by Dana Marton
THE MOTLEY BEDOUIN ARMY crept across the desert without headlights. A wisp of a cloud that would evaporate soon enough once the sun came up covered the moon, giving them further advantage. Some of the vehicles had been hidden at a nearby oasis, a number of pickups pulled into tents during the day. Now that they didn’t have to worry about raising suspicion and all came together, they made a respectable size convoy.
Dara peered into the darkness, hoping to glimpse the lights of the city. They skirted Majid’s army without trouble, thanks to continuous intelligence received from the Colonel, who arranged for drones to keep an eye on troop movements.
According to the intelligence reports, the royal palace was fortified to keep out the angry mob that was gathering on the streets, but there was no major deployment in the city beyond that. Majid clearly expected to annihilate Saeed’s tribal forces in the desert and for the rest of his people to accept the defeat and back down.
Saeed stared forward as he drove the truck, his face grim, but his resolve evident in his gaze. “You’re adamant about fighting?”
“Damn right,” she said. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“It drives me crazy.”
“Get over it.”
He looked at her, his expression pained. “I’m trying.”
“I fight for a living. I’m a soldier.”
He turned his attention to the sand before them. “If truly you were a soldier, you wouldn’t have to remind yourself so often.”
A quick protest died on her lips. She truly was a soldier, wasn’t she? In her heart? Or was she following the path set before her by her father? Was she striving for his approval still?
“If I’m not a soldier, who the hell am I?” She was disturbed by the idea and angry at him for suggesting it.
“That’s something only you can find out. Have you ever wanted to do anything else?”
“Never.” Everyone she knew growing up had worked for the air force, except for her mother who’d been a housewife and miserable because of it. Dara had sworn she would never put herself into that situation.
So had she chosen the service because that was what she really wanted, or because she didn’t know anything else?
“Hell of a time to make me doubt myself. In the middle of a freaking offensive!”
He took her hand, held it. “You should never doubt yourself. You’re strong, intelligent, determined. You can succeed at anything you want. Maybe you should ask yourself why you became a soldier in the first place.”
That was easy—to be like her father, to pattern herself irrevocably after him and to make sure she didn’t end up with the identity crisis of her mother.
“You just don’t want me to be a soldier because you don’t think a woman should be,” she said sullenly, not at all appreciating his insight.
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “If you say women should be cherished, I’m going to scream.”
He threw her a reproaching look. “I was about to say that I don’t want you to be a soldier because it scares the soul out of me. But if this is what makes you happy I’ll learn to live with it.”
She stared at him, digesting the words, which implied they would have a relationship beyond the next few days, a relationship during which he would have to learn to live with her occupation.
Oh yeah, that would go down well. If the Colonel found out she’d had an affair with the man she was supposed to protect, she would probably be court-martialed. Could she be court-martialed for sleeping around on the job? She needed to check into that.
“We’re here,” he said.
When she looked up, she could see the lights of a few dozen high-rises in the distance.
As agreed before they’d left camp, the trucks and pickups spread out, preparing to enter the city through as many points as possible. All the tribes had specific tasks. Some were to go to the schools Majid was keeping under lockdown, others secured the streets. The goal of Saeed’s team was to surround the royal palace as quickly as they could.
But trouble started before they even reached the paved streets. Fire opened on them from several rooftops. Bullets tore up the road around them. Men fell.
Those still alive charged forward, rushing into the coverage of the houses. A couple of trucks stopped and men ran to take care of the rooftop shooters. People were coming out to the streets to see what was going on. Then Saeed was recognized and word spread.
He drove straight for the palace, and his people took key positions, waiting for his word to attack. Capturing Majid was the key to swift victory with as little bloodshed as possible.
The clouds had thickened and covered the moon, but the streetlights provided plenty of visibility as they got out of the truck.
Dara felt the first fat raindrop on her face, and glanced at Saeed who looked like he’d just received a sign from heaven. She didn’t like the timing, but for his people’s sake she hoped they would have a good rain this year, more than the previous winter when, according to Saeed, a three-hour rainstorm in one afternoon had been all the water they’d gotten.
The rain picked up and she looked at the upturned faces around her, watching the pleasure and optimism the people soaked up from the sky. Then Saeed moved forward, and a wave of desert warriors followed him as one.
They came under increasingly heavy fire as they moved toward the palace, but their number had grown. Some of the other tribes had arrived. Dara looked around at the sea of people, most of them on foot. They came from every section of the city, woken by gunfire.
“Ready?” she asked Saeed, and he nodded.
She checked the twenty pounds of TNT in the back of the SUV, fixed the gas pedal and aimed the car toward the barricades at the palace gate, tying the steering wheel in position. She reached through the window and put the shift in gear before jumping clear of the vehicle.
The people who knew of the plan were taking cover. It took but a few seconds for the rest to figure out what was going on and join them.
The explosion started every car alarm within a mile and blasted out half the palace windows. Dara shook broken pieces of glass from her hair as she charged ahead from behind the abandoned car they had used for cover. From the corner of her eye, she could see Saeed doing the same.
The fight was bitter, every step of progress bought with blood. Saeed had been right. The royal guard did not give up easily. But Saeed’s men were just as loyal and determined. It took fifteen minutes of heavy gunfight to take the gate, another half hour to reach the first corridor. The plan was to trap Majid in his private quarters.
She followed Saeed and took out two men who came at them guns blazing from a side passage. She moved on as fast as she could but not so fast as to be careless, mindful that they were on Majid’s territory.
Saeed reached a door to the left, opened it and burst in as she covered him. Nobody in there. They kept going. The sounds of chaos reached them from the courtyard. She hoped the other teams who were sent to circle behind the king’s private rooms and cut off his escape routes were making progress.
She heard a door slam open ahead of them, then royal guards flooded the hall. Saeed jumped into the cover of a doorway and pulled her with him, firing nonstop at the men. Here we go. She went down on one knee so they wouldn’t be in each other’s way.
They were outnumbered, but Saeed and she were better shots, thinning the group quickly. Then one of the guards threw a grenade. He had to have been holding onto it for a while because it blew the second it hit, not leaving her time to draw back.
She sank to the ground, blinded and half-deaf.
“Are you hurt?” She heard Saeed’s words as if from under water.
She nodded, the small movement making her dizzy. She blinked her burning eyes a couple of times. Everything was bright white with a smattering of shadows. Her throat constricted.
“I can’t see,” she said panicked, and felt Saeed’s hand on her arm, pulling her up.
He patted her down. “Your clothes
are torn in a couple spots. You have some cuts and scratches but I don’t see any serious injuries. Can you move everything?” His voice was tight.
“I think so.” A miracle. She should have been dead. The hallway was quiet. “Did you get them?”
“Most of them. The rest retreated.”
“We can’t stay here.”
“You can’t go anywhere like this.”
She reached out and grabbed onto his belt. “Keep going. I’ll be better in a minute. Just blinded by the flash, that’s all.”
She gripped his leather belt with one hand, her rifle with the other, then heard gunfire. Saeed pushed her aside to respond, but she refused to let him take on the danger on his own. She might have been temporarily disabled, but she wasn’t useless yet. Blindly, she angled the AK-47 around him and shot in the direction of the sound.
“You are an exceedingly stubborn woman,” he said and pulled her on.
“You said that before.”
“It bears repeating.”
“Where are we?”
“In one of the reception rooms. We’re close.”
“And if he’s not in his bedroom?”
“If he’s in the palace, he is there, and I think he’s in the palace. We haven’t given him enough warning to get away and he is too conceited to consider we’d get this far. His bedroom is reinforced. No windows. The walls are made of Kevlar.”
Like a panic room, she thought, and blinked her eyes a couple of times, impatient with them. Her vision was returning, but too slowly. She could see Saeed’s form in front of her, the larger pieces of furniture like menacing shadows looming against the walls.
She heard footsteps behind them, turned, aimed her gun.
“Ours.” Saeed pushed the barrel down.
They moved forward.
Her ears were still ringing but not too badly. She could once again hear the sound of gunfire that came from all over the palace.
By the time they reached the gold double doors, she could see enough to let go of Saeed and tell apart friend from enemy.
A good thing, as royal guards rushed them from a side door. She went down onto her stomach behind a console and, using it for cover, took aim, squeezed the trigger and didn’t let go.
One royal guard fell after the other, not having much to hide behind in the open doorway. But there were a lot of them, too many, a new one always ready to step into place.
Saeed was next to her, and in the cacophony she reserved a compartment of her brain to listen for nothing else but the sound of his gun, knowing that as long as he was shooting he was alive.
Men she knew from camp lay dead around them. She fired on, dreading the moment when she would have to reload, afraid they could press even that moment of an advantage. Most of the shooting came from the royal guards, the guns of Saeed’s men falling silent one after the other.
They were used to hunting with old Winchesters, not this kind of desperate hell of a shootout with semiautomatics. She squeezed off her last shot, pulled back behind the console and switched magazines while Saeed covered her.
Then she was back, not aiming at any organ or anyone even in particular, her vision still blurry, but spraying the enemy with bullets.
And at last when the four in the doorway fell, no others came to take their place.
The men who rushed in a few minutes after that were Saeed’s. They tried to bust the double doors, using the butts of their rifles then heavy pieces of furniture, but to no avail. The doors held, even after Dara shot up the locks.
“Probably barricaded from inside,” she said, and Saeed nodded, then called out loudly in Arabic.
She only understood two words, Majid and TNT, but they were enough to know what he was saying. He was threatening the king with blowing him up if he did not come out.
An empty threat since what little explosives they’d had, they’d used up at the gate.
Silence followed his words, then a few words, spoken by a child.
Saeed went white. “He has my son.”
The men with him looked as stricken as he did. He called out something in Arabic again.
“La,” came the response.
This, she understood—no.
The man on the other side of the door spoke again. She turned to Saeed for translation.
“He says if we don’t leave the palace at once, Salah will die. He will not negotiate.”
Dara looked at the pain on his face, then stepped forward and raised her voice. “My name is Dara Alexander, I am here on behalf of the United States government. I want to discuss the terms of truce.”
Silence followed her words, then after a while the same one-word answer Saeed had gotten earlier. “La.”
“I will come in unarmed. I’m sure you’re not afraid of a woman.”
No response.
“You have nothing to lose by letting me in. You’ll have one more hostage.”
Saeed reached for her arm to pull her back.
God, he was never going to let her do this. He hated to rely on others. He wasn’t going to put his son’s life into the hands of a foreigner, a woman at that. “You must trust me. He will never let you in. I can do this,” she said, desperate for him to understand.
“I know.” His gaze bore into hers. After an eternity, he nodded. “You can do anything.”
She smiled, knowing well what it cost him to let her handle this, appreciating the vote of confidence.
The door opened a crack, a rifle barrel pushed through. Dara walked up to the opening and was pulled inside roughly, the door closing behind her with a bang.
Along with King Majid and the boy, a dozen royal guards were in the room, as well as Saeed’s sisters, huddled in the corner, scared out of their wits. Odd that Majid hadn’t mentioned them. Or maybe not that odd. He probably thought little of their value for bargaining or otherwise, since they were women.
Dara watched the king while one of the guards searched her. Majid looked nothing like Saeed, despite their relation. He was shorter, with a wide face and a prominent mustache that hung over fleshy lips. He was not overweight, but clearly out of shape.
Her gaze slid back to the hostages and she smiled at Salah and Saeed’s sisters, hoping to reassure them. She could see fairly well now, and was grateful for it. She looked around the room for any possible strategic advantage.
King Majid’s bedroom was bizarre in its excess. Frescoes of nudes decorated the high ceilings, framed with gold molding. Priceless art covered the walls, life-size marble statues of naked Roman goddesses in every corner, despite the fact that religious law strictly forbade any depiction of the human body. The furniture looked like something antique dealers would call Louis with a number after it.
The room had two other exits and judging from the fact that Majid was still here, she guessed they were blocked by Saeed’s men from the outside.
“Say what you came to say,” the king ordered in his accented English.
“Release your hostages and you’ll be guaranteed safe passage to the country of your choosing for exile, as long as they agree to take you.”
She could make no such guarantee in Saeed’s name nor in her own government’s, but she didn’t expect Majid to go for it anyway. She was just buying time until she figured out what to do.
“I can stay here until my army returns to the city and crushes the rebels.”
“Your army defected,” she said without blinking.
She could see a moment of hesitation in his small brown eyes.
“I will not be run off. I’ll die as a hero and take Saeed’s heir with me.”
“What would that accomplish?” she asked, her voice calmer than she felt. “Sheik Saeed will have another heir and you will be dead.”
Rage contorted the man’s face. He was clearly not used to anyone resisting him, especially not a woman.
She inched toward the guard to her left, the one who kept his eye on Fatima instead of the proceedings. If she could grab his gun, it might give her some
leverage. If she was able to get her hands on Majid, she was pretty sure her demands for the guards to surrender would be met.
But before she could go for it, another guard burst through the wall, panting and bloody, bowing then talking rapidly.
She stared at the man’s point of entry. A hidden wall panel. Damn. Saeed didn’t know about that.
“It seems my men secured a way out of here. I have loyal troops on the southern borders. I’ll be back in the palace within a week and we’ll see who will be dead then.” Majid grabbed Salah by the arm and dragged him to the open panel, his guards pulling Fatima and Lamis to their feet to follow.
Damn. Dara glanced toward the golden double doors. One of the guards raised a rifle to her head. She couldn’t risk calling out to warn Saeed. She couldn’t afford to get shot. She needed to go with the hostages to save them.
She watched as the small party stepped through the open wall panel and followed obediently, thinking of the knife tucked in her boot and that the farther from the rebel forces the king got, the more he’d lower his guard.
They passed through a long corridor. When Salah tripped on the uneven ground, Majid yanked his arm and yelled at the child.
“Let me carry him,” Dara said. “We’ll go faster.”
After a moment of hesitation Majid nodded. She picked up the boy, and he hid his face in the crook of her neck. He couldn’t have weighed over forty pounds. She had carried rucksacks heavier than that for days at a time on exercise.
They reached a hidden doorway and descended three flights of stairs, then entered a dark cramped passageway, the walls built of stone—an escape tunnel probably built for just this purpose. She watched the way the men moved, seeking to judge their strength, whether any of them had sustained injuries.
There were only ten guards now, Majid had left two back in his bedroom, to hold Saeed off as long as possible, no doubt.
They walked on for a long time, crossed over to the sewer system at one point; Dara sniffed at the sharp smell of ammonia in the air. She was glad when the corridor finally angled upward. When they came to a doorway, one of the guards busted off the padlock from the door with the butt of his rifle. A steep staircase led upward, and they followed it to a stainless-steel-covered room.