Cal had an opportunity while they were all confused, though he had to be lightning quick. He bolted farther into the apartment to find the balcony. He would shimmy down the side of the house or even take his chances with a leap down to the grounds. Otherwise, his biopic was about to turn into The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
He heard the king shout after him and a fluster of movement from the front hall. Then, as Cal raced for his life, he heard a dreadful noise, even worse than the explosion somewhere on the property. The seat of his shorts had ripped open.
Chapter Twenty-Six
BACK AT THE navy base, Brendan had followed Ibrahim and boarded a Humvee that a group of rebels had commandeered from the sailors. Their mission now was to rendezvous at the king’s palace with the other foreign insurgents and their local counterparts and storm the estate. They’d left the base on an off-road route since the raised highway from the peninsula to the mainland had been demolished by one of Bassam’s missiles. Across a bumpy, treeless plain, they refound paved streets. Ibrahim had told Brendan they’d have to traverse the city to get to the king’s compound on the outskirts of town.
Inside the military vehicle, Brendan glanced out of the windows from a safe distance in the middle of the backseat. It was now deep in the night, but from what he could see and hear, Abbas Barundi had become a warzone. His shoulders clenched from the sound of rifle fire, traveling to them from places nearby. Hordes of people swarmed police vehicles, overturning them and setting them ablaze. Molotov cocktails burst and blazed at barricaded checkpoints, and the country’s soldiers desperately tried to defend themselves by blasting rounds of bullets into the crowds. Stray rocks and ammunition pelted the Humvee as they rolled through the chaos.
All of this inspired very bleak feelings about finding Cal. Their Humvee wouldn’t stop until they reached the king’s compound, and even if he figured out a way to wrestle his way out the door of the moving vehicle, he would have to swim through rioting mobs with absolutely no idea where to look for his husband. He had no idea what the natives would make of him, a dazed American plunked down in the middle of their bloodthirsty revolt. The police stations they passed by were under siege. Would officers loyal to the king kill their prisoners out of spite?
A choppy radio dispatch fizzed on from the front of the vehicle. Kazi, who was in the passenger’s seat, picked up the receiver and held a conversation while the other guys in the artillery truck hollered about what had to be good news. Brendan looked to Ibrahim for a translation.
“Bassam’s ship made landing in the harbor. They’re loading the missile launcher onto a truck. We’ll need the heavy artillery. The palace will be defended. As soon as they break down the walls, we’ve been ordered to secure the compound.”
Brendan hadn’t known what to expect, though Bassam had made it sound like taking the palace would be easier. He had no interest in attacking the king’s palace. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He just needed to get Cal and get out of this country that had gone berserk.
He leaned over the front seat and spoke to Kazi. “Is that Bassam on the radio? Can I speak to him?” He was desperate to believe the revolutionary leader had some advice on where to find his husband.
Kazi didn’t answer him. The rest of the troop ignored Brendan as well.
Ibrahim told Brendan, “Relax, cowboy. We follow orders until the mission is complete. After the surrender, Bassam will organize teams to investigate the detention centers.”
“When?”
“Could be a couple of days.”
Brendan couldn’t wait that long. He’d frickin’ die.
“Let me talk to Bassam. We had a deal. I did what I was supposed to do, helping secure the navy base. I’ve got to find Cal.”
He could feel the attitude of his companions shifting. Comments flew around in Arabic, and more than one suspicious glare dug into him.
“You did nothing at the navy base,” Ibrahim told him. “Now you want to desert the revolution?”
Brendan said nothing. After the scene at the detention center, the college student clearly had his doubts about him, as had every other guy in the vehicle.
“Watch yourself,” Ibrahim said. “When we get to the palace, you follow the team. If you lag behind or run off, you will be considered an open target.” His hand was fixed on the handle of his rifle.
They swerved through the streets and onto sidewalks to avoid immobilized police cars and throngs of people declaiming the king’s regime. Past the rioting in the city center, they arrived on an open boulevard that led into the suburbs. Brendan still saw signs of anarchy. Storefronts and gas stations had been ransacked by looters. Everywhere, posters of King Al-Moghadam were defaced with graffiti. Some of the king’s billboards had been set ablaze.
A missile scraped through the sky and exploded at a distant point on the horizon.
The SUV erupted with cheers while Brendan gripped his seat. Ibrahim drew his attention to what was up ahead. “The palace. Bassam is targeting the gates.”
Brendan stared through the night. Missiles screamed overhead. Explosions flared and thundered on the horizon and sent sparks into the air. A phantom chorus of “The Star-Spangled Banner” resounded in his head.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there…
While they gained on the compound, that refrain stayed with him like a movie soundtrack, lifting him to some out-of-body place where his frightening reality seemed muted, as if he were watching it instead of living it. The Humvee rumbled to a halt some yards from a smoldering crater that looked like it had once been the walled compound’s main gate. Brendan’s companions filed out of the vehicle with their rifles, and he kept up with them as they crept up on what was left of the gates.
Machine gun fire erupted from soldiers hidden behind the wreckage. Men from the team went down. Brendan dodged and ducked the onslaught of bullets, sidestepping his fallen comrades, trying to stay near Ibrahim and the rest of their party. He still felt disembodied from the physical danger.
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Kazi and some others found targets and blasted the men guarding the compound. Brendan propped his rifle into firing position though he was helplessly confused about where to aim. He couldn’t see any of the men defending the gates, which was merely a ditch between two piles of boulders. There could have been two or two hundred soldiers on the other side.
Another Humvee rolled onto the scene, and a team of rebels scrambled out of the vehicle. The camouflaged freedom fighters took up positions and pelted the murky entrance to the estate with rifle fire. One man tossed a hand grenade into that barrier. The blast brought Brendan down to his knees.
Smoke coughed out of the opening to the compound. Rifle fire from the other side ceased. Kazi cried out a call to attack, and the two teams marauded forward through the smog and into the compound.
Brendan jogged after them. Past the smoking crater, he flinched from a rat-a-tat of gunshots in many directions. The only thing he could discern was some soldiers must have been waiting for them. He got down low and tried to take things in. Guys cried out in agony. Their voices were less familiar, suggesting possibly the compound guards were taking the brunt of the bullets. He glimpsed Ibrahim picking off a guy in a military uniform at close range. Some guy in civilian attire had come onto the scene with a handgun. Past the murky zone of combat, lights from an estate house glowed in the distance. The vast grounds were veiled in darkness.
Brendan awakened from his daze of shock and seized on his slim chance to escape the fray. He tore into an empty field, away from the rifle fire, praying by his speed and by some higher power he would make it out unseen. His revolutionary teammates would shoot him for deserting. Anyone guarding the palace would shoot him too. His legs carried him ever farther from the hail of bullets, though he could hardly be sure he was headed to
safety. The way was shadowed, but the only escape from his team was toward the lighted house.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
CAL HOP STEPPED out to the balcony with one hand trying to hold together the rip in the seat of his shorts, while the guards clopped through the suite, searching for him, not far behind. He hustled to the edge of the balcony.
A glance at the grounds revealed a befuddling scene. House guards burst out from the front of the estate. They piled into black sedans parked around the circular driveway and tore off down the road toward the gates. Beyond the man-made lake, Cal glimpsed the glow of flames. None of this made sense to him at the time. He just needed to get away from Abdullah’s guards before they roughed him up and bound him for whatever kinky torture Abdullah had in mind.
It was a good fifteen-foot drop to the lawn below outside the cricket field. He had a better chance of not breaking any bones if he climbed over the railing and hung off the balcony floor for his descent. Throwing one leg over, he heard and felt the split in the seat of his shorts tear wider. A guard swept open the curtain to the balcony door, and his gaze found Cal.
Cal pulled his other leg over the railing. He looked down at the steep drop below him, whimpered, and took the plunge.
Anticipating crushing pain, he hit the ground on stiffened legs, lost his balance, and tucked into a somersaulting tumble with his ass flying free in the night air.
The tumble knocked the breath out of him, but as he gathered himself on all fours, he realized his limbs were all intact. Besides a little brush burn on his knees and elbows, it really hadn’t been that bad. Maybe he had some athletic ability after all. Not that Cal cared to try it again.
The guard shouted at him from above. Cal got up and booked onto the cricket field. The palace had to be teeming with men from the king’s security team who would come after him. Though they all seemed to be drawn to that fiery disturbance by the gates. Cal prayed that was the case and he could disappear into the night-shrouded grounds.
He bolted across the field and onward to a rolling lawn, now assured the seat of his shorts was a gaping hole, ripped open even wider as he ran. When he found the perimeter of the estate, he’d climb the wall and beg someone to lend him a phone. Though he didn’t speak Arabic, and he had to look ridiculously sketchy, dressed up in a boy’s cricket outfit with his butt hanging out the back. Cal raced on, thinking: one step at a time. At least the cleats had come in handy. They really gave good traction on the lawn, which was wet with evening dew. He envisioned himself as a star soccer player, charging to the goal line.
Gunfire erupted in the distance. Cal seized up and nearly wiped out. It was nowhere near him, but what the heck was going on? A siege on the palace? That danger fueled him forward, and Cal remembered the young man, Hakim, who he had met in the courthouse waiting pen.
We are all doomed. Until the revolution comes.
Was “the revolution” underway? It sure sounded like it. In the distance, he heard heavy vehicles rounding the estate, rowdy voices, and the hail of machine gun fire. What would he find when he made it out of the palace compound and into the city streets?
Cal had ventured onto a shadowy golf course, where beneath the glow of a full moon he could make out the silhouettes of putting greens, patches of trees, and sand traps. His legs felt like they could carry him all the way back to Hydra, but his lungs weren’t doing as well keeping up. He spotted a gazebo—some rest stop on the course. It was dark, secluded, a decent place to hole up for a moment while he gathered his breath and his thoughts. Cal stumbled into the enclosure, sucking in air, trying to be quiet about it. Good god, he’d wound up in a mess even worse than waking up in a tugboat chartered by Romanian mobsters.
BRENDAN CHARGED THROUGH the night, achieving a greater distance from the melee back at the compound gates. Cars sped down the road from the estate house, and he veered away from their headlights.
Mostly, the palace grounds were a sightless void. A narrow lake stretched along the road to a lighted house that looked like a government monument. The king’s palace. Decorative lampposts lined the driveway. He could stay out of detection in the shadowy acres of the lawn, but how long until battalions of revolutionaries made their way into the estate, firing at any target, and locking down the compound? If he didn’t find a way out, or at least a fail-safe hiding place, he was dead meat.
Military vehicles rumbled from the streets surrounding the walled estate. His only option was to venture closer to the house where it was quieter and farther away from the inevitable approach of Bassam’s bloodthirsty militia.
He let his pace drag, wiping his face with his shirtsleeve, trying to sort out a route. Sweat rolled down his forehead, stinging his eyes, and his vision throbbed in and out while his lungs clenched for air. He had to skirt the main house, which was lit up by every outside fixture and every window of its front facade and its symmetrical wings. He spotted a copse of trees to one side and beyond that, what looked like steps down to a dimly lit topiary garden. With his rifle tucked under one arm, Brendan staggered in that direction.
Drawing nearer to the house, he heard men shouting to one another and sharp bursts of communication from radio headsets. Everyone was in a panic, and likely, the king would have bodyguards patrolling the grounds. He skulked his way into a garden with pebbled trails, which made some regrettable noise as he stepped tenderly through. Lighted fountains in the grand topiary also presented obstacles. It was a maze garden fit for a seventeenth-century French king. Brendan crept along a shadowed aisle with an eye on the side of the garden nearest the house.
From some balcony of the estate, he heard a noise, and then bullets from a handgun blasted and sniped in his direction. Brendan ducked behind some hedges, trying to control his frightened breaths. He heard hollering and curses from the house. Naturally, in his fatigues, someone had probably thought he was one of the insurgents staking out the grounds. When it sounded like the shooter had gone back inside, he didn’t wait around to confirm it. He scurried through the gardens toward a clearing behind the house.
Brendan ran on to a vast lawn with only the cover of night. He imagined an alarm blaring on and a team of Rottweilers chasing after him, though mercifully none of that happened. The chaos of Bassam’s insurgency was working to his advantage. Every man in the security force of the estate had to be hunkering down to defend the main house and protect the king. Brendan glanced at some commotion from a back bay to the house. People loaded into a car and drove across the grounds to a heliport. Doors creaked open and slammed shut as lights from a chopper blinked on, and its blades churned to life.
It looked like the king was making his escape. The helicopter lifted from the grounds and whirred off in the night. None too soon. From some distance behind Brendan, on the front side of the house, he heard the roar of an approaching mob. He hoofed it away from that. Did he stand a chance finding his way out of the estate and taking harbor somewhere that hopefully had a phone?
Blindly guessing on a direction for his flight, he arrived on a golf course. How fucking extensive was the palace estate? He must have run two miles already. It felt like he could be lost in the place until dawn.
A full moon glowed overhead. Brendan hadn’t noticed that before. It made sense for a night when the world had gone insane, sucking him into the middle of a revolution. A grassy fairway glinted in the silvery light, and up a hill, he saw a teeing ground and a secluded gazebo. The peaceful rest stop called to him. He needed to rest his legs and pull himself together to finish off the disappearing act of a lifetime. The darkened hideaway was a good distance from the shouting and gunfire exchange at the main house.
He trudged toward the gazebo and halted at the sound of a faint noise. Was it possible someone was in there? It was too dark to see. It could have been his imagination, or droppings from a nearby tree when the wind passed through. On the other hand, someone from the estate might have smuggled into the hiding place to escape from the encroaching militia.
Brendan
raised his rifle, slid open the bolt, and warily drew closer. Truly, he didn’t want to hurt anyone, but whoever was in the gazebo was not likely to be friendly, and his only advantage was intimidation, just to flush the stranger out. His firing hand quivered. What if the stranger was also armed? He had only used his rifle once, back at the navy base, spraying bullets at the stationary window of the detention center, at close range.
He edged up to about a yard’s length from the entrance to the enclosure. Moonlight traced a few steps inside, but the interior of the gazebo was almost entirely a hollow of shadow. He definitely heard a rustle and a gasp. The rifle trembled in his hands. He couldn’t see a target. The stranger could rush out, catch him off guard, and knock the rifle right out of his hands. Brendan thought of calling out a warning. His throat was bone dry. Thinking he would just test the resistance on the trigger spring, his finger set it off, and the rifle discharged a round of bullets, throwing him back on his heels, riveting the roof of the gazebo.
A voice said, “I surrender. No need for excessive force. I’m an American. With no allegiance to the king. Believe me. I just broke out of the palace to get away from him. He wanted to hold me hostage to reenact some kinky scene from Nicholas Nickleby. ”
A shadowed figure stood up in the gazebo, hands raised in the air.
“I’ve always believed in diplomatic solutions first, but in this situation, I’m totally nonjudgmental. I’ll even help out, if you need me. KP duty? Keeping up morale in the medic’s tent? I’m basically, totally unskilled, but I was a Cub Scout for a summer. I came pretty close to earning my Bobcat badge.”
Brendan’s heart hovered. Could it possibly be? He threw down his rifle and staggered toward his husband.
“Cal?”
“Brendan?”
Brendan scooped Cal up in his arms, and they clung to one another, both hiccupping with tears. Brendan swooned with waves of joy and waves of disbelief. It could not be a mirage. He could feel Cal’s rapid heartbeat against his own, breathe in his familiar smell, and hear his tearful breaths. No matter how impossible it was that they’d ended up in the same gazebo, on the vast estate, in a foreign country that was under siege. And Brendan had almost killed him. He lightly broke their embrace to look at Cal.
Irresistible Page 23