*****
The three Suburbans were snarling along in four wheel drive on the bumpy, rugged track, making no better than fifteen miles per hour at present. There had been early stretches that were flat and fairly level, and they’d done as well as thirty there, but the last half hour had been this slow crawl. The General was leading with his two “retainers” as Ripley had dubbed them, the women and children were in the middle with a driver. Cameron, Ripley, and Allen brought up the rear in the silver truck, Allen driving. The rest of the Saudis they’d left behind after breakfast and the sunrise prayer, they would break and pack up the camp and follow when they could.
In the back seat Cameron, who’d been dead asleep since shortly after they’d set out, stirred and slowly returned to the ranks of the living. Allen reached over and nudged Ripley to get him started in the same direction, and then just for fun said, “Long night for you old guys, huh Colonel?”
If not for the truth that he felt old this morning Cameron would have made a truly vicious reply. But he did feel old. Dinner and stories had gone on and on into the night, and bed after two a.m. only to wake three and a half hours later to get moving was not really his cup of tea anymore. When had it ever been? Instead of the instinctive “fuck you, too, David” that he almost let rip then, he stretched again and substituted, “well, son, you know us Air Force guys: we don’t show up until the showers are hot, the golf course is green, and the officer’s club is stocked and open, and we never make war on less than twelve hours of crew rest, so old or young, this ain’t the way the better half does it.”
He watched Allen’s face in the rearview, and was extremely satisfied to see that the “better half” story had settled the infantryman’s hash quite nicely.
But Allen’s sunny disposition, a marvel unto itself, was not to be quelled by this for long, and he had a leg up anyway. Punching Ripley again to stave off what looked like a determined attempt to go back to sleep, he asked, “well, while you two were getting your beauty sleep, did you notice anything peculiar happening in the camp in the small hours this morning?”
“Nope, sleeping like a baby, Cameron answered. “How ‘bout you, Patrick?”
“Nottadamnthing,” Ripley growled, “whatthefuck time is it anyway, and where are we?”
The other two laughed, but Allen more than Cameron. This was his triumph and he’d make the most of it, especially with Ripley. “Well, you guys almost coulda woke up dead is all.” He paused for emphasis, looked at both men, and took great satisfaction from their expressions of utter shock. “Yep, around three-thirty there was movement south of us maybe three hundred meters or so. I went out to take a look, found our Saudi sentry pretty nervous on top of his dune. We waited, and in comes a party of twenty guys on camels, armed to the teeth. We were having a bit of a parley with them when four of the General’s guys came to join us, packing AK’s and with vests stuffed full of extra mags. Me, I had one of the HKs and two of the pistols. The six of us made a better parley, I guess. After a couple of minutes haggling the guys hopped down off the camels, someone found a spirit-stove and next thing I know we’re sitting around it drinking gawa again.”
“I slept throught that?” Ripley groaned. He could see by the look on Allen’s face that his reputation as a night-stalkin’ killer was irreparably damaged, and worse, that Allen wasn’t going to let him forget it.
“Who were they, then, and where were they going?” Cameron asked, catching this dynamic and inwardly amused.
“Al-Rashid tribe, they said, and our guys say they were, too. On their way north into Iraq to bring supplies to relations up in the Sunni triangle. They were packing heavy, too, Colonel.”
“They’re riding camels all the way up there?”
“No, they have some Shi’a relations, distant eighth cousins three times removed or something like that, in Najaf, and they have vehicles for them there. I never have been able to figure how Arabs keep track of relationships like that, have you Boss?”
“Not me, but it is amazing,” Cameron replied. “So no trouble, then?”
“None at all. When the gawa was done, they loaded back up and headed North, but they scooted west several hundred meters to give our camp a wide berth. The 4 retainers walked along that way, too, just to keep an eye on them.”
Ripley was miserable. “So you were awake already at 0330?”
“Nahh, but I heard ‘em out there and that woke me up,” Allen said with a thoroughly satisfied grin that completely destroyed Ripley. “You look really well rested, though.”
This was hopeless. Changing the subject, Ripley twisted in his seat. “Colonel, did I dream it, or at some point did you say last night that you plan to retire soon and start a bed and breakfast thing somewhere?”
Cameron saw through this transparent change of subject and chuckled. “Nope, not a dream. I think this trip put the final proof on the notion that the Air Force doesn’t have a next job for me that I really want, probably just some staff thing anyway, so I think I’ll retire as soon as I can after I get back. Probably take six months. My wife doesn’t know the plan yet, though, and somehow I think that’s going to be a hard sell. We’ll see. Anyway, if I can do a little of this on the side and run a B&B thing, I figure my retirement, plus a little side pay from the Company, plus folks paying to stay might pay for a pretty grand house somewhere in just a few years. After that, I think I’ll just become a country gentlemen and have my friends visit from time to time. Maybe try farming something for a hobby; raise llamas or something goofy like that. You guys are invited.”
This was mostly true. The part about the Air Force was all true, sadly enough, and Cameron had never thought of himself as the kind of guy who would enjoy being a staff officer anywhere. He knew he wasn’t general material, either, and never would be. On top of that obvious limitation he’d been thinking since Paris and getting the new passport, and Jones pointing out that he needed to make sure he never became “un-anonymous” to the enemy who would be ruthless in revenge if given the chance. That thought had led to the notion that military bases and military towns were too easy to find, too predictable. If he was going to do any more of this kind of thing, and maybe even as a precaution after just this one mission, he needed to do something different, disappear into the huge, swirling boil that was the greater America. Become more anonymous, hard to find, not famous, his photo nowhere to be found on an Air Force website as commander of anything, anywhere. The B&B idea struck him as a perfect cover: it could be remote, in a relatively small town, off the beaten track or even in the mountains, in a place where Middle-Eastern men would be conspicuous and would be questioned by the locals. Probably in the South somewhere would be best. Maybe it could even be somewhat fortified, built of concrete or stone, just in case, with a killer security system. He wondered what the occupancy rate was for a B&B—he’d never stayed in one. “Probably a bad idea , likely go broke. . .” he was thinking.
“Well, I’ll come if you’re buying,” Ripley interrupted his thoughts, “although I’m not signing up for any llama farming. I hear they spit and bite like camels. Maybe you should build a castle or something, I always wanted to live in a castle when I was a kid. I guess it might be a little out of place in the US, though.”
“A castle?” Cameron asked. “You kidding?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Colonel, sure I’m kidding. On the other hand, though, lots of women would probably want to get married in one, without having to go to Europe that is, and maybe spend their wedding nights in one feeling like a Queen. Geez, now that I’m rambling about it, it sounds to me like it might just work. I’m a genius. That’ll be a hundred bucks for consulting, Colonel.” Ripley broke out laughing.
“Yeah, very funny,” Cameron said. “Well, you guys give me your business cards before this is all over and I’ll send you a postcard from wherever I do this when I’m open for business, that is if the Boss at home doesn’t exercise her veto powe
r.”
Allen giggled. Nobody was giving anyone a business card—like they had any anyway.
They bounced, jostled, crawled, and shuddered along over the uneven ground for another thirty minutes, making small talk and joking. At a relatively level spot surrounded by dunes they stopped, and everyone got out to stretch.
The break lasted fifteen minutes, then they moved on, this time with General Fahd bringing up the rear with the Americans. Allen got right down to business with, “So, General, tell us about this house of yours.”
Fahd chuckled. “It’s not so much a house, as it is some houses, Mr. Allen. The family compound has eight villas in it, with a mosque and a garage at one end, and the houses in two rows on either side of a lane that runs down the middle . . .”