by Rachel Grant
Named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2017 and winner of the 2018 HOLT Medallion, Tinderbox is available now at your favorite online retailer. You can find links to excerpts and audio samples on my website, or turn the page to read chapter one.
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Tinderbox Excerpt
Chapter One
Two miles west of Camp Citron, Djibouti
Horn of Africa
March
Morgan Adler’s gaze darted between the cloud of dust in her rearview mirror and the road in front of her. Two more miles. She was going to make it. With the American embassy closed, Camp Citron, a US military base, was her only hope for refuge. The bones would be protected.
Adrenaline still coursed through her system after she’d faced down a warlord’s henchmen armed with machine guns. They’d arrived moments after she’d received the text from the embassy, stating a credible threat had been made against the US ambassador and the embassy was going into lockdown. Her local field crew of five had fled as soon as the militants arrived, leaving her to face the armed men alone.
The warlord’s message—apparently memorized, as the men repeated the words, and nothing else, at least half a dozen times—was clear: “Etefu Desta controls this land. Everything you find here is his.”
Etefu Desta was an Ethiopian warlord looking to expand his territory into Djibouti. Apparently, he’d heard about her astonishing paleoanthropological find.
But how?
Officially, only Charles Lemaire, the Djiboutian minister of culture, knew the details. Which meant turning to the local government was out.
Djibouti—pronounced “juh-booty” by Americans and “jey-bootay” by the French—sounded both funny and sexy, but she’d learned once she arrived in the tiny nation on the Horn of Africa that the country was neither. Djibouti had third-world aspirations, with a long way to go to reach even that level of affluence.
Her find could help the Djiboutian government achieve those goals, and she’d be damned before she turned over the fossils to a warlord.
Another glance in the rearview mirror. No one followed. Her hands still shook as she gripped the wheel. She was going to be fine. She’d get on the base, explain the situation, and they’d help her. The US military had a vested interest in her project. She simply hadn’t reached out to the powers that be on the base before now because she knew how the military worked and would not relinquish one ounce of control of her project.
She rounded a bend in the road that hugged a low plateau, and slammed on the brakes. A tire spike strip stretched across the road thirty meters in front of her. Another twenty meters beyond that, a Humvee blocked the road.
She twisted the wheel and skidded to a halt just shy of the spike strips. Her heart pounded as two men with big rifles stepped from behind the Humvee.
The vehicle indicated they were with the US military. Why had they blocked the road with tire-shredding spike strips?
A moment of panic ripped through her. What if these men had stolen US equipment and really worked for Desta?
As they approached, that fear subsided. There was no mistaking their American-ness, right down to their M4 carbine rifles, which each man carried with one hand on the stock and the other on the barrel, aimed down and to the side. Not pointed at her, but ready to aim and fire if warranted.
She’d seen far too many automated weapons already today. But then, she was more the Sig P226 type.
Both men wore desert combat camouflage—better known as Army Combat Uniform or ACU, according to her father. One was fair-skinned, the other dark. They moved like so many soldiers she’d known growing up. These were the good guys. They could help her.
They separated, the taller, white soldier rounding the bumper to her side of the car, while the black soldier paused in front and hitched up his weapon. Covering his partner without being too threatening, she guessed.
She kept her hands on the wheel, in view of both men and reminded herself she’d done nothing wrong.
Well, nothing except taking the fossils from the site. But she was protecting them. They’d be handed over to the Djiboutian government as soon as she knew if she could trust Charles Lemaire.
The soldier to her left signaled for her to lower the window. His name tape on the right breast said BLANCHARD. The branch tape on the left said US ARMY. The familiar reverse US flag patch on his right sleeve signaled friend.
Camp Citron was primarily a Navy base with Marines providing security, making her wonder if these guys were Special Forces, and if so, why they’d set up a roadblock two miles from the base.
Everything about the soldier’s stance was meant to be intimidating.
I’ve done nothing wrong.
She gingerly lifted one hand from the wheel to comply with his signal. These guys didn’t mess around. She pressed the button, and the glass slid slowly downward, releasing precious air-conditioning to the sweltering March day.
“ID?” the man asked.
“Why did you stop me?” she asked, hearing a tinge of fear in her voice. She cleared her throat, hoping to expel the panic.
“I’m not at liberty to say. ID?”
She reached for her passport from the pouch she wore under her shirt, next to her belly. She glanced up at the soldier, but dark sunglasses covered his eyes, telling her nothing of what he thought of her mild striptease.
She handed him her passport and rebuttoned her shirt. Her hands shook harder now than they had before. She gripped the steering wheel again in an effort to control the shaking.
“Please state your business”—he lifted his dark sunglasses to inspect her ID—“Morgan Adler.” His face was expressionless to the degree that he might as well be addressing an acacia tree. Perhaps that was how he practiced the blank look, talking to the thorny plant that had destroyed her favorite pair of work boots. Either that or the intense heat had sucked all the life out of him.
“Right now, I’m heading to Camp Citron and trying to figure out why you have the right to stop and question me two miles from the gate.”
“Please state your business on the base.”
“Are you some sort of advance screen?”
“If you cooperate, we might permit you to approach the base.”
“You might permit me to drive on a public road. That’s very generous of you.”
“We aren’t in the US, ma’am. For the most part, Djibouti is lawless, so forget your notions of public and private when it comes to roads and pretty much everything else.” His jaw tightened. “Please step from the vehicle.”
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Could they really do this?
I’ve done nothing wrong.
She didn’t want to be stupid but feared it was too late—she was starting to believe she’d been stupid when she took the contract to begin with, but then the weight of student loans from her newly minted PhD meant she didn’t really have a choice.
When she made no move to exit the vehicle, Blanchard opened the door and said, “Now, Dr. Adler.”
She startled at his use of and emphasis on her title. Her passport, several years old, didn’t indicate her advanced degree. What the hell is going on?
She shut off the engine. Blanchard moved back so she could step out. The other soldier slowly paced the passenger side of her rental car, his head tilted down, looking at something.
Between the seventy-eight percent humidity, and the eighty-eight-degree day, the heat index was pegged at a hundred and five, and she felt every thick, bliste
ring degree as she faced the soldier. “How do you know who I am?” she asked.
“Raise your hands, please.”
When she made no move to do so, he barked a sharp “Now!” and gestured with the butt of his M4.
She tried to stifle her squeal of terror as she raised her arms. She’d wanted to get herself and the fossils safely inside the perimeter fence of the military base, under the protection of machine guns, instead of being threatened by them.
Although technically, he hadn’t pointed his rifle at her.
“There’s a cell phone in my bra,” she said when he began to frisk her. Her ample cleavage hid the bulge, making the warning necessary. “In the front.”
Thankfully, he was perfunctory in the pat down, finding and extracting the phone without fuss. She’d been groped enough to know the difference, and this man kept it professional.
He slipped her cell into his pocket along with her passport and continued the search, pausing on the pouch against her belly, but a quick hand inside proved it was empty. He circled her and repeated the process on her back. “She’s clear,” he said to the other soldier.
She turned to face him. “Was that necessary?”
“We received a tip Etefu Desta was sending Camp Citron a message with one Dr. Morgan Adler. So yes, it was necessary.” His brows lowered, making her wish she could see his eyes behind the shaded lenses. “However, the tipster specifically indicated Dr. Adler was a man.”
She couldn’t contain her shock. She’d faced that issue more than once when she arrived in Djibouti—Morgan was a name that could be male or female, and she might have used that to her advantage when bidding on the project, because East African nations weren’t known for their progressive attitude toward women—but the fact that her name had been mentioned in conjunction with a warlord’s was far more alarming than the lack of correct gender identification. “That’s bull! I don’t know, nor am I working for, Etefu Desta. I have no clue what that even means.”
Behind her, the other man swore. She turned to see what triggered it. He had a mirror mounted to a long pole and was scanning the undercarriage of her car. “Shit. Found the message. There’s a package on a timer.”
Blanchard stiffened. “Can you see the countdown?”
“No, just the Timex.” He looked down the road, toward the base. “If it’s set to go off when she reached the base—”
Blanchard grabbed her arm, yanking her forward, away from the car. “Move!” he shouted as he dragged her behind him. She yanked her arm from his grasp and turned to the other soldier. “Do you mean there’s a bomb?”
“Yes. C-4. Lots of it. Right under the gas tank.”
She took three quick steps back to the car and leaned inside. Her finger hit the trunk release as hands snatched her from the vehicle.
She struggled against the soldier’s grip. “I have to get the fossils! They’re in the trunk.”
Blanchard’s grip only tightened. “No time.”
She kicked at him and broke free, but he caught her again before she took two steps. With a curse, he scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder, which hit her diaphragm and knocked the wind out of her. She gripped his back and tried to breathe as he ran at shocking speed.
“Stop!” she shouted when she finally caught her breath. A stream of invectives escaped her mouth, which she followed up with “Let me grab the bones!”
The other soldier ran on a parallel course, ignoring her yells and shouting, “Go! Go!”
She clawed at his shoulder—not that he’d notice through the thick combat fatigues—and cursed. “Dammit! Let me grab the bones from the trunk!” Her eyes teared as the distance between her and the rental car widened. The surge of bile in her throat could have been caused by the Heimlich-maneuver-type abdominal jolts she received with each bounce as he sprinted across the rocky desert ground, but the tears were undoubtedly caused by the fact that the fossilized bones were in danger of being destroyed.
She’d taken them from the site to save them from a warlord. She pounded on his shoulders again, spewing more curses. “Stop!” Her voice trailed off as tears of frustration and anger won the battle.
They’d covered at least a hundred meters when the soldier slowed. His heavy pack protected his back from her frustrated fists, so she tried to knee him in the chest, only to meet body armor.
He let out a low growl. “Stop it! I’m trying to save your damn life!”
“I need to get the fossils!” She shoved at his shoulder, throwing him off-balance and giving him no choice but to set her down. The moment her feet touched earth, she pushed away from him. He had no idea how important the bones were, how they could enhance—even change—current evolutionary models.
He caught her around the belly and yanked her backward. Her breath left in a rush with the force of the blow to her diaphragm.
She saw the explosion before she heard it—a quick flash of orange followed by a percussive wave of heat. She managed to get air in her lungs just in time to scream.
* * *
Pax Blanchard twisted as he dove, so the woman wouldn’t take the brunt of impact with the hard, dry ground. He rolled, tucking her under him as a secondary—and bigger—explosion shook the earth. A wave of heat—noticeable even at eleven degrees north of the equator—washed over him. Fortunately, they’d cleared the blast zone. His legs were peppered with debris, but it was more akin to a spray of gravel kicked up by a passing truck than being pelted with hot, sharp shrapnel.
He held Dr. Adler beneath him as the echo from the blast faded. He’d had to fight her every step from the vehicle, which pissed him off. If she’d managed to escape his grip and made it back to the car, he’d have had to follow, blowing them both to bits. That didn’t sit well with him.
He glared at her as she struggled beneath him, her face contorted with grief and rage as if someone had just stolen her baby. With hearing dimmed due to the explosion, cursing her out for her stupidity would have to wait.
Damn, that had been close. If they hadn’t stopped her, she’d have made it to Camp Citron. She never would have made it through the screen, but the explosion would have taken out more than the foolish woman and whatever it was she’d been desperate to get from the trunk of her car.
Hell. He owed Callahan fifty bucks. He’d been certain the tip was bullshit.
Dust filled the air, limiting sight distance, but shielded as she was by his body, he could see every bitter emotion that crossed Dr. Adler’s features. He had a feeling this was her first rodeo and would be braced for waterworks except she was too angry to realize she’d just come very close to becoming the source of a blood rain in the desert.
He peeled his body from hers and got to his feet. Five yards away, Callahan also stood. “I’m getting too old for this shit.” Cal’s voice was muted but firm, indicating he was uninjured.
She flopped backward when freed of his weight and closed her eyes. Her chest rose with two deep breaths.
Maybe she’d launch into hysterics after all.
Pax radioed the base, informing them of the explosion while keeping his eye on Dr. Adler. The conversation was frustratingly short, as he didn’t know exactly who the woman was and why she’d carried a package from Etefu Desta. Their Humvee had been damaged in the explosion, so the base was sending a convoy to pick them up. A second team would investigate the explosion and recover the Humvee.
He clipped the radio to his belt and faced Dr. Adler. He needed answers. Now. He offered her a hand, but she ignored it and instead pushed herself up from the ground. “Dammit! The fossils are gone!” With her gaze fixed on the smoldering vehicle, she cursed again, as creatively as she had while he carried her.
Pax glanced from the woman to the wreckage. “I’ve never heard the word jizz used in quite that way.”
Cal grimaced. “I’m never going to look at a goat in the same way again.”
The woman glared at Pax. “Why didn’t you let me grab the box? There was time! I could have saved�
�” Her voice cracked on the last word, and finally an emotion besides anger slipped through. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.
Shit. He’d take anger over tears any day. Even anger that pissed him off.
“Maybe you could have grabbed whatever it was from the trunk,” Pax said. “But we had no idea how much time we had. No idea if we’d be able to clear the blast zone at all. Grabbing crap from the car was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.”
“But I was,” she said.
“I couldn’t leave you. In going back for whatever it was you wanted to save, you risked my life too.” His voice hardened. “I’m not okay with that, Dr. Adler.”
Her jaw snapped shut. All at once she deflated. Her knees buckled and she dropped to the ground again. She stared at her smoldering, annihilated vehicle. Color leached from her face—something he’d have thought impossible in the intense desert heat—and she covered her mouth as though she was trying not to hurl.
“What was it? What was so important you risked your life for it?” This from Cal, who sounded genuinely curious and not nearly as pissed as Pax.
She met Cal’s gaze, giving Pax a chance to take in her profile. She had pretty—almost angelic—features, and the pat down had revealed impressive curves hidden under the loose field shirt. But it was her mouth that really caught his attention. She had the sweetest lips that said the foulest things. The woman was Barbie’s raunchy alter ego.
“What just blew up?” she repeated Cal’s question as she swiped away tears with a trembling palm. Her hand dropped, revealing a smear of red desert dirt across her cheek. “Only a piece of the biggest paleoanthropological find in East Africa this millennium. A bigger find than Lucy.”
“A piece?” Pax asked, curious now. He knew about Lucy.
She nodded. “We lost Linus’s dinner.”
