The Sheik's Safety (14 page)

“Ready?” she asked Saeed, and he nodded.

She checked the twenty pounds of TNT in the back of the SUV, fixed the gas pedal and aimed the car toward the barricades at the palace gate, tying the steering wheel in position. She reached through the window and put the shift in gear before jumping clear of the vehicle.

The people who knew of the plan were taking cover. It took but a few seconds for the rest to figure out what was going on and join them.

The explosion started every car alarm within a mile and blasted out half the palace windows. Dara shook broken pieces of glass from her hair as she
charged ahead from behind the abandoned car they had used for cover. From the corner of her eye, she could see Saeed doing the same.

The fight was bitter, every step of progress bought with blood. Saeed had been right. The royal guard did not give up easily. But Saeed's men were just as loyal and determined. It took fifteen minutes of heavy gunfight to take the gate, another half hour to reach the first corridor. The plan was to trap Majid in his private quarters.

She followed Saeed and took out two men who came at them guns blazing from a side passage. She moved on as fast as she could but not so fast as to be careless, mindful that they were on Majid's territory.

Saeed reached a door to the left, opened it and burst in as she covered him. Nobody in there. They kept going. The sounds of chaos reached them from the courtyard. She hoped the other teams who were sent to circle behind the king's private rooms and cut off his escape routes were making progress.

She heard a door slam open ahead of them, then royal guards flooded the hall. Saeed jumped into the cover of a doorway and pulled her with him, firing nonstop at the men.
Here we go.
She went down on one knee so they wouldn't be in each other's way.

They were outnumbered, but Saeed and she were better shots, thinning the group quickly. Then one of the guards threw a grenade. He had to have been
holding onto it for a while because it blew the second it hit, not leaving her time to draw back.

She sank to the ground, blinded and half-deaf.

“Are you hurt?” She heard Saeed's words as if from under water.

She nodded, the small movement making her dizzy. She blinked her burning eyes a couple of times. Everything was bright white with a smattering of shadows. Her throat constricted.

“I can't see,” she said panicked, and felt Saeed's hand on her arm, pulling her up.

He patted her down. “Your clothes are torn in a couple spots. You have some cuts and scratches but I don't see any serious injuries. Can you move everything?” His voice was tight.

“I think so.” A miracle. She should have been dead. The hallway was quiet. “Did you get them?”

“Most of them. The rest retreated.”

“We can't stay here.”

“You can't go anywhere like this.”

She reached out and grabbed onto his belt. “Keep going. I'll be better in a minute. Just blinded by the flash, that's all.”

She gripped his leather belt with one hand, her rifle with the other, then heard gunfire. Saeed pushed her aside to respond, but she refused to let him take on the danger on his own. She might have been temporarily disabled, but she wasn't useless yet. Blindly,
she angled the AK-47 around him and shot in the direction of the sound.

“You are an exceedingly stubborn woman,” he said and pulled her on.

“You said that before.”

“It bears repeating.”

“Where are we?”

“In one of the reception rooms. We're close.”

“And if he's not in his bedroom?”

“If he's in the palace, he is there, and I think he's in the palace. We haven't given him enough warning to get away and he is too conceited to consider we'd get this far. His bedroom is reinforced. No windows. The walls are made of Kevlar.”

Like a panic room, she thought, and blinked her eyes a couple of times, impatient with them. Her vision was returning, but too slowly. She could see Saeed's form in front of her, the larger pieces of furniture like menacing shadows looming against the walls.

She heard footsteps behind them, turned, aimed her gun.

“Ours.” Saeed pushed the barrel down.

They moved forward.

Her ears were still ringing but not too badly. She could once again hear the sound of gunfire that came from all over the palace.

By the time they reached the gold double doors,
she could see enough to let go of Saeed and tell apart friend from enemy.

A good thing, as royal guards rushed them from a side door. She went down onto her stomach behind a console and, using it for cover, took aim, squeezed the trigger and didn't let go.

One royal guard fell after the other, not having much to hide behind in the open doorway. But there were a lot of them, too many, a new one always ready to step into place.

Saeed was next to her, and in the cacophony she reserved a compartment of her brain to listen for nothing else but the sound of his gun, knowing that as long as he was shooting he was alive.

Men she knew from camp lay dead around them. She fired on, dreading the moment when she would have to reload, afraid they could press even that moment of an advantage. Most of the shooting came from the royal guards, the guns of Saeed's men falling silent one after the other.

They were used to hunting with old Winchesters, not this kind of desperate hell of a shootout with semiautomatics. She squeezed off her last shot, pulled back behind the console and switched magazines while Saeed covered her.

Then she was back, not aiming at any organ or anyone even in particular, her vision still blurry, but spraying the enemy with bullets.

And at last when the four in the doorway fell, no others came to take their place.

The men who rushed in a few minutes after that were Saeed's. They tried to bust the double doors, using the butts of their rifles then heavy pieces of furniture, but to no avail. The doors held, even after Dara shot up the locks.

“Probably barricaded from inside,” she said, and Saeed nodded, then called out loudly in Arabic.

She only understood two words,
Majid
and
TNT,
but they were enough to know what he was saying. He was threatening the king with blowing him up if he did not come out.

An empty threat since what little explosives they'd had, they'd used up at the gate.

Silence followed his words, then a few words, spoken by a child.

Saeed went white. “He has my son.”

The men with him looked as stricken as he did. He called out something in Arabic again.

“La,”
came the response.

This, she understood—
no.

The man on the other side of the door spoke again. She turned to Saeed for translation.

“He says if we don't leave the palace at once, Salah will die. He will not negotiate.”

Dara looked at the pain on his face, then stepped forward and raised her voice. “My name is Dara Al
exander, I am here on behalf of the United States government. I want to discuss the terms of truce.”

Silence followed her words, then after a while the same one-word answer Saeed had gotten earlier.
“La.”

“I will come in unarmed. I'm sure you're not afraid of a woman.”

No response.

“You have nothing to lose by letting me in. You'll have one more hostage.”

Saeed reached for her arm to pull her back.

God, he was never going to let her do this. He hated to rely on others. He wasn't going to put his son's life into the hands of a foreigner, a woman at that. “You must trust me. He will never let you in. I can do this,” she said, desperate for him to understand.

“I know.” His gaze bore into hers. After an eternity, he nodded. “You can do anything.”

She smiled, knowing well what it cost him to let her handle this, appreciating the vote of confidence.

The door opened a crack, a rifle barrel pushed through. Dara walked up to the opening and was pulled inside roughly, the door closing behind her with a bang.

Along with King Majid and the boy, a dozen royal guards were in the room, as well as Saeed's sisters, huddled in the corner, scared out of their wits. Odd that Majid hadn't mentioned them. Or maybe not that odd. He probably thought little of their value for bargaining or otherwise, since they were women.

Dara watched the king while one of the guards searched her. Majid looked nothing like Saeed, despite their relation. He was shorter, with a wide face and a prominent mustache that hung over fleshy lips. He was not overweight, but clearly out of shape.

Her gaze slid back to the hostages and she smiled at Salah and Saeed's sisters, hoping to reassure them. She could see fairly well now, and was grateful for it. She looked around the room for any possible strategic advantage.

King Majid's bedroom was bizarre in its excess. Frescoes of nudes decorated the high ceilings, framed with gold molding. Priceless art covered the walls, life-size marble statues of naked Roman goddesses in every corner, despite the fact that religious law strictly forbade any depiction of the human body. The furniture looked like something antique dealers would call
Louis
with a number after it.

The room had two other exits and judging from the fact that Majid was still here, she guessed they were blocked by Saeed's men from the outside.

“Say what you came to say,” the king ordered in his accented English.

“Release your hostages and you'll be guaranteed safe passage to the country of your choosing for exile, as long as they agree to take you.”

She could make no such guarantee in Saeed's name nor in her own government's, but she didn't ex
pect Majid to go for it anyway. She was just buying time until she figured out what to do.

“I can stay here until my army returns to the city and crushes the rebels.”

“Your army defected,” she said without blinking.

She could see a moment of hesitation in his small brown eyes.

“I will not be run off. I'll die as a hero and take Saeed's heir with me.”

“What would that accomplish?” she asked, her voice calmer than she felt. “Sheik Saeed will have another heir and you will be dead.”

Rage contorted the man's face. He was clearly not used to anyone resisting him, especially not a woman.

She inched toward the guard to her left, the one who kept his eye on Fatima instead of the proceedings. If she could grab his gun, it might give her some leverage. If she was able to get her hands on Majid, she was pretty sure her demands for the guards to surrender would be met.

But before she could go for it, another guard burst through the wall, panting and bloody, bowing then talking rapidly.

She stared at the man's point of entry. A hidden wall panel. Damn. Saeed didn't know about that.

“It seems my men secured a way out of here. I have loyal troops on the southern borders. I'll be back in the palace within a week and we'll see who
will be dead then.” Majid grabbed Salah by the arm and dragged him to the open panel, his guards pulling Fatima and Lamis to their feet to follow.

Damn. Dara glanced toward the golden double doors. One of the guards raised a rifle to her head. She couldn't risk calling out to warn Saeed. She couldn't afford to get shot. She needed to go with the hostages to save them.

She watched as the small party stepped through the open wall panel and followed obediently, thinking of the knife tucked in her boot and that the farther from the rebel forces the king got, the more he'd lower his guard.

They passed through a long corridor. When Salah tripped on the uneven ground, Majid yanked his arm and yelled at the child.

“Let me carry him,” Dara said. “We'll go faster.”

After a moment of hesitation Majid nodded. She picked up the boy, and he hid his face in the crook of her neck. He couldn't have weighed over forty pounds. She had carried rucksacks heavier than that for days at a time on exercise.

They reached a hidden doorway and descended three flights of stairs, then entered a dark cramped passageway, the walls built of stone—an escape tunnel probably built for just this purpose. She watched the way the men moved, seeking to judge their strength, whether any of them had sustained injuries.

There were only ten guards now, Majid had left two back in his bedroom, to hold Saeed off as long as possible, no doubt.

They walked on for a long time, crossed over to the sewer system at one point; Dara sniffed at the sharp smell of ammonia in the air. She was glad when the corridor finally angled upward. When they came to a doorway, one of the guards busted off the padlock from the door with the butt of his rifle. A steep staircase led upward, and they followed it to a stainless-steel-covered room.

Two large metal tables stood in the middle; small square doors in even rows lined the walls from floor to ceiling. A morgue? She didn't have time to look around. The guards rushed the hostages through the room and up another set of stairs. Bandages, all kinds of medical equipment. Looked like they were in the storage area of some kind of hospital.

Three of the men ran forward and disappeared from sight. When the rest of the group caught up, they were in the ambulance bay, a half-dozen bodies on the floor.

The king climbed in the back of an ambulance, and Fatima and Lamis were pushed after him, then Dara and Salah. That didn't leave much room for guards, but six managed to squeeze in. She figured two would sit up front, that made eight professional soldiers she had to take care of. She wasn't overly worried about Majid.

But she couldn't do anything yet, not when a flying bullet might hit one of the people she was here to protect. She had to wait, bide her time, be ready when the opportunity came.

Dara leaned back against the wall of the ambulance and inventoried the weapons around her. Each man had a semiautomatic, with extra magazines. Majid had a pistol tucked into his belt.

The siren came on, and Salah, who'd gone to sit between his aunts, covered his ears.

Dara smiled at him. “Everything is going to be okay.”

She fell silent when the soldier next to her raised his rifle. Looked like they preferred if she didn't talk.

Too bad.

She made sure to keep the smile on her face for the boy's sake while her mind worked at full speed. The farther they got from the city and Saeed's forces, the less Majid would need the hostages. Once he felt safe, would he get rid of them?

“You should leave them behind.” She nodded toward Saeed's sisters and son.

The king looked at her, angry and impatient. “You should shut up.”

“Saeed will pursue his heir to the ends of the world. Any man would. If you let the boy go, finding you becomes much less important, giving you time to regroup.”

The king said nothing, but he was listening.

“Salah is the great-great-grandson of Sheik Zayed, your own blood. If something happens to him, the people will not forgive it easily, even if it's not your fault. We could come under fire. Everyone will blame you if he dies.”

Majid looked away from her.

“Let them go and keep me,” she said.

He snorted with derision. “What good would you be? If I need to bargain, I'll need something of value. What will Saeed give me for the life of a foreigner, a woman?”

She weighed her words carefully. “Some men are attached to their mistresses.”

Majid's gaze snapped back to her. He measured her up. “He
is
the type to get attached to a woman—a weakness that runs in his family. Took but one wife and didn't take another even after her death.”

She watched him as he rubbed the heels of his hands over his knees, and could see the wheels turn in his head, as he considered how to exploit Saeed's weakness.

“If what you say is true…” He watched her closely.

“Why do you think he keeps me by his side at all times? He cannot bear to be separated from me even when he goes to battle. Saeed will give for me what you ask of him,” she said with false confidence.

A muscle ticked in his cheek.

She stayed silent for a while, not wanting to push him into a rage where he might cross over into violence.

“They know you had a hand in the bombing at the air force base,” she said when she thought he was calm enough again.

He went still, his face cold and frozen like the statues in his bedroom.

“The U.S. is looking for you, too. Everyone will be searching for a small group of soldiers with a couple of women and a small boy with them.”

She left time for her words to sink in before she went on. “With a kaffiyeh on, nobody can tell me from another soldier. You'll get much farther with just me. And the Americans will negotiate for me should anything happen. They don't like to lose one of their own. Bringing home body bags makes for bad publicity. It's bad for politics.” She watched him closely. “Let them go.”

“Do not,” he said in a voice of ice, “presume to tell me what to do.”

 

M
AJID WATCHED THE WOMAN
, angered and at the same time aroused by her fire. Under different circumstances, he would have enjoyed bringing her to heel and bedding her. Mastering a willful woman took skill, like mastering a willful horse. Of course, with his horses he would have never used unnecessary force. His stable of purebred Arabians was too valuable.

He appraised Dara. This one would require force. He would enjoy it. Maybe they would have some time for that kind of fun when he was out of danger, surrounded by his army once again.

He trusted his southern troops; they didn't have as many Bedu among them as among the troops that had defected according to the woman. He believed her on that. But the troops stationed on the southern border… Everything hinged on them.

His confidence wavered.

If they thought Saeed was winning, would they have thrown their support behind him already? Could he risk it?

Fear gripped him for a moment, the fear of having nowhere to go. Then he pushed it back. There was one place, one people who stood to lose if Saeed took the throne. Majid breathed easier, with renewed confidence. He would hide among them until he figured out who was still loyal to him.

 

H
E SHOULDN'T HAVE LET
Dara go in there. All they'd accomplished was giving Majid another hostage. She
had asked him to trust her, and he did—she was smart and strong, amazing—but by Allah, it had cost him to let her go to Majid.

Saeed tried to listen for voices but the doors were soundproof, as were all doors in the king's private quarters. They would have to be yelling to be heard.

“Either you open that door or I am breaking it,” he called out, and he meant it.

No response.

His heartbeat quickened. “I'm offering to let you go free for the last time, Cousin.”

A couple of men came in with a granite statue he'd sent them to bring from the courtyard. He grabbed the end and motioned for them to back up and charge the door. They had to repeat the action a half dozen times before the frame gave. From the lack of threats while they were trying to break into the room, he al ready knew what he would find.

Nothing.

Cold panic spread in his stomach.

The room had no windows. Majid was paranoid that way. With reason. Anyone who ruled by fear was bound to make enemies.

Saeed unlocked the two other doors and found his own men facing him, weapons drawn. He stepped back into the room, banged on the walls, looking for a hidden exit. “There has to be a passageway.”

His men rushed to the search, one of them yelling out his discovery a few minutes later.

No time to find the opening mechanism. Saeed kicked in the panel then ran forward. They had precious little time to waste. If they weren't late already. No, he could not think that. He could not accept even the possibility that his loved ones might be dead.

They reached the morgue, and he had his men check the vaults in the wall. He didn't breathe until they had gone through every last one.

His limbs felt numb, his chest as if a herd of camels trampled over it.

“Spread out.” He rushed from the room, knowing too much time had passed. They were unlikely to find Majid here.

He ran through the basement and up the stairs, bumping into one of his men.

“They left through the ambulance bay.”

He followed the man, scanned the dead left on the concrete floor, lying in their own blood, and was relieved that neither his son, nor his sisters, nor Dara were among them.

“Go, send our people out into the city. Pass the word. Every ambulance must be stopped,” he said, then pulled out his cell phone to call Nasir.

“Majid has Salah and our sisters, Dara, too. He's on his way out of the city.” He explained the details as he ran from the building.

Once on the street, he grabbed a car from one of his men and raced over the asphalt, watching for any sign of them from behind the madly working windshield wipers. The sun was coming up behind the clouds, the streets lighter now. Rain poured from the sky, the city smelling sweet and wet, filled with hope as he was filled with despair.

Where would Majid go? He would have to leave the city, too many of the opposition were there right now. He would go somewhere he would feel safe. His southern troops?

Saeed turned the car down the boulevard and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. He didn't slow when his cell phone rang, but kept the steering wheel steady with one hand while he answered it.

“Someone came across an abandoned ambulance in the East Souq. I'm on my way over,” Nasir said.

“Me, too.” He took a sharp turn toward the market, and beeped at a group of women to get out of the way.

He was four blocks away, made it there in under two minutes. Then it took a while to find the ambulance, wedged within the labyrinth of tables. At least the market was empty. Every able-bodied man was at the palace today.

He saw his men surround the vehicle with guns drawn, stopped the car and ran toward them, straight for the doors. Locked.

He called out his son's name.

No response.

“Dara? Fatima? Lamis?”

His heart hammered against his chest. He barely noticed the rain that ran down his face and soaked his clothes. One of his men ran to him with a crowbar. He grabbed it and wedged it between the doors.

They popped open, and air returned to his lungs once he saw Salah and his sisters on the floor, bound and gagged, but alive.

He pulled out his knife and freed them, hugging them, not ever wanting to let go.

“Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” he asked when they finally separated.

Fatima and Lamis shook their heads. Salah held on to Saeed's leg tight enough to cut off his circulation. They were safe. Relief washed through him in waves. But he had more work to do, a piece of his heart still missing.

“Where is Dara?”

Fatima filled him in, so scared and shaken she made little sense. It took a while to calm her and get all the details.

“What happened to Gedad?”

She shook her head. “We never made it that far.”

“I'll take care of our family,” Nasir said from behind Saeed. “Majid is gone, you are the king. You must return to the palace and restore order.”

King, he thought surprised. Nasir was right.
Majid had fled the capital. His cousin's despotic reign was over.

“You need to show your strength, order the cabinet to meet at once,” Nasir pressed.

“No.” He looked his brother in the eye, wanting to make sure Nasir understood him. “Not while my queen is missing.”

He squatted in front of Salah. “I'm proud of you for being so brave, son.”

He gave the boy a long hug, thanking Allah for returning his only child to him. Then he ran to the car. Majid would go to the desert. He'd be recognized if he drove through the towns and villages. He wouldn't trust the people who were rising up against him.

Saeed hit the steering wheel with his open palm. He would not let Dara come to harm. He would protect her whatever the price. There were people she trusted, people who could help her.

He flipped his cell phone open, scanned the saved list of the last ten numbers dialed and found the one he was looking for—the call to the U.S. He dialed the numbers, keeping an eye on the road ahead of him.

“Hello,” a man answered without identifying himself.

“This is Sheik Saeed ibn Ahmad. Dara Alexander was taken hostage by King Majid.”

A brief silence followed his words.

“Any ideas on her location?”

“Somewhere in the desert not far from Tihrin. Most likely a single truck with a handful of guards, heading away from the city.”

“Keep this line open,” the man said and clicked off.

He drove on to the sound of rain drumming on the car roof, and prayed that she was still alive. She was strong, she would not back down from Majid. She would try to fight him, try to escape. Fear shrank his chest cavity, making it hard to breathe. Majid would not put up with resistance.

If he touched her, if he harmed her in any way… Saeed drove on, barely seeing the road in front of him.

He was on the outskirts of the city when the phone rang.

“I'm looking at the latest satellite pictures,” the man said. “There's a truck heading toward an oasis about two hundred miles west from Tihrin. It's in a deep valley. There's a small armed force there. Are you authorizing U.S. assistance?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “Do whatever is necessary to save her.”

“The nearest air force base is in somewhat of an upheaval, but I can get a chopper to her within the next hour or so.”

Saeed closed the phone and stepped on the gas. He knew the oasis the man was talking about—a small well that was insufficient for watering entire herds, but frequented by gun and drug smugglers alike.
They liked its geography, the thousand-meter-high sand dunes that surrounded it, making it an easily defendable location in case of attack.

 

D
ARA SHOOK THE RAINWATER
out of her hair as she walked back into the empty tent, eager to get away from the leering of the royal guard. They had allowed her out, but did not give her the privacy to go to the bathroom. She tried to pretend it didn't bother her.

Her boots were covered with wet sand. She pulled out her knife and slid it up her sleeve, taking advantage of being alone for the first time since they had arrived at camp.

She didn't have a good feeling about the place, nor the people—three dozen men, armed to the teeth, silent and menacing. They gave Majid shelter, but she got the impression they weren't crazy about it. They probably figured sooner or later someone would come after the king.

She looked up as Majid entered and sat on the carpet across from her, staring at her. She nearly smiled. A lucky break at last.

“I can see why my cousin found you refreshing.” He rubbed his palms on his knees. “You must have given him a wild ride.”

Rain drummed on the canvas above her head. She didn't respond. Her mind was on the handgun tucked into the man's belt.

“I myself am a connoisseur of Western women.” He spread and stretched his legs. “When I'm done with him, Saeed will be nothing. I'll still be king.”

He pulled out his gun with his right hand. With his left hand, he undid his belt and unzipped his pants.

“I thought the sanctity of women was one of the most important values of your people.”

“The
sharaf,
yes. Sanctity of
our
women. You're not Saeed's wife. You're his foreign whore.”

He motioned her closer with the gun, as one of his guards came through the flap. Majid said something, and the man backed out.