Corsair

EIGHT

ALANA SAT IN THE DRILL TRUCK’S PASSENGER’S SEAT WHILE Mike Duncan drove. The old riverbed was littered with rounded boulders. Some could be steered around, others they had to muscle over. Her backside was a sea of bruises after so many weeks traversing the same terrain.

At camp the night before, they had pleaded their case to the Tunisian representative, who believed they were searching for a Roman mill and waterwheel, that returning to the old ruins every night was an unnecessary precaution. They begged to be allowed to stay out for a few days, pointing out that Greg Chaffee had a satellite phone, so they would never really be out of contact with the main archaeological team.

While the legitimate members of the archaeological dig were making tremendous strides in excavating the Roman ruins, Alana’s team still had nothing to show for their weeks of effort. It was hoped that if they could remain out in the desert longer, and thus roam wider, they might pick up the trail of the old Barbary corsair, Suleiman Al-Jama.

The only thing keeping her going now was her nightly e-mail chat with her son back in Phoenix. She marveled at the advance in technology. Her first dig as an undergrad, at a site in the Arizona desert less than two hundred miles from school, had been more isolated than this godforsaken dust bowl, thanks to modern satellite communications.

The Tunisian government minder continued to refuse their request until Greg took him aside for about two minutes. When they had returned to the dining tent, the official beamed at Alana and granted them permission, provided they checked in every day and returned within seventy-two hours.

“Baksheesh,” Greg had replied to her inquiring look.

Alana had paled. “What if he refused the money and reported you?”

“This is the Middle East. We would have been in trouble if he hadn’t.”

“But . . .” Alana didn’t know what to say.

She had always lived her life by one simple dictum: Obey the rules. She had never cheated on a test, reported every penny on her tax return, and set her car’s cruise control at the posted speed limit. For her, the world was very black-and-white, and this made things simple in one sense and incredibly difficult in another. She could always feel comfortable with the moral choices she made, but she was forced to live in a society that spent most of its time searching for the gray areas so it could avoid responsibility.

It wasn’t that she was naïve to the way the world worked, she just couldn’t allow its petty corruptions into her life. It never would have occurred to her to bribe the representative from Tunisia’s archaeological ministry because it was wrong.

On the other hand, she certainly wouldn’t turn down the opportunity Greg’s actions presented. So they were driving again, with the intention of finding a way past the waterfall in the vain hope that Suleiman Al-Jama’s secret base was somewhere in the desert wastes beyond.

The truck was loaded with enough water and food to last the party three days. They had brought only one tent, but Alana felt comfortable enough with her companions that it wouldn’t be a problem. They also carried a fifty-gallon drum of fuel strapped in the bed, with enough diesel to extend their range a further three hundred miles, depending on how much they used up running the drill.

No one was optimistic about their chances. The waterfall was simply too tall for a sailing ship to navigate. However, they were desperate. The Tripoli Accords were fast approaching. Alana was aware that the Secretary of State was flying in to Libya this very day for a brief round of preliminary talks, so she felt the added pressure.

“Do you have to hit every pothole and rock?” Greg asked from the rear bench seat of the open-topped truck.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Mike deadpanned.

Greg shifted to the right so he was behind Alana. “Then hit them with the left-side tires, will ya?”

It was another sparkling-clear day, which meant the temperature hit one hundred and eight degrees when they stopped for lunch. Alana handed out chilled bottles of water from the cooler and gave each man a sandwich the camp staff had prepared. According to the odometer, they had come seventy miles, and if she remembered correctly the falls were a further thirty.

“What do you think about over there?” Mike asked with his mouth full of food. He used his sandwich like a pointer to indicate the far bank of the old river. Where usually they were hemmed in by steep cliffs, here, in a curve in the watercourse, erosion had carved into the bank so it was a ramp up to the desert floor.

“Looks to be a sixty percent grade, or steeper,” Greg said.

“If we can find something on top to secure the winch, we should be able to pull ourselves up, no problem.”

Alana nodded. “I like it.”

As soon as they finished their meal, something the heat made unappealing to them all, Mike drove the truck to the base of the riverbank. Seen up close, the gradient appeared steeper than they had originally estimated, and the height a good thirty feet more. He forced the truck up the bank until the rear wheels lost traction and began to throw off plumes of dust. Alana and Greg leapt from the vehicle. She began to unspool the braided-steel cable from the winch mounted to the front bumper, while Greg Chaffee, the fittest of the bunch, threw himself into the task of climbing the slope. His boots kicked up small avalanches of loose dirt and pebbles with each step, and he was quickly forced to scramble up the hill using his hands and arms as well as his legs. He cursed when his big straw hat went flying away, rolling down the hill behind him. With no choice, he clipped the hook to the back of his belt and kept going, scraping his fingers raw on the rough stone.

It took Greg nearly ten minutes to reach the summit, and, when he did, the back of his shirt was soaked through with perspiration, and he could feel the bald spot on the crown of his head parboiling. He vanished from sight for a moment, dragging the wire behind him.

When he reemerged, he shouted down to the other two, “I looped the wire around an outcropping of rock. Give it a try, and pick up my hat on the way up.”

The winch could be controlled from inside the truck’s cab, so Alana fetched the hat before it blew away and hopped back into her seat. Mike jammed the transmission into first, fed the engine some gas, and engaged the winch’s toggle. While not especially powerful, the winch’s motor ran through enough gears to give it the torque it needed. The truck started a slow, stately ascent up the bank. Alana and Mike exchanged grins, while above them Greg gave a triumphant shout.

The flick of a shadow crossing her face drew Alana’s attention. She glanced skyward, expecting to see a hawk or vulture.

A large twin-engine jet was passing overhead at less than a thousand feet. Incongruously, Alana could barely hear the roar of its exhaust. It was as if the engines were shut down and the jet was gliding. She knew of no landing fields in the area, at least on this side of the Libyan border, and guessed correctly that the plane was in trouble.

She noticed two details as the jet banked slightly away. One was a jagged hole near the tail that was stained with what she guessed was hydraulic fluid. The other thing she saw were words written along the aircraft’s fuselage: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Greg had stopped whooping. He placed his hand above his eyes, shading them from the sun, and he turned in place, tracking the path of the crippled government jet.

Alana gasped aloud when she realized what plane that was and who was on it.

Concentrating on getting the truck up the hill, Mike Duncan hadn’t seen a thing, so when Alana sucked in a lungful of air he thought something was happening with the tow cable, and asked, “What is it?”

“Get to the top of the hill as fast as you can.”

“I’m working on it. What’s the rush?”

“The Secretary of State’s plane is about to crash.”

Of course, there was nothing Mike could do. They were at the mercy of the slowly turning winch.

Alana shouted up to Greg, “Can you see anything?”

“No,” he replied over the rig’s snarling engine. “The plane flew over some hills a couple miles from here. I don’t see any smoke or anything. Maybe the pilot was able to set it down safely.”

For eight agonizing minutes, the truck climbed up the hill like a fly crawling over a crust of bread. Greg kept reporting that he saw no smoke, which was a tremendous relief.

They finally emerged from the dry riverbed. Greg unsnapped the tow hook from the cable and unwound it from a sandstone projectile the size of a locomotive. The cable had cut deeply into the soft stone, and he had to brace his foot against the rock to pull it free.

“It could have come down in Libya,” Mike muttered.

“What was that?” Alana asked.

“I said the plane could have come down across the border in Libya.” He spoke loudly enough for Greg to hear as well.

Alana was the team leader but she looked to Chaffee for validation, her suspicions that he was from the CIA making him the expert in this type of situation.

“We could be the only people for fifty or more miles,” Greg said. “If they managed to land, there could be injuries, and we have the only vehicle out here.”

“Who do you really work for?” asked Alana.

“We’re wasting time.”

“Greg, this is important. If we have to cross into Libya, I need to know who you work for.”

“I’m with the Agency, all right. The CIA. My job is to keep an eye on you three. Well, the two of you, since the good Dr. Bumford hasn’t left camp since we arrived. You recognized the plane, didn’t you?” Alana nodded. “So you know who’s on board?”

“Yes.”

“Are you willing to let her die out here because you’re afraid we might run into a Libyan patrol? Hell, they invited her. They aren’t going to do anything to us if we’re trying to rescue her, for God’s sake.”

Alana looked over at Mike Duncan. The rangy oilman’s face was a blank mask. They could be discussing the weather, for all the concern he showed. “What do you think?” she asked.

“I’m no hero, but I think we should probably check it out.”

“Then let’s go,” Alana replied.

They started off across the open desert. It was like driving on the surface of the moon. There was no hint of human habitation, no inkling they were on the same planet even. From the river to the string of hills Greg mentioned was nothing but a boulder-strewn plain devoid of life. This deep in the desert, only a few insects and lizards could survive, and they had the good sense to remain in their burrows during the torturous afternoons.

As they drove, Greg tried unsuccessfully to reach his superiors on his satellite phone. His had a dedicated government communications system, the same one used by the military, so there was no reason he shouldn’t get through but he couldn’t. He replaced the chargeable battery with another he carried in a knapsack.

“This piece of junk,” he spat. “Thirty-billion-a-year budget and they send me out with a five-year-old phone that doesn’t work. I should have known. Listen, you guys, you ought to know that this wasn’t really a priority mission. If we found Al-Jama’s papers, great. But if not, the conference was going ahead anyway.”

“But Christie Valero said—”

“Anything to get you to agree to come. Hey, Mike and I both know from playing the ponies that long shots sometimes pay, too, but this has been a farce since day one. For me, this mission is punishment for a screwup I made in Baghdad a few months ago. For you guys . . . I have no idea, but they sent me out here with crap equipment, so you figure it out.”

After Greg’s revealing outburst, the team drove on in silence, the mood in the truck somber. Alana was torn between thinking about what Greg had said and what they would find when they came across Secretary Katamora’s plane. Both options were grim. She had never met Fiona Katamora, but she admired her tremendously. She was the kind of role model America needed. To think of her dead in a plane crash was just too horrible to contemplate.

But to consider Greg’s words was painful, too, so she decided he was simply wrong. Who knew what baggage he carried that made him so jaded. Christie Valero and St. Julian Perlmutter had laid out a convincing case. Being able to undercut the justifications Islamic radicals used to validate their murderous actions would be perhaps the greatest stride yet in the war on terror. More than ever, she was certain that this mission, while admittedly a long shot, was critical to the upcoming peace talks, and she didn’t care what Greg said about it.

Mike steered them into a canyon between the hills, shaded and much cooler than the open desert. It snaked through the low mountains for a half mile before they emerged on the other side. There still wasn’t any evidence that the Secretary’s plane had crashed, no column of black smoke rising up into the sky. Considering how low the plane had been flying, it had to be on the ground by now, so Alana let herself hope it had landed safely.

They continued on for another hour, knowing that they had passed the unmarked border at some point and were now in Libyan territory illegally. Her only solace was Greg’s fluency in Arabic. If they ran into a patrol, it would be up to him to talk their way out of trouble.

The desert rose and fell in unending dunes of gravel and dirt that sent off shimmering curtains of heat. It made the distant horizon look fluid. The truck crested another anonymous hill, and Mike was about to take them down the far side when he braked suddenly. He rammed the gearbox into reverse and twisted in his seat to look behind them.

“What is it?” Alana cried as the vehicle plunged back down the hill they had climbed moments earlier.

Her answer came not from Mike but from Greg. “Patrol!”

Alana looked ahead as a military vehicle came over the hill, a soldier propped up in a hatch in the truck’s roof. He was hanging on to a wicked-looking machine gun. With its tall suspension, balloon tires, and boxy cab, the truck looked perfectly suited for the desert.

“Forget it, Mike,” Greg shouted over the keening engine. “Running from them is only going to make it worse.”

Mike Duncan looked undecided for a moment, then nodded. He knew Chaffee was right. He eased off the gas and applied the brake. When the truck came to a stop, he killed the engine and left his hands on the wheel.

The Libyan patrol vehicle stopped twenty yards away, giving the roof gunner an optimal position to cover the trio. Back doors were thrown open and four soldiers dressed in desert fatigues rushed out, their AKs at the ready.

Alana had never been so frightened in her life. It was the suddenness of it all. One second they had been alone and the next they were looking down the barrel of a gun. Multiple guns, in fact.

The Libyan soldiers were shouting and gesturing with their weapons for them to get out of the truck. Greg Chaffee was trying to speak to them in Arabic, but his efforts had no effect. One soldier stepped back a pace and raked the ground with automatic fire, the bullets kicking up geysers of sand that blew away on the wind.

The sound was staggering, and Alana screamed.

Mike, Greg, and Alana threw their hands over their heads in the universal signal of surrender. A soldier grabbed Alana’s wrist and yanked her from the open cab. Mike made a move to protest the rough treatment and had the butt of an AK slammed into his shoulder hard enough to numb his arm to the fingertips.

Alana sprawled in the dirt, her pride injured more than her body. Greg jumped from the rear seat, keeping his arms pointed skyward.

“Please,” he said in Arabic, “we didn’t know we had traveled into Libya.”

“Tell them about the plane,” Alana said, getting to her feet and dusting off her backside.

“Oh, right.” Chaffee addressed the soldiers again. “We saw an aircraft that looked like it was about to crash. We were trying to see if it had.”

Though none were wearing insignia on their uniforms, one of the soldiers was clearly their leader. He asked, “Where did you see this?”

Greg was relieved he had opened a dialogue. “We are part of an archaeological expedition working just across the border in Tunisia. The plane flew over where we were working at no more than a thousand feet—ah, three hundred meters.”

“Did you see the plane crash?” the unshaved soldier asked.

“No. We didn’t. We think it might have actually found someplace to land in the desert, because we haven’t seen any smoke.”

“That is good news for you,” was his non sequitur reply.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Greg asked.

The Libyan ignored the question and stepped back to his patrol vehicle. He came back a moment later with something in his hands. None of the Americans could tell what he had until he handed them over to one of his men. Handcuffs.

“What are you doing?” Alana demanded in English when one of the soldiers grabbed her shoulders from behind. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

When the warm steel snapped around her wrist, she turned and spat in the face of her captor. The man backhanded her hard enough to send her sprawling.

Mike pushed aside a soldier, getting ready to cuff him, and had taken two strides toward where Alana lay semiconscious, when the group’s leader reacted to the aggressive move. He drew a pistol from a holster at his hip and calmly put a bullet between the oilman’s eyes.

Mike Duncan’s head snapped back, and his body toppled a couple of feet from Alana. Dazed by the blow, she could do nothing but stare at the obscene third eye in Mike’s forehead. A trickle of dark fluid oozed from it.

She felt herself lifted to her feet but could do nothing to either resist or assist when she was manhandled into the back of the patrol truck. Greg Chaffee, too, seemed to be in shock as he was placed on a bench seat next to her. The interior was hot, hotter than even the open desert, and it was made worse when a soldier threw a dark cloth bag over her head.

The material absorbed Alana Shepard’s tears as soon as they leaked from her eyes.