in the afternoon sunlight.
He glanced behind him at the seat where his brother-in-law had his head back and his eyes closed. Colton took a moment to study Bret’s profile. His beard had grown, his face was tanned and he’d lost a significant amount of weight. But he was alive. And for now, that was all that mattered.
Besides the loss of weight, he still looked fairly strong, though there was no way at this point to measure the emotional effects of what he’d gone through. Now he just needed to get Bret home.
Colton shifted his attention to the passenger sitting beside him, letting his gaze linger longer than necessary before turning back to the controls. Lexi Shannon had intrigued him during the one, brief time he’d met her. First impressions had revealed she was smart, compassionate, adventurous and, on top of that, beautiful. Not that he was interested in pursuing anything at this point. A broken relationship was one of the factors that had sealed the deal on him taking a job flying missionary bush planes across North Africa. There was no way he was ready to hand in his pilot’s license for another rocky romance.
“You okay?” he asked her through his headset, deciding that a bit of conversation couldn’t hurt. He needed a distraction, and he was pretty sure she did, as well.
She turned and smiled at him with a mixture of both determination and fatigue in her gaze. “Besides the fact that my adrenaline’s still pumping, and I will probably forever be leery of men in fatigues...yeah. Or I will be...eventually.”
Colton laughed. “I don’t blame you.”
Her dark eyes intensified. “Thank you. You risked a lot to get us out of there.”
“All in a day’s work.”
“Something tells me that today was anything but normal,” she said. “At least I hope so.”
“I don’t know. Rescuing a damsel in distress isn’t a bad way to spend my time if you ask me. And on top of that you can’t beat the view from up here,” he said. And besides, after today’s flight, the chances of him seeing her again were pretty slim.
“Absolutely stunning.” She shot him a smile that somehow managed to melt away one of the outer layers of protection he’d built up around his heart.
“See that row of camels?” Colton ignored his heart and pointed toward a thin line of camels that looked like a trail of smoke against the sand.
Lexi leaned forward, searched the landscape below them, then nodded. “Wow. One of the things I want to do before I move back to the US is camel trekking along with a night spent in the desert. I’ve heard that both the night sky and the sunrises are incredible.”
“They are,” Colton said. “Though here’s an interesting fact. Did you know that camels really don’t store water the way most people think? Their humps are actually made of fat, allowing them to keep their body temperature down.”
Lexi laughed. “I didn’t know I was getting a rescuer, a pilot and a tour guide today.”
“Camels also have three eyelids,” he added with a grin. “Though don’t get too excited. That’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge.”
Lexi laughed again. “When I first flew here, I arrived at night, then we drove in the rest of the way, so this is my first up-close view of the desert from the air. But I know you make these flights all the time. Does it ever become routine? At least when you’re not rescuing damsels in distress?”
“Routine?” He shook his head. “Hardly. This is the third largest desert in the world after the Arctic and Antarctica. Some might call it barren—and a lot of it is—but I find it fascinating. Have you ever been up in a Cessna before?”
“My grandfather’s a pilot, though he doesn’t fly as much as he used to. I always wanted to take flying lessons myself, but for some reason I’ve never taken the time to learn.”
“It’s never too late.” Colton said. “What does your grandfather fly?”
“He used to have a 1979 Super Viking.”
Colton let out a low whistle. “I flew one of those once. Loved it.”
“He named her Abigail after my grandmother. She—well, both the plane and my grandmother were his pride and joy.”
“I can imagine. At least for the plane, that is.” Colton chuckled. “Single-engine, four seat, high performance. The one I flew handled like a dream.”
“I have a feeling you and my grandfather would hit it off. He’s a veteran with dozen’s of stories to tell. I keep telling him he needs to write them all down.”
“I’d love to hear them sometime—”
The sound of an explosion drowned out their conversation. The entire plane shook and started veering toward the right.
Lexi pressed her hand against the window to hold herself upright. “What in the world just happened?”
He glanced out the window, his own heart hammering as the plane started to dive.
You’ve got to be kidding...
“Colton?” Bret grabbed his shoulder from behind.
“Looks like we’ve been hit,” Colton said.
“What?” He caught the panic in Lexi’s voice as she spoke. “You can’t be serious?”
“Trust me, I wish I wasn’t,” Colton said, managing to pull them out of the dive.
At least for the moment.
“Hit with what?” Bret asked.
“I don’t know, but whoever followed us must have brought some firepower with him.”
“How serious is it?”
“Let’s just say, I’m going to try to keep this bird in the air as long as I can, but eventually I’m going to have to find a place to land. And probably sooner rather than later.”
He picked up the radio to contact his base back in Timbuktu, but all he could hear was static. Whatever hit them must have knocked out the antenna. Glancing out the window again, he saw smoke coming out the side of the plane.
“What do you see down there?” he asked.
“I think there’s a vehicle. Maybe the one that was following us. I don’t know,” Lexi said.
“Whoever’s down there has to have some kind of surface-to-air missile,” Colton fought to keep the plane in the air. He needed to get them as far away as he could from the men on the ground before he brought the aircraft down.
He let out a sharp huff of air. Actually landing the plane could turn out to be least of their worries. If they managed to survive the landing and avoid whoever was after them, they were still going to have to deal with the harsh elements of the terrain below. With its shifting sand dunes, barren plateaus, and limited water and vegetation, most people couldn’t even fathom the actual size and dangers of the desert that engulfed northern Africa. He scanned the horizon. All he could see was
