truck. Next to the tailgate, Jon and Randi listened for more gunfire. Behind them lay the two unconscious policemen who had been guarding them, while outside some new, unknown force besieged them.
Tense and alert, Smith dropped into a crouch, cradling his confiscated AK-47. He pulled Randi down next to him. She swung her Kalashnikov around so she was ready to shoot, too. They peered outside through cracks where the canvas flap closed against the sides of the truck.
“All I can see are streaks of fire and moving silhouettes,” he said, disgusted. Sweat coated his face. Time seemed to pass with aching slowness.
“That's what I see, too. The light from the other truck's too glaring.”
“Damn!”
They dropped the flap. Abruptly, the noise of fighting ceased. The cold night was menacingly quiet. The only sound was the raspy breathing of the two Iraqi guards lying unconscious on the floor in the eerie glow from the headlamps of the other vehicle.
Jon looked at Randi, who turned just at that moment. He frowned. She shook her head. Her face was pinched. He saw fear in her eyes, then she moved her gaze.
His chest tightened. Only the truck's canvas walls and their confiscated Kalashnikov rifles stood between them and whatever peril waited outside.
He told her, “We'll open fire. We've got no choice.”
“As soon as they're close enough.”
From the desert, a voice bellowed in Arabic at them, “Everyone has surrendered! Throw out your guns and follow with your hands up!”
Quickly Randi translated for Jon. She added grimly, “Sounds like the Republican Guard.”
Smith nodded. In the hovering silence, his gaze narrowed. He was not going to just sit and wait to be executed. He inched back the flap. In the slit he could see a trio of black silhouettes, their guns aimed at the truck where he and Randi hunched.
“I can get three,” Jon decided. “Perfect targets. Problem is, who are they? And where are the others?”
She rose up and peered out through the narrow opening above his head. The heat of her body warmed the chill around him.
“We may have to kill them anyway,” she said grimly. “We've got to get this information about the virus out of Iraq. Concentrate on their legs. What's a few shattered femurs compared to what's at stake?”
He nodded sober agreement and slid the nose of his AK-47 out. He wrapped his finger over the trigger, prepared to fire, and?
Suddenly, a voice boomed: “Russell!”
Jon and Randi stiffened. They gazed at each other, shocked.
“Are you in there, Russell?” the voice yelled in English. Very American English. “If you and the U.N. guy have taken out the guards, give me a shout. Otherwise, you're not likely to leave there without a lot of birdshot in your carcasses!”
Randi inhaled with excitement. She squeezed Jon's shoulder. “I know who he is, thank God.” She raised her voice. “Donoso? Is that you, pig breath?”
“No one else, little lady.”
“We almost killed you, you fool!”
Jon spoke in a low, quick voice. “Don't tell them who I really am. Use the U.N. cover. He already believes it, or he wouldn't have identified me that way. If the U.S. Army gets its hands on me for being AWOL…” He let the words hang in the air. He knew she understood the inevitable result: He would be stopped from pursuing the people who had killed Sophia. “Randi? Will you do that?”
She turned her angry, blazing eyes onto him. “Of course.”
He had to trust her, which suddenly made him very nervous. Together they raised the canvas that overlay the tailgate. Jon shot her a worried look as a short, swarthy man in desert camos came around from the side. He had the firm face and bunched muscles of someone religious in his fitness training. Carrying a cocked 9mm Beretta, he peered beyond them and their Kalashnikovs to the wounded policemen sprawled in the back of the truck.
He grinned approval. “Nice job. Two less for us to deal with.”
Smith and Randi jumped down, and Randi pumped Donoso's hand. “Always interesting, Donoso. This is Mark Bonnet.”
Jon exhaled, relieved, as she introduced him under the alias.
She gave him a polite smile, then returned to focus on Donoso. “Mark's here with a medical mission. Mark, meet Agent Gabriel Donoso. How the hell did you find us, Gabby?”
“Doc Mahuk called as soon as they grabbed you. Then one of our assets picked up the truck crossing the Tigris.” His gaze swept the night. “I'd love to catch up on old times, but someone could've heard the gunfire. We'd better do a fast fade.” He peered speculatively at Jon. “U.N. medical mission, huh?”
“CIA, I take it.” Jon shook his hand and smiled. “My personal appreciation for the CIA grows by the instant.”
Donoso nodded sympathetically. “Looks like you two have had a rough time.”
As Donoso led them around the truck, Jon saw an old Soviet BMP1 troop carrier whose sides had been stenciled with Republican Guard markings. Ruts showed where it had first been angled to block the road. Now its headlights shone directly onto the canvas-covered police truck. Sitting on the light desert soil with their backs against it were the surviving Baghdad policemen and their officer, who was bleeding from a shoulder wound and no longer sported his tariq pistol. Standing sentry were two CIA agents who might easily pass for Iraqis.
“Do you know what they were planning to do with us?” Smith asked Donoso.
“Yup. Get you deep out in the middle of nowhere, kill you, and hide your corpses where not even the Bedouins would dream of looking.”
Jon raised his eyebrows. He exchanged a look with Randi. It was no surprise.
Donoso said, “I need those Kalashnikovs, Mr. Bonnet. Both of them, little lady.”
As Randi and Jon handed over their weapons, Randi explained to Jon, “Donoso's an unrepentant male chauvinist pig. He knows better, but he just doesn't care. So he calls me little lady, or girlie, or sweetie-pie, or any other demeaning cliche he can dredge up from his rather ordinary redneck background.”
Donoso grinned widely. “She sticks to `pig breath.' She's got great legs but a limited imagination. Let's go. Into the carrier.”
“A limited imagination? Hey, I'm the one who saved your butt in Riyadh. Where's your respect?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Whoops. That occasion slipped my mind.” He added their AK-47s to a pile of other weapons taken from the Iraqi policemen. “See your guns in there?”
Jon quickly located his Beretta, while Randi dug around until she uncovered her Uzi. Donoso nodded approval and scrambled up into the carrier. Smith and Randi followed.
As they found places to sit, Jon nodded back at the prisoners. “What are you going to do about the Iraqis?”
“Nothing,” Donoso told him. “If they so much as hint about being out here on their own in a police truck, they'll get a fast trip to Saddam Hussein's gallows. No way are they going to breathe a word about what happened.”
Smith understood. “Which means they'd better have their own guns when they get back to headquarters.”
Donoso nodded. “You got it.”
While the prisoners glared up sullenly, the old troop carrier spun its treads into the parched soil and took off. Its speed increasing, the driver directed the big machine down the center of the narrow road that led deeper into the hard, rocky landscape. The moon was sinking in the west, while stars glimmered brightly above. Far ahead on the horizon were dry, rolling hills, black against an even blacker sky.
But Jon was watching behind. At last the Iraqis ran across the sand to the pile of guns and their truck. Now that the carrier was out of rifle range, they were safe to flee. Seconds later, their canvas-covered vehicle disappeared, raising mushroom clouds of light soil as it rushed back to Baghdad and, perhaps, survival.
“Where are we going?” Randi wanted to know.
“Old World War One outpost the Brits built,” Donoso answered promptly. “It's nothing but ruins now. A few tumbledown walls and desert ghosts. A Harrier will pick you up there at dawn and fly you out to Turkey.”
