Chapter Twenty
An unfamiliar alarm woke Dr. Julia Huxley. Her cabin was located next to her office, with the door perpetually open. The alarm was coming from her computer, and when she glanced over she could see the screen coming to life, a milky glow that spilled across her tidy desk and glinted off the stainless steel arms of her rolling chair.
Julia threw aside her covers, her hands automatically bunching her hair into a ponytail and binding it with the elastic band sitting on her nightstand. In her one major, although secret, feminine conceit, she wore a hand–laced white satin nightgown that clung to her curves like a second skin. If she knew there would be a chance of a middle–of–the–night emergency, usually when the Oregon was gearing up for combat, she slept in an oversized T–shirt, but when things were quiet she had a whole closetful of clingy sleepwear. She’d nearly been found out a couple of times, but with a pair of clean scrubs folded at the foot of her bed she could change in seconds and no one was the wiser.
Julia padded in bare feet across her cabin and plopped herself in front of her computer. By the time she’d flicked on the articulated light clamped to her desk, she knew what the alarm was. One of the biometric tracking chips implanted in all shore operators’ legs had failed. There were several tones the computer generated, depending on the nature of the failure. Most commonly, it was a dying electric charge, but what she heard sent a chill down her spine. The sharp electronic wail meant that either the chip in question had been removed or the owner was dead.
The story was writ across her computer screen.
Juan Cabrillo’s tracking chip was no longer transmitting its location to the constellation of orbiting GPS satellites. She scrolled back to check his movements over the past several hours and saw he had left the general area of the terrorist camp and old mine, striking out to the south at a steady four miles per hour. He’d covered almost twenty–five miles. He had then stopped ten minutes earlier, and, without warning, the chip had ceased functioning.
She reached for the phone to call Max when the alarm stopped. The chip was transmitting once again. Julia typed in a command to run a system diagnostic, noting the Chairman hadn’t moved. The tracking chips were still a new technology, and while they hadn’t had too many problems, she understood they weren’t infallible. According to the system, Cabrillo had either been dead for thirty–eight seconds or the chip had been pulled from his body and then returned to it, recontacting with pumping, oxygenated blood, completing the circuit it needed to transmit.
Just as suddenly as the alarm went silent, it started up again, keening for thirty or so seconds. And then it started dropping in and out, seemingly random.
Blip, beep beep. Blip, beep. Beep, blip, beep. Blip.
Blip, blip, beep. Blip, beep beep, blip.
Through the chaos of tones, she thought she recognized a pattern. Making sure her computer was recording the telemetry from Juan’s chip, she opened an Internet connection and checked her hunch. It took her nearly a minute to decipher the first series of sounds even as more came in.
Wake … up …
Blip, blip, blip, blip. Blip, blip, beep. Beep, blip, blip, beep.
Hux …
Juan was interrupting the signal from the chip somehow and was sending a message in old–fashioned Morse code.
“You crafty SOB,” Julia muttered in admiration.
And then the alarm shrieked a continuous cry that went on and on.
Julia knocked over a cup of pens reaching for the phone.
• • •
After trekking the first four miles from the terrorist camp, Cabrillo had found a sheltered spot out of the sun’s brutal gaze to hole up. He and his new charge, Alana Shepard, would need to wait until nightfall in order to tackle the open desert. He told her to sleep while he backtracked a mile to make sure their spoor had been obliterated by the wind. He knew Muslims didn’t keep dogs, even for tracking purposes, so he felt confident that no one would be on their trail, at least for a while.
When they started out again shortly after sunset, he wanted to put much distance between themselves and the camp, sensing that once they stopped he wouldn’t be able to walk much farther afterward. If he and Alana were still alone in the desert come dawn, the vultures would start circling. With food so scarce in the desert, the vultures would loiter for days waiting for their prey to die. It would be the same as raising a sign that said ESCAPEES HERE. If the terrorists sent out a patrol, especially the chopper, they would be spotted quickly.
One more thing he had to consider was Alana’s endurance. She appeared in better condition than the other prisoners he had seen, but she still suffered from deprivation. He had swiped a couple of canteens during his earlier meanderings and allowed her to drink as much as she could, yet she remained sorely dehydrated. And there was nothing he could do for the rumbling in her belly that she felt compelled to keep apologizing for.
It was three in the morning when he could tell she was spent completely. She might make it another mile, but there was no real need. It was time now to rely on his people and not her stamina.
“So tell me more about the dig you were heading up,” he invited to distract her, settling himself on the ground with his back against a rock. He had led her up a small outcrop of rock with a natural bowl at its summit that provided cover as well as a strong vantage point.
Because he had pushed the march so hard, they hadn’t really spoken much beyond introductions.
“It’s frustrating.” She sipped from the canteen. Despite what must be a raging thirst, she had good survival instincts and drank sparingly. “The original source material strongly indicates the Suleiman Al–Jama’s Saqr is still buried in a cave someplace, but I’ll be darned if we could find any sign. For one thing, the geology is all wrong for caves or caverns.”
“And for all you know, this guy Lafayette’s bearings were off and you’re searching the wrong riverbed,” he said, finishing her thought. He rolled up his pant leg.
Alana stared at the molded titanium–and–plastic limb, saying nothing.
“Shaving cut,” Juan said with a lopsided grin.
To her credit, she didn’t miss a beat. “You should stick to depilatories. The third, and most likely, scenario is the Arab retainers Henry Lafayette mentioned in his journal returned to the cave after Al–Jama’s death, looted what they could, and destroyed the rest.”
“That’s actually the least likely of the three,” Juan countered. From his combat leg, he pulled a throwing knife, basically a flat piece of surgical steel that had been balanced and honed to a razor’s edge. He went on: “If they were that loyal to Al–Jama in life, the respect would have continued after death. A devout Muslim would no more desecrate a grave than he’d have ham for Easter dinner.”
“But Muslims don’t eat … Oh, I get it.”
“If that one generation of servants kept quiet about the entombed ship, then I’m pretty sure it’s still buried out there.”
“Not where we’ve been looking.” In the moonlight, her eyes dimmed. “Are we going to be able to rescue Greg Chaffee?”
He looked at her. “I’m not going to BS you. My team and I have another priority that trumps his rescue. I’m sorry. As soon as we’re done, I will go back. That I can promise.”
“You’re searching for Fiona Katamora’s plane, aren’t you?” She took Juan’s silence as confirmation. “We saw it going down. That’s why Greg, Mike, and I crossed the border into Libya. We were looking for it, too.”
“That explains why you were taken prisoner.”
“A patrol found us. They … they killed Mike Duncan. Shot him dead for trying to come to my aid.”
He could see tears glinting on her cheeks in the moonlight. Juan knew some women would want him to take them in his arms and comfort them, but there remained a defiant lift to Alana Shepard’s chin. She didn’t need his sympathy, only his help. His respect for her went up another notch.
“There’s an important peace conference coming up,” he said softly. “Her presence there would have pretty much guaranteed success.”
“I know. It was the State Department that hired me to find Al–Jama’s ship in the first place. They believed that some writing he left behind would help her during the meeting.”
“So this isn’t just about archaeology?” She shook her head. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”
It took only a few minutes for her to lay out the story, from her summons to Christie Valero’s office at the State Department to meeting with her and St. Julian Perlmutter to her capture by what she thought had been a routine border patrol.
“I know Perlmutter by reputation,” Juan mentioned when she finished. “He’s perhaps the best maritime researcher in the world, and if he’s convinced the Saqr’s still buried in the desert that’s good enough for me. I wonder why he didn’t take this to NUMA. I thought he was some sort of consultant with them.”
“I don’t know. I’d never heard of him before. I did get the impression that because of the diplomatic angle he thought the State Department should handle it.”
“Still, should have been NUMA,” Juan said, thinking back to the professionalism he’d encountered with that Agency over the years. “I’ve been meaning to ask, do you have any idea who the other detainees were back at the labor camp?”
“No,” Alana admitted. “Greg might have. He speaks Arabic. Other than mealtimes, I was kept away from the men, and none of the women I tried to speak with understood English or the little bit of Spanish I know.”
“Another mystery for another time,” he mused. “Now it’s time to call in the cavalry.”
Cabrillo unbuckled his belt and lowered his pants to expose his upper thighs. He had been such an enigma to Alana since first rescuing her that nothing he did surprised her. There was an inch–long red scar on the thickest point of his quadriceps.
Without so much as a calming breath, Juan sliced open the scar with the throwing knife. Dark blood welled from the open lips of the wound.
“What are you doing?” she asked, now suddenly alarmed.
“There’s a tracking device in my leg,” he replied. “I can use it to signal my people to come get us.”
He plunged two fingers into the gash, fishing around, his mouth tight and set against the pain. A moment later, he withdrew the device, a black plastic object the size and shape of a cheap digital watch. He wiped its underside against his uniform shirt, waited silently for about thirty seconds to elapse, and then pressed it into the blood trickling out of his leg. He repeated what he’d just done, and then started moving quicker, dabbing and wiping so his hands were in constant motion.
“U … P … H … U … X,” he said, transmitting each letter.
Like a desert djinn rising up from the ground, a spectral figure leapt over the rock parapet sheltering Juan and Alana. It crashed into Juan, the impact sending the slippery transmitter skittering off into the dark. Bony fingers clawed for his neck, the sharp nails digging into his flesh.
With an oozing wound in his leg and his pants pulled down to his knees, Cabrillo was at a complete disadvantage. The filthy creature made a guttural screech as it tried to ram its knees into Juan’s chest while its feet raked across his legs like a cat trying to eviscerate its prey. Nails as tough as horn ripped out trenches of Juan’s skin.
The Kel–Tec pistol was buried inside the pocket of his bunched–up pants, and the knife was out of reach. Juan reared his head back as far as he could and smashed it into his attacker’s nose. He didn’t have the leverage to break bone, so he had to find satisfaction in the spurts of blood that began to patter across his face and the howl of pain his blow elicited.
He twisted onto his stomach under the figure, gathered his legs under him, and thrust upward with everything he had. The creature was thrown from his back, sailing across the bowl and smashing into the far side. Cabrillo had already crouched and rolled to grab the knife, and he had it in his hand and cocked by the time the monstrosity crumpled into an untidy heap.
His knife arm came down, the blade glinting, and it would have flown true had two things not occurred to Cabrillo at the last instant. His attacker had been unbelievably light, and the man was dressed in the same rags he’d seen the prisoners wearing. It was too late to stop the throw, but he managed to angle it ever so slightly. The blade embedded itself into the sandstone an inch from the man’s head.
Five seconds had passed since Juan was first attacked. In that time, Alana had managed to raise her hands to her mouth in alarm and nothing more.
Juan blew out a breath.
“Oh my God,” Alana gasped. “Greg told me two prisoners escaped a couple of days ago. They only brought back one.”
Juan considered the odds that they would come across the only other human within twenty miles and guessed they were actually pretty good. He had put the camp directly behind him as he and Alana had struck out, and they had followed the easiest terrain to gain distance. It had been the most logical choice, and the prisoner had done the exact same thing.
They had obviously moved faster than the man, and, considering his wasted condition, it was no surprise. The miracle was that he had made it this far at all. He must have been using the hillock as an observation post, spotted Alana and Juan walking toward him, and remained hidden until Cabrillo was at his most vulnerable.
Juan shuffled over to the prisoner and reached out a hand for Alana to pass him the canteen.
“Drink,” Juan said in Arabic. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Under the dirt and grime and weeks of matted beard, he saw the guy was about his own age, with a strong nose and broad forehead. His cheeks were hollow from hunger and dehydration, and his eyes had a dull sheen. But he had had the strength to hike this far and launch a pretty well thought out assault. Cabrillo was impressed.
“You’ve done well, my friend,” he said. “Our rescue is close at hand.”
“You are Saudi,” the man rasped after drinking half the canteen. “I recognize your accent.”
“No, I learned Arabic in Riyadh. I’m actually American.”
“Praise be to Allah.”
“And to His Prophet, Muhammad,” Juan added.
“Peace be upon him. We are saved.”
“We?”