Candice spat sand and looked in both directions. The front end of the fuselage was still attached to the buried wreckage, though some of the connections had been sheared off; the rest uttered tortured groans as they held the two halves of the plane together. The back end of the fuselage had disintegrated, the tail ripped off, the compartment open to the elements.
Nevada rose up, bleeding from a gash on her forehead, clutching the Shadow. She looked as bad as Candice—bruised, battered, and in places, bloodied.
“I am never putting my dryer on spin cycle again,” she moaned, clutching her bicep.
Over Nevada’s shoulder, Candice saw a group of six horsemen wheel around and ride full-tilt for the plane, a cacophony of war cries, cracking rifles, and blasting horse nostrils. Nevada twisted and dropped to one knee, bringing the Shadow up as she faced them. She fired a short burst, and pink mist exploded from the chest of the lead horseman. He toppled from his mount.
The others rode through it, his blood marking their robes. They kept firing—bullets chipped at the ground around Nevada, tore through the sand that still hung heavy in the air from the rollover. Candice threw herself facedown on the ground, looking up to see the Nevada swivel a fraction of an inch to the left, fire another burst, a fraction of an inch to the right, three more bullets.
The second horseman went down, planting himself in sand which sucked him in as the sea welcomed a drowning man. Bullets punched through the third horseman, center mass, severing an artery that quickly painted his chest red. He hung limp in the saddle, shifting out of place more and more with each gallop of the horse. Finally, he fell, his foot catching on the stirrup, the horse dragging his body as it broke away.
The horsemen were scattering like bowling pins now, pulling away before they could get any closer to point-blank range. Except for the one in the back. Streaked with the blood of his comrades, he dismounted as Nevada fired at him, her bullets ripping harmlessly through his cape. He hit the ground running, his rifle coughing smoke as it fired. The bullet combed Nevada’s hair. She pulled her own trigger, but the gun clicked empty.
He charged at her, not bothering to rack his rifle’s bolt-action, but holding its bayonet out for Nevada’s heart. She had no time to reload; her hand dipped into her boot and flashed silver as she came up with her dive knife. She flung it into his chest from six feet away. It thudded into his breastbone. He staggered, but kept coming. The knife had broken his stride, though. When he got within arm’s reach of Nevada, she easily ducked out of the way of the bayonet and gave him a hip-toss that landed him on the knife’s handle. His weight drove it into his heart, hilt and all.
“I’ve been meaning to get a new knife anyway,” Nevada said.
Candice heard a belch of ignition and the full-throated ripping of a rocket in flight. The technical. It must’ve lost them when they’d rolled down the dune, but now it had targeted them again. Nevada had already realized this even as Candice froze. She ran as a rocket hit the fuselage behind her, the explosion ripping away more of the hull, and another rocket hit next to it, and another, and another—a series of booming thumps like a hammer banging on the world.
Candice lost her balance, each explosion jerking the ground out from under her. She fell and Nevada grabbed her around the waist, lugging her off her feet. Another rocket hit just behind them—Candice felt a wave of pressure break over her, the heat of the explosion sizzling on her skin. She ran as best she could, trying to keep up as Nevada dragged her along. She heard a roar of flames behind her and could only imagine how close the explosions were. Shockwaves hit her like heavyweight punches, nearly ripping her off the ground, and she was so concerned with staying on her feet that she didn’t see the abyss looming in front of them until Nevada jumped into it, pulling her along for the ride.
For a second, the chill of rushing air felt good on Candice’s overheated skin. Then she realized she was falling thirty feet straight down to the buried cockpit.
Nevada landed in a svelte crouch. Candice landed on her face. Rearing up, she spat out her second helping of sand for the day.
“I hate sand,” she muttered.
“I know, right? It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.”
“If you’re going to quote Star Wars, at least quote one of the good ones…” Candice looked up. A nearly impenetrable cloud of black smoke hung in the air above them. She doubted the B-17 was still in one piece up there. “It’s incredible. We managed to crash a plane that’s still on the ground.”
“If anyone asks, it was like this when we got here.” Nevada reached out and grabbed the Shadow that Candice hadn’t realized she was still gripping. “Please and thank you.”
They looked around. It was like being at the bottom of a well with striations on the walls that could’ve served as handholds. Candice tried grabbing one and immediately snatched her hand back. In the desert sun, the metal was as hot as a lit skillet.
“Hmm,” Nevada said.
“What is it?” Candice asked. She tried to adopt a joking tone, “Don’t tell me I’m finally here to see you proven wrong about something.”
“Oh no, not at all.” Nevada bent down to sit on the sand. She rested her back against the wall as she rubbed the spot on her arm she’d hurt earlier. “This is better than being out in the open with people shooting rockets at us. But, ah—not by much.”
Candice looked up nervously. There still had to be, what, a dozen Khamsin up there? She doubted there’d be much confusion about where their targets had disappeared to.
Nevada rotated her shoulder a few times, hissing breath through her teeth. “Yeah, landed on this all wrong. Gonna be sore in the morning.”
“Nevada, seriously, what do we do ?”
Nevada dug into a pocket and came up with a small bottled water. “One of two things: either they kill us right here, right now, or they take us.”
Candice could only stand there as Nevada took a gulp. “What happens if they take us?” she asked in a small voice.
“Ever seen a true-crime show? Think girl in the black and white photos who everyone is saying nice things about.” Nevada held out the bottle. “Here. Drink. Dehydration is a bitch.”
There wasn’t much room to pace, so Candice really just kicked one side of the plane and then kicked the other. “So we’re buggered? That’s it? We’re going to be killed and raped and tortured, is that it?”
“Maybe not in that order.” Nevada shook the bottle. “Hydrate. It’s good for your skin.”
Candice took the bottle and drank. It was cool, refreshing, and she found herself gulping it down, desperate for all she could get. She heard voices up above, shouting to one another in harsh Arabic.
She hit the last drop too soon.
“You don’t have to be here for it,” Nevada said.
Candice looked at her.
Nevada held up the gun. “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,” she quoted Kipling’s The Young British Soldier .
For a moment, Candice was dumbfounded. It seemed impossible that there could be anything that would make her welcome death, but intellectually, a bullet to the head had to be better than what the Khamsin had planned for them. And it did seem they were running low on impossible escapes. They’d been lucky, incredibly lucky, but—maybe there was something to be said for cashing out when the cards were against them.
“Reciting poetry to me,” Candice said drolly. “When you crush, you crush hard.”
Nevada lowered the pistol. “If you think that’s good, I know the lyrics to every Britney Spears song.”
Candice smiled. “Think you can get us out of this one? Stall for time, make a dumb joke, smoke a cigarette?”
“I don’t know.”
“Thea—”
“ I don’t know ,” Nevada stressed. “If I had money, I wouldn’t put it on me.”
“I would,” Candice said.
Nevada hung her head, but despite the gesture, she seemed to light up somehow. Some
thing about the set of her shoulders. Then Candice realized—she was smiling.
“I never much liked that name.”
“What?” Candice asked.
“Thea. But you say it pretty nice.”
“It’s the accent. Everything sounds better British.”
Nevada brought her head up and Candice saw how rueful her smile was. “I don’t think I could’ve killed you anyway.” She got up, tossed her gun to the ground, and shouted up to the sky. “Hey! Can you come take us prisoner already? I haven’t got all day!”
Chapter 6
A rope was dropped down
and they were hauled to the surface. There, they were roughly searched, bound, and gagged, their ropes tied to the saddles of the horsemen with a lead of a few feet. The horses were whipped to a cant, and Nevada and Candice were pulled along. It was walk or be dragged.
They walked. They walked and walked and walked. They fell and got back up, the sand sticking to sweat-damp skin, and they walked.
The Khamsin rode ahead of them, sitting in their saddles with a haughty grace, moving in sloping rhythm to their mounts’ swaying gaits. It was almost hypnotic. Nevada had no doubt that if she or Candice could not keep up, the riders would be happy to rake the desert floor with them.
They walked.
The sun beat at their clothes, got through them, needled into their bodies and swelled inside them until it was shouldering aside thoughts, memories—anything and everything but the cruel knowledge that they were not meant to be under this heat.
Blisters formed on their feet and their lips cracked for want of water; the blisters burst and the sky itself turned so red it could’ve been bleeding. The sun hid behind the horizon, but the heat stayed, burning in their sore muscles, in their boiling sweat. The emptiness of the desert seemed to mock them now, full as they were with aches and fatigue and regret.
Finally, some invisible signal passed through the Khamsin, calling a halt. Without permission, Candice collapsed to the sand. Nevada followed, telling herself it was in some sort of solidarity. The cold was little better on their bruised flesh than the heat had been, but they let it take its turn. The Khamsin dismounted and took advantage of the break, feeding their horses, relieving themselves, fixing quick meals—their routines indifferently arrayed around the two women.
Nevada forced her desiccated lips to part, though her mouth felt like old parchment and every movement without water felt like it would tear. “Water… water…” she begged. The thirst inside her was too big to allow dignity to fit alongside it. But the Khamsin ignored her, their callousness almost impressive. It was barely even cruel. More like a meditation predicated on ignoring them.
Nevada kept mumbling the word long after she was out of breath to make herself heard, but the only attention she got was when a horse blanket was thrown over her and Candice. It provided enough protection from the nightly chill for that concern to be crowded out by her soreness and her thirst. She succumbed to unconsciousness still saying that word, like even the sound of it could bring a little relief.
The next thing she knew, a bucket of ice-cold water was poured over their heads. Nevada came awake, still exhausted, not even sure she had slept, except that there was so little heat left in the air that the water soaking through her clothes seemed to freeze her solid.
“Terrorist humor… I would’ve thought there’d be more Jeff Dunham.”
The moon had a toehold on the horizon, polishing the world silver. With her senses reeling from the shock, it took Nevada a moment to distinguish one shadow from the rest.
Their leader was almost unnaturally tall—at least six foot seven inches—his body lean, made even narrower with his hands clasped behind his back. His face was seamed and weathered with the years, but they didn’t make him appear aged—they were more like scratch marks on some much-used piece of armor. A well-tended beard dominated his jawline, suitably balanced by a hawkish nose and the dark slashes of his eyebrows. It was a face given to nobility. In another life, Nevada could’ve imagined him as some celebrated teacher or leader. But in this life, he had empty eyes, eyes that could only be filled with hate, looking for something to destroy. Nevada had witnessed men like him before. Despite the impressive face, the only thing behind it was madness.
“You are enemies of Islam, accused of blasphemy, idolatry, adultery…”
The list went on and on—Nevada could barely hear it over her pounding headache. The Khamsin grabbed her and Candice, cutting their bonds and frog-marching them to where a stake had been driven into the sands, the speaker leading the way. They were shoved down back to back, their wrists chained around the stake with heavy manacles. Nevada tested hers. She was going nowhere fast.
The leader finally finished his recital with: “And you are guilty of the murder of my son.”
“In the interest of full disclosure,” Nevada said, “when I was in college, I didn’t have a Halloween costume one year, so I put on a winter coat and went as an Eskimo. Was that insensitive?”
“Yes,” Candice said. “It was.”
“Oh, you’re speaking for the Eskimos now?”
“They prefer to be called Inuit.”
“What, do you have an Eskimo cousin? Does he show up at family reunions and rub his nose against yours?”
“Silence!” the Khamsin leader cried. “These are charges to make Allah weep. The punishment is severe.”
“I’m sorry,” Candice said, “who are you?”
“I am Nazir al-Jabbar, Khalif of Sudan.”
“Wiz Khalifa?” Nevada asked, shaking her head as if to clear her ears. “Not sure I’m a fan of the new look. Maybe you should’ve just gone with a mohawk.”
Nazir smiled warmly, as if they were a pair of yapping puppies, too adorable to be angry with. “I had a daughter much like you once.”
“Clear complexion and really thick lashes that kinda give you this eyeliner-without-eyeliner look?” Nevada asked.
“Strong. Stubborn. Intelligent.” Gathering his legs under him, Nazir sat cross-legged on the sand with them, his elbows resting on his knees. “A good woman. Or a woman who could be made good, by the hand of Allah.” Nazir held up a finger. “But she refused that touch. She was tempted—drawn off the path by the flash and frivolity of your… culture. Its sugar. Instant gratification. Everything bared, cheap, easy to touch. And in time, she became easy to touch too. But by men. Not by God.”
Candice spoke up, “Listen, your men were trying to kill us. We defended ourselves…”
“If she speaks again, silence her,” Nazir told his nearest follower. He got a compliant nod in return. “I’m trying to teach you something. I want you to learn. You are shallow materialists, are you not? Obsessed with jewels and expensive clothes and fast cars?”
“I’m actually into Beanie Babies,” Nevada said. “I think they’re coming back in a big way.”
Nazir nodded. “Imagine then, if you saw one of your prized possessions in the hands of another. Being used by someone who had no right to it. Being dirtied and stained until you couldn’t even look at it. Would you not rather see it burned instead of its continued misuse?”
“People aren’t possessions,” Candice said.
“Yeah,” Nevada agreed. “Wish I could be an optimist on this one, Wiz, but you might not wanna bother writing an acceptance speech for father of the year.”
Nazir gestured to his man and a boot crashed into Candice’s face, knocking her to the end of her chain’s reach. Nevada wrenched against her bonds, but they held fast.
“My daughter’s death erased the shame she had brought upon me, but all your deaths will do is put a stop to the sins you swim in. It is unfortunate. You could’ve made good wives, good mothers, but you turned away from Allah. You and your society.”
All around them, the men were loading up again, all in perfect silence. Nazir’s words rang out over the landscape, with his followers as quietly attentive as a funeral service.
“You think we have not noticed h
ow your culture quests impotently for purity? You see the sexual immorality brought about by your immodest women, the greed and intolerance that defines your culture, and you wish to be made clean. All we offer is the simple truth of how that cleanliness may come about. But like children running from the taste of medicine, you resist what is proper.” He looked at Nevada. “Even abandoning your own young.”
Nevada grinned at him, all the wider for how worried she was on the inside. “Oh, let’s not go there, Wiz. We were having a real good time listening to your parenting tips.”
“Your child grows up in sin and corruption, without even the blood of the family to guide him. Your sins will be visited upon him. Sudan is just the beginning.” Nazir stood and paced grandly around the women, his outline glowing as he swept in front of the moon. “In short order, all of Africa will see the righteousness of our cause. Europe, weak and divided, will be next, eagerly kowtowing to the relief we offer. And finally, your home, America. Even more divided than Europe, with no taste for blood, no will for sacrifice. There, I will pull out even the root of your evil. Perhaps in hell, reunited with your spawn, you can finally be the mother you should’ve been when he first grew inside you.”
Nevada abruptly laughed. “Oh, buddy, wow —I’m really gonna fuck you up now.”
“I do not think so,” Nazir said, pointing to the west. Nevada saw the waning light dipping into holes in the ground, deep shadows pooled inside them. “Those are scorpion burrows. As the heat of the day breathes its last, the creatures will be awakened from their slumber. They will swarm out in search of prey and find you here, helpless. The flesh will be picked from your bones while you still draw breath. Just the latest in a string of conquests for Allah, conquests that will continue until all worship our god. We will not rest. We will not falter. All will follow or die.”
“Oh,” Nevada said, “you’re Beyoncé fans.”
“I highly doubt Beyoncé would be part of any scheme this half-baked,” Candice said, then had second thoughts: “Okay, Tidal.”
Nazir folded his hands together. “You think me a monster. And yet, what is the real monstrosity? It is allowing your whoring and immorality to continue. This is not an act of hatred. It is a merciful deed, ending your sins before you give further offense to God. Good day, Thea Quatermain, Candice Cushing—I must continue the work you so foolishly interfered with. Feel free to blaspheme as you are eaten alive, knowing our purity will not be sullied by you, even in death. Allahu Akbar.”
Candice Cushing and the Lost Tomb of Cleopatra Page 17