Faisal smelled another opportunity. Although he was an Air Force officer, he used his status as the man who had saved the Arab world to seize control of the ground army. He called forward a division of tanks and ordered his soldiers to follow them to the front of the conflict. He would join them as soon as he could find a camera crew. They moved off, leaving Reg to his own devices.
He retreated through the tangle of parked cars and found Mrs. Roeder. She was standing on the hood of limousine, talking into her headset radio. Reg jumped up onto the car and urged her to help evacuate the area. The American woman blinked at him in confusion. “Major, I admit you were right about there being survivors, but look around. This thing is shaping up into a good old-fashioned turkey shoot.”
Indeed, the aliens were being killed almost as soon as they showed themselves. Most of them, at least. The handful that survived the sprint past the entourage joined their legless companion in the foxhole. It was now a long deep trench, and growing by the moment.
Not far from where Reg was standing, Tye checked his watch, then announced dryly, “I’d say it’s time to run like hell.”
Remi couldn’t have agreed more. “But our driver is stuck. We need transportation.” Like the other pilots, he trusted Reg and Miriyam’s assessment of the danger. He called a huddle with some of the other pilots and quickly formed a plan. They would escape in the old truck Reg had commandeered earlier. Miriyam had thought to take the keys. Yossi slipped in behind the wheel and turned over the engine. Edward and Sutton were next to him in the cab.
“What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
“What about Cummins?” Yossi asked. “We can’t leave him.”
Sutton wasn’t sure Reg was worth the trouble, but volunteered to go get him. He dashed off, leaving Edward and Yossi, Palestinian and Israeli, together in the cab of the truck. There was an uncomfortable, dangerous silence between them. Looking for an excuse to step outside, Edward studied the mayhem surrounding them and noticed a nearby truck with dozens of rifles lying in the back. He hurried over and grabbed an armful of them along with several boxes of ammunition. He jogged back to the truck and was loading them into the cab when a face appeared at the driver’s side window. It was the burly Saudi captain from the camp. He grinned at Yossi and popped open a switchblade.
“Get lost, you talking donkey,” Edward said in Arabic. “This is our truck now.”
“Shut your mouth, filthy Palestinian dog, or I’ll cut your Jewish boyfriend’s throat.” Pleased with himself for foiling the Zionist plot, the muscular captain opened the door and prepared to pull Yossi outside. Before he could do so, he felt the barrel of a gun pressing against the small of his back. A quick hand reached around and lifted his pistol from its holster.
“Drop the knife,” came a voice from behind him. It was Miriyam. “If you cooperate, you live. If you make a noise, you die.”
The Saudi knew she meant business. What was more, she’d probably get away with it. The sea of noise surrounding them would easily mask the sound of a bullet. His options, it seemed, were limited. Miriyam hustled him to the back of the truck, which was covered by a canvas roof, and made him climb inside. She told him to lie on his stomach, then sat on his back with her pistol pressed to his skull. The truck ground into low gear and started to move.
A few yards away, Sutton spotted Reg. “Cummins, let’s get out of here,” he yelled. “A group of us are taking that truck of yours and leaving.” Reg hesitated. Mrs. Roeder was picking up the first reports of trouble coming from inside the ship, and Reg wanted to know what was happening. Sutton didn’t wait. As soon as he’d delivered the message, he turned and left.
Saudi jets were gathering in the sky, and a pair of helicopters thwacked at the air overhead, moving toward the alien foxhole to finish off the survivors. Through the mayhem, Reg spotted Fadeela. Her father had spirited her away from the shooting and was shouting instructions to the driver of the car in which Khalid was being held prisoner. When she glanced in his direction, Reg waved his arms in the air and caught her attention. Their eyes met for a moment before Mr. Yamani dragged her by the wrist toward his own blue Rolls-Royce limousine. They piled inside and took off across the open desert at the head of a four-car caravan. It took Reg a while to realize that Sutton had gone. He was already climbing into the rear of the truck, which was turning around, preparing to leave.
The next ten seconds changed everything. Pulses of white light, energy bursts like the ones they’d faced during the dogfights, flew out of the triangular breach and struck the helicopters, destroying them instantly. Until that moment, the aliens had shown no signs of being armed. More pulse blasts sailed upward and began picking off the Saudi jets high above. Others whizzed toward the tents and the tangle of cars parked on the plateau. A limousine not far from Reg took one of the sizzling, fist-sized projectiles. The front end was turned into shrapnel and the entire vehicle tossed sideways. A separate flurry of shots came from the foxhole. Screaming and panic erupted on the plateau as the entourage was caught in the cross fire.
And their troubles were only beginning. Seconds after the shooting began, the alien ground army started pouring out of the destroyer. Hundreds of aliens, clad in their eight-foot-tall exoskeleton suits of armor, raced down the ramp of debris, firing as they came. Marching out behind them were scores of strange-looking chariots. These vehicles looked like oversize dark brown toboggans that had sprouted short sticklike legs. Each chariot carried a pair of aliens sitting side by side. The chariots looked too flimsy to handle the weight of their bulky passengers, but they raced down the sloping ramp with ease and, when they reached the desert floor, fanned out in several directions to surround the humans. It was the same type of blitzkrieg strategy their attacker planes had used the day before. Within seconds, the chariots had outpaced the alien foot soldiers. While some of the chariots trotted onto the plateau, others raced around the perimeter and began chasing down the cars that were trying to escape.
Reg turned and broke into a dead run, trying to catch up to his friends in the battered truck. Everything was chaos around him. Cars and people were smashing into one another, desperate to get away in time. The truck was just gathering speed when Reg raced up alongside it. Edward threw open his door and helped Reg pull himself inside.
With bullets and enemy pulse blasts flying through the air, Yossi stomped on the accelerator pedal and flew down a steep embankment, nearly rolling the truck. “Which way? Which way do I go?”
“That way,” Reg said without hesitation, pointing east. In the distance, he could see the line of cars carrying the Yamani family. One of the alien chariots was following them. Unaware that they were being pursued, the Yamani caravan was bumping along slowly through a shallow valley. Yossi floored it and made up some ground, but they were still far behind when the aliens fired their first shot.
The car at the rear of the caravan exploded and flipped in the air. Once the other limousine drivers realized the danger behind them, they gunned their engines and tried to get away. They stayed together and raced along the bottom of a wide, shallow wadi. In his haste, the lead driver failed to notice the walls of the gully slowly closing in around him. Instead of steering toward the open, high ground, he drove into a shallow canyon, following its twists and turns. The wadi walls were only four feet tall in some places, but they were too steep for the limousines to climb. The many-legged chariot chased after them, closing in.
Reg and Edward told Yossi to follow the cars into the wadi, but he swerved away and climbed a small embankment instead. It turned out to be the right decision. Keeping to higher ground, he raced along the top edge of the wadi, catching occasional glimpses of the aliens ahead. The difference in terrain allowed them to close the gap until they came within firing range.
Edward passed the rifles he’d taken to the soldiers riding in back. Miriyam had let the Saudi captain up, but she continued to keep an eye on him.
“What about him?” Remi shouted to her. “Give him a gun?
” The Israeli woman and the Saudi man stared one another down. It was a long, steely stare, during which neither of them blinked. Remi watched them until he began to laugh. “You guys are too tough! You’re scaring me.”
Miriyam blinked first. She took a rifle from the African, then called across the truck to the Arab. “What’s your name,” she asked him.
“Ali Hassan.”
“Ali, my name is Miriyam.” She tossed him the rifle. “From now on, we fight together.”
Ali couldn’t help but grin. Needless to say, he’d never met a woman quite like this Jewish warrior. “Okay, sounds good to me.”
Tye and Sutton were already in position. They had cut away the canvas tarp covering on the left side of the truck and were waiting for a clear shot at the alien chariot, but they were only getting occasional glimpses. Each time they sighted on the aliens, the aliens’ pointed skeleton heads disappeared again behind the banks of the wadi.
“Faster, man, let’s go,” Edward screamed at Yossi. “You drive like my grandmother.”
Behind the wheel, Yossi was driving as close to the soft edge of the wadi as he dared. “Who are these people we’re chasing?” he wanted to know.
“Friends of mine,” Reg said.
“Your Arab girl?”
Before Reg could answer, they drove downslope and saw the alien chariot right beside them, not twenty feet from the driver’s door, speeding along a parallel course. The oversize aliens were crouched forward behind the chariot’s front wall as the skinny legs of the sledlike vehicle pumped furiously in the sand. No steering controls or instrumentation of any kind was visible. The chariot seemed to guide itself around the obstacles in its path. A moment after gunfire started raining down on them, the big shell head of the creature closest to them turned to look up at the truck. Then it raised its arm and pointed one of its elongated bone fingers at Yossi. A pulse blast shot toward them and tore through the roof of the cab, inches above the driver’s head.
Cursing in Hebrew, Yossi turned away and slowed down.
“What are you doing? Chase them!” Reg yelled.
“What are you, crazy? I’m not killing myself to save a bunch of rich Arabs.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Edward took out a pistol and pointed it at the driver’s head. “Drive, asshole, or I’ll kill you and follow them myself.” When Yossi hesitated, Edward squeezed the trigger until the hammer cocked into position.
“Okay, hold on tight.” He slammed the gas pedal down and headed after them. Before they could catch up, a pulse blast toasted the third vehicle, and shots were whizzing past the gray Mercedes carrying Khalid.
Remi shouted forward to the men riding in the cab. “We need more ammunition.”
“Make it count,” Edward told him, handing him a few twenty-four-round magazines. “This is the last we have.”
An explosion flashed up out of the wadi, and, a second later, they caught sight of the car in which Khalid was being held a prisoner. It was turned upside down and burning. The soldiers in the back quickly used up their remaining bullets.
The chauffeur of the last car, the blue Rolls-Royce, slid open the glass partition and called back to his passengers. “Around the next turn, I’m going to stop. When I do, get out fast. I’m going to back up and ram them.” The earthen walls were closing in on them, leaving only a few feet of clearance on either side, and the alien chariot was gaining on them. This was their last hope. “Hold on!”
After crashing through a barrier of acacia bushes and fishtailing around a bend, the driver slammed on the brakes. Fadeela threw open her door and pulled her elderly father into the sand. When they were clear of the door, the tires spun, and the Rolls started moving in reverse. The aliens’ chariot came speeding around the corner right on cue, moving too fast to swerve out of the way. But as the chauffeur bore down on them, the thin insectile legs of the chariot sprang into the air and clattered over the roof of the Rolls as it passed underneath. The chariot settled smoothly to the ground and rushed past Fadeela and her father before it could slow down and stop. Then it turned in place and began marching back for the kill.
Fadeela heard a rumbling sound in the air as the chariot trotted closer, and one of the aliens leisurely raised a pointed finger in her direction. But both the creatures turned their heads in a new direction when a large shape came flying over the edge of the embankment. The battered Saudi army truck soared through the air and landed on top of the aliens and their chariot with a loud, splintering crack.
The people inside the truck were thrown forward like a collection of rag dolls. But none was seriously injured, and they came staggering outside to inspect the damage. The aliens, their exoskeleton armor, and their transport had all been mashed into an indistinguishable pulp. A few of the chariot’s stick legs continued to twitch weakly as the smell of ammonia wafted into the air.
Reg jogged down the wadi to where Fadeela was holding her badly shaken father. When he got there, she stood up and threw her arms around him and squeezed him tightly, burying her face in his chest. When Mr. Yamani saw this, he snapped out of his teary-eyed stupor, stood up, and moved toward them. Reg assumed the old man was angry, when he was only grateful. He threw his arms around the both of them and held them while he cried.
As the others inspected the bodies under the truck, Miriyam warned everyone that the aliens could attack without touching, but that didn’t stop Tye from climbing halfway under the truck when he noticed something moving. He was, after all, a mechanic. “Somebody come and have a look at this,” he yelled. When the others came around to where he was, all they could see were his long legs lying in the sand. “Down here, look at this!” They squatted and saw him only inches away from an undamaged bony hand. There were four spiky gray fingers opening and closing very slowly.
“Don’t touch it,” Miriyam screamed at him. “It’s still alive.”
“Do I look insane? Of course I’m not going to touch it. But look at this gizmo on the hand. It’s some kind of light display.” He pointed to an amber-colored circular disk set into the back of the hand. It was blinking out a message or a picture—he couldn’t tell which—composed of tiny diamond shapes.
Miriyam wasn’t much concerned with his discovery. She understood the danger he was in, so she ducked underneath the foul-smelling truck and pumped a few slugs into the broken chest of the armor, making sure the little one inside was dead.
“Okay I think you killed it,” Tye called. “The blinking stopped.” He pried the disk out of the bone with a pocketknife and brought it out into the sunlight wrapped in a handkerchief. The top of it was like a thin sheet of amber-colored glass. It wasn’t glass, though, because there were veins running through it. When he flipped it over, Miriyam recognized the coppery material lining the bottom—it was the same substance she’d seen on the doors in the bowels of the destroyer. She suggested showing it to Reg.
Yossi lit a cigarette and blew the smoke at Edward as he walked past. “You still think I drive like your grandmother?”
“No, you proved me wrong. You’re a very fine driver,” said the Palestinian as he reached into the breast pocket of Yossi’s shirt, took the last cigarette out of the pack and lit it. “Probably you could have done even better if it was Jews inside the cars, instead of a worthless bunch of Arabs.” He wadded up the empty package and tossed it at Yossi’s feet.
No one was quite sure which direction they should go from there, but everyone agreed it should be away from the downed alien destroyer. The Yamanis’ driver knew the area well and said there was an oasis town not far away. The truck was damaged but still operable. They found a place where it could be driven out of the wadi, then towed the limousine out as well. As they were preparing to drive away, a pair of men came walking toward them: Khalid, still in his handcuffs, and his jailer. They’d climbed out of their burning Mercedes seconds before it exploded. Mr. Yamani howled with joy at the sight of his son still alive. Fadeela ran forward to greet him. When they came closer, Reg told the
jailer to unlock Khalid’s handcuffs, but he refused.
“The instructions of Commander Faisal were clear,” he announced in an official tone of voice. “Khalid Yamani will be freed only when the wedding has been completed.”
The pilots exchanged glances with one another and without a word being spoken, they fanned out to surround the man. They might have been enemies in the past, but they were slowly forging themselves into a coherent unit. The jailer became visibly nervous when he realized what he was up against.
“Listen to me, little man.” Miriyam started toward him, ready to settle the matter in her less-than-delicate way when a big hand fell on her shoulder and arrested her progress. It was Ali.
“Let me.” He walked up to the guard and stood over him menacingly. “Do you know who I am?”
“You are Ali Hassan.”
“That’s right.” He snatched away the jailer’s keys and unshackled Khalid’s hands. “I am Ali Hassan, and from now on I will fight with these people.”
9
AN OASIS TOWN
About noon, the freshly dented Rolls-Royce and the equally battered old truck came to the oasis town of Qal’at Buqum. It was no more than a cluster of swaying green palm trees in the middle of an arid valley baking in the sun. From a distance, it looked an all-too-perfect mirage, except for the twenty-story-tall steel radio tower that rose from the center of town. Under normal circumstances, it was a dusty village with two hundred permanent residents. That day, there were almost a thousand people within its limits, down from the three thousand that had slept there the night before. You could walk from one end to the other in ten minutes. Brightly painted shops and houses with crumbling mud-plaster walls lined the road, standing shoulder to shoulder with the prefab commercial buildings built since the oil boom. On the eastern horizon stood the Asir mountains, the great barrier between Qal’at Buqum and the sea.
The town’s central square was an asphalt parking lot overgrown with weeds around the edges. The Saudi military had established a command post there, retreating into the shade of the nearest building, the post office, to escape the intense midday heat. Some of the soldiers had been on the plateau with the royal family and their guests when the ambush took place.
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 69
