Jennifer Horsman

Excerpt

Nawwaf bin el-Serif meant to punish her, Janan knew. For being five minutes late.

She hurried beneath a blazing sun--the outside temperature had reached a sweltering 116--and rushed up the steps of the private Canadair Challenger jet. Her elderly Filipina maid, Louisa, followed. Sayyid, the stout, middle-aged pilot, stood on the top step, holding the door open for them and smiling magnanimously.

Janan paused, confused by the unaccustomed smile. Her father's pilot normally refused to look at her. The few times he had cast his dark gaze on her person, it was with unmistakable disdain--her shame, no doubt. Yet now he nodded, grinning as she and Louisa disappeared into the cabin.

The young woman recognized the malice behind the smile a second too late. The door closed behind them, and the heat inside enveloped her instantly with smothering weight. Like a furnace! She drew the hot air into her lungs and expelled it in a gasp.

"My God!" Louisa exclaimed in English as she stumbled back against the wall. The heat was a physical force; each breath delivered a blow.

Janan turned quickly to the exit, but Sayyid had already locked the door. She pounded on it, speaking in rapid Arabic, "Please Sayyid, open the door until the air conditioning is on!" There was no answer. Frantically, she rushed to a window and peered out, only to see Sayyid strolling calmly back to the terminal, no doubt to wait with Nawwaf el-Serif in the cool air-conditioned lounge as she and Louisa baked.

"For being a few minutes late," Janan whispered, wondering why such cruelty continued to amaze when she had encountered it in a myriad of ways, both large and small throughout each of her entire twenty-four years. She scanned the quiet cabin of twelve wide-bodied light brown leather seats, as if taking stock of their predicament.

The heat seemed to shimmer in waves.

Each breath felt drawn from fire. Small trails of perspiration trickled between her breasts and under her arms and legs, though these signs of discomfort remained concealed beneath her long, black abayas.

"You could not help being late," Louisa said, wiping her brow with her headscarf. "Crusty old bastard, that one."

"And you are being punished with me. It is not fair."

Louisa shrugged. "Ah well. We will make do, no?"

Janan nodded, but watched worriedly as Louisa made her way to the rear of the plane--women had to sit in back--and lowered her bulk into the seat. At what point did heat become dangerous?

She had read somewhere that in extreme heat the brain melted like ice beneath a hot sun. She offered a bottle of water to Louisa. "Here, this will help," she said.

Louisa shook her graying head and fanned her perspiration-streaked face with surprising vigor. "I will just close my eyes and escape into dreams."

Janan sat down too, determined to endure Nawwaf ibn el-Serif's childish vindictiveness with as much composure as possible. Anger would only fuel the merciless heat that seemed to pulsate through the small cabin, intensifying with each strained breath.

"My chest," Louisa complained in a barely audible whisper.

Concerned, Janan turned to her friend. "Louisa, are you all right?"

Louisa nodded before she closed her eyes and, just like that, fell asleep.

Janan stared with incomprehension. How could anyone possibly sleep in this heat? If only she could do the same!

With a sigh, she finished nearly all of the water, then doused a cotton cloth with the rest and soothed it over her hot face, neck and arms. Beneath the abayas, she wore cotton shorts, a red tank top, and white sneakers, all improperly immodest, but she always reasoned that if no one witnessed the immodesty, it didn't actually exist.

Janan felt her heartbeat escalate, then slow, as if unsure of the exact nature of this emergency. She wiped at her face again. She closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply, calmly, concentrating on evoking beautiful images of swimming pools, and for nearly fifteen minutes, as the heat seemed to build unmercifully, the clear blue waters of her imagination provided transcendence.

Then dizziness washed over her, and breathing became difficult. She opened her heavy, burning eyes and peered through the window at the air-conditioned terminal fifty yards away.

Oh, please end this stupid game!

The hot Shamal wind dusted the tarmac with small sand drifts, creating an arresting pattern of black and gold, but where the sun blasted the black concrete, heat rose in shimmering waves. Only two other airplanes sat on the tarmac. Not a soul about. How long would Nawwaf force this? How hot could you be for how long before you died?

Did he intend to kill them?

The idea scared her; she wondered if he could. True, she was the widow of Prince ibn Allami Saud and the daughter of the King's number one physician, Mohammed Akbar, but everyone would believe whatever story Nawwaf concocted to explain the two women's death. No one would even think to question it.

As another powerful wave of dizziness flooded Janan's senses, Nawwaf Serif and Sayyid finally moved toward the plane. Finally! She withdrew her book from her large straw purse. A leather cover of a prayer book concealed Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge.

The light plane registered each of Nawwaf Serif's heavy footsteps up the stairs. Feigning imperviousness to the torment, Janan met Serif's narrow amber eyes squarely and hoped she only imagined his features registering sadistic amusement as he assessed the effects of the heat on his victim. He stood there for a moment, staring, and his expression turned to one of consternation in the face of her apparent impassivity.

He sat in the front seat and signaled the pilot to take off. Within minutes the plane lifted off the ground, and merciful cool air flowed into the interior.

Janan drew her first easy breath and looked out the window, always thrilled by the way the world shrank from view during takeoff. In the corner of her vision, two dark-skinned men watched the plane lift off. One nodded as he spoke into his cell phone, while the other tracked the plane with binoculars.

Once they stopped climbing, the world leveled out into an endless vista of sunlit desert, the largest sand desert on earth. Soon Nawwaf Serif's loud snores resounded jarringly through the cabin, and Janan escaped into The Razor's Edge for the next half hour.

The interruption landed like a thick book on a hard floor. Sayyid's panicked voice sounded abruptly over the intercom: "Fasten seat belts! Fasten seat belts! Emergency landing!"

Janan's hands flew to her already fastened seat belt. She looked back at Louisa. "Wake up!" she shouted. "Louisa! Wake up. Emergency landing!"

Louisa did not move.

Janan unbuckled her belt and rushed to Louisa's side. She shook her, but there was no response. "Louisa," she said very softly, but she already knew.

With not a second to lose, Janan raced back to her seat and buckled her seat belt, pulling it tight across her lap. Unbelievably, Nawwaf el-Serif still slept. "Emir Serif!" she screamed.

He woke with a start as the plane jerked violently and swooped crazily, then started to dive.

Terror strangled Janan's capacity for rational thought. Every sensation heightened and stung: her crackling ears, her dry mouth and eyes, the frantic beat of her pulse. She couldn't cry out; she couldn't move, paralyzed as she was with the idea of death, her death, her life lived for nothing. Regret, swift and powerful, swam through the fog of her fear and momentarily claimed her.

She had never known passion; she had never learned to swim.

As she watched the earth rush toward them, she bargained with fate for another chance: please, let me live!

The jeep's speedometer hit its limit, but Jack Montgomery never noticed. His gaze was on the sky. The landscape flying past was nothing but an endless expanse of flat gold-colored plains. No plant life, save for the occasional scrub bush. The only thing here was the most expansive horizon on earth.

Saudi Arabia, a place like no other.

Back at Army Intel headquarters at Embassy Row in Riyadh, the whole team--Chinny, Linc, Sam, and Tennessee--listened on the speakerphone, connected to Jack, their CO, through his specially outfitted headphone. They had been monitoring Dr. Mohammed Akbar's, physician to the King, every move, since discovering fifty million missing and unaccounted for from his plump bank account of two hundred plus million dollars. The whole of intel was searching for this missing money. A missing fifty million would not be a mere suicide bombing; it was in another league entirely. Fifty million bought membership into the most elite club on earth--the nuclear club. Fifty million bought a nuclear bomb.

Despite Dr. Akbar's close association with the royal family, he and an Imam named Kedar ran a group of Islamic Brotherhood mosques where suspected Al Qaeda members hung out. Altair, Jack's best friend in this life, worked undercover inside the mosques. Intelligence indicated that this group was in the early stages of yet another plot to overthrow the royal family and take over the oil fields along with the all-important religious sites--Mecca and Medina.

One of their paid informants had delivered the information on the intended assassination of el-Serif in a plane crash. It was probably unrelated to the missing millions, but no matter. Two small bombs placed inside the engines would detonate exactly thirty minutes into the flight. Two innocent women were on board, the doctor's daughter one of them. With just this much information and the GPS, Jack and his team had estimated the point of detonation.

Jack now attempted to do the impossible:reach the crash before the fuel tanks exploded. The engine's roar nearly drowned out Linc's pessimistic assessment, delivered in a voice as deep as the Grand Canyon, "Even you can't make it, Jack."

"I've got to at least try. It's why we're the good guys."

"We are? Jesus," Linc swore, "Sam, Chinny, did you know that? That we're the good guys?" Jack heard the collective muffled laughter of his team, laughter that spoke of the weary cynicism of all soldiers. "Sam wants to know what's your evidence? He seems to think--"

"Just give me the GPS!"

"Four degrees north. It should be coming into view within--actually Jack, you should be lookin' at it."

Jack veered slightly north, his entire being focused on the sky above, searching for the plane. One mile off in any direction could prove disastrous–yet, there she was--

"Bless your bald head, Linc!" Jack shouted. "I got it!"

The men's laughter sounded at the other end. "You're one lucky SOB!" Chinny said.

"But Jack, if you get yourself killed, I swear I'll . . ."

Jack never heard Linc's threat. He tore off his earphone and pressed hard on the gas, the jeep bouncing over the rough landscape. The desert flew past on either side, but he kept his gaze on the prize, the jet speeding earthward at a disastrous angle. He estimated the point of impact and turned again, aiming some two miles north. It typically took four minutes for the fuel tanks of a Challenger to blow. Four minutes to rescue two women. Not the best odds, but then he never picked the odds.

The sun, more formidable in Saudi Arabia than anywhere else on earth, sank eerily toward the horizon, a blazing dark orange ball. Brilliant shades of red streaked the sky, but Jack ignored the sight, ignored everything but his goal, plunging ever closer into view.

The jet hit the ground, bounced, and went down nose first. For a minute, maybe more, it disappeared in a cloud of dirt and sand as Jack approached at breakneck speed. Gradually, as if a fog were lifting, the crash came into view. The cockpit was crushed like an accordion--the pilot would be dead.

Jack slammed on the brakes, underestimating his speed as usual. The jeep spun in three tight circles, tilting right and then left before settling on all four wheels. His boots hit the ground before the jeep stopped moving.

Within a minute he had hoisted himself onto the crumpled left wing. He grabbed the red emergency handle in its small recessed well, and yanked it with a clockwise twist. Jammed. He pulled out his Glock and shot it open. Hydraulic pressure did the rest, unlatching the lock on the inside.

The clamshell door opened outward and down.

Three minutes and counting.

With gun still in hand, he pushed his way inside. Smoke filled the cabin. The old man was still alive, moaning in a state of semi-consciousness.

The women first, he knew. The directive condemned Nawwaf el-Serif to death, but that wasn't his doing. The Saudi Arabian royal family engaged in a fierce and furious battle to save its crown from rebellious factions within and the methods the King used were the age-old tools of all tyrants, and this included what he was looking at--assassination.

Three more steps brought him to the veiled woman, slumped unconscious in a black heap.

He held his breath, unwilling to scourge his lungs with any more smoke, as he holstered his weapon.

He spotted the second, older and a glance told him she was almost certainly dead. He reached her side, checked her pulse, and cursed, before returning to the pile of black cloth. He slit the seat belt with his knife, and lifted the bundle effortlessly into his arms.

Fire licked at the edges of the door, but he had no time to think how much he really hated being burned. The plane would blow within seconds. He rushed through the plane, cursing as the ridiculous abayas caught fire. Holding tight to his burning package, he leaped to the ground. Six steps brought him to the jeep, and in one swift movement he pounded out the flaming garment and shoved the woman underneath the jeep. Covering the still unconscious form as best he could, he started counting: "Ten, nine, eight--"

The fiery explosion shot steel, titanium, and plastic two hundred feet in the air. For maybe three minutes--it felt like an eternity--the sky rained searing hot debris. A thick plume of black smoke rose from the red flames as the surrounding landscape settled back into grim stillness. Smoldering fragments of rubble littered the parched ground over a three mile radius. No one would ever be able to discern the cause of the accident. A perfectly executed assassination.

Jack rolled out from under the jeep and stood up, dusting the sand from his clothes before retrieving his cell phone. The setting sun brought relief; he was light sensitive from decades surfing beneath a bright sun. The light in Saudi Arabia, indeed in so much of the Middle East, was too harsh and sharp--the sun always felt just a few feet away. He had to wear dark glasses to protect his vision almost constantly now.

"Jack?"

"I'm still here."

"And it's a fucking miracle, too. We heard her blow."

"I got one of the women out. She's younger, so it is probably the doctor's daughter."

"The other one?"

"Dead when I reached her--"

"The crash?"

"Didn't seem like it. Maybe fright, the poor old girl. Jesus," he swore, as he noticed smoke rising from beneath the jeep. He dropped the cell phone again, bent down and threw sand over the still smoldering abayas before pulling the unconscious body out from under the vehicle. He used his knife to rip open the abayas and stomped on its smoking folds.

Only to find himself staring at the beautiful body of a young woman. Fair-skinned, tall, maybe five-seven or eight, slim--too slim for his particular tastes but graced with impossibly long legs, a quality to which he was particularly susceptible. Curious now, he removed the head getup and veil. She had delicate features with the kind of symmetry found in high fashion models. Lustrous light brown hair arranged in an ample bun. A beauty, for sure. The doctor's daughter and some muckity-muck's favorite wife, no doubt. Nawwaf el-Serif's?

He hoped not, for her sake.

Still staring, he heard a distant, tinny sound; Linc was calling his name. He retrieved the cell again. "Minor difficulties, Linc. I better get the young lady to the hospital."

"Now she's young?"

"And definitely unconscious. I'm out of here."

Janan painfully pried open her eyes to see two large worn black boots protruding from under the cuffs of faded blue jeans.

"Gorgeous blue eyes, to boot. Colored eyes, as you people call them. Where did they come from?"

She first thought she must be dreaming. The voice sounded rich, deep, edged with humor. Definitely American.

She tried to sit up, making it to one elbow before a small cry escaped her lips and she collapsed again in agony. Her neck felt like it was cast in cement. Pain radiated from her shoulders.

"Jesus. Here," Jack said, or rather ordered, "let me help." He knelt down and slid his arm around her shoulders, lifting her head off the ground. With effort she achieved an upright position. "Easy does it," he said.

Janan had an uncertain impression of height and graceful limbs before she found herself staring at his face: both wide and long, with a large, crooked nose, a shadow of beard over tanned skin, and the corners of his mouth lifted with a grin. He had short dark hair and thick brows that arched wing-like over his most arresting feature--dark blue eyes, full of intelligence and curiosity and . . . arrogance. Enough arrogance to fill the royal palace.

"Where am I? Who are you?"

"We're about a hundred and twenty-five miles north of Riyadh. Your plane crashed. I pulled you out. I'm Jack. Jack Montgomery."

"The plane . . . ?" Janan ventured a slight twist of her neck but could see only the side of the jeep.

"It blew up. There were no survivors but you."

The news registered vaguely as she gave up and collapsed against his arm. "Louisa . . ."

"The older woman? Unfortunately, she died before I reached her."

The sympathy in his voice penetrated her dazed senses and she whispered, "Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajiun." Then, in English, "He killed her . . ."

"Who killed her?"

"Nawwaf bin el-Serif. He was punishing me, but Louisa paid the price."

A strange intensity entered his voice as he asked, "How was he punishing you?"

She closed her eyes as if to shut out the memory. "He had the pilot lock us inside the plane on the tarmac. Before we took off. It was so hot; we could barely breathe. Louisa must have suffered a heart attack or a stroke," she explained softly. "I thought she had been sleeping, but realized she was dead just before the plane crashed."

Janan could not register the look in Jack's eyes as he absorbed this information, for a wave of dizziness submerged her in a swirling haze of varying shades of gray. She opened her eyes again, to find herself in the passenger seat of the jeep. The man stood at the side, staring at her solicitously. He offered a canteen of water. "This might help."

Dark glasses now hid his eyes, giving him a rather menacing appearance.

Ferociously thirsty all of a sudden, she took the canteen and consumed its contents. She gently twisted her neck this way and that. Pain, but not as intense. A miracle, all things considered.

Oh but--poor Louisa. She had just arrived two months ago from the Philippines to replace her younger sister who had returned to their country for the birth of a grandchild. The family would be devastated! And now, her murderer was dead as well.

She consulted her feelings about Sayyid and Nawwaf's death but found nothing. No feelings, not even gladness. She knew little about Sayyid, her father's pilot and even less about Nawwaf el-Serif, except that he was a very important Imam in the country, a close associate of her father and extremely devout.

She was not so simple minded as to believe Allah stole their lives in punishment for taking Louisa's but still, it was strange how fate orchestrated their deaths so soon after their murderous act.

The man's brown shoulder harness and gun came into sharp focus. Americans loved guns, she knew, but they were not allowed to carry them in Saudi Arabia; such a transgression could mean a long prison sentence. She next became aware of how he was staring, or at least she thought he was staring--it was hard to tell with the dark glasses. "My abayas!" she said, horrified, suddenly realizing she was practically naked before the eyes of a stranger.

"Ah," he nodded, "the black getup." He bent over and swooped up the tattered and burnt remains of her abayas. He shook his head, expelled an exaggerated sigh, one full of a sarcasm even she understood. "Gone the way of all things. But don't worry on my account. The package might be pretty, but to an American, the sight does not often incite a barbaric response."

The words hardly registered, his verbosity even less. Shame, bright, hot shame flared up from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. She had only one thought: "My father will kill me."

A surprised brow lifted from behind the dark glasses. "He'll kill you? Because your abayas caught on fire?" He opened his mouth to condemn this very idea, but shook his head. "I'll never understand how they manage to persecute half the population here! Don't you think--" he broke off. "What's your name?"

"Janan."

"Don't you think, Janan, that your father will be overjoyed that his daughter survived an otherwise fatal plane crash, and in one piece?"

She understood his incredulousness, but he did not know her father. He was so strict about the abayas! They were alone and unchaperoned. While it was obviously no fault of her own, the fact remained and her father was a stickler for the facts.

Ever since a trip to Paris some ten years ago, she no longer even believed in modesty as a necessary tenet of her religion. She'd seen thousands of women immodestly dressed--even in the beautiful cathedrals!--all going about their happy, carefree existence. Would the masses of uncovered women all be condemned? Surely not! And nowhere in the Quran did the Prophet himself say that all women must be veiled; he specified only that his wives should be veiled. The wearing of the abayas should be a choice, rather than the law.

Like many people, especially those who cherished books, once she began questioning one aspect of her religion, Janan found herself questioning many things. A hundred doubts plagued her thoughts, especially of late. Each question seemed a fertile seed that gave birth to new questions and troubling ideas. Her father and brothers' answers seemed woefully inadequate, although thee answers promptly ended any further debate.

Jack withdrew an army blanket from the back of the jeep. "Here," he said, handing it to her before returning to the driver's side. Instead of using the door like a normal person, he hopped in like a gymnast, demonstrating unusual agility for a man his size. "I better get you to a hospital."

Janan draped the blanket gratefully over her shoulders as the engine hummed to life and they took off. The top of the vehicle opened to the sky and the warm wind brought some minor relief.

"What's your last name?" He pressed a button on the dashboard.

The question momentarily confused her, so consumed was she by thoughts of how her father would respond to the impropriety of this situation--however unavoidable--and how hard Louisa's relatives would take this tragedy. "Janan ibin-Akbar." She did not add that her father, Dr. Mohammed ibn Akbar, was a second cousin and the exalted private physician to his royal highness, the Crown Prince.

"You're Dr. Sans-Akbar's daughter?"

"You know my father?"

"I've heard of him," he said vaguely, as he started driving again. "So, was Nawwaf el-Serif your husband?"

"No, no. He is a friend of my father."

"Was he? See him at the house all the time?"

"Not all the time, no, but once in a while." Why was he asking for so much information? "You ask many questions, Mr. Montgomery."

"Just curious. I've been here less than two months--"

"You work the oil fields, I presume?" Most Americans in Saudi Arabia worked the oil fields or were in banking, though that would not explain his guns. She noticed the deep and terrible scars covering his left arm. It looked as if it had been torn to shreds at one time, or burned to a crisp, or . . . both.

He cast her a crooked smile. "Yeah, I work the oil fields." This seemed to amuse him. "So, why was Nawwaf el-Serif punishing you?"

She dismissed it shyly, embarrassed. "Oh, it was a minor thing."

"Minor," he nodded. "And yet it had the power to kill an innocent human being."

"He did not intend to kill Louisa!" She clung to the rail with one hand, to her sore neck with the other. The American drove so fast!

"No, of course not. He only meant to punish a helpless young woman. And what was your crime? You haven't said."

Unable to bear his scrutiny, much less this interrogation, Janan grabbed her neck and gazed out over the desert-nothing but an ocean of sand washed in the lingering glow of the setting sun. The sky turned violet; the first star appeared on the distant horizon. She closed her eyes and made the familiar wish.

"So?" Jack's voice shattered her reverie.

"I kept him waiting." Thinking of Louisa, suddenly thinking if she hadn't kept Nawwaf el-Serif waiting, Louisa might still be alive. "It was just a few minutes, no more."

Jack slammed on the brakes. The jeep came to an abrupt halt, but because she was still holding her neck, Janan weathered the jolt with no pain. The American turned to her with out rage, his blue eyes peering over his dark glasses.

"Tell me that you understand--at least!--how criminal it is to lock two women in a boiling hot plane for some imagined infraction like being a few minutes late. He could have killed you! Jesus, today hit 116!"

His anger took her aback. "Well, yes, it did seem unnecessarily cruel, especially because Louisa was made to suffer my punishment with me."

"It was cruel, period, Janan. If you had kept the bastard waiting till hell froze over, he still did not have the right to punish you like that." Quietly, but with conviction, he added, "He especially didn't have the right to hurt you."

Janan stared at the folds of the blanket and nodded. Of course she agreed. She wished every man felt that way. Back when her father still practiced medicine she often overheard his assistants, all doctors, discussing the cracked ribs, broken bones, bruises, and burns various women had received at the hands of their husbands, a pervasive problem in all countries, but especially Saudi Arabia where women had no rights and certainly no recourse. She could not imagine her father or any of her brothers ever hurting a woman, but she knew it happened in other families.

She did remember though, the time her father locked Rida, his second wife, in her apartment for six months. Six long months. Rida had not been allowed to leave or have any visitors, which had been devastating, as Rida was the only mother she had ever known. Her father had even forbidden his own son from seeing his mother.

She never did find out why.

"So, why were you late?"

For some reason, perhaps for no other reason than that the American seemed so forthright, blunt, direct--characteristics Americans were famous for--she found herself telling him about her weekly visits to her younger brother Ali, who suffered a mental deficiency and lived in a hospital in the nearby town of Dhahran. She explained how she had found mysterious bruises on his arms and one leg and how she had spoken to the director about it, which caused her lateness.

Again he evinced a surprising interest. He asked Ali's age, questioned her about his condition, and then: "What did the director say about the bruises?"

"That like many of his kind Ali was clumsy, that he must have taken a fall." She shook her head, "Ali is not clumsy, and this is not the first time I have seen bruises on him. The bruising seemed to be getting worse. I was concerned."

"Surely your father could intervene?"

She shook her head with a sad smile. "My father is . . . well, I think he is ashamed of his youngest son. It's almost as if he feels Ali's troubles are his fault, the result of some weakness of his instead of an accident of fate. He does not even like me visiting Ali; he often tries to discourage me. No one thinks Ali is even aware of my visits. He barely ever speaks, you see. But they do not know him as I do." She cast a quick glance at Jack's face, which to her surprised revealed only sympathy. "It's as if everyone else would like to pretend Ali doesn't exist."

They drove in silence for some time before she heard, "How old are you, Janan?"

"How old are you?" she countered.

"Thirty," he replied, removing his glasses. An inky blackness had spilled over the desert sky. Twilight brought an intense stillness to the landscape, as if the earth were waiting breathlessly for the relief of night.

She would have guessed that he was older. "I am twenty-four."

"Twenty-four," he repeated. "You must be married then, right?"

"I was . . . for more than ten years. My husband died not long ago." She waited for an expression of polite sympathy.

Instead, an incensed exclamation burst through the desert stillness: "Jesus, that means your father married you off when you were what? Thirteen? Fourteen?"

She had been shy of her fourteenth birthday, but that was her business. The man's bluntness began to grate. Was there nothing Americans would not say out loud? Did he have to be so . . . forthright, so bold, so incredibly rude?

"We are not like you Americans, who believe that love comes first, then marriage. We believe love comes from a good marriage, and good marriages are best arranged by families, rather than by an individual's whim." She regretted the words as soon as she uttered them; they sounded pat and ill-considered, like a child's recitation of verse, a thing repeated over and over without any real comprehension. Many arranged marriages were happy ones, but most women would still desperately prefer to choose their husbands.

Jack's expression betrayed his contempt. He did not even try to hide it. "Right," he said. "So you had a good marriage?"

Blood warmed her cheeks, and she looked away, choking on the familiar knot of shame. She couldn't have answered even if she wanted to. No wonder women were not allowed to talk freely with men! It was nothing but disastrous. She could not remember the last time she had been so uncomfortable.

She instinctively reached for her roll of lifesavers--the candy comforted her in times of distress--only to be reminded of her missing abayas. Nervously, she clutched the folds of the blanket even tighter.

"You can't answer that, I see. And if it wasn't bad enough to send your daughter, who most people would consider a very young girl, into a strange man's bed, bottom dollar says you were the second or third wife and the ‘husband' was at least twice your age."

Her blue eyes widened as she absorbed his words. She had been Prince Abdu Allami's fourth wife, and he had been fifty-five when they married, but it was such an honor for a member of the royal family to ask for her hand! The day of her marriage had been the most terrifying day of her life. She still did not understand exactly what had happened, only that it had gone horribly wrong.

"You know nothing about me." She bristled defensively. "I do not think I should speak to you anymore."

"Oh? Was I wrong?" he asked, in a pretense of surprised innocence. "Your husband was a young man, and you were his only wife?"

He understood nothing, but why should he? He was an American and a man, and as such he was as free as a falcon to choose his path. It was not so with her.

"Our customs--"

"Your customs leave a lot to be desired, sweetheart," he said brusquely. "And I for one wish to hell you people would stop excusing everything with ‘it's our custom,' as if a custom is a thing to be respected despite its inherent barbarity. Handing over a thirteen-year-old kid to a greedy old bastard to use as a plaything under some archaic religious pretense of marriage is not okay. Not now. Not ever."

The sound of the engine and of the tires on sand became a backdrop for the loud ringing in her ears as embarrassment, and its close cousin, shame, fueled the hammering of her heart. The awful heat, the crash, Louisa's death, and now this insufferable American who with one string of words had managed to reduce the sanctity of her marriage to travesty, all of it gathered in a tight knot in her chest.

In Saudi Arabia the legal marrying age for women was nine. It had to be nine because the Prophet himself had taken Aisha, a girl of nine in marriage, and despite her tender age, Aisha had been the Prophet's favorite wife. True, Janan had never known a girl of that age being married. Most Saudi women did not marry until they were fourteen or fifteen, and lately more and more women married even later, but then most women were not sought by a member of the Royal family. She never had a choice.

A small red light flashed on the dashboard, and Jack reached across to retrieve a phone the glove compartment. "Yes?" He smiled, "Altair . . ."

The American's face lit up and his voice softened as he spoke. "I got it. Coordinate with Sam." He laughed at some unheard communication, his whole expression changing. "Soon Altair, soon," he said, and replaced the phone in the glove compartment.

As if in answer to the new silence, Jack punched a button, and the most beautiful music Janan had ever heard poured from the disc player. It was complex and haunting, and for several long minutes she remained still, entranced by the lovely sound.

Softly, "What is this?"

Jack heard the reverence in her voice. "Handel's Water Music. Haven't you ever heard it before?"

Janan shook her head, afraid to tell him that both her father and husband approved only of Arabic music. One should ideally listen only to the melodic hum of the Quran being read aloud. She had rarely heard music from other countries.

Dust rose behind them as he slowed the jeep. "I'm sorry," he said, turning to her. "I know I sound . . . harsh. You must understand how different it is in America and other parts of the world. We have laws prohibiting underage marriages and multiple wives."

His sincerity broke through her apprehension, and she nodded quietly. "Yes, I know. I have read many English books, hundreds of them. I have read Huck Finn and Moby Dick and all the novels of John Steinbeck. The idea of America. It always seems so . . . like a dream, the land of so much freedom."

A lone tear stole out from behind closed lids. He reached a finger to it and gently wiped it across her cheek. She opened her eyes to meet his stare, which was filled with sympathy and concern.

"Janan, have you ever thought of emigrating?"

To his surprise, she laughed, lightly, girlishly. "Oh my father would never permit that!"

The words never registered, as the thrumming of a helicopter's blades dispelled the quiet of the night, the pilot no doubt tracing their tire tracks in the desert sands. The headlight shone much brighter than the first stars.

What happened next would live forever in her mind.

Jack stopped the jeep and quietly, quickly, removed his shoulder harness. He withdrew one of the two guns, slipping it between his Levis and his waist. She watched with wonder and no small amount of fear as he pulled a hidden metal box from beneath the seat and deposited the second gun, the shoulder harness, and his phone. He pocketed one of three passports from the box. He withdrew a knife from his boot and deposited it.

The helicopter was descending some fifty meters from the jeep.

Jack pulled on a shirt to hide his weapon. He cast Janan a quick grin and gave the universal signal for secrecy, a finger to the lips. "My life is in your hands, Janan."

Her heart pounded, matching the helicopter's thudding in response to yet another emergency.

"Here, I want you to have this," he said, pressing another button. The disc popped out. He slipped it into a cover and handed it to her before she could refuse. She pulled the blanket up over her head and mouth as the wind whipped around them. The noise grew deafening as the helicopter hovered twenty meters off the ground. She closed her eyes and felt Jack's hand press her shoulder, gently urging her down.

The helicopter landed. Two policemen, machine-guns in hand, and an unarmed man emerged and approached the jeep. For one wild moment Janan thought the police would open fire, but instead they ordered Jack in Arabic to step out and put his hands in the air. Jack complied, leaping out of the car. The man apparently had no use for doors.

As one policeman kept a gun trained on him, the other frisked him but failed to find the gun. Jack lowered his hands as the policemen turned to search the jeep.

The unarmed man spoke in Arabic. "Your name?"

"Donald Bell," Jack replied.

Janan stifled a gasp.

"And why are you driving Madame Akbar, Mr. Bell?"

In heavily accented Arabic, Jack explained that he was driving across the desert when he witnessed the crash and rushed to the site and managed to carry Madame Akbar to safety. No one else survived, he explained. The young woman had been hurt, so he was taking her to the hospital.

The man turned to Janan. "Please come with us, Madame Akbar. We will take you to the hospital. Your father is anxiously awaiting news of you."

He escorted her to the helicopter, still wrapped in Jack's blanket. Just before she disappeared inside, she saw the policemen conclude their search of the jeep, apparently finding nothing. Why she felt relief she could not say, except that Jack Montgomery or Donald Bell had saved her life, and she owed him much.

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