Charon's Landing

The United Arab Emirates

Looking at a globe, it is almost impossible to get any farther away from Seattle than the Persian Gulf. They lie on nearly exact opposite sides of the planet. Yet it was still a little quicker for Mercer to fly first to New York, then continue east across Europe and on to the Middle East, rather than across the Eurasian landmass. He had no recollection of the transcontinental flight. He slept from the moment he boarded in Seattle until the plane barked its wheels in New York. Because the terrorist attack at London’s Heathrow Airport had so disrupted air travel, the only quick flight he could get to Europe was aboard Air France’s supersonic Concorde. He would have preferred a slower mode of transportation since he moved through JFK like a zombie and had planned to keep sleeping on the transatlantic leg of his journey. He managed only a two-hour catnap on the slender missilelike aircraft.

In Paris, Charles de Gaulle Airport was absolute chaos as thousands of stranded passengers tried to make their way to the British Isles. Had he been more alert, Mercer would have cared, but as it was, he dozed through the hour layover before his connection to Abu Dhabi.

The brutal glare of the desert sun in Abu Dhabi came as a relief to the cold, damp misery he’d experienced for the past couple of days. It felt as if his bones would need weeks to dissipate the chill of his plunge into the icy water while escaping from Petromax’s oil rig. He carried only a small bag of hastily purchased clothing from Kennedy Airport, so he was through customs in minutes, past the enormous duty-free shopping mall in the airport, and out onto the strip of road abutting the international terminal.

Waiting for his contact, a colonel named Wayne Bigelow, Mercer set his bag at his feet, ignoring the taxi and limousine drivers soliciting fares into Abu Dhabi City, and closed his eyes once again, nodding off as he stood against a lamppost. After he got the chill from his body, his next order of business would be to pay back more of the tremendous sleep debt he’d incurred.

A car horn sounded close by and dragged him back to consciousness. Mercer had formed a pretty good impression of Colonel Bigelow from the telephone call he’d placed back at Sea-Tac Airport and more than half expected to see the old soldier driving a battered Land Rover, one with its top hacked off and a heavy tire bolted to its hood. Instead, Bigelow leaned from the open window of a new Mercedes 600 SEL sedan, its glossy black paint radiant in the sunlight.

“Dr. Mercer, I presume?” Bigelow’s accent was strictly Colonial English, like a voice from a bygone era. His silvered mustache was waxed to needle points, and his face was as dark and weathered as tree bark. Even seated in the luxury automobile, he retained a rigid military bearing. Mercer guessed that when Bigelow died, rigor mortis would actually loosen his spine. He liked the older man immediately.

“What’s left of him.” Mercer pushed himself off the lamppost and, grabbing his bag, walked to the car.

“Sorry I’m late, but I wanted to catch the fireworks this morning. Damn impressive those Hornets your navy uses. Scream like the bloody hounds of hell, they do.” Bigelow noted how slowly Mercer walked around the Mercedes and how gingerly he eased himself into the leather passenger seat. “Looks like you and Khalid Khuddari have the same tailor.” Mercer’s right arm was in a cloth sling to lessen the tension on his more severely torn shoulder tendons.

“It’s amazing the sympathy you get with one of these. Hell, even the Air France flight attendants were civil.”

“Should have come down on BOAC.” Bigelow still used the old name for British Airways. “But I’m sure the flap at Heathrow has mucked them up for a few days.”

“So everything went as planned?” Mercer asked. Between the time spent waiting in airports and on planes and the hours he’d lost traveling thirteen time zones east, a full day had passed since he and Captain Hauser had prevented the destruction of the Petromax Arctica.

“Like clockwork,” Bigelow replied with a grand smile. The Mercedes purred along at about a hundred miles an hour on the ribbon of asphalt bisecting the white desert sand. “I’ll let Minister Khuddari fill you in on the details.”

“I understand from my conversation with his secretary that he was severely injured in London during an attack at the British Museum and later at Heathrow.”

“Siri has a soft spot for him. She made his wounds sound worse than they are. He caught a bunch of shrapnel fragments, nothing even remotely life threatening, and he gave himself a nasty spinal dislocation jumping from an airplane.” Bigelow then added fondly, “The pansy fell ten feet and pinched off a nerve for a couple of hours. I’ve known men who’ve leaped from five thousand feet without a parachute and walked away with nothing more than a mild limp. I knew he should have gone to Sandhurst rather than Cambridge and the London School of Economics. Lad’s too soft by far.”

“Known him long?” Mercer smiled at Bigelow’s gruff affection.

“Since his father brought him in from the desert when he was a boy. Men like him are the future of the Gulf. They can function in the Western world yet still retain their traditions and their faith, giving each the proper due and maintaining true balance. The fundamentalism so popular now isn’t the answer. Whether it’s belief in Allah or in modern civilization, the Arabs have to learn not to rush headlong in either direction. Unfortunately, they are so passionate about everything they do that they lose sight of life’s subtle compromises.”

Mercer chuckled. “I just gave that same speech about environmentalists.”

“It applies to everyone,” Bigelow replied.

Once in the city, Bigelow parked them in a garage under a modern glass and steel office tower, the space he took having his name on a plaque affixed to the poured concrete wall. “You can leave your bag. In fact, the car is yours while you’re here in Abu Dhabi. I hope you enjoy it more than I do. I much prefer my old Rover to these Kraut leather-lined bordellos.”

While the building could not have been more than a few years old, Bigelow led Mercer into an area that had the feel of an old Victorian edifice, plaster walls, dark woodwork, and ceilings at least twelve feet high. The effect was disorienting but very welcome in the otherwise sterile city. The doors to Khalid al-Khuddari’s office were solid pieces of mahogany, each four feet wide by nine feet tall. Mercer knew they had to be antiques because trees that size were just not found anymore.

The outer office was large, richly decorated, and inviting, the colors hued to those of the outlying desert and the azure of the Gulf to the north. The desk at its far end was as large as a pool table but spotlessly organized, even the cables running from the computer were tightly wrapped to reduce their ugly functionalism. Mercer assumed that the woman coming from behind the desk was Khalid Khuddari’s secretary, Siri Patal. He wasn’t ready for her exquisitely delicate beauty. He’d expected a heavy, matronly woman like the ones he knew from the Indian restaurants around Washington. Siri Patal could have been a model; her fluid movement and her reed-thin body were exceptional. Thinking a purely chauvinistic thought, Mercer hoped that Khuddari had the sense to have an affair with this woman. He would have, in Khuddari’s position.

“Hello, Colonel,” Siri said respectfully to Bigelow, who ignored her professional demeanor and gave her cheek a tickle with his mustache.

“Hello, darling. How’s my girl?”

“Colonel, please,” she blushed and nodded to the corner of the antechamber.

Seated on one of the two leather sofas and leafing through an oil industry magazine, Jim Gibson looked up and smiled broadly. “Don’t you mind me, little lady, you just carry on.” His Stetson and cowboy boots looked appropriate once he spoke in his booming Texas voice. “Well, jerk my lizard! They told me you was comin’, Mercer, but I said naw, couldn’t be. Mercer is a miner, I said, and the only resource this country’s got other than oil is sand. Since the bottom fell out of the hourglass market, there’s no sense mining that.”

Mercer shook Gibson’s hand awkwardly with his left, his whole fist vanishing in the Texan’s big paw. “Thanks, Jim, for everything. I think the world would be a different place if you hadn’t put me in touch with Colonel Bigelow.”

“Hell, I haven’t talked to you since Nigeria, and the next thing I know, you’re calling me up about government plots and sabotage. When I heard about the flap at the Alaska Pipeline and knew you hadn’t gone round the bend, I did what any hero woulda done.” Gibson laughed. “Taking a lesson from the Duke, John Wayne, when the Indians are circling, begging your pardon ma’am, but when they’re circling, you call in the cavalry, right? I’m just glad I was able to help. And speaking of which, it’s time for this hero to get his reward.”

Mercer cocked an eyebrow at the brawny petroleum geologist.

“The Crown Prince wants to add to his stables, and knowing me to be a fine judge of horseflesh, he’s sending me on a buying spree through Europe and the States. Told me that if I happen to find a few fillies that catch my eye, not to be shy about buyin’ them for myself. The check he gave me has more zeros than a high school chess club.” Gibson tipped his hat. “Miss Siri, Colonel. Mercer, hate to cut this short, but I’ve got a plane to catch.”

No sooner had Gibson left than the door leading to Minister Khalid al-Khuddari’s chamber opened. The minister wore casual clothing, American-style jeans and an open-necked shirt. Supported by two canes, his movement into the reception area was slow but steady, his arms taking much of the strain as he crabbed forward. Mercer stole a quick glance at Siri Patal and was envious of the look she gave Khuddari. An image of Aggie Johnston flashed painfully in his mind. They hadn’t spoken since Alaska. They probably never would.

“Dr. Mercer, it is both a pleasure and a privilege to meet you,” Khuddari said, coming close. He looked at Mercer critically, and when he made some sort of personal judgment, smiled. “I’m willing to bet your injuries are a lot worse than they appear.”

“Only if I appear dead.” Mercer made no move to shake Khuddari’s hand because he could only use his left comfortably. He knew that touching an Arab with that hand, which they considered unclean, was a sign of disrespect.

“We’ve both suffered for this,” Khuddari said so quietly that only Mercer could hear. Mercer nodded a silent agreement, recognizing the seriousness of those words and the meaning behind them. Just as quickly as it appeared, Khuddari’s serious edge disappeared, and he was again the charming host. “Come into my office. We have a great deal to discuss, a great many war stories to swap. I think even Colonel Bigelow may be impressed by us. What do you think?”

Mercer laughed, “Unless you and I single-handedly defeated Rommel, I don’t think much would impress your Colonel.”

Khuddari was delighted by the accurate description of his friend and mentor, grinning at Bigelow’s scowl.

He led them into his office and took a seat behind his desk, propping his legs on an ottoman and leaning the canes against the wall like dueling sabers. Bigelow and Mercer sat opposite the desk. Because Mercer’s internal clock was so messed up by jet lag and exhaustion, he didn’t refuse Bigelow’s offer of whiskey from the gold-capped flask he pulled from the pocket of his khaki tunic.

“To begin with, my closest friends call me Khalid. I would like to count you among them. May I dispense with your formal title and call you Philip?”

“My friends call me Mercer. Actually, so do my enemies, but that doesn’t really matter.”

“Then let me say officially, Mercer, the people of the United Arab Emirates and everyone else living in the Gulf owe you a great deal. I’m afraid that without your involvement, what we saw as an internal problem would have mushroomed until it encompassed the entire region. Your timely warning prevented not only a revolution here, but the destabilization of the whole Middle East.”

Mercer tried to demure, but Khuddari pressed on. “We had known for some time of a revolutionary element here in the UAE, a man by the name of Hasaan bin-Rufti, but we did not know how deep was his involvement with other — how shall we say — less friendly nations. Later, I learned of Rufti’s connections with the Iraqis and Iranians when I was in London, but I was too incapacitated to make that knowledge useful here at home.

“Fortunately, as soon as Colonel Bigelow learned that I was delayed in London by a terrorist attack at Heathrow, he rightly deduced that the assault was intended to kill me. On his own initiative, he arrested Hasaan Rufti upon his return from the OPEC meeting. Though we had Rufti, we still didn’t know where he had secreted his troops. That’s where you came in.

“By linking the attacks in Alaska to Petromax Oil and Southern Coasting and Lightering, you gave us the clue to the location of those troops. In the limbo period during the sale of Petromax’s fleet to SC&L, their ship the Petromax Arabia had become the Southern Accent, a vessel no one had any record of that had sat ignored in our harbor for weeks. We never would have known the tanker’s involvement without you. I mean that. The men Rufti had aboard the ship could have stormed ashore and taken over this country faster than Saddam took Kuwait in 1990.”

“Am I correct in guessing that the attacks on the Alaska Pipeline and the sinking of the Petromax Arctica were the triggers for this Rufti’s revolution here in the UAE?”

“As far as we can tell, yes,” Khalid said.

“The mastermind behind this whole plot was a former KGB agent named Ivan Kerikov—”

“We know all about Kerikov,” Bigelow interrupted. “He was seen in Istanbul last year, meeting with Hasaan Rufti. It was then that they hatched this scheme.”

“Not hatched, Colonel, stole,” Mercer replied. “We found out from a computer expert Kerikov hired that the program he activated had been in place since the Cold War, planted by a KGB sleeper agent. Years ago, Kerikov came upon the plan and the codes needed to override Alyeska’s computers. He’d been waiting for someone like Rufti to come along, someone who would be willing to pay to have the Trans-Alaska Pipeline permanently shut down.”

“But why? And why now?”

“By destroying the pipeline and then sinking a tanker carrying North Slope crude, Kerikov and Rufti could guarantee that the United States would abandon its plan to cut off foreign oil suppliers by relying on domestic production and alternative fuels. The President’s energy policy, which many Washington insiders and the New York financiers detest, would be scrapped before it was ever implemented.”

“So Rufti would use the attacks in America as both a trigger and a diversion while he and his new Iranian and Iraqi allies took over the Middle East.” Khalid spoke with a new understanding of how deeply the plot to take over his country truly ran. “By using tactical lessons from the Gulf War and striking when America was occupied by the domestic feuds following the twin oil-related disasters, Rufti could have seized the Emirates in days and the rest of the region in a matter of weeks. Unbelievable! But where did the money come from? It was something the Crown Prince mentioned prior to my going to London. Despite what the rest of the world thinks, not everyone living in an OPEC country is filthy rich. Rufti is a millionaire, certainly, but not nearly wealthy enough to finance an operation as elaborate as this.”

“That’s where Max Johnston came in, I’m afraid,” replied Mercer. “In a way, he paid for the entire thing. At first, it was a simple business decision, but one he later discovered had a much darker side. Because of the President’s energy policy, oil companies were scrambling to make as much money as possible in the ten years remaining before the deadline. Johnston was approached by Rufti, and later by Iranians and Iraqis, who promised him that in exchange for some up-front money, Petromax would be given exclusive rights for all future oil explorations in Iran, Iraq, and the UAE. From Johnston’s point of view, the 150 million dollars they’d asked for was merely a kickback to the three oil ministers to gain market domination.

“The deal would have stayed in effect even after the U.S. cut off imports, giving Petromax a near monopoly on Middle East crude imported by Europe and Japan. Even if the rest of the world followed our lead on restricting oil consumption, we’re still talking about billions of dollars over the next quarter century.”

“It’s nice that Rufti was negotiating as our Petroleum Minister,” Khalid said sarcastically.

“Johnston must have known you were to be assassinated as an obstacle to Rufti’s plan, but I don’t believe he was aware that Iran, Iraq, and Rufti intended to establish themselves as the dominant power in the Gulf. He believed the deal was with three separate nations, not a triumvirate. Johnston couldn’t raise the 150 million without selling some of his assets. Enter Southern Coasting and Lightering. He sold them his fleet of tankers, using the promissory notes of sale and hauling contacts to raise the cash in some sort of financial derivatives fund. I’m not certain how it was all to work out, but in essence he financed his own downfall.”

“Excuse me,” Bigelow said, “but this doesn’t make sense. He sells his tankers to raise money to become sole importer of oil from any new Middle Eastern fields.”

“He had just made a deal for drilling rights to half the world’s oil supply. I doubt he was concerned with the few million dollars a year he makes on his tankers. But this is where the story gets truly Machiavellian.”

“You mean more so,” Khalid said mildly.

“I have a friend in Miami who is a leading maritime attorney. He found all the details of what transpired. Up until a year ago, Southern Coasting had been a small outfit in Louisiana, owning a couple of 100,000-ton product tankers that ran between Galveston and Venezuela. Then they were bought, and suddenly Southern Coasting had the money to go buy three VLCCs, a huge step for a company that showed only modest profits last year.”

“Who bought the company?”

“Remember the Oil for Food deal the United Nations gave to the Iraqis a few years ago as a way of maintaining international sanctions yet allowing some humanitarian aid into the country? Part of the proceeds of those oil sales went into Southern Coasting. The company was owned by Iraq and Hasaan bin-Rufti, a fact that Max Johnston was unaware of. He thought he had made the deal of a lifetime. Instead he put his neck in a noose that was about to be pulled.”

“You mean Iraq paid for this whole thing? Why bother bringing in Max Johnston if they were going to finance the operation themselves?” Minister Khuddari was quick to point out.

“Two reasons. One, the Iraqis needed to launder the money internationally in a legitimate business deal. During the Oil for Food program, the United Nations was keeping a tight watch on Iraq’s money to ensure that they weren’t buying weapons. Once my friend Dave Saulman started pulling the thread of SC&L’s ownership, the whole tapestry unraveled. What started out as a 150-million-dollar deal for soy and other foodstuffs turned into a tanker fleet with just a few falsified documents and a little bribery. Southern Coasting paid Johnston for his ships, and he turned the money right back over to Iraq, and they now found themselves with a tremendous fortune in their war chest. Some of this money went to Kerikov to set up the destruction of the pipeline and the Arctica. For this, he hired commandos and heavily bankrolled PEAL to become his unwitting pawns.

“The second reason was the need to use some of Johnston’s equipment, namely his tankers, to carry the huge quantities of liquid nitrogen to Alaska and to act as Rufti’s troop base here in the Emirates. Johnston would also be their scapegoat when the operation was over.

“What Max didn’t know is that Kerikov and Rufti planned to cancel the deal all along and leave him with the mess following the destruction of the Petromax Arctica. Max had already fulfilled his part of the bargain, letting them use his ships and washing their money, so they were going to doublecross him. To ensure he never revealed what he’d done, Kerikov and Rufti’s assistant, a man named Abu Alam—”

“Oh, we know Alam,” Bigelow said. “The man’s a bloody psychotic.”

“Right now he’s just blood. Maybe a little tissue, but I doubt it. Anyway, Alam and Kerikov kidnapped Johnston’s daughter, Aggie. By holding her, Kerikov could threaten Max with her death if their deal were ever made public. Johnston’s hands were tied.”

“So Max Johnston didn’t know that the money he laundered from Rufti would eventually be used to destroy him?” Khalid asked.

“He had no idea. Kerikov and Rufti played off his greed for their own benefit while planning to betray him. It’s almost like a Shakespearean tragedy in its scope. It hasn’t been reported yet, but the FBI raided Max’s home yesterday. I was told by Dick Henna that Johnston had shot himself. I doubt he knew that Kerikov was no longer holding his daughter, so he must have traded the silence of his death for her life.”

“And avoided a long stint in gaol,” Bigelow said.

“I’ve known Max for a number of years. He would have gone to prison to make things right. I believe he saw his suicide as a way of rescuing his daughter, not to avoid his responsibilities.”

“Did Johnston know that Kerikov was using that oil rig you escaped from?”

“Yes, he did know that. Actually, Kerikov took it over and then told Max about it. But it was too late for him to do anything. He was in too deep.”

“And you managed to stop it all before it really even began?”

“Well, it did begin in the United States, but yes, it’s over. The twin spills in Alaska and Puget Sound were not nearly as bad as they could have been. Cleanup will still run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but since this was a terrorist act, the federal government will be picking up a good share of the cost. But here in the Gulf, Kerikov and Rufti’s operation never really got off the ground. Colonel Bigelow told me a little about the action this morning. That was where everything finally stopped, Kerikov’s plan, Rufti’s coup, and the Iran-Iraq pact to dominate the Middle East.”

Khalid smiled for the first time since their conversation began. “At dawn this morning, a squadron of American F-18 Hornets from the carrier Carl Vinson made a series of subsonic passes over the tanker sitting off the coast, Petromax Arabia or Southern Accent, whatever you prefer to call it. Your Admiral Morrison phoned me himself to lend U.S. air support to our seaborne counterstrike.”

Bigelow continued for Khalid, adding the color that he felt the story needed. “While the fighters were strafing the port side of the tanker with Gatling gunfire and barrages of unguided rockets, UAE special forces boarded the tanker from the starboard, capturing the ship without ever needing to fire a shot. All of Hasaan Rufti’s troops were more than happy to surrender after the aerial bombardment.”

“Preliminary reports from our intelligence people indicate that they had lists of those to be executed and those who would be loyal to the new regime, as well as timetables for linking up with forces sweeping through Kuwait and Saudi Arabia,” Khalid concluded.

“Why didn’t your CIA catch on to the troop movements already under way in Iran and Iraq?” Bigelow directed the question to Mercer as if he were responsible for America’s lack of hard data.

“You can move troops in school buses and artillery pieces in tractor trailers, and tanks can be deployed like mobile homes. If the effort is coordinated, it’s impossible to detect,” Mercer lied. He believed it was more plausible that American Intelligence had been caught unaware again, as it had when Saddam Hussein first took Kuwait. Changing the touchy subject, Mercer asked, “So where does this leave us? Is everything settled?”

“Mostly,” Khalid said. “The troops we captured this morning, and the division Rufti had poised in Ajman, will be tried for treason and executed some time next month. Those who are not Emirate residents — mercenaries and the Iranian and Iraqi instructors — will be deported within the week, probably to face heroes’ welcomes, but that’s the price we pay for diplomacy.”

“What about Rufti?” Mercer asked.

“We have something very special planned for him. Perhaps you would like to watch. It won’t be pleasant, but I can assure you it will be satisfying.” Khalid checked his watch. “It’s time for lunch. Afterward, we’ll go see the esteemed Hasaan bin-Rufti.”

They dined in a private room at the top floor of Khalid’s office building, a sumptuous meal of curried lamb, whose flavor and spice balance kept Mercer eating well past the point when he was full. Though Khalid Khuddari abstained, Wayne Bigelow seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of wines in some private cellar. He found a soul mate in Mercer, bringing out three bottles before the meal was finished and stuffing a bottle of eighty-year-old brandy into his tunic for the ride that followed.

Seated in the back of a limousine racing out into the desert on the Al Ain Road, Bigelow and Mercer, after having shown the aromatic spirit its proper deferential respect, passed it back and forth, drawing from its open neck like soldiers slugging water from a single canteen. The ride, like the meal, was one of celebration. After an hour in the air-conditioned car, the three men transferred to a converted truck, the heavy vehicle reconfigured to make it more usable in the harsh desert environs. Khalid had to be carried from one vehicle to the other. He tried walking, but his canes sank into the soft sand. He withstood the ignominy stoically.

The ride out into the desert was over a tortuous route that was barely a rut in the baked earth, the truck jostling passengers and driver alike as it bucked farther into the empty expanse. The air in the high cab was approaching a hundred degrees, and even the breeze funneling through the open windows was too hot to be a comfort. Abrasive particles of sand swirled through the truck, covering the seats, the dash, the men themselves. If it weren’t for the brandy, Mercer would have considered the trip miserable.

Two hours after leaving the main road, the truck ground over the top of an old dry wadi and rumbled to its bottom. The sun was high overhead, blazing at its hottest in the midafternoon. Another truck was parked in the ancient riverbed, a boxy ten-wheeler, its canvas cargo cover faded and torn by years in the desert. Several Bedouins were hunched around a small, smokeless fire a short distance from the truck, their long robes protecting their skin from the brutal solar rays. They stood when they saw Khalid Khuddari shuffling toward them, his canes finding better purchase on the riverbed’s hardpan.

As was the custom of the nomads, Khalid and the Bedouins spoke for a few minutes, gesturing and laughing like old friends reunited after a long absence. Khalid took a cup of strong tea from them, Mercer and Bigelow following suit. After another long exchange that Bigelow seemed to follow with interest, one of the nomads detached himself from the group and went to the back of the truck. Returning a moment later, he placed a large plastic crate on the ground near Khalid.

From within it, a falcon called clearly — as if to welcome her master.

Hasaan bin-Rufti was secured to four metal stakes that had been driven into the ground. He lay naked and spread-eagle under the sun’s glare; his body burned raw and blistered by the sun. His hairless body was so rounded and creased by the rolls of fat that he resembled a pillowy Scandinavian sofa covered in bright red vinyl. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for hours. The ravaging thirst that burned his throat was matched by the deep rumbling in his empty stomach. He hadn’t had a thing for hours now, and the lack of food was drifting his mind and blurring his thinking.

For an instant, he thought he was in a Parisian hotel, trussed to the bedposts by a prostitute he’d hired, his body pinioned while she pleased him in unimaginable ways. He could hear her soft call as her long hair caressed the area between his legs. He moaned at her touch, then suddenly the whore sank her fingernails into his chest and he cried out. The pain was like steel spikes mincing his flesh.

As he came more awake, Rufti found just enough strength to raise his head off the ground and saw a tiny creature standing on him, its noble head looking off into the vacant desert, its wickedly curved beak arrowing down toward his prone form. He knew what was going to happen to him, and the thought sent a new, keener jolt of fear through him.

“She’ll go for your eyes first, Hasaan,” Khalid Khuddari said as he came into Rufti’s view. “As I understand, they are the easiest to get at and one of the more succulent parts of the human body. Once she’s plucked them from your skull, she may rest for a while, digesting until she’s hungry enough to go after your genitals, another easy target. I suspect Sahara will be able to sever your testicles easily, but she may have to eat your penis while it’s still attached.”

Khalid whistled, and his saker falcon lifted off Rufti’s bloated body and alighted on the glove covering Khuddari’s left fist. He stroked the bird’s chest, whispering to her softly, reassuring the raptor and praising her beauty. The falcon responded to the gestures happily, preening on his arm and giving him a kweet kweet of contentment. Although she wanted to hunt, she would be just as satisfied eating the banquet laid before her.

“I can think of a great many horrible ways to die, Rufti,” Khalid continued. “But I believe being eaten alive must be one of the worst. If Sahara has a mind to, she can make this last for a few days. I suspect you’ll be dead long before she finishes her repast, but you’ll still have plenty of time to think about what you’ve done and beg for forgiveness from me and the Crown Prince and Allah Himself. I guarantee that we are so far out into the desert that your pleas will never be heard. By all means, you bastard, scream your lungs out. Sahara will enjoy her meal that much more if she knows it’s alive.

“Killing you won’t bring back the planeload of people you killed in London, or the priest or the little girl in the airport. It won’t ever avenge the death of Trevor James-Price. Nor will it forgive you for trying to assassinate me or causing the environmental damage to the United States or attempting to overthrow my country. Your death won’t even be a warning to others, because no one will know how you died. Killing you is only to satisfy my desire to feel a little safer at night, to know that there is one less madman in the world. I’ll think about your ravaged corpse when I drift off tonight, Rufti, and I’m going to smile.”

Khalid waited for a response, but Rufti’s spirit had already died. He lay there docilely, not having the strength to even whimper. Khuddari eventually turned away and let Sahara fly from his arm to streak up into the clear sky before swooping to strike at her meal.

Back at the trucks, a hundred yards from where Rufti lay staked to the ground, Khalid addressed Bigelow and Mercer. “This is going to take the rest of the afternoon. He may even live into the night. I want to be here to make sure he’s really dead, but you two don’t need to wait with me. Why don’t you go back to Abu Dhabi and enjoy yourselves? I’ll join you for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

Mercer was tempted. After all the death he had seen in the past week, Khuddari’s version of desert justice was almost too much to bear. However, he demurred, wanting to witness the end of Charon’s Landing. The Bedouins built a second fire, erected a sunshade, and brought out a cooking pot for the evening meal. They boiled water for continuous cups of tea. The three men talked desultorily through the afternoon, ignoring the screams from beyond the banks of the wadi.

“So what happens next?” Mercer asked Khalid as the sun dipped below the horizon, turning the sky a rich bloodred before the beginning of twilight.

“I’m taking a few weeks off to recuperate. I’m going to London for a funeral, and then I’ll probably go to the south of France or maybe Malaga in Spain with my secretary. I think we both deserve it,” Khalid replied with a candor that surprised Colonel Bigelow. “What about you?”

“I was hoping to take your secretary to the south of France or maybe Malaga, but that’s out of the question now,” Mercer joked to mask his emotions about losing Aggie Johnston. “During my layover in New York, I checked my voice mail and discovered I had a rather intriguing message from the State Department, so I suppose it’s back to the mines for me.”

Hasaan bin-Rufti stopped screaming just after the desert settled under a blanket of darkness lit only by a sliver of moon and the coldly distant stars. Khalid’s falcon rejoined the men a few minutes later, her tight little body speckled with gore, her entire head covered with Rufti’s blood.

Mercer, Khalid, and Bigelow spent the night in the Bedouin camp, laughing until well past midnight thanks to the Colonel’s wildly exaggerated war stories. Sahara flew off once during the night to continue feeding. None of the men felt she had done enough mutilation of Rufti’s corpse. At sunup they returned to the city, leaving Rufti for the jackals and buzzards that had gathered in the night. Khalid left later that day for an extended vacation with a blushing but joyous Siri Patal while Mercer stayed in the country for another few days, resting himself and testing Bigelow’s boast that he could drink any man under the table.

Bigelow won all their competitions, but Mercer would have loved to see the Colonel go up against Harry White. The English-man wouldn’t have stood a chance.