Without so much as a calming breath, Juan sliced open the scar with the throwing knife. Dark blood welled from the open lips of the wound.
“What are you doing?” she asked, now suddenly alarmed.
“There’s a tracking device in my leg,” he replied. “I can use it to signal my people to come get us.”
He plunged two fingers into the gash, fishing around, his mouth tight and set against the pain. A moment later, he withdrew the device, a black plastic object the size and shape of a cheap digital watch. He wiped its underside against his uniform shirt, waited silently for about thirty seconds to elapse, and then pressed it into the blood trickling out of his leg. He repeated what he’d just done, and then started moving quicker, dabbing and wiping so his hands were in constant motion.
“U . . . P . . . H . . . U . . . X,” he said, transmitting each letter.
Like a desert djinn rising up from the ground, a spectral figure leapt over the rock parapet sheltering Juan and Alana. It crashed into Juan, the impact sending the slippery transmitter skittering off into the dark. Bony fingers clawed for his neck, the sharp nails digging into his flesh.
With an oozing wound in his leg and his pants pulled down to his knees, Cabrillo was at a complete disadvantage. The filthy creature made a guttural screech as it tried to ram its knees into Juan’s chest while its feet raked across his legs like a cat trying to eviscerate its prey. Nails as tough as horn ripped out trenches of Juan’s skin.
The Kel-Tec pistol was buried inside the pocket of his bunched-up pants, and the knife was out of reach. Juan reared his head back as far as he could and smashed it into his attacker’s nose. He didn’t have the leverage to break bone, so he had to find satisfaction in the spurts of blood that began to patter across his face and the howl of pain his blow elicited.
He twisted onto his stomach under the figure, gathered his legs under him, and thrust upward with everything he had. The creature was thrown from his back, sailing across the bowl and smashing into the far side. Cabrillo had already crouched and rolled to grab the knife, and he had it in his hand and cocked by the time the monstrosity crumpled into an untidy heap.
His knife arm came down, the blade glinting, and it would have flown true had two things not occurred to Cabrillo at the last instant. His attacker had been unbelievably light, and the man was dressed in the same rags he’d seen the prisoners wearing. It was too late to stop the throw, but he managed to angle it ever so slightly. The blade embedded itself into the sandstone an inch from the man’s head.
Five seconds had passed since Juan was first attacked. In that time, Alana had managed to raise her hands to her mouth in alarm and nothing more.
Juan blew out a breath.
“Oh my God,” Alana gasped. “Greg told me two prisoners escaped a couple of days ago. They only brought back one.”
Juan considered the odds that they would come across the only other human within twenty miles and guessed they were actually pretty good. He had put the camp directly behind him as he and Alana had struck out, and they had followed the easiest terrain to gain distance. It had been the most logical choice, and the prisoner had done the exact same thing.
They had obviously moved faster than the man, and, considering his wasted condition, it was no surprise. The miracle was that he had made it this far at all. He must have been using the hillock as an observation post, spotted Alana and Juan walking toward him, and remained hidden until Cabrillo was at his most vulnerable.
Juan shuffled over to the prisoner and reached out a hand for Alana to pass him the canteen.
“Drink,” Juan said in Arabic. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Under the dirt and grime and weeks of matted beard, he saw the guy was about his own age, with a strong nose and broad forehead. His cheeks were hollow from hunger and dehydration, and his eyes had a dull sheen. But he had had the strength to hike this far and launch a pretty well thought out assault. Cabrillo was impressed.
“You’ve done well, my friend,” he said. “Our rescue is close at hand.”
“You are Saudi,” the man rasped after drinking half the canteen. “I recognize your accent.”
“No, I learned Arabic in Riyadh. I’m actually American.”
“Praise be to Allah.”
“And to His Prophet, Muhammad,” Juan added.
“Peace be upon him. We are saved.”
“We?”
TWENTY-ONE
JUAN NEVER TRANSMITTED GAIN AFTER THE SALUTATION Julia had laboriously transcribed, so Max made the decision to have Linc, Linda, and Mark head to his final coordinates in the Pig.
It took the trio two hours of hard driving to reach the area.
Hanley was in the op center. The ship’s computer was maintaining their position so there was no need for anyone other than a skeleton watch to be in the high-tech room, but a dozen men and women sat in the chairs or leaned against the walls. The only sounds were the rush of air through the vents and the occasional slurp of coffee. Eric Stone was at the helm, while next to him George Adams lolled in Mark Murphy’s weapons station. With his matinee-idol looks and flight suit, the chopper pilot cut a dashing figure. He was one of the best poker players on the ship, after the Chairman himself, and his only tell was that he toyed with his drooping gunfighter mustache when he was really nervous. At the pace he was going on this night, he would have twisted the hair off his lip in another hour.
The main monitor over their heads showed a view of the predawn darkness outside the ship. There was the merest hint of color to the east. Not so much light but the absence of pitch-black. A smaller screen displayed the Pig’s progress. The glowing dots representing the Pig and Juan’s last position were millimeters apart.
When a phone rang, everyone startled. The tech sitting in Hali Kasim’s communications center glanced at Max. Max nodded, and fitted a headset around his ears and adjusted the microphone.
“Hanley,” he said, making sure to keep any concern out of his voice. He wouldn’t give Juan the satisfaction of knowing how worried he’d been.
“Ah, Max. Langston Overholt.”
Max grunted in irritation at the unexpected call. “You’ve caught us at a rather bad moment, Lang.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“You know us. It’s always serious. So are you at the tail end of a late night or just getting an early start?” It was midnight in Washington, D.C.
“To be honest, I don’t even know anymore. It’s all blended into one of the longest few days of my life.”
“It’s gotta be bad, then,” Max said. “You were in the company during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
“Back then, I was still so wet behind the ears they wouldn’t give me the code for the executive washroom.”
Max Hanley and Langston Overholt had come from opposite poles of the American experience. Max was blue-collar all the way. His father had been a union machinist at a California aircraft plant, his mother a teacher. His commands during Vietnam had come through merit and ability. Overholt, on the other hand, had been born into a family from such old money they still considered the Astors nouveau riche. He was the result of twelve years of prep school, four years of Harvard, and three more of Harvard Law. Yet the two men had a strong respect for each other.
“Now I think one of the stalls is named after you,” Max quipped.
“Enjoy your normal prostate while it lasts, my friend.”
“So, what’s up?”
“Libyans are reporting that a fighter jockey on a nighttime training exercise spotted something in the desert just inside their border with Tunisia. A patrol was sent out and discovered a secret base equipped with a Hind helicopter. The place had been hit hard. The gunship was destroyed, and there appeared to be no survivors.”