by S. A. Beck
Several women gathered around her, asking urgent questions in Arabic. Jaxon sighed with disappointment. If they had been Tuareg perhaps Agerzam and his soldiers might have found her here. Instead she was in one of those rare, remote oases in the middle of the desert. She heard the bleat of sheep and goats nearby. These people survived by grazing their animals on the oasis grass and then moving them to the next water source when the greenery got depleted.
Someone brought her water in a goatskin canteen that stank of something sour. She didn’t care. She drank eagerly.
Just as she gulped down her third mouthful, the goatskin got snatched from her grasp.
Orion stood there, another goatskin in his other hand. He drained them both as she watched. The women shouted in protest but he ignored them.
“Please,” Jaxon said, her voice coming out as coarse as sandpaper. “I need more water.”
“You’ve had enough for now. I’ll give you a bit more later.”
He’s keeping me weak, Jaxon realized.
A couple of men came up, gripping old rifles. They didn’t look hostile, just wary and curious. They asked some questions in Arabic. Orion motioned to his mouth to indicate he wanted food.
Following the timeless rules of hospitality in the desert, the group of herdsmen built a fire and started brewing up some tea. It didn’t matter that their guests had come out of nowhere, unable to speak the local language and demanding rather than asking to be fed. Strangers in the desert deserved hospitality, even strangers as strange as these. One of the men pulled some flat circular loaves of bread out of a bag, and another brought out some salted meat. A woman came up with a bag of white gunk that looked like it might be some sort of yogurt.
Jaxon’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t had any food for more than 24 hours. She had barely eaten before the attack, the butterflies in her stomach keeping her from feeling hungry, and after the attack she had felt too ill. This food didn’t look very clean, though. She hoped it wouldn’t make her sick like Otto had become back in Timbuktu.
She had to take that risk. This was survival.
The women tried to take her away to the women’s tent but a harsh word from Orion stopped them. So they sat together, looking like the man and wife these people no doubt thought they were, under the shade of a large canvas stretched between two palm trees, and were served together. One of the male herders squatted nearby, his rifle across his lap. They had gained these people’s hospitality, but it was obvious that they had not gained their trust.
Jaxon felt grateful that Orion let her eat. He kept the water away from her, but Jaxon ate a lot of the yogurt, hoping that the moisture in it would ease her dehydration.
Orion paid her little attention, wolfing down his food and drinking so much water that one of the women had to go to the well twice to fetch more.
He was just as affected by the heat as I was, Jaxon thought. He was able to ignore it, though. I wonder how much longer he could have gone before he collapsed?
When they finished their meal, weariness pressed down on them. Their hosts, seeing their drooping eyelids, made motions that they should sleep and moved away to another part of the oasis.
Jaxon lay down, and Orion did the same within reach of her. She could see him fighting sleep, his eyes closing and then snapping open to check on her.
This is my chance, she thought. When he falls asleep I can get out of here.
With Orion watching her, she had to pretend to be asleep. She thought of turning her back to him but that would only make him suspicious. So she had to face him, close her eyes, and try not to fall asleep.
After a minute, just as she felt about to be pulled under, she opened one eye, only to find Orion staring at her. She closed her eyes again.
Dream images came at her, those half-visions and hints of sound that signal the onset of true sleep. Her mind jerked her awake.
She flinched a little and opened her eyes.
Jaxon must have made a sound, because a moment later, Orion opened his eyes too.
Jaxon shut her eyes, pretending to sleep again, but knew that Orion had seen her. She decided to wait longer this time before she tried to creep away.
She didn’t get that chance. Exhaustion pulled her down and sleep took her.
Jaxon awoke with her throat on fire. She raised her heavy head and looked around. The herders were mostly at work, the young boys tending the flock, the men posted at various points around the little oasis keeping watch, and the women and girls preparing an evening meal.
Yes, dinner already. The sun hovered low in the west. She had slept for several hours.
It felt like several days. With sluggish movements she rose and looked around. Orion sat not far off with one of the herdsmen, having a conversation in sign language while drawing on the sand, Orion no doubt trying to figure out where they were.
A group of women sat not far off cleaning the carcass of a goat, probably this evening’s main course. She stumbled over to them, trying not to look at the open chest cavity of the goat and the bloody heap of entrails nearby that a dog was picking at. Jaxon had never realized what a privilege supermarket shopping was until this moment.
As soon as they saw her, they stood up and handed her a goatskin full of water. She hadn’t even needed to ask. Jaxon slumped down and started to drink. As she did, the women sat around her, trying to block Orion’s view of her. Several of the women gave her sympathetic looks and cast angry glances in Orion’s direction.
Her captor stood up and looked around, quickly spotting her.
“Vacation’s over,” Jaxon muttered, taking another slug of water. A woman slipped her some dates, which Jaxon put in her pocket.
“We need to get going,” he told her.
Jaxon got to her feet. The water had revived her, but she still felt bone weary and her headache had not abated. The heat remained intense. She estimated it was at least a hundred degrees in the shade. She didn’t want to think about the temperature out there in the sun and sand.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Never mind,” Orion said.
“Shouldn’t we wait until it’s cooler?”
“No.”
Jaxon sighed. She glanced over at the gold tablet wrapped in her headscarf. One of the herdsmen sat nearby with his rifle, watching them.
Suddenly Jaxon got an idea—a terrible idea, a desperate idea, but one she had to try.
“Let me get the tablet,” she told him.
He made no objection, following her a couple of steps behind.
Jaxon had to pass the herdsman to get to the tablet. His rifle lay in his lap. While he held it in a ready grip, she knew she was stronger than any regular human, even this tough wanderer of the desert.
She had never fired a gun before. In all their travels and dangers, she had avoided that stuff. Now she needed to.
Jaxon thought back to all the boasting Otto had done about the weapons training Grunt had given him, all that boasting she hadn’t listened to but now had become vitally important.
A safety, she thought. There’s something called a safety on the side of the gun. You had to flick it to the open position or the gun won’t fire. But which was is the open position? Does that guy have the safety off?
He sat only a few steps away. She stared at his gun. She could see the switch right above and a little behind the trigger. She didn’t see any markings on it, no helpful “on/off” written next to the switch to tell her what to do.
A little movement gave her a clue. The man’s eyes narrowed as he looked past her at Orion, and the herdsman’s thumb edged toward the switch.
Bingo. You have the safety on and you’re getting ready to switch it off if Orion gives you any trouble.
Sorry buddy, but I’m the one who’s going to cause trouble.
With a single fluid motion, Jaxon ducked down, wrenched the rifle from his grip, flicked off the safety switch, and spun to point the gun at Orion.
Her captor stopped. He was only a
couple of steps behind her. She backed away, keeping the gun leveled at his chest.
The oasis, which had been full of happy conversation and the laughter of children, fell as silent as a tomb.
Orion did not raise his hands above his head and he did not look frightened. He only studied her with a calculating expression.
The man she had taken the rifle from backed off, unsure what to do. What did the rules of desert hospitality dictate when one guest pulled a gun on another?
Jaxon squared her shoulders and tried to put on a brave face. After all she had been through, after all her people had been through, she still wasn’t sure she could pull the trigger. Killing him was the logical thing to do, the only way to ensure she would survive and that her people had a fighting chance.
Still, she hesitated.
“Get out of here,” she told Orion. “Go whichever way you like, but if I see you again I’ll shoot you.”
Orion stared at her a moment, then nodded.
He turned and walked away. Jaxon remembered to aim. She hadn’t been doing that before. Lining up the sights, she aimed at the back of Orion’s head. The gun wavered in her hands.
Orion kept going. He passed by the group of women, making a wide circle around them so Jaxon wouldn’t get jumpy, and continued slowly through the palm grove.
He was halfway out of it when a baby goat scurried across his path, chased by a girl of about three.
A woman screamed. Orion scooped up the toddler and spun around to face Jaxon, using the child as a shield.
“My mission says I can kill anyone I need to in order to get you where we’re going,” he said. The words came out in such a matter of fact manner, he might have been telling her the time of day.
Jaxon slumped, defeated. She set the rifle down and stepped away from it.
Orion strode up to her, still carrying the toddler, who cooed with innocent delight and played with Orion’s dreadlocks.
Orion set down the child, picked up the rifle, and ejected all the ammunition. Tossing it aside, he grabbed her by the wrist and led her to the tablet, handing it to her. The nomads stared. Several had guns leveled.
“Try any more tricks like that and I’ll kill you,” Orion told her with his usual lack of expression. Somehow it felt more menacing than if he had raged and screamed at her.
He yanked her along, heading for the edge of the oasis.
A shout in Arabic made him stop. Four of the herdsmen approached, guns at the ready. One of them shouted again and gestured at Jaxon. He made his point clear by aiming his rifle at Orion’s face from two paces away.
Orion let go of her wrist. Jaxon took a step away, rubbing the red marks his immensely strong fingers had left on it.
Orion stared at the nomad for a second.
Faster than her eye could blink, his hands whipped out, plucked the gun from his grasp, and bent it like it had been made of rubber.
He tossed the ruined weapon at his feet as the herdsmen backed off, faces pale.
Orion lunged for them, shouting at the top of his lungs.
They bolted.
Orion grabbed her wrist again, ordered her to keep up, and ran out of the oasis at what Jaxon guessed was at least forty miles an hour.
“Thank you for not killing them,” Jaxon panted beside him.
“If I started to there would have been a lot of shooting, and you might have been killed.”
They ran over a series of sand dunes and the oasis was soon lost behind them.
They kept up a brutal pace. Soon Jaxon was panting and sweat poured down her face, making her blink. The tablet in her hands seemed to get heavier and heavier.
After about an hour, she stumbled and fell.
Orion pulled out a canteen.
“Drink,” he said, bending over her.
He stared.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Without waiting for a response, he grabbed the gold chain around her neck that held the talisman she had uncovered in the other ruin. She had kept it hidden under her shirt the entire time, but when she fell it had popped out from her neckline.
Orion held it up to the light. Jaxon’s heart sank.
“This has power. I can feel it, just like I felt those old ruins and the tablet. I thought I was feeling you, but really I was feeling this thing you were wearing.”
He studied it for a second, examining the embossed map of the world with its strangely distorted continents and an extra continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. For a moment, confusion passed over his usually expressionless features and his eyes took on a greater intensity.
“What does it do?” Orion asked, his voice a bit shaken.
Jaxon remained silent. She took the opportunity to drink.
Orion cocked his head and looked at it a moment more, then put it on.
His eyes lit up.
“Ah, I can feel them. I can feel them for miles and miles.”
He slowly turned in a full circle, staring at the shimmering horizon.
“General Corbin will like this. With it we can track all of you down.”
Panicked, Jaxon leaped at him. He swung a fist into her face.
For an instant she saw a flash and felt a sharp pain.
Then she knew no more.
Chapter 15
AUGUST 30, NOUAKCHOTT, MAURITANIA
11:00 AM
* * *
General Corbin could hardly believe his luck. You rarely got pleasant surprises in war, and he had just been handed a big one.
The local CIA official, Clifford Owen, had just told him that Vice President Salek had been picked up in a remote village and flown back to Nouakchott by helicopter. After a briefing with the Mauritanian president and his cabinet, he had called Owen to say that he wanted to come to the American embassy to speak with him and General Corbin.
That was an interesting development. Salek had obviously heard from the police that he had made it to town and had not denounced the vice president for holding a gun to his head. The wily politician must have realized that Corbin had his own reasons for silence, that he was on some sort of mission of his own, and now Salek wanted to come over and feel him out, figure out what Corbin’s intentions were.
The general smiled. Salek sure knew how to play the game. Yesterday Corbin had dumped him in the desert and made him walk back to civilization, and now the guy was prepared to hammer out a new deal.
That suited Corbin just fine. He had nothing personal against Salek, and if the vice president proved useful, he would be happy to make a deal with him.
A deal that helped himself, of course.
Owen had another piece of good news. A severe storm in Senegal was keeping the American ambassador from flying back to Mauritania. Good. The last thing Corbin needed was another nosy official poking around his business.
Salek arrived half an hour later, looking none the worse for wear for his trek through the desert. No doubt he had gone back to his mansion, ate a good meal, drank a gallon of mineral water, and had a long sleep. A good night’s sleep had revived Corbin too and he felt ready for the long day ahead.
And it was going to be a long, eventful day. A call to Isadore that morning assured that.
Salek arrived at Owen’s office flanked by a pair of bodyguards. He was all smiles and fake concern.
“So glad to see you got out of that terrible situation, my good friend!” he said as he shook Corbin’s hand while Owen stood by. “I did not see you once the attack started. How did you escape?”
“I slipped out of the prison camp while everyone was busy firing at one another,” Corbin replied. “I didn’t want to get captured by those vicious Tuareg bandits.”
“Quite right, my friend. I did the same. You were lucky you managed to get a Jeep. I had a very long and hot walk.”
Salek kept his smile as he said this, but Corbin took the hint.
“I am terribly sorry you had to suffer, Mr. Vice President. Let’s sit down and discuss how we can deal with this th
reat and improve relations between our two nations.”
The meeting that followed was a sham, and Owen was the only one there who didn’t realize it. And yet the meeting was entirely for his benefit. Salek and Corbin kept up a good front, avoiding the truth about the prison camp or the real reason for Corbin’s visit. The politician had obviously figured out Corbin was here without his government’s blessing, and was willing to play along. Now they shared a secret, and Corbin realized that Salek wouldn’t keep that secret for free.
They discussed how to fight the Tuaregs and the People of the Sea. Owen promised more help from the CIA and better access to spy satellite photos. They also drafted messages asking for the release of General Meade and Orion to the Tuareg rebels and the “People of the Sea Liberation Front”, a “terror” group Salek made up on the spur of the moment.
“I have back channels to their organization,” Salek said. “I can get this message through.”
Corbin had to admire his creativity, and wonder what would come next when he finally got to be alone with him.
He also wondered how to ditch Owen and get that chance.
Salek solved that problem too. After an hour he sat back and smiled at the CIA agent.
“I think we have done all we can for now. I pray to God that we get your people back safe. Now if you will excuse me, I would like to invite my good friend General Corbin to lunch at my house. We can talk over these things further.”
Owen nodded. “All right. I have plenty to do here. Do you want an escort?”
Salek gave Corbin a significant look. “No, I have a good group of highly trained bodyguards. They will take very good care of your general.”
“All right,” Owen said, rising and shaking the vice president’s hand. “I’ll talk to both of you later this afternoon.”
Corbin and Salek kept silent until they got out of the embassy gate. A limousine and two police cars waited outside. Several burly Mauritanian men stood around them, their eyes masked by sunglasses. Corbin had no doubt they were all armed and well trained in hand-to-hand combat.
