Everybody nodded.
“Excellent. Let’s hit the sand.”
11
The desert outside of Cairo was as desolate as the Saudi Arabian wasteland only a hundred kilometers farther east. As Wolfgang stepped out of the 4Runner, a blast of sandy wind tore at his clothes and ripped the door from his hand. He blinked back the dust, then quickly pressed sunglasses onto his face. Megan appeared a moment later, dressed in canvas pants and a loose canvas jacket that barely concealed the pistol she wore in a shoulder holster.
Wolfgang glanced back into the 4Runner and saw Kevin at the wheel, eyeing him with that frosty glare again.
What’s with this guy?
“Charlie One, sitrep,” Edric called.
Wolfgang looked involuntarily to the sky, but he couldn’t see Lyle’s drone. It was either too high to make out or lost in the glare of the desert sun.
“We’re half a klick offsite,” Megan said. “Moving in now.”
“Copy that. Charlie Two, remain on standby.”
Wolfgang looked to Kevin again and wondered if he was angry because Edric had become comfortable with pairing himself and Megan while leaving Kevin for backup support. Kevin’s operational specialty was combat, which most of their missions required little of. That left Kevin doing the grunt work—driving, setting off fire alarms, picking up Chinese food. It had to suck, but Wolfgang didn’t have time to worry about it. He liked being on the leading edge of the action. He liked the thrill, the danger, and the pressure.
Most of all, he liked being close to Megan.
The two stepped away from the road and started into the sand. Cairo International Airport lay only a few kilometers to the northwest, and Wolfgang could hear the roar of a jet preparing for takeoff. He saw the glittering towers of Cairo rising from the desert. The city was a stark contrast to the desolation directly ahead and to his right. As they topped a slight rise in the sand, they paused, and Wolfgang held a hand over his eyes, sure that he was being blinded by the sun, in spite of his sunglasses.
But the yellow blob in front of him wasn’t blindness—it was desert. Stretching out to the north and to the east for miles on end, the desolation was almost complete. Fields of packed sand, windblown and empty, were broken only by crisscrossing dirt roads and small compounds of industrial buildings. A few personal vehicles and an occasional semi-truck crawled toward Cairo in the distance, and a black exhaust rose from a tower in the middle of one of the complexes. Otherwise, the desert was as vacant as an ocean.
And so damn large.
Wolfgang let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
Megan dug a pair of binoculars out of her pack and scanned the desert. She adjusted the focus on the binoculars from time to time as she panned to different points in the sand. Then Wolfgang saw her back stiffen just a little.
She leaned forward, adjusting the focus again. “Charlie Eye,” she said. “Did Pollins own a car?”
There was a pause over the coms as Lyle checked his notes. “Let’s see . . . Um, yeah. A two thousand four Chevy Cobalt. Grey. Usually parked at the museum. Why?”
Megan lowered the binoculars and broke into a fast walk back toward the 4Runner. “Because I see it.”
“Drive!” Megan said, slamming the door of the 4Runner. Kevin had already started the engine and was shoving the SUV into gear before Wolfgang even shut his door. They bumped off the road and into the desert, cresting the small rise Megan and Wolfgang had just stood on, before dipping into the valley beyond. Dust exploded around the 4Runner’s tires, clouding the side windows in mere seconds as Wolfgang clutched the back of Megan’s seat and tried to keep his head from slamming into the ceiling.
“What did you see?” Wolfgang asked.
Megan ignored the question, guiding Kevin across the surface of the desert with a pointed finger. Wolfgang leaned between the two front seats and watched as the landscape unfolded in front of them. From a distance, everything looked flat, but closer in the desert was an uneven expanse of dips and rises, with small ravines and random pits sprinkled among them. Kevin had to turn rapidly on a number of occasions to avoid ramming one wheel of the 4Runner into a hole, but they gradually approached the spot Megan identified, and then Wolfgang saw the car.
It sat behind a sharp rise, sheltered from view except for the right rear quarter panel and wheel. The car was a dark grey four-door, small enough that the rise completely covered the front two-thirds of it. Kevin stomped on the brakes, and the 4Runner ground to a halt fifty yards away. Megan reached for the door handles, but Kevin held up a hand.
“Wait.” He dug beneath the driver's seat and produced an AR-15 rifle with a shortened barrel and a collapsible stock. With a quick flip of his hand, Kevin deployed the stock, then chambered a round. “Charlie Lead,” Kevin said, his voice calm but commanding. “We’ve located a grey Chevy Cobalt matching the description of Pollins’s car.”
“Copy that, Charlie Two. Charlie Eye has a view from the drone. The vehicle appears to be abandoned, but we can’t tell for sure.”
“Understood,” Kevin said. “We’ll check it out on foot.”
“Copy that. Take it slow.”
The group piled out of the SUV, and Wolfgang unbuttoned his shirt to make sure his Berretta was accessible. It rode beneath his arm, a friendly and reassuring lump next to his side. His heart pounded as the three of them fanned out, taking the car from different angles. Kevin led, his shoulders low and the rifle riding just beneath his line of sight. Every move he made was elegant and balanced, and Wolfgang wondered what Kevin had done prior to joining Charlie Team.
This isn’t
