiny, faded photograph inside. It was a picture of Emily Argyle and Jarod Forster, together. They looked happy and in love.
“What does that mean?” Kimberley asked.
Caine again felt a sense of uncertainty. “This man was one of the crew, Jarod Forster. He was supposedly in love with my friend, Emily Argyle. This is them.”
“That’s so romantic,” Kimberley said as she examined the locket in Caine’s hand. “He saved this locket from the crash. His last thoughts were of her.”
Kimberley explored the rocks near where she had found the locket. “There might be something else here.” She pulled aside several loose rock fragments. They tumbled and fell on the ledge beneath her.
CRACK! CRACK!
The sound of gunfire echoed around them. Caine and Kimberly ducked behind the rocks. He peered around the side, looking for an attacker, but there was no one.
Kimberly opened her eyes and straightened from the hunched position she had adopted. She too looked for the shooter .
Safiya, unperturbed, grabbed another rock and smashed it on the rock edge. Another loud crack rang out. It sounded like a gunshot.
“It’s okay,” she called out. “It's just the rocks!”
“Wow!” Kimberley said in awe. “I thought we were dead, but it’s just the acoustics in here. The echo makes it sound like gunshots.”
“Some of the rocks in the desert are very old,” Safiya explained. “They can carry whispers for great distances. If you know where to speak to them.”
Caine nodded, relieved that they weren’t under attack. “Kimberley, did you find anything else behind the rocks you pulled down?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, got a bit optimistic there.”
He stared at the locket again. For a moment, Caine was jealous of Jarod Forster and Emily Argyle’s relationship. The way they held each other in the photo… He had never expressed commitment or devotion to Rebecca Freeling like that. He didn’t know if he ever could.
Had Rashid got it wrong? A man who hangs a locket expressing his eternal love, while bleeding out in the heart of a wasteland… Was that the kind of man to set up his girlfriend to take a fall?
He snapped the locket closed. The mystery would have to wait.
“Let’s keep digging,” he said. “See if we can find anything useful.”
They worked together, pushing aside the hot sands. They first had to use their head scarves so the sand wouldn’t burn their hands. But a foot down the sand was much cooler. After thirty minutes or so of frantic shoveling, Kimberley let out a tiny squeal of excitement. Then she kept digging. A mummified husk of a hand, then a limb, and finally a whole body was unearthed.
The clothes were western. Cotton shirt and pants, desert boots, and a worn leather belt. Multiple lacerations cut across the body, probably where fragments of the plane’s wreckage had cut or impaled him. The sunken face and shriveled skin robbed the man of any identifying features. But Caine was certain this was Jarod Forster. His wallet held an Arizona driver’s license and social security card with his name on them. The passport stuffed in his pocket further confirmed his identity.
Sulieman Rashid was either wrong, or lying. Whoever he was dealing with inside the CIA, it was not Jarod Forster.
Caine kept searching. He flipped open the man's shirt pocket. Inside, his probing fingers wrapped around a slim metal rectangle.
The data stick, he thought. The item which had starte
d him on this cross-global investigation in the first place. The secret Emily, Forster, and so many others had died for.
He discretely pocketed the stick without the women noticing. He kept digging. Kimberley and Safiya helped. Soon they found a Browning Hi-Power pistol, a half-full water bottle, and a satellite phone.
“If he had water, why didn’t he drink it?” Kimberley asked.
“Perhaps his wounds made it too painful to drink,” Safiya offered. “Or he might have finished other water bottles first, dropping them when they were empty.”
They rationed out the water. Each of them drank a sixth now, saving the rest for later. Caine entrusted Safiya to hold the water bottle.
Kimberly licked her lips, hungry for every last drop of the precious liquid. “While I’m asking all the questions, why didn’t Forster call for help on the sat phone?”
Caine examined it. The answer was obvious. “Because the battery was missing,” he said.
A thought occurred to him. Caine took the battery from his pocket and tried it on Forster’s phone. To his surprise, it fit. Both phones were the same make and model.
“Looks like we finally got a break,” Caine muttered. The phone switched on. The screen lit up and locked in on a signal, providing them with the GPS coordinates for their position.
“Who do we call?” Kimberley asked. “Who can get here fast enough?”
Caine knew exactly who he needed to speak to .
He dialed the number from memory. Gabriella Castro answered after three rings.
Caine quickly explained their circumstances. In short, clipped sentences, he told her that he knew where the missing data stick was, that they needed immediate evacuation.
He took a breath after finishing his story. “Who’s in charge now that Delbridge has been taken out?” he finally asked.
“What?” Gabriella responded, surprise evident in her tone. “Martin Delbridge isn’t dead… He’s right here. He’s on the other line, listening to this conversation.”
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