froze her limbs for a split second.
“Incoming. Surface-to-air missile. Brace for impact,” the warning instructed through her headset.
Dara grabbed for one of the belts secured to the wall, twisted it around her arm, and hung on for all she was worth as the plane lurched to the side, the pilot taking evasive action.
Too late.
The plane shook the next second when the SAM hit.
Her right shoulder felt as if it were being ripped out of the socket. More alarms came on, deafening her. She lost hold of the belt and slid across the floor toward the front of the plane. Damn. Fear and adrenaline raced through her veins. She grasped at anything that might hold her, hoping she’d manage before she slammed into the metal crates by the cockpit door and broke a leg. The cargo net. She reached for it and succeeded, coming to a halt at last.
She tried to pull up, ignoring the ache in her shoulder, her gaze focused on her nine-millimeter Beretta that had snagged on something and gotten loose as she’d slid. She sought purchase on the floor with her feet, managed to get some leverage and pushed forward.
The plane straightened. Finally. Dara got on her knees to stand, but then the nose of the aircraft lifted and she lurched backward. Her pistol flew out of sight, disappearing behind the guys’ feet in the back. Thank God, she’d still had her fingers locked around the net.
She held on tight, her insides trembling.
“They got the left wing.” The pilot’s voice echoed in her ringing ears. “I’m going to try to pull up. Prepare to jump.”
Harrison unbuckled and came for her, helped her parachute on as he hauled her to her feet, opened the door and pushed her out just as she got the last fastener secured. Cold wind hit her in the face, but she barely noticed, floating weightless in the air.
She yanked hard on the rip cord, and the next second the harness bit into her shoulders as the canopy opened and broke her fall. The parachute needed five hundred feet at the minimum to properly operate. She looked down, gauging the distance between herself and the ground. Hard to tell in the dark.
She glanced back at the plane and saw someone else jump, Miller perhaps, then Scallio, then another. Under optimal circumstances the MC-130 could drop ten men every five seconds. She hoped that would be fast enough.
The second SAM hit.
She stared, a scream of denial frozen on her lips, as the plane exploded. The impact shook the air, the wind of it pushing her back, tangling her suspension lines for a second. She pulled at them frantically as flaming scraps of metal fell from the sky around her to land on the sand and burn on, lighting up the night. Her fall slowed again as the lines twisted free.
She drew a deep breath into her aching lungs and looked up because she couldn’t bear to look down. Hers was the only parachute in the air. The other jumpers had been too close.
She rode the slight breeze, numb, her mind struggling to catch up with her eyes. They were dead, all dead. The five officers and four enlisted men of the flight crew, and eleven of the twelve-member SDDU team.
Grief hit her hard, robbing the air from her lungs. But she couldn’t afford the luxury of giving in to it, of getting distracted even temporarily.
She was in the middle of hostile territory, alone.
She floated like a lost feather out of the sky, a hundred unrelated thoughts flying through her head. She had no radio contact. Harrison was gone, Miller was gone, and the others…
The ground was coming up to meet her fast. She bent her knees ready for landing, thumped onto the sand, then walked forward to allow her canopy to fold to the ground behind her.
Her gaze hesitated on the faint light on the horizon where the plane was burning. The beacon. Her best chance for rescue was if she stayed as close to her last known location as possible. But the men who had shot down the plane were bound to be there. They had to have seen her jump, which meant they would be looking for her.
Dara glanced at her compass in the moonlight, thought of the map they had studied on the way over.
“Come up with the best plan you can, then give it your best effort. Failure is not an option,” she muttered Harrison’s favorite mantra aloud.
There was a small village fifty to sixty miles north from where she was now, seventy, tops. Once there, she could sneak in at night to get some water and food, get her hands on a phone or radio and call for help.
She buried her parachute, saving a two-by-four strip to shade her head once the sun came up, then, ignoring her throbbing shoulder, she moved forward at a good clip, away from the plane. She pretended she was on an exercise, that food and water would be waiting for her just beyond the horizon, the guys ribbing her about coming in last.
The guys.
Tears of grief and frustration clouded her eyes. Wouldn’t be a problem for long, she thought as she blinked them away. Pretty soon she’d be too dehydrated to cry.
SHEIK SAEED IBN AHMAD IBN Salim ben Zayed scanned his surroundings from the mouth of the cave before he stepped outside into the sunset, careful to note every dune. Two assassination attempts in two weeks had made him cautious.
His sharp whistle brought his black stallion trotting over. “Time to go, Hawk.”
He vaulted himself into the saddle, grabbed his flask, and drank the last of his water. He could refill at the oasis halfway between here and camp. He capped the flask and glanced back at the opening of the cave, anger still at a slow boil in his gut. Whatever it took, he would find the thieves.
The treasure belonged to his tribe, the knowledge of it passed down through the centuries from sheik to sheik—father to son. In times of dire need, when the livelihood of the tribe was threatened, the sheik would take enough to last them until the drought lifted and famine passed.
The cave’s secret had been their thousand-year-old disaster insurance. Allah be thanked, they hadn’t needed it in the last couple of decades, not since oil income from the tribe’s southern territories became dependable. They made it through the twelve-year drought of the eighties and early nineties without having to touch the gold. But it was theirs just the same, their heritage. No one knew what the future might bring.
At least the thieves hadn’t taken everything. The cave, continuing for hundreds of meters underground, had many crevices, the treasure carefully concealed. Only a small cache had been broken into, close to the entrance. Not a significant loss, a million dollars’ worth or so.
But once it was spent, they would be back hoping for more. And that he couldn’t allow. He couldn’t let them find the passageway leading underground. He either had to figure out a way to guard the treasure or move it.
A sudden squall threw sand into his face, and he leaned forward in the saddle as Hawk flew across the distance. He had to come up with a plan, or his enemies would bury him faster than a windstorm. He watched the desert for any sign of danger as he rode. And then he saw it.
A man lying ahead to the right in ambush.
Saeed ducked in the saddle and turned Hawk, urged him faster, but no shots rang out. He rode on until he knew he was out of sight then circled back, sick of the game and ready to bring it to an end.
The previous assassins had been killed by his angry tribesmen before he’d had the chance to question them. He needed one alive. He had a fair idea of who had paid the men, but he needed proof—a confession he could take to the Council of Ministers.
He left Hawk out of sight and bade him to stay, came in on foot, then on his belly over the last dune. The man wasn’t moving. At all. Nobody who knew anything about the desert would have lain down in the sand like that, exposed to the elements, to sleep. And stranger yet, no sign of how he had gotten there, no camel or horse or car.
Saeed crept closer, his gun ready as he made his way over to the prone figure with caution, all the while watching out for more of them, for any