Desert Secrets

by Lisa Harris

  I need this plan to work, God…

  Because Bret’s life depended on it.

  Joseph stopped the vehicle a dozen yards from the nearest tent. “I’ll wait here for you.”

  Colton nodded, then stepped out of the Jeep and grabbed the suitcases, hesitating briefly before heading toward the camp. This had to be the right place, but there were no signs of Bret or his captors. No movement in the distance except the hot wind that never stopped blowing.

  He glanced at the ridge. If the Malian army wasn’t here, right now, they were all going to end up dead.

  A man with a thick beard stepped out of the shadows of one of the tents and into the sunlight. “You have what we asked for?”

  “I’ve got the suitcases.” Colton walked slowly forward with one in each hand, his heart pounding with each step against the shifting sand.

  “Set them down on the ground in front of you.”

  Colton gripped the handles of the suitcases. “I want to see my brother-in-law.”

  “That’s not how it’s going to work.” The man raised his automatic weapon. “First, I see the money. Then we’ll talk about your brother.”

  Colton glanced up at the ridge. There was still no movement. And he didn’t have a plan B.

  He hesitated, then set down the suitcases and took a step back. “Where’s my brother-in-law?”

  “Don’t worry. He’s here.”

  Bret appeared at the entrance of one of the tents gripping a backpack in his hand.

  Colton resisted the urge to run to him and pull him into a bear hug, but there was no time for a family reunion. “We need to get you out of here—”

  “Wait,” Bret said. “There’s another prisoner.”

  A young woman ducked out of the tent behind Bret, the wind tugging on the ends of her dark, shoulder-length hair. His mind fought to place the familiar face. He’d met her before. They’d chatted briefly…

  Lexi.

  The man shouted at her to get back. “She’s not going with you.”

  Another man grabbed her arm. She screamed, trying to fight back. A second later, a bullet slammed into the man, dropping him to the ground beside her. She stood frozen. Blood spatter dotted her khaki pants. Colton reacted instantly, ignoring the men shouting around them as he ran to her, then pulled her toward the only cover there was behind one of the tents.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He looked back up at the ridge. Half a dozen men in military uniforms appeared along the ridge at the edge of the camp. He let out a sharp sigh of relief. The army had arrived. Now it was up to him to get them safely out of here.

  “Follow me. We need to go now.” He grabbed Lexi’s hand and started running back toward the Jeep with Bret right behind them, praying the army would be able to hold the kidnappers off. “I’ve got a driver waiting for us.”

  He shoved back the worst-case scenarios flooding through his mind as he caught sight of the approaching vehicle. They’d almost made it through the most difficult part, getting away from their captors in one piece. Now all he had to do was ensure they got to the airstrip, got the plane in the air and flew them out of this nightmare.

  TWO

  While Lexi’s mind fought to hold on to reality, Colton held her hand and they ran across the sand and away from the sounds of gunfire. She’d been kidnapped by rebels, taken to an unknown location in the middle of the desert, only to be rescued by a man she’d dreamed about. It sounded more like a movie than her own fairly routine life.

  She tripped on a bulge in the sand, but Colton caught her, ensuring she kept her balance. She glanced down at her bloodstained pants, before she started running again. Unlike her nighttime imaginings of Colton, this was no dream. A man had been murdered next to her. She was running for her life in the middle of the Sahara, praying that one of those bullets she heard behind her didn’t hit her or one of the men escaping with her.

  Bret had mentioned how he’d hoped his brother-in-law had a plan to rescue them, but at the time that had seemed impossible. And with men who had nothing to lose, she could have easily been kept for months, even years. She knew what happened to people like her who were snatched up and disappeared. It was a place she hadn’t wanted to imagine for herself.

  “This is my driver, Joseph,” Colton said, as they neared the Jeep. “He’ll get us out of here in one piece.”

  Colton helped her into backseat of the vehicle next to Bret, then scrambled into the front passenger seat. The second his door closed, Joseph pushed on the accelerator and headed back across the sand in the direction they’d come from.

  Lexi pulled the seat belt across her lap and buckled it, working to slow her breathing both from exertion and pure terror.

  “Are you both okay?” Colton asked.

  “We will be once we put enough miles between us and those men. This is Lexi Shannon, by the way,” Bret said, making a quick introduction. “And I’m sure she’d agree that your timing couldn’t have been more perfect.”

  “We met once in Timbuktu,” Colton said, looking at her with those unforgettable smoky gray eyes.

  “You remember?” Her hands gripped the armrest as Joseph sped across the bumpy terrain that even with a seat belt on made her feel as if she were about to fly through the window.

  “I do. Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked her.

  “I think so.” She tried not to think about the bloodstained pants.

  “How long have you been here?” Colton asked.

  “They grabbed me yesterday morning outside Timbuktu.” She tried to suppress the wave of emotion that came with the memories. “Then brought me to the camp early this morning.”

  A day earlier and he would have missed her. A day later—she hated to think what they might have done to her given more time.

  Bret reached up and squeezed Colton’s shoulder. “You can’t imagine how good it is to see you. The two of us discussed your taking part in a rescue, but I honestly didn’t think it was possible. Where in the world did you come up with two million dollars?”

  Colton turned back around, as the camp faded into the distance along with the sounds of gunfire. “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?” Bret asked.

  “I didn’t have the money. Not real bills, anyway. It was counterfeit.”

  Bret leaned forward. “Counterfeit?”

  The surprise in Bret’s voice mirrored her own. Arriving without the ransom was a risk that could have easily cost not just her and Bret’s life, but Colton’s, as well. And yet the plan had worked. He had somehow managed to grab both Bret and her while the rebels had taken the fall with the army’s bullets.

  “I decided to show up with the Malian army instead,” Colton said. “I know it sounds crazy, but when Becca and I couldn’t come up with the two million, it was the only real option we had.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Bret shook his head. “If they’d opened those suitcases and discovered what was inside, or if those soldiers hadn’t shown up…”

  “But none of that happened,” Colton said. “And now the army’s going to play cleanup and you’re safe.”

  A shadow crossed Bret’s face. “How is Becca?”

  “My sister’s a strong woman, but it’s been a tough few weeks for both her and Noah. The waiting and not knowing…”

  “They’re what kept me going.”

  “We’ll call her as soon as we can, I promise. Let’s just focus on getting out of here first and making sure we’re all safe.”

  Lexi glanced out the window at the miles and miles of endless sand. Dunes loomed to the west then spread out flat in front of them and to the east. She was still breathing hard. Her heart still pounding. She wasn’t going to feel safe for a very long time.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention from behind them.

  She turned to look out the back window as the Jeep bounced across the uneven ground. A vehicle followed.

  �
��Colton…” She could hear the panic in her voice as she spoke.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She stared out the back of the Jeep. “There’s someone behind us, and they’re closing in.”

  “I thought the army was supposed to clean up while we made a getaway,” Joseph said, pushing on the accelerator.

  Lexi gripped her fingers tighter around the armrest. When she was a teenager and they’d lived in California, her stepfather had raced dirt bikes up the local sand dunes. He taken her out a few times and taught her about safety. Which was why she knew that this wasn’t the place to be running for their lives. She’d seen firsthand how easy it was to flip a vehicle. Or the potential of getting stuck in the sand. Add to that, if the tire pressure was too high, the handling ability of the 4x4 would be affected.

  There were so many things that could go wrong.

  “What do we do now?” Bret asked.

  “We need to figure out plan B,” Colton said.

  “Which is?” Joseph asked.

  “Drive straight up the dune,” Colton said.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Joseph said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding! That’s crazy!” Lexi grabbed the headrest and leaned forward. “It’s too easy to roll.”

  “I’m pretty sure that other vehicle doesn’t have enough power to make it over the top,” Joseph said, apparently buying into the idea.

  “And if we don’t make it all the way up?” Lexi asked.

  “We’ll end up rolling back down the dune,” Joseph said. “But that won’t happen.”

  Lexi frowned. “And this vehicle…you think it can handle it?”

  “I’m not sure we have a choice. Which means everyone needs to grab on to something now.”

  Lexi leaned back in her seat and felt the pull of gravity fighting against the vehicle as Joseph took a sharp left and headed up the dune. What if they didn’t make it to the top? And even if they did go over the hill unscathed and lost whoever was behind them, they still weren’t out of the woods yet. There could be other insurgents coming after them, and then there was Colton’s brother-in-law. He was weak after two months of captivity and needed to be checked out by a doctor.

  Joseph had his foot on the accelerator, fighting with the engine to keep up the momentum. If he tried to turn or cross the slope, they’d end up popping a tire or flipping the car. And if they didn’t maintain their speed they’d never make it.

  Lexi turned around just in time to see the other vehicle rolling back down the steep hill. There was still a chance they would meet the same end as they weren’t at the top yet.

  Finally they crested the top of the ridge. Joseph had been right.

  “I think your zany plan worked,” Bret said.

  Lexi let out a lungful of pent-up air, and realized she’d been holding her breath.

  “We’re not out of here yet, but we’re close,” Joseph said, reading her thoughts. “Your Cessna’s parked about ten minutes ahead.”

  Lexi caught the worry in Colton’s expression as Joseph sped across the desert. All they had to do now was make it to Colton’s plane and take off before anyone else tried to stop them.

  *

  Get them in the air and fly them out of here.

  A piece of cake, Colton thought, still trying to convince himself they were out of danger as the Cessna took off from the runway fifteen minutes later. Thanks to Joseph’s skilled driving, they’d made it to the plane.

  There was no human settlement for as far as he could see. Nothing growing in the harsh desert sands except for a few scraggly bushes. Nothing to stop them. They might actually make it out of here in one piece after all.

  Colton felt the muscles in his shoulders begin to relax as the six-passenger aircraft continued climbing toward its cruising altitude. He drew in a deep breath, then glanced down at the familiar terrain below him from the pilot’s seat. Endless ripples of orange shimmered in the afternoon sunlight.

  He glanced behind him at the seat where his brother-in-law had his head back and his eyes closed. Colton took a moment to study Bret’s profile. His beard had grown, his face was tanned and he’d lost a significant amount of weight. But he was alive. And for now, that was all that mattered.

  Besides the loss of weight, he still looked fairly strong, though there was no way at this point to measure the emotional effects of what he’d gone through. Now he just needed to get Bret home.

  Colton shifted his attention to the passenger sitting beside him, letting his gaze linger longer than necessary before turning back to the controls. Lexi Shannon had intrigued him during the one, brief time he’d met her. First impressions had revealed she was smart, compassionate, adventurous and, on top of that, beautiful. Not that he was interested in pursuing anything at this point. A broken relationship was one of the factors that had sealed the deal on him taking a job flying missionary bush planes across North Africa. There was no way he was ready to hand in his pilot’s license for another rocky romance.

  “You okay?” he asked her through his headset, deciding that a bit of conversation couldn’t hurt. He needed a distraction, and he was pretty sure she did, as well.

  She turned and smiled at him with a mixture of both determination and fatigue in her gaze. “Besides the fact that my adrenaline’s still pumping, and I will probably forever be leery of men in fatigues…yeah. Or I will be…eventually.”

  Colton laughed. “I don’t blame you.”

  Her dark eyes intensified. “Thank you. You risked a lot to get us out of there.”

  “All in a day’s work.”

  “Something tells me that today was anything but normal,” she said. “At least I hope so.”

  “I don’t know. Rescuing a damsel in distress isn’t a bad way to spend my time if you ask me. And on top of that you can’t beat the view from up here,” he said. And besides, after today’s flight, the chances of him seeing her again were pretty slim.

  “Absolutely stunning.” She shot him a smile that somehow managed to melt away one of the outer layers of protection he’d built up around his heart.

  “See that row of camels?” Colton ignored his heart and pointed toward a thin line of camels that looked like a trail of smoke against the sand.

  Lexi leaned forward, searched the landscape below them, then nodded. “Wow. One of the things I want to do before I move back to the US is camel trekking along with a night spent in the desert. I’ve heard that both the night sky and the sunrises are incredible.”

  “They are,” Colton said. “Though here’s an interesting fact. Did you know that camels really don’t store water the way most people think? Their humps are actually made of fat, allowing them to keep their body temperature down.”

  Lexi laughed. “I didn’t know I was getting a rescuer, a pilot and a tour guide today.”

  “Camels also have three eyelids,” he added with a grin. “Though don’t get too excited. That’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge.”

  Lexi laughed again. “When I first flew here, I arrived at night, then we drove in the rest of the way, so this is my first up-close view of the desert from the air. But I know you make these flights all the time. Does it ever become routine? At least when you’re not rescuing damsels in distress?”

  “Routine?” He shook his head. “Hardly. This is the third largest desert in the world after the Arctic and Antarctica. Some might call it barren—and a lot of it is—but I find it fascinating. Have you ever been up in a Cessna before?”

  “My grandfather’s a pilot, though he doesn’t fly as much as he used to. I always wanted to take flying lessons myself, but for some reason I’ve never taken the time to learn.”

  “It’s never too late.” Colton said. “What does your grandfather fly?”

  “He used to have a 1979 Super Viking.”

  Colton let out a low whistle. “I flew one of those once. Loved it.”

  “He named her Abigail after my grandmother. She—well, both the plane and my grandmothe
r were his pride and joy.”

  “I can imagine. At least for the plane, that is.” Colton chuckled. “Single-engine, four seat, high performance. The one I flew handled like a dream.”

  “I have a feeling you and my grandfather would hit it off. He’s a veteran with dozen’s of stories to tell. I keep telling him he needs to write them all down.”

  “I’d love to hear them sometime—”

  The sound of an explosion drowned out their conversation. The entire plane shook and started veering toward the right.

  Lexi pressed her hand against the window to hold herself upright. “What in the world just happened?”

  He glanced out the window, his own heart hammering as the plane started to dive.

  You’ve got to be kidding…

  “Colton?” Bret grabbed his shoulder from behind.

  “Looks like we’ve been hit,” Colton said.

  “What?” He caught the panic in Lexi’s voice as she spoke. “You can’t be serious?”

  “Trust me, I wish I wasn’t,” Colton said, managing to pull them out of the dive.

  At least for the moment.

  “Hit with what?” Bret asked.

  “I don’t know, but whoever followed us must have brought some firepower with him.”

  “How serious is it?”

  “Let’s just say, I’m going to try to keep this bird in the air as long as I can, but eventually I’m going to have to find a place to land. And probably sooner rather than later.”

  He picked up the radio to contact his base back in Timbuktu, but all he could hear was static. Whatever hit them must have knocked out the antenna. Glancing out the window again, he saw smoke coming out the side of the plane.

  “What do you see down there?” he asked.

  “I think there’s a vehicle. Maybe the one that was following us. I don’t know,” Lexi said.

  “Whoever’s down there has to have some kind of surface-to-air missile,” Colton fought to keep the plane in the air. He needed to get them as far away as he could from the men on the ground before he brought the aircraft down.

  He let out a sharp huff of air. Actually landing the plane could turn out to be least of their worries. If they managed to survive the landing and avoid whoever was after them, they were still going to have to deal with the harsh elements of the terrain below. With its shifting sand dunes, barren plateaus, and limited water and vegetation, most people couldn’t even fathom the actual size and dangers of the desert that engulfed northern Africa. He scanned the horizon. All he could see was the miles and miles of sand that spread out around them. The nearest town was hours away by foot—if they could even find it—and when night fell the soaring temperatures were going to drop.