Sheik's Revenge

by Loreth Anne White

  He took a small step forward, but stopped as if deciding not to look for her further.

  Faith slowly released her breath and pressure on the trigger, then cursed when she saw he wasn’t about to leave yet. Instead, he was removing what looked like a satellite phone from his belt. She wasn’t sure she could hold on much longer without slipping again.

  He keyed the pad on his phone, put it to his ear, watchful of the surrounding jungle as he waited for an answer. He looked powerful, almost regal on the knoll. Faith wondered again what his motive was for going after that bodyguard and she bit into a sudden surge of self-recrimination—she’d been such a bloody idiot to have fallen for him like that.

  This man was dangerous to her in ways that others weren’t.

  Facing in her direction, he spoke into his phone. And with a jolt Faith registered he was speaking Arabic.

  *

  Omair had expected a palace aide to answer Zakir’s phone, so he was nearly blinded by a raw punch of emotion as he heard his brother’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Zakir?” His own voice became hoarse. “You…were not on the plane?”

  “I’ve been expecting your call, Omair.” His brother’s voice was tight, flat. “I cancelled my UN address because Nikki was having a few complications with the pregnancy. I sent an envoy instead. Dalilah came early to Al Na’Jar, on a commercial flight, also to be with Nikki.”

  “Tariq, Julie—they were on the plane?”

  There was a long pause of silence. Omair’s fist tightened on his phone. “Tell me Tariq is all right!”

  Zakir inhaled deeply. “He’s in a coma, Omair, in intensive care.” Zakir fell silent again and Omair knew his brother was struggling to speak.

  “How bad?”

  “It’s bad. He was flung clear of the plane in the initial blast, but he went back into the fire to save Julie. A second blast occurred as he was running with her from the wreckage. They were both badly burned. Tariq tried to revive Julie on scene, but she was gone. There was a third explosion, which flung debris that hit him across the head. He fell into a coma en route to the hospital. The doctors say it’s from brain hemorrhaging. They’ve been working on him—”

  “I’ll fly immediately to—”

  “No!” Zakir’s forceful delivery brooked zero argument. “Do not go to New York. We don’t know who did this. Our enemies are suddenly strong again—there’s evidence of new cash flowing to MagMo, and if they are behind this, their resurgence could be because they have a new leader, a man who calls himself the New Moor. We don’t know the extent of his reach and he could have people waiting for you to come to the hospital. You could be walking right into a trap, Omair, with Tariq as the bait. I want to bring Tariq here, back to Al Na’Jar, along with the best medical specialists available. When he arrives, I’ll wait for a few days, then tell the world he has passed.” Zakir paused, and Omair could visualize him, the blind king, standing beside the desk in his office, hand braced on the back of his chair for orientation and support.

  “Does this work for you, Omair?” he said quietly.

  Omair understood what his brother was saying. Tariq would be safer if their enemy thought he was dead. It also meant the enemy would now come directly for Omair. After Tariq, Omair was next in line of succession.

  “Of course,” he said, voice thick. “Have the doctors said what the long-term prognosis is?”

  “If he does come out of the coma there will be extensive plastic surgery, a long haul to recovery.” Zakir wavered, his voice going hoarse. “We need to be strong. For him, for our country, for our family.”

  Anguish twisted through Omair’s chest and he reached for a rock to steady himself.

  “Was it a bomb?”

  “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is heading up a joint task force to investigate. Our people are assisting. We’ll know more as things progress. Where are you now?”

  Omair steeled his jaw and took a deep breath.

  “Da’ud’s third assassin has now been eliminated,” he said quietly. “I’m leaving Colombia for Ecuador—I know a pilot who’ll take me tonight. From there I will fly to the Western Sahara. It’s evident that the Maghreb Moors are behind this weapons deal, but I want proof. And I want the man calling the shots—if it’s this New Moor, I want him. He could be spinning new ideology to fire his cause, using the ancient strife between the Sun Clan and the historic Al Arif Bedouin tribe to build identity for the MagMo organization, and if that’s the case, it’s going to hurt us because more might join their so-called cause.”

  “And that cause is?”

  “To destroy us, the Al Arifs. And to take control of our kingdom, land they believe historically belongs to the Sun Clan.”

  Zakir was silent for another long moment, and when he spoke again, Omair could hear the grief and fatigue in his voice.

  “Be careful, brother. I’ll let you know as soon as anything develops with Tariq.”

  “We’re going to win this battle, Zakir,” he said quietly. “I will fight it to the end.”

  Omair killed the call and leaned on the rock.

  He did not want to believe Tariq might not make it out of the coma, or that his brother might never be able to operate again. If Tariq survived and was not able to pursue the career, the passion that defined him, this alone would kill him. Not to mention how Tariq would feel when he woke to find Julie, the love of his life, gone, decimated by an unknown enemy.

  Emotion burned fierce in Omair’s eyes and his heart hardened with anger and pain. Heat shimmered in the humidity around him and the thunder growled closer. A few heavy drops of rain began to bomb the dry earth. The scent was strong. But everything seemed suddenly distant and the emotion in Omair’s eyes turned into hot tears he could no longer hold back.

  And as the tears leaked down the face of the assassin, he vowed to find and kill everyone responsible for this. It was his duty. He would go wherever in the world it took him, and he would not rest until he had justice for Tariq. An eye for an eye.

  A life for a life.

  *

  Faith was fluent in Arabic—it was part of her training, but because of the noisy clatter of leaves in the mounting storm wind the only words she’d managed to identify in his phone conversation were bomb, MagMo, jet, explosion, Homeland Security and JFK.

  Anxiety curled through her. If Santiago was a MagMo terrorist of some kind, and if it was found she’d slept with him and screwed up her hit because of it, she was as good as dead.

  He was facing her now as he leaned back against a rock, and with shock she saw his features were twisted with raw emotion and tears glistened in his coal-black eyes.

  Faith felt a startling reciprocal clutch of emotion in her chest at the sight of his pain.

  What did he care so much about?

  Faith hadn’t allowed herself to care with that kind of passion or depth for anything or anyone for as long as she could remember. She curled her fingers tighter around the vine, her ankle throbbing, her muscles beginning to shake as she watched him. She was going to lose her grip if he didn’t leave soon.

  To Faith’s relief, he pushed himself off the rock, glanced sharply one more time in her direction, then he disappeared down the opposite side of the knoll and slipped back into the jungle.

  Clearly no longer his priority, Faith waited a few more moments to make sure he wasn’t coming back. Rain fell more steadily as she slid carefully down the trunk of the tree. All she had to do now was find a way to splint her ankle and get to her evacuation point. Then she’d have to face the music over her botched mission when she returned to base in Maryland. Santiago might be gone for good, but her fling with him could very well have cost her her job. Possibly even her life. STRIKE was a fairly new and deep black ops outfit. Retirement of assassins from the unit was, as yet, an untested question.

  All this because she’d been unable to resist those oil-black eyes, the smoke in his touch.

  *

  Washington,
D.C. Late June.

  Seven weeks after the Al Arif jet bombing.

  Senator Sam Etherington, clear front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination come fall, sipped his Earl Grey tea as he paged through the Washington Daily. He stopped at the headline on page three—Dr. Tariq Al Arif, renowned neurosurgeon and geneticist, and next in line to the Al Na’Jar throne, had succumbed to his injuries and died at a private medical facility in the desert kingdom of Al Na’Jar.

  As shoo-in for the presidency, terrorism and homeland security were cornerstones to his campaign, and so far there’d been no leads in the Al Arif jet bombing at JFK seven weeks ago. Nor had any group claimed responsibility.

  Sam set his teacup carefully back into the saucer on his desk as he noted the byline on the story: Bella DiCaprio. She’d delved into the political ramifications of the surgeon sheik’s death for Al Na’Jar. And in the stories following her initial coverage of the jet bombing, DiCaprio had noted that the desert kingdom was recently oil-rich, and that there’d been ongoing unrest in the country, along with previous attempts on King Zakir Al Arif’s life. The king’s parents and older brother, she’d made a point of mentioning, also had been assassinated.

  Sam committed her name to memory.

  He liked to know the names of D.C. reporters, especially the up-and-comers garnering big attention, and DiCaprio was one. Recognizing and calling reporters by name at media conferences had worked favorably for him to date—coverage tended to be more favorable.

  A tap sounded on his office door.

  “Come in!”

  Isaiah Gold, Sam’s special aide—a blunt political operative with an intelligence background—entered with an envelope in his hand.

  Sam stilled at the look in Isaiah’s features.

  “We need to talk,” Isaiah said, very softly.

  Sam glanced at the envelope clutched in Isaiah’s hand and folded his newspaper. “Take a seat.”

  Isaiah shook his head, and mouthed the word: outside.

  Sam frowned. His office was swept for bugs and wiretaps once a week at Isaiah’s insistence. Feeling a bite of tension, he reached for his jacket.

  *

  They sat on the wall of a fountain in the park across from Sam’s office building where the noisy splash of water would obscure any attempts to record speech from a distance. The June sunshine was balmy and leaves fluttered in a soft breeze as Sam read the contents of the manila envelope. Then he read them again, anger swelling quietly inside him. He looked up, and met Isaiah’s eyes.

  “He can deliver everything it says in here—OPEC, Middle Eastern support, a major share of oil rights in Al Na’Jar?”

  “If you uphold your end of the bargain and back the insurgency in Al Na’Jar, and if you help assassinate the remaining Al Arif royals.”

  Sam slapped the envelope onto the fountain wall. “There is no bargain! I don’t know what has gotten into you, Isaiah. This man is incarcerated, being held in solitary confinement under U.S. military interrogation in Jordan! How in hell did he manage to get this proposition to you via an envoy anyway?”

  “Sam,” Isaiah said quietly with a placid smile, “you could still be photographed from a distance. Please, relax. Don’t give anyone anything they can use against you. This is a critical time.”

  A tongue of panic licked through Sam. He glanced around quickly. A woman was walking a small dog at the far end of the park. Several sedans and a rusty white van were parked across the street. A couple walked hand in hand and a mother led her toddler over grass to the swings. Nothing unusual. But the information in the envelope was enough to make him paranoid.

  “I’m going to pretend you never brought this to me.” Sam said quietly as he stood up and calmly adjusted his jacket. Anger pounded in his head as he began to walk away.

  “The proposal in that envelope doesn’t come from the prisoner in custody, Sam. That old man is redundant to MagMo now. The organization has a new leader. This offer comes from him.”

  He swung back to face Isaiah. “What?”

  Isaiah said nothing.

  Sam returned to the fountain. “Who is this man?”

  “We don’t know,” Isaiah said quietly. “He calls himself the New Moor. He appears to be well connected, and exceedingly powerful.”

  Isaiah opened his jacket as he spoke, removing a smaller envelope. “He sent this, too—a little gift, apparently, to sweeten his proposal.”

  Sam snatched the envelope from Isaiah, opened it. Blood drained from his head.

  Slowly, very slowly, he sat back down on the fountain wall.

  “Where did these photos come from?” His voice came out thick.

  “Again, I don’t know.”

  “Is it really her? Alive?”

  “According to the New Moor’s envoy, your ex-wife—the woman you had declared dead in absentia—is very much alive and thriving as the new, and very pregnant, Queen of Al Na’Jar.”

  “This…can’t be.”

  “She always wears a veil in public, and she has not left the kingdom since the marriage. These photos were apparently taken inside the Al Arif palace.” Isaiah paused. “The Queen’s features are a biometric match to Dr. Alexis Etherington.”

  Nausea rose in Sam’s throat. “You checked?”

  “I had my man look into it, yes.”

  “You should have come to me first, before involving anyone else.”

  Isaiah’s gaze was intense as he met Sam’s, but there was a slight smile on his lips, in case anyone was watching.

  “Sam,” Isaiah said quietly. “This New Moor apparently has evidence that you hired a hit man to murder Alexis, but you ended up killing your five-year-old twins instead. Evidence, he says, that will hold up in court.”

  Hot fear roiled with nausea through Sam. He loosened his tie.

  Isaiah was watching him intently. “Is this true, Sam—you tried to kill her?”

  He said nothing.

  “Damn it, Samuel, I can’t cover for you, I can’t spin things, if I don’t know the facts to begin with!”

  Sam moistened his lips. “What…what evidence does he have?”

  Isaiah’s keen, slate-blue eyes narrowed sharply. “I guess you’ll find out when I tell his envoy you’re not interested in his proposal. At best, the allegations alone could cost your bid for the party nomination. At worst, you’ll be charged with homicide.”

  Sam sat silent for several beats.

  “Are these so-called New Moor’s people responsible for the jet bomb? Did MagMo kill Tariq Al Arif?”

  “Yes. They’ll be releasing a statement at some point in the near future.” Isaiah leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Consider this, Sam. If you help the New Moor, as proposed in that envelope, the Queen of Al Na’Jar—and your past connection to her—will die with her and her husband. The Moor will take control of the kingdom of Al Na’Jar, and you’ll get unprecedented access to the country’s considerable oil reserves, along with allies in the Middle East. These are campaign promises you can take to the bank.”

  “Why does this New Moor so desperately want Al Na’Jar?”

  “Oil.”

  “That simple?”

  “And that complex.”

  Sam sat silent, listening to the water splashing in fountain, unable to fully digest the fact that the wife he’d tried to get rid of all those years ago was coming back to haunt him now, in the worst way possible.

  “Does King Zakir know who his wife really is?” Sam said, voice flat.

  “Apparently so.”

  “Then why hasn’t he acted, or used this against me?”

  “He’s protecting her anonymity. She’s made a new life, wants nothing to do with her old one, even if it means letting you get away with murder, it seems. Bear in mind, she could face local charges, too—for fraud, obtaining false identification. She’d also potentially have to face you in court over the deaths of your children, which is something she’d probably prefer to avoid at this stage.”

&
nbsp; Rage boiled suddenly into Sam’s veins.

  “This knowledge makes that blind king dangerous! He’s a time bomb waiting to explode in my face—he could come after me years down the road, threaten the presidency, make demands.” Sam dragged his hand over his hair, sweat dampening his body under his business suit.

  “It’s a bloody sword of Damocles.” He spun to face Isaiah. “And this…New Moor…wants me to eliminate Sheik Omair Al Arif first, before the fall convention? In some kind of show of good faith that I’m on board with this proposal?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Christ, Isaiah, how in hell am I supposed to do that?”

  “You have unique access to a deep black ops assassin program at your disposal, Sam, a unit few even know exists—STRIKE. Use it.”

  “You’ve actually thought this through? You…you actually condone this.”

  “There’s an operative they need to retire. An alarm was set off in STRIKE computers when a private forensics agency working on behalf of a private investigator tried to match her DNA profile in some major U.S. databases, which means her security has been compromised. The forensics agency is also in possession of a unique shell casing belonging to a one-of-a-kind prototype military sniper rifle—the kind she used for a hit in Colombia. There’s a partial print on it. That partial print has also been run through key databases.” Isaiah paused, allowing Sam to digest what he was saying.

  “This operative needs to be eliminated, Sam, before the secrecy of STRIKE itself is compromised. Her name is Faith Sinclair. Use her. Let her take the fall for

  killing the Al Arif prince before she’s eliminated in turn.” Isaiah stood and put on his sunglasses.

  “Once she’s dead, your hands will be washed clean.”

  *

  The engine of an old white van parked across the street from the park sputtered to life as the two men got up from the fountain wall and began walking across the grass toward Senator Sam Etherington’s office building.

  “You get anything, Scoob?” the stocky, dreadlocked driver said as he pulled into the traffic.