Danger in the Desert

by Merline Lovelace

  “Now,” Sheik Yousef announced when she’d emptied her bowl, washed her hands in warm water and downed a third glass of cinnamon tea, “show me this scarab you have found.”

  “This is only a replica.” Reaching under her scarf, she unclasped the thin gold chain. “The real one is in the custody of the director of the Cairo Museum.”

  She dropped the beetle in his thorny palm. He fingered it, turning it over to study the markings while Jaci launched into a description of how she’d stumbled at the City of the Dead and the incidents that followed—including Mrs. Grimes’s initial assumption she’d been the target of a kidnap attempt by white slavers. The story sounded fantastic even to her own ears.

  When she finished, Kahil described the electronic chatter her find had generated and the scarab’s subsequent authentication by experts at the Cairo Museum.

  Stroking the beetle, the Lion of the Desert skewered Deke with a piercing stare. “And you, al Sham shir? What is your part in all this?”

  “My government sent me to assist Kahil in determining whether Jaci had any idea of the hornet’s nest she’d stumbled into.”

  “She did not?”

  “No,” Deke replied.

  “She does now, however.”

  “She does indeed. That’s why I’m here, to protect her.”

  The sheik’s dark eyes lanced from Deke to Jaci and back again.

  “It strikes me that may not be the only reason you are here. Just remember, my friend. While this woman is under my roof, she has my protection.”

  It didn’t take Jaci long to appreciate how all-encompassing the sheik’s protection was.

  Of necessity, Bedouin women enjoyed a considerable degree of independence. The harsh, unforgiving desert dictated an equality of labor and movement denied to many of their sisters in more conservative communities. Yet because of Jaci’s special circumstances, either Deke or Kahil or a specially designated guard accompanied her every time she departed Yousef El Hassan’s home.

  One of those guards pulled sentry duty outside the mud-brick dwelling Fahranna used as a clinic. His machine gun tucked in his crossed arms, he waited patiently while Jaci assisted the doctor as best she could.

  A similarly armed Deke accompanied her to the small but thriving market the following afternoon, where he helped her bargain for baskets and shawls woven in traditional Bedouin designs for friends at home.

  Evenings she spent mostly with the women of the sheik’s extended household. After that first night, she and Fahranna weren’t invited to dine with the men. Instead, they took their meals in the dining area reserved for women. Lit by oil lamps and noisy with laughter and talk, it was a lively, convivial place.

  Ditto her sleeping quarters. As it turned out, Jaci’s room was located in the wing reserved for the unmarried females. Oil lamps flickered late into the night as the women sewed or read or conveyed to their guest through pantomime and elaborate hand gestures how lucky she was to have such a man as al Shamshir as her guardian.

  She didn’t argue. It didn’t do any good, given Deke’s self-appointed role as guardian and protector. She had to admit he looked the part, too. Adopting local customs, he protected his head and neck from the sun with a traditional Bedouin headdress anchored by thick ropes. His tan deepened to bronzed oak, and the beginnings of a beard darkened his cheeks and chin.

  He appeared as fierce as any of the sheik’s warriors when he strode into the courtyard the morning of their third day at the oasis. Jaci was bouncing a curly haired toddler on her knee, with a half dozen women clustered around her. Deke immediately snagged every female eye, hers included.

  “Kahil just got a radio call from his aide,” he told her, his eyes glinting. “The subtle hints Kahil had his people drop have taken root. According to intercepted emails and tweets, Ma’at’s true believers know you’re at Jawal. They’ve been trying to decide what to do next.”

  “How long is Kahil going to let them stew?”

  “As long as it takes.” His steely gaze locked with hers. “Unless you change your mind and let me hustle you onto a plane back to the States.”

  “I’m smack in the middle of an empty desert, guarded night and day by heavily armed watchdogs. With,” she reminded him, “an entire squadron of air commandos just a radio call away. I might as well see this through.”

  His mouth set. He wanted to say more. That much was obvious to both Jaci and the women sitting around her. They stopped their various tasks and observed the byplay with unabashed interest.

  “We still need to talk about what happened at your hotel,” he reminded her.

  “No, we don’t.”

  Her response was automatic, but she knew he was right. They needed to talk. She’d had sufficient time in the past few days to work through her anger at his duplicity. She still had a way to go before she could get past her own starry-eyed gullibility. This was hardly the time or the place to bare those emotions, however.

  Deke recognized that, as well. He glanced at the other women in the courtyard. They didn’t understand his words, but Jaci knew they were recording every gesture, every inflection, for dissection later.

  “Kahil says Fahranna wants to go to the mud baths this afternoon,” Deke informed her gruffly. “I’ll escort you, and we’ll talk then.”

  Jaci had no idea what one wore to a mud bath. When she asked Fahranna, the physician shrugged.

  “You wear nothing.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  “Don’t worry. There are separate chambers for men and women. We will strip off all our clothing and wallow in the green Egyptian mud like Nile hippos.”

  “Sounds, uh, lovely.”

  “It is,” Fahranna replied, laughing. “You won’t believe what the mud does for your pores. But it’s even more lovely when you rinse off under the stars in a pool fed by a clear, bubbling spring. The baths are the main reason I let Kahil drag me to his father’s house.”

  “If you say so.”

  Kahil and Deke were waiting when the women went downstairs later that afternoon. Jaci wasn’t particularly reassured by the holsters buckled low on their hips. Or the semiautomatic rifles each man had slung across his shoulder. All they needed, she thought, were crossed bandoliers to make her turn tail and scurry back to the women’s quarters.

  She sneaked a hand under her head scarf and nervously fingered the substitute scarab. The fact that Fahranna also sported a pistol strapped to her hip didn’t do much for Jaci’s peace of mind.

  “The baths are on the other side of the oasis,” Kahil said by way of explanation. “Still well with in the innermost ring of my father’s perimeter defenses. Ordinarily we would not go armed, but given the circumstances Deke and I thought it best to keep weapons close at hand.”

  When they walked through the heavy double doors, Jaci was still trying to figure out how the men would hang on to all those weapons while rolling around in green Egyptian mud. The sight of a stable boy holding the reins of four kneeling camels brought her to a dead stop.

  “Uh-oh.” Her expression turned nervous. “I’m not very good at riding one of those,” she confessed to Kahil.

  “Deke told us.” Hiding a smile, he patted a long, hairy neck. “This is one of my father’s gentlest milk camels. I’ve had them mount a child’s saddle on her for you. It’s smaller and lighter, and the pommels are closer together for a safer ride. You can’t fall out.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that.”

  Jaci mounted gingerly and hung on while Deke arranged the folds of her robe so they padded her calves against the coarse saddle blanket. He then swung a leg over the saddle of the camel next to hers. Fahranna mounted with the ease of long practice and accepted a cloth sack from Kahil, which she hooked around the pommel.

  “Tea and sesame cakes,” she told Jaci. “For after we bathe.”

  It took ten precarious, swaying minutes before Jaci finally loosened her death grip on the reins. Five minutes more before she allowed herself to relax and enjoy the experie
nce of plodding around a salt-rimmed lake while the sun dropped toward the shallow pool at its top.

  The late-afternoon sun, Fahranna informed her after they’d slathered mud all over each other and stretched out on stone slabs in the open-air women’s cubicle, was necessary to bake the mud into one’s pores.

  And bake it did! By the time she rolled off the slab, Jaci felt as though she’d been trussed, seasoned and steamed in a clay casserole. Stiff-legged, she followed Fahranna to the natural rock pool. It was fed by a spring that seeped through porous limestone and dropped in a silvery waterfall.

  Gasping at the water’s unexpected chill, she sank up to her neck and dunked her head repeatedly. Once she got the mud off her hair and face, she discovered Fahranna was right. Her pores were so tight that her skin felt like glass.

  “Wow! I’d like to bottle some of this stuff and carry it home with me.”

  “You can bottle the mud,” the Egyptian said as she floated lazily on her back, “but not our desert sun.”

  The sound of splashing and the low murmur of voices carried over the wall separating the bathing areas. Resolutely, Jaci tried not to visualize Deke floating on his back.

  “We’ll have tea and sweet cakes with the men after the sun goes down,” Fahranna advised. “Seeing the stars light up the night sky here, with no city lights to diffuse their brilliance, is something you’ll never forget.”

  They would take tea and watch the stars come out. Then, Jaci thought, she and Deke would talk.

  She waited until they’d demolished the tea and sticky-sweet sesame cakes and the sky had darkened to walk the pool’s edge with him.

  Jaci could have easily let herself get swept up in their magic if not for her nervousness about the conversation to come. Fahranna kept insisting Deke felt something more than a professional sense of responsibility toward her. She would have loved to believe that. Common sense dictated otherwise. There was nothing in her life—nothing in her—that would hold the interest of an adventurer like him. Not for long, anyway.

  “Okay.” She came to a halt and turned to face him, determined to get it over with. “You wanted to talk. So talk.”

  He stared down at her, his features shadowed. “First, I need to apologize. I’ve never…that is, I always…”

  He stopped, blew out a breath. Was this smooth, sophisticated, take-charge Deke Griffin? Fumbling for words? His uncharacteristic uncertainty filled Jaci with both surprise and satisfaction.

  “Let me help you out here,” she said, oozing a sweetness she was far from feeling. “You’ve al ready stated unequivocally that making love to me wasn’t part of your plan. I believe your exact words were that taking me to bed went against all your training and instincts.”

  “It did.”

  “Now you’re feeling guilty and a misplaced sense of responsibility for the naive twit you played like a cheap violin.”

  “That’s not what…”

  “It’s okay, Deke. Really. I’ve worked through my embarrassment and anger. I’ve decided to consider the memory of our night together as one more souvenir to take home from my vacation.”

  “You’ve decided I’m a souvenir?”

  “Not the kind I usually collect,” she admitted with a halfhearted smile. “I’ll have to figure out how to work you into my scrapbook.”

  Judging by the way his brows snapped together, her attempt at a joke fell completely flat.

  “The point is,” she said with painful honesty, “you don’t have to feel guilty or responsible or this misplaced sense of protectiveness toward me. I might not have known who you were when I invited you into my hotel room, but I did invite you. What happened was as much my fault as it was yours.”

  “Got it all figured out, have you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, I’m damned if I do,” he said gruffly.

  “’Scuse me?”

  “The fact is I do feel guilty and responsible and a fierce sense of protectiveness for you. I’ve also spent more hours than I should have the past few days thinking of ways to get you into bed again.”

  His hand came up and cupped her cheek.

  “I can’t do it here, Jaci. Not without risking castration by Sheik Yousef,” he added drily. “But I’m going to do my damnedest to make it happen as soon as I get you home safe.”

  Well! So much for her carefully rehearsed speech. The man had just made mincemeat of it. And knocked her breath back down her throat in the process.

  “In the meantime,” he said, his voice husky, “this will have to hold me.”

  When his lips molded to hers, Jaci realized it would have to hold her, too.

  Especially after the rattle of gunfire split the night.

  Chapter 11

  The shots brought Kahil and Fahranna on the run. They skidded to a halt beside the two Americans, listening intently as short, staccato bursts echoed across the desert. Stark silence followed for five or six seconds.

  Jaci’s heart jackhammered against her ribs. “What…?”

  Three additional bursts cut her off. She almost jumped out of her skin again, but the others visibly relaxed.

  “That’s my father’s signal,” Kahil explained.

  “He wishes us to return.”

  “What’s wrong?” she wanted to know as they made for their patiently waiting camels. “Why did he signal?”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  Since the radio clipped to the colonel’s belt hadn’t broadcast an alarm, Jaci figured she didn’t need to worry. Yet an uneasy feeling seemed to seep into her with each thud of her camel’s hooves. Although she knew the scarab dangling on its thin gold chain was a fake, the urge to touch it grew too powerful to ignore. Awkwardly, she gathered her mount’s reins in one hand and slipped the other under the veil she’d hurriedly draped across her head and throat.

  When they arrived at the main house, Sheik Yousef met them in the vestibule. “A vehicle approaches,” he announced in his thunderous bass.

  “Only one?” his son asked.

  “Only one. My sentries have tracked it for the past half hour.”

  That didn’t sound like an invasion of the body snatchers to Jaci. Yet her nerves crawled as she waited with the others. Nervously, she clutched her substitute scarab. She didn’t understand why the heck it gave her such comfort but it did.

  What seemed like an eternity later, one of the sheik’s men escorted a dusty—but very familiar—figure into the house.

  “Hanif!”

  The tour guard looked exhausted. He was wearing his standard uniform—the dark green suit with the jacket cut loosely enough to accommodate the compact submachine gun that bulged under the back flap—but it was his grim expression that sent a shiver of dread down Jaci’s spine.

  “What are you doing here? What’s happened?”

  “Your friend, Mrs. Grimes. She’s had an accident.”

  Jaci gasped. “Oh, no! What kind of an accident?”

  “She was hit by a taxi while crossing the street.”

  “Dear God! Is she badly hurt?”

  “She is in the hospital. The doctors say her condition is very critical.” The guard’s dark eyes held hers. “She asks for you. My supervisor at the agency, he tries to call you but the call does not go through on your cell phone. So I drive to Jawal to tell you.”

  Jaci might be naive and a tad clumsy but she was no fool. A thread of doubt wove its way through her shock and dismay. Instinctively, she turned to Deke.

  He had the same doubts, she saw. His face was set and his eyes cool, but before either he or Kahil could question Hanif, Fahranna took charge.

  “What hospital is she in?” the physician asked the tour guard briskly.

  “Dar al Fouad.”

  “That’s one of our best,” she assured Jaci. “It’s critical care unit is world renowned. Kahil, get on your radio and contact your command center. Have them patch me through to the doctor in charge of the CCU.”

  The eyes of everyone in th
e room locked on the colonel as he unhooked the radio from his belt and keyed the mike. After a burst of static, someone answered and Kahil barked out a rapid order. While they waited for the connection, Hanif turned to Jaci.

  “Your tour group leaves tomorrow for Luxor. I must go with them. It is my job. But it worries me that your friend will have no one except a representative from the tour agency with her.”

  Jaci caught her lower lip between her teeth. Susan Grimes had watched over her like a mother hen. The possibility that the kind, gregarious woman might lie in the hospital for days or weeks with no family or friends beside her bed made Jaci throw a desperate glance at Deke.

  His expression remained impassive, but she could guess what he was thinking. Had the so-called true believers turned the tables on them? Were they using Susan Grimes as bait for the bait? Was Hanif one of them?

  Not only possible, Jaci thought with a sudden lurch in her stomach, but very probable. The guard was the only Egyptian she’d shown Ma’at’s scarab to the day she found it. Not long afterward, Egyptian authorities had begun picking up suspicious phone and email chatter.

  Fahranna’s terse exchange with the doctor at the hospital cut into her whirling thoughts. Since it was conducted in Arabic, she held her breath until the physician handed the radio back to her husband.

  “It’s as he says,” she told Jaci gravely. “Your friend sustained massive trauma to the head and is in very critical condition.”

  Stricken by the news, Jaci didn’t hesitate. “I need to get back to Cairo immediately.”

  “I will drive you.” Hanif’s glance shifted to the man beside her. “And any other who wishes to go.”

  She caught the quick look Deke and Kahil exchanged. So did Sheik Yousef.

  “The sands can be treacherous at night,” the Lion of the Desert reminded them. “My men and I will escort you.”

  “No need,” his son replied, once again keying his radio mike. “I’ll call in a chopper.”

  Hanif opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. He stood as stiff and silent as the others until the colonel signed off.