to complain uselessly and waste any of their precious time, he hoisted Nicole over his shoulders and moved out behind Tarik. It was a difficult ten miles over rough terrain to the extraction point and he knew she would never make it under her own power. This was the only way for them to arrive in time.
At any point along the way, if either of these two women cried out for some reason, all of them would be at the mercy of the Taj Zabbar soldiers. Sounds traveled far in the night desert air. Explaining that to Nicole now, however, was impossible. He had to hope against hope that she was smart enough to keep silent.
In his opinion, the going was easy but too slow. He tried to follow an old camel trail, but sand had blown over it in spots and drifts were several feet deep in many places.
Carrying Nicole wrapped around his neck and draped on his shoulders was the easiest part. She was as light as a bird. He didn’t remember her body being this lean in the past. Perhaps the Taj had starved her while she was their prisoner. That notion made him grit his teeth.
After they were flown to freedom and had a moment to reflect and talk, he wanted to ask her how she had come to be captured by the Taj. Had they taken her by force? Shakir didn’t like the idea of that any better than the idea of her starving at their hands.
After her initial surprise at being carried, Nicole’s body relaxed and she was completely silent during their march across the sand. Grateful for the favor, Shakir only wished he could’ve had a moment to still her fears and calm her down before they began the trip. Grabbing her up like a bag of sheep feed and slinging her over his shoulder seemed barbaric. Like something he may have seen done to women back when he’d learned to live as a desert warrior at his grandfather’s knee.
The more he thought about it, the more horrified he was by his own savage reaction. Despite having done it for her best interests, he knew she would never forget. He could only hope she would be able to forgive him someday, though he doubted if he could forgive himself.
They ended up covering the ten miles of desert in good time. In a little over two hours, he looked ahead and spotted the chopper hovering over a wide flat surface. The other members of the team were boarding with their human cargo.
Worried that they were too exposed in the open desert, Shakir halted about fifty yards shy of the pickup zone and lowered Nicole to the ground beside a creosote bush. “Sit and stretch your legs out in front of you for a moment. I’m going in closer to help load the other women. For safety’s sake, I’ll board you at the last possible second. I don’t want to take any chances on surprise sniper fire. Think you can walk?”
Rubbing at her feet to get the circulation back, Nicole looked up at him with that strange expression in her eyes again. “I can walk. May I have the canteen?”
His heart went out to her. Handing the water over, he thought back to the sophisticated but fragile princess who had once captured his heart. She was holding up quite well under the strain.
But they had no time to reminisce. Perhaps later. After he’d rescued her and explained how he’d known of her plight. It was a long story and their minutes left in Zabbarán were coming to an abrupt end.
“I’ll signal when it’s your turn to board. If you can’t walk, I’ll come back for you.”
“I said I can walk.”
She was trying hard to be strong. It made him yearn to take her in his arms and hold her close to his chest, encasing her in a protective embrace. Instead, he nodded sharply, turned and made a dash for the chopper.
Within a few minutes, Tarik loaded the old woman, the last of the hostages to board except for Nicole. Through his earpiece, Shakir heard one of the Kadir surveillance teams warning that a Taj Soviet-made Ilyushin IL-28 was scrambling from the country’s main landing strip a couple of hundred miles away. The old-model jet was known to be a dilapidated bucket of bolts. But still, it would be here within minutes.
“Now or never, brother.” Tarik turned and held out his hand.
Shakir swivelled, signalling to Nicole. The chopper’s rotors blew sand in wide circles around the landing zone. He was suddenly worried that she would not be able to see his signal and started running toward her position.
Calling her name, he closed the distance between the chopper and where he’d left her waiting. No answer.
“Sixty seconds,” Tarik shouted through his earpiece.
Shakir arrived at the creosote bush, but the space was empty. No Nicole. He made a cursory inspection of the surroundings. No Nicole.
“Thirty seconds.”
Bugger it. Bugger her.
“Go!” he shouted to his brother.
“Not without you.” Tarik’s voice was too sharp. His brother was worried about him.
“I’ll be okay.” Shakir worked to sound calm, confident. “I’m not leaving without her, Tarik. I’ll contact you as soon as I can. Now, go!”
Nikki never imagined it would be this difficult to find her way across the desert by using the stars. Lalla had marked the coordinates of every water hole, oasis and town within a hundred-mile radius on her map. But now that Nikki was out here, it all looked the same in the pitch-black night.
Luckily, the house where her son was supposedly living was only about fifty miles from the fortress she’d left behind. She could certainly make a fifty-mile walk in a couple of long nights’ worth of travel. It was true, though, that she would need fresh water and places to rest during daylight hours. In addition to being impossible to travel during the heat of the day, she needed to keep the Taj Zabbar soldiers from spotting her in the desert.
Stopping for a moment, she breathed deep and used one of her precious matches to check her map. That water hole should be right here. She needed to find it before daybreak.
Surely she wouldn’t have the bad luck to get lost on her first night. Yes, she’d gotten a bit turned around while being carried on Shakir’s shoulders. But she had been sure that she’d reoriented herself properly within the first few moments on her feet.
Still a bit curious about how he had known to come for her in the first place, Nikki felt guilty about her disappearing act. But Shakir hadn’t allowed her any time to speak. And hers was a story that needed more than a cursory explanation.
After she found her son and rescued him, maybe then she would try again to locate Shakir. To talk. Of course, the last time she’d tried to find him things hadn’t worked out well.
Thoughts of that dark time, those long months, surrounded her in a swirl of sadness. It had been the beginning of a whole new life. And she had drastically changed from those difficult days to today.
Nikki often wondered how different her life might have been had she found Shakir back then. But what-ifs and maybes were a part of her past now. She could no longer afford to dwell on how things might have been.
Turning in a complete circle, Nikki looked up at the stars once more. That watering hole had to be close.
“You’re almost there.” The male voice, coming out of the darkness, nearly caused her to turn tail and run.
“Shakir?” It had to be him.
