by Ann Jacobs
Perhaps he had brought her the greatest pleasure of her life. And he might already have given her the son or daughter she believed would ease her awful loneliness. For that if for no other reason, Jamil did not deserve to suffer Dubaq's final vengeance.
Slowly, as though compelled by a force stronger than her own will, Leila picked up a jug of water and made her way across the desert sand.
Jamil might die, but she would not be a party to his death.
She could do no less than warn him of his intended fate. No more than offer to free him this night not so he could pleasure her but so he might make a desperate attempt at escape.
What Dubaq would surely do to her in retaliation for her part in costing him his anticipated sport did not cross Leila's mind until she overheard him gloating over his last prisoners' impending death when she passed by his and Mernoosh's bedroom as soon as darkness fell.
A sudden chill came over her. By saving her lover, she might be condemning herself to the fate from which she planned to help him escape.
Chapter Seven
Leila shrugged off her fear. Surely Dubaq would not harm his wife's sister-by-marriage. It was not as though he hadn't granted her permission to loosen Jamil's chains, and he could not have been so stupid as not to have known the prisoner could physically overpower her if he so chose.
Yet deep inside she knew being the widow of Mernoosh's younger brother would not shield her from Dubaq's wrath.
She could not let that matter.
"You will wait outside," she told the beady-eyed soldier she found guarding the bunker. "I wish no prying eyes upon me this night."
Where was Maktoum? she wondered, her gaze on the soldier's worn boots as he ascended the steps. Why did Dubaq have one of his own troop guarding the prisoners tonight?
Nerves. It was only her nerves that had her on edge. Jamil was chained securely to his cot, as was the American. There was nothing different, no change in the routine that should rouse her alarm.
Quickly Leila worked the key into the locks that secured Jamil's wrists and ankles. She tried not to dwell on the fact that she would never look upon his magnificent body again. "Dubaq plans to kill you tomorrow before we leave. I cannot allow him to do so, because you have done nothing to deserve death. Go, escape now while you can. I sent the guard away, but he will be close by. Thank you for giving me pleasure." She kissed him quickly, a gesture of farewell. "Allah be with you."
Jamil slid his hand beneath her veil and caressed her cheek through the thin silk of her hijab. "Thank you, houri, but I do not go alone. Give me the key so I may free the American."
"I cannot. Dubaq will-"
"Do not make me take it from you." He held out his hand toward the pocket where she had dropped the large, heavy key.
The look on Leila's face when she laid the key in Jamil's hand bespoke pure terror. Terror he translated at once to mean fear not of him but of the retribution Dubaq was certain to take on her once he found his prisoners gone.
But his path was clear. Escape or die.
While he worked to free Shearer from his chains, Leila trembled at his side. A tear slid down her cheek and disappeared into the fabric of her scarf.
Guilt and some unfamiliar, more tender emotion assailed Jamil. "I cannot leave you to face Dubaq alone. You will come with us."
"What would become of me? I have no family, no friends in your country."
"I will take care of you."
She wiped away another tear, then looked boldly into his eyes. "I care for myself. I need no one to pity me."
"It would not be pity, but gratitude." Again Jamil was struck with that novel emotion he wasn't ready to define.
"No. Go now. I will stay and take my chances."
If she did, she would die. And Jamil wanted very much for her to live. If they abducted her…
"You will come with us if I have to knock you unconscious and carry you. Then, if we are caught, I will swear with my dying breath that we overpowered and abducted you. I cannot bear to have your torture or death at Dubaq's hands on my conscience."
Seeing that the American had finished dressing in the traditional Arab garb they wore to work outside in the desert sun, Jamil shoved Leila at him. "Hold her while I put on my robes. Do not let her go."
Leila struggled, but Shearer held her fast.
"I will scream. You will be caught and executed this night rather than on the morrow. Go, leave me in peace," she begged them.
Shearer shoved a rag into her mouth before she could follow through with her threat and slung her over his shoulder, steadying her with one hand.
"We go now. I will silence the guard." Jamil would not entrust that task to Shearer, though the sight of the American's splayed hand over Leila's nicely rounded ass evoked surprisingly possessive emotions in him.
He nearly changed his mind. But Americans were too squeamish. They would drop lethal bombs from airplanes without giving the results a second thought, but most caviled at the idea of killing an enemy up close. He imagined Brian would be even more finicky about eye-to-eye killing than most of his countrymen.
Carefully Jamil climbed the cement stairs and stepped outside. The pungent smell of a lit Turkish cigarette and a small orange glow in the darkness led his gaze to the guard. Reflected moonlight drew his eye to the Kalashnikov slung casually over the soldier's shoulder.
Good. They had not so far raised the man's suspicion. Moving silently in the shadows, Jamil approached him from behind. Less than a foot away now, he closed in, clamping his left hand over the man's open mouth while ramming the other hand upward into his nose.
Bone crunched, an eerie sound in the silence. The guard crumpled. Not daring to leave him without being certain that he could not call for help, Jamil knelt beside the body and checked for a pulse.
There was none. With his bare hands, Jamil had killed another human being. He allowed himself a moment's regret while stripping the man's rifle off his back and slinging it over his own shoulder. A quick check of the dead soldier's pockets yielded a handful of ammunition and a small but lethal looking dagger.
When he turned away, the first face he saw was Leila's. The terror he saw mirrored in her eyes made him want to comfort her, but there was no time. They had a long way to travel before morning. And a rendezvous to keep with the old man, Zayed.
Motioning for Shearer to follow with his burden, Jamil headed for the railroad tracks that would lead them to the main road between Al Basrah and Al Jahrah. The road they would follow to go home.
* * * * *
She had left her sister, the only family she had. All Leila saw of the outpost now was lights in the distance that were quickly dimming as they put distance between it and themselves with every weary step. Having been set down on her feet and ordered to keep up once they began moving along the path of the railroad tracks, she could have made a run for freedom if she'd chosen to.
Leila was confident Jamil would not kill her. After all, he had insisted she come with them to save her from Dubaq's wrath.
And the American was occupied with steadying Zayed, the frail old Marsh Arab who apparently wanted to die in freedom enough to risk this perilous journey.
Once again, she stared back at the fading lights of the compound. Had they suddenly brightened? Or was her imagination playing tricks on her?
Eyes straining in the darkness, she stared into the night. If anything, the glow was dimmer now. But what if…?
Someone might have stumbled onto the dead soldier already. If not, he and the missing prisoners would be noticed and the alarm would be raised once morning came. Looking back once more and noticing sand swirling over the path they'd traveled and obscuring their footprints, Leila realized their trail would be difficult for Dubaq to follow.
Difficult but not impossible. He would certainly guess Jamil had headed for the Kuwaiti border. Probably by the most direct route. Recalling the depths of her brother-in-law's rage when crossed, Leila was gripped with icy fear despite the warmth
of the night.
Fear not so much for herself as for Jamil. And for the gnarled old Ma'dan who wanted freedom so desperately that he risked making this treacherous journey to escape the Marshes-a difficult undertaking for all of them, but likely impossible for him.
His labored breathing punctuated the stillness of the night.
Leila could not help but feel Zayed's pain. During his lifetime, he must have seen much sorrow. Not one loss but many, as his tribesmen had been gassed and many of the survivors dispersed. Those as stubborn as he, who had stayed and endured the tribulations, had seen their way of life erode along with the land after Saddam had ordered the Marshes drained.
When Jamil paused long enough to trade places with the American, Leila spied a lonely flower, risen out of the stark sand. A harbinger of spring. Of hope.
She dared not aspire to more than prosperity and a lonely life far from hurtful memories-yet she did. She wanted to be whole. To love and to be loved.
And she wanted the chance to know the man she'd seduced, to admire the courage and decency he'd demonstrated from the moment she set him free.
Hearing Jamil's deep, melodious voice shook her back to their most pressing issue: staying alive long enough to realize those hopes and dreams.
"Do you need a moment's rest?" he asked Zayed, who leaned heavily onto his gnarled cane when the American stepped aside so Jamil might spell him with his burden.
"No. I am slowing you enough already," the old man said, his voice no more than a raspy wheeze. "Do not concern yourself with me. When I die, my wives and sons will greet me in Paradise. And I will die happy, knowing I die free."
The American said something then in rapid English Leila could not quite make out. She did, however, follow his hand gestures toward the west, where headlights illuminated a pair of ancient trucks headed in the direction from which they had come, on what appeared to be a paved but rutted road.
"We have come farther than I'd thought," Jamil said, lengthening his stride and leading them away from the road into the shadows of a large sand dune. "Insha'Allah, the drivers will not have spotted us. But we must remain well away from the road."
In the moonlight, Leila saw concern in his eyes. But not fear.
After having endured years of imprisonment and torture at Dubaq's hand, he would find precious little worthy of arousing his dread. The thought of Jamil naked and chained to the dank walls like an animal awaiting mutilation and death made her shudder, even now that his chains were gone and his prison left behind in the whirling sand.
The old man's ragged breathing again pierced the silence of the desert. In the eastern sky Leila glimpsed a bit of color lightening the blanket of darkness. Day would be dawning soon, bringing with it new risks, for surely Dubaq would pursue them.
* * * * *
An oasis. Or was it a mirage?
The midday sun beat down on the weary travelers as they made their way step by step toward the border-and freedom.
Jamil pressed on, certain Dubaq and his soldiers would not be far behind. The Kalashnikov that weighed down his left shoulder would provide little protection against a pack of enraged, heavily armed fiends.
He judged they had about fifteen kilometers yet to travel before reaching Kuwait and safety. He could make it. So could Brian. But Jamil wasn't certain Leila could keep up the pace they must maintain to rendezvous with Dahoud tonight at the Kuwaiti border, and he knew the ancient Marsh Arab could not.
Though the old man plodded along, leaning on his cane and either Jamil or Brian's shoulder, Jamil saw that his strength was nearly spent. For Zayed's sake, they must stop and rest.
Perhaps they could risk an hour's respite, find fresh water to replenish their depleted supply. He weighed the danger of discovery and ambush against the risk of forging ahead and almost certainly causing the old man's death.
"We will rest there before moving on," he said, veering toward a cluster of date palms flanked by a patch of low, pale green plant growth that stood out against the desert sand.
As they approached the oasis, Jamil heard what sounded like gunshots crackling in the distance.
Chapter Eight
Hair prickled on the back of Bear's neck at the muffled sound of distant gunfire. It came not from the southwest, where his country's army was playing war games with the Americans, but from across the border somewhere in that vast sea of sand and desolation.
"Someone's shooting. That didn't come from the direction of our armies' war games," Jake said, clutching the high-powered Winchester hunting rifle he'd chosen in preference to any of the automatic combat weapons Bear had offered before they had left Mina Su'ud.
"I know." Sound traveled long distances over the barren desert. The shots could have been fired from as far as twenty kilos away, depending upon what kind of weapon was being fired. Fear for his cousin made Bear's stomach churn.
"Those shots could mean Jamil's in trouble," he told the others, forcing himself to remain calm.
"Let's go." Jake jerked on his camel's halter, urging the beast to its knees and clambering awkwardly into the saddle. "I've got a feeling we'd better hurry. Go, you godforsaken beast." He kicked the animal's sides, sending it loping off through the hole they'd cut in the barbed wire fence, into Iraq.
His white robe and ghutra flapping in the wind, Jake looked as much the desert warrior as Bear and his men, but Bear knew if Jake were captured, the Iraqis would know within moments of listening to his halting Arabic that he was a foreigner. It would take them little more effort to guess he was an American-and Bear doubted that would bode well for his brother-in-law's continued well-being.
Not that he or his men would fare much better.
Insha'Allah, they would all return unscathed from this unauthorized journey into enemy country. "Stay long enough to repair the breach in the fence," he ordered the two oilfield workers. "Then follow us." Bear lumbered across the border on his camel, keeping an eye on Jake and visually scanning the distant horizon for signs of trouble.
"Careful," he said when he caught up with his wife's impulsive brother. "This isn't Texas, my friend. Here, men shoot first and ask questions later if ever. Shana would kill me if I let anything happen to her baby brother."
"Likewise. If I let anything happen to her husband, I'd be dead meat. You take care, too. What's that?" Jake asked, gesturing toward a bird in the distance, diving straight down toward the ground.
"A kestrel. Jamil and I used to hunt with them when we were boys." Bear watched the graceful falcon swoop down, Bear assumed to pluck an unsuspecting rodent from its hiding place among some lacy desert plants.
Once, twice, three times the kestrel soared and dived.
"I've never seen one behave that way before, my sheikh," one of the men who had just caught up with them commented in Arabic when the bird made another dive, this time practically into their path. It held a writhing serpent in its beak.
Jake shook his head. "It's almost like he's trying to tell us something."
More shots rang out.
Silence followed.
Then another crack in the air. And what sounded like a woman's anguished shriek.
Ordinarily Bear didn't believe in omens. But watching the graceful raptor gave him a sense of urgency.
Those shots. The kestrel. That otherworldly shriek that sounded for all the world like a woman in the throes of grief.
And the sixth sense that told him his cousin's life was in dire peril. "The kestrel nests in the trees of the oases. Let us hurry."
By Bear's reckoning, the oasis Maktoum had mentioned yesterday lay perhaps five kilos due north, perilously close to the main highway. Insha'Allah, they would arrive in time, he thought as shots rang out again.
* * * * *
Leila hunkered down chin-high among tall bullrushes in the brackish water of the oasis pool where Jamil had shoved her almost as soon as the shooting had begun, as though he genuinely wanted to protect her from harm. The old man, Zayed, lay quietly at the pond's edge, h
is frail body partially concealed by the desert shrubs that abounded this time of year.
A kestrel dived, then soared high in a cloudless sky. The rushes shifted in the arid breeze, brushing her exposed cheek and reminding her of the scars no longer hidden by the scarf and veil she'd sacrificed to bandage the wound Dubaq's first barrage of bullets had put in the old Marsh Arab's shoulder.
Why was it so silent?
As though she had willed an end to the lull, shots rang out again. Another bullet hit the water, skimming across its surface like a lethal serpent before losing momentum and slithering into the rushes near the pond's edge.
Two men with one decent weapon now, against four fully armed soldiers. Poor odds, yet Leila held out hope that Jamil and the American would prevail. No doubt they would fight to the death to avoid the fate her brother-by-marriage had in mind for them all if they fell back into his hands.
She had witnessed the first exchange of fire and seen the methodical manner in which Jamil had aimed his weapon, dropping two approaching soldiers. The remaining three had scurried for the safety of the army truck from which Dubaq was screaming insults at them for their cowardice.
Zayed had bravely stood his ground, as well, until he'd lost too much blood from where a bullet had nicked his shoulder. The American had carried him here, asking for her scarf and veil for makeshift bandages. Now the old man lay quietly, and the American had gone back into the line of fire, brandishing Zayed's ancient weapon that was no match for the Iraqi army-issued rifles.
Leila heard more shots. Then that deafening silence that made her blood run cold.
Who was dead, and who still lived?
She dared not move, lest a soldier discover her and shoot.
But she needed to know. Had Dubaq slaughtered her lover?
Her yoni clenched when she thought of Jamil as she had seen him these past hours, proud, strong, and free from the chains that had confined his body but not his will. A warrior prince, no longer a prisoner.