Call Me Crazy (Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker)

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  Nowhere was she safe.

  Yes, there was one place – the bed of the four-wheeler! Nuke wouldn’t risk blowing to pieces the Ark. I just have to get from here to there, damn’t! She shrugged. It was that or get picked off like a sitting duck.

  Diving head first over the next dune, she began a roll, a zig-zag run, another roll toward the truck. Bullets pinged around her. As she jackknifed toward the four-wheeler bed, a bullet pounded her left shoulder. She staggered. Hauling herself onto the bed, she burrowed with her AK-47 among the two drums and the Ark. Nuke’s potshots were over. Now it was wait and see contest.

  “I can outwait you,” she called. “I’ve got the water.” But overhead the sun was roasting them both.

  His gravelly voice belted back, “You’ll bleed to death, before I die of thirst.”

  “You’re sharpshooting is not as good as you think.”

  To prove her wrong, he targeted the gas drum, and leaded gasoline spewed over her. Maybe her idea hadn’t been such a good one after all. Quickly, she scooted closer to the Ark. The shifting of positions did it – she caught the glint of sun off metal! Up reared her AK-47, and she blasted away.

  “Bitch!” he roared.

  “Ready to do business?”

  “Sure. Come down off the Gator.”

  Away from the Ark, right? Wrong, you bastard. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  “How do I know you won’t shoot me?”

  “How do I know you won’t shoot me?” she countered.

  His shaved head edged above the dune, and she was sorely tempted to blow it off, except she had to know he had the quartz chip on him. And he knew that, too. Cautiously, the gun barrel trained on her, he advanced in sidewise, ski-plowing steps down the dune. By his awkward gait and the dark splotch on the lower right leg of his khaki’s, she took satisfaction in knowing her last effort had found its target.

  Her AK-47 cradled and aimed, she jumped to the ground. Damn’t. The jarring landing hurt her shoulder worse than her thigh.

  Veins stood out in his forehead. Hips lips were drawn back in a tight smile. His expression made her think uneasily of the Grim Reaper. With his free hand, he dug into his pocket and tossed the chip at her feet.

  Her gaze dropped to verify it was authentic. That’s when his barrel swung up to point dead-on at her chest.

  I’m dead!

  He pulled the trigger and fired.

  Nothing.

  He stared dumbfounded at the jammed M-16.

  She slammed her AK-47 against the side of his head. Stunned, he pitched sidewise onto the sand. Blood dribbled down his temple. She could have blasted him away then and there but she wanted him to suffer. A vicious kick to the gonads was good for a starter.

  Groaning, he doubled up.

  She dropped the gun and with a fury whipped the knife from her boot, wincing at the pain rocketing through her arm. Still, she grinned. “I’m ready to carve the turkey, Pilgrim.”

  His eyes widened, horror expanding their pupils. And she saw herself reflected in them – the same monster that stared in fear back at her. The blade hovered over his chest. What did the missionaries say? An eye for an eye? What about a life for a life?!

  And The Voice said, Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

  She sighed. She was a chump to let this man walk free. A sucker to trust that karma would catch up with him somewhere out there in the desert. Well, she had never been one of those wise women. “Your boots better be made for walking.” She nodded at the four-wheeler. “Give me the keys.”

  He must have seen the ‘give no quarter’ in her expression. Slowly, painfully, he pushed to his feet. Hunched, he jammed his hand into his vest pocket to produce the keys.

  Before she could grab them with her free hand, wildly yodeled ululations shattered the silence. She spun to see camels galloping over a dune, their riders waving guns and shouting.

  At that moment, he lunged for the four-wheeler’s driver’s seat. She wheeled back, threw the knife but her impaired aim sent it plunging into the cushioned seat. The four-wheeler’s engine roared, bucked forward, and churned up the nearest dune. Its hood bounced like a broken jack-in-the-box. She grabbed for her rifle, gasped at the renewed shoulder pain, and aimed for the tires. Her shot went wild as the four-wheeler descended the dune’s other side.

  Behind her thudded the galloping, padded clop of the camels. Now what, she thought, spinning with rifle raised to see whom next she had to take on. Through the scope, her narrowed gazed sited in Jack, hauling abruptly on his camel’s reins! And Yasmin was astride the other camel, with Sam behind her, holding fast. Of course.

  “Nuke’s getting away!” she yelled at the three.

  Jack leaped from the camel more than dismounted and sprinted toward her. Behind him, Yasmin flung aside her reins and slid off, while Sam nearly fell from the saddle.

  “God, girl, I thought I’d never see you again!” Jack said, grabbing by her shoulders. Were those tears in his eyes? His expression was a combination of enormous relief and sheer joy.

  She nearly buckled at the pain of his grip. “Damn’t, let me loose! Go after Nuke!” Her arm was stinging and burning, and it was all she could do to keep focused.

  Sam joined them with his beaming Bollywood smile. “Not to worry, Janet.” He tapped the face of his Mickey Mouse wristwatch. It flipped open. “Just calling in a Predator drone out of Qatar. Its got a 900 mm zoom lens that can read license plates. Would you believe that?!”

  She shook her head, trying to clear the fuzziness of having gone so long without sleep and water and having been knocked around and shot up. “What? What are you saying?”

  Yasmin’s abundant lips downturned in abject disappointment, and her narrow shoulders slumped. “I so wanted to see Nuke neutered.”

  “Yes, yes,” Sam nodded several times in succession at both Yasmin and Janet. “In a few seconds, our CIA agents 8,000 miles away in Virginia will get a close-up image of the Gator on their computer screens. Press one button and a five-foot-long AG-114 Hellfire missile fixed to the Predator’s undercarriage will lock onto the Gator, and we have instant incineration.”

  “But the chip?” Jack demanded. He was unstoppable.

  She went stiff. Had her suspicions been right about him all along? Was it always the chip with him?

  Sam shrugged. “Better blown to oblivion than a tool in Nuke’s hand, wouldn’t you say?”

  Janet looked at Jack for confirmation of her misplaced trust. But the ear-shattering explosion and huge ball of flame erupting several miles away was like a second Trinity Site detonation.

  They all stared at the blinding mushroom of light. It stunned the imagination and realized for each the fear of what the future might have held had everything been put in place. Yasmin’s doe-like gaze deserted the white-hot sky to turn on Sam adoringly, and he blushed. “Just part of the job,” he told them, but his eyes were fastened on her. “That take down was for you, Princess Jasmine.”

  Jack raised his brows at Sam. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re with the CIA?”

  “Well, in their employ,” he said with aww-shucks modesty. “Tex was heading up the Yemen operations.”

  “Was?” Janet asked, still feeling befuddled.

  “Gone renegade.” He looked at his watch. “Right about now, he should be meeting up with Tariq al-Madh, the dead dude back at Menelek’s cavern chamber. Or, at least, Tex thinks he is meeting with Tariq for the quartz chip.”

  “The chip,” Jack groaned, his gaze clamped to the roiling black smoke. “Gone for good.”

  Well this was it. All or nothing. She was desperate enough and daring enough. Janet held out her palm, displaying the glittering shard.

  He took one glance, and immeasurable elation brightened his eyes. He swung her up in his arms. “I love you, sweetheart!”

  She yelped with genuine pain and then faked the funk. “The chip! It’s gone!” Still caught up in his arms, her gaze wildly panned the encircling expanse o
f desert. She waited for him to react as he had done at her brother’s grave, waited for him to plow into the sand, sifting frantically for science’s sacred nugget of gold.

  “You’ve been shot!” His furrowed gaze inventoried the spreading crimson on her shoulder. “Sweetheart, you’re hurt!” His dark expression one of fearful contrition, he set her down gently. His fingers quickly nudged aside her jacket to probe.

  As if he cared naught for the lost corner piece? Did that mean he would stay? Or did he still plan to bullet out of sight at first opportunity? “I’m all right,” she reassured him.

  Her eyes lifted to meet his. Her throat sealed off, and all her gulping didn’t clear it. She could feel the stinging tears streaming from her eyes, evaporated by the broiling sun far before they reached her jaw. Damn’t, at long last ‘later’ had arrived with its warehouse of tears. “What about the crystal chip?”

  At each painful beat that followed, her heart threatened to burst the constraint of its rib cage. Her whole life, her happiness, depended on his answer. Without Jack, it was back to her trailer house, her heart and her life as blighted and cramped as her trailer house – for there was no one else she wanted or could ever want. He might be a CSD, but he was her CSD.

  “The crystal chip . . . the Two C’s?” he said gently, his tone adamant. He shrugged those yardarm-wide shoulders. “More is better. Give me the three C’s.”

  She felt dizzy with the relief and, yes, the love that zinged through her blood and threatened to burst open her heart. The missing key to her lock had been found. Smirking, she opened her palm to display the quartz chip.

  He glanced from it to her. “I should have known. You’re one of a kind, Woman-Yes-to-Me. She didn’t miss his alteration of her name. Casting the magic of his lopsided, ever cheerful grin over her, he drawled, “As the Hopi say, ‘Nothing is set in stone.’”

  A small part of her still hovered on the brink of annihilation. Everything depended on this . . . he might love her, but did he need her in his life. Before she could voice her final fear, Sam interrupted with a sharp intake of breath and averted his eyes. “I didn’t see the chip you are holding. In fact, I don’t know where it is now.”

  She sighed. The tender, fragile moment was gone, maybe never to present itself again. “Thank you, Sam.” She tucked the chip securely into her jacket pocket. “I assure you it will be put to a peaceful use.”

  “And the Ark of the Covenant?” Yasmin asked.

  Sam shrugged and tapped his wristwatch again. “Just calling in another Predator drone. Who knows where the Ark really is? Or if it exists at all. In another few seconds, neither Menelek’s burial chamber nor Tex will exist.”

  Janet turned her gaze back to what was now a black mushroom of smoke. “I guess the real importance of the Ark’s contents is that we follow its Ten Commandments.”

  “So, all along you knew how this would play out?” Yasmin asked Sam, a line creasing between her perfect brows.

  “Oh, heavens, no,” Sam grinned, almost bashfully. “I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. Just following orders. Whenever Mickey Mouse here worked, that is.” He fondly patted the wristwatch. “Fortunately, Faisyal kept me up to date as best he could with – ”

  “Faisyal?” Janet asked.

  “Yes, yes, remember the Indonesian owner of the Bilquis Restaurant in Marib? He was our liaison here. Faisyal was onto Tex and was coordinating with the brass back in Langley.”

  The CIA? She jumped on it this time. “Sam, has the CIA any information on my daughter’s – ”

  “Oh, but, yes, Janet. Langley has been in constant touch with your Chief Wes Keevama, and Faisyal says to let you know your daughter Molly is doing splendidly. Off the ventilator. We wanted to let you know since back there at the Bilquis Restaurant but couldn’t take the chance – not until the Devil got his due – Nuke, of course.”

  Janet’s knees went weak with the blessed news, and only Jack’s strong arm about her waist steadied her. So many hours and days, afraid she would never see Molly alive. A lassitude crept over her. I’m so tired, so tired. Tired of drinking, even. Now, if that’s not a first.

  Sam’s black-eyed gaze homed in on Yasmin. “It appears I will be posted here longer than I had anticipated. Do you know of any vacancies in the Old City?”

  A virgin’s blush pinked her cheeks. “I’m sure we’ll find something.”

  With his easy grace, Jack swung up onto his camel and stretched his hand down to Janet to help her up. “Ready to go home, sweetheart?”

  “Home?” she asked wonderingly.

  “Yes. Home. To dance where Kachinas play and Voices speak. Don’t you know you’re my home, sweetheart?”

  Go home!

  I hear you, I hear you, she told The Voice. You don’t have to shout.

  “Yes!” she said, grinning and placing her hand in Jack’s. “Home is where the heart is. Let’s go home, CSD.”

  T H E E N D

  If you enjoyed reading CALL ME CRAZY, the second book in the Janet Lomayestewa Tracker series, I hope you will consider recommending the novel to your friends, as well as writing a good review for the novel at http://www.amazon.com ~ Call Me Crazy. You can check out my other novels on my Amazon Author Central profile at www.amazon.com/author/parrisaftonbonds

  Parris Afton Bonds is the mother of five sons and the author of more than thirty-five published novels. She is the co-founder of and first vice president of Romance Writers of America. Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in major newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages. She donates her time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates. The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.

  Connect with Parris at http://parrisaftonbonds.com