Out of Sight

by Cherry Adair

  "Don't panic yet. Believe me, I'll let you know when it's time to panic." Kane spared her a quick glance, then looked back at the outside world as it tried to claw its way in. "The team'll be there when we need them. There's only so much anyone can do in this weather. Even Raazaq can't beat the storms. Right now we're the closest to him.

  "The second this storm backs off," he said, each word bitten off, "the skies will be filled with aircraft and more backup than anyone will know what to do with. In the meantime, we go as fast and as far as we can and ride his ass."

  "I'll alert the others." She grabbed the comm link and connected with Hawk, instructing the men to catch up and stay close if they could. AJ used a simple series of T-FLAC code words to briefly fill in the others about the danger and the ramifications of Raazaq, and within seconds the convoy was once again in motion. She couldn't see them, but she knew the team was back there, covering their ass, moving up to join them in T-FLAC solidarity. She and Kane weren't alone, despite the isolation of driving in this storm.

  Hell, just driving was a potentially lethal business as the winds gusted and the sand whirled in a blinding, beige wall. The road, not that great to begin with, was obscured by moving sand. They could have been about to drive over an oasis full of happy villagers and they wouldn't know it until the wheels made a thumping sound over their bodies. Jesus.

  AJ glanced at Kane in the lights from the dash. The muscles in his arms bulged as he fought for control of the wheel, and strain bracketed his mouth as he took the Humvee to dangerous speeds. They didn't speak as he concentrated on keeping the heavy vehicle on the road.

  At times they almost seemed to levitate in the raging wind. AJ bit her tongue, swore, and pressed a hand to her somersaulting stomach. The wind was actually trying to push them backwards. Was Fate trying to tell them something?

  No.

  The only fate was the one you made, AJ thought. And she'd be damned if she'd let that madman Raazaq continue holding the world hostage.

  She grabbed the Sat Comm when it rang—grateful for the interruption. "It's Hawk," she shouted over the raging storm. "He wants to talk to you."

  "Put him on speaker."

  AJ flicked the switch and adjusted the buttons to bring in the other operative more clearly. She turned up the volume as high as it would go so Hawk's voice would carry over the thundering roar surrounding them. The satellite communicator crackled like an old-fashioned radio. "Shit!" she shouted as some sort of flying vegetation—Was that a palm tree?—came right for the car. "Watch out!"

  The vehicle slewed across the nonexistent road, bounced convulsively as Kane wrestled the wheel to get the car back in the right direction.

  "The—broken dow—" Hawk's voice broke up.

  "Say again," Kane demanded.

  "—two—sand—engine—" The other vehicle's engine had seized in the sandstorm. Hell. There was a pause as they all contemplated this news. "Have—back—them."

  "No," Kane said flatly. "Raazaq is already in the wind. They'll have to wait. Radio in and have the others pick them up when they come through."

  There was a long pause. "Cou—three da—or more."

  "Could be," Kane told him flatly. "I need you more than they do. Get your ass in ge—" He swore. "The line went dead."

  "I'll try again." AJ used the satellite communicator, she tried the land line, she tried both cell phones.

  Nothing worked.

  All communications, satellite and otherwise, were suddenly, inexplicably, dead.

  They were on their own.

  "Raazaq is approximately eighteen miles ahead of us." Kane flicked a grim glance at the blip on the screen. "Which places him… where?"

  "The oasis," AJ said triumphantly. "If we gun it, we can be there in twenty minutes. Tops."

  "You sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Have a heading?"

  "We're on it. Just keep going. We can do this."

  Forty-five minutes later, Kane knew they'd arrived. The front bumper of their vehicle and a very large palm tree suddenly came eye to eye. He slammed on the brakes. The Humvee vibrated, its back end swinging wide in the sand, but it stopped dead just inches away from the trunk.

  "Well done, bubba." AJ let out the breath she appeared to have been holding for miles, and started braiding her long hair. Hair as soft as the finest silk and smelling of roses and cinnamon.

  "Raazaq better be here." AJ dropped her hands. "If not, where?"

  "Wish to hell I knew." Kane squinted through a veil of swirling sand and observed the black tents and staked animals of the nomadic Bedouins.

  She searched the bag at her feet. "What do we want to take in?"

  "I'll take the Sig, thanks, and my knife." AJ handed him the weapons. Not much if things turned to shit. But they couldn't go in armed to the teeth and look friendly, either. He strapped the knife to his calf, then tugged his pant leg down over it. He leaned forward to secret the gun in the small of his back under his T-shirt. Wouldn't bear close scrutiny, but in the dark nobody would notice. "Take something small and discreet. Ready?"

  "I'm weaponed up, if that's what you mean. Are we getting out, or do we sit here until the wind blows us to Oz?"

  "Out, wiseass. Grab the canteen first."

  They both wet large bandannas, squeezed out the excess water, and tied the damp cloths around their noses and mouths to keep out the sand. They looked like outlaws.

  He held out his hand. "Grab that bag of supplies behind your seat. Give it to me. Here, I'll take it." He tucked the small leather sack inside his shirt.

  AJ grabbed his hand and slid across the console, exiting beside him on the driver side. Instantly, she was battered by the never-ceasing wind. Kane put himself between her and the blast, but it was like trying to hold off a tornado with a screen door. The sand was everywhere. Living, breathing, an entity all to itself. It surrounded them, pelting against her skin like thousands of needles at once. Digging, stinging, slapping.

  The wind wrenched the door handle out of Kane's hand and slammed the car door hard enough to shake the vehicle, missing her by a breath. Kane grabbed her hand and steadied her, pulling her toward the largest tent, in the center of the small encampment. A faint glow of a lamp within shone like a beacon, guiding them in out of the storm. The rest of the world was darkness and gale-force-driven sand.

  Despite the wet cloth covering their faces, both choked and coughed on powder-fine dust particles as they leaned into the wind, weaving on unsteady feet like Saturday night drunks. Sand gritted between her teeth and coated her nose, despite the bandanna.

  The narrow squint of their eyes made walking hazardous, and the damp cloths over their faces quickly clogged with sand, making breathing damn near impossible. He held on to AJ's hand tightly enough to crack her slender bones. And she was glad of it. He was the one stable point in this night filled with sound and fury and little else. Every step was torture. Every breath painful. She clung to Kane, a part of her terrified that she'd be plucked from his grasp and carried away on a wall of sand.

  Christ. Kane'd never experienced anything like this. Particles stung his skin like microscopic shards of glass. He felt as if he were being sliced to pieces by an enemy too small and too numerous to fight. So much for this storm passing in eight hours. It'd been seven, and it didn't look as though it would let up anytime soon.

  There was no sign of Raazaq's entourage. He had four vehicles, at least. But the fact that Kane couldn't see them didn't necessarily mean anything. The cars could be hidden behind the tents, or between some of the small mud huts scattered about the oasis. Hell. They could be sitting right in front of him and he wouldn't be able to see them. Impossible to tell in the dark with the sand blowing up a screen that covered everything unless they tripped over it.

  There was a strong possibility that Raazaq wasn't here. That he'd somehow managed to ditch the tracking device. If that was the case, finding him now would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Or, in this case, one particular gra
in of sand in the middle of a khamsin.

  The hot wind buffeted AJ smack into him. Hard. They staggered before Kane caught her and wrapped a strong arm about her waist, supporting her weight against him. Their booted feet sank into ankle-deep sand, which moved and shifted beneath them like quicksand.

  The cluster of tents, which had seemed so close when they left the Humvee, appeared much farther away now. Almost as if the camp were slipping away from them. Hell, they wouldn't be the first people to get lost and die when safety lay a few feet away. The desert was alive and malicious. A killer with no compassion. Very much like the monster they were tracking. The only way they'd stay alive would be to remember that.

  Kane called out a greeting in Arabic as they came within feet of the tent—fortunately they'd managed to arrive at the front door. More by accident than design. He pushed into the tent, dragging AJ in with him.

  A man, reclining on the ground in a nest of blankets, looked up, startled, from the book he was reading. "Salaam Aleikum."

  "Aleikum es Salaam," Kane replied, drawing AJ inside. Still supporting her with one strong arm, he reached up and pulled his bandanna down to lay around the base of his neck. God, it felt good to draw a breath that wasn't filled with sand grinding its way down his throat.

  "Assef. Ma-batkallamsh àrabi." It would be expected that he didn't speak Arabic, but a wise man didn't plead too ignorant. A tourist would pick up a smattering of the language in his travels.

  "I speak your American," the man said in deep, if halting accents. He waved them forward. "Marhaba, welcome, travelers."

  After much salaaming, greetings, and offers of food and lodging, Kane and AJ found themselves seated on a pillow-strewn rug as the man woke his servants and ordered food prepared.

  AJ slumped against Kane, yanking her bandanna down and scraping one hand across her dirty face to push her sand-encrusted hair back and out of her way. She looked gorgeous.

  Kane was so damn glad to be out of the wind and sand that he grinned at her before turning his gaze to their new surroundings.

  The goat- and camel-hair-paneled tent was large, and well insulated against the storm. Seven feet high, and held up by nine poles, the large space was divided into a women's side and a men's side, with rugs on the ground, and facing away from the worst of the winds. The raging sand screamed outside, and they had to raise their voices to be heard, but they were sufficiently protected from the worst of it.

  Kane introduced himself and AJ, found out their host's name was Jafar Shaaeawi, and politely refused the first offer of food, as was custom. Their host politely insisted, which was also custom. Kane explained he was a photographer, AJ his model, and they were on their way to the Siwa Oasis. Of course, they were going nowhere near the oasis, but it was in a somewhat southerly direction and could explain why they were heading this way.

  Jafar, a small, middle-aged man with a grizzly gray beard and large, meaty hands, informed Kane, in excruciatingly polite tones, that they were way off course. He offered to have one of his many strong sons go with them in the morning and get them back on the correct road for their destination.

  A woman rose from a pile of blankets in the corner and moved to light a fire. AJ straightened up and smiled at her.

  Kane presented her with the small pouch he'd brought in with him. It contained a brick of sugar and a pouch of tobacco as gifts to their host, who would prize both, as they were so hard to come by. Both the men and women of the nomad tribes chewed tobacco, and the woman accepted the gifts with obvious delight.

  Then she turned with a swirl of her black robes to squat and stir the fire. The flames danced, flickering golden on the roof of the tent. Jafar's wife then served them curdled milk in small, filthy mugs. Saharan nomads used precious water only to drink, not to wash their utensils, and a filter of sand covered the curds. Even in the dim lighting Kane could see the dirt and small insects swimming in the gray mess.

  Their host slurped his down, and Kane and AJ drank, too. Kane hoped AJ attempted to do what he was doing, filter the liquid through clenched teeth. Since there was no way to politely spit out what he'd filtered, he swallowed, anyway. He bit back a grin when he heard AJ noisily swallow beside him. This was foul stuff. Good girl, she'd managed to do so without gagging. His estimation of her went up several more notches.

  The woman, never introduced, and covered from toes to eyes in her black garb and veil, filled a miniature enameled teapot with green tea leaves. She broke a large lump off the rock-hard loaf of sugar Kane had given her, with a precise knock of a small tea-glass bottom. She then lined three glasses up on the rug in front other. Silence hung in the tent while the woman went through the hospitable ceremony. Outside, the wind and sand continued to batter at the walls of the tent, but inside, it was still, and warm.

  After the tea was brewed, she poured it into a glass from a height that made it foam, then back into the teapot. She poured the tea back and forth three or four times, let it come to a boil again, then served them each a glass with a flourish.

  Kane knew that the sugary green tea was one of the few sweets the nomads indulged in. He let the silence deepen as they sipped their drinks, letting their host savor the taste with loud, slurping noises. As was the custom, the tea was served three times.

  "The first glass tastes bitter, the second one just right, the third one a little weak," their host told them with a smile.

  Kane declined food. It was late, they'd disturbed their host more than enough for the night. But the man insisted. Kane felt AJ droop beside him as she leaned heavily against his side. He glanced at her once. She was fighting sleep, but game, and he knew should the need arise she'd be wide awake and raring to go.

  Admiration pooled inside him and he gave her full marks. No matter how this op had started, she'd more than pulled her weight since.

  Ful beans had been boiled—at some point—with vegetables, mashed onions, and tomatoes, and then heavily spiced. The woman reheated the mixture, and brought it to them in a communal serving dish with rounds of bread. They tore the round loaf into finger-size portions and dipped the bread in the bowl, eating with their fingers. The bean dish was delicious, lack of refrigeration notwithstanding, and AJ and Kane both ate their fill. He'd been hungrier than he'd realized, and he noticed AJ must've been, too; she ate everything except the finish on the bowl. And she was looking a little more perky.

  All to the good.

  Fatigue dragged at Kane's gritty eyes, but he fought to stay alert. Their host was friendly and courteous, but for all Kane knew, Jafar had offered Raazaq the same hospitality. He couldn't afford to relax too far.

  A nargileh, or water pipe, was brought out, but this time Kane declined with utmost sincerity. He and his twin, Derek, had smoked half a pack of Lucky's behind the garage one momentous afternoon when they'd been fourteen. Between the two of them, they'd been sick enough for ten people. It wasn't something Kane wanted to repeat. Since then, just the smell of tobacco was enough to remind him of the indignity of heaving into his mother's petunia bed. Not to mention the lecture he and Derek had gotten from their father, when the old man had hauled them inside the house stinking of smoke and puke.

  Jafar's ma'assul tobacco was burned over live coals, then filtered through the water and drawn up a three-foot-long snakelike tube. The gurgling sound of the water bubbling blended with the howling of the wind in a strange and unfamiliar tune that was almost hypnotic.

  Kane glanced down at AJ, then gently removed the glass she held tilted on her lap from her lax fingers. Head slumped on his shoulder, she'd fallen asleep while he and Jafar talked.

  "She is very beautiful, your woman."

  "She has a beautiful soul," Kane said easily. He relaxed against the pillows, tucking AJ more comfortably into the curve of his shoulder. She was dead weight. Exhausted beyond her limit, she was out like a light. Kane sipped his tea. "It is a good thing you were here, Jafar. We couldn't have traveled any farther this day."

  "Allah be praised." Jafar t
ouched his lips and forehead and gave a half bow. "We are always happy to welcome weary travelers."

  "Have there been many in this storm?"

  "We have given a few travelers sanctuary. You will meet the rest of our guests come morning."

  Kane glanced around casually. They sat in a small pool of flickering, amber firelight. The rest of the tent, and its occupants, were shadowed in darkness. The hairs at the back of his neck prickled as he studied the various blanketed lumps huddled around the edges of the tent. Raazaq? Was the bastard hunkered down, listening? Planning?

  "While I'm enjoying your company, I would ask that we be shown where we may sleep. It's been a long day."

  Their host clapped his hands. A servant, a boy of about ten or eleven, materialized out of the shadows. "Show our guests to their beds." He turned to Kane and bowed. "I will look forward to talking with you more in the morning."

  "Thank you for your hospitality." Kane supported AJ as he rose, then dipped down and lifted her into his arms. He followed the child, who carried a small lantern, across the carpeted floor and into another tent, and then another. They were all linked together by canvas passageways. It was a fabric catacomb, leading him… Hell, it could have been leading him anywhere.

  The boy finally ushered Kane into what looked like a supply tent, which had been hastily rearranged to accommodate a sleeping pallet.

  Kane lay AJ down on the blankets, then reached into his pocket and handed the boy a few coins, baksheesh. The child left the lantern on a stack of baskets piled haphazardly in the corner, and closed the tent flap behind him.

  Kane knew he needed to sleep. And sleep hard. He'd had precious little in the last seventy-two hours, and while his mind could compensate and allow for the lack, his body was protesting. Even a couple of hours now would stand him in good stead. He was a light sleeper, their accommodations were at the end of the row of sleeping tents. If anyone entered he'd hear them.