Three Wrong Turns in the Desert

by Neil S. Plakcy

  It was Bin-Tahari, Liam was sure of it. That added urgency to the mission; now, not only must the Tagant School be shut down, but Bin-Tahari had to be captured. But what could he do? He was alone, his only associates a camel herder and an ESL teacher from Philadelphia.

  All he needed was a plan. Oh, and a SEAL team to back him up.

  36 – Dropped off the Face of the Earth

  When the men and camels disappeared through the gates of the Tagant School, Aidan went back to Ifoudan’s tent and passed the time studying his guidebook, trying to get a handle on where they were in the desert, and practicing Arabic phrases. Aywa was yes, and la was no. Shukran was thank you, and afwan was you’re welcome.

  But how did you say, “Please release my boyfriend from custody?” Or “Please don’t shoot me, I am just an English teacher?”

  Aidan considered his situation. They had been out in the desert for a week. A week before that, he’d been in Tunis, settling into his apartment, waiting for his appointment with Madame Abboud and planning his new life.

  Things had changed so much since then it was hard to take it all in. When Aidan stopped to think, he was scared—but when he didn’t think about it, he was pleased at his ability to act. He’d talked his way into Charles Carlucci’s room at the Hotel Africa, he’d escaped from those guys at the souk, and he’d faced every challenge in the desert, from peeing behind palm trees to riding a camel. When he got back to Philadelphia, if he got back, he’d be a different person, a stronger one. He was sure of that.

  He went for a walk, past a small field of black basalt pebbles, and climbed the rise to look out at the Tagant School again. He was there when the muezzin mounted one of the corner sentry posts with the lonely call to the midday prayer, called dohr.

  The men in the courtyard, even the soldiers on patrol, stopped what they were doing, knelt on the ground in the direction of Mecca, and prayed. Aidan added his own prayer, that Liam and the rest of the men would return safely.

  The fine sand at the top of the rise reminded him of the beach during summer vacations at the Jersey shore. It was rippled like the patterns in watered silk, and whenever a light breeze blew up, a white mist of salt swirled over the surfaces.

  He’d thought Liam might return at the heat of the day, but he didn’t. Neither did any of the other men, though, and Aidan wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. If one of the soldiers had discovered Liam’s identity, they might have incarcerated all the men of the caravan.

  He went back to Ifoudan’s tent and tried to sleep, but worry for Liam twisted his stomach until he felt like he’d eaten a whole sheep, which was kicking his insides trying to get out. Though there were others in the camp, and many more in the Tagant School, he felt alone. The guidebook said that the Sahara extended for three and a half million square miles, big as the whole United States, and he was struck by how small each person was compared to that vastness.

  And yet, one person could make a difference. By accompanying Liam, he’d helped deliver that bank account information to Ibrahim’s tribe, and that money would change the way they lived forever. Tuareg children would be educated, have access to health care, and become connected to the rest of the world, because of something he had done.

  There was more to do, though. If Liam did not return, Aidan had to make that satellite phone call, and then do his best to get the hell out of Dodge—which he might or might not be able to do, depending on how the soldiers reacted to Liam. What if they swooped down on the caravan’s encampment and took everyone prisoner? What if Ifoudan betrayed them?

  If the soldiers decided to execute everyone on the caravan, he’d be among them. Probably buried in a mass grave under the shifting sands. No one back home would ever know what had happened to him.

  It was an interesting feeling, to have dropped off the face of the earth, as it were. Even when he’d worked his way around Europe teaching, before meeting Blake, there had been records: passport stamps, employment paperwork, apartment leases. All his life, in fact, he’d been where he was supposed to be. At school, at work, at home preparing dinner for Blake. Once in a while he’d snuck off to an afternoon movie by himself, or detoured past a bar on his way home from work (in his pre-Blake days, at least). But those moments out of time had been brief, and he’d always surfaced again.

  He left Ifoudan’s tent once again, paced around the camp for a while, and then returned to his vantage point at the rise. He heard a commotion at the front gate, and then it opened, and a line of men and camels began to move out.

  He wished he had binoculars. Was Liam among the men? With his ability to change his posture and gait, there was no way to tell. Aidan hurried down the rise, kicking up sand, and ran back to the camp.

  The women and old men who had remained at the camp while the caravan was unloaded didn’t share his nervous anticipation. They carried on what they were doing—sleeping, building fires, preparing food—as the men returned. Aidan waited at the front of Ifoudan’s tent until he saw the camel-herder coming, accompanied by a grimy-faced man in a blue robe.

  They both moved slowly, as if the day had tired them out, and Aidan longed to rush up to Liam and embrace him, but held back. Liam and Ifoudan both collapsed to the mats inside Ifoudan’s tent. “I’ve never worked so hard in one day,” Liam groaned. “My back is killing me.”

  “Roll over,” Aidan said. “I’ll give you a back rub.”

  His ability to give massages was another legacy of Blake’s desire to educate him as a great caretaker. Aidan had gone through three months of training at night, and he put all those skills to use as he worked the knots out of Liam’s back, used his knuckles, pressed his weight into the bodyguard to release the tightened muscles.

  He loved the feeling of Liam’s skin against his fingers, the way his body yielded to just the right pressure. It gave him a hard-on to be poised over Liam, legs to either side of Liam’s body, having the big man totally under his control.

  Liam groaned with pleasure. On the other side of the tent, Ifoudan snored softly. “Did you get the information you needed?” Aidan asked in a low voice.

  “More than I wanted to know,” Liam said, his voice low and husky.

  “Yes? What?”

  But Liam had drifted off to sleep. Aidan gave up and lay down next to him. Liam smelled of sweat and dirt and sand, but Aidan didn’t care. He snuggled up beside the bodyguard, molding his body to Liam’s, and they both slept.

  For once, Aidan woke before Liam did. He built a fire and started making dinner, and it was only when the rich, spicy scent of the couscous drifted into the tent that Liam woke. It was after dark by then, and he and Ifoudan ate hungrily, both of them still stretching injured muscles. After Ifoudan finished eating, he left to check on the camels.

  “What happened today?” Aidan asked Liam, as he cleaned his plate.

  “They’re not just training Libyan soldiers there,” the bodyguard said. “I saw a bunch of men from different places. Some who looked Filipino, some Indonesian. Lots of Arabs. A few were Pakistani, a few were Palestinian.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think it’s a training camp for terrorists,” Liam said. “And we’ve just delivered their course materials.”

  “Wow. Are you sure?”

  “When I was a SEAL, we had to memorize names and faces and backgrounds of dozens of known terrorists, so that if we ran across any of them on an operation, we’d know who we were up against.” Liam stirred the fire, and it flared up, sending bright sparks out into the night. “One of the men I memorized was Abdul Bin-Tahari, a Saudi national and close confidante of Bin Ladin. He has a background as a petroleum engineer. I saw him today, inside the school.”

  Liam turned to face Aidan. “I have to stop him. I have to stop him somehow.”

  “Can’t you call in the SEALs and have them drop some bombs on the place?” Aidan asked. “I mean, after we get out of here.”

  He shook his head. “On the surface, this place looks like it
’s a school and a hospital. And I did see some kids there, in one wing, and there’s a small hospital, too. If we blow it up, the Libyans will raise holy hell.”

  “Can you lure this Bin-Tahari guy outside? We could truss him up, throw him on the back of a camel, and head back into Tunisia.”

  “I love your enthusiasm,” Liam said. “But Bin-Tahari’s smart, and he’s been on the run for years. It wouldn’t be easy to trick him out of the camp on his own.”

  They sat there in silence for a while. “Are you going to call that colonel?” Aidan asked.

  “I need to. But I want to have a plan in mind first.”

  Aidan cleaned up, and Liam lay down to sleep again. He had another heavy day of unloading the camels the next day and he needed his rest.

  Aidan was restless. He’d spent the day napping and worrying, and neither of those lead to undisturbed sleep. Ifoudan returned, and after he went to sleep, Aidan got up and walked around the encampment for a while.

  There were a few fires here and there, but most people had already turned in for the night, knowing they’d be up at first light to continue unloading the camels. Aidan ended up atop the rise once again, looking at the Tagant School. The night was so quiet he could hear the soft whirring of the air handling units.

  An idea started dancing around at the edge of his brain. He stared at the camp for a while as it gelled, and then he knew what he and Liam could do. He hurried down the rise to wake the bodyguard and see what he thought.

  37 – Aidan’s Plan

  Liam woke quickly and soundlessly when Aidan tapped his shoulder. “I have an idea,” Aidan whispered. “Come with me.”

  Not for the first time, Aidan blessed the fact that Liam was so unlike Blake. Blake wouldn’t have followed him without a long explanation, without argument and justification. Just thinking of all the time he’d wasted with Blake made him tired.

  He led Liam back up the rise, then said, “Listen. What do you hear?”

  Liam listened. “I hear a motor. From the school.”

  “Yes. It’s the air handler, isn’t it?”

  Liam listened again and nodded. “It brings cool air up from the catacombs and circulates it through the buildings.”

  “There was a big story in the US a couple of years ago,” Aidan said. “Somebody sent anthrax to a newspaper’s offices. A couple of people died, and the building had to be closed for years because the stuff got into the ventilating system. I was teaching my students how to evaluate stories in the paper, and we followed that case for a while.”

  Even in the dark, starlit night, he could see Liam processing this information. “If we can get some anthrax in there, and then let them know it’s in the ducts, they’ll have to evacuate. If you could get a team in place, you could catch your guy, and maybe a few more. And then they wouldn’t be able to use this place for years.”

  “It’s a workable plan,” Liam said, when they had debated the idea and considered the details. “I’ve got to make that call.”

  “You should get good reception up here,” Aidan said. “I’ll wait at the bottom of the rise to make sure nobody surprises you.”

  Liam leaned over and kissed him. “We make a good team, you and me.”

  “Yeah,” Aidan said. “I think so, too.”

  He wondered, as he walked down the hill, what this effort might mean to Liam. He’d been kicked out of the SEALs, after all. If he brought them a solid target, like this guy Abdul Bin-Tahari, and a plan to capture him, would that make him feel better about leaving the military?

  Liam was the strong, silent type. Blake hadn’t been much of a communicator, either, but Aidan had always believed that was about control. If Blake didn’t tell him anything until the last minute, there was no chance Aidan could complain, or propose an alternate plan.

  With Liam, the silence was different. He wasn’t as chatty as Aidan was, for starters. Aidan knew where he’d grown up, but not what that had felt like. Had he felt different, as a kid? What about as a teenager? From his build and his physical grace, Aidan imagined Liam had been a sports star. What was the locker room like for him?

  Aidan had tried to avoid showering in gym class, because he was afraid he’d get a hard-on, and the other boys would tease him and know that he was turned on by their naked bodies. When the other guys talked about girls and sex, he’d kept quiet. He didn’t have any interest in getting to first or second or third base with a girl, and at fifteen or sixteen he didn’t know why. He only knew that his body betrayed him at inopportune times.

  He had time for a lot of thinking before Liam came down the rise. “We have to stall for at least two days,” he said. “It’s going to take that long to get things together.”

  He yawned. “Man, I have to go back and unload camels again tomorrow.”

  “Talk to Ifoudan. Get the guys to slow down,” Aidan said as they walked back to the tent.

  Liam was nearly asleep on his feet. Aidan guided him into the tent, where he collapsed on the mat. He was out within a minute, and lying next to him, listening to his rhythmic breathing, Aidan followed soon after.

  The next morning, the other men seemed as worn out as Liam. They plodded from the camp to the gate, and it didn’t seem like Liam was going to have to do anything to get them to stall. As a matter of fact, they were back in time for the afternoon prayers.

  “Something’s up,” Liam said when he returned to the tent. “Yesterday, they were pushing us hard to get everything unloaded. Today there was no pressure, and the colonel announced that we won’t work tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday—isn’t that the Muslim Sabbath?” Aidan asked.

  “There isn’t really any such thing,” Liam said. “Muslims are supposed to pray in the mosque on Fridays, but they’re allowed to work after that. I have a bad feeling that something’s up.”

  “Maybe they saw how worn out you guys got yesterday.”

  “They wouldn’t care. But at least we won’t have to come up with a reason to hang around until the team gets here.”

  Aidan gave him another back rub, and after that they lay back down on the sleeping mats. As Liam snored, Aidan worried about Hassan el-Masri, wondering why he was still inside the compound. He worried about Leila and wondered where she was. He hoped that Ibrahim and his tribe had made it somewhere safe where they could access their money.

  And he worried about how his and Liam’s adventure would end. They were in the middle of the desert, miles from civilization, and if things went bad they could be stranded. What if their plan turned into armed combat? They had no weapons beyond what the SEALs might bring. And it was always possible that their approach could be ambushed, leaving him and Liam on their own, and under heavy suspicion.

  That night, long after dark, Liam climbed the rise with his satellite phone once again, and again Aidan stood guard at the bottom. This call was a lot shorter, and when Liam came down the hill he was brimming with enthusiasm. “The team is coming in tomorrow night,” he said. “They’ve got a landing site picked out about 20 miles from here. They’ll parachute in, and then hump it.”

  “Camels?”

  He laughed. “Not that kind of hump. They’ll walk.”

  “Twenty miles? At night?”

  “That’s a cakewalk for a SEAL,” he said. “A buddy of mine is carrying the anthrax. I’ll take it inside, and leave it in the ventilation system. Then we’ll catch them as they come streaming out.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Aidan said dryly. He couldn’t believe Liam was so excited; it was the most animated Aidan had ever seen him.

  “This is what I do,” he said. “This is who I am.”

  “A soldier.”

  “A SEAL. There’s a difference.”

  “You miss it, don’t you?” Aidan asked, as they walked back to the camp.

  “I do. I didn’t realize how much until now. The stuff I’ve been doing in Tunis, it’s penny-ante. Bodyguard duty, a couple of courier gigs. It’s been paying my rent, but nothing
to get my juices flowing.”

  “If they let you back in, would you go?”

  “They won’t, so it’s not worth thinking about.”

  Aidan stopped. “Things are changing, Liam. Same-sex couples are getting married in different states. More and more companies have anti-discrimination policies, domestic partner benefits. Someday don’t ask, don’t tell will be gone.”

  “I’m changing, too, Aidan.” Liam faced him. “When I was in the Navy, I didn’t care about going away on long missions. Hell, I loved being deployed. Because I didn’t have anybody back home to care about me.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Well, you should, because it’s true. My dad’s dead, and my mom puts homosexuality right up there with drug abuse, pedophilia and devil worship. If she knew I was gay I wouldn’t be welcome in her house again. I never had a boyfriend when I was in the Navy. The closest I got was running into the same guy in a bookstore in San Diego a couple of times.”

  “I’m sorry,” Aidan said.

  “Don’t be sorry. I made my choice, and I lived with it. I thought being a faggot was lousy, and I hated myself, and I hated every guy who sucked my dick or let me suck his.”

  “Wow.” The depth of the bitterness, and pain, in Liam’s speech made Aidan want to hug him, kiss him, tell him that he was wrong. But from his body language Aidan could see Liam didn’t want that.

  “And then I got kicked out, and I accepted it. It was my punishment. I tried to go back to Jersey after that, but I’d be out somewhere, in the hardware store, say, and some guy would look at me and start to flirt, and I’d get sick to my stomach. Because I’d want to rip my clothes off right there and have sex, and I knew that was wrong.”

  Liam turned away, and in the moonlight it looked like there were tears streaking his face.

  “And then I met you. And for once, I didn’t hate myself for wanting to get into another guy’s pants. You were feisty, and smart, and vulnerable at the same time.” He turned back to face Aidan. “I didn’t need you to pretend to be Charles Carlucci. I could have broken into his room at the Hotel Africa. I could have made it all this way without you. But I wanted to be with you.”