August 2, 2016, IN THE DESERT NEAR AIN BEN TILI, ON THE BORDER BETWEEN MOROCCO AND MAURITANIA
11:45 A.M.
The morning after the bombing, Otto and Grunt looked out at the ruin left behind. The vehicles were all blackened wrecks, charred bodies lying all around them. Otto winced and took the binoculars away from his eyes.
“I told you not to look,” Grunt said.
“I had to see what my parents’ tax dollars were paying for.”
“The Air Force goes after terrorists, Pyro. Don’t waste your time feeling bad about them.”
“You said the Air Force sometimes makes mistakes.”
Grunt nodded. “That they do, Pyro. That they do.”
“What if this was a mistake?”
“No way to tell from this distance. Want to go for a closer look?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Let’s move out.”
They walked back to the Land Rovers. They hadn’t dared go back to their vehicles during the night for fear of the bomber coming back, spotting them, and taking them for a target. So they had spent a cold, uncomfortable night huddled in the desert about half a mile away.
Grunt had only gone back once to throw some tan-colored tarps over the Land Rovers as camouflage. They blended with the sand perfectly, and a plane overhead wouldn’t spot them. They also shielded the heat from the engines that, even though they’d been shut off for a couple of hours, still radiated enough warmth to be picked up on a military-grade infrared sensor.
“They’ll probably do a flyover during the night to see if they can pick up any heat traces and then take a peek with a spy satellite or drone in the morning to see how the bombing run turned out,” Grunt explained.
“What if the satellite sees us? It’s strong enough for that, isn’t it?”
Yuhle and Yamazaki nodded, obviously nervous.
“It doesn’t matter,” Grunt said. “A big explosion in the desert often attracts Bedouin or smugglers who come and search the wreckage in hopes of salvaging something. The Air Force doesn’t go after them.”
“Wait, what if some of those guys show up now?”
“That would be a problem, and that’s why we have to get out of here pronto.”
They packed up and sped off in the direction of their old camp, the one where they had left Vivian and Jaxon.
Grunt turned out to be right and was able to lead them to the camp with little trouble.
Not that Otto would have been able to recognize it. It looked like just another collection of sand dunes to him. Grunt’s sense of direction was only confirmed when they saw something catch the sun on top of one of the dunes.
They parked the Land Rovers at the base of the dune and climbed up.
“That’s Jaxon’s tablet!” Otto cried.
Next to it stood a tent peg and a streamer made of wrappers that were blowing in the wind and glinting in the sunlight. Impaled on the tent peg was a note. Grunt pulled it off.
“What is this?” Otto asked, staring at the note. Instead of writing, there was a series of numbers.
“Code,” Grunt said. “An old one me and Vivian used back in the day. Says they saw the flares and decided to head out last night for the road. They’re walking due west, and they’re short on water.”
Grunt and Otto automatically turned to the west. They could see no sign of anyone. Grunt pulled out his binoculars and checked. Nothing.
“Hey!” Dr. Yamazaki shouted from the base of the dune. “I’ve found their tracks.”
They hurried down to where she and Dr. Yuhle stood and clearly saw two sets of footprints in the sand, heading off toward the western horizon. They came from the direction of the top of the dune but disappeared about halfway up.
“Why can’t we see them at the top of the dune?” Otto asked.
“The wind,” Dr. Yamazaki explained. “In the more exposed areas, the wind has wiped the prints clean. Sheltered as they are here between the dunes, we can still see them.”
“Basic arenological morphology,” Dr. Yuhle said, giving Otto a smile.
“Whatever,” Otto said, rolling his eyes. “Let’s go.”
They headed out, steering the Land Rovers on a weaving path through the dunes and trying to follow the trail. At times, the dunes opened up and the tracks disappeared, and then they’d find them again in the next sheltered area.
All this took time. Otto cursed every delay as they circled around, trying to relocate the tracks. At times, they had to take large detours to avoid canyons or stretches of rough rocks the Land Rovers couldn’t cross. Then they’d have to search for the trail all over again.
“We should have caught up to them by now!” Otto shouted, slamming his fist against the dashboard as the sun settled on the western horizon. “They’re walking, and we’re driving.”
“Let’s get up to the top of that big dune over there and take a look,” Grunt said.
They climbed the dune and scanned the horizon, seeing nothing. They did see a disturbing haze of dust to the east, however.
“Damn, looks like another convoy,” Grunt said.
“This desert is a bit too busy for my liking,” Dr. Yuhle said.
“Mine too,” Grunt grumbled.
Just then, a gust of wind blew up from the southwest, a scorching blast that spewed burning sand into their faces. Otto looked down at his feet. Sand swirled all around them, and he could barely see the footprints they had made just a few minutes before when they had climbed up here.
“There goes our trail,” Otto murmured.
He looked out to the west, where the lowering sun dazzled his eyes. Jaxon was out there somewhere, dying of thirst.
Grunt put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find them, Pyro.”
“Let’s get out of sight before someone else finds us,” Dr. Yamazaki said, looking back the way they’d come. Even though the gust of wind had kicked up a general haze, they could still clearly see the plume of dust made by the mystery vehicles.
They hurried back to the Land Rovers and drove straight on to the west. As Otto had suspected, the trail had vanished without a trace, and they had to hope that Vivian and Jaxon had kept on heading straight for the highway.
If they hadn’t, there was no chance of finding them.
Grunt had Dr. Yamazaki, who was at the wheel of the other Land Rover, drive about a quarter of a mile to the north of them, both to spread out the search area and to reduce the dust cloud they were kicking up. They didn’t want whoever was behind them to notice someone else was driving through the desert. The haze of that convoy grew fainter but never disappeared entirely.
The afternoon dragged on. As the shadows lengthened, Otto got more and more impatient.
“We should have found them by now!” was all he could say.
“Relax, Pyro. Vivian knows what she’s doing,” Grunt replied.
He sounded less confident than before.
Night fell, and with it the hope of finding Vivian and Jaxon until the next day. Frustrated, the Atlantis Allegiance made camp. As soon as they stopped, Otto ran up to the top of the nearest dune to have a look around. He remembered that everyone on the team had a flashlight. Maybe Jaxon and Vivian would use them to light their way and he’d spot them.
No luck. He stared out into the desert for a long time. Down below, he could see Grunt putting the tarps over the vehicles as the two scientists took the tents and other gear and moved them well away. Grunt was still worried about an air strike. Otto couldn’t bring himself to worry about anything other than Jaxon being lost in the desert.
Once they were finished setting up camp, Dr. Yuhle walked up the dune to join him.
“Have you seen anything?” he asked once he got close enough.
“No, nothing. Not a damn thing,” Otto grumbled.
Yuhle took a long look around. “At least that other group of vehicles seems to have disappeared.”
“I hope so. Grunt says it’s still too dangerous to send up a flare.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Otto turned to face the scientist. “Are they still alive? I mean, you’ve been figuring the chances in your head, haven’t you? You’ve been trying to guess how much water they had in their tent and whether they’d still be alive, right?”
Yuhle shifted from one foot to the other, adjusting his glasses and not looking at Otto.
“Answer me!” Otto shouted.
“Please keep your voice down. We’re not alone in this desert,” Yuhle replied. He didn’t say any more for a moment, and Otto was about to demand an answer again when he finally spoke. “I recall Vivian carrying a jug of water up to their tent. I don’t know how much was in it, but assuming it was full, or even half full, they are still alive. Vivian is trained in desert survival. They’ll only travel at night and conserve their water as much as possible. If they haven’t run into any other sort of trouble, they are definitely still alive.”
“And tomorrow?” Otto asked.
“We’ll find them tomorrow.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
There was a long pause before Yuhle said, “They won’t survive to tomorrow night.”
Otto looked out over the silent desert, now pitch dark but for the stars shining above. Dead by tomorrow night.
“We’ll find them,” Yuhle repeated. “We’ll get up before dawn and start searching at first light and not stop until we find them.”
Otto nodded. “I’ve never thanked you for all the help you’ve given me and Jaxon.”
“Oh, never mind about that. It gets me out of the lab. Most invigorating.”
“A bit too invigorating. I’m sure you don’t really want to be here.”
“I’m here because I need to be here. This is important work we’re doing.”
“The science? Seems like a lot of risk just for a research project.”
“Well, it’s more than that.” Yuhle paused as if struggling with himself about whether to go on. “It’s not just the genetics that pulled me in. It’s the Atlanteans’ history. How they’ve been exploited. There’s a long history of injustice that needs to be corrected.”
“Yeah, Grunt and Vivian hate General Meade. Seem to have a history with him.”
“That’s their business. For me, it’s a bit different.” Yuhle paused again, adjusted his glasses, and looked out to the west. “My uncle was a police officer. Uncle Rodge. His name was Rodger, but everyone called him Rodge. He was your typical swaggering tough-guy gun nut. I was your typical science nerd. Somehow, we got along. He wanted to make a man out of me, you see, so he took me hunting and shooting and all that manly stuff. Gave me my first can of beer when I was twelve. Nasty drink. Not sure what his motives were with that, but it kept me from drinking all through high school. Helped my grades, I’m sure. Uncle Rodge was always pulling weird stunts with me. He even took me for a ride-along in his patrol car when he was on duty.”
“Is that legal?”
“Rules didn’t apply to Uncle Rodge. I hero-worshipped him. Even though it became obvious that I’d never be the manly man he wanted me to be, he still took me camping and fishing and all that. He’d introduce me to his friends as the ‘World’s Smartest Nephew.’ I loved that.
“Then one day I saw him on the news. He was first responder to an emergency call about a gang member carrying a gun in front of a grocery store. Uncle Rodge got to the scene, saw the guy, saw the gun, and shot him dead. Well, that turned out not to be the whole story. The supposed gang member was a twelve-year-old black boy waiting outside while his parents did the shopping. The gun was a BB gun that didn’t even have any BBs in it.”
“Damn, that must have torn up your uncle inside,” Otto said.
Yuhle shook his head sadly, his grimace visible even in the starlight. “I wish it had. At first, all he told me was that the gun looked real and the kid was big for his age. Apparently, that was enough in his eyes. There was an investigation, of course, and a bit of a media flap. Protests. Uncle Rodge was found innocent and returned to duty. The police investigators ignored the fact that the kid was actually small for his age and that the BB gun was sitting on a bench next to him. He wasn’t even holding it.”
“Oh.”
“Uncle Rodge kept a poker face all through the investigation. He didn’t say a word about it except for those lame excuses that the newspaper told me were lies. He kept taking me out, though. I felt uncomfortable, because I wanted to know what was going on, but I didn’t have the courage to ask all the questions I wanted to ask. Once it was all over, we went for a drive—our usual Sunday drive. I can’t even remember where we went. I only remember one thing. We were driving past a group of black kids hanging out on the sidewalk when he leaned over to me and whispered, ‘One down, a few million more to go.’”
Otto tensed. “Maybe he didn’t mean—”
“He meant exactly what he said!” Yuhle snapped. Otto blinked. He’d never seen the scientist get angry before. Yuhle seemed embarrassed by the outburst, adjusted his glasses, and went on in a normal voice. “He even smiled when he said it. I never hung out with him after that. I couldn’t bear being seen with him. I owe him a debt of gratitude, however. He taught me that not everything is as it seems and that if you want a hero in your life, you have to be your own.”
“And so you’re out here.”
“And so I’m out here,” Yuhle said with a shrug. “Trying to help a people I didn’t even know existed ten years ago and fighting conspiracies I still don’t understand. Sometimes I find myself thinking about what my life would have been like if I’d just stayed at home and kept my nose clean, working for some university somewhere. I certainly wouldn’t have the worst sunburn of my life or be looking over my shoulder, afraid of getting killed by terrorists or my own government, but on the whole, I’m happy with the choices I’ve made.”
Otto clapped him on the shoulder. “So am I. Let’s go down and try to get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
As they had planned, they set out just before dawn, Otto and Grunt in one Land Rover and the two scientists driving half a mile north in the other. They saw no footprints.
“How far until the highway?” Otto asked.
“We’re more than halfway. Maybe fifteen miles to go.”
“Could they have walked this far?” Otto asked.
“We’re going to drive a few more miles and then circle back and check again. They won’t have made it to the highway by this point. They’re close, Pyro. Don’t you worry.”
But Otto noticed that Grunt sounded worried himself, and from what he said, he assumed they would have to circle back, meaning they wouldn’t find them on the first try. That meant more time for Jaxon and Vivian to die of thirst.
Suddenly, the other Land Rover zoomed into view on their right. Dr. Yamazaki was at the wheel and gesturing frantically through the window.
Otto’s heart leapt. Had they found them? But Yamazaki wasn’t slowing down—she was speeding up.
Then Otto saw the dust trail of another vehicle to their right, closing in on both of them.
He reached into the backseat to grab his AK-47 and then nearly dropped it when the jeep came into view.
It had an open top. Four guys were inside, two in front and two in back. One of the guys in back was standing up and manning the biggest machine gun Otto had ever seen. It rested on a pole bolted to the back of the jeep because the machine gun was far too big for someone to hold.
And it was pointing right at them.
Grunt swerved the Land Rover around a sand dune, Yamazaki right behind. The jeep disappeared from view.
“What the hell was that?” Otto shouted.
“It’s called a Technical,” Grunt said. “Jeeps with a machine gun or cannon on top. Poor man’s tank. Popular in this part of the world.”
Otto looked around. He saw more dust trails behind them and to the left.
“They’re closing in on us,” Otto said.
“I know,” Grunt said, stepping on the gas.
They shot over a low ridge of sand and flew in the air, landing hard on the other side. Yamazaki made the jump too. Together, they sped across an open area. Otto looked back and saw three jeeps come into view. Two of them had machine guns on top. The third was packed with well-armed men.
Grunt swerved left around another dune then right around the next one. Otto began to feel carsick as they bumped over the rough ground and did hard turns to avoid patches of soft sand that would trap them. Grunt was a crazy driver, and it turned out Yamazaki wasn’t any less crazy. She kept right on their tail.
The strangers kept on their tail too. They weren’t catching up, but Grunt and Yamazaki weren’t able to shake them.
Then they came to another open area. A few hundred yards to the front of them were parked half a dozen vehicles. Men in loose desert robes, their faces half obscured by scarves, stood with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades at the ready. At the center of the line of vehicles was a Technical with a huge cannon bolted to the top. Otto wondered if the whole jeep would flip over if it was fired.
Grunt and Yamazaki decided not to test that. They screeched to a stop within a few yards of the vehicles, sending a cloud of dust over the waiting men.
Grunt cursed.
“End of the road, Pyro. Get out with your hands up, and let me do the talking.”
Otto tossed his weapon into the backseat and did as he was told. He didn’t really see any other option.
As he got out of the Land Rover, the pursuit vehicles appeared from the dunes and stopped behind them, hemming them in.
“Salaam Alaykum!” Grunt shouted. Otto snorted. That was a standard Arabic greeting that meant “Peace be upon you.” It didn’t seem very appropriate. Yuhle and Yamazaki meekly got out of the other Land Rover.
The man who stood behind the cannon on the central Technical clambered to the front and stood on the hood. He wore military boots and desert camo pants, with a loose blue shirt and a blue turban with one strip of material wrapped around the lower part of his face. Sunglasses obscured his eyes. An automatic pistol was strapped to his belt. He shouted instructions to his men in a language that didn’t sound like Arabic. The desert warriors spread out, encircling the two Land Rovers.
Grunt moved forward a little. The leader put a hand on his pistol. Grunt stopped.
“We’re travelers,” Grunt called over to him in English. “We’re just passing through, and we don’t want any trouble.”
The leader did a double take and removed his sunglasses. He had swarthy skin and sharp eyes of such a dark brown that they looked like giant pupils. He studied Grunt for a moment.
“Why is it that any time Americans come to my country, something blows up?” the man asked.
Otto was surprised to hear his accent sounded like some high-class Englishman’s.
Grunt put his fists on his hips. “And why is it that anytime I’m in trouble in the Sahara, I always bump into scumbags like you?”
The gunman and Grunt ran at each other.