Enough rain for crops and grazing for animals as large as elephants; there were even forest areas.”
“Hard to believe,” said Holliday. They were pulling up on a battered tan Land Rover that looked like it belonged in a World War Two movie.
“Some geologists see the Sahara as a living thing, moving slowly from west to east and north to south. There’s a whole school of thought that says the Sahara is on a cyclical schedule, growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking over millions of years.”
A hundred yards ahead of them the Land Rover suddenly lurched and then swerved, striking the low railing of a bridge spanning a dry waterbed far below.
“Holy crap!” Peggy said.
The Land Rover climbed the rail, swung sideways and then toppled off the bridge. Rafi quickly checked the rearview, then braked. They were a few yards onto the bridge.
“Flat tire?” Rafi said.
“Maybe,” answered Holliday. He looked around. The only feature on the trackless desert was a low, stony ridge away to their right.
“What do we do?” Peggy said.
“We see if anyone survived,” Holliday said. He pushed open the door and stepped out onto the road. The heat hit him like a slap in the face. “Bring some rope,” he said over his shoulder to Rafi. He slammed the door and sprinted across the deserted highway to the bridge abutment.
Holliday stared down into the shallow gorge. The old Land Rover was on its back like a turtle, smoke and steam wafting up from the rear of the vehicle. Quickly, Holliday estimated the distance from the bridge to the hard-packed bottom of the ancient watercourse; the Land Rover had fallen at least thirty or forty feet. In this part of the world, the chance that it was equipped with seat belts was nonexistent, which meant that the driver and whatever passengers were accompanying him would have been thrown around like dice in a craps cup. The odds of anyone surviving the fall were slim.
Rafi appeared with a skein of rope.
“How much is there here?” Holliday asked.
“Twenty-five meters.” Eighty feet.
“Should be enough.”
Holliday looped a quick double-figure-eight knot around one of the bridge rail pipes, pulled it taut, then eased himself over the edge. The side of the shallow gorge was a mixture of rock, baked mud and crumbling sand. Without the rope, getting down to the overturned Rover would have been impossible. He reached the bottom and stepped back, looking upward.
Rafi was already on the rope, the first-aid kit from the Land Cruiser dangling from his shoulder on its strap. Holliday didn’t wait. He crossed the cracked-mud surface of the bottom of the gorge and approached the overturned Rover. The driver’s-side door hung open, twisted and bent. Smoke and steam were coming up out of the crumpled engine compartment.
He reached the door and squatted down. The windshield was shattered, covering the driver in a glittering shroud. The man’s eyes were closed and there was blood coming out of his mouth and nose. There was also a large bloodstain on the front of the man’s tan shirt. The stain went from the left center of the man’s chest and spread down his shirt to the belt of his shorts.
The man was still breathing, but only barely. Holliday gently eased him out of the vehicle and onto the sand. It was at that point that Holliday saw the ragged hole in the back of the seat and the matching entry wound in the man’s back.
“We’ve got trouble,” he said as Rafi joined him. “He’s been shot, whoever he is. Large-caliber through the back of the seat and into his lungs.”
“Bandits?” Rafi asked. He paled and looked back up to the top of the gorge. “Peggy!”
“Not bandits,” said Holliday. “Bandits aren’t that accurate. This was an assassination. There’s a pro out there somewhere.”
“We’ve got to get him to some kind of hospital.”
“Move him and he’s dead,” said Holliday. There was a cold distance in his voice. He’d seen this kind of thing too often to disguise it with platitudes. The bullet had probably chewed up the man’s insides like a Weedwacker.
“Why this guy?” Rafi asked, stunned. He stared at the man, listening to the bubbling, ragged breath.
“Get his wallet; find out who he is.”
Holliday ducked back into the overturned truck; he’d seen two things of interest when he dragged the body out: an old, well-worn leather dispatch case and the familiar shape of a canvas rifle case. He tossed the dispatch case out through the open doorway, then clambered farther into the interior of the truck and grabbed the rifle case. He wriggled backward, hanging on to the gun case, and ducked out into the open. Rafi was leaning over the wounded man, listening intently. As Holliday opened the back flap of the gun case he heard a shouting voice echoing from above.
“What’s going on down there?”
Holliday looked up to see Peggy, camera slung around her neck, peering over the bridge rail.
“Get down!” Holliday yelled.
“Peggy!” Rafi yelled, still crouched over the dying man.
There was a clanging sound and the whine of a bullet ricocheting off one of the bridge stanchions less than a foot from where she was standing. A split second later echoed the cracking sound of the gunshot. Peggy screamed and jerked back.
“Get behind the truck!” Holliday yelled. Peggy didn’t need to be told twice. She dropped out of sight. Holliday pulled the gun out of its case. The weapon was an old-fashioned Winchester 76 complete with a modern Swift 687M telescopic sight and a canvas sling. Holliday rummaged around in the case and came up with a fistful of rounds. The original caliber had been 45.40 but these shells looked like.357 magnums. He took a long, desperate minute to slide the rounds into the loading port.
“He’s dead,” said Rafi, staring down at the body of the man from the Rover.
Holliday slung the loaded rifle over his shoulder. “We’re not.” He headed for the rope and then began to climb.
“Son of a bitch!” Mike Harris stared through the big Steiner binoculars at the road below. He was flat on his belly at the top of the ridge above the bridge. Seeing Holliday getting out of the Land Cruiser was like a nightmare come to life.
“What’s the matter?” said the man with the rifle, lying beside him. His name was Pieter Jonker, an ex-Project Barnacle assassin provided by Faulkener. “I got the
“You missed the woman, you idiot!”
“I wasn’t hired to shoot the
Harris kept his eyes glued to the binoculars. He saw Holliday crawl up over the top of the gorge, something slung over his back.
“You want him dead, too?” Jonker asked, his eye up to the rifle scope.
“Shoot!” Harris bellowed.
Jonker squeezed the trigger of the Truvelo CMS rifle. A puff of sand erupted inches from Holliday’s head.
The sound of the rifle hammered painfully in Harris’s ear. He winced. When his eyes opened again Holliday was gone.
“God damn it! You missed again!” Harris yelled.
Suddenly the top of the sandy ridge exploded an inch away from Harris and his companion. A rock chip tore a gash in Harris’s cheek. A split second later the sound of four or five rapidly fired rounds reached them. In an instant Jonker was wriggling backward down the back slope of the ridge.
“Get back here!”
“I signed on to shoot, not to get shot at,” said Jonker, scuttling backward, leaving the heavy weapon behind.
