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His heart went out to her. Handing the water over, he thought back to the sophisticated but fragile princess who had once captured his heart. She was holding up quite well under the strain.
But they had no time to reminisce. Perhaps later. After he’d rescued her and explained how he’d known of her plight. It was a long story and their minutes left in Zabbarán were coming to an abrupt end.
“I’ll signal when it’s your turn to board. If you can’t walk, I’ll come back for you.”
“I said I can walk.”
She was trying hard to be strong. It made him yearn to take her in his arms and hold her close to his chest, encasing her in a protective embrace. Instead, he nodded sharply, turned and made a dash for the chopper.
Within a few minutes, Tarik loaded the old woman, the last of the hostages to board except for Nicole. Through his earpiece, Shakir heard one of the Kadir surveillance teams warning that a Taj Soviet-made Ilyushin IL-28 was scrambling from the country’s main landing strip a couple of hundred miles away. The old-model jet was known to be a dilapidated bucket of bolts. But still, it would be here within minutes.
“Now or never, brother.” Tarik turned and held out his hand.
Shakir swivelled, signalling to Nicole. The chopper’s rotors blew sand in wide circles around the landing zone. He was suddenly worried that she would not be able to see his signal and started running toward her position.
Calling her name, he closed the distance between the chopper and where he’d left her waiting. No answer.
“Sixty seconds,” Tarik shouted through his earpiece.
Shakir arrived at the creosote bush, but the space was empty. No Nicole. He made a cursory inspection of the surroundings. No Nicole.
“Thirty seconds.”
Bugger it. Bugger her.
“Go!” he shouted to his brother.
“Not without you.” Tarik’s voice was too sharp. His brother was worried about him.
“I’ll be okay.” Shakir worked to sound calm, confident. “I’m not leaving without her, Tarik. I’ll contact you as soon as I can. Now, go!”
Nikki never imagined it would be this difficult to find her way across the desert by using the stars. Lalla had marked the coordinates of every water hole, oasis and town within a hundred-mile radius on her map. But now that Nikki was out here, it all looked the same in the pitch-black night.
Luckily, the house where her son was supposedly living was only about fifty miles from the fortress she’d left behind. She could certainly make a fifty-mile walk in a couple of long nights’ worth of travel. It was true, though, that she would need fresh water and places to rest during daylight hours. In addition to being impossible to travel during the heat of the day, she needed to keep the Taj Zabbar soldiers from spotting her in the desert.
Stopping for a moment, she breathed deep and used one of her precious matches to check her map. That water hole should be right here. She needed to find it before daybreak.
Surely she wouldn’t have the bad luck to get lost on her first night. Yes, she’d gotten a bit turned around while being carried on Shakir’s shoulders. But she had been sure that she’d reoriented herself properly within the first few moments on her feet.
Still a bit curious about how he had known to come for her in the first place, Nikki felt guilty about her disappearing act. But Shakir hadn’t allowed her any time to speak. And hers was a story that needed more than a cursory explanation.
After she found her son and rescued him, maybe then she would try again to locate Shakir. To talk. Of course, the last time she’d tried to find him things hadn’t worked out well.
Thoughts of that dark time, those long months, surrounded her in a swirl of sadness. It had been the beginning of a whole new life. And she had drastically changed from those difficult days to today.
Nikki often wondered how different her life might have been had she found Shakir back then. But what-ifs and maybes were a part of her past now. She could no longer afford to dwell on how things might have been.
Turning in a complete circle, Nikki looked up at the stars once more. That watering hole had to be close.
“You’re almost there.” The male voice, coming out of the darkness, nearly caused her to turn tail and run.
“Shakir?” It had to be him. She had heard that voice often enough in her dreams. “How in the world did you find me here?”
He was beside her in an instant. “We’ll talk about it later. For now, we need to take shelter and stop standing out in the open.”
Grabbing her elbow, he whirled her around. He didn’t take more than fifteen steps before a rock outcropping appeared silhouetted in the darkness.
“Why didn’t you fly off with the others?” She was confused and felt a growing annoyance at his showing up when she least expected it.
“I should also ask why you didn’t get on the chopper.” His pointed reply was not an answer. “But both our questions will have to wait. Trouble is coming. We need to hunker down.”
“The Taj Zabbar soldiers? They found me?”
“No.” Marching them straight past a stand of scrawny trees, Shakir leaned in close. “Hell is on the way.”
“Hell?”
“Scourge of the desert, Nicole. Sandstorm.”
Chapter 3
Sandstorm?
Nikki had heard of them, of course. But she never dreamed they could be a problem for her in Zabbarán.
“Could the storm kill us?”
“No.” Shakir put his arm around her shoulders, guiding them closer to the boulders. “But we must take precautions.”
Why hadn’t she noticed anything wrong before he showed up? Was he lying to her about a sandstorm coming? For what reason?
She’d learned the hard way not to trust anyone. Never again would she allow herself to be taken in by a sincere-looking face and a kind manner.
As she let Shakir lead her toward a two-story mound of shale and rocks, Nikki paid closer attention to her surroundings. Yes, she could feel a slight increase in the wind’s velocity, but at this point she was only aware of a nice quiet breeze on her face. Looking around, she also noticed the pale beginnings of lavender light and knew that in the desert that meant daybreak would soon appear in all its magnificence.
Things were never as scary in the light of day as they seemed in the dark.
After climbing up a medium grade to the base of giant rock boulders, Shakir pealed off his backpack. He crouched beside her on the stony ground and opened his pack.
While searching through the pockets, he made a demand. “Give me the canteen.”
Feeling at a loss, she was in no position to argue. At least temporarily she had no choice but to let him make his demands. She gave him the canteen and he used the water to dampen a tan-colored cloth. Then he handed the cloth to her.
“What is this? Your wet T-shirt? What do I do with this?”
The predawn glow gave her enough light to see his eyes. Warm, liquid brown and fringed by long, ebony lashes, those fascinating eyes were a reminder of a time past. Whenever she’d gazed into them in her youth, she’d ended up swamped in a pool of longing and need. There was a time when she had trusted him implicitly to do the right thing. Not anymore.
“After we take cover,” he shouted, “hold the shirt over your eyes, nose and mouth. Breathe through it and don’t stop until I give the okay.”
“Cover?” Turning in a circle, she looked around and saw nothing but rocks and sand dunes. “Where?”
Shakir didn’t answer but stood and hurried over to a nearby rock-covered stand. Even through the low light, she realized this must be the water well she had been expecting to find. While lifting the large flat rock from its base, his muscles rippled and bunched under his shirt. The sight gave her an unwelcome tingle, forcing her to dig her fingernails into her palms to stay quiet.
Once Shakir had the heavy-looking rock in his arms, he used it to cover the well. Every one of his movements was economical, as though he’d been taught exactly what to do.
After returning to her side, he said, “Let’s go.”
Huh? “I don’t think …”
“Look.” He pointed off in the opposite direction of the rising sun.
She turned her head and got one of the biggest shocks of her life. The entire horizon, from desert floor to electric-blue sky, was blurred by a clay-colored cloud. A towering line of menacing dust blocked out both sky and land as it rolled over the dunes. The storm appeared to be headed right for them.
Maybe some things could be scarier in the daylight.
Shakir scooped her up next to his side and ran toward a cleft in the rocks. As they came closer, she managed a better look at the indentation in the rocks. The space seemed tiny. But never hesitating for a second, he pushed her into the small crevice.
“Cover!” He jammed in close behind her, blocking her body with his own.
Nikki had enough room and time left to raise her hands and cover her face with the wet cloth. In the next instant, a deafening roar overtook them.
The sounds of angry sands, fiercely pounding against solid stone, assaulted her eardrums. Winds roared in her ears even under the protective head scarf she still wore. Biting the inside of her cheek, she waited.
Those initial dire seconds of the storm soon turned to long desperate minutes of panic, and finally dragged on interminably for what seemed like hours. Between bouts of panic, boredom and spurts of claustrophobia, she had time to think. Time enough for the stillness of a memory.
A memory from long ago. One sunny summer day when the sky over the English countryside was not blurred with sand, but was so clear and blue it could bring one to tears. That afternoon had been meant for young lovers. It was one of those days meant to fool them into believing that true love would last forever.
But even then, as lost as she’d been in her dreams of lust and in an intense pair of chocolate eyes, in the back of her mind she must have known that love was not the road to happiness. Not for her.
Still, for those few precious months with Shakir, she had let herself believe in the dream.
She’d wanted desperately for Shakir to make things different for them. In her naïveté, he had been everything she’d thought she needed. Everything she had ever wanted. Tall, broad and so good-looking that other girls swooned over him, he was a dashing prince of the desert. An intelligent, modern-day sheik who would carry her off to a fantasy life in some faraway romantic land.
Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken long for her to awaken from the dream. Her eyes had been opened when her parents began demanding that she come home and take up her royal life. The life she had been raised to obediently follow.
Nikki did her duty, stepped up and complied with her parents’ bidding. She sent Shakir away. But secretly, as she had spoken those hateful words of goodbye, she’d hoped against hope that he would not leave willingly. She wanted him to take a stand and make his own demands.
Wishing for him to love her enough to fight for her, Nikki had held her breath. She waited for Shakir to plead his case and offer to steal off with her and hide from her responsibilities.
But he never did. Shakir never demanded anything. He simply hadn’t loved her enough to fight. He’d heard her out, then turned silently and walked out of her life for good.
What had become of him since? she wondered. It was a question that had haunted her for many years. Perhaps once the storm was over, she would finally get the answers to her burning questions. But she would have to be smart when she asked those questions. Smarter than she had ever been in her past.
With disappointment after disappointment, she’d grown much wiser over the years. And she knew how to be careful. Particularly careful with what she said.
Shakir felt Nicole’s legs giving way just as the last of the sandstorm’s winds rolled off into the distance like the waning echo of a ringing bell. His own limbs were stiff from standing, but he eased back and let her limp body slide into his arms.
“We were lucky,” he said as he lifted her and carried her out of their narrow rock shelter. “The storm was a small one.”
Still holding the by-now dry T-shirt, her hands dropped to her chest and she blinked her eyes against the bright sun. “You call that small?” Choking on her words, she tried to swallow past the build up of dust in her throat. “How long were we standing there?”
“A few hours.” He understood how she felt. His throat was parched and gritty, too, and tiny grains of sand layered every bodily crevice.
He helped Nicole ease herself onto a nearby flat-surfaced rock. Then he pulled off his goggles and earpieces and looked around the small area surrounding the water hole.
Checking his watch, he discovered the sand had blasted the clear face and he could no longer make out the time. “Sandstorms can sometimes last for days.”
“Days? I wouldn’t have been able to stand for that long.”
He would’ve seen to it that Nicole stood for however long the storm took. Even if the winds carried on for a week. He had sworn to let nothing happen to her. Nothing.
The sun shone from directly overhead, making Shakir give thanks to the desert mother that it was spring season and not the dead of summer. Still, during the hottest part of the day, extreme heat could rise to uncomfortable levels even in the spring months.
Within a minute or two of scouting the area, he found what he’d been seeking. A makeshift shelter from the sun formed underneath a natural rock ledge. As was the case at many desert water holes, long ago desert travelers had constructed a shelter to provide shade for daylight resting periods. Generations of travelers had used the shelter ever since.
Shakir hadn’t bothered to look for the shelf to use as their shelter from the sandstorm. More of a cave-like structure, the shelter was too low to the ground to provide enough protection from blowing sands. He had learned in his boyhood that standing on higher ground made far more sense as defense against the winds. But used as a cool place to rest until dusk, this shallow cave would do fine.
Hanging tenuously on to the rough surfaces of the rock she’d been using, Nicole rose to her feet. Her knees wobbled for a moment, but eventually she managed to stand.
Once she was on her feet, deep ragged coughs began racking her body. He scolded himself for neglecting to see to her needs. What kind of a proficient desert rescuer was he? He handed over the canteen and helped her take a few swallows.
“Keep the canteen with you and take small swallows periodically over the next few hours while we are at rest. Don’t gulp the water. Your body cannot absorb it yet.”
She nodded that she understood. Shakir noticed then that his dehydrated body had also begun rebelling against the growing heat of midday. Shoving aside the piles of new sand, he removed the rock covering from the water well. After reopening the well, he moved as quickly as possible, refilling a collapsible bladder from his pack with the precious liquid.
Now they needed shelter. “Come on. It’s time.” He reached out, ready to take her by the hand.
Staring up at him, her eyes took on that distrustful expression once again. “Time for what? How did you find me in the dark anyway?”
Shakir grew irritated with her questions. He was the one who knew how to survive the desert. Knew it far too well, in fact. But as long as they were to remain in Zabbarán, for her own safety, she needed to defer to his judgment and experience.
After taking a deep, calming breath, he finally remembered that Nicole was a fragile creature. High-strung and spoiled. The princess was probably experiencing a form of PTSD due to her capture and imprisonment. He’d learned all about the psychology of victims during his training in modern warfare for the British. It would serve him well to keep that training in mind and try to put aside his ancient warrior training at the hands of his mother’s father.
Nicole was a woman with no experience at hard living. As a princess royal she was more accustomed to servants and satin sheets, and he needed to cut her some slack.
“I found you by using the infrared goggles,” he explained. “Spotted your footsteps in the sand as you walked away from the chopper. You made no attempt to hide your trail. Within a half mile I knew where you must be heading. Water is too precious in this country. You would surely stop at the closest well.”
He wanted to ask why she hadn’t jumped at the chance to leave with the other women. But he had a gut feeling that she wasn’t yet ready to talk.
“It’s time to take shelter from the sun, Nicole. Over there.” He pointed out the low, dark cave at the base of the rocks.
“Oh. But … What if there are snakes in that cave? And other poisonous creatures might be hiding inside there as well.”
Shakir took her by the hand. He made a pass and grabbed his pack off the ground, then dragged both pack and woman across the sand.
“If we encounter snakes,” he ground out, swallowing his annoyance at being questioned, “we will eat them. Other poisonous creatures will simply have to make room for us.”
He felt a shudder ripple through her body and took small pleasure at giving her something else to think about. But as they crawled into the cool, shaded cave, he felt chagrined by his bad behaviour.
