A Gentleman's Game

46

Saudi Arabia-Tabuk Province, the Wadi-as-Sirhan 22 September 0222 Local (GMT+3.00)

It took another hour, because they went much more slowly now. Both Wallace and Chace had agreed that it was unlikely HUM-AA was expecting trouble or that there would be static defenses in place. Certainly, there would be sentries, but they were dealing with a training camp, one where the trainees and the trainers felt secure in their work. The residents were there to learn and to train, their days would be full, their nights dedicated to rest.

But Chace and Wallace weren't going to take any chances.

They climbed down into the actual physical wadi, roughly two kilometers from the camp, picking their way down the sides, cautious with their footfalls, and once at the bottom stopped and took stock. The sides of the wadi rose roughly three meters on either side, and where they had entered was narrow, perhaps only four meters across. The ground beneath their feet was hard earth, cleaned by the rare floods that rushed through it in the spring. Chace saw tire tracks but had no idea how recent they were.

Wallace checked his GPS, showed his findings to Chace, and she nodded, then took the lead, now heading northeast.

After fourteen minutes, the wadi widened considerably and its walls had slowly begun to drop. Another GPS reading put them within five hundred meters, and here they spread out again, Chace to the eastern side of the wadi, Wallace to the western. Chace moved the P90 to her shoulder, made certain the safety was off and the selector was on burst.

They moved very slowly now, listening hard, trying to ignore their own sounds, trying to control their own fear.

With one hundred meters to go, the wadi curved again, and Chace hugged her wall as she followed it around. Over the emptiness, she heard a rustling, the scraping of a foot, and peering the rest of the way, she saw the sentry, Kalashnikov held in one hand, covering his mouth to suppress a yawn.

She looked to Wallace, could barely make him out in the darkness across from her. She held up a finger, hoping he could read the sign, and she saw him return it, then made a circle, then showed him all five fingers. She lowered her hand, went back to watching the sentry, counting seconds.

The time the sentry had left to live.