Before assuming a tenure-track professorship, Sam had been posted everywhere in the Middle East. As a freelance journalist, he had covered assignments with Newsweek, Paris Match, Time, and National Geographical, among others. He had been embedded with the U.S. army in Afghanistan, had trekked with the Taliban, had covered the invasion of Iraq, had smoked opium with an al Qaeda operative, had reconnoitered Iran, and had written features on the club scene of Morocco.
Of all the foreign spots, Yemen was the most beautiful; the people the friendliest. Yet it was certainly not where he wanted to spend the rest of his life; and certainly not working for spook organizations. The Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, sleeper agents, cabals which sought to control public opinion, world leaders, and economy . . . one never was certain whom or what to trust.
From out of the steam-charged atmosphere, a florid face emerged. “Have a seat, kid.”
The man was the only bather in the small, subterranean room, and Sam could choose to sit anywhere. Always take the high road, Sam. Lifelong advice from his old man, now wheelchair-bound. Tactically, Sam maneuvered within whispering distance to a stone ledge just higher than that of the other man.
“Craig Scudder?” the man asked. His veined and bloated body hardly looked to be that of a brilliant whip of a group that few people inside Washington and no one outside it knew existed. “He still has the chip?”
“Sources are telling me Scudder’s meeting with Tariq al-Madh somewhere the day after tomorrow.”
“Ahh, yes, the leader of al Qaeda’s home base. Crossed paths with the wily bastard several times. So Tariq is after the chip, also? Hmmm. Wouldn’t have thought al Qaeda had that kind of moolah.”
Al Qaeda didn’t . . . unless it had stumbled upon diamond mines that rivaled South Africa’s De Beers in its own back yard, here in Yemen. Sam started to voice this and thought better of it. His loquaciousness was reserved for the dog and pony shows. Instead, he parried, “The Hopi Indian Tracker?”
“Didn’t stay hog-tied in jail long, did she? Got lucky.”
He was underestimating Janet Lomayestewa, Sam thought, . . . waylaying her and banking on Jack Ripley to find the chip and to know how to put it to the best use. But this was another opinion that Sam wouldn’t voice.
“You know you’re on your own from here, kid. No cell phones to trace you, no genuine, authentic real-deal I.D., nada, except for what’s needed for the shoot out at the O.K. Corral. Okay?”
“I understand.”
Sweat dripped from the bush gray brows. “You’ve arranged to pick up the vehicle?”
“Your people couldn’t come across with something more reliable?”
“File your complaint with the CIA or FBI – the guys with the deep pockets. If you were James Bond, then the Oval Office might figure you rate an Aston Martin. But a podunk post in Yemen puts you sort of low on the totem pole, kid. ”
Sam forced a faintly amused smile. He threaded his fingers through his hair that was wiring up like hundreds of slinkies, thanks to the steam. “And you want me to beat everyone else to the chip in a push-and-pedal of a Toyota pickup?”
“Our brass wants you to beat everyone else to the chip, whatever is required. They feel this is of the highest security concern.” Frankfurter fingers interlaced over the dome of the man’s sweaty belly. “Simplified, if you don’t, you can forget any kind of a writing career. Mom and pop are back on the streets. For you, it’s back to teaching at that piss-ass Detroit community college. If there’s even a Detroit left should that renegade agent palm the chip off to an U.S. unfriendly bunch. But, hey, kid, you’re smart. Wouldn’t have given you the nod if I didn’t believe in you.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sana’a was so high and dry that the weather was for the most part pleasant, if one could overlook the car exhaust fumes that fogged the air. Brilliant afternoon sunlight glinted over the city’s scores of minarets, and its gingerbread-like buildings. Their colored glass qamarias shimmered like kaleidoscopic prisms.
Craig rendezvoused with a former contact at an outdoor café near the intersection of the busy Hadda Street and Sayilah, the moat-like road around the Old City. His contact, a stuffy white-collared rep with IPhone in hand and thumb drive hanging from his neck, actually worked for John Deere. Over yogurt-drenched soggy bread called shafoot and the fenugreek-flavored meat stew, Craig wound up the negotiations for the deliverance of a Range Rover and necessary traveling papers within the hour.
“At Marib,” the rep finished in crisp English, “you can take possession of the John Deere Gator.”
While Craig waited for the rep to return with the Range Rover and papers, he lingered over a cup of the much vaulted al Moccha coffee. Like Yemen and the Kingdom of Saba, it had seen its best days. He watched the men, their cheeks puffed with the local narcotic qat, striding past in long white robes with their curved jambiyas belted at their waist and here and there a woman, scurrying despite the weight of sacks of food.
Which of those women had hands that would put up a fierce fight? He sighed. Time did not allow for a hard fuck. The last one, the female activist, had been one of the best in a while, fighting him as she had . . . especially when he had shoved the pistol against her cunt. The pistol had been designed by a top weapons expert to be undetectable at airport security checks. He would have liked to have spent more time with her and really hated to extinguish her. As it was, upon leaving the hotel, he had placed a discreet call to her government, and let them do the executing for him.
Alas, business came before pleasure. From his recollection of the Middle East armament, and that recollection was photographic memory-proof, six SAM surface-to-air missile launchers protected the area around the Queen of Sheba’s Temple.
Why?
The temple, as yet not totally excavated, was in the Empty Quarter. There was nothing there but death. Unless, there was something there . . . something that had titillated man’s imagination for nearly thirty-five hundred years.
A millennium ago Saba had been a wealthy country with an advanced irrigation and dam system that made it a lush metropolitan garden oasis along the lucrative caravan trade route. Saba had been also rich in gold and other precious stones. Yet her real wealth was in her exclusive trade in aromatic oil like myrrh and the fragrant frankincense. Sought by neighboring kingdoms, frankincense was unique since it was derived from the sap of certain tree that grew only in Yemen. By 1000 B.C., camels frequently freighted frankincense the 1400 miles up the Incense Road and from there along the Red Sea to Israel.
It wasn’t a camel he needed but rather a John Deere all terrain vehicle, the Gator RSX 850i. During his time embedded as a special op in the Middle East, he had become familiar with the farm equipment firm, which supplied armored tanks through government contracts for the U.S.-Middle East conflicts. The Gator was John Deere’s newest production. It out-performed all other ATV’s in speed, stability, climb factor, and endurance in water, mud, and sand.
With the Gator, he would still arrive barely in time for his meeting in two days with the give-no-quarter Tariq al-Madh, leader of the Yemen-based al Qaeda. And from there, it would be a death-defying trip north through the heart of The Empty Quarter that no sane man would think of making. But then sanity had never been one of his sterling qualities. Even his father had relieved him of that idealistic notion early on.
Regrettably, or maybe not so regrettably, he had lost half a day in his dalliance with the activist, Yasmin Yamani. Her fleshy pussy and her silent fury had been well worth it. There is othing like control. Had Yemen’s latest president ordered her execution yet?
Yemen’s tribal-patriarch government was trying to walk the fence between its alliance with Al Qaeda and industrialized nations. However, al Qaeda was substantially entrenched in the desert vastness of Yemen to the distress of U.S. security agencies – and to the delight of Craig Scudder. Al Qaeda was willing to pay a hefty sum for the quartz chip, which combined with the energy storehouse in the Ark of the Covenant
would provide al Qaeda a weapon of mass destruction beyond humanity’s imagination.
Craig had other plans.
For possession of both the quartz crystal chip – and the Ark of the Covenant – the drug lords of Latin America would be more than willing to pay him a sum of wealth beyond al Qaeda’s imagination and most certainly resources. He need only out maneuver Tariq and his low life thugs, who didn’t hesitate to kill children. “The collateral of our sacred war,” Tariq had once proclaimed, shrugging his immense shoulders unsympathetically. Well, it was time for the duel at dawn; the shoot-out for the last piece of the puzzle, the Ark of the Covenant.
“Allaaaaaaaahu Akbar!” The static sound of the call to prayer being broadcast from the city’s numerous minarets jolted him. The streets began emptying of all Muslims – the males hurrying to prayer in the mosques, the females to their homes. Still, enough non-Muslim Yemenis and a few westerners still thronged the intersection.
Yet the four striding past caused his head to swivel. A veiled Muslim woman muffled in the black hijab and billowing abaya was accompanied by a young, good-looking modern Arab male. There was something familiar about the Muslim woman, but then weren’t they all alike? Shrouded pussies.
Still, the other woman in the denim jacket, she was definitely familiar – or, at least, her billed cap was. Dallas Cowboys! His eyes narrowed on her. The female Hopi Indian tracker for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. What was her name? Janet. Yes, Janet Lomayestewa, shadowed by the unmistakable astrophysicist, Jack Ripley. And her child? The thought he had wounded the child or worse may have killed her was still uncomfortable. He snapped his mind back to the mother. No mere coincidence she was here at civilization’s farthest outpost.
Appreciation for the Hopi Indian tracker was followed by sheer pleasure. The advantage was definitely all Craig’s now. He was no longer the hunted, but the hunter.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The four were eating with their fingers from shared platters at a small fish restaurant inside the Jewish quarter. Or rather, Yasmin was trying to eat. Her freshly bandaged hands, compliments of Sam’s resourcefulness, were making eating with her fingers almost impossible.
The Jewish quarter had also been Sam’s suggestion. “Easier to go unbothered here,” he had explained. “Besides, recently twenty-three prisoners escaped at one time from Central Prison, including high-level al Qaeda operatives. You’re only one of many breakouts in a city of two million people. Not to worry.”
Well, Janet did. Still, considering Central Prison’s slipshod intake processing, she could readily believe it had lost track of her and Yasmin. Nonetheless, as a western-clad female in a male predominant environment, Janet felt as conspicuous as a snake curled on a cake.
“You told me to connect the dots,” Jack was saying irritably, “and I’m telling you that – ” he broke off to signal one of the waiters in stained aprons who hurried from the kitchen with platters of spice-basted orange fish. “ A fork, please.” He turned back to her and the other two, “I’m telling you that Nuke is headed for Marib. That’s where the Queen of Sheba’s temple is.”
Why was he so snarky today? Because he had had so little sleep last night moving to a new room just in case airport authorities tracked her entry papers registering the Hotel al-Salam as her destination? She could only hope she was unimportant enough that the Yemen police wouldn’t bother with her.
She drew a steadying breath. What was it about him that made her knees go wobbly and her stomach capsize? Sam, sitting across from her, was much more handsome with his merry black eyes and sparkling teeth, with that black wealth of curls and beautifully burnished skin.
Yet Jack, with his bladed nose, his untamable lion’s mane and pirate’s mustache, his mile-wide shoulders and daredevil grin – the rogue was one-hundred percent male. Maybe, the powerful need she felt when around him could just be attributed to pheromones. After all, the bad-ass was merely a man. Still, the way he had literally swept her up off her feet when she had stumbled into their room at the al-Salam had left her feeling like . . . like she had come home.
“You are sure that this Nuke is the same man who turned me over to the police?” Yasmin asked, looking to Janet for confirmation. At least, she and Yasmin had this in common – a flaring distrust of anything smelling of testosterone.
Janet’s glance moved from Yasmin’s pain-wracked face to Jack’s cantankerous grimace and settled on Sam’s blistering smile. Dr. Sampson al-Addin?! Aladdin? Come on! What was the young man’s game – besides providing the necessary interior travel papers out of the goodness of his heart? She’d bet her badge Sam hadn’t been merely hanging out at the hotel lobby last night . . . and the way he so easily smoothed the room exchange with the desk clerk . . . yeah, Sam was just too ingratiating.
“Your description of your rapist matches our man, Yasmin.” Janet shrugged. “Of course, it could match a hundred men in Sana’a.”
But not men with eyes that artic blue who chewed compulsively on toothpicks. Instincts told her she was on the right trail. Nevertheless, she was feeling antsy. The energy percolating around the restaurant table at the moment was throwing her off center. And the longer they waited for Sam’s contact to show up, the fainter the trail was getting.
If only she had her Ka-bar knife the airport soldier had confiscated. Without it, she felt naked and vulnerable. Granted the prison guard’s AK-47 would be useful. However, it was safely concealed back in the hotel room for the moment.
“This Nuke is not staying in Sana’a,” Yasmin said. She was virtually concealed by the black abaya but had dropped her gauzy veil so that she could drink and eat. “While I was there, he received a phone call. He talked about a meeting at Menelek’s tomb at five o’clock. This Tuesday, I think.”
All eating paused.
“The day after tomorrow,” Jack muttered.
“Who is Menelek?” Janet asked.
“The only child of Solomon and Sheba, according to some ancient texts,” Sam said.
Gazes swerved toward him.
His smile was less than beaming, almost embarrassed as he explained, “I also have a degree in linguistics, specifically in ancient languages of the Middle East.
“So where is Menelek’s tomb?” she asked, feeling excitement rise in her like the temperature come August in Arizona.
“When he died, ancient texts indicate Sheba had her son buried beneath her temple in Marib and then she left Yemen forever.”
“Then I’m booking my vacation for Marib tonight,” Janet said. The quicker out of Sana’a the better.
The fork arrived, and Jack presented it to Yasmin. “This might make eating the fish easier.”
Startled, the Arab woman’s turquoise eyes lowered modestly then rose to lock with his attentive gaze. “Thank you.”
Viciously, Janet ripped a piece of bread from its disc-like loaf. “About these papers – ”
“Tasrih permits from the Ministry of Interior,” Sam responded. “Without these you cannot pass the checkpoints in regions renowned for their instability and frequent kidnappings.”
“That would be Marib,” Yasmin said.
“And we’re getting these papers how?” Janet pressed.
“A local fixer.” He did a quick check of his Mickey Mouse wrist watch. “The Tasrih’s permits are passing us off as guests of an oil company.” He flashed Janet another of his charming white smiles. Obviously, he did not chew the qat, an important clue that this was no ordinary Yemeni, even if he was American-born. “Besides the fixer owes me one. I snuck him into a private belly dance performance. You should have seen his eyes when the dancer swished her – ”
Yasmin practically snorted. “My tribe does not permit outsiders to watch the dance.”
“Your tribe?” Jack inquired, his green-eyed gaze admiring.
Bilious green-eyes, Janet thought and jabbed her chunk of fish in the orange sauce. So Yasmin had youth, intelligence – and hair.
“Actually I am a mixture of Fren
ch and the Yamani tribe.”
But, of course.
“A rapacious tribe,” Sam commented, taking a sip from his cup of mint tea and waving the waiter with the check toward Jack.
Yasmin visibly bristled. “We are descendants of the ancient Sabaens. Over the centuries my tribe’s sheikhs have been the sole defenders of Yemen’s freedom that your small ruling elite in Sana’a would stamp out if they could.”
“My ruling elite?” Sam inquired, his eyes dancing impishly. “I’m a poor professor from the States. Just here to care for my mom for a while.” He shifted his intense black-eyed interest to Janet and explained, “Yemen’s National Museum may write my measly paycheck, but I call Michigan home. And you, Janet?”
“Can we get on with this?” Jack snapped, yanking his wallet from his back jeans pocket to extract a layer of crumpled, frayed riyals.
Yasmin’s gaze leaped beyond the table, and she sputtered into her tea cup. “Please tell me this is not your contact.”
Janet’s gaze followed hers. An old guy in a sweat-stained gray Stetson lurched through the door. He was shod in cowboy boots and wore a pearl-buttoned light blue western shirt that strained to contain his wine cask-sized belly. He straightened upright in a dignified effort. Both hands shot into the air. “Tah-dah!” he bellowed. “Tex is here!”
* * * * *
The suq looked like something out of the Arabian Nights. The centuries-old camel market, entered by the north gate of Sana’a’s famous suq, provided access for large camel loads and in this century for vehicles, although traffic these days was almost blocked by a mosque in the middle. The market was a boisterous, busy place with an air of excitement and vitality and Arabs in colorful robes, all talking ceaselessly. Herders were using bamboo canes to corral their camels, most of which had their right leg bent and tied behind to prevent escape. Their strong odor and their dung cleared Jack’s sinus cavities. Their snorting and spitting and the herder’s shouts practically drowned out Tex’s instructions.
Call Me Crazy (Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker) Page 9
