Wild Storm (18 page)

Antony still wasn’t budging. The sound emanating from him had gotten deeper and more ominous-sounding.

“He has a little bit of a temper, especially this early,” Massri said. “Not a morning camel, this one.”

“A little bit of a temper?” Storm said. “What does he do when he really gets mad?”

“Oh, then he bites,” Massri said, under his breath. Massri realized Storm had heard him and added, “But that never happens. Almost never happens. He is a good camel. He is just a little stubborn. This is not an unusual trait for a camel, you will find.”

Massri finally succeeded in yanking Antony all the way down the ramp. Antony was making a noise that sounded like an outboard motor that had a small rodent stuck in it. A slab of pink flesh had slipped out the side of his mouth.

“Why is he sticking his tongue out at me?” Storm asked.

“That is not his tongue, Mr. Sullivan. That is called a ‘dulla.’ It is a large, inflatable sac that comes from his throat. It shows he is trying to assert his dominance over you. Or perhaps to mate with your female.”

Strike whipped her head in their direction. “Excuse me?” she said.

“Oh, I would not be too concerned about that, Mrs. Sullivan. It is the wrong time of the year for him to be rutting. Besides, camels are unique among hoofed mammals in that they are the only ones to mate while sitting down. When he sits down, he is either too tired to continue or he is feeling amorous. As long as he remains on his feet, you have nothing to worry about.”

Antony had finally stopped vocalizing, and was now just looking annoyed. Storm took one step toward the beast. It responded by growling and showing his teeth.

“And you said he never bites, huh?” Storm said.

“Almost never,” Massri said, his smile having returned. “Ah, but Mr. Sullivan, never mind that. You should see him run. He is magical. Like a unicorn!”

“Without the horn,” Storm said.

“Yes, without the horn.”

“Which would make him, what, a Pegasus?” Storm said. Massri looked at him quizzically. Storm decided to drop the comparisons to mythical creatures.

“I just wish camels didn’t smell like, you know, camels,” Storm said, wrinkling his nose as the odor of the animal—some horrible and undetermined mix of urine, manure, and camel sweat—came even closer.

“Ah, well, you must remember, camels have very sensitive noses. Antony can smell water from three kilometers away. So it’s possible you are far more offensive to him, Mr. Sullivan.”

Storm looked at Antony, whose mouth was developing a thick beard of white, frothy foam that he was shaking into globs that fell onto the ground.

“I doubt that very seriously,” Storm said.

Storm added to the beast’s burden a few essential items that Strike had packed, which mostly consisted of weaponry that had been broken down for ease of storing. Each still had a concealed sidearm—Storm his Dirty Harry gun, and Strike a Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum, which billed itself as the most powerful revolver in production.

Collectively, the two guns packed a wallop. But Strike had added two longer rifles: a CheyTac M200 sniper rifle and time-worn Colt M16 that was conspicuously battle tested. In addition to some nicks and dings, the switch that allowed it to toggle from single shot to automatic had been set to automatic and then ripped off. Strike packed extra ammo to compensate for that anomaly.

Massri helped both Storm and Strike up onto their camels. Cleopatra remained docile, allowing Strike to mount her easily. Antony kept trying to turn and bite Storm’s legs, which Massri was able to prevent only by whacking the camel’s nose with a riding crop.

“Here, why don’t you keep this,” Massri said, handing Storm the crop when he was finally atop the beast. “It comes free with the rental. But I warn you, Mr. Sullivan, use it sparingly. This is the fastest camel in all the desert. A unicorn! A Pegasus! I would put this camel against even the fastest thoroughbred. He is the Secretariat of camels. You are most fortunate to ride such a champion.”

Antony let out one final belch, then fell in behind Cleopatra, who had already started walking at a slow, dutiful pace toward the vast openness of the Sahara.

THEY HAD DECIDED TO TRAVEL INTO
the middle of the target zone, to the exact coordinates given to them by Jones, and then begin a search pattern of concentric circles that radiated out from the epicenter.

The sun rose behind them as they rode west. Sunrises in the desert, to which Storm was no stranger, were hauntingly beautiful. At least at first, you could even convince yourself that this place—so infertile, so desolate—wasn’t all that bad. Or at least that it got a bum rap. Storm watched their long shadows grow shorter.

Then the sun reached a certain altitude, high enough that its rays didn’t have to slice through so much of the atmosphere. That’s when Storm could start to feel it beating through the thin, earth-colored
thobe
that covered his body and the white keffiyeh wrapped around his head and neck.

The sand, which had cooled with the night, began to heat. It was slow at first, but it was incredible how quickly it happened. Storm wasn’t bothering to check the temperature—what was the point?—but it felt like it was rising five degrees every fifteen minutes. A morning that had started out in the fifties was soon into the eighties. Storm felt the sweat popping on his body. He looked at his water bottle. Not yet. They had to conserve what they had.

The pretense of being nomads aside, Storm was glad for the glimpses he was able to sneak at his handheld GPS. The terrain was so featureless that he understood how it was that people ended up traveling in huge circles when they were lost in the desert. It was easy to get disoriented. The GPS kept them more or less on course.

But otherwise, they were traveling across the desert as humankind had for many millennia. On camel. In the heat. Baked by the murderous sun.

They said little. Both seemed to be conscious of conserving their energy, not wasting it on idle talk. For whatever Strike said about getting their task done before the heat of the day, that was clearly not possible. They had too far to travel.

Antony, for whatever initial recalcitrance he may have shown, had settled into a good rhythm. Frothing and spitting aside, this is what he had been bred for since his species was first domesticated in the days before the pharaohs.

It took three hours to near the coordinates Jones had provided. It was already above ninety, Storm was sure, and it was like the furnace was only beginning to roil. Storm was aware Strike was looking at him with increasing frequency as they closed in. He was allowing himself more time with the GPS out. They had locked in the proper northerly coordinate. They now just had to get far enough west.

Finally, they had arrived.

“This is it,” Storm said, pulling on Antony’s reins. In a rare fit of obedience, the camel came to a stop.

They shared a silent beat where they scanned the landscape. There was nothing. Just an ocean of sand that stretched seemingly without end on all sides. Somewhere within ten square miles, what they sought was hidden. The enormity of finding it was manifesting itself.

“Well, it’s all clear to me now,” Strike said, knowing Storm would get the sarcasm.

“It’s damn inconsiderate of the terrorists not to at least plant a flag for us or something. I mean, we came all this way.”

“Inhospitable terrorists. The worst. Next thing you know, they won’t have pulled out the good china for us.”

“I blame the parenting. People just don’t know how to raise a good terrorist anymore,” Storm said. “Let’s head to the top of that dune over there, see what we can see.”

Storm urged Antony forward, and Cleopatra fell in behind. When they reached the summit of what seemed to be the tallest mound of sand amid all the other mounds of sand, they again stopped. The camels stood side by side. Cleopatra nuzzled Antony, who let out a thunderous belch.

It was the only sound for miles.

“Oh, now it’s
really
clear to me,” Strike said, surveying a view that had changed only in elevation. “The silly thing is, I thought it would be easier once we got out here. If anything, it’s more hopeless than when I was looking on the satellites. At least back then I didn’t have sweat dripping down my cleavage.”

“Man, I never thought I’d feel jealous of sweat,” he said.

Strike said nothing, accustomed as she was to ignoring the fact that Storm seemed to think of sex every eight seconds.

Storm pulled out a pair of Steiner Marine 7x50 binoculars that Strike had been thoughtful enough to include in his backpack. He focused the viewfinder and began scanning the horizon. He made it a full 360 degrees around and started his way back.

He was perhaps halfway through when he saw a glint. It was sun striking off either glass or polished metal, neither one of which was known to be a surface naturally found in a desert. He noted the direction and removed the device from his face.

“There,” he said, handing her the binoculars. “Look at two hundred and seven degrees.”

“Two hundred and seven degrees is what it is out here,” she said, taking a look. “Are you sure you’re not just hallucinating?”

“No. That’s why I’m having you look. Do you see that reflection?”

“Storm, I don’t see anything but…Oh, never mind. Yeah. I got it now. Jones had mentioned there was something that looked like a Bedouin encampment but he said it was outside the target zone so they didn’t really pay too much attention to it. You think that’s it?”

“Whatever it is, it’s more interesting than anything else I see around here. I’m sure it’s outside the target zone, but let’s ditch the search pattern and go check it out.”

“Sounds good to me,” Strike said.

And off down the dune they went. In the Steiner glasses, the flash they saw had looked almost close enough to grab. In reality, it was nearly five miles away and took the better part of an hour to reach.

Again, they lapsed into quiet. The only sound was Antony’s occasional bellowing. Camels have evolved with all kinds of clever features to help them beat the heat and preserve their hydration—blood cells that are circular instead of oval, noses that trap the moisture in their exhales and cycle it back to their body, dung that is so devoid of water it can be lit on fire. Humans have no such adaptations. And as the temperature surged above a hundred, Storm and Strike began suffering accordingly. The heat felt ubiquitous, like it had now filled every ounce of available space, spinning every atom into an inflamed tizzy. Whatever oxygen there was in the air seemed to have evaporated along with whatever water there was on the entire planet.

Neither complained. Storm said nothing because there was no point. Strike said nothing because, whether she acknowledged it or not, she always felt like she was in a kind of unspoken competition with Storm: who was tougher? Who was the better agent? Who could withstand more? Even if he was unaware of the contest, she didn’t want to let him win.

As they neared what had been glinting in the distance, they saw it was not just a stray piece of metal lying in the sun. It was a settlement of some sort—a grouping of tents, some of them quite large, with trucks scattered around them. Storm kept his eye on it, watched as men in white and off-white clothing scurried from tent to tent, trying to stay in the sun as little as possible. He counted perhaps two dozen men, though it was difficult to account for duplicates at that distance.

They appeared to be doing work of some sort. What their purpose was, Storm couldn’t guess. He saw one open-sided tent where several items, some of them quite large, had been secured in crates, perhaps for transport.

When they got to within perhaps a half a mile, Storm could hear excited shouting. The sound carried through the distance, and even though the words did not, Storm could surmise they had been spotted. There was more shouting, and when they got to within a few hundred yards, Storm saw a camel-mounted greeting party coming out to intercept them.

It was around that time when Storm was finally able to guess what was going on there. He saw an ancient block sandstone structure sticking out of the ground. It had an entrance that led underground. Most of the activity that wasn’t focused on Storm and Strike seemed to be centered around that entrance.

“Any thoughts?” Strike said.

“It looks like some kind of archaeological dig to me.”

“I agree. And ordinarily I would say that means they won’t be belligerent toward us. Except I see guns on several of those men.”

“Only because they’re more scared of us than we are of them,” Storm said. “Why don’t you start talking to them? Hearing a woman’s voice will calm them. I’m going to raise my hands real high, but I want you to keep yours under your burka, on the trigger of that little cannon you’re carrying. Just in case. We good?”

“Got it,” Strike said.

She began calling out in loud, friendly Arabic: “Good day, my friends. We are but peaceful travelers. We mean you no harm. Lower your weapons, please. Again, we come in peace.”

Storm studied the muzzles trained on them and the guns behind them. They were old guns, probably inaccurate to start with and poorly maintained on top of it. Sand wreaked havoc on a weapon, especially one that wasn’t properly cleaned. Even if these clowns wanted to shoot Storm and Strike, they’d probably fail.

Eventually, Strike’s words had their intended effect. Storm watched as the muzzles lowered. They were close enough to be able to see the smiles on the men’s faces.

And that one of them wasn’t a man.

She also clearly wasn’t Egyptian. Storm could see wisps of blond hair escaping from her loosely worn hijab. And freckles across the bridge of her nose. And bright blue eyes. And a certain posture and confidence that suggested a very attractive young woman was hidden underneath the swaddles of cloth that hid her from the sun and, at the moment, most of Storm’s inquisitive examination.

“Hello, there,” Storm said in English, directing his words toward her. “My name is…Talbot. Terry Talbot. And this is my partner. Her name is Sullivan. Sally Sullivan.”

“Oh, hello,” she said. “I’m Dr. Katie Comely.”