He grinned at her. ‘Scratched to what?’
She turned her face to his, filled with comical guilt. ‘It’s an Australian term. I’ve got no idea what its exact meaning is—think it means pretty bad?’
He chuckled. How often he’d laughed in her company; far more than he had in the three years preceding it…and it no longer felt like a betrayal to Fadi that he could laugh. ‘Knowing you has been an education,’ he said gravely.
‘I live to serve,’ she replied, bowing her head with the same gravity. ‘I strive not to be completely forgettable.’
I’ll never forget you, he thought but didn’t say. Even if he never saw her again after this adventure, she’d for ever shine in his memory like the star he’d named her. But he would see her again, at least once—he’d make certain of it. ‘Maybe you’re not completely forgettable—just a little bit,’ he conceded in a drawl.
‘Oh, thank you so much,’ she retorted, trying not to laugh—and he smiled inside at the indignation flashing in her eyes. She gave away her feelings for him with everything she said, and everything she left unsaid.
‘Hold on tight and keep your eyes open, Hana. We have to find the truck.’ He swerved the wheel, and the Jeep turned hard right. ‘Look for some kind of opening. If we hide in time, they might pass our tracks in the night.’
‘There,’ she cried seconds later, pointing. ‘Let me out. There’s a track to the left there, covered with branches, exactly as Abdel described it. I’ll clear it for you.’
‘It’ll go faster if we both do it.’ It would be useless to command her to stay in the Jeep. After hours of enforced rest, she was determined to pull her weight. ‘Try to run where the tyres will make indents. It’ll make for less cleaning later.’ He stopped the Jeep, and they both ran for the track, clearing branches and rocks in their way. Clever Abdel had done all he could to make certain the truck wasn’t found. ‘Keep the debris close by. We need to replace it for cover.’
After a few minutes, when they’d cleared all they could, he said, ‘Get in the Jeep, Hana. You can’t cover our tracks without putting your shoulder out again.’
She made a sound of frustration. ‘What can I do to help?’
‘Can you drive the Jeep?’ he asked tersely. ‘Just drive straight inside without turning, keeping it in first gear, and stop when the back of the Jeep is about twenty feet in.’ He picked up a branch covered in leaves as he spoke, and headed for the furthest point he dared, given the enemy was only a few kilometres behind now.
Hana jumped into the Jeep, driving it into the opened track while Alim brushed traces of the Jeep’s tyres for a hundred feet, then trailed the branch behind him as he ran inside the track.
‘Alim,’ she called urgently, ‘I can see dust rising behind us.’
‘Wait.’ He threw the debris back across the track, covering their trail as best he could. ‘That’ll slow them down a bit,’ he panted as he jerked open the driver’s door. He lifted her up and over the gear stick to the passenger seat, strapping her seat belt on. ‘You’ll need the loop to hang onto if this gets bumpy.’
She pushed her arm through the torn jacket, holding tight. ‘Go.’
He took off as slow and quiet as he could to minimise their dust cloud, praising God she’d thought to keep the engine going; with the enemy so close, starting the Jeep would surely have attracted their attention. Hana thought of things ahead of time, and didn’t let her worst fear turn to mind-numbing panic. She was a woman he could rely on to be by his side through the worst of times, not wailing or expecting him to save her.
He flicked a glance at her as he drove through the pitch-black trail. In the reflected light of the dashboard panel, she stared ahead with calm resolution. She looked ghostly, like a phantom of wisdom and strength in the night.
Even now, she didn’t panic or make demands for him to hurry every few moments, knowing it would make him more on edge. Her tranquillity in this worst of situations, her good sense was something more than any physical beauty a woman could own. She was a woman in a million; he’d never find another woman like her; and when this was over—
‘When this is over and we’re safe, I’m going to marry you.’
And in her silence, his jaw dropped a little at the outright gall of the proposal. He’d meant to tell her how he felt—but his words had come out so blunt even he was shocked. He flicked another glance at her, and saw her fists were clenched; her cheeks were white and nostrils flared. He called himself all sorts of names for stupid. If he’d shocked himself, he’d stunned Hana.
Yet he’d never meant any words more. Idiot, why couldn’t he have said something romantic and poetic, to soften her and win her over first?
Well, why not? She loved it when he called her Sahar Thurayya—if he told her he thought of her as a queen above any born to the title—he scrambled to get his thoughts in order—
‘No.’
The single word was neither blunt nor stunned; it was final. Just that one word, yet it encompassed a world of rejection. Now, when it was too late and she’d rejected him, his mind turned calm and focused; he had the fight of his life on his hands, but that was okay. His agenda was out there, and at last he had a reason to make her speak. Or so he hoped. ‘Why?’
After a few moments, she said, ‘Just no.’ But there was a telltale quiver in her voice.
‘Would you marry me if I wasn’t who I am?’ he asked, though he knew the answer.
‘N-no. You don’t mean it.’
No longer a quiver; she was stammering her words. She was considering it.
‘Yes, I do. I want to marry you.’
‘Well, you can’t.’ Desperation laced her voice. Though she was sitting right beside him, she was bolting away in her mind and heart.
‘Don’t you think I deserve a reason, my dawn star?’ he asked in Gulf Arabic; he’d noticed before that she became more emotional, more vulnerable in her native tongue, and when he called her by the name he loved.
‘I can’t give you one,’ she said, in Arabic. ‘Please, just stop.’
‘You like me,’ he went on, his mind clear, his aim on target. ‘You like me as much as I like you.’
‘I—yes.’
He kept the smile inside; the situation they were in was too serious to waste moments chalking up points. ‘To like each other is a rare thing, far better and stronger than mere desire, and it lasts a lifetime. Yet you desire me as well, Sahar Thurayya—you ache for me as much as I ache for you.’ He didn’t make it a question; they both knew the truth.
‘Please stop.’ The words sounded raw, hurting. ‘This is ridiculous. We have people trying to kill us, and you want to talk about this?’
‘I know the danger we’re in, Hana. And if they take us, kill us, this hour, this minute is the last we’ll ever be alone together. So say it, my honest dawn star.’ Gentle, remorseless. Dragging her out of emotional hiding.
‘Yes, all right,’ she snapped. ‘There’s no point hiding what you’ve already seen. When you smile at me, my heart soars. When you touch me, I—I ache, something inside me starts burning and I can’t think of anything else but you!’
He struggled against the joyous laughter bubbling up inside. Never had he heard an angrier declaration of a woman’s yearning for him…and never had it meant so much. ‘So is it my birth, my position that you don’t like?’
He kept his gaze focused on the trail ahead, but his mind was completely on her. On doing this last thing for her, bringing her out of a hiding far more complex than his disappearance. On saving her, if he could. His plan to rescue her was done—and if the worst happened, she’d at least know how he felt about her.
After a long silence, she grated out, ‘It’s not a matter of what I like or don’t like. You know I’m not suitable. The country would be in an uproar if you didn’t marry someone who could bring diplomatic or financial advantage to them all. That’s how it works.’
He did know—but he also knew how to fight it, to use his power and peop
le’s devotion to his advantage. But though he could see that wasn’t the real issue, not yet. ‘Yes, it seems that Harun and Amber know it, too—to their cost. Is that what you want for me?’
‘No!’ She sounded so frustrated he decided to take a chance.
‘What’s the real reason, Hana? What hurts you so much you can’t even say it out loud?’ he asked, with so much tenderness in his heart he saw her gulp and press her lips together.
‘Stop it. Just get us to the truck.’
‘There it is, right ahead of us.’ He didn’t press her further; she was almost at breaking point—and it told him what he meant to her. ‘Let’s go, and pray constantly there’s an exit to this track, and they’re not waiting at the end of it.’
Hana opened her door and grabbed her backpack with her undamaged hand, and ran for the truck without looking back. The stiffness of her spine was a clear back off species of its own.
Does she know how her body language gives away so many of her thoughts and emotions? He ran after her and threw himself in the truck. He found the keys in his backpack zip pocket and, after ensuring all the other entrances were doublelocked, he started the truck. ‘It won’t be easy with the truck’s tyres gone, but—’
And he cursed inside as he saw the fuel levels.
‘What is it?’
He turned to her, knowing he couldn’t protect her now…but he knew what he had to do. ‘We need to refill the fuel tank. I have twenty gallons and a hose in the back, but…’
‘But it’s time we don’t have.’ She searched his eyes for a moment, her face white. ‘We’re going to be taken, aren’t we?’
‘We’re not done yet,’ he said with grim purpose. ‘We’re not giving up.’ And from beneath the console he pulled out his ace in the pack: a satellite phone. As he drove down the trail, he speed-dialled the first number on memory, and spoke quickly. ‘Brian, it’s Alim from the northern run. I need help. I’m with one of the aid nurses from Shellah-Akbar. She’s injured and needs medical assistance—’ He listened as the pilot interjected with a vital question for the help he needed. ‘No, she’s not a local; she’s Australian. We escaped the village a few days ago and are currently sixty kilometres north-northwest of the village with Sh’ellah’s men not far behind. We need to get out, and fast. Is anyone in the region?’ He nodded at the answer, and said grimly, ‘If it helps, my surname is El-Kanar. Yes, I’m that Alim El-Kanar.’ He felt Hana’s wondering gaze on him as he listened again. ‘Thanks, Brian, we’ll meet him there.’ He disconnected and tossed her the phone. ‘We’re meeting the pilot in twenty minutes at a prearranged spot. We’ll only have a minute to get away.’
‘You’re going back to your life,’ was all she said.
‘Yes.’ He flicked a glance at her; her face was pale, and she hadn’t touched the phone. ‘In case this doesn’t work out, would you like to call anyone, make your peace?’
It was a tradition in Abbas al-Din, to make peace as a final thing; it prepared the heart to meet their maker. Hana looked down at the phone, her face filled with a hunger so pitiful it wrenched at his gut; then she pushed it away. ‘No.’
She sounded as final as she had in rejecting him, with the same desperate resolution. His poor dawn star; how she suffered for whatever happened to her in the past. How small and lonely she looked, shutting him out from helping her. How brave and beautiful, with mud and blood from multiple scratches encrusting her skin and mouth, her hair splitting and breaking from its plait, stiff with the dirt plastered through it, and a cap torn so badly spikes of hair pushed through. Just Hana…his woman, his queen, even if she rejected him for the rest of her life.
He didn’t flinch from the tasks ahead of him. To save her he’d do anything, endure whatever he must. And save her he would—from this current situation, and from what held her in such invisible chains. He’d set her free, no matter what it took.
Here we go, he thought as he saw headlights at the end of the trail. Grimly he shoved the gear down and pressed a series of buttons: his own special modifications for attack and defence. ‘Hang onto the roll bar,’ was all he said to her, and floored the accelerator.
Hana gasped as they headed straight at the Jeep blocking the path. ‘Alim, we can’t possibly make it past—’
He laughed, hard and defiant. ‘Who’s The Racing Sheikh here? You have no idea what I can do with this baby. Just hang on and watch—and trust me.’
She lifted a brow and smiled back, her chin high. ‘Bring it on, Your Lordship. I’m ready.’
The truck bumped hard as he kept pedal to the metal, slowly increasing speed, the engine revving hard and high. Shots fired, but only made cracking sounds on the double-reinforced bulletproof glass he’d made at his private lab in the basement of his Kenyan house. Hana shrieked the first time and dived down, but soon re-emerged with the same come-and-get-me laugh he’d done a minute ago. And the truck gunned straight for the Jeep blocking the path, more than twice its size and with the massive spiked bars now protruding from the front and sides—
The warlord’s men dived out the doors seconds before connection, screaming as they bolted to safety. More shots cracked the glass but it held. And the truck lifted high, higher, as the specially modified rims lifted up and over the Jeep, crushing it beneath its weight and the rollers he’d lowered between the front rims.
He heard the men shouting as they took off, and grinned.
‘Is there anywhere they can damage us with their guns?’ Hana asked, sounding awed.
He slashed the grin her way. ‘Nope. Only a bazooka or bomb will break this baby. It must be frustrating for them with no tyres to shoot out, the fuel tank triple-lined with hard-coated plastic over reinforced steel and boxed in lead casing, and bulletproof glass. They’ll have to surround the truck to stop us.’
‘They obviously don’t have bazookas or bombs. And if they do surround us, we can run them over.’ She sounded excited, gripping his arm instead of the roll bars.
Good, she hadn’t thought about the fuel situation. He didn’t want her to remember, just as he didn’t tell her that the rubber rims on the tyres had only been made to last a hundred ks at most. By the time they ran out she’d be safe—that was all he wanted. He drawled, ‘Is this enough excitement for you, my dawn star?’
She laughed. ‘My parents would say this was my destiny. I was born to be killed in a shoot-out or car chase. They could never stop me watching those kinds of shows or reading suspense novels.’
It was the first time she’d mentioned her family without pain—but he didn’t have time to pursue it. ‘Here they come. Four Jeeps, about a hundred metres back. They’re probably waiting for reinforcements to arrive before taking on the truck.’
‘They won’t be able to surround the truck before we reach the plane.’ She sounded exultant. ‘We’ve done it, Alim. You’ve done it!’
He fought to keep the sense of inevitability from his voice as he replied, ‘No, we did it.’ He revved the truck to its limits before changing gear. ‘This is going to get rough.’
She held to the roll cage as he took the straightest route, right over rocks and on shifting sand and dirt. She bumped and lifted right off the seat so many times, her shoulder had to be in agony, but she didn’t make a sound, except when he asked her to check the GPS built into the console, to be sure they were still heading in the right direction. Nor did she look back.
There was a blinking light to the west, only a hundred feet up and falling when they drew near to the assigned meeting place. The enemy was only five hundred metres behind.
He put the headlights on high beam and flashed the old distress call in Morse code, as prearranged: CQD. Then he geared down and stopped. ‘Hurry, Hana. We only have seconds.’
She nodded and grabbed at the backpacks. ‘Leave them,’ he said as he opened her door for her, rough with the exhaustion hitting him, almost thirty-six hours awake. ‘Plane weight has to be kept to a minimum.’
She nodded and took the hand he held to her
, stumbling at a dead run for the Cessna.
The small plane hit ground and skidded as it twisted to avoid the truck. The second it was still, the door flew open. ‘Get in,’ the pilot yelled, but Alim had already scooped Hana into his arms, and was putting her in. ‘Go.’
Hana’s eyes widened as she saw it was only a two-seater plane; the back was loaded to the ceiling, with no time to unload to make room for him. She struggled against the pilot as he strapped her in. ‘No, Alim, you can’t do this!’
‘Go!’ He slammed the door shut, hardening himself against the sight of her anguished face, the hands against the windows, as if she could reach him from behind the invisible barrier.
Swirling dust covered him as the plane began to move. Red dust choked him from behind as the warlord’s men arrived.
‘Alim, don’t do this! Alim!’ she screamed through the Perspex, hitting it with her fist. Tears rained down her face, his brave Hana who never cried or complained. ‘Alim!’
‘I’m coming back for you, you hear me? I’ll find you, Hana,’ he yelled to her, with such conviction even he almost believed it.
The plane took off on a short run as the Jeeps screeched past Alim, aiming their rifles high, ready to shoot them down—
‘My name is Alim El-Kanar,’ he announced in Gulf Arabic, calm, imperious in all his mud and torn clothing. Praying one of them knew enough Gulf Arabic to get the gist before somebody killed him. ‘I’m the missing sheikh of Abbas al-Din. I am worth at least fifty million US dollars in ransom to your warlord.’
It seemed they all understood well enough. Twenty assault rifles dropped from the skyward aim, and levelled at his chest.
Chapter Eight
Compassion For Humanity Refugee Camp,
North-western Kenya
Nine days later
‘HANA, you’re wanted in Sam’s office,’ one of the nurses called to her as she passed, bearing a box of ampoules for immunising babies. ‘Looks like your transfer’s come through.’
Desert Jewels & Rising Stars Page 132
