“Stay here,” he ordered Jinn.
Khalif snuck through the opening and worked his way into the darkness. Moving in a wide arc, he curled in behind his enemies and slipped into the oasis.
Preoccupied with Sabah and his men at their front, the bandits never noticed Khalif flanking them. He came up behind them and opened fire, blasting them in the back from close range.
Three went down quickly and then a fourth. Another tried to run and was killed by a shot from Sabah, but the sixth and final thug turned around in time and fired back.
A slug hit Khalif’s shoulder, knocking him backward and sending a jolt of pain surging though his body. He landed in the water.
The bandit rushed toward him, perhaps thinking him dead or too wounded to fight.
Khalif aimed the old rifle and pulled the trigger. The shell jammed in the breach. He grabbed the bolt and worked to free it, but his wounded arm was not strong enough to break loose the frozen action.
The bandit raised his own weapon, drawing a bead on Khalif’s chest. And then the sound of the Webley revolver rang out like thunder.
The bandit fell against a date palm with a puzzled look on his face. He slid down it, the weapon falling from his hands into the water.
Jinn stood behind the dead man, holding the pistol in a shaking grip, his eyes filled with tears.
Khalif looked around for more enemies, but he saw none. The shooting had stopped. He could hear Sabah shouting to the men. The battle was over.
“Come here, Jinn,” he ordered.
His son moved toward him, shaking and trembling. Khalif took him under one arm and held him.
“Look at me.”
The boy did not respond.
“Look at me, Jinn!”
Finally Jinn turned. Khalif held his shoulder tightly.
“You are too young to understand, my son, but you have done a mighty thing. You have saved your father. You have saved your family.”
“But my brothers and mother are dead,” Jinn cried.
“No,” Khalif said. “They are in paradise, and we will go on, until we meet them one day.”
Jinn did not react, he only stared and sobbed.
A sound from the right turned Khalif. One of the bandits was alive and trying to crawl away.
Khalif raised the curved knife, ready to finish the man, but then held himself back. “Kill him, Jinn.”
The shaking boy stared blankly. Khalif stared back, firm and unyielding.
“Your brothers are dead, Jinn. The future of the clan rests with you. You must learn to be strong.”
Jinn continued to shake, but Khalif was all the more certain now. Kindness and generosity had almost destroyed them. Such weakness had to be banished from his only surviving son.
“You must never have pity,” Khalif said. “He is an enemy. If we have not the strength to kill our enemies, they will take the waters from us. And without the waters, we inherit only wandering and death.”
Khalif knew he could force Jinn to do it, knew he could order him and the boy would follow the command. But he needed Jinn to choose the act himself.
“Are you afraid?”
Jinn shook his head. Slowly, he turned and raised the pistol.
The bandit glanced back at him, but instead of Jinn buckling, his hand grew steady. He looked the bandit in the face and pulled the trigger.
The gun’s report echoed across the water and out into the desert. By the time it faded, tears no longer flowed from the young boy’s eyes.
CHAPTER 2
INDIAN OCEAN
JUNE 2012
THE NINETY-FOOT CATAMARAN LOLLED ITS WAY ACROSS calm waters of the Indian Ocean at sunset. It was making three or four knots in a light breeze. A brilliant white sail rose above the wide deck. Five-foot letters in turquoise spelled out numa across its central section—the National Underwater and Marine Agency.
Kimo A’kona stood near one of the catamaran’s twin bows. He was thirty years old, with jet-black hair, a chiseled body and the swirling designs of a traditional Hawaiian tattoo on his arm and shoulder. He stood on the bow in bare feet, balancing on the very tip as if he were hanging ten on a surfboard.
He held a long pole ahead and to the side, dipping an instrument into the water. Readings on a small display screen told him it was working.
He called out the results. “Oxygen level is a little low, temperature is 21 degrees centigrade, 70.4 Fahrenheit.”
Behind Kimo, two others watched. Perry Halverson, the team leader and oldest member of the crew, stood at the helm. He wore khaki shorts, a black T-shirt and an olive drab “boonie” hat he’d owned for years.
Beside him, Thalia Quivaros, who everyone called T, stood on the deck in white shorts and a red bikini top that accented her tan figure enough to distract both men.
“That’s the coldest reading yet,” Halverson noted. “Three full degrees cooler than it should be this time of year.”
“The global warming people aren’t going to like that,” Kimo noted.
“Maybe not,” Thalia said as she typed the readings into a small computer tablet. “But it’s definitely a pattern. Twenty-nine of the last thirty readings are off by at least two degrees.”
“Could a storm have passed through here?” Kimo asked. “Dumping rain or hail that we aren’t accounting for?”
“Nothing for weeks,” Halverson replied. “This is an anomaly, not a local distortion.”
Thalia nodded. “Deepwater readings from the remote sensors we dropped are confirming it. Temperatures are way off, all the way down to the thermocline. It’s like the sun’s heat is missing this region somehow.”
“I don’t think the sun’s the problem,” Kimo said. The ambient air temperature had reached the high in the nineties a few hours before as the sun had been blazing from a cloudless sky. Even as it set, the last rays were strong and warm.
Kimo reeled in the instrument, checked it and then swung the pole like a fly fisherman. He cast the sensor out forty feet from the boat, letting it sink and drift back. The second reading came back identical to the first.
“At least we’ve found something to tell the brass back in D.C.,” Halverson said. “You know they all think we’re on a pleasure cruise out here.”
“I’m guessing it’s an upwelling,” Kimo said. “Something like the El Niño/La Niña effect. Although since this is the Indian Ocean, they will probably call it something in Hindu.”
“Maybe they could name it after us,” Thalia suggested. “The Quivaros-A’kona-Halverson effect. QAH for short.”
“Notice how she put herself up front,” Kimo said to Halverson.
“Ladies first,” she said with a nod and a smile.
Halverson laughed and adjusted his hat.
“While you guys figure that out, I’ll get started on the mess for tonight. Anyone for flying-fish tacos?”
Thalia looked at him suspiciously. “We had those last night.”
“Lines are empty,” Halverson said. “We didn’t catch anything today.”
Kimo thought about that. The farther they sailed into the cold zone, the less sea life they’d found. It was like the ocean was turning barren and cold. “Sounds better than canned goods,” he said.
Thalia nodded, and Halverson ducked into the cabin to whip them up some dinner. Kimo stood and gazed off to the west.
The sun had finally dropped below the horizon, and the sky was fading to an indigo hue with a line of blazing orange just above the water. The air was soft and humid, the temperature now around eighty-five degrees. It was a perfect evening, made even more perfect by the notion that they’d discovered something unique.
They had no idea what was causing it, but the temperature anomaly seemed to be wreaking havoc with the weather across the region. So far, there’d been little rain across southern and western India at a time when the monsoons were supposed to be brewing.
Concern was spreading as a billion people were waiting for the seasonal downpours to bring the rice and wheat crops to life. From what he’d heard nerves were fraying. Memories of the previous year’s light harvest had sparked talk of famine if something didn’t change soon.