WEST OF LUXOR, Egypt
The gun was old and small for a revolver. It took Storm a moment to recognize it. It was a Colt Pocket Police, a gun coveted by Civil War buffs because generals on both sides had carried them.
Yet being an antique made it no less deadly when fired from point-blank range. Raynes had the weapon pressed against Katie Comely’s temple. He was using her as a shield from the rest of the party.
“Hands up,” Raynes ordered. “All of you, hands up. Nothing crazy here, or she dies.”
Storm, the three graduate students who had been driving the cargo trucks, and the four guards slowly raised their hands. The only one who didn’t comply was Strike. She had brought the M16 up to her shoulder and was aiming it at Raynes from perhaps thirty feet away.
“I’ve got the shot, Storm,” she said calmly.
“Don’t,” Storm said.
“I can take him out,” she insisted.
“No! For God’s sake, you’re on a camel and that gun is stuck on automatic. There’s no way you’ll be able to control your aim or the muzzle climb. There’s too great a chance you’d hit them both.”
“Better listen to your boyfriend, Ms. Sullivan — or whatever your name is,” Raynes said, hiding more of himself behind his terrified postdoc.
“I’ve. Got. The. Shot,” Strike said again, not lowering the weapon.
“And Katie has got a family in Kansas,” Storm said.
“Drop the weapon! Drop it, now!” Raynes was shouting as Storm spoke, pressing the barrel of the Pocket Police tighter against the side of Katie’s head.
Storm wished he could place his body between Strike and her target. But she was too high up on the camel. All he had were words. The ones he chose were soft: “Clara. Please. Not for her. For me.”
Strike took a deep breath, moved her finger to the trigger, tightened her grip on the gun…
Then tossed it on the desert sand below her.
“Damn it,” she said.
“All right,” Raynes said. “And while you’re at it, let’s get rid of those handguns you have, too. I’ve seen what’s in those shoulder holsters. Do it real, real slow. If I even think you’re making a move to draw, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
Storm and Strike slowly discarded their sidearms, moving deliberately so their actions could not be misinterpreted.
“Okay, all of you, over there, away from the trucks,” Raynes barked. “That’s right. And let’s keep those hands up.”
Storm, Strike, and the others herded themselves into a small clump a short distance away from Raynes, who still had his gun trained on the side of Katie’s head.
When he felt the group was a sufficient distance away, Raynes moved just slightly away from Katie.
“Okay,” he said. “Now you’re going to keep your hands up, but you’re going to sit down.”
Exchanging glances, the nine people who suddenly found themselves at gunpoint reached the conclusion that they didn’t have much of a choice and took a seat on the sand.
“Very good,” Raynes said. “Katie, there’s a bunch of rope in the truck. You’re going to go get it and use it to tie up all of these people. Start with Mr. Talbot here. Then Ms. Sullivan. And you had better make it tight.”
Raynes shadowed Katie’s movements as she went to the cargo truck, retrieved the rope, and began tying up her friends and colleagues. He stayed within a few feet of her, never letting the gun drop.
Storm and Strike communicated with their eyes only. At one point, Storm — as if responding to a suggestion Strike had made aloud — shook his head.
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
“No talking!” Raynes ordered. “And let’s keep those hands up.”
“But my arms are getting sore,” one of the graduate students complained.
“A bullet will hurt a lot worse,” Raynes snarled.
Katie, who was finally recovering from her shock, began fuming. “It’s been you, all along. You’re the one who told the bandits what we’ve dug up. You’ve been telling them when to make their raids. All as a front for selling this…this promethium, whatever that is. How could you do this to us?”
“You’re very naïve, Katie. All this equipment. All these supplies. All these workers. You think I’ve been getting that kind of money from the university? Please.”
“But…why just dig it up and let someone else take it?”
“Because if these people didn’t take it, the Egyptian government would. Either way, I don’t see a dime of it.”
“But you get credit for the discovery!”
“Oh, fabulous, credit,” Raynes said with a scoff as Katie continued her knot work. “Let me explain to you how credit works in the real world, my young postdoc. You make these amazing finds. You publish them, like a good academic should. You get all this quote-unquote credit. And then the university chancellor says, ‘That’s wonderful, professor. Congratulations. But, sorry, we have to cut your funding.’
“And then there are the foundations. Oh, let me tell you about them. They make you travel halfway across the globe to grovel at the feet of their almighty boards. And they tell you how fantastic you are. And then a week later, the executive director calls you up and says, ‘Sorry, our portfolio didn’t perform as well as we hoped this year. But we’ll fund your dig two years from now, for sure. Good luck keeping it going.’”
Raynes punctuated this by lobbing out a few words that cannot be said on network television.
“And so there I was, slowly sinking, watching my budget and my staff whittle down to nothing, losing everything I had worked for. And then, one day, I noticed an unusual geological formation in one of the seismograms. I dug just a little and found a limestone cave that had a deposit of something that wasn’t limestone. I had it tested and, lo and behold, it was this thing called promethium, the rarest of the rare earths. It sells for three thousand dollars an ounce. And what was I supposed to do at that point? Tell the Egyptian government, which would immediately claim mineral rights and take it all for themselves? No way.”
Katie had furious tears streaming down her face. “You’re a monster,” she spat.
“Am I? I didn’t hear you complaining when you were collecting that postdoc stipend and padding out your resume so you could get yourself a tenure-track job back in the states. Where do you think that money came from?”
Katie did not reply. Raynes went over to her and cupped the back of her head.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, jerking herself away.
“I was going to let Bouchard through. You know that, right? All the truly important finds got through. I just…I needed the bandits as a cover. I couldn’t risk selling the promethium on the open market. I would have lost it all and we would have had to close the dig.”
“So instead you sell it to terrorists,” Storm said.
“Shut up!” Raynes said, briefly swiveling his gun in Storm’s direction. “I sell it to a man named Ahmed. What he does with it is his business.”
“He’s using it to make a weapon that blows up commercial airliners laden with innocent people,” Storm said. “But, hey, you’ve got a dig to fund, so what do you care?”
Raynes ignored him. Katie had bound the nine other members of the expedition.
“Very good. Now get in that truck,” he said, pointing to the middle cargo truck, the one with the promethium still in back.
“I’m not coming with you,” she said indignantly.
“Oh, yes you are. You’re my insurance plan in case anyone here gets any ideas about playing hero. Actually, sorry, you’re the second part of my insurance plan. This is the first part.”
He walked to the front of the first truck, aimed the Pocket Police at the front left tire, and shot it. The truck jolted down. He followed suit by shooting out the front right tire. Then he went to the back truck and similarly disabled it with two well-aimed shots.
Raynes returned to Katie, who needed a little extra cajoling to enter the passenger seat of the truck. Raynes got into the driver’s side, turned the engine over, then rolled down the window.
His last words before putting the truck in gear and driving away were: “If any of you even have a thought about coming after us, know that it will cost Dr. Comely her life.”
Storm waited until the truck had disappeared down into the valley of the dune, then sprung to his feet.
He ran over to the corner of one of the remaining trucks, using its sharp edge to hack into the rope that bound him, not caring that when he missed he was gouging his arms.
“Jesus, Storm. Slow down. What’s your hurry?” Strike asked.
“I’ve got an Egyptologist to rescue.”
“Just let her go. You didn’t let me take the shot when I had the shot. Why endanger her now?”
“Didn’t you notice?” Storm asked, with the rope already fraying.
“Notice what?”
“That revolver of his. It’s a Colt Pocket Police. The Pocket Police was unusual for mass production revolvers in that it had four cylinders. That, plus one in the chamber means he only has five shots. He used four of them to shoot the trucks. He’s only got one left.”
“So?”
“So if he uses it to shoot Katie, he’d essentially be inviting me to kill him. And I can think of ten ways off the top of my head I could do it.”
“Yeah, but what if he uses that one bullet to shoot you?”
“I’ll take my chances,” Storm said, the ropes now loose enough that he could slip free of them.
“Storm, seriously, you’ll never be able to catch them.”
Storm dashed over to pick up Dirty Harry, which he holstered. Then he ran to Antony and leapt up on the camel.
“Wanna bet?” Storm said, removing the riding crop from his pack and holding it aloft. “Hyah!”
Storm did not even have to hit the beast. As soon as Antony saw the crop’s cruel whiplike end out of the corner of his eye, he let out a mighty bellow.
And then he began to run.
Like the wind — on a blustery day.
Like a Pegasus taking flight.
Like no camel ever has.
IT TOOK ALL OF STORM’S STRENGTH just to hold on at first. He never knew that a camel was capable of exerting such extreme g-forces on its rider.
But soon he was able to get hunched down in his saddle and lean forward as Antony, his ears pinned against his head, reached top speed.
“Hyah, hyah!” Storm said, keeping the crop in his hand and outstretched — where Antony could see it — but not using it.
The cargo truck, which soon came into view, had perhaps a half-mile head start. Relieved of having to pretend there were precious artifacts in the back, Raynes was pushing the ungainly vehicle across the rugged terrain as fast as it could go, which was about thirty miles an hour.
Unfortunately for him, a champion racing camel can hit forty. And unlike a truck, the camel was bred to run in the desert.
Antony closed the gap fast. After a minute, he had cut the distance between himself and the truck down by a third. Two minutes in, he was less than a thousand feet away. After three minutes, he was within ten feet.
Raynes had started making an effort at performing evasive maneuvers, to little effect. In addition to being faster than the truck, Antony was also significantly more agile. Storm had no trouble countering Raynes’s futile efforts as he drew even with the back of the trailer.
This, of course, was around exactly the time Antony decided he was getting less interested in chasing this silly truck. Storm could feel the animal slowing.
“Come on, Antony, hyah! Hyah!”
Storm reached forward so the crop was in the animal’s face. Antony responded with one last burst of speed. Storm jumped from the camel to the truck just as Antony quit for good. The camel went from sprinting to walking to sitting down within a few short yards.
Raynes responded to the presence of another passenger by swerving a few times, trying to shake Storm off the top of the trailer. But Storm hung on easily. His days of urban surfing had started long ago in suburban Washington, D.C. There was nothing this truck could throw at him that Storm and his daredevil friends hadn’t conquered long ago.
Once he was sure of his purchase on the truck, Storm began crawling toward the cab. He was just starting to make progress when Raynes slammed on the brakes.
Storm gripped his fingers into the metal to avoid being tossed over the front of the truck and run over — if that was, in fact, Raynes’s intention.
But, no, the professor had a different plan. As soon as the truck came to a stop, Katie spilled out of the truck’s passenger side as if kicked. Raynes dove out after her and resumed a position he was rapidly perfecting: using Dr. Comely as a shield.
Storm had already drawn his weapon and was lying prone atop the truck, which meant he was also not within range of his enemy’s gun.
“I told you not to come after us,” Raynes screamed. Storm could hear him panting. Katie squealed, but he couldn’t see what the cause of it was.
“Yes, and then you used four of your five bullets to shoot out our tires,” Storm said, his voice steady. “Leaving you with just one and an interesting dilemma. If you use it to shoot Katie, I’ll have you dead before she even hits the ground. But if you try to use it on me, you might miss. Or you might hit me but, with that little peashooter, not fully incapacitate me. And I assure you, neither of those outcomes will end well for you.”
“Ah, yes, but you also have a dilemma, Mr. Talbot. As long as I’m holding this gun to Katie’s head, you can’t dare make a move on me. Because if you do, her death will be on your conscience.”
“True,” Storm said. “So we are at something of an impasse, then. Are we not?”
“We are.”
“In that case, I propose a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s really quite simple, professor,” Storm said. “You’re going to leave Katie with me, and I’m going to let you go. You’ll never be able to work in academia again, of course. And the Egyptian authorities might have quite a beef with you if they can ever catch you. It might be in your best interests to leave the country immediately and go to some place that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Egypt, because you had better believe I’m going to tell them you’ve been stealing antiquities and illegally mining promethium. I’m also going to see to it they keep a close eye on this area, because I know otherwise you’re going to try to come back here and mine more. So you’re through here. Trust me when I tell you, you’re through.
“But, on the positive side, you get to keep your life and all that promethium in the back of that truck. That was, what, about three hundred pounds back there? Four hundred? You can’t get top dollar for it dealing on the black market, but I’m betting you’re still able to command at least a thousand dollars an ounce. So that’s something in the neighborhood of five or six million dollars I’m giving you as a retirement plan. You should be able to live quite comfortably on that for the rest of your miserable life.”
“How do I know if I let her go you won’t just come after me again?”
“Because she and I are going to walk away. You’ve got the truck. We can’t catch you on foot.”
“Balderdash. You can just get on that speed-demon camel of yours anytime you want.”
Storm laughed. “Do you see my speed-demon camel back there in the distance?”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll see he’s sitting down. If you know anything about camels in general, or mine in particular, you’ll know they only sit down when they’re horny or when they’ve decided they’re just not going anywhere for a while. Either way, you should have plenty of time to escape.”
“And if I refuse your deal?”
Storm crept forward slightly on the roof of the truck, enough that Raynes could see Dirty Harry and little else. “Then we remain at an impasse. I will be holding you at gunpoint. And you will be holding Dr. Comely at gunpoint. But time is on my side, professor. It won’t take long for my colleague, Ms. Sullivan, to get back to civilization and form a major search operation for us. We are not with the International Art Protection League, because there’s no such thing. But we are with an organization that has all the resources needed to track down this truck in a desert and apprehend it.”
“Okay, deal,” Raynes said. “I’m getting back in the truck now, but I’m keeping Katie close. When I’m back behind the wheel, I want you to throw your gun as far as you can. When you do, I’ll release Dr. Comely.”
“Very well,” Storm said.
He hopped down off the truck, on the opposite side from where Raynes was. Quickly, making sure the professor didn’t see him do it, Storm jammed his satellite phone in one of the cargo truck’s wheel wells.
“Okay, here goes my gun,” Storm said, heaving the weapon into the distance.
Moments after it landed, Storm heard the truck revving. As it started moving, Katie leapt from it. She fell and rolled on the ground.
Storm didn’t think Raynes would attempt a parting shot, but he kept in the truck’s blind spot just in case. Then he walked over to Katie, who was already up and dusting sand off her pants.
“I don’t suppose ‘thank you’ suffices?” she said.
“It’ll do just fine,” Storm said.
“I can probably do better a little later,” she said.
Storm just smiled.
TRUE TO FORM, Antony the camel had spent his energy on his mad dash and could not be persuaded to carry passengers without trying to bite them first.
So it was Dr. Comely and Storm made the roughly three-mile walk back toward the others with the camel in tow.
Katie was quiet during the first part of the journey. Storm let her have her thoughts.
Finally, she said, “I should have known.”
“No, you really shouldn’t. If you lived suspecting everyone in the world was capable of that kind of evil, you’d be a paranoid, unhappy person.”
“But there were clues,” she said. “First of all, he did seem to have too much money. Most digs you go on, you subsist on ramen noodles and Pop-Tarts. You almost pride yourself on how rough you have it. But with Raynes, there was all this fresh food brought in. And the air conditioners. And the generators. And the wood floors on the tents. And all you had to do if you needed something was ask.”
“I still don’t think you should be blaming yourself,” Storm said.
“No, but there’s more. Every other day, he would just wander off in the late afternoon, just when it was starting to cool off a little. He would walk due east with a backpack on. And then he would come back two hours later, like nothing had happened. I asked him about it, and he said he was just getting some exercise, enjoying a walk. But, seriously, who just walks through the desert for two hours for no reason?”
“Yes, but as a wise man once said, ‘Hindsight is fifty-fifty.’”
“You mean, ‘hindsight is twenty-twenty,’” she corrected.
“No. That’s what makes it wise. Hindsight is fifty-fifty. There’s no greater expression of the arbitrary, random nature of the universe than saying something is fifty-fifty. It means you have an equal chance of being wrong and being right, of winning or of losing. There’s no way to game fifty-fifty. You also can’t second-guess it, because how were you supposed to know which way to go? That’s the wisdom of ‘hindsight is fifty-fifty.’ It means you can’t go back and beat yourself up over an outcome that only seems preordained after it happened.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been in the sun too long?” Katie asked.
Storm laughed. They were within sight of the disabled cargo trucks.
“So there’s really no such thing as the International Art Protection League?” Katie asked.
“No. And yet we protected you anyway. That’s called irony, in case you’re wondering.”
“So who are you?”
Any potential answer was interrupted when Strike became aware of their approach. She walked out to meet them.
“Where’s the promethium?” she demanded.
Storm made note of the question. It was not where’s the professor? Not how are you? Not how did you get her free? It was where’s the promethium? At least he knew, once again, what Jones’s — and, therefore Strike’s — priorities were.
“It’s in the back of the truck, as far as I know,” Storm said.
“Fine. Where’s the truck?”
Storm looked at his watch. “By now? It’s probably on the highway.”
“What? You let it go?”
“It was the only way to get him to free Dr. Comely.”
Storm had enough history with Clara Strike to know her tells. Outwardly, there were few signs of activity — perhaps a slight flaring of the nostrils and a barely perceptible widening of the eyes. Inside, within her wiring, there were circuit breakers tripping.
Very evenly, Strike said, “You let the promethium go just to save a piece of ass?”
Katie’s jaw dropped. Storm didn’t back down. “I don’t know if you noticed, but that ass actually has a human being attached to it.”
“Our orders were to stop the terrorists and secure the promethium.”
“No, your orders involved getting the promethium. I want no part of that scavenger hunt, even if it’s abundantly clear that’s all Jones really cares about.”
“Don’t be absurd. He wants those terrorists’ heads on a platter. You should have heard him talk after the Pennsylvania Three.”
“Really? You think I’m being that absurd? Seriously, if it came down to imprisoning terrorists or adding to the U.S. military’s arsenal, which do you think Jones would choose?”
“It’s not that simple,” Strike said. “This is not a case of either or. We do our job right, we accomplish both.”
“I’ll bet you, right here and now, that Jones would let the terrorists skate free in exchange for a truckload of promethium.”
“I’m not getting into theoretical debates with you, Storm.”
“There might come a time when it’s not theoretical. What’s it going to be? Justice for all or weapons for generals?”
“It…it doesn’t matter. We’ve got orders to follow.”
“Orders,” Storm scoffed. “You’re going to hide behind orders?”
“It’s not hiding. It’s called doing my job,” she shot back. “But I guess you’re going to choose this moment to remind me that you don’t really work for the CIA.”
It was not their first go-around with this particular argument. And yet Storm felt himself sinking into his usual role. “Well, now that you mention it—”
“And then, after that, you’re going to make it clear that what I want and what you want are, as usual, not fully compatible.”
“This isn’t about us. Stop making it about us. It’s about mission objectives.”
“To you it’s not about us,” Strike said. “To me, it’s always about us. That’s the part you never seem to get. So let me be clear: it’s about us. Are you going to help me or not?”
Was it about them? Or was it just her way of manipulating him, like she had done so many times in the past? Storm held her glare, said nothing.
Strike turned and stalked off. The anger wasn’t faked. Storm couldn’t help but wonder if the reason for it was.