Arachnosaur

by Richard Jeffries

  “Already taken care of,” Rahal assured them. “I’ve been planning since our talk in the tent.”

  Back there, and then, Key had made his concerns clear. His conclusion that he and Daniels were being tracked without their knowledge or permission was not a guess as far as he was concerned. And that, alone, was enough for him to start making extreme alternate plans.

  Now, all these hours later, Rahal placed Daniels’s bug in what had been her recovery bed, while the sergeant started changing into the scrubs she had secured for him.

  “I still don’t understand why,” she said while tossing them lab coats. “What do they hope to gain?”

  Key shrugged on the lab coat. “Don’t know yet. It could be they’re being careful, or we’re some sort of pawns in a bigger game they want to control, or something even more ominous. Any way it’s shaking down, I trust myself a lot more than I trust Logan.”

  Key took Rahal’s arm, and the three “Oman Medical College teachers” started for the door. But just as they got there, the tallest, widest one hesitated.

  “Sure you want to do this, Joe? Once you go off the reservation, it’s hard to get back on.”

  Key took a second to punch Daniels, directly on the slice Rahal had made. “I know, Morty,” he assured him. “You know I know.”

  Daniels still held back, rubbing his arm. “Come on, Joe, I understand you don’t like being screwed with, but maybe this time there’s a really good reason. This is big, end of the world big. Logan could be right.”

  That stopped Key dead in his tracks. But when he turned back to his friend, he had an honest, understanding smile on his face.

  “Of course Logan’s right, Morty,” he said. “If anybody’s going to control the weaponized arachnosaurs, it had better be us. But, good and bad news, buddy. Nobody’s going to be able to control them. You know it, I know it, even they probably know it. Only difference is that I’m willing to admit it.”

  He felt Rahal tugging at his sleeve. He held up a finger in the “just a minute” gesture without taking his eyes off Daniels. His expression, body language, and even aura made clear the following words were important, if for nothing else than to keep Daniels from betraying them the way he had betrayed Strenkofski.

  “And you know how I know, Morty? Because Professor Davi blew his brains out right in front of us. He preferred to die rather than live in a world where there were idiots who thought they could control weaponized arachnosaurs. Not where there were arachnosaurs…just idiot people who thought they could control them!”

  Daniels stared for a minute, and then his smile mirrored Key’s. “What, are you kidding? Me? Avoid a chance to fool superiors, maybe earn a charge of treason in the first degree, and have the entire Corps on our ass for the rest of our natural lives? Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He joined them at the door to make sure the coast was still clear. “You know Logan’s not going to love you anymore after this,” he told his friend.

  “Oh, sure he will,” Key said flippantly. “He has plenty of love left. If he didn’t, we’d already be dead.”

  Chapter 19

  “Stay seated,” Manuel ‘Speedy’ Gonzales told them from the front seat of the bronze-colored, 2016 Renault Koleos sport utility vehicle.

  Of all of the possible means of transportation Key could imagine sneaking out of Muscat in, this was not one of them. It smelled and looked brand-new, untested, and it had frankly decadent European styling inside and out, setting it apart from the more utilitarian Japanese and Korean SUVs around them.

  They were at the Arrival Visa building on the Omani side of the border, a squat, pale, glorified Quonset hut sporting a big blue Passport Control sign. Key sat behind Gonzales with Rahal beside him, while Daniels sat behind them in the third row of seats, with, of all people, Lailani beside him.

  The men wore the traditional Emirati outfits of the white kandora robe, the white ghutrah headdress, and the black agal rope that affixed the covering to their skulls. The women wore long, loose, black abaya dresses, shayla scarves, which covered their heads and chests, and, to take no chances, niqabs, the face-covering veils.

  Gonzales wore the same attire as Key and Daniels, but the driver he nodded to, who turned out to be, not surprisingly, his go-to right-hand-partner-in-crime Faisal, was resplendent in a silk representation of a chauffeur’s uniform, complete with cap and driving gloves. Faisal nodded back, took a fistful of passports, and snappily exited the air-conditioned conveyance.

  “Standing in line is for peons,” Gonzales told them with a somewhat tense grin. “Not for VIPs.”

  “Like us?” Rahal said from beneath her veil. Her tone was hard to read.

  “Like us,” Gonzales assured her, and them.

  Lailani said something in what sounded like a mix of Arabic and Filipino. But her tone was not hard to read. A healthy heaping of sardonicism, with a touch of bitterness.

  Key looked from Gonzales to Rahal for translation. The latter took up the task after a quick conferring look with their host. “It’s a bit rhetorical,” she explained, “but basically she said, ‘here, money talks, tourists walk.’”

  Gonzales nodded with approval at her interpretation. “Spoken like a woman in the know,” he said.

  Once again Key marveled at both Daniels’s friend network, and what Gonzales could, and was willing to, do. The corporal had been somewhat grasping at straws when he had reached out, but Gonzales had long ago given him a contact number. When Key dialed it from a cell phone bought from a street peddler—a cell phone that was immediately trashed after that single call—he was initially surprised to hear a fax signal.

  Then he wasn’t. There was a reason many Government agencies still preferred the fax to the phone. It was because the facsimile machine used the inherently secure Public Switched Telephone Network, which was much harder to hack than email. And even if the hacker could get direct access to the phone line being used, the intercepted file would be indecipherable noise.

  Thankfully, Key was able to fashion a succinct message during the nearly frantic search for a fax machine in Muscat. That was when Daniels had suggested they find Lailani where he, and the marine patrol who found them in the Gulf of Oman, had left her. It was in another tacky bar she worked at, a bar so tacky, in fact, that the owner even had a dusty fax machine in the corner of his messy office. So, finally, that set the stage for Gonzales to be surprised when the long unused fax machine in his Thumrait Studio hummed, buzzed, and chattered to life.

  “Thank you,” Rahal now said to Gonzales many hours after that, “for the compliment, but also for—” She struggled to find a description of all he had done so far: avoiding censure and detection while coming to collect them, as well as supplying clothing and counterfeit documents. “—all this.”

  Gonzales shrugged. “Told Joe before. I fix things. No world, no things to fix. Besides, it’s not like any of you have just been sitting on your las nalgas either.”

  Rahal nodded in realization and acceptance, then looked at the others, stopping to nod directly at Lailani with both apology and respect. She had been surprised when Key had accepted the sergeant’s insistence that they collect her without a peep, but now knew that she was not only extremely useful, but Daniels’s determination to help her marked great progress in his character.

  “Years, maybe even months, if not weeks, ago,” Key had told Rahal, “he would have dumped her without a second thought.”

  “If she hadn’t dumped on my ass, then saved it,” Daniels had interrupted, “maybe I still would’ve.”

  So now they all sat together in the back of a sweet-smelling, air-conditioned SUV as Faisal returned, got behind the steering wheel, and tossed the pile of passports to Gonzales. He said something in Arabic, which Gonzales translatd, “Leaving stamps secured.”

  * * * *

  Unlike Rahal, Key had not been concerned about the forged passports
’ quality. While Rahal had heard about hard jail time for being caught with fakes at the border, Key had already experienced the first-class Hispanic mechanic service.

  “One down, three to go,” Rahal said.

  “Three?” Daniels echoed. “I thought we’re just crossing the border into the United Arab Emirates.”

  Gonzales nodded. “We are, but the way it works is that we now go to the Emirati border patrol. Then, because of the way the road was built, there’s an Omani police checkpoint, followed, finally, by a UAE checkpoint.”

  “Oh, great.” Daniels growled. “Three more chances to risk the joy of anal rape.”

  Gonzales snorted. “Oh no, Morty,” he corrected. “You get nicked, you get three years of chances.”

  The decision to drive four hundred and fifty kilometers northwest was not taken lightly. Key had faxed Gonzales their longitude and latitude, as well as two requests in the form of a single sentence. “Where’s Logan/Awar?”

  By the time Gonzales had arrived at the landscaper shack at Al-Qurm Park where the quartet of fugitives were holding up, he had the same answer to both.

  “Usa Awar has a lot of money,” Gonzales informed Key as the Renault continued on its way, “and most of it not from terrorist group support.”

  “Of course not,” Daniels complained. “He gets it like the rest of the towelheads, right? Oil.”

  “No.” Key sighed. “Weapons.”

  “Right,” Gonzales concurred. “And the biggest weapons show in the region is this week.”

  “And Logan’s there, too,” Key said. “That’s troubling, but not surprising.”

  “In certain circles,” Rahal reminded him, “rumors of some sort of arachnid weapon are rampant.”

  “And the industrial espionage and infighting that goes on for control of the latest weapon is legion,” Gonzales informed them.

  It struck Key, thanks to some church sermon long ago, that the use of the word ‘legion’ was appropriate. It was a New Testament term to describe a clutch of demons. He wondered if Islam had a counterpart to that. Jinn, maybe? Not that it mattered. If they didn’t have one, odds were they soon would.

  “They’re not even seeing these things as monsters,” Key said, shaking his head. “Just as possible equipment.”

  “What?” Daniels sneered. “You want us to just lean back and let Awar have them?”

  Key looked at the sergeant evenly and spoke in a slight singsong. “No. I want us to see them as a danger to all humanity and destroy them before it’s too late. Right?”

  Daniels shut his mouth, folded his arms, and sulked. “Right.”

  “What are you going to do?” Rahal asked Key as he turned back toward the front.

  “Don’t know yet,” he replied honestly. “But whatever we decide, it couldn’t be carried out in Muscat.”

  The sergeant sniffed, already feeling irritable and hemmed in. He shifted uncomfortably in the comfortable seat to see Lailani looking wistfully out the window, her elbow on the frame, and her chin cupped in her hand.

  “What’s with you, pogi?” he asked, purposely using the subtle Filipino term for someone a cruel person tries to curry favors from in an obviously over-affectionate way. “You act like you’re going to miss this dump.”

  “Shut up, guwapo,” she retorted diffidently, using the term for handsome men, as well as even handsomer horses. “You couldn’t tell flesh from plastic.”

  Daniels straightened, ready to snap back at her, but Gonzales’s laugh distracted him. He looked past Key and Rahal to see Gonzales grinning at him.

  “Smart cookie,” he told the sergeant. “You should listen to her.” He motioned out the windows to the shifting sands all around them. “About three decades ago, almost all of this was just cactuses and scorpions. But in one small village on the coast lived a bunch of divers who found pearls so big that people came from all over to join them. They named their town after a local locust, the daba, who ate everything in its reach. Then came the British. They ate everything the locusts had missed.”

  That elicited another snort from Lailani. When Daniels looked confusedly from her to the others, Key threw him a bone. “The British occupied Manila in 1762.”

  “In 1762?” Daniels blurted. “That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”

  Rahal cocked her head toward the sergeant. “Don’t say anything like that to someone from India or China,” she recommended.

  “Be that as it may,” Gonzales continued, “the grand and glorious British Empire throttled the pearl-rich village fairly thoroughly as late as the nineteen-seventies, but then the town named after a locust ganged up with a half dozen nearby states and created the United Arab Emirates—just in time for Texas tea to be discovered.”

  “Oil,” Daniels said.

  “Yes. So what were these pearl divers going to do with all that cash flow?”

  “What else?” Key asked. “Invite the world to come on down, tax free.”

  “And come they did,” Gonzales continued. “So many, in fact, that in just thirty or so years, their population outnumbered the pearl divers by ninety-five percent. The place went from seventeen hundred to twenty-one hundred in less time than it took you to grow up.”

  “Then they still got some ways to go,” Daniels said. “I haven’t grown up yet.”

  “I would suggest that it’s about time,” Gonzales told him.

  “Eh? Why spoil a good thing?”

  “Because you’re off to see the wizard, Morty,” Gonzales said. “The wonderful wizard of black gold. So, sit back, relax, and watch how the sand dunes magically turn into skyscrapers.”

  It was perfect timing. Daniels looked into the distance just as something started rising from the desert, something that looked very much like the Emerald City with sunlight and silver purity and towering spires that rose from atop magical walls. Sometimes the glass reflected sun and rusty sand or other giant structures. At other times the walls just seemed to vanish, as the sky on one side matched exactly the color and clarity of the sky on the other.

  “Welcome, Morty,” Gonzales said. “Welcome to the city that pride and a ridiculous prime rate bought. Welcome to Dubai.”

  Chapter 20

  Key and Daniels were amused by how the other was trying to adjust to Dubai by acting as if they weren’t trying to adjust to Dubai. It had the world’s tallest man-made structure, the Burj Khalifa—an icicle of a thing—which had the world’s highest restaurant. The city also had the tallest hotel, the highest outdoor observation deck, the loftiest nightclub, and even the uppermost mosque. Given all that height, it was little wonder the marines were having a hard time not being light-headed.

  The second stop Gonzales had made was to a secret tailor. The first stop had been to a secret shelter. All the secret shopping could be found within a maze of alleys Gonzales referred to as Souk Land which was, apparently, between the city sections known as Deira and Bar Dubai. From what Key could find out, Deira was once the commercial center of the city, which was now marginalized, much the way Hong Kong had been after the Chinese Government had taken over the lease from the British Government in 1997. Bar Dubai was one of the most historic sections of the city.

  Souk Land, wedged between them like a hornet’s nest, was a labyrinth of shops ranging from glittering steel and glass warts to stuffed tents. At first, it looked as if Faisal was driving directly into a mound of tent flaps, but he braked just before touching cloth, and Lailani was out of the Renault, grabbing Rahal’s wrist. As Daniels reached to complain, Gonzales slapped his hand.

  “Women can’t go unchaperoned in Dubai,” he said casually. “Women can’t do a lot of things in Dubai. The sooner they’re out of sight, the better for everyone.”

  “Tsk-tsk,” Daniels said. “Compare that to what American women have to put up with—men who don’t agree with them.”

  Daniels looked fro
m Gonzales’s heavy-lidded, mirthlessly smiling face, to where Lailani and Rahal had just been, but weren’t anymore. He blinked, and ran through a gamut that included confusion, disbelief, then disappointment. Key stifled a laugh. To the leader’s eyes—and he had been watching the whole thing, unlike Daniels—it appeared as if the two women had slipped between two tent walls, then simply winked out of existence.

  “Damn de damn damn damn,” was all Daniels could think to say before he went looking from one tent to the other. The first sold chocolates. The other sold preserved flowers. He looked beyond each. All the rest of the shops there sold nothing like those products. To the east was one spice shop after another. To the west was fish stall after fish stall. “No magic lamps for sale?”

  Gonzales moved between him and Daniels, taking them both by the arms. “Come on, you’ll find out the secret to the magic trick later,” he said.

  “Whatever time you think we have left, it’s probably less.”

  Key was impressed how quickly and unerringly Gonzales navigated the web of shops, from open air bazaars and lattice covered gardens to tent hives. Finally, they were in a nest of textiles, crammed inside a warehouse made of intricate wooden lattice. Piles of fabric tumbled against lines of dresses, shoes, and accessories. Shopkeepers and tailors yelled at anyone, but the marines stayed with their host, who ignored them all.

  Finally, he came to two tents, similar to where Lailani had taken Rahal. Gonzales slipped between them first, pulling Daniels after him, while Key took up the rear. Had to be that way, Key realized, lest the sergeant start balking like a horse brought to water.

  To his impressed amusement, the flaps seemed to wrap them without disturbing their adjoining tents’ floor or roof supports. There was only a second or two of disorientation, then the souks revealed their secret. Wedged between them, along the back of parallel, right-angled, and kitty-cornered shops, were spaces occupied by others. Others who were not available to the public or the pretentious. Others who did not wish to serve the spoiled or stupid. Others who only wanted to serve only the ones they chose.