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.
CHAPTER 24
HERCULES, California
T
he man with the wine stain was loving this job, mostly because he was charging by the hour.
It was going on four weeks now. Four weeks of 24-7 surveillance, billing out at a hundred and twenty-fiv
e dollars an hour, and his employer hadn’t even blinked at the money. It was being deposited in his account weekly, without hesitation and without a sign of cessation.
And, yeah, it was a little boring, watching this old lady, Alida McWhatshername, shuffle around. But for that kind of money, who cared? He hoped the job never ended. As long as no realtors decided to show the empty house he was using, he could stay here forever.
He had his Buck knife out and was using it to dig some dirt out from under his fingernails. It was the most work the knife had gotten.
Whenever it ended—and all good things did, right?—he was going to go out and buy himself a new truck. His truck now was fine. But it was a little wimpy. He wanted something big. Something nice. A half ton, for sure. Maybe three-quarter ton. With leather seats. And a bitchin’ stereo system.
Hell, if this job kept up, he could have whatever truck he wanted. He could even jack up the suspension and…
His phone was ringing in his pocket. He took it out and looked down. It was his employer, the man William McRae called Alpha.
“Hey,” the man with the wine stain said.
“Anything to report?”
“Not really. She’s just doing her thing. She goes to bed at the same time, wakes up at the same time, goes out in her garden. The usual. Most exciting thing she’s done is go to the grocery store.”
“Have you seen the large visitor again?”
“Naw. He ain’t been back.”
“Good. What about any other signs of law enforcement?”
“Nothing. She ain’t gone to the sheriff in a few days now.”
“Excellent,” Alpha said. “And is she aware of your presence?”
“Nuh-uh. I don’t have to leave the house. Most of the time, she don’t know whether to wind her ass or scratch her watch.”
“Ah, you southerners and your colloquialisms. They are so amusing. But what I am dealing with is not. Dr. McRae is getting a little testy. He’s showing the first signs of balking at his work, giving us a little trouble.”