“I do,” Quinn said.
“It’s about to get awful lonely out there.”
The Liaisons were crowded with onlookers, and even the more remote Special Sections were generally peppered with fans, some huddled under the shade of a single lonely tree, others lined up with coolers and straw hats, braving the sun in order to catch a glimpse of their favorite riders.
Between the three medical helicopters and assorted media birds, not two minutes went by that there wasn’t some eye in the sky keeping everyone honest and safe.
Until the accident.
Ahead of Quinn, the dunes gave way to hard-packed dirt and gravel washes. He topped the next ridge in time to see Zamora’s bike dart to the right and disappear behind a rock outcrop into a dry riverbed.
The hot dry wind suddenly took on a metallic smell. This was all wrong. He glanced over the handlebars at his road book. As he suspected, the route went straight ahead for another three kilometers.
“Zamora’s decided to leave the course,” Quinn said.
“Watch yourself,” Thibodaux said. “I got your signal on the GPS but still no joy on Zamora. Something’s wrong.”
Quinn watched the two riders who’d been with Zamora pop over a hill to continue straight on the prescribed course. Wherever Zamora was going, he was going it alone.
Quinn slowed to follow Zamora’s tracks at the dry riverbed. There was no sign of the Venezuelan, but he could hear the whine of his bike around the next bend.
Standing in the pegs, Quinn poured on the throttle, wanting to catch up before Zamora lost him altogether. If Thibodaux couldn’t track him, Quinn had no choice but to speed up and keep him in sight.
He caught sight of the bike the moment he rounded the next corner. It was close — and something was extremely wrong. Quinn tried to process the new images at the same moment the front tire of his KTM seemed to fold in on itself, throwing him violently over the handlebars. A cloud of fesh fesh blossomed into the air like gray talc, blinding him as he and his bike slammed into the unforgiving ground.
CHAPTER 35
Yazid Nazif held the phone to his ear and listened to the empty line. He’d tried to connect with the Venezuelan for the last four hours only to get nothing but empty ringing and dead air — not even so much as a message. One would think that when a person was paid almost half a billion dollars they would avail themselves of better communication. Nazif wanted to smash the phone against the wall. This stupid race Zamora insisted on running was beginning to be a problem.
The phone buzzed in his hand with an incoming call.
“Yes.” He smiled inside, recognizing the number. It was Ibrahim, his youngest brother.
Yazid stretched his back and picked up a small cup of coffee from the table before him, letting the familiar scent of cardamom calm his tattered nerves. Things would be all right, he told himself. All would work out. The stone that was cut from the mountain by the hand of God could not be stopped.
“Peace be unto you, my brother.” Ibrahim’s voice was familiar, like the comfortable sound of the gate to their garden back home.
“And you,” Yazid answered back. “I trust things are going well on your end.”
“Very,” Ibrahim said. “I am helping out at the church we discussed. There will be quite a large number attending. I believe you would enjoy the performance if you are able to arrive in time. Still, there are alternatives.”
“You think we should focus on another event?”
There was a long silence on the phone.
“Perhaps,” Ibrahim said at length. “I will text you a photo.”
“Watch yourself, brother,” Yazid said before hanging up. He ran a hand across his bald head and waited for the ping that signaled an incoming text.
“Not bad,” he said to himself, using two fingers to enlarge the photograph of a man with shaggy blond hair standing before a small choir of thirty or so smiling children — all a hodgepodge of race, ranging in age from less than seven to their early teens. They were ripe enough, Yazid’s heart raced when he saw the open auditorium behind the children — with seating for thousands. If Ibrahim had a target better than this, it had to be a ripe one indeed.
CHAPTER 36
Quinn awoke on his side, hands pulled unnaturally behind him. His helmet lay in the rocks a few feet away. He’d landed on his left ear after hitting the fesh fesh — superfine particles of dust that blew along the desert floor to fill in any low spots. Fesh fesh looked like regular ground and ate many unsuspecting motorcyclists if those low spots happened to be more than a few inches deep.
The KTM was somewhere close behind him. He couldn’t see it but reasoned that he hadn’t been unconscious long from the sound of ticking metal as the bike bled heat from the engine.
Quinn tried to push himself to a seated position and realized his hands were tied behind his back. He turned his head slowly and saw Zamora had an even bigger problem.
Ten meters to Quinn’s right, Blessington and another man Quinn recognized as the Chechen from the chalet in Mar del Plata stood towering over a bound Zamora. The Venezuelan’s riding boots and socks had been stripped off. His bare feet had been strapped to the handlebars of his motorcycle — which lay on its side, apparently another victim of unsuspected fesh fesh.
The Chechen spewed something in rapid-fire Russian, kicking Zamora in the ribs when he didn’t answer. The Venezuelan cursed him back, spitting vehemently into the dirt.
Blessington smiled, drawing back a long wooden staff nearly an inch in diameter. He let it hang for a long moment while the Chechen asked another question, then struck cruelly on the sole of Zamora’s pink foot before he had time to answer.
Zamora writhed in pain from the blow, thrashing hard enough to yank the handlebars of his bike sideways. Blessington set down the stick to maneuver the bike and his victim’s feet back into position as a better target.
Quinn knew both he and Zamora were dead as soon as they got what they wanted. He looked around, shifting his eyes rather than moving his head and drawing attention to himself. Behind him, he could feel the heat radiating off the KTM’s muffler. Taking advantage of their preoccupation with Zamora, Quinn inched backward to the bike, pressing the plastic zip ties on his wrist against the exhaust, as close to the engine as he could get. He winced as the heat seared the tender skin inside his wrists, but held them there until the plastic melted, freeing him with a faint pop as they gave way.
Now loose, he kept his hands behind him and took another look at his opponents. The Chechen had a pistol on his hip and Blessington had a knife in addition to his wooden staff. It killed him inside to help a man like Zamora escape. The treatment he was getting was well deserved. But Blessington was enjoying himself too much. It was obvious the Chechens wanted the bomb, but these two were heavy-handed. They were likely to kill Zamora by accident before he told them anything.
Quinn toyed with the idea of giving them a few minutes before he took action, but they could turn on him at any moment. The chance the Chechen would draw his pistol and start shooting was too great.
He moved his feet slightly, wiggling his toes to make sure they weren’t asleep. The last thing he needed was to be halfway into his lunge and realize he was working on two dead legs. When he felt reasonably sure his body was in good enough working order after the wreck, he took one final look at the situation and let Blessington have one more whack at Zamora’s feet.
The piercing screams provided good cover for his initial movement — and Blessington’s feelings of superiority at dispensing punishment to a helpless prisoner made him careless.