The Empty Quarter

by David L. Robbins

  Josh couldn’t drive on. He couldn’t stop.

  He powered behind the Mercedes’s one headlight, frantically weighing the dangers, looking for one to tip the balance. A few miles back, the pickup hadn’t gained on him; he believed he could outrun it to the Saudi border. But what if another roadblock waited in the desert ahead, more guns and bribed qabili? The Abidah knew they couldn’t trust the Bani Yam, so they’d backstopped them with the Sai’ar. Who’d been paid to block the road next, and where?

  Where were the PJs?

  “Khalil.”

  In the rearview, the Yemeni had collapsed against the seat, eyes closed.

  “Yes, Joshua.” Shouting over the wind seemed to tax him.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  Khalil’s head tipped back, showing the bottom of his chin. He spoke to the upholstered ceiling.

  “The mission.”

  Josh wanted to punch the steering wheel but the speed of the car and the pain in his arm stopped him.

  “There’s no mission. It’s finished. She’s not going to make it.”

  Khalil’s head bobbed down. He leaned forward, pale and sweaty. He drew his mouth close to Josh’s ear, to be sure he was heard.

  “Then save her.”

  “How?”

  The reek of all their blood, even flowing out the open windows, was growing overpowering.

  “Be a soldier.”

  Khalil eased back, leaving Josh alone to figure out how to do that.

  Pull the car over and confront the Sai’ar? Three tribesmen had been left alive at the roadblock. Josh had to figure all three were in the pursuing pickup, and rampaging mad. Could he fight alone against those numbers, with a bad arm and a torn side? The best he could hope for would be to lose more time, while the Abidah and al-Qaeda zoomed closer on the road. At worst, Josh would be killed and take Khalil and the princess with him.

  Running for it was the best chance to save his own life. Every white stripe flashing under his wheels brought him nearer to the PJs charging to his signal. If they were in choppers or a plane, his best guess was ten to fifteen more minutes of breakneck driving until he crossed their path. If the PJs were on ATVs like the SEALs, then an hour at least. In either case, Nadya had little chance of surviving in the car.

  Josh imagined his rescue, safe with wounded Khalil, the corpse of a princess in the backseat, his assignment in shambles. That scene carried no relief, no honor. Just failure.

  Josh, too, was losing blood. How much more time did he have in him for a high-speed chase? How long until he grew too weak for this dark desert highway, faded, and drove off the road or got overtaken by the guns of the Sai’ar?

  He pulled the blue force tracker off the dashboard. Flicking his eyes between it and the spooling road, he dialed his ID code and one more **4. Hurry.

  The mission was, in fact, over. Silva’s diplomatic assignment, the CIA and Saudi kidnapping op—all of it flurried out through the busted windows, lost into the Empty Quarter. Josh centered on his only duty: to keep himself, Khalil, and the princess alive long enough for rescue to reach them.

  First, they had to stop being chased. He needed to get off the road somewhere to find cover. A stronghold where he could buy a few minutes to address their wounds, slow some of the bleeding, then hang on until the pararescuemen reached them. The rule of thumb for siege warfare was one defender for every three attackers. If Josh could get inside walls, his odds improved. He scanned the fast-passing desert for a structure, any abandoned building. A few miles back, he’d passed some shacks, unused oil garages, the remains of dwellings. More may be ahead. He searched for anything he could defend.

  The wild card was the Abidah and the al-Qaeda husband. How close were they? How many guns would they bring?

  Josh had only fired the Kalashnikov twice. With any luck, the thirty-shot magazine was at least half-full.

  “Khalil, you got more ammo?”

  Hurting, the Yemeni rooted in his jacket. He held up two fresh magazines.

  “Sixteen rounds.”

  “Good. How’re you feeling?”

  Khalil clenched his teeth in the mirror. The man had grit.

  “She’s dying.”

  “I understand. How well do you know this road?”

  “Well enough.”

  “We need to get inside somewhere. I can patch everybody up, then we’ll hold out and wait for whoever’s coming.”

  Khalil sat forward again. Josh saw how badly he was blanching.

  “A citadel.”

  “That’s the idea. Can you fight if you have to?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s up ahead?”

  To prop himself, Khalil gripped the front passenger seat with a hand smirched with the princess’s blood. His breath beside Josh’s cheek smelled sour.

  “In a few miles, you will see the turnoff for route 150 north. Do not take it.”

  “We’ve got to keep going north.”

  “There’s nothing north of the crossroads but desert and wadis. All the way to the border.”

  “You want to stay on the N5?”

  “Beyond the turn is the outskirts of a village. We’ll find an empty place there.”

  “How about the villagers?”

  “This is tribal land. They will not help us.”

  Khalil let go of the front seat. He drifted back beside the princess.

  “Go quickly.”

  Josh poured on the speed to widen the gap with the pursuing Sai’ar, buying more slivers of time. He fought against the distraction of his own wounds to push the limits of his control over the car, passing 100 mph behind the lone headlamp. The speed was nerve-racking and he could only hold it for a couple more miles. He backed off when a reflective sign rose out of the black distance for the upcoming intersection.

  Josh neared the sign, one eye on the pickup behind. He tore through the crossroads, past a dilapidated truck stop, where a pair of eighteen-wheelers fueled under jittering fluorescent lights. To better assess the surroundings and find a hideout, Josh slowed the Mercedes to sixty, but this proved too fast. He braked more, and with every lost bit of speed his urgency climbed.

  The road entered the ramshackle outskirts of a village. The low structures were few, impoverished, and spread out. Each humble house looked occupied. Two had many white bulbs strung across their fronts like holiday lights. Close to midnight, only dogs walked in the dirt spaces between hovels. Josh drove deeper down the road, as swiftly as he could, swiveling his head for shelter. One dark, small building appeared empty, but the walls were corrugated metal and without windows. He needed shooting apertures and walls thick enough to stop bullets.

  “Khalil, find something fast.”

  The Yemeni set his left elbow in the sill of the rear window, peering into the sparse surroundings. Josh hurtled past a clump of commercial buildings with vehicles parked in front; the doors looked locked for the night. He’d driven a mile past the crossroads and lost track of the Sai’ar truck.

  Khalil extended his good arm out the window.

  “Turn there.”

  A chain fence stood without a gate on either side of a packed-sand drive. Josh spun the Mercedes into the lane.

  “What’s down there?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re away from the main road. Cut off your lights.”

  Josh did this. He hurried down the bare track, driving blacked-out under the moon. On all sides lay nothing but open, dry land. Fifty yards ahead, the silhouette of a low structure broke the level plain. Josh headed for it, raising a dust cloud.

  He shot past a battered sign, barely able to read the Arabic in the little light: Keep Out. Excavation Under Way. The order was under the authority of the Yemeni Interior Ministry. The sign looked weathered and forgotten.

  A large mud hut emerged out of the gloom.
Josh circled it, skidding the Mercedes past honeycombed digs in the dirt. This had been an archaeological site, the building an antique ruin. He stopped behind the old rear wall to hide the car from the road.

  The structure was an earthen square, just four tall mud-brick walls with openings for doors and windows, no roof. The surrounding ground had been dug and panned for antiquities, but the effort appeared to have halted years ago. The ruts and furrows showed the rounding of weather and neglect.

  Josh grabbed his backpack and the Kalashnikov off the passenger seat, and the blue force tracker, and threw open his door. His side split; he’d overlooked the wound there to move fast. He almost lost his footing from the pain.

  Khalil had climbed halfway out of the car. He’d tucked his right hand inside his belt to hold it still. His other clutched the Beretta. Josh tugged him to his feet.

  “Get inside. I’ll bring her. Watch the road.”

  Khalil lumbered into the hut. Josh hustled to the rear passenger door, threw it open, and recoiled from the assault of blood in his nostrils and the sight of the shrouded woman unconscious, dying in pulses. He strapped the Kalashnikov across his back and slid his hands under her, soaking his sleeves. Despite his own wounds, he lifted her out of the car to carry her over the threshold.

  Josh set Nadya in a corner of the cool dirt floor and stayed on his knees. He yanked the first aid kit out of his backpack. Before he could open it, Khalil hissed. Josh skidded low beside him to a window facing the front.

  The Sai’ar pickup truck approached on the main road. Nearing the fence, it slowed, passed by, then stopped and backed up. Carefully, the vehicle swung onto the dirt road.

  The arriving headlights lit the last wisps of the Mercedes’s dust trail.

  Chapter 24

  Hadhramaut

  The Empty Quarter

  Yemen

  Headlights barred the road miles ahead. So the Sai’ar had not abandoned their post like the despicable Bani Yam. Was Nadya up ahead? Were the kidnappers? Arif’s heart swelled in step with his wrath and a final burst of speed from the truck. The Makarov tucked at his waist took on its own pulse.

  “Mahmoud, check your phone. Have you missed a call?”

  “I have not.”

  Closing in, only two pickups blocked the highway. Arif did not touch the brakes until he was almost on them, outpacing the four trucks behind him. He pulled to the shoulder, jarring Mahmoud and the Yemenis in the bed with his sudden stop. He took the Makarov in hand and walked into the beams, seeing no one.

  Arif stood in the middle of the road, simmering in the headlights. At his sandals sparkled dozens of spent casings. He raised the Makarov two-handed and moved more carefully behind it across the road.

  As he left the throw of the lights, his eyes adjusted to the sudden dark. Ten strides into the sand, a thin tribesman kneeled before three bodies. The corpses lay faceup, dragged into a line with their arms crossed over bloodied chests. The surviving tribesman’s hands were lifted beside his head, and he did not interrupt his prayer. He touched his forehead to the sand. A banded bundle of riyals lay near him.

  Arif lowered the Makarov as Mahmoud and four Ba-Jalal brothers joined him. The elder indicated the Sai’ar bowing beside his dead clansmen.

  “This prayer is getting a lot of use tonight.”

  Arif lowered to his knees alongside the tribesman. Quietly, he waited until the man lifted his forehead from the sand. Arif touched him to stop his muttering.

  “Who did this?”

  The eyes of the grieving Sai’ar were without tears. This was an angry man.

  “The American. And his driver.”

  Arif hurled a glance back at Mahmoud. The old man spit in the desert.

  “An American? Are you sure?”

  “He shot down my brothers. Yes, sayyid. I am sure.”

  “The driver?”

  “A Yemeni. A city man. He is a killer, too.”

  Judging by the brass lying in the road and scattered around the dead Sai’ar, there had been a fearsome gun battle at close quarters.

  “Was there a woman in the car?”

  “In the backseat.”

  Arif made a hopeful, private fist. He’d found her.

  “Was she hurt?”

  “I do not know, sayyid. She did not move during the fight.”

  “Where have they gone?”

  “East.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Before rising, Arif rested a hand on the body closest to him.

  “Your brothers.”

  “Yes, sayyid.”

  “I am sorry.”

  Mahmoud pointed at the thick packet of riyals on the sand.

  “Take that.”

  The tribesman did not shift his eyes from his losses.

  “No, sayyid.”

  Arif curled his hand behind the tribesman’s bent neck.

  “To whom belongs everything in the heavens and the earth?”

  The Sai’ar covered his face.

  “To God.”

  Arif stood the same moment Mahmoud’s cell phone rang.

  Chapter 25

  Above the Empty Quarter

  Yemeni airspace

  The hydraulic gate dropped, and the desert night rushed into the cargo bay. At first the dry air was cooling, then LB noted a bite to it, a rebuke and a warning that the desert below would not be welcoming.

  Bathed in the red bulb and the sickly glow of activated Cyalum sticks, LB stood at the front of his pararescue unit. Like the seven others, he held on to the steel static line strung taut past his helmet. Loaded with a hundred-plus pounds of armor, packs, weapons, and chute, he’d be easily put off-balance by any sudden turbulence. Behind him were Jamie, Mouse, and Berko. The second team followed: Doc, Quincy, and Dow, with Wally at the end of the stick.

  The loadmaster poised with a blade to cut away the web restraints holding the two GAARVs from the open gate. Kingsman 1 zoomed close to the ground; LB crept closer to the windy edge to peek down at the speeding earth. No lights shone anywhere on the fretted terrain, just the silver milk of the moon. LB had trained in deserts before, but they’d been American deserts with saguaro and rock, nothing like the vast badlands and dunes of The Empty Quarter.

  Waiting for the green light, he wasn’t troubled by the desert; the PJs and their equipment could handle it. But two minutes ago, before giving the order to hook up, Wally announced that the package, after blasting through the crossroads at 100 mph, had stopped again. The satellite map showed they’d parked next to a remote hut outside a village. The signal had gone inside the four walls. That could only mean one of two things: the diplomat and the princess were hiding out, or they were gearing up for a fight.

  Wally’s voice sizzled over the team frequency.

  “Get down fast. Free up the GAARVs and let’s move. I think we’re dealing with minutes here.”

  LB answered for everyone. “Roger that.”

  The red light over the open gate extinguished. The cargo bay paused with the dark. The loadmaster set the edge of his knife to the final web restraint. Unnecessarily, and out of habit, Wally shouted “Ready.” No one replied, not even Berko.

  The emerald bulb flicked on. The loadmaster hacked away the last web restraint. After the first GAARV pallet got a shove, the rollers in the floor did the rest. The next second, the great parcel slid down the gate into open air and was scooped away by the wind to disappear under the ramp. Instantly the second GAARV followed off the gate. Only seconds later, the two giant gray cargo chutes bloomed, and the GAARVs floated down.

  Working fast, the loadmaster reeled in the flapping static lines. Done, he whirled on LB with a thumbs-up.

  LB lunged off the edge into nothing. He tucked his chin to his chest and held his legs tight together. He locked his arms at
his side and his hands on his emergency chute. The winds behind the HC-130 snatched and yanked him backward. His boots were just eight hundred feet off the ground, a distance he’d plunge in five seconds if anything went wrong. Instantly the static line jerked the chute from the container at his back. The many cords unraveled upward, and the rectangular chute took shape over his head. The force of the opening pushed the air out of his lungs, and he let out a hard, gutty sigh. His plummet became a steep downward drift; LB filled his lungs again, as he did on every jump, with a breath of relief.

  Close behind, Kingsman 1 sowed the rest of the team into the brilliant sky. Each chute popped two seconds after tumbling from the plane. LB gripped the twin toggles that dropped beside his ears so that he could control his position in the wind and follow behind the GAARVs’ cargo chutes.

  LB thumbed the talk button for the team freq.

  “PJ one up.”

  Above him, Jamie replied. “PJ two up.”

  Mouse and Berko chimed in, then the rest of the team in order, until Wally at the top of the stack reported his chute had deployed.

  The drop lasted forty seconds. The pair of GAARVs landed softly and in good shape, both upright. Both chutes cut away automatically and lay deflated on the sand. The LZ was a hundred-yard-wide wadi framed east and west by higher ground. The PJs could stay in this dry riverbed for two miles, all the way to the package.

  LB flew a steep glide slope, hastening for the ground. He made a running landing twenty yards from the GAARVs. Boots down, he released his chest and crotch straps, then the bellyband, and the container was tugged off his back by the chute’s collapse. He didn’t break stride on the pebbled earth, heading for the first vehicle. LB whipped out his black Benchmade knife, opening it with a quick flick of his thumb.

  He attacked the packing straps, snipping two with the honed blade before Jamie arrived and joined him to hack at the riggers’ work. Mouse and Berko dropped silently and doffed their chutes, leaving them crumpled with the others in the wadi. The gray night was bright enough for the four to cut the nearest GAARV loose without night-vision goggles. Berko set to tossing away all the crush board packed around the four wheels and the equipment bay in the rear, then he readied the twin M-240B machine guns mounted left and right. Moving confidently, the young lieutenant opened the ammo trays to both guns, laid the 7.62 belts into the feeding blocks, slapped the covers shut, and armed the GAARV.