Sandfire

by Andrew Warren

  Neither side wanted a war. The data stick had to be destroyed at all costs. If what Forster had just told him was true, then maybe life could continue as it was. Pleasant. Comfortable. Numb.

  “Very well,” Rashid replied. “Let me know when this man is close to the crash site. I’ll send in a team to clean up.”

  “Good. I’ll have drones in the air to support you. I’m glad we’re still on the same page on this one.”

  “Oh, we are.”

  “I’ll call when I have more news.”

  The line went dead.

  Rashid stood motionless for a minute, knowing that another call was not far away. When his phone rang, it was also unlisted. He answered simply with a “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” said Alharbi. The hacker's voice was a nervous stutter. It had been explained very clearly to him what would happen if he didn’t provide the information Rashid needed. One of his sons would have an unfortunate accident, in the very near future.

  “Did you find what I need?” Rashid asked.

  Alharbi swallowed. “I did,” he said. “Forster is in Sana’a.”

  “Where in Sana’a exactly?”

  “You won't believe me when I tell you. Forster’s inside the U.S. Embassy.”

  Rashid found himself contemplating this news. If he had emotions, what would they be right now?

  He had nothing.

  So he simply said, “That’s very interesting, indeed.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE EMPTY QUARTER, AL JAWF GOVERNORATE, YEMEN

  Sand.

  Everything was sand.

  The tiny grains blew around their feet when standing. Luckily, the swirling sand didn't reach them when they were perched up high, riding on camels. Even when the howling winds picked up, few grains rose higher than a few feet above the dunes.

  But the sand bothered Caine less than the heat. For three days Safiya had led them deep into the driest, hottest, most inhospitable sand desert on the planet. During the day the temperature never dropped below a hundred. There was no shade, nowhere to go to get away from the burning sun. They were always thirsty, but they had to conserve their water rations, to ensure they made it to the next oasis.

  They travelled by night, when it was cooler. Safiya explained how she used the Great Bear constellation to guide them towards Polaris, the northern star. The facing of the dunes was another guide she used to keep them headed in the right direction… The towering mo unds of sand formed perpendicular to the eastern blowing winds. Caine had his satellite phone, and could have guided them by GPS. But he decided it was safer to trust Safiya’s traditional Bedouin ways. A satellite phone could be tracked, giving away their position. He kept it switched off, with the battery disconnected.

  Night time in the desert was strangely peaceful. Caine was struck by how silent and still everything was. This deep into the Empty Quarter, the dunes were five-hundred feet or higher. In the silver moonlight, they looked like ocean waves frozen in time.

  When their camels carried them over the crests, Caine could see for what seemed to be hundreds of miles in any direction. The Milky Way above was brilliant in the cloudless sky. He had never seen so many stars. He could even make out the gas clouds that formed the spiral arms of the galaxy. Meteors were plentiful… brief streaks of light on the dark, distant horizon.

  The only living creatures they had seen in their travels was a distant herd of Arabian Oryx, two days ago. Safiya told Caine that the desert antelopes took water from the scant vegetation in the area. They would walk hundreds of miles to find the tiniest patch of green. Life in the dunes was harsh, but other than humans, the Oryx had no predators.

  From dusk until dawn, their camels grumbled but kept a steady pace. They were covering around twenty-five miles a day. Kimberley had traded her Fiat for the four camels… three to ride and one to carry provisions. The heaviest load they carried were the containers of water. They brought enough to last three humans two weeks. The camels could go without for up to five days between oases. When the animals drank, they would consume up to twenty gallons in one go.

  Since their escape from Sana’a there had been no signs anyone was following them. But Caine knew spy satellites and drones could be watching them at any time without them noticing. In an effort to throw pursuers off their track, they all wore the long white tunics, sleeveless cloaks and head cloths of Bedouin men. It had been Safiya’s idea. It would be risky if they encountered another Bedouin caravan this deep in the Empty Quarter. But he hoped it would confuse aerial surveillance, should they be spotted.

  Riding a camel had taken some getting used to, and it was a challenge just to control them. Caine was a fit man. He could run thirty miles through mountainous terrain without stopping once for a rest. But the unrelenting rolling motion of the camel, and the uncomfortable saddle, left him stiff and sore after hours of riding.

  Safiya stopped them in a narrow valley between two high dunes. They would camp here, to minimize the time the sun would be upon them. After quenching their thirst, they erected their tents. The shelters were made of woven goat hair, and supported by poles and guy ropes. This had been Caine’s third attempt at erecting a Bedouin tent. He was getting used to the intricacies of its design.

  Safiya watched him work. “Did you know that in my culture, it is deemed woman’s work to prepare the tent?”

  Caine grinned. “Well, where I come from I believe in sharing—” He stopped and looked up at her. “Wait a minute. You speak English?"

  With only the three of them, hundreds of miles from anywhere, Safiya no longer hid her face. She stared back at him, but said nothing. Kimberley rested her hands on her hips, and gave him a smug grin.

  “So you both lied to me?” Caine asked, as he finished setting up the tent.

  “Oh, don’t be a sook,” Kimberley baited in her Aussie accent. “Tough love ‘em and leave ‘em bloke like you must be used to lying to women. Now you’re surprised when they lie back?”

  Caine wiped the sand off his arms and hands, and laughed. “Still don't trust me?”

  “We needed to know what kind of man you were,” Safiya answered. Whoever had taught her English was from Britain, Caine noted. The woman spoke with an English accent.

  “If you didn’t think you needed me to translate,” Kimberley added, “you might have abandoned me back in Al Abr. There was no way I was letting Safiya travel alone with a strange man deep into the desert—”

  “—So we tested you,” Safiya added. She was conversing fluidly, as if the two women were starting and ending each other’s sentences. “We wanted to see how you reacted at the clinic, with the cholera patients—”

  “—And I wanted to see what your reaction was. To see if you actually cared about the plight of women and children in this country.”

  Caine opened his mouth to speak, but he was lost for words. The two women were a united front, and he knew a losing battle when he saw one. He had to admire their fortitude and principals.

  “I gave you my word,” he finally said. “I have no intention of breaking it. But if you don’t trust me, why are we here?”

  “I said we didn’t trust you,” Kimberley answered. “Past tense. My Aussie bullshit detector is still on, but you’ve stuck it out this long. Maybe you’ve got what it takes.”

  Without warning Safiya began shaking. She started sobbing again. Kimberley held her, gave her comfort. Neither she nor Caine said another word for several minutes.

  Safiya’s sobbing finally subsided. Caine put an arm on her shoulder. “I promise you again,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I can to find your children. Whatever it takes.”

  “Me too,” Kimberley said, also placing her hand on her heart. “I promise that too.”

  Safiya wiped the stray tears from her eyes. Soon the sun would be rising, so she excused herself to climb a dune and face north, ready for her morning prayers.

  When Safiya was out of earshot, Kimberley said casually, “Your name isn’t really Matthew Quinn
, is it?”

  “No,” he said, just as casually.

  “Thought so,” she said with a shrug. “You going to tell me?”

  “It’s Thomas. Thomas Caine."

  “Thomas,” she said, smiling. “Suits you better than Matthew.” She rummaged through their bags until she found dates, flat bread and coffee. “Hungry? Thirsty?”

  “Yes, and yes. I’ll get a fire going.” They had brought kindling and paraffin oil, enough to brew coffee twice a day. He was surprised she didn’t ask him more about who he was, but perhaps that was all she needed… a name. Someone she could trust.

  He hoped he wouldn't be forced to let her down.

  Kimberley looked up at the dune, where Safiya was bowing down in prayer. “How much danger are we in, Thomas?”

  Now that the sun was rising, Caine placed his sunglasses over his eyes. “I really don’t know. I was attacked in Sana’a, but since then, nothing. I have to assume someone doesn’t want the downed aircraft found. But if we were being followed, I think I would have spotted them by now.”

  “Is that why you keep looking over your shoulder all the time?”

  He nodded. “Occupational hazard.”

  She glanced back at Safiya. “She’s scared, but she hides it well. She believes she’ll never see her children ever again. She’s afraid you will betray us.”

  “I know,” Caine said thoughtfully. “What do you think?”

  “You’re an enigma, Thomas Caine. But until you prove otherwise, I trust you’ll do what’s right. And I’ll fight the good fight beside you.”

  Caine did not reply. He watched Safiya finish her prayers in silence.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE EMTPY QUARTER, NAJRAN REGION, SAUDI ARABIA

  Early into the night they stumbled across a bitumen road stretching into the west. A battered sedan sped past, and disappeared into the distance. Kimberley shuddered. She hadn’t expected signs of modern civilization to pop up out of nowhere.

  “This is the Khbash to Sharorah Road,” Safiya explained. “We are well inside Saudi Arabia now.”

  “Wow! Really?” Kimberly asked, her voice tinged with anxiety.

  She shivered for a second, despite the intense heat. This was her first illegal border crossing. She was now inside one of the least friendly nations on earth for women. She took a deep breath and reminded herself why she was here. She urged her camel on.

  Safiya crossed the road first with the cargo camel trailing behind her. Kimberley was next, and Caine took up the rear. Kimberly was still getting used to his real name. When she told Safiya, the Bedouin woman had given her a pensive look, but did not comment. She hadn’t seemed at all surprised he’d been using an alias .

  In under a minute they were over the road and traversing the next sand dune. Modern infrastructure vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  The quarter moon was luminous in the horizon, bathing the Empty Quarter in dark blues. Despite the constant sense of foreboding that gripped her, she thought the desert was beautiful. It held mystic, almost supernatural qualities. It’s silence and stillness created a sense of peace. That, combined with hours of rocking to the rhythmic pace of her marching camel, led to drifting thoughts. Like waking dreams, they ran through her head. A subconscious analysis of what the hell she was doing, and why she was here.

  Life in Sydney had been fun, safe and secure. A good job, great friends, and family who loved her. So why had she uprooted her prosperous life? Why had she come to work in one of the most dangerous and desperate regions on the planet?

  Her answer always sounded corny when she explained it to others. She wanted to make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate than her. It made her feel that her life finally held purpose. She had never felt so satisfied, so complete. Sure, there was the bureaucracy of the UN to deal with. Plus the sexism, the backward practices of Middle Eastern government, made her want to scream at the top of her lungs. But she could also see the results of her labor. Women, children and men lived better lives because of the aid she provided. How many people back home could say the same?

  At first she thought that aid work would be something she would do for a few years at the most. Now she wasn’t certain she would ever stop.

  Caine rode by her and smiled. He was a handsome man. Fit, muscular, and all alpha male. More importantly, he was considerate and respectful. There was a depth to him, something more behind those emerald eyes than selfish needs and desires. The last characteristic was his most attractive trait, but also his most mysterious.

  Kimberley felt certain he was a former U.S. Navy SEAL, Delta Force operator, or something similar. A special forces hero who spent most of his life operating behind enemy lines. She’d met a few of their kind over the years in Iraq and Yemen.

  Like Caine, they were all quietly confident and rarely bragged. But they never seemed to give much thought to what they were doing. Point and shoot. Fire and forget. Kill a few terrorists in the night, then go and have some beers with some mates and watch the Gridiron. But with Caine, she sensed something more behind his piercing green eyes.

  She had seen the way he reacted to the infected masses, in the town on the outskirts of the desert. The look in his eyes when he talked about the death of his friend. The tenderness in his voice, when he promised Safiya that he would find her sons.

  She realized that despite his hard exterior, Caine was not indifferent to the suffering of others.

  Later in the night when the moon had set, he rode alongside her. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “Okay, I guess. Scared out of my mind, but okay.”

  “Well, look on the bright side,” he said with a grin. “We've made it this far.”

  “We made a promise. I never go back on my promises.”

  “I can see that.”

  “When I think about what Safiya has gone through—is still going through—I know I have nothing to complain about,” she said.

  Safiya was ahead by about thirty meters, leading the way. She mostly kept to herself. Kimberley suspected it was because she didn’t want them to see how much she was hurting.

  Kimberly sighed. “To have a child die is bad enough. But at least then, you know their suffering is at an end. To have them go missing, not knowing what’s happening to them, if you'll ever see them again… it would destroy you.”

  Caine nodded, but said nothing.

  She glanced over at him. “Why are you here, Thomas?”

  “To find the intel on the missing aircra—”

  “No,” she said, cutting him off. “I mean… I know your mission, bu t why do you work for the CIA? You’re putting your life on the line too. I’m guessing you do it all the time. There must be some kind of greater purpose, right?”

  The man called Caine looked towards the horizon. “I’ve done a lot of bad things, Kimberley, but I’ve always thought that what I did served a greater good. I know how that sounds… but it’s true. Most of the world is run by bad people. The CIA, our allies… I know they aren’t perfect. But things would be worse if they weren’t out there in the field, fighting back.”

  She nodded, not certain that he had answered her question. Like all soldiers she had encountered, he was guarded. She knew with men like him, there would always be aspects of his personality and his past that would remain closed to the rest of the world.

  “How does Safiya speak English so well?” he asked, changing the subject.

  Kimberley shrugged. “That's quite a story. Safiya told me that as a child, she and her sister discovered an Englishman dying in a jeep. He had crashed, traveling off road in the desert. They rescued the man, and together with her father and mother, they nursed him back to life. But he had broken his back, leaving him a paraplegic. His name was Justin Melville. He was some kind of banker, advising the Saudi Royal Family. Melville had swindled them out of a vast fortune. Before that, he had embezzled money from several of the largest banks in England, so he had nowhere to go. He made a deal with S
afiya’s father. He taught Safiya and her siblings English and mathematics, in return for food and lodging, and to keep his location secret. I guess life as a cripple in a Bedouin camp was better than a Saudi jail.”

  Caine grunted. “That’s some story. Do you believe it?”

  She raised an eyebrow at Caine’s suspicious remark. “What has Safiya got to gain from lying?”

  “Nothing, I guess. What happened to Melville? Is he still alive?”

  “No, she said he died like ten years ago or something. Some kind of fever he never recovered from. ”

  Caine nodded. “One more secret, buried in the sands.”

  “Thomas, what’s going to happen to Safiya, when this is all over? Widows don’t fare well in her culture.”

  “Let’s focus on getting her children back first. Then we can focus on her long-term future.”

  Ahead, Safiya had made a sharp turn, and galloped her camel back to Caine and Kimberley.

  “What’s up?” Kimberley asked. She could tell by Safiya’s frantic expression that whatever she was about to tell them, it was not good news

  “A sandstorm is coming! We must prepare. It will be upon us in minutes!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A wall of sand, like an ominous cliff face a mile high, stretched from one horizon to the other. The frantic, rolling cloud of darkness was lit by occasional flashes of lightning. It churned across the sand, heading straight towards them.

  There was nowhere to run.

  Caine leapt off his camel and approached Safiya, yelling already because of the noise. “Do we erect the tent?” he asked, ready to do something. He knew they didn’t have long. They had to act quickly.

  She shook her head. “Too late! I apologize most profoundly. God forgive me, I did not see the warning signs.”

  “No need to apologize,” Kimberley shouted. “Just tell us what to do!”

  Safiya nodded. “The biggest danger is sand getting in our throats. Too much and you will drown.”