A few hours later unease begins to settle over us as we take stock and consider whether we’re running into an ambush. Our intelligence tells us the rebel camp is located just over the next couple of dunes. It’s here I’m expecting and dreading rivers of blood to be shed. Instead, it’s all too quiet as we approach; our foe seems reluctant to leave their camp. I begin to worry just how they might have fortified it and what traps we could be heading into. And as I glance around me, seeing Jon Tharpe and Ben Carter in discussion with the team from Grade A, and the sheikhs deep in talks with their senior men, I realise I’m not the only one who’s worried about what lies ahead.
And then we hear the helicopter approaching, flying low, taking advantage of the sand dunes to hide from our guns. Then the engine noise fades, and in the quiet I realise we’ve run out of time.
Chapter 34
Zoe
I can’t move. The dirt filling the hole leaves only my head and neck and tops of my shoulders exposed. Despite my best efforts, I’ve no chance of any fucking escape! Futilely I try to kick at the impacted sand, but my legs have no room to move. I can’t even wiggle my fingers; the dirt is packed down too hard, and almost worse. The only thing I can do is thrash my head, and that at least loosens the blindfold so I can see what’s going on, but I don’t know if that makes it worse of better.
Ethan has excelled himself this time. The horrors he’s inflicted on me in the past don’t come close to topping this! I’m beyond scared now, petrified and unable to grasp what’s going to happen. There’s a pile of stones that have been gathered off to one side, stones which will soon be thrown at my head. Tears flood down my face as I anticipate the terrible pain to come, and I wish fear alone would make me pass out. The size of some of those rocks on their own would crush my skull. And the thought that they’ll just keep throwing them, fracturing my head until at last, I’m dead. Oh my God, surely this can’t be happening to me! It’s a worse way to die than any I could have imagined.
Suddenly, an eerie chanting starts to one side of me and out of the corner of my eye I can see a robed figure, his head bowed down as if in prayer. Ethan watches the man almost reverently, listening to his incantation as Hargreaves kneels and whispers in my ear, “He’s singing a prayer for your soul, whore. Enjoy the last moments of your miserable fucking life.”
Momentarily I’m stunned into silence; then I start screaming and yelling until my voice becomes hoarse. I don’t give a damn I’m interrupting a religious ceremony, refusing to go quietly. In between begging and pleading with Ethan to stop this before it goes too far, I’m shouting for help. Ethan roars at me, angry I’m not accepting my fate, but I don’t shut up. I make all the noise I can. I hear Hargreaves giggling and laughing, encouraging him on. He’s frothing at the mouth and totally mad. Then abruptly the chanting stops. Hamid steps forwards, selects his stone and takes aim…
“Ma fi asm alllah yajri huna?” At first, I can’t see the man who’s bellowing loudly in Arabic in a very voice, or have any idea of what he’s saying. But as he moves round into my line of sight he takes the rock from Hamid’s hand and throws it away I feel a faint glimmer of hope. “Rijal Amahad la yumarisun alqanun Shiria . waqf hdha fawraan!” He roars out, his fury is palpable. I don’t understand the words, but it sounds like he’s protesting.
Abdul-Muhsi steps up to him. “She is an adulteress. I have passed judgement on her. Sharia law is practised in Ezirad.” He indicates Ethan, who is standing behind him and speaks in English, presumably for his benefit.
“I’m not!” I scream, tears running down my face. “I can’t be an adulteress!”
The newcomer spares me a quick glance. “Whether the woman is guilty of the crime or not, and wherever we are, Amahadians don’t practice Sharia law! We don’t kill our women, or our men, in this way.”
Abdul-Muhsi switches back to Arabic dialect, and I can’t understand a word of what they are saying, but I believe, from his tone, he is furious. The two men get deep into a heated argument. Suddenly I hear a voice translating for me. Sean, who can’t even stand, blood running freely down both legs, has somehow managed to crawl on his belly up alongside me, his guards having taken their eyes off of him for the moment. “Sheikh Fadi! Amahad has lost its way. It has become home to the infidels. We must stamp it out. Sharia law must be imposed to restore our country to its Muslim purity.” His whispered interpretation at least lets me know what’s going on.
“This is madness!” Another man comes up. Sean continues to translate.
“Tamir, I never realised…”
“Sheikhs, you are with me!” Abdul-Muhsi sounds deranged. “You have pledged your support!”
The man named Fadi shakes his head. “Neither I or my tribe can condone this.”
Abdul-Muhsi starts screaming. Fadi calls two of his men forwards gesticulating towards me and the discarded shovels, and to my extremely grateful relief, they start digging me out of the hole. Ethan’s men try to take their tools away but are in turn surrounded by tribesmen in traditional robes who pull them back. Other men come running from all directions, some group around Abdul-Muhsi, but there are more surrounding the other two sheikhs. Ethan tries to intervene, but a burly man with a long scimitar holds him back.
Fadi steps forwards. Sean continues to explain what he’s saying; I’d have had no idea what’s going on had it not been for him. “Amahadians! We are united by our shared blood, although we come from different tribes. We are a powerful and wealthy country. The oil wells will bring great riches to the desert and will enable us to build schools and hospitals accessible to all. Amahad has signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but if we follow the practices of Abdul-Muhsi, we will no longer be able to comply. Is this what you want? Your women subjugated? Flogged for wearing western clothing? Your men beheaded without a fair trial? Western nations will cease their investment in our country. Return to the old ways is not the path to the future!”
A voice calls out. “But Kadar is a weak ruler. He depends too much on the west!”
With a shake of his head, Fadi dismisses what was said, “Kadar is young, but he can grow into his role with our support, and his relations with the West smooth the way for our country. Abdul-Muhsi would return Amahad to the dark ages. Sharia Law is not our way of life.”
Abdul-Muhsi swears loudly, and with a battle roar draws his sword and rushes Fadi, who’s just as quick, a scimitar appearing in his hand as if by magic. The two men exchange blows, but the fight doesn’t last long. The rebel Sheikh is older and carries more weight, from the start he doesn’t appear to stand much chance and it’s only the strength of his anger spurring him on. It ends quickly, Fadi lunges, and twists his sabre. Abdul-Muhsi hits the ground, his hand covering a wound in his stomach so deep it has to be fatal, red blood pouring out, quickly staining the sand.
Even as the drama’s unfolding, some of the men have managed to loosen the sand enough to pull me back out of that ghastly hole and have untied my hands. I stutter over my heartfelt ‘thankyous’ unable for a moment to believe my life has been saved. Then I turn, transfixed at the scene before me, my eyes held fast by the sight of the man slowly dying as he bleeds out in front of me. I’ve never seen death close up before. Horrified I watch and I don’t notice what’s playing out on my other side until a rock hits me on the cheek, splitting it open. I stagger sideways, seeing my attacker out of the corner of my eye. I should have guessed they wouldn’t let me escape this easily. It had been Hargreaves who’d thrown the rock.
“Whore!” The shout comes from behind me but I’m too slow to turn and slightly dazed from the first blow I don’t think to duck, and the second rock hits me with a crack, hard on the back of my head. I fall forwards onto the hot baked sand and see Ethan walk into my line of vision. “Whore!” He repeats, dropping another stone onto my skull. I’m stunned, immobile.
The fog in my head makes the sound of voices come as though from a distance. There’s shouting in Arabic, men barking in English. Struggling to
open my eyes, I see the sandals of robed figures getting between myself and my tormentor. Sean crawls closer towards me, trying to protect my body with his but Ethan kicks him away.
I hear gunfire, but the shots sound like they are being fired into the air, no screams mark they’ve met their targets. Abruptly all sound ceases. The camp is silent. Blackness comes over me.
Chapter 35
Kadar
Seeing the helicopter arrive has spurred us on. As it helped them, the sand dunes also serve us well, hiding our approach and enabling us to get closer to the rebel stronghold than we had expected. For some strange reason, the rebels have sited their camp in a bizarrely indefensible position. If he hadn’t already reached rock bottom in my estimation, Abdul-Muhsi would by now be dropping down even further. But what’s not going to help him will aid us.
We approach with care, our senses alert on the watch for lookouts, expecting them to be posted to warn of our advance. But as we breach the last dune and get our first glimpse through binoculars of Abdul-Muhsi’s base, instead of the organised opposition I was expecting, the camp seems to be in chaos. Leaving Sheikh Wahid to form a rear guard, I’m at the forefront of my men, along with Rais and Ghalib. Ben and his team are also in the vanguard ready to face an army. But what we see is a farce. Men are arguing, shouting amongst themselves, and members who, from their dress, I recognise as those from Abdul-Muhsi’s tribe are being attacked, ridiculed and beaten by their fellow Amahadians. A man lies unmoving on the ground, and a feeling in my gut tells me he is dead.
Jon Tharpe has directed Seth and Ryan, two members of the Grade A team and both ex-SAS like most of their colleagues, to come to the front. Dropping to their stomachs they begin to move forward in the military style leopard crawl, keeping low, their desert combat gear camouflaging them well, as they move fast ahead of us to assess the level of threat.
I’ve got a strange feeling about all this. I know that I have the trained military on my side and apart from, presumably, St. John Davies’ men, Abdul-Muhsi is leading mostly unorganised rebels, albeit with a handful of soldiers who deserted from the Amahadian army. But they are heavily armed and must be well prepared to face combat; they would have known I wouldn’t surrender without a fight. The desert warrior spirit is in their blood, just as it is in mine. But when Seth and Ryan rise to their feet and beckon us forwards, I start to have a glimmer of hope that there won’t be much of or a battle at all. Unless every man in the rebel stronghold is blind, they have to know we’re here by now, but they seem more intent fighting amongst themselves rather than making a stand against us. Not what I expected to find at all.
It’s with curiosity that I step out and away from my bodyguards, at last leading my men to face our adversaries.
Two men I recognise are coming towards me, Sheikhs Fadi and Tamir. My heart starts sinking at the confirmation that they, too, had risen against me. But before I can speak, they approach and throw themselves to the ground in front of me.
“Rise.” My voice is unconsciously imperious.
Sheikh Fadi is the first to speak. “I beg your forgiveness, Excellency. Abdul-Muhsi was too persuasive. But finding he wanted to take the throne for himself and impose Sharia Law, well, we could not stomach that.”
I’m suspicious, “But wasn’t that obvious?”
Tamir glances at his companion as if for encouragement, before turning back to me. “He told us your ideas of a democratic government were just a trick. That you were going to sell out the desert to the west and allow westerners to exploit the oil for their own gain.”
Rais has come up to my side. He scoffs, “He just wants power for himself.”
“Wanted,” Fadi admits coldly, “He’s dead. I killed him.”
Putting his head to one side, Rais asks the question going round my head, “You took long enough to realise. What opened your eyes?”
“What he was allowing to happen to that woman.”
“What woman?” I ask, harshly.
“The Englishwoman…”
“Is she harmed?” I can’t prevent myself from stepping forwards and grabbing hold of his robe, twisting the material in my hands. If anything has happened to her, I’ll kill someone with my bare fists, and he’s unlucky enough to be the closest.
As if he realised the danger he’s in Fadi explains quickly, waving his hands in denial, “No, no. Well, she’s injured, but we stopped it.”
“Stopped what?”
He’s shaking in the hold of his emir; as ruler I hold his life in my hands. “They were going to stone her.”
I throw him away from me and, uncaring about my own safety, start running towards the camp, my men trying to keep up, Rais and the Grade A team behind them. As I draw closer, I see the rebellious sheikh lying dead on the ground, and two other bodies lying prostrate close by. At first glance, neither is moving. Ben is first to reach me, and steps out in front, but I shove him out of my way, my only thought is to find Zee and see if she’s still alive. I tear over fast as I can, without caring I’ve left the men protecting me behind.
A voice calls out, stopping me in my tracks.
“Kadar! You touched my woman! I can’t allow that!”
In slow motion, I see the man I recognise from photos as Ethan St John-Davies come to the front of his team of men. Unlike the rest of the rabble, this group is organised and focused, and I suspect every one of his mercenaries will be highly trained and know precisely what they are doing. Being so desperate to get to Zee, I belatedly notice the gun in St John-Davies’ hand is raised, and that it’s pointing straight at me. I’ve exposed myself. Now all I can do try to do is face him and attempt to talk him down.
“You’re dead. And the whore’s next!”
As he takes the safety off his weapon with an audible click, I know I won’t be able to raise my gun faster than his bullet will fly. Time seems to stop, and I even have time to call on Allah’s name asking him to protect Zoe. But then, so fast it the very air seems to shimmer, one of the prone figures rises to their feet and launches towards me, the action putting the person I don’t immediately recognise deliberately in the path of the bullet heading straight for my heart.
A blaze of returning fire neutralises St. John Davies for good and immediately his team of men drop their arms down by their sides, turn and walk away. Paid mercenaries no longer employed now their paymaster is dead. Moments later a helicopter rises into the air behind the camp.
Chapter 36
Zoe
“How are you feeling, pet?”
I bite back a sarcastic comment at the question. Why do people always ask that when you’re lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a morphine pump because you’re in so much pain? Suffering the indignity of a catheter, because you’re unable to make the short distance between bed and bathroom? Visitors, in my opinion, come to be reassured that you can’t be feeling as bad as you look, so they can go away satisfied, having put their minds at rest and believing it was worth the visit. I know it’s expected of me to refrain from giving the truthful answer, which of course would be ‘bloody awful’, but to give him what he wants to hear instead. So I lie. “Better, thank you.”
Better? Better than what? It’s only now that I’m starting to feel I’ve got my wits about me again, able to take in and understand what has happened to me over the past couple of weeks. Ethan’s parting shot with that stone was a doozy, cracking my skull. Luckily they tell me it was only a linear fracture that didn’t need surgical intervention, but it was enough to cause a swelling, an epidural hematoma, which meant I spent three days in an induced coma. The bullet lodged in my shoulder had meanwhile caused significant blood loss needing an immediate transfusion as soon as Kadar’s men airlifted both Sean and me to the hospital in Z̧almā. Being close to the border and used to dealing with some horrific injuries suffered by the military, the desert city hospital was well equipped and practised in dealing with trauma. Had it not been, I might not be alive.
What I have absolutely no memory of
doing, but what’s already becoming the making of a legend, is how I apparently managed to raise myself from the grave to save Kadar’s life. But the fact remains, had I not acted purely on instinct—ignoring life threatening and what should have been incapacitating injuries, and thrown myself in the path of the bullet—the Emir of Amahad would be dead.
Sean was luckier than me, being up and about a lot quicker than I, disdaining to use a wheelchair and hopping around on crutches despite one leg being in plaster from ankle to thigh as a result of the bullet having made good work of shattering the bone, and the other just having a hefty bandage covering a nasty flesh wound that had required a large number of stitches. Nevertheless, he’ll not be completely mobile for quite a while, although the prognosis is good and hopefully he’ll be just as competent with his high-kicking routine after a few months’ recovery and physiotherapy.
When I first came round, I was just pleased to know we had both survived the ordeal. Fading into and out of consciousness for a few more days, doped up on medication, I wasn’t aware of what was going on. But an overheard conversation between Kadar and an unknown man seeped into my awareness, and for the first time in days, I remembered clearly the events leading up to my final abuse at Ethan’s hands.
As the overheard words sunk in, it became evident Kadar was being berated for neglecting his duties. Instead of returning to the capital to rule the country, he was choosing to stay if not by my side, at least in Z̧almā, and visiting the hospital daily. After the note I’d left for him, I couldn’t understand why, and selfishly I knew him hanging around was not going to be good for me. So the next time he came to see me, I forced myself to be fully awake, not using my pain medication so I was completely aware and able to talk.
Second Chances (Blood Brothers #3) Page 36