The Arab Fall (A James Acton Thriller, Book #6) (James Acton Thrillers) (8 page)

Laura
Palmer worships no one.

But
there was no denying she loved him, and was absolutely devoted to him. And he
to her.

Reading
remembered feeling that way about his wife years ago when they had first met,
but the feeling had been fleeting, and if it weren’t for her being pregnant,
they would have gone their separate ways. Instead, they stayed together for as
long as they could stand each other, then separated, and eventually divorced,
his own son becoming estranged from him. They had recently begun to patch
things up, as it had never truly been the typical estrangement where former
spouses used the child as a proxy in their war with each other.

It had
been his fear of being a father.

He had
failed as a husband.

Miserably.

And he
had feared failing his son, so had found excuses to avoid him, the job usually
providing an excuse for him, and when not hearing from his dad had become the
norm, Reading merely kept the expectations low. Christmas gifts and birthday
gifts were always on time, the occasional phone call, but little contact, and
almost none for the poor kid’s teenage years when he could have really used a
father.

You
ran away from your problems.

Reading
frowned, shifting slightly to see if he could work the breeze a little further
up.
Is that what you’re doing now? Running away?
He could honestly say
he wasn’t contemplating retirement out of fear. He had never been a coward. And
his job now was mostly behind a desk, so the physical aspect shouldn’t be an
issue anymore.

Maybe
you’re afraid of letting your friends down when they need you.

Reading
bit his lip.
Could that be it?
Could he be afraid of failing his
friends? As he thought about it, he realized that this could very well be the
reason he was in a funk. He hadn’t been able to help them in China, but then he
hadn’t even known it was happening until it was too late. He had helped them on
several occasions, successfully he thought, but Laura had still been shot and
almost killed.

He shook
his head.
You can’t be everywhere at once.

Something
from outside the tent yanked Reading from his reverie and he bolted upright,
his eyes shooting open as he strained to hear again what he thought he had just
heard. A woman’s cry. He heard nothing, but struggled from his seat nonetheless
and was soon outside, several of the students pointing and beginning to run
toward a ridge south of the camp.

“What’s
going on?” he yelled.

Terrence
Mitchell, the senior grad student, turned and waved for him to follow.

“We just
heard Professor Palmer yelling!” he said, his uncoordinated feet nearly
tripping him up as he looked behind him.

Reading
pointed at two of the ex-SAS guards. “You’re with us. The rest stay and guard
the camp.”

The two
men nodded, sprinting ahead of the group, their weapons at the ready, as
Reading labored through the sand, then up the embankment. As he cleared the
ridge, he saw the guards followed by several of the students approaching a
group of rocks where his former partner Chaney stood, holding Laura as she
cried, both looking down at the ground.

Where’s
Jim?

As he
arrived he found a circle of students blocking his view, witnesses to a crime
impeding his police investigation.

“Step
aside,” he ordered, his old training kicking in, and the authority in his voice
parted them like the staff of Moses did the Red Sea, and he stepped through,
only to gasp at the hole that greeted him. “Did he fall in there?” he asked,
looking at his partner.

Chaney
nodded.

Reading
sucked in a breath, then took command of the situation. He pointed at Terrence.
“You, get as much rope as you can carry. Take someone to help you.” Terrence
nodded, tapping the shoulder of the boy beside him, and they both sprinted
toward the camp. He pointed at the next student in line. “You, go get
flashlights and glow sticks if you have them. As many as you can carry. Go!”
She nodded, chasing her friends. He picked two more. “You two, get shovels and
pickaxes. You two, water. Go!”

With
most of the students now busy with jobs, he was able to survey the area a
little closer. He pointed to Chaney. “You two get out of there, on this side of
the rocks. Chaney nodded, guiding Laura out of the danger area. Reading dropped
to his knees, and crawled as close to the edge of the hole as he dared.

“Hello!”
he yelled. “Jim! Can you hear me?”

His
voice echoed into the hollow, and he breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t
quicksand that had swallowed up his friend. He turned his head to listen for a
reply, but heard nothing.

“Jim!”
he yelled, louder this time. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes!”
came the faint reply. Laura yelped in joy, breaking free from Chaney’s grasp as
she dropped beside Reading.

“James,
it’s me, are you okay?”

“Excuse
me, sir.”

Reading
looked up to see Lt. Colonel Leather, Retired, beckoning him to stand up.
Reading looked at Chaney and pointed at Laura, who continued to talk excitedly
to her fiancé, then climbed to his feet.

“What is
it?”

Leather casually
looked back toward the camp, positioning himself between Reading and the hole.

“Over my
right shoulder, sir.”

“What is
it?” asked Reading, looking over Leather’s shoulder, but seeing nothing.

“We’re
being watched, sir.”

Then
Reading saw it, a glint of light off glass.

Binoculars!

He
successfully hid his surprise, and casually turned his head to the side.

“How
many do you figure?”

“I’ve
spotted two distinct positions manned, but there could be more.”

“Recommendation?”

“If this
were a military op, I’d send out a team to flank them and recce the area,
capture them if possible, eliminate them if necessary.”

“But
since this isn’t a military operation?”

“Recce
it is.”

Reading
nodded. “Do it, but keep it quiet. We don’t want to panic the civilians.”

Leather nodded,
walking away and getting on his radio.

Reading
dropped to a knee, pretending to look at the pit containing his friend, but
instead scanning the horizon without moving his head.

And this
time saw at least two different flashes, separated enough to know it was more
than one person.

Who
the hell could be watching us out here? And why?

Then he
looked at the pit and his heart slammed into his chest as the adrenaline of
realization surged through his body.

They’re
not watching us, they’re watching this hole!

Tarik’s Residence, Alexandria

30 BC, Seven Weeks After Cleopatra’s Death

Tarik sat on the step overlooking the Nile, the view from the back
of his estate breathtaking on any other day, but today it went unnoticed, the
hundreds of vessels plying its waters mere shadows on an equally dark canvas
that was his soul.

My
own brother!

He
couldn’t believe it. As soon as he had realized who it was, he had sent Shakir
and Kontar off, hoping his shopkeeper Kontar hadn’t spotted her, and if he had,
hadn’t recognized her. But there was no doubting who she was. He had seen her
face a thousand times, had seen it laugh, had seen it smile, had seen it admire
the jewelry worn by others richer than him, had seen the envy in those green
eyes.

Footsteps
behind him echoed across the marble and stone, but he didn’t look. He
recognized the step. It was his brother Jabari, whom he had sent for
immediately upon arriving home.

“Brother,
what is it? Your messenger said it was urgent!”

Jabari
walked down several of the steps, then turned to face his eldest brother. Tarik
didn’t say anything, instead pointing at a nearby table where the necklace sat.
Jabari stepped over to look.

“Why,
isn’t this the necklace you crafted for our Pharaoh?” asked Jabari, his voice
barely a whisper, as his hand reached out, tracing the jewels without touching,
the object revered the moment it had graced the skin of their beloved
Cleopatra.

“Yes, it
is.”

“But
where, how, I mean—” Jabari stopped, unable to find the words, then sat down in
a nearby chair, grabbing his hair. “Why do you have it? How? We’ve been
guarding the burial site. It should be impossible!”

“Yes, it
should be, unless…”

Tarik
let the statement drift, waiting for Jabari to come to his own conclusions.

“Unless
what?” demanded Jabari. “Unless…” And he too let his voice drift as his jaw
dropped. “Unless one of our own has betrayed us!” he hissed, looking about. “Do
you know who?”

Tarik
nodded. “The answer lies in who had the necklace.”

Jabari
rose then took a knee at Tarik’s feet, looking up at him as they both kept
their voices low lest the servants be listening.

“One of
my shopkeepers, Kontar, was approached by a petty thief, a pickpocket, with the
necklace yesterday. He brought it to me as he recognized it, then we
apprehended the thief, a wretched old creature named Shakir—very skilled, very
old. He pointed out the woman from whom he had stolen it.”

“Did you
have her arrested?”

Tarik
shook his head.

“No.”

“Why
not?”

“It was
Dalila, Fadil’s wife.”

Tarik
felt his stomach flip as he said the words, the very idea of it still not
having sunk in, and he could see the horror on his younger brother’s face as he
too processed what he had just heard. It was simply too fantastic to believe,
that their own family, their own brother, could be involved.

“Are we
sure it’s him?”

Tarik
looked at his brother. “Of course, what other explanation could there be? She’s
his wife, how else would she have obtained it?”

Jabari
covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking for several moments,
then he sucked in a deep breath and looked up at his brother, tears streaking
down his cheeks.

“You
realize what this means?”

Tarik
knew exactly what it meant, which was why he had been sick since the moment he
had seen her face in the market. Desecration of a god’s tomb was sacrilege. It
was an unforgivable sin.

And
there was only one punishment for it.

Death.

Nubian Desert, Egypt, University College London Dig Site

Two Days Before the Liberty Island Attack

Lt. Colonel Cameron Leather expertly guided the jeep down the road
to what some might call the main motorway. He didn’t. It was a strip of
pavement that was at times barely visible due to drifting sand. But that didn’t
matter, he wasn’t going to the road. He cranked the wheel to the right, gunning
the engine as he crested a hill, sending the butterflies in his stomach into
action, that feeling of near weightlessness he loved so much as the upward
g-force equaled with that of Mother Nature herself, then the jolt as the jeep
came crashing back to the ground.

I
love this shit!

He had
retired young in his mind, mid-forties. When he had been promoted to a desk
after being wounded on a mission in Afghanistan, he had labored long and hard
to recover fully so he could return to active duty, but it wasn’t to be. He had
gone crazy with paperwork before he could return himself to the physical
condition a soldier in the Special Air Service needed to be. They were
Britain’s elite soldiers, the best of the best, and there was no way he would
let himself return to them unless he was in top form.

It would
put the rest at risk.

So he
had retired, and taken the gig as Professor Laura Palmer’s head of security.
When he had first heard of the position, he had laughed, then cried a little
inside at the thought of what had become of his life. One day he was a super
soldier, killing the enemy and protecting his country, and the next, he was a
babysitter to some woman and her children in Egypt.

But he
had recruited a few of the lads from the unit that had rotated out for various
reasons, or followed him out, and created his own firm, with four of them here
in Egypt now, another four in Peru at Professor Acton’s dig site.

When he
had heard what had happened to the professors—and even that was through the
news and through friends in the know since the Profs never talked about it—he
had been gobsmacked. And after working with them for a couple of years, he had
come to respect them, and even admire them.

And he
had quickly decided they needed to be trained if they were going to survive the
ordeals they continually found themselves in. Professor Acton already had a
fair amount of training from his days in the National Guard and his time in
theatre during Desert Storm, and with Leather’s guidance, Acton’s old training
quickly came back, and he excelled at the advanced self-defense techniques
Leather and his men would teach. Professor Palmer had come green, but had no
fear. The woman was remarkable in Leather’s mind, not afraid to try anything, and
would insist on continuing until she got it right.

They
were ideal students who were appreciative of his efforts, and he took some
pride in hearing about some of their exploits, and how his training had saved
their asses on more than one occasion.

Which
was why when they had suggested the students be trained as well, he had jumped
at it. These kids were going to be working in hotspots all around the world,
and living in cities that were becoming more and more violent. Knowing how to
take care of yourself not only gave confidence, but it allowed you to not only
help yourself when needed, but others too.