by Unknown
“What?” I climbed to my feet and moved to peer into the hole, but he pulled me back.
“There was a snake.” His breathing was fast and ragged. “I read that they tunnel into the sand to escape the heat. I stomped on the ground before I started digging, hoping to scare them off.”
Well, that explained the rain dance. “Guess they didn’t mind a little noise.” I stepped further away from the hole and then caught sight of the snake slithering sideways down the dune. It blended in almost perfectly with the sand. If it hadn’t been moving, I might not have spotted it at all.
“Guess not,” Blake agreed. We both watched the snake slither off. Thankfully, it was just as anxious to get away from us as we were to stay away from it.
“It’s poisonous I take it.” I hid behind Blake and peered over his shoulder.
“Yeah. Most things are out here.”
I tried not to imagine a snake bite on top of everything else. “Do you think there are any more?”
“Let’s hope not.” He wiped sweat from his brow and went to stomp around the hole. I joined him and we pummeled the ground for several minutes. Then he returned to work, scooping out more sand.
I sat down about twenty feet or so away. I didn’t want to be nearby when the next snake jumped out at us. “Are you sure you don’t want to call someone? Anyone?”
He shook his head. “This is for the best. With a little luck, we’ll be out of here by dusk tomorrow.”
I furrowed my brow as a thought occurred to me. “So, is Ferrid incompetent? If he meant to kill us, he sure botched the job.”
“Maybe.” Blake threw more sand over his shoulder. “He’s never served in the military. Most of his crew hasn’t either. They’re experienced jihadist criminals, but don’t know anything about survival. Or maybe they just assumed we didn’t know either.” He dusted off his hands. “Okay, so that’s done.”
I craned my neck to peer into the hole. Aside from the big hole, he’d made a smaller one inside. “What are you doing exactly?”
He pointed to the rocks. “There’s water even in the desert, you just have to know how to find it, or make it as the case may be. Since it’s so cold at night and so hot during the day, there’s dew and we’re going to collect it.” He emptied out the little pouch that had been strapped around his leg. “This is going to hold the water.” He pushed it into the small hole at the bottom and then dropped in the bigger rocks. After that, he covered everything with a plastic poncho from his kit, weighing it down with some smaller rocks.
“What does the plastic do?” I asked, curious.
“Condenses the water,” he said, panting with the exertion of his efforts. “When we wake up tomorrow morning, we’ll have enough water to keep us going for the day.”
“Wow. They taught you that in the military?” I looked at him, amazed. For the first time since we’d been dumped in the desert, I thought we might get out of this alive.
Blake headed down the dune to where the carpets we’d been rolled up in lay, saying over his shoulder, “I read up on things, too. The military can’t cover every eventuality. I’ve made survival a hobby.”
I followed him and helped as he rolled up the rugs. “You use that hobby a lot in a professional capacity?”
“More than I’d like.” Blake hoisted a rug over his shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I watched him marveling at his strength in the face of soul melting heat.
“Making a shelter for us.” He headed up the dune, aiming for the spot where he’d dug the water hole.
I tried to follow suit with the second rug, but it was too heavy. When I tried to heave it up onto my shoulders, all I accomplished was knocking myself over with the momentum of its weight. Getting up, I settled for dragging the rug behind me.
At the top of one dune, Blake spread the one rug on the ground, wedging it in a narrow dip between the dune he stood on and its neighbor.
I huffed and puffed my way up to him and dropped the rug at his feet. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He took the second rug and balanced it across the top of the dunes. He anchored each end in place with some nearby rocks.
“It’s snug, but it’s shade.” He gave a little bow and a wave of his hand. “After you.”
I ducked into our carpet made cave and he joined me. The shade instantly made the air feel cooler, although it was still hot.
“We’ll wait here and once we have water, we start walking.” Blake hesitated for a moment. “We should talk too, while we have the chance.”
“About what?”
“It was a mistake to bring you here, Ruby.” He pointed to himself and then me. “We can’t happen, baby. It’s too dangerous.”
I nodded. “I agree.” The words hurt, but they were true. I would spend the rest of my life wishing we could have made it somehow, but the guy was the US version of freaking James Bond and I wasn’t bullet proof.
“I’m sorry. I thought I could keep you safe. I thought I could make it work.” He ran a hand through his hair and scowled.
“Is that what happened to Mara?” I’d only heard her name once, but it had stuck with me because of Blake’s strong reaction. There’d been someone else, I was sure of it. Had she survived?
Blake looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I think you owe me whatever explanation I ask for,” I said boldly.
He bowed his head. “She was an operative.”
“Like you.”
“Yes, like me.” He paused and then heaved a sigh. “We were in love, but she didn’t make it. The operation went bad.”
“Bad like this?” I wanted to know if we were repeating history, wanted to know why his team had said I was Mara all over again.
He shrugged. “Yes and no. All missions are the same in many ways.”
“So why me, Blake?” Why had he plucked me out of the obscurity of the Cirque D’Amour?
Blake looked at me then, his eyes serious and steady. “I saw you watching me and I started watching you back until I had to have you. The night you performed in Lilli’s place, I realized I would regret never knowing you, never touching your skin. So I took a chance.”
“And left me behind.”
He reached out and lightly cupped my cheek, thumb caressing my dry lips. “I didn’t want to. When I arrived in Morocco and needed someone with your skills, it seemed like a sign.” His hand dropped away. “One I read the wrong way.”
He picked up a small stone and tossed it down the dune. “This was supposed to be a simple first contact mission. I thought we’d get in and get out and then you and I could spend some time together before the next phase.”
“You would’ve left me again,” I said in an accusatory tone.
“For a while, yes, but I would’ve returned.”
I snorted. “You have too many enemies for that to be anything more than a fantasy.” Instead of making me a girlfriend, he’d turned me into a target.
He nodded, his shoulders slumped. “I thought I had a future with Mara, too. I should have known better. I’m wrong, always wrong.” Blake smacked his fist on the ground, his face twisted in anguish. “I protect the American Dream, Ruby, but I never get to live it.”
I caught his fist on the downward stroke and cradled it in my hands. “I’m sorry.” And I was. He’d only wanted to be with me. I’d felt the same way and knew well the drive to cleave to someone, the need to find your other half in the world and make them whole. “But we aren’t going to work. It’s better to face the truth, right?” I made the last a question because I wasn’t so sure myself. ‘Better’ hurt more than I liked.
Blake pulled his hand away. “Not better, no. It’s based in reality. We have no future and it’s not by my choice.” He flopped onto his back, refusing to look at me. “Try to rest while you can. You’ll need all your strength for the walk tomorrow.”
I lay down too and fell asleep before I knew it, smothered by the desert and the ache in my heart. No matter how m
uch we might want to find happiness in each other, we were not destined to have it.
Chapter Seventeen
We slept fitfully, tossing and turning, sinking in and out of sleep. The intense heat, made it impossible to sleep deeply. Just before dusk, Blake’s phone rang, startling us both. He fished it out of his back pocket and looked at the screen.
“Shit.”
“What? Who is it?” I asked, my voice thick with sleep. I rubbed sand from my eyes and sat up. The sun hung lower in the sky, blasting us with heat. It would cool down soon, but not yet, not until full dark.
“Frankie.” He answered the call and passed the phone over to me.
"Heya Frankie," I said casually. The heat made it impossible for me to be formal. All my social niceties had melted.
"Thought I would check in and see how things were going.” The rough edges and deep rasp of Frankie’s Boston accent filled my ear.
I looked at the desert painted caramel by the sun. Thirst singed my throat, my lips had cracked from the heat and my clothes were stiff from the salt in my sweat. "Swell. Just swell."
"He'll be there tomorrow night?"
I mentally plotted out the timeline. The night we would sit through, the walk ahead of us and my earlier optimism fizzled and went flat. We weren’t going to make. Not in time for Lilli.
"Oh no, probably not going to happen. Unless…" An idea struck me. "You want to come get us?"
“Ruby, no. Don’t do it. We have a way out that’s on our own terms. Don’t give that up.” Blake tried to take the phone away from me but I leaned back, holding it close to my chest and his fingers closed on empty air.
"What are you talking about? What's going on?" Frankie shouted.
"I'm the middle of the fucking Sahara, Frankie. That’s what’s going on. There's no water and no way out. You want Blake there tomorrow? You're going to have to come and get us." I put the phone on speaker and navigated to the map app Blake had used earlier. "Here are our coordinates." I started to read them off, but Blake put a hand over mine, muffling the speaker.
"This isn’t a good idea." His dark eyes pleaded with me to listen to him and he reached for the phone again.
I narrowed my eyes at Blake, the movement making my sunburned skin sting. Dodging his hand, I said, "Why not? You have a better plan?"
"Yes, mine is harder but safer. Don’t play into his hands."
"He's got Lilli god damn you. Lilli. This isn’t about just us and we can’t walk through the desert fast enough to save her." I turned away from Blake. "Here are the coordinates." I read them off. "Got it?"
"Are you fucking with me, girl? There's a tracker on your phone that says you're in Algiers, Algeria."
I gave a sharp laugh. "Ha! Algeria. I wish. Listen, dipshit, there's sand in everything out here. I'm surprised the damn phone still works. Look, here's proof."
I tossed the phone to Blake and stepped outside our shelter, sliding half way down the dune. "Take my picture."
"Ruby," he started.
"Shut up and do it." I flipped Blake, Frankie and the Sahara desert the bird, plastering a big smile on my face as I did so.
Blake sighed but took the picture. He tossed the phone back to me and I sent Frankie the picture. "Did you get it?"
"No," said Frankie. Then, a second later, "How do I know you’re where you say you are? There’s a lot of desert out there and not all of it is the Sahara. You could be anywhere.”
“Check the exif data on the image. It’ll confirm our location.” I looked at Blake and said softly, “You’re not cloaking your phone’s GPS are you?”
He shook his head. “Not unless I have to. It’s always better to look like I have nothing to hide.”
Good. Now all I had to worry about was whether or not Frankie knew what exif data was. With his job, he had probably tracked people down a time or two. I’d learned about it from an article in Cosmo about online privacy.
Maybe Frankie had read the same article because he said, “Holy shit. You’re really in the Sahara.”
"Told ya,” I said flippantly. “Exif data doesn’t lie. So come and get us, Frankie. Or at least tell them where to find our bodies." I hung up then.
Blake scowled at me. "Jesus, Ruby. That was a little over the top."
"I don't do well with extreme heat." I felt baked, as if I’d been roasting in an oven all day. I expected my muscles to fall away from my bones any second now.
"You don't say," he muttered and then shut up when he caught the look on my face.
I pointed at him. "And you said yourself there was no one coming to save us." I crossed my arms. "Like it or not, our enemy just because our rescue team.”
“You’ll forgive me if I’m less than thrilled.” Blake glared at me.
I crossed my arms. “I don’t care if you’re upset. My priority is Lilli.”
“So is mine.”
I harrumphed.
Blake rested his head in his hands, defeated for the moment. “Look, you don’t get it. If he comes and gets us, he’ll keep us. We’ll be no better than prisoners.”
I shrugged. “We’ll escape once we’re back in civilization.” I could not wait to get out of this wasteland and into a bath.
His eyebrows went up.“Oh, is that all we need to do?”
“Well you’re a ninja, James Bond MacGyver mash-up, right? You can make it happen.” I pictured a bath filled with water and decided I would drink the first tub dry, then fill it again to bathe. My throat convulsed at the idea of so much water.
“Last I knew, ninjas, James Bond and MacGyver couldn’t outrun bullets.” He raised his hands. “I’m unarmed. How exactly should I manage an escape?”
“You’ll figure it out. What’s so bad about being captive if that’s where we’re going anyway?” I was thinking about air conditioning now, a freon breeze cold enough to turn my blood into a slushie. Better yet, maybe I could find a walk-in freezer to live in.
“Oh, you know, little things like weapons, putting a plan in place and setting up an escape route. If Frankie takes us in, we’re winging it with no back up and no plan.” He stared at me. “That kind of improvisation gets people killed.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice. I hadn’t thought of it like that.
The rumble of a motor cut off further conversation. We both jumped to our feet and peered into the horizon.
“There, over there!” I pointed at a Jeep heading toward us. “Wow, that was fast.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Too fast. I don’t think it’s Frankie’s people.”
“No? Then who?” I looked at him with wide eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said, his jaw tight. “You go hide on the other side of the dune, don’t come out until I tell you to.”
“No.”
He did a double take. “What?”
“You hide, I’ll go out and meet them.” He started to protest, but I cut him off. “Look, if something happens to you, I’m dead. You’re not saving me from anything by hiding me away. I need you alive. You’re not expendable.”
I expected him to argue, but he didn’t, just nodded and said, “Okay.”
I headed down the dune to meet the cars which had spotted us by now. For his part, Blake slunk into the shadows and hid.
“Over here!” I waved my arms.
The Jeep zoomed over to me and then stopped, a cloud of dust rising in the air at the disturbance. A person I never expected to see again stepped out of the car.
“Ruby,” she cried, her round face beaming under her black hijab.
“Amiyah?” My jaw dropped. I’d last seen her at the souk. We rode the Ferris wheel together and then I’d been kidnapped. Again. At this point, abduction was a life theme.
“I knew we would find you.” She clapped her hands together with excitement and then ran toward me, her robes billowing around her.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked as she wrapped her arms around me. I returned her enthusiastic hug, bewildered.
“Wh
en you didn’t come back and when Blake disappeared, I made Father come look for you. I knew something bad had happened. We’ve been criss-crossing the desert since dawn, hoping to find you.” She frowned. “Ferrid is an evil man who brings shame to all Muslims.”
My eyes met her father’s as he came out of the car. He gave a slight nod.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said to them both. Then, calling up to the dune, I yelled, “Blake, come on down.”
He slid down the dune, his suspicion changing to happiness once he spoke to Amiyah’s father.
“This is good news, isn’t it?” I whispered to him as we climbed into the car.
He ducked his head to whisper his response in my ear.“It’s a lucky break for sure. You made quite an impression on Amiyah and she considers you a friend. If not for that, we’d be waiting for Frankie’s men to find us.”
I smiled and he smiled back. I wanted to lean in and kiss him, but fought back the impulse. We weren’t an item, not anymore. I was going to have to quit Blake and cold turkey seemed like the best way. If only it didn’t hurt so much.
Why couldn’t I have my cake and eat it too? Why did life give me the man of my dreams and then make him into someone I could never have?
***
Amiyah and her father dropped us off at the airstrip. On the drive there, we sucked down multiple bottles of water and feasted on fresh fruit. I could literally feel my skin swelling, plumping up with water. I suddenly had a lot in common with a withered plant restored by an impromptu rain shower.
At the airport, moved by Amiyah’s rescue of us, I said, “If you come to the States, look me up.” I gave the young girl another big hug. We’d hardly known each other three hours, but we’d managed to forge a friendship I would never forget.
She smiled and then frowned. “I would love to go to America. We’ll see if father lets me go.”
I glanced at her father who watched us with a stoic expression. He’d spoken to Blake during our drive, but had yet to address me directly. I couldn’t tell if it was a language barrier thing or a sexist thing. Looking back to Amiyah, I said, “You’re a smart, capable woman and he should be proud to give you that opportunity.”
“Inshallah,” she said giving me one last squeeze before returning to sit in the Jeep.
