Little Mouse jumped into the driver’s seat. He sliced away the remaining cushioning around the steering column, then hit the starter to fire up the GAARV. Mouse buckled in, revved the motor, and clapped his hands.
LB, Jamie, and Berko stepped back while Mouse drove the GAARV off the pallet that had absorbed the impact perfectly. The big vehicle rolled free of its constraints, unleashed and capable. Berko climbed beside Mouse, LB and Jamie already strapped into the rear seats beside the machine guns. All this was completed in under sixty seconds.
Twenty yards away, Team 2 finished their own tasks. Dow jumped behind the wheel of the second GAARV, started the engine, and stepped her off the platform. Quincy and Doc climbed in back with the guns. Wally sat next to Dow, his SADL computer screen glowing at his belly.
Overhead, the HC-130 gained altitude. The bird would circle at several thousand feet above the mission, maintaining a backup comm link to Torres in Djibouti.
Dow took the lead, Wally pointing the way. The pair of GAARVs spun rubber in the dry wadi, gunning the teams south away from their chutes and litter.
Chapter 26
Outside al ’Abr
Hadhramaut
Yemen
Josh slung the Kalashnikov around Khalil’s shoulders. He lifted the spy’s bloody right hand to rest it near the trigger. He took the pearl-gripped Beretta in exchange and left Khalil sitting below the window, gun barrel on the mud sill.
The Sai’ar’s truck drove a slow loop around the hut, keeping its distance, inspecting the Mercedes. When it had finished the circle, the truck settled on the entry track, stabbing the hut from forty yards back with headlights that carved the ochre interior into boxes of light and shadow. The hut’s roofless walls, open windows, and doorframes did little to keep the desert chill out. The dirt floor cooled Josh’s knees.
He scurried back to the princess in a corner, out of the truck’s beams. Already she’d stained the ground with blood. He tore into his backpack for the first aid kit and reached for gauze pads and a rubber hose tourniquet.
He lifted the hem of her sodden burqa. Josh sucked his teeth at the ugliness and placement of her injury. The exit wound lay at the top of the left inside thigh. The puncture bled as bad as anything he’d seen on a battlefield. The princess’s right leg was clear—the bullet must have dug into the seat before striking it. The entry wound in her left pelvis bled less but scared Josh more. His best guess was one of her femoral vessels, the artery or vein, had been nicked or severed. It needed pressure to shut it down and save her life.
Using his teeth, Josh ripped open two sterile gauze bandages and crammed the gauze into both holes to help stanch the flow. He made several turns around the wounds with a gauze wrap. Then, with nothing else to try, he ran the hose under her leg, tying the tightest knot he could across the seam of her groin.
“Khalil, you holding up?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone moving?”
“No. A bad sign.”
The Sai’ar were waiting for reinforcements. Josh was, too.
He hustled the first aid kit to Khalil. Staying out of the light, leaving Khalil and the Kalashnikov in place beneath the window, Josh peeled back the Yemeni’s jacket to lay bare the two wounds. He slapped a pair of adhesive bandages over the punctures, front and back.
“That’s all I can do for now. Help’s on the way.”
“Many people are on the way. Tend to yourself.”
Josh touched Khalil’s good left arm. He slid back to Nadya.
Quickly he rolled up his own soggy right sleeve, revealing a four-inch-long trough through the flesh. He cleaned it with an antiseptic, stinging swipe. Blood oozed back into the groove. After applying a gauze wrap, he tugged his sleeve down to put the wound out of sight.
Josh pulled up his shirttail for a look at the rip in his right side, above the belt. The gash was short, not deep, and more painful than it looked. He’d have to ignore it for a while. He thanked his luck that he’d not been hit worse and wondered if he’d used the last of it.
The princess slumped in the shadowed corner of the hut just as she had against the window of the Mercedes, unconscious, her bare left hand turned up in the dirt. Josh held her wrist for a pulse.
Nadya’s skin had gone cold. He found a beat, weak and distant.
In the ten minutes since the gunfight, she’d lost a frightening amount of blood. Her left leg was cold, clammy, and white. The poor pulse indicated falling blood pressure. Her breathing came shallow. Making matters worse, whatever Khalil had used to knock her out was depressing her heartbeat.
“Khalil.”
“What.”
“She’s going into shock. I’ve got to wake her up.”
“That may not be advisable.”
“If I don’t, she’s got no chance.”
“Is she dying?”
“Fast.”
Khalil did not turn from the Sai’ar pickup idling in the dirt lane. Josh hadn’t let go of the princess’s hand.
“Khalil. Now.”
“On her right shoulder.”
Josh flashed a hand up her right arm. Under the folds of the burqa, he felt a small box. Quickly, he rolled back her sleeve, baring more pale, chilly flesh.
A pump the size of a deck of cards was strapped high on her right arm. A small pane showed a silently spinning reservoir; a clear fluid revolved inside. From the bottom of the machine ran a clear plastic tube taped to her arm, trailing down to a port into a forearm vein. Liquid dripped into the tube, then into the princess.
The truck’s lights behind Khalil, her kidnapper, darkened his face, keeping Josh from spotting if regret stained it.
“It’s propofol. Pull it out.”
Josh slid the port from the princess’s skin. He taped a bandage over the hole. The catheter wept another drop before Josh could tug the wicked thing off her and toss it into a dark corner.
She didn’t stir. Crimson seeped through the gauze around her thigh. The tourniquet wasn’t stopping her bleeding. Her pulse stayed feeble.
Josh dug a bottle of water from the backpack. Gently, he lifted the hem of the burqa’s veil to expose her face. He rested the ebony cloth over the top of her head.
Princess Nadya showed in her features that she was near death. Her cheeks had sunk. Both eye sockets seemed rimmed with ash. Her smooth forehead was as white as her leg. When pink and flushed, she might have been pretty, with a small nose and long, black lashes. She had the wrinkles of middle age and did not deserve to have only minutes left to her. This was Khalil’s doing, and Josh’s, and the three nations that could find no better way than stealing her. He cupped her chin to straighten her head and hold it in place. Lightly, Josh slapped her.
“Nadya. Princess. Wake up. Come on.”
He added more force to his hand across her cheek.
The princess’s brows flexed. She snorted, wrenching out of his palm. She took short, startled breaths before opening dark Arab eyes.
“That’s it. Wake up.”
He took down his hands. Madly she blinked above colorless cheeks, her breathing spiked. She didn’t focus on Josh but flitted her gaze around the empty, roofless hut where she sat on a dirt floor, dazzling light pouring in. Nadya tugged at the burqa as if it were unfamiliar, then saw her own bare right arm and ghostly, naked left leg. Her eyelids fluttered on the Beretta lying beside Josh.
With a sudden gasp, the princess put her hands in the dirt to push herself harder against the wall, away from him. She stammered in Arabic.
“Who . . . who are you? What’s happened?”
The burst of energy waned. Nadya slumped against the wall, struggling to keep her chin up. Again, Josh supported her head.
She slurred, “Don’t touch me.” Her face dipped in his hand, the blood loss pulling her back to unconsciousness.
Josh answered lo
udly, “Listen to me. Okay? You’ve been wounded. Help is on the way. We’re going to get you home, all right? Stay with me.”
Nadya swayed forward off the wall as if she meant to stand. Her hands flopped on the earth, wobbly and struggling. She spoke without raising her face.
“Home?” She fought hard to meet Josh’s eyes. Fading, she locked on him. “Arif?”
“Yes. Arif. He’s on his way, he’ll be here soon. Let’s wait for him, Princess.”
One more time, she tried to push off the ground. Josh eased her down, then opened the water bottle to pour across her loose lips. She choked down a swallow.
Her weight released backward. The crown of her head fell against the mud wall, baring her pallid neck. Nadya faced the open stars.
Josh rocked back on his haunches. Was that who was coming to kill him and Khalil? Arif, for whom the princess fought to get on her feet?
In small tremors Nadya’s throat worked. Her mouth opened and closed. Josh lay his ear closer. In a voice almost too soft to hear, she repeated:
“La elaha ela Allah.” There is no God but Allah.
A prayer of the dying.
Chapter 27
Hadhramaut
The Empty Quarter
Yemen
The truck would not go as fast as Arif tried to push it. Carrying six armed men and a mounted machine gun, the burdened truck would not exceed 80 mph. The four Yemenis in the back complained and tapped on the window. When they were ignored, they hunkered behind the cab and held on.
Beside Arif, Mahmoud did not speak. He carried a pistol on his hip but had not touched it and seemed unaware of it. As if reading Arif’s mind, the elder took the handgun from its holster. He removed the magazine, checked that it was full, tapped it once in his palm, and returned the load into the grip. The old man pulled back the slide to charge a round into the chamber before holstering the gun.
“You’ve used that before?”
Mahmoud brushed a hand through his whiskers.
“My family are businessmen. I am my father’s first son. We were not always merchants.”
The road whined under Arif’s wheels, and the immensity of the desert did nothing to slow or divert him. He sped before a convoy of trucks bearing five high-caliber machine guns, two dozen armed tribesmen loyal to the Ba-Jalal, and brothers furious and frightened to have seen Ghalib’s fiery death. The Americans had killed their youngest brother, and now there was news that an American had gone to ground in a mud hut outside al ’Abr. At first, the Ba-Jalal had come to honor their father’s pledge to Arif. That pledge was no longer necessary.
A road sign emerged out of the darkness, marking the turnoff north to the Saudi border. The kidnappers did not go that way. Why did they miss the turn? Why did they stop running to hole up in an isolated hut outside al ’Abr? Were they wounded? Certainly the American and his Yemeni driver could see the Sai’ar pickup truck facing them; they must know that Arif was coming to kill them.
The thought of his enemies bleeding and desperate behind mud walls led Arif to the fear that Nadya was hurt, too. Many bullets had been exchanged at the roadblock. This vision, the heartache of her in pain or worse, roiled in his chest, breaking his focus from the road. Arif shook his head to clear his heart. He floored the accelerator. Silently he asked Allah to preserve his wife and to give this truck more power.
“Mahmoud. The American and his driver. They are waiting for rescue. That is why they have stopped behind cover.”
“I have considered this.”
“An American helicopter or plane will get to them quickly.”
“You are saying there will be a battle in al ’Abr.”
“Perhaps. Yes.”
“We have many guns.”
“So will they.”
As any man would if given the time to stand on the banks of his own death, Arif surveyed how he’d come to this place. Where did it begin? How far back to trace his life to arrive at this moment, to the Makarov at his side and the enemies ahead? He looked for accidents, missteps to say he did not belong here and was destined elsewise, but could not find any. Every choice in life, his childhood into the madrassas, to Afghanistan and loving Nadya, leaving the Kingdom, hacking Abd al-Aziz’s computer, even meeting and trusting Ghalib, was a natural flow, a river of a life that could only flow here. In the passenger seat, Mahmoud seemed pensive, stroking his beard, perhaps rowing through his own fate.
“Mahmoud, I must ask.”
“Yes.”
“If my wife is not alive, I will still fight. Will you stand with me?”
“For your wife? No. Our oath to you is for protection. We will not share your vengeance, that is only for clan. You are not Ba-Jalal.”
“Then for your brothers, Yasser and Ghalib.”
“To my own death, Arif the Saudi.”
Chapter 28
Hadhramaut
The Empty Quarter
Yemen
The two GAARVs rumbled through the wadi. Mouse dropped his NVGs to his eyes, steering behind the vehicle’s infrared headlights. Berko bent over his SADL monitor, keeping watch on the green dot, just as Wally was doing in Team 2’s GAARV twenty yards out front. LB rested both gloved hands on his M4. Jamie laid his on the stock of the mounted M-240 beside him.
The crisp desert night blew into the open windows. Constellations sparkled down to the horizon on every side, unhindered save for one glow a mile ahead, the throw of a single car’s headlights.
The riverbed was well packed and flinty; the twin vehicles raised no dust. A low table of rock lay in the center of the wadi a half mile from the lights. Dow stopped behind it. Mouse pulled next to him. The GAARVs idled side by side while Wally gave orders over the team freq.
“The package is in that hut with the car lights shining on it. That’s not good. Team 1, get up there fast. Stay out of sight. Enter the structure, assess and evac the package and anyone else you determine. If there’s resistance, return fire. Team 2 will hold back two hundred yards on overwatch. LB, questions?”
LB, team leader, answered swiftly. “Negative.”
“Get in, get out. Go.”
Mouse peeled away first, pressing LB, Jamie, and Berko into their seats. Dow’s GAARV fell in behind.
For the next quarter mile through the wadi, the vehicles rushed in tandem until Team 2 braked and Mouse drove on. He maneuvered to put the high walls of the mud hut in the way of the single staring car, to approach hidden behind it. In the seat in front of LB, Berko closed his computer monitor to put his hands on his weapon. LB tapped him on the shoulder.
“You and me go inside. Mouse and Jamie stay on the GAARV guns.”
“Roger.”
LB squeezed the young officer’s shoulder to say, You’re good. We’re good.
Fifty yards out, riding the long shadow of the hut, Mouse skidded to a halt. LB was out of the GAARV before it settled, Berko beside him. Berko reached up for his night goggles but saw that LB had left his on his helmet and did the same. The headlights playing over the hut would provide enough illumination and blind any effort to see more.
LB led the way, bent low inside the hut’s shadow, Berko close on his tail. The two galloped toward the rear wall of the hut, freighted and hauling so much gear and armor. They jostled through a maze of old ditches and trenches, this place must have been some sort of abandoned historical dig. They leaped over shallow troughs and ran onto a dirt path leading to the back of the hut. Reaching the rear wall, Berko and LB flattened their backs against ancient mud bricks. LB let them pause to catch their breath. A black Mercedes riddled with bullets was parked close by. Fifty yards back, in the quiet moonlight, Mouse and Jamie charged the bolts on the GAARV’s twin .240s.
LB lifted the muzzle of his M4, nestling near the open doorframe. Berko, panting behind him, patted his shoulder. I’m good. Go.
LB called int
o the opening.
“US Air Force. We’re coming in.”
Behind his rifle, LB swept inside. Moving the gun barrel where he put his eyes, he quick-scanned the left half of the hut. Behind him, Berko handled the right. One man in dark clothing sat in a crumpled slouch beneath a front-facing window, Kalashnikov aimed at the watching vehicle. This man lifted both hands off the gun to face LB. His palms were bloody. LB and he exchanged nods.
“Clear.”
Behind LB, Berko echoed, “Clear.”
LB sidestepped out of the beams flooding in from the car outside. He spun to look down on another man dressed in khakis and sweatshirt, curled beside a woman partly cloaked in a gray, blood-soaked burqa. The pair sat in the dirt against a blank wall. The woman had sunk into a ghastly pallor, her bare left leg smeared in blood. A tourniquet circled her groin but to no avail: a gauze wrap around her thigh was sopping red. She looked dead or dying. The man, like the other, raised two gory hands, with a big pistol on the ground beside him.
LB dropped to his knees.
“You the diplomat?”
“Josh Cofield. US embassy, Sana’a.”
“This the princess?”
“She is. Glad to see you.”
“Sergeant DiNardo. Same here.” LB indicated the man with the AK-47. “He speak English?”
“Yep.”
“Good. LT, get a sit rep.”
Berko hustled across the open-roofed room to land beside the armed man.
LB laid the princess flat, then snatched her wrist. The arm hung limp, skin notably cool and misty. The burqa’s veil had been lifted to reveal her face. Sweat beaded on her upper lip. She drew quick and shallow breaths.
“What can you tell me?”
“She took a bullet through the left hip. Bleeding heavy. I don’t think the tourniquet is stopping it.”
The Empty Quarter Page 24