be useful.
‘Maya is with your mother, so she is in good hands.’
She sounded genuine, and he knew from his mother that she appeared to genuinely care, but he must have still looked doubtful for she hurried on.
‘I’ve been lowered from helicopters. I’ve done rescues off ships. I am trained.’
‘Cutting my legs out from under me—isn’t that the expression?’ he responded.
She smiled and he realised it was only the second time he’d seen a proper smile from her, but this one, in daylight rather than the dim light of the rose garden, was something special. Her generous lips curved in what seemed like genuine delight, while silver flashes danced in her eyes.
Disturbed in ways he didn’t want to think about, he turned away from her, gave a curt order to his pilot, nodded to the navigator, who would act as winchman if necessary, and climbed into the front seat. He hoped there’d be a patch of flat land where the helicopter could land, but if there wasn’t they’d have to be lowered on a cable.
‘You say you’ve been winched down on a cable?’ he asked, speaking through the microphone in his helmet as the engines were roaring with the power needed for liftoff.
‘Onto the deck of a ship pitching in sixty-knot winds,’ she told him, and he felt an urge to grind his teeth.
‘Wonder-woman, in fact?’ he growled instead.
She glanced his way and shrugged.
‘No, but I believe if you’re going to do something you should do it well.’
He believed the same thing himself, so it couldn’t be that causing his aggravation. Was it nothing more than the presence of the woman in the helicopter?
Impossible question to answer, so he turned to practical matters, taking care to keep any hint of sarcasm out of his voice as he said, ‘Well, you’ve probably had experience of this before, but unless the chopper lands a fair distance away, dust from the rotors can cause more problems for people who have been injured, or buried beneath the rubble. Dropping in a short distance away is usually safer and if we can establish a drop zone, medical supplies and water can be lowered into the same place as well.’
Azzam realised he’d mostly done training runs and learnt from books and lectures the latest ways to handle mass disasters. He’d even written the hospital’s policy papers for the management of such things. But he’d never really expected it to happen—not in his own country.
Driven by his need to see for himself, and his fear for the people of the northern village, he’d left the funeral feast and rushed straight back to his rooms, issuing orders through the phone to the hospital as he went, speaking to the police department and army officers as he changed into tough outdoor wear, making sure the emergency response teams he had set up, but never yet used, were all springing into action.
‘I don’t know how long the flight will take, but you should try to snatch some sleep.’ Her voice broke into his thoughts as he went over the arrangements he’d already put in place.
‘Sleep?’
He heard the word echo back in his helmet and realised he’d spoken a bit abruptly.
‘I’ve found these emergency situations are a bit like being back in our intern years, and the rule is the same—snatch what sleep you can when you can.’
He realised she was right. There was nothing else to do until they were on the ground, where, together, they would assess the situation and call in whatever help was needed.
He wanted to tell her she was right and that he was grateful to her for being there, grateful that he’d have someone with whom to discuss the situation and work out best options, but it had been a long time since he’d shared any feelings with a stranger—and a female stranger at that.
Yet—
‘I will sleep.’
At least he’d acknowledged her presence, Alex thought as she looked around the interior of the helicopter. She sat in one of two seats fitted against the fuselage, a door beside her and another one opposite it. In the seat behind the pilot, directly opposite her, was another man, who apparently didn’t speak English for he hadn’t been involved in the conversation Alex had had with the pilot when she’d persuaded him to allow her to join the flight.
Alex assumed this second man would play multiple roles—second pilot, navigator, and winchman.
She hoped he was good at his job!
Secured to the walls were familiar-looking equipment backpacks. Some would hold emergency medical supplies, one a special defibrillator and vital-signs monitor. Next to them were two collapsible stretchers, also in backpacks, and she could see where these, once opened out, could be secured to the floor of the aircraft.
‘I understood this was your personal chopper, so why the emergency equipment?’ she said, forgetting she’d told her companion to sleep.
‘It is the prince’s aircraft, he flies it himself at times,’ the pilot replied, ‘but he believes it should have more use than a convenience to get him to and from work in the city, so he had it specially fitted out.’
Knowing how much money was needed to keep the emergency helicopter services afloat at home, Alex could only marvel that one person could have a private aircraft like this at his disposal. Her wages would be chicken feed to him, although even thinking about her request for wages made her stomach squirm.
Forget it! she told herself, and she did, turning instead to peer out the window, seeing for the first time what a desert looked like.
It was like flying over the sea at sunset, something she’d been lucky enough to do, seeing the ocean turned to red-gold, the row upon row of waves like the dunes beneath them now. But shadows were already touching the eastward sides of the dunes and the blackness of those shadows made the colours more vivid.
Up ahead she could see mountains rising from the sands—red mountains with deeper shadows below them, what appeared to be a road or track of some kind disappearing between two ranges.
Used to flying over coastal scenes and greenery and water, the endless red conjured up the magic-carpet image yet again, the patterns of the windswept sand and shadows like the patterns in the carpets back at the palace or whatever it was to which she’d been taken.
‘Ayee!’
The cry came from the man behind the pilot and Alex peered forward, shocked by what had caused his cry. From the air it looked as if large white blocks had been tumbled down a hill but, as they drew closer, Alex realised they were houses.
‘It is a narrow ravine,’ Azzam explained, his bleary voice suggesting he had slept at least for a short time. ‘It was a guard point on an ancient trade route—the frankincense trade, in fact. It was settled because of the oasis there at the bottom, the houses built on the sides of the hills because the wadi—the river bed—floods after rain.’
His voice faded from her earphones but not before Alex had heard shock and deep sadness in it.
Now Alex could see where the mountain looked as if it had sheared
