“That’s a little tunny,” Rania said. “Where did you catch him?”
“Just floated out by the reef with a little piece of dead crab on the hook until he happened along and took the bait.”
“He may not look like much,” she said, “but he’ll be mighty tasty once we grill him.”
Moj took his knife and cleaned the small fish before depositing the filets on a palm leaf. “Since I landed him, is there any way you can cook him?”
“Huh?” Rania gave him a playful poke in the ribs. “I’m a woman. I was born to cook,” she said, and pulled a waterproof roll from one of her overall pockets. The kit inside contained a thin piece of metal attached to a rough metal rod with a leather thong; a plastic bag stuffed with cotton balls; and five tubes of lip balm. She laid out her treasures on a flat rock and squatted back on her haunches to flash him a huge smile.
“Magic,” she said, and pointed to the curious collection. She took the cotton balls and methodically coated each one with greasy gobs of lip balm. “Go get some rocks and build me a fire ring,” she said, and continued her careful daubing.
Moj constructed a sturdy ring in the sand nearby and then came back for further orders.
“Now gather little bits of dried wood and dead vegetation,” Rania said, “for the bottom layer. Then find some bigger stuff we can put on top once I get the flames going.”
He dumped the small stuff into the ring before padding off to comb the edge of the beach for cooking fuel. Rania piled the greased cotton balls in the middle of the stone ring and then scraped the two pieces of metal together. Gradually, sparks flew off the surfaces and set the cotton balls ablaze. She quickly piled the tinder materials on top, and before Moj had a chance to return with an armful of larger chunks of wood, she had a steady blaze going.
“Damn,” he said. “That’s unbelievable. All that heat comes from nothing but some cotton balls, lip balm, and rubbing two pieces of metal together? How long will the flames last?”
“Long enough to get the bigger stuff going,” she said, and moved over to skewer the fish filets onto a long, green stick she pulled from a bush. “Once the rest of the wood catches and the heat builds, we’ll be ready to cook.”
* * *
Moj lugged a full plastic jug of water while Rania forged ahead, whacking at the undergrowth beyond the spring. Hiking toward the spring had been a hell of a lot easier today thanks to the previous day’s work, so they were making good time toward the lee side of the island.
He guessed that, technically, they weren’t still on a deserted island. But if they did have neighbors on the spit of sand, rocks and jungle growth, none had surfaced to challenge them.
At least now he wasn’t starving. The fish had filled him up, along with another coconut shared with Rania. He was amazed at how well they’d managed since being shot at the day before. If either of them had been alone, the outcome could have been a lot more bleak. But together, they’d faced each problem and powered through.
And then there was his beautiful Amazon, Rania, who at the moment had the harder job. The thought no more than entered his head than she turned with the knife she’d been using to hack vegetation and handed the hilt end to him.
“Your turn,” she said, and softened the blow with a seductive smile. “I’ll lug water for a while.”
“You do know, you’re not nearly as sexy when you’re giving orders,” he said, handing her the water jug and taking point in their surge toward the opposite shore of the island.
“Just how much trouble are we in, on a scale of one to ten?” Moj shouted over his shoulder after about a quarter hour of moving through the heavy undergrowth.
“We lost the sat phones when the inflatable sunk, so they can’t track us that way,” she said, “and even if I still had my GPS hand unit, it was a one-way-only device.” She paused and dropped the water jug to the ground. “Stop for a minute, and let’s hydrate,” she urged him.
“Don’t need to tell me twice,” he said, and turned, plummeting to the ground, sweat pouring from his forehead. He swiped at the droplets and reached for the water when Rania finished drinking.
She was silent for a long time and then looked into his eyes.
“There is something they could use, but nobody knows I have it, only Global Security.” She lifted her left arm and pointed to a tiny scar just above her armpit.
“It’s a tracking chip. If you work for them, the implant is mandatory. My old boss never wanted one of us to be used as a hostage.”
Moj was struck silent. He had a hard time summoning up words.
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” he finally said, “the ultimate invasion of privacy. Why would you sign on for something like that?”
“Because I needed the work, and I was tired of being just a stewardess on superyachts. I guess I felt I had something to prove.” She lowered her arm quickly, as if she’d been burned.
“But that work turned out to be just as frustrating as what I’d been doing on yachts. Except the pay was way better.” She stood suddenly, signaling the end of an uncomfortable conversation.
He couldn’t let it go.
“You could have gone home to your father. He would have taken care of you.”
“I can’t go back to Egypt,” she said, the expression on her face shuttered.
“I know it’s hard for women there,” Moj said, “but—”
She shut him down. “No, you don’t understand. I can’t go back to Egypt.”
“But your father. Surely he has influence,” Moj said. The look she gave him was not only final but downright scary. She wasn’t going to explain.
He raised his arms in surrender. “Sorry I brought up something so painful. My bad. Won’t ever ask again.”
She finally looked away and motioned him back to their jungle tunneling project. After an additional half-hour of thwacking through thick underbrush, Moj stopped so suddenly, Rania nearly ran into him.
He gave a low whistle. They were maybe a hundred feet from the shore, and hidden beneath carefully piled vegetation was an odd little plane that had been pulled up from the beach.
It wasn’t a seaplane, exactly. Its landing wheels were on hinges that could fold back against its sides; the wings supported enormous twin engines above the cabin.
Rania peered over his shoulder and whispered low, “Remember when you asked me how much trouble we’re in?”
“Uh-huh,” he answered.
“We’re in a lot of trouble,” she said. “A lot.”
* * *
Rania’s heart did a quick double beat when she realized what the hidden plane meant. Someone was using this tiny outpost as part of a smuggling operation. The absent pilot no doubt was smuggling something, something she and Moj didn’t want to know about if they wanted to stay alive.
A healthy chain of drug dealing spread westward from China and Afghanistan and was conducted by small aircraft like the one in front of them. No amphibious aircraft had extensive range, based on fuel limitations, but they could fly below the radar. And island-hop.
“Define ‘a lot,’” Moj demanded, and stepped closer to the plane, pushing the palm leaves off the wings.
“I’m not sure, but I’d give it a twelve on a scale of one to ten,” she said. “My guess is this is a smugglers’ relay station. If they’re about to return and find us, that would be ‘a lot’ of trouble.” Rania added. She followed him to the plane’s cabin door he’d propped open and craned her neck around his massive shoulders to peer inside.
He turned back and asked, “What are we looking for?” In the struggle to get inside, they suddenly bumped heads as Moj lowered his to get closer to the controls.
Rania laughed and grasped his face with both hands to pull him in for a long kiss.
“Now breathe,” she said, “and tell me what you’re looking for that’s so important you need to hip-check me out of the way.”
“The controls. Maybe a manual if we’re lucky.” He used her momen
tary diversion to push ahead and pull himself into the cabin.
“So you’ve been up in a plane for lessons, but you’re not checked out to solo yet,” Rania said, and climbed in next to him. “Do you think it’s safe to try a desperate takeoff?”
“Maybe,” he said, and gave her a wink.
“Really? You think you can fly this thing on your own?”
He grinned. “Fly? Maybe. Land? Not so much.”
“What the hell?” She smacked his rock-hard shoulder muscle.
“Ow. Watch it,” he said, and dove under the controls, checking the storage bins on the floor of the cabin. “Don’t interfere with an expert at work.”
“Come on,” she begged. “Explain.”
“Well, I got interested in flying about a year ago and started taking lessons. I definitely could get this baby off the ground, but I haven’t been checked off on landing a twin engine yet, let alone this contraption. Have you ever seen one like it?”
“I think it’s an amphibian,” she said. “Never been up in one, but I’ve seen them take off and land. They’re pretty popular in the islands. Some of the bigger yachts keep them as expensive toys.”
She got out of the cabin and walked around, checking out the wings.
“See?” She pointed to the chunky fin-like extensions below the tip of each wing. “Those are floats to balance the wings. When they land on water, they’re tethered like boats in shallow water, or they’re pulled up on land with the wheels down.” She touched one of the extended tires locked in place beneath the plane. “When they roll her back into the water, they fold the wheels up against the plane for takeoff. And then if you need to, you can extend them again for landing on a regular runway.”
“How far does a plane like this need for takeoff on water?” Moj asked.
Rania turned and shaded her eyes from the high afternoon sun. “Probably at least the length of the lagoon.”
“Damn,” he said, “that would be scary as hell.” He turned and looked across the lagoon toward open water with her. “What kind of resistance would we get from water and waves?”
“Don’t know,” she said, “but we have to find out and get the hell out of here before whoever owns this gets back.” She stopped and gave the water another assessing look. “I’m thinking the best time to try a takeoff would be just after dawn, before any wind or waves form. And then there’s the tide and current…”
“What effect will those have on us?”
“Since our phones went overboard and we don’t have access to satellite downloads, I guess we’ll just have to try and be surprised.” She giggled at his uneasy look. “You are so cute when you frown. Makes me want to take you down.”
“How can you joke at a time like this?” he asked, his tone indignant.
She set her hands on her bikini-clad hips and said, “Sure beats dry-mouth terror. And, honestly, it’s hard to take you seriously in bare feet and board shorts.”
He relaxed a little and pulled her into his arms. “We’re gonna get out of here and everything will work out fine. I promise. When we get back to civilization, you’re never going to have to worry about anything again. Ol’ Moj is gonna take care of you.”
She pulled back a little and swept him with a defiant gaze. “Ol’ Rania has been taking care of herself for a long time, and she’s going to keep on doing exactly that.”
Although she kept her voice stern, her inner girl was doing a little dance. Good news? He cared about her. Bad news? She’d turned into an emotional sap.
* * *
Moj couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. This was a woman who didn’t need to be taken care of. In fact, so far, she’d been saving his ass from one moment to the next. The last thing she needed from him was an arrogant speech about how he’d be in charge of her well-being from now on.
And what was the deal about not being able to go back to Egypt? Had she killed somebody while she worked for that big-deal security company boss?
Speaking of Mr. Big, Moj was going to incapacitate the bastard the first time he ran across him. What the hell did he think he was doing, planting a homing chip in the woman Moj loved? Whoa, Moj. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did he just think the “L” word? Crap! What if he’d said it out loud?
He swept the storage areas beneath the controls in the cockpit one last time and came up with the manual, plus a spiral-bound notebook with a crude label — LOG.
“Eureka,” he said, and then realized Rania was no longer within hearing distance.
He popped out of the cockpit at a sudden yell from Rania, who had stumbled onto the beach. When he joined her, he saw what had caused the outburst. He felt like a dark, six-foot-four Goldilocks.
Whoever owned the hidden plane knew how to live. A sleek beach house on stilts blended into the surrounding vegetation as if the tiny dwelling were part of the jungle. Long plastic streamers in camouflage colors fluttered from every surface of the compact hut. From the air, or an occasional passing ship, the hideaway would look just like the surrounding ground cover.
However, the sight that must have caught Rania by surprise was the adjoining pool. Constructed of materials designed to blend into the colors of an island paradise, the pool was mostly submerged in the natural water of the lagoon inside the huge reef stretching out toward deeper water.
Rania toed a lever at the edge of the pool, and streams of bubbles billowed from the inner sides. When Moj extended a foot into the froth, he realized with a start the water was hot. A hot, bubbling spa. Damn. Whatever the island inhabitants smuggled with the little plane, they made a lot of money.
She was right. They were in a lot of trouble.
She came close, discarded her overalls, unclipped her bra top, and stepped out of the bikini bottoms. Staring hard into his eyes, she said, “There is maybe one chance in hell we’re going to survive this ordeal. I say we make the most of the time we have left, since we can’t try a takeoff until morning. What do you say?”
His only answer was to slip out of his swim trunks and plunge into the pool after stacking the manual and pilot’s log onto the nearby sand.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rania leaned back into Moj’s arms in a corner of the pool and let her legs float free. His hands cradled her breasts, lazily rubbing her nipples. His cock bobbed insistently against her bottom, although she thought they’d pretty much worn each other out. Maybe not.
Hours later, after being entangled with his body in the warm, bubbling tub, she didn’t want to move, or worry about what the next day would bring, but she knew they had to form a game plan for the next morning while they still had light.
She assumed there would be solar panels and/or a generator somewhere to power the hut, but she didn’t want to count on it.
So she rolled over and pulled Moj into a deep kiss before standing and reluctantly climbing out of the pool. She motioned over her shoulder for him to follow.
“Do we have to?” Moj caught up and rubbed her shoulders.
“No, of course not. We can stay here until the smugglers come back and kill us.” She gave him her best “duh” look and kept moving toward the hut.
The rope holding the ladder to the deck of the stilt house was attached to a pulley. She lowered the steps to the sand and then looked back to where Moj still stood with a wistful look on his face.
“Now would be a good time for you to offer to go back and get our clothes,” she added, when he didn’t budge.
“You’re really serious about this leaving the perfect desert island thing, aren’t you?” Moj finally said.
Rania stepped close to him again.
“Spending more time with you in a place where no one knows who you are and no one cares where we are has to be the best fantasy I’ve ever had,” she said, and planted a soft kiss on his lips.
Moj took advantage of the moment to crush her into his arms and rest his chin on the top of her head.
“I wish our time together could last longer, too,” he said, and suddenly released
her to head back for their clothes.
She sighed and climbed the ladder toward the hut deck and entrance.
Even though they hadn’t seen any signs of other souls, Rania headed toward the sliding door opening with her muscles taut, ready to spring into a defensive stance in case someone was lurking inside.
The first thing she noticed on her way across the deck was the absence of the normal junk littering most people’s outside living areas. No grill, no neglected dead-flower pots. No cheap plastic chairs and tables. The only accommodation for human habitation was a series of camo-painted folding chairs hung on hooks screwed into the outdoor wooden siding.
Suddenly, Moj was behind her, handing her the well-worn bikini and work overalls. He already had his swim trunks back on.
“Tell me what to do,” he said, and picked up a heavy chunk of driftwood that had been left on a corner of the deck.
“I can’t believe they wouldn’t have confronted us by now if they’ve been here all along,” she said, “but better to be safe. Stay close behind, just in case.”
“I don’t care how badass you are,” Moj said. “I’m going in first.” And he slid ahead of her before she could argue.
He pushed the door open a few inches at a time, taking care to make as little noise as possible. Sticking his head inside, he peered around the glass into the interior. He gave a low whistle and suddenly disappeared within.
“Shit,” Rania said, and rushed in behind him with clenched fists.
* * *
Moj crouched low on entering the hut, expecting the worst. He straightened and let his eyes adjust to the dark innards of the compact hut and eased out a sigh of relief. No one lurked inside.
He walked over to the wall of windows and opened one. A simple wooden shutter system covered the outside openings all around the small structure. Moj moved from one to another on the land and sea sides of the hut, opening the shutters to the ocean breezes. He dropped his driftwood club onto the outside deck.
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