“One of the passengers walked from the crash,” Safiya explained. “He still died after he bled to death. But he managed to walk to a small rock formation, west of here.”
Caine looked at her, surprised. “Why are you only telling us this now?”
“I needed to hold something back, just in case you wouldn't help me find my children. Information I could bargain with. But now… I saw what you did. You tricked that soldier into telling you where my children are. I… I thank you.”
Caine glared at her, not sure how he should react to this revelation.
“If you're having a go at Safiya for holding back information, just look in the mirror,” Kimberley interrupted. “How long did it take you to tell us your real name?”
“Okay,” Caine said quietly. “Safiya and I both haven’t been completely honest here. I get that, and we each had our reasons. But right now, we need to find a way out of our situation here, or we’ll be dead within the next forty-eight hours.”
He could feel the sweat running off him. The dry heat had to be
more than a hundred degrees, and there was no shade. Without water, they wouldn’t last long.
“Do either of you have water on you?” he asked.
The two women shook their heads.
“What about the camels?” Kimberley asked. “Could we survive eating camel meat?”
“They were burnt to cinders, there’s nothing left but ash. Plus I’m pretty sure the chemicals in Hellfire missiles would be toxic.” Caine turned to Safiya. “Who was this man? The one who walked away from the crash?”
Safiya shook her head. “I don’t know who he was. He was dark skinned, like an African man.”
Caine considered this information. Jarod Forster was African-American. But according to Rashid, Forster was still alive. He wasn’t on the plane when it went down…
Safiya continued speaking, her voice dry and hoarse. “He managed to walk from the wreckage. I saw his body huddled in some rocks, but before I could reach him the sandstorm hit.”
Caine thought for a moment. “So his body might still be there, with provisions, weapons and a means of communication?”
The Bedouin woman gave him a confused look, then shrugged. “Maybe… I do not know."
“Can you take us there?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
They climbed a dune. Together they scanned the western horizon. Eventually Kimberley spotted the rocky embankment, jutting up from the sand. Caine guessed it was perhaps three, maybe four miles distant.
They took off at a brisk pace, walking along the tops of the dunes as much as they could so they didn’t lose sight of the rock. Caine’s tongue felt thick and swollen. He was thirsty, desperate for a drink. He pushed those thoughts aside and kept marching. Caine knew the man Safiya had seen, whoever he was, might be their only hope. But first they had to find him. He would either have water on him… or he wo
uld not. When all their problems were broken down into their component pieces, it was that simple. Fix one thing at a time, then move onto the next.
Caine glanced at the two women marching alongside him. To Safiya and Kimberley’s credit, they kept pace with him, and never complained once. He knew that they too must be desperate to quench their thirst.
Walking was not easy. The sand was soft and treacherous, especially when they needed to climb a dune. A journey that would have taken an hour on solid ground took three through the shifting desert.
When they reached the rock outcropping, Caine could see it was about six-hundred feet long, thirty feet wide and about twenty feet high. The rocks themselves resembled dried honeycombs. Dead grass grew in clumps around the base of the steep sandstone edges. Caine saw no signs of the corpse. Whatever tracks the man had left would have been blown away by the winds long ago.
“Where did you see him?” Caine demanded of Safiya. “Which crevasse?”
Safiya shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Try,” he insisted. Caine knew he was pushing her, but the alternatives weren’t pretty for any of them. He was already becoming light headed from thirst. “The body will be buried. There are only so many times we can dig before we lose our strength. We have to narrow our search.”
She nodded, finding her courage. “Let me take a closer look.”
As he examined the rocks, Caine identified petroglyphs on their jagged faces. The stylized carvings depicted men, camels and oryx. They could have been thousands of years old, for all Caine knew.
Safiya examined each rock face with him, searching for anything familiar. Caine could see she was having a hard time. Too much had changed since the passing of two sandstorms. He scanned the rocks with a critical eye. He tried to guess where he would have hidden, if he were the one alone in the desert, bleeding to death
.
He quickly identified three possible locations, and pointed them out to the women.
“Alright, we'd better get started, Kimberly and Safiya, you take those two sections over there. I’ll start at those rocks in the middle.”
The two women nodded, and they split up. They each began scooping into the mounds of sand that had blown up against the rock faces. They had only their hands to work with, and the labor was exhausting under the brutal sun. He lost track of how long he’d been digging. Was it a few minutes… an hour? More?
Suddenly, he heard Kimberley call out.
“Thomas!”
“What did you find?”
“A locket.”
Safiya and Caine ran to Kimberley. She had discovered a locket hanging from the rock. He opened it, and found a tiny, faded photograph inside. It was a picture of Emily Argyle and Jarod Forster, together. They looked happy and in love.
“What does that mean?” Kimberley asked.
Caine again felt a sense of uncertainty. “This man was one of the crew, Jarod Forster. He was supposedly in love with my friend, Emily Argyle. This is them.”
“That’s so romantic,” Kimberley said as she examined the locket in Caine’s hand. “He saved this locket from the crash. His last thoughts were of her.”
Kimberley explored the rocks near where she had found the locket. “There might be something else here.” She pulled aside several loose rock fragments. They tumbled and fell on the ledge beneath her.
CRACK! CRACK!
The sound of gunfire echoed around them. Caine and Kimberly ducked behind the rocks. He peered around the side, looking for an attacker, but there was no one.
Kimberly opened her eyes and straightened from the hunched position she had adopted. She too looked for the shooter
.
Safiya, unperturbed, grabbed another rock and smashed it on the rock edge. Another loud crack rang out. It sounded like a gunshot.
“It’s okay,” she called out. “It's just the rocks!”
“Wow!” Kimberley said in awe. “I thought we were dead, but it’s just the acoustics in here. The echo makes it sound like gunshots.”
“Some of the rocks in the desert are very old,” Safiya explained. “They can carry whispers for great distances. If you know where to speak to them.”
Caine nodded, relieved that they weren’t under attack. “Kimberley, did you find anything else behind the rocks you pulled down?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, got a bit optimistic there.”
He stared at the locket again. For a moment, Caine was jealous of Jarod Forster and Emily Argyle’s relationship. The way they held each other in the photo… He had never expressed commitment or devotion to Rebecca Freeling like that. He didn’t know if he ever could.
Had Rashid got it wrong? A man who hangs a locket expressing his eternal love, while bleeding out in the heart of a wasteland… Was that the kind of man to set up his girlfriend to take a fall?
He snapped the locket closed. The mystery would have to wait.
“Let’s keep digging,” he said. “See if we can find anything useful.”
They worked together, pushing aside the hot sands. They first had to use their head scarves so the sand wouldn’t burn their hands. But a foot down the sand was much cooler. After thirty minutes or so of frantic shoveling, Kimberley let out a tiny squeal of excitement. Then she kept digging. A mummified husk of a hand, then a limb, and finally a whole body was unearthed.
The clothes were western. Cotton shirt and pants, desert boots, and a worn leather belt. Multiple lacerations cut across the body, probably where fragments of the plane’s wreckage had cut or impaled him. The sunken face and shriveled skin robbed the man of any identifying features. But Caine was certain this was Jarod Forster. His wallet held an Arizona driver’s license and social security card with
his name on them. The passport stuffed in his pocket further confirmed his identity.
Sulieman Rashid was either wrong, or lying. Whoever he was dealing with inside the CIA, it was not Jarod Forster.
Caine kept searching. He flipped open the man's shirt pocket. Inside, his probing fingers wrapped around a slim metal rectangle.
The data stick, he thought. The item which had started him on this cross-global investigation in the first place. The secret Emily, Forster, and so many others had died for.
He discretely pocketed the stick without the women noticing. He kept digging. Kimberley and Safiya helped. Soon they found a Browning Hi-Power pistol, a half-full water bottle, and a satellite phone.
“If he had water, why didn’t he drink it?” Kimberley asked.
“Perhaps his wounds made it too painful to drink,” Safiya offered. “Or he might have finished other water bottles first, dropping them when they were empty.”
They rationed out the water. Each of them drank a sixth now, saving the rest for later. Caine entrusted Safiya to hold the water bottle.
Kimberly licked her lips, hungry for every last drop of the precious liquid. “While I’m asking all the questions, why didn’t Forster call for help on the sat phone?”
Caine examined it. The answer was obvious. “Because the battery was missing,” he said.
A thought occurred to him. Caine took the battery from his pocket and tried it on Forster’s phone. To his surprise, it fit. Both phones were the same make and model.
“Looks like we finally got a break,” Caine muttered. The phone switched on. The screen lit up and locked in on a signal, providing them with the GPS coordinates for their position.
“Who do we call?” Kimberley asked. “Who can get here fast enough?”
Caine knew exactly who he needed to speak to
.
He dialed the number from memory. Gabriella Castro answered after three rings.
Caine quickly explained their circumstances. In short, clipped sentences, he told her that he knew where the missing data stick was, that they needed immediate evacuation.
He took a breath after finishing his story. “Who’s in charge now that Delbridge has been taken out?” he finally asked.
“What?” Gabriella responded, surprise evident in her tone. “Martin Delbridge isn’t dead… He’s right here. He’s on the other line, listening to this conversation.”
Caine froze. His fist tightened around the phone, clenching it in a white knuckled grip. “What?”
“Do you want to speak to him?”
Caine terminated the call quickly, but he knew it was already too late. Their location was in the hands of the enemy, and that enemy was Martin Delbridge. The CIA Station Head was the man in collusion with Rashid. He was pretending to be Forster whenever they spoke.
Caine remembered the program Gabriella had shown him, Mustang Sally. Delbridge must have used it to mask his identity, in case Rashid cracked his communication encryptions. And Delbridge had faked his death in Sana’a to scare Caine into working alone. No wonder the van had snatched his body away so quickly…
Anger welled up inside Caine, but he bit it down. He knew he had to remain cool and calm. Survival was their first priority. They had to escape this desert. Then he could go after Martin Delbridge, and take him down.
“Why did you hang up?” Safiya asked.
Kimberly looked into his smoldering green eyes. “What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
“We’ve been set up,” Caine answered. “Either that drone is going to come back and finish us off, or Rashid and his men are.”