Call Me Crazy (Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker)

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  When she climbed an exceptionally steep sand dune, the other three fell behind. She looked back below her. Yasmin’s eyes were red-rimmed orbs in her thin, sensitive face. Sam was breathing hard. Jack had unknotted his bandana from his head, pulled the sand goggles over his eyes, and masked the rest of his face.

  “You climb like a mountain goat,” he rasped, drawing even with her again.

  She had to smile, and the action stretched her dry lips painfully. “You’d be better off with that bandana back on your head. The sun will boil your brain.”

  Pushing the sand goggles back, he grinned wickedly. “No chance of that. It boiled that first night with you.”

  That crooked grin had the power to drop her, the power to make her melt, to make her float free of her body when riding the waves of passion with him. It found her weaknesses and, instead of playing on them, shored them up. That put him way ahead of her other lovers.

  “Now I wish I hadn’t thrown away my abaya,” Yasmin panted, joining them.

  Jack took one look at her reddened eyes and passed her his goggles. “You need these more than I.”

  “A break,” Janet said. “And water. Just a little!”

  Immediately, her other two companions collapsed on the ground, only to spring upright like jack-in-the-boxes. “Holy smokes,” Sam said, “that’s grill-ass hot!

  She stifled her laughter. The energy would have cost her too much.

  Though they heeded her warning, quenching thirst with only sips from their plastic bottles, she noted that the plastic bottles were now less than a third full.

  Precious sand was wasting through the hour glass. It was back to the trek. Once more, one step in front of the other. Climbing up one wave of sand and plowing down it’s backside. A slight wind harboring even more sand stung her face. She figured that she must have walked unconsciously for, at least, an hour. Her mouth was dry as the sand. She turned back to signal another rest, but a haggard Sam, dragging his zombie-like gaze from the sand before him upward to the horizon, mumbled, for the second time that day, “We’ve got visitors.”

  She whirled in the direction he was looking. Cresting a sand dune about a mile away was a host of . . . oh, no!

  Camel riders.

  Galloping fast.

  Toward them.

  With deafening ululations.

  Swords and jambiyas flashing ferociously in the merciless sunlight.

  “I guess this is not the cavalry coming to rescue us?” Jack muttered.

  Oh, God, let this be a hallucination.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Craig kept the Gator running just to the left of the above-ground pipeline. Occasionally in areas where the wind had blasted away so much of the sand, he could actually drive under the pipeline. Sometimes, the wind-blown sand had buried the pipeline out of sight completely. It branched off the main one stretching east and west, paralleling the ancient spice trade route of biblical times.

  Not that he believed in the Bible. To even entertain the idea of a spiritual reality was as ludicrous as believing in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. Only the fearful believed in such illogicalities. If there was, indeed, such a reality beyond the absolute one of the five senses, then he might as well turn in his solider of fortune badge and claim his pension.

  But what he had in mind was far larger than even Bill Gates’s pension.

  Projecting a dozen or so feet above the sand, the flare was easy to spot. The temperature had to be 130º. Closer to the flare, the temperature had to be blistering. Waves of visible, shimmering heat radiated in a wide circumference around the flare. The heat pouring through the enclosed cab’s vinyl windshield syphoned whatever moisture was left in his eyes and seared his nasal passages and lungs. He reduced his breathing to shallow sips. This was what hotter than hell meant.

  The branched-off pipeline ended there, at the flare . . . but that was not his destination. North toward Mecca. The Be All and End All.

  Eyes narrowed against both the flare and the sun’s glare off the windshield, he zeroed in on what appeared to be a small cluster of red rocks jutted above the rolling sand dunes about seven miles due north, just as the map indicated.

  He gave the flare a wide birth and gunned the Gator toward his destination. Closer on, the outcropping took on the shape of a cruise ship navigating the waves of the sand. Squinting, he could just barely make out a vertical slit in the enormous rocky ridge. The narrow separation created two rust-colored, jutting walls that, if the directions were correct, embraced the entrance to a canyon.

  Cresting ever higher sand dunes, the Gator struggled to gain ten miles per hour. As the 4x4 drew nearer the helm of the enormous ship-shaped ridge, the dunes leveled out to a flat salt-like desert. He began to survey the area for tracks – vehicle, animal, or man-made. None. However, the droopy-eyed Tariq al-Madh, in anticipation of being one step ahead of him, could have arrived the night before – and with back-up. In which case, the shamal, a sand-carrying wind, would have swept clean any track evidence. So, where was al-Madh’s transportation? Tucked back in some small off-shoot canyon, most likely.

  He halted the Gator in the life-saving shade of the rearing red rock. Nomads considered the area to be inhabited by jinns and judiciously kept a far distance from the place. Reaching behind, he retrieved his AK-47 and Salam Farouk’s M-16. He stepped just inside the narrow entrance of the towering stone walls and stopped. His lids narrowed, his keen, pale blue eyes, hunter’s eyes, scanned the widened, elliptical area of the gorge.

  House-high boulders littered the ground. Beyond, the boulders degenerated into rocky rubble. Inside the canyon, the ground was a mixture of earth and sand. More solid ground, where tracks wouldn’t give away so quickly.

  Cradling the AK-47, the M-16 slung over his shoulder, he kept to the canyon’s shadowy perimeters, blending with the walls. All the while his gaze swept back and forth. He was looking for anything out of the ordinary. Human litter, footprints, tire tracks, displaced stones. Next, he listened. Intensely. All senses diverted to the auditory. An eerie quiet reigned after the wind’s constant whining outside the gorge’s walls.

  Once past the field of boulders and rubble, he paused and reconnoitered the area. Sensing safety for the moment, he continued deeper and deeper into the winding canyon. Slowly. Step by step. This caution was costing him precious time. He had already lost too much time to his dalliance with Salam’s wives. He had thought to pleasure himself with only one and had experienced the delight of a second. Most men only dreamed of having two women service the body simultaneously. Yes, being a soldier of fortune was proving most fortunate. But not so for the now two handmaidens whose time here on earth had expired.

  And there was the boy, Amyn, an orphan now.

  The thought troubled him. He never thought of himself as an assassin; only as a warrior that governments of the world throw away when they no longer fit their purpose. On the outskirts of his mind, he was aware his humanness seemed to be deteriorating. Replaced by the strange existence of something more mechanical. And that counted as a huge advantage in his line of work.

  A couple of miles farther in he nearly stumbled upon them . . . tracks that also kept to the canyon’s outskirts. Flattening, those type of prints were called. Found in hard, dry, sandy conditions where there was zero moisture to hold a definite imprint, they exhibited a lighter color. Hunkering, he identified one, no, two separate sets. Not that he expected many more. The Yemeni leader of al Qaeda would feel the fewer with knowledge of the location of the legendary Ark of the Covenant, the better. If Craig didn’t kill the look out, Tariq al-Madh would later.

  He shifted his gaze beyond. Searching minutely every crevice in the canyon walls. Farther back, he made out something verdant just over head-high. Trees perhaps? If so, that would signal the springs indicated on the map.

  And, if his luck held, then a hundred or so yards further back would be the seventh pillar!

  His ears twitched . . . he heard something. S
omething not in keeping with the surroundings. Something that created a slight echo. The pulling up of a zipper? He froze. His gaze began a point-by-point assessment of the area ahead. Nearly three minutes passed. Then he spotted the camouflage-give-away on a ledge about a third the way up the rust-colored canyon wall. If only, he had his silencer. He sighed.

  Another time consuming, back-breaking job.

  * * * * *

  In a goat-hair tent spread with carpets, three of the four sat cross-legged on soft sheepskin rugs, as signaled by their captors, and pondered their fate. They waited endlessly edgy minute after minute. The tent’s multi-colored awning stretched beyond the entrance, opening to a Bedouin camp of tents. Beneath the awning, at either side of the tent’s open flats, an armed guard assured the Bedouins’ guests would not depart. More than an hour had passed since their capture. No harm had been done to them, but the sheikh had yet to make an appearance.

  Yasmin noted that at the moment Sam’s attention was directed toward the tent’s accoutrements – the metal brazier, large sable cushions serving as mattresses, a low inlaid brass table. And, of course, the curtained-off back room.

  Jack lay back on one of the cushions, hands clasped behind his head as if in a state of unconcerned relaxation and prepared to take a nap.

  Janet, who had been standing to one side of the doorway’s flaps, observing the comings and goings of the hundred or so Bedouins, returned to seat herself on one of the many pillows flung across the soft rugs. Even seated, she did not appear to relax. Biting her thumb nail, she swept her gaze relentlessly back and forth along the tent’s poles, its stakes, its ropes, and its sand-ladened edges. Yasmin suspected that this incredible Hopi woman was calling forth arcane resources of energy, some vital power, that would hold all of them together long enough to end this fiasco.

  “Might I hope that our hosts are members of your tribe?” Jack murmured to Yasmin. “The Yamani?” Above the scowling droop of his sand-coated mustache, his eyes glowed liked kiln-fired emeralds.

  She was aware that well-informed outsiders might be able to identify a tribe by checking out details – the way a head scarf was tied, the embroidery on the sleeves of a woman’s abaya, the make of a man’s jambiya scabbard. For members of a tribe, even if it was ten-thousand strong, recognition was instantaneous. Something in the DNA. She shook her head. “I am afraid not.”

  An Arab servant woman enveloped in a black shroud slipped through curtains leading to an inner room. She bore a tray with cups and a brass pot, along with a small saucer of pyramided dates. Yasmin detected the fresh aroma of cardamom-spiced coffee, and nostalgia from her childhood smote her. She summoned resistance from some unknown inner depths . . . but did she truly enjoy the role of a stand-alone, independent, progressive female?

  And then she reminded herself of the castration she had narrowly escaped.

  Sam eyed the refreshments with delight. “A sign of hospitality!”

  “Unless they’re fattening the goose before the kill,” Jack grumbled.

  Only then did Janet speak. “Yasmin, ask her when their leader is expected.”

  She translated the question in a spate of Arabic and winced with the servant woman’s reply. “Sheikh al Araki will not return for two or three days,” she relayed to Janet.

  Yasmin was concerned as to just how much power this sheikh wielded. Some, as head of a few families, drove mangy camels and sore-covered donkeys from camp to camp. Others led hundreds of thousands of devoted tribal members who worshipped the sheikh as only slightly below the Prophet Mohammed.

  “What are our chances of leaving sooner?” Jack asked.

  “About the same as our chances of leaving alive,” she said. “It depends on how close the tribe’s ties are to al Qaeda.”

  Apprehensive thoughts kept them all silent. From outside came the bleat of sheep, a sheepherder’s pipe, the cough of camels and the rapid-fire conversations of the Bedouins. Jack reached to his side and squeezed Janet’s small hand.

  How wonderful it would be, Yasmin thought, to know someone had her back. Someone so strong, so vigorous, so intensely alive as Jack Ripley. She leaned toward the tray the woman had left on the inlaid table and poured the coffee, passing a cup to each of the three. “I would imagine we have all been in risky situations before this . . . expedition.” She glanced at Sam’s frivolous Mickey Mouse watch as she handed him a cup. “Well, perhaps not you.”

  His perfect thick, black brows did the hip-hop. “No, this is my first risk at a skirmish . . . and I hope that is all it is.”

  Janet sipped her coffee, then said, “I propose we risk leaving sooner than later.”

  All heads swiveled toward her.

  “Risk is one thing – suicide is another,” Sam said.

  Jack stroked his mustache, then shook his head. “No guns. No food or water. No truck. How far do you think we’d get?”

  The fatalist in Yasmin prompted her to speak up. “Bedouins are a superstitious people. Our tribes live in an unforgiving environment and so view the smallest of trespasses as unforgivable. If these Bedouins catch up with us . . . well, staked out on the desert while my skin is being peeled away with fire-hot pincers and I am screaming my lungs out is not the way I would want to make my transition.”

  As though pondering this information, Janet took another sip from her cup, swallowed, then said, “We’ve got to stop Nuke.”

  “Do you have a death wish?!” Sam asked.

  “She’s right,” Jack said. “We’ve got to stop him. It’s the threat of death now – or the assurance of it if Nuke has his way. An inevitable death not just for us but for millions of people. Most likely people of the Free World.”

  Yasmin looked at Janet. The word failure was not in the woman’s vocabulary. Yasmin so envied the self assured, fearless woman . . . and envied the high wattage desire she triggered in the magnificent specimen of manhood, Jack Ripley. Oh, Sampson al Addin was blindingly handsome but only escaped effeminacy due to his firm chin. And she was sure Sam, Quicksilver personified, was patently aware of his good looks. “You are proposing we just walk out?”

  Janet set aside her cup and removed her sunglasses. Beneath her billed cap, her eyes radiated like two baked coals. “Yasmin, you said your people are superstitious? So are mine. Superstition is something I can deal with.”

  “We’re not talking about the rudiments of culture here,” Sam pointed out. “We’re talking about violent death. Our own.”

  Yasmin restrained a sigh. Such a coward. Or wuss as the Americans would say.

  Janet rose fluidly to her feet and held out her hand. “Yasmin, give me Jack’s sand goggles.”

  Jack directed at her a puzzled look but Yasmin readily complied, tugging them off her neck to pass over to her.

  “Sam, your Mickey Mouse ears.”

  “What?” His hand clutched his back pocket as if reluctant to relinquish up his prize.

  Janet was already adjusting the goggles over her eyes. “Call me crazy, but I’m going out to charm some snakes.” She slid her billed cap and sunglasses in her jeans back pockets and jammed on the Mickey Mouse ears. “When the camp goes absolutely silent, Yasmin, you come out to negotiate for me.”

  All three stared at the pixy-size, hairless woman attired in Mickey Mouse ears and goggles. She looked like an extra from a 1950’s sci-fi movie. She stepped out under the awning. At once the two guards swung their automatic rifles toward her.

  Then began the most spine-shivering screech Yasmin had ever heard. It continued, even while Janet began a foot-stomping, arm-flailing, dervish-whirling, dust-whipping dance that took the woman out of their sight.

  “Allah has touched her,” Yasmin muttered and hoped fervently that, as always, the Arabs would be very gentle with anyone who was crazy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Tariq al-Madh, all of maybe six feet, was clothed in flowing white kufiya and crowned by a black head rope. The ever-present AK-47 was slung over his shoulder. Smoking a cigarette, the fierce
-bearded leader of the Yemen-based al Qaeda leaned against a wall of reddish rock. On his right, the wall gave way to a small cave-like entrance. The site was perhaps a hundred yards away from an oasis deep within the canyon. Towering date palms shaded a spring-fed aquamarine pond that had begun to ripple with the rising wind.

  If Tariq was surprised to see Craig without forewarning by his lookout, he gave no indication. Beneath bristling brows, one smoldering black eye took his measure quickly. Turning so that Craig could see his hard profile, he flicked away his cigarette butt. Craig noted the man’s unusually large thumbs, often a sign of a person who liked to be in control. Well not this time.

  Tariq smiled beatifically. “You have the chip?”

  “You have the Ark?”

  Tariq raised a languid hand, gesturing toward the cave entrance. “In there.”

  Craig rolled the cigarette between his lips. “Show me.”

  There was a pause. He knew Tariq was considering killing him on the spot but for the thought that he might not have the chip on his person. Tariq shrugged. Ducking his extraordinary height, he led the way inside the cave. “Grab hold of the rope anchored on the wall,” the al Qaeda leader said.

  Craig felt more than saw the thick, frayed rope. Deeper into the labyrinthine tunnel they went. He sensed rather than sighted that other smaller tunnels branched off the tunnel through which he groped. Behind them, the sunlight diminished until darkness triumphed. The air cooled. It was musty and stale but not moldy. The cave had to be as old as the Flood. Maybe created by the Flood. If one was fearful enough to believe the Bible. His senses escalated to high alert . . . anticipating the unpredictable.

  And it was unpredictable. After almost half an hour of groping, the main tunnel abruptly flared into an enormous limestone room. The cavern was lit dimly by sunlight shafting through a small aperture in the high ceiling. The shaft of sunlight fell directly and dramatically on a towering rectangular column that marked the tomb site of the Queen of Sheba’s son, Menelek.