He had lived next door to this monster for almost a year. As much as it pained him to admit it, they had been friends, good friends. So why, he wondered, didn’t I see this coming? If only I could have stopped him sooner, so much sorrow and suffering could have been avoided. He felt weak, sick, and profoundly guilty.
The soldiers who held his legs, keeping him from plunging into the dark abyss, released their grip as he pushed himself back from the escape hatch. He retrieved his pistol from the sand as sounds of jubilation floated up from the troops below.
Their revelry faded, drowned out by the whine of the nearby U.N. helicopter’s engines being switched on. As the blades began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, the desert sands began to swirl around the copter. Holding his hands up to shield his eyes while ducking below the rush of the whirling blades, Thomas hopped into the copter, pulled the sliding side door closed, and buckled himself in.
Below and around him everything vibrated. The noisy engine of the Apache escalated to a roar as Thomas stared back dully at the sight of the U.N. Forces emerging from the opened hatch like ants emerging from a mound. Assembled above ground, their celebratory demeanor as they were congratulated by the two late-arriving apache copter crews reminded him of a team of ballplayers. Old news clips of the 2004 Red Sox came to mind, piling upon each other at the pitcher’s mound after breaking the Bambino’s curse and winning the World Series. The soldiers cheered as they closed the hatch and began to weld it shut, sealing the underground lab that would become an eternal tomb for the terrorist, man — god — or both, named Horus.
~~~
Omar turned around to be sure his passenger had buckled in and secured the side door. “Welcome back to my taxi, Thomas Franklin. I got a call from dispatch instructing me to lift off as soon as you get on board. They told me not to wait for anyone else. Have you got pull, or something?”
When Thomas didn’t answer, Omar rambled on, aimless but affable. “Has anyone ever told you how lucky you are? I thought we were going to crash for sure when that sandstorm hit us, but, praise Allah, we didn’t. I also thought those two other Apaches were going to land right on top of me! I like hanging with you, Franklin. You are lucky, like a rabbit’s foot! Did you know that? For a moment it really looked like you were going to be pulled into that hole! “
Thomas replied in a lethargic voice. “I almost was.” Turning his attention away from the celebrants below as the helicopter rose and banked towards the north, he saw something that delivered an emotional jolt, equal to, or perhaps even greater than the one he felt when he encountered Horus.
He had been so absorbed with the activity at the Sphinx he hadn’t noticed or thought about whether anyone else might be on the helicopter, but now his eyes met those of a dark haired female, trembling on the far end of the long bench. Incredibly, staring out from above the diaphanous scarlet veil wrapped about her face, were the tear engorged, disbelieving emerald-green eyes of Jeanne Mosley.
Tearing the cloth away from her face, her chin quivered as she held her arms out. For the next few minutes cries of exultation and heartfelt relief were uttered, but words did not come. They would have been of little use. This was not a time for verbal descriptions and explanations of how and why things happened.
This situation called for a different kind of communication. The painful psychological and emotional scars, demonic remnants of their terrifying ordeal, mandated an exorcism to be performed not by a priest, but through restorative caresses, the long awaited supple textures of soft cheeks and lips, the reinvigorating sensation of clinging to the warm flesh of someone loved, and longed for, who had been feared to be lost, forever.
Bored by the monotonous drone of the engines, the endless, undulating sea of glaring sand below, and the lengthy silence behind him, Omar asked, “How about some good music? This is a modified Apache, you know? I have a disc player.” After not getting a reply he shrugged and pushed a knob on his console. Turning the volume up to what he considered an appropriate level, his head began to bob in time with the music, if that were what you had to call it.
It reminded Thomas of the music that tortured him on the night he first met Horace Khenemetankh.
Hungry for more news about the mission, the pilot spoke again after, in his estimation, having afforded the reunited lovers sufficient time to themselves. He shouted over his shoulder, “I heard on the com link that there were a bunch of animals penned up and some kind of a research laboratory underneath the Sphinx. I wonder what kind of experiments that Egyptian terrorist conducted down there.”
Skimming along above the desolate dunes, heading back to a life and a future that had nearly been stolen, the wailing serenade of Ali Baba and the tone deaf, three legged camel began to produce a dull headache and a queasy feeling in Thomas’s stomach. He rubbed a hand across his burning, emotion dampened eyes while his other arm remained tightly wrapped around a still trembling Jeanne, holding her as if something evil might magically appear to snatch her away. His eyes swept the horizon, straining to see anything out of the ordinary, yet he saw nothing to corroborate what his senses screamed.
The pilot turned the volume down, tilted his tinted visor up and twisted around in his seat. A look of innocent expectation hung on his chubby, almost cherubic face made to look even more so by the foam filled padding that pressed against the sides of his face, pooching his ruddy cheeks out in his too-tight helmet that had fit when issued, 30 pounds ago. Omar shouted, “Hey Franklin…I said, I wonder what kinds of experiments were being conducted down there?”
Suffering from emotional exhaustion, and a sense of foreboding upon which he preferred not to elaborate, Thomas replied, “Omar, I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Let’s just hope this is where the story ends.”
The End.
About the Author
I write fiction, frequently seasoned with a dash of supernatural flavor. My stories have appeared in several on-line magazines and paperback short-story anthologies. In the 70s, I worked in radio & dabbled in music as a songwriter, singer, and drummer. Since then I've been a sales manager at several places in Houston. Originally a therapeutic hobby that I started in 2000, writing has become a passionate obsession. “Welcome to my imagination.”
The Falcon and His Desert Rose Page 26
