Out of Control (15 page)

Then I woke up.

“Hey,” I heard him whisper, “are you okay?”

“Nick?”

“I’m here, sugar. You had a bad dream.”

“Did I dream I got abducted?”

“Regrettably, no, that wasn’t a dream. Are you hurt?”

I moved slightly and winced. “Think my rib’s broken.” Turning my head, I saw that
we were in a small, white room with two cots, a small chest of drawers, and no window.
Robichaud sat at the edge of my cot, his hand rubbing my arm comfortingly.

“Where are we?”

“No idea.”

“How’s your arm?”

“Hurts like the devil, but it’ll be all right. The doctor took me for X-rays, then
left the room. A male nurse came in and gave me a shot, even though I said no and
tried to get off the table. Next thing I knew, I woke up here.”

I told him what happened to me, including the dream.

He gave me a crooked smile. “Not gonna lie, Blair. I expect if you gave me five daughters
I’d be mighty tempted to spoil them all rotten. But a Land Rover? Nah.” He pursed
his lips. “Maybe a 4-Runner.”

I smiled weakly. “Don’t think I’m up for five anyway. How about two boys who play
baseball and mow lawns to earn their own money for a car?”

His hand smoothed my hair away from my face. “That’ll work.”

“Do you think they’ll kill us?”

“Chances are, but maybe not.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t understand
why Dan didn’t answer.”

“Are you afraid something’s happened to him?”

“More than afraid. I’m pretty certain of it. He’s our contact man in Saudi, the go-to
guy when the shit hits the fan. If we escape or these assholes let us go, we’re on
our own to get out of the country, and it’ll be a bitch.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“Because the room may be bugged. I checked and found nothing, but it’s still possible.”

I glanced at a new bruise across his jaw. “That looks painful.”

He touched it and shrugged. “Not so much. I think the gurney hit me.”

Or some guy. “Our plan didn’t take into account the insane drivers in Riyadh.”

“Or someone waylaying us.”

“Do you think the port’s been blown?”

“If Cole wasn’t lying about the timing, yes. It’s almost six o’clock in the morning
and he said it was supposed to blow at eleven last night.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and fought tears. “We came so close, and it was all for nothing.”

“It’s hard to take, I know, but you have to roll with it. Sometimes it works out,
and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Opening my eyes again, I took in his expression. It wasn’t happy or resigned, but
reflected a wealth of experience, good and bad, which let him take setbacks in stride.
I could use some of that.

I scooted over until my back was to the wall. “Lie down with me.”

Favoring his arm, he stretched out, gathered me up, and held me close.

“Tell me about your Something Like That.”

“I would, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Our kidnappers may take care of that for you.”

He held me a bit tighter and his voice dropped to a whisper again. “There are several
offshoots of the CIA, most of them very secretive, and all of them kept under wraps
from the American public. After I spent time with the arms dealers and returned to
Dhahran to go back to my job at Aramco, I was approached by a man named Jamie who
asked if I’d be interested in working undercover for his black ops group. They concentrate
on the Middle East, particularly the petroleum industry, so they recruit engineers
and geophysicists and geologists. I was to have a regular job, and wherever I was
assigned, I was to keep an eye out for terrorist activities. I agreed and they sent
me through an intensive three month training period. I went back to Aramco for a year
or so, then left to take a position with Worldwide.”

“If you suspected something was up, were you expected to take care of it, or did you
report it to someone?”

“It all depended on the situation. If the danger was imminent, I was charged to diffuse
it, then make a report. If it was something involving a lot of personnel and multiple
locations, I was to monitor and make timely reports. What made it difficult was not
knowing who else was on board. They do it that way to keep operatives from becoming
chummy with one another.”

“Why is that a bad thing? Seems like it would be helpful.”

“The temptation to talk would be great, and over here, the walls sometimes have ears.
It’s also against policy to depend on anyone else. Teamwork isn’t their cornerstone.
More like a lot of lone wolves. The only exceptions are the go-to guys, like Dan,
who are here as a last resort in the event we get in a life or death situation and
need to get out as quickly as possible.”

I snuggled into the crook of his neck and considered the odd things life throws our
way, how the road we choose can take such drastic turns. As a young man, Robichaud
probably thought he’d take a job with an oil company, have his two-point-five kids,
buy a ranch style house, and go hunting with his buddies on the weekend.

Instead, his brother was murdered by Arab arms dealers and everything changed.

“Why did you leave Worldwide and come to work for Lacrouix and Book?”

“Partly because I was ready for a change, and partly because Sweet talked me into
it, but mostly because of the contract they signed with the new Iraqi government.
Jamie thinks I should be working fires there, and Worldwide seems to be focusing on
Asia, particularly Russia. Not that there aren’t terrorist threats there, but our
organization concentrates on the Middle East.”

“So you’re James Bond in a hardhat.”

He gave me a crooked grin. “Yeah, totally. I drink martinis, date hot women, and drive
killer cars while wearing a tux and a hardhat. That’s me, baby.”

I smiled back in spite of our dire situation. “Do Sweet and Trick know about your
other job?”

“In a roundabout way, but nothing definitive. They asked for details, I said I couldn’t
give any, and they said to let them know if I needed anything, that they’d help all
they could. That’s why Sweet didn’t blink too much when we said we needed to come
to Saudi.”

Ah. “And me thinking it was because he loves me so much.”

Nick pulled me gingerly against him, mindful of my ribs. “Blair, I can’t lie. Things
don’t look good. There’ve been rumblings in this country for a long time, and blowing
Ras Tanura feels a lot like that first cannon ball fired at Fort Sumter.”

“You think it’s the start of a civil war?”

“I think a lot of people will want it to be, but there’s too much at stake for the
rest of the world to sit by and let things disintegrate. Civil unrest in Saudi Arabia
isn’t anywhere close to the same thing as unrest in another country.” He grimaced.
“I called Jamie before we left New Orleans and told him what was up. He said if I
got here and it looked as though the port really was going to be hit, I needed to
contact him and he’d speak to his boss about it.”

Jamie, Nick’s covert ops handler. “Who’s his boss?”

“The President.”

Wow. That was…pretty damn incredible. “Have you called him?”

“I planned to as soon as we got to the hospital, but you see how well that plan worked
out.”

I followed the thought to its logical conclusion. “If the port really has blown up,
he probably thinks you’re dead.” Fabulous.

“Probably. Dan not answering his phone is also a very bad sign.”

“So, if Jamie thinks you and Dan are dead, he won’t be sending any help.”

“No. We’re on our own, sugar.”

It just got better and better.

We both fell pensive, and after a time, we slept. I didn’t dream again, thank God.

When I woke up, it was to the sound of someone opening the door. Robichaud rolled
away from me and came to his feet in one fluid motion.

I sat up, flinching in pain, and steeled myself to face the men who’d abducted me.

Instead, Ara and Faisal slipped silently into the room and quietly closed the door
behind them. Ara held a finger to her lips, shushing us.

Robichaud cut me a quick glance before he leveled a hard stare at the two of them.

Faisal moved close to him and whispered, “We’re getting you out of here before they
kill you. Just come along quietly and we’ll talk once we’re in the car.”

I wondered if we could trust them, but Nick gave me a look that said,
What choice do we have?
and I knew he was right. If they were luring us out of the room so they could shoot
us, we were doomed anyway, so why not just get it over with?

He helped me get to my feet, and once I was standing, my middle felt much better.
Ara had my pack slung over her shoulder and Faisal had Nick’s. I wondered briefly
where they’d found them.

We followed them out the door and into a narrow hallway with a low ceiling and intermittent
fluorescent lights. Wordlessly, we ran to the end of the hall and through a steel
door into a stairwell with concrete steps. At the bottom landing, Faisal motioned
for us to stop, then poked his head around the door before waving us to follow.

We found ourselves inside someone’s kitchen. Or maybe a hotel kitchen. It was vast,
with industrial refrigerators and huge ovens. Faisal and Ara went swiftly to another
door that led outside. Close to eight o’clock in the morning, it was already ungodly
hot. We got in an older model Cadillac with dark windows, Robichaud and me in the
back, Ara in front, and Faisal behind the wheel.

Once the car was moving, I began to believe we really were going to get away without
dying. I looked out the window and saw we were leaving a monstrosity of a house that
looked like a Mediterranean resort.

“This is Hakeem’s home,” Ara said. “He had his men take you last night, we think to
make sure you didn’t interfere with his plans.”

Faisal said, “Our father discovered you were both missing from the hospital when he
went to check on you. He made inquiries and was told the two of you were taken to
a private home to recuperate. He paid someone to tell him whose home it was. When
he came here, Hakeem denied that you were in the house, and this upset our father,
because he knew Hakeem was lying, but he could do nothing. To refute Hakeem would
be to call him a fraud. Ara and I waited for him and his American friend to leave
so we could get you away. We believe he intended to kill you, to silence you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We owe you a great debt.”

The two of them exchanged a glance.

“Did his plans go through?” I asked.

Ara turned to look at me through a pair of oversized Chanel shades. “The loading terminals
at Ras Tanura were hit just after eleven last night. Faisal and I knew the minute
we heard the news that Hakeem was behind it. He likes to boast of how he would run
things if he were in charge, and the steps he’d take to oust the old and bring in
the new. First among them is the destruction of key pieces of infrastructure, in order
to prove to the younger citizens how the older Sauds are incapable of protecting the
country.”

I know it was naïve of me, but until that moment I’d held out hope that it hadn’t
really happened, that something had altered the plan and prevented the explosion.
“How bad was the damage?”

“Not nearly as much as I’m sure Hakeem hoped. A small craft owned by a guy who made
his living scraping barnacles off ship hulls was turned into one big suicide bomb.
He rammed it into an oil tanker, detonating forty pounds of Semtex which was supposed
to blow the tanker’s hold and ignite the oil it was carrying, setting off a chain
reaction that would blow the pipelines leading up to the storage tanks in the port.
As it turned out, the tanker hadn’t started loading yet, so the damage is concentrated
to the end of the pipeline on just one arm of the offshore facility. And the barnacle
scraper, of course.”

“The damage will take a year or longer to repair,” Fasial added, “but since it was
contained to one arm and two loading terminals, the cutback in shipping capability
won’t be nearly as bad as it could have been. The oil ministry is already diverting
oil through the east-west pipeline to the port at Yanbu on the Red Sea.”

“What’s the price per barrel now?” Robichaud asked.

“One hundred ten dollars.”

Less than I’d feared, but still off the map. “How long before it stabilizes, do you
think?”

Ara said gloomily, “Could be months. Maybe not until Ras Tanura is repaired and back
in operation.”

“The worst part,” Faisal said, “is the damage to our country’s sense of security.
It’s as bad as the physical damage to the port.”

Kind of like the U.S. after 9/11. “Does anyone know Hakeem is behind it?” I asked.

“Not yet, but they will.”

Nick shot me a look.

I swallowed, and focused on Ara’s beautiful face. “How will they know?”

“Because you’re going to tell them. We’re on our way to see King Abdullah, right now.”

My stomach clenched. “Suppose the king doesn’t believe us? We have no proof.”

“If you have no proof, why did you go to such great lengths to get out of the house
to go and see him last night?”

“How do you know where we were going?”

Ara raised her brows at me. “Hakeem told our father that one of his men saw you after
the accident and you said Nick had been on his way to see the king.”

I nodded. “We thought there might be a plan to set off an explosion, but until Cole
Fox confirmed it we didn’t know for sure. It was imperative we get that information
to the authorities as soon as possible, and Nick thought the king was the one to tell.
As for Hakeem’s involvement, all I have is what Cole told me, and the man’s a consummate
liar. For all I know, you and Faisal are to blame.” I pointed at a man walking along
the street. “Or it could be him. I have no way of proving that Hakeem is guilty.”

“Faisal has been blamed for Hakeem’s crimes in the past,” Ara said angrily. “It will
not happen again.”

I shook my head bleakly. “I understand how you feel. But why should the king believe
us? Hakeem is a particular favorite of the king’s, so he’ll not be inclined to hear
what we say with any kind of open mind.”