emphatic as the old man.
'And parade themselves in the Swiss courts? Somehow I doubt it.'
The Cobra helicopter without markings stuttered across the desert at an altitude of less than five hundred feet. Evan and Khalehla, exhausted from nearly twenty-six hours in the air and racing to covert connections on the ground, sat next to each other, Rashad's head on Kendrick's shoulder, his own slumped down into his chest; both were asleep. A man in belted khaki overalls with no insignia walked out of the flight deck and down the fuselage. He shook Evan's arm in the dim light.
'We'll be there in about fifteen minutes, sir.'
'Oh?' Kendrick snapped up his head, blinking his eyes and opening them wide to rid them of sleep. 'Thanks. I'll wake my friend here; they always do things before arriving anywhere, don't they?'
'Not this “they”,' said Khalehla out loud without moving. 'I sleep to the very last minute.'
'Well, forgive me, but I don't. I can't. Necessity calls.'
'Men,' remarked the agent from Cairo, removing her head from his shoulder and shifting to the other side of the seat and into the bulkhead. 'No control,' she added, her eyes still closed.
'We'll keep you posted,' said the Air Force flight officer, laughing quietly, and returning to the deck.
Sixteen minutes passed and the pilot spoke over the intercom. 'Flare spotted directly ahead. Buckle up for touchdown, please.' The helicopter decelerated and hovered over the ground, where the headlights of two cars facing each other had replaced the flare. Slowly, the chopper was lowered into its threshold. 'Depart the aircraft as quickly as possible, please,' continued the pilot. 'We have to get out of here fast, if you catch my drift.'
No sooner had they stepped down the metal ladder to the ground than the Cobra, its rotors thundering, rose in the night sky; it turned, stuttering in the desert moonlight, kicking up what sand there was, and headed north, accelerating rapidly, the noise receding in the darkness above. Walking into the beams of a car's headlights was the young sultan of Oman. He was in slacks, an open-necked white shirt replacing the New England Patriots football jersey he had worn that first night he met with Evan in the desert sixteen months ago.
'Let me talk first, okay?' he said, as Kendrick and Rashad approached.
'Okay,' replied Kendrick.
'First reactions can be not too smart, agreed?'
'Agreed,' agreed Evan.
'But I'm supposed to be smart, right?'
'Right.'
'Still, consistency is the product of small minds, isn't that so?'
'Within reasonable boundaries.'
'Don't qualify.'
'Don't you play lawyer. The only bar you ever passed was with Manny in Los Angeles.'
'Why, that hypocritical Israeli nut—’
'At least you didn't say Jew.'
'I wouldn't. I don't like the sound of it any more than I like the sound of “dirty Arab”… Anyway, Manny and I didn't pass too many bars in LA that we didn't go into.'
'What's your point, Ahmat?'
The young ruler breathed deeply and spoke quickly. 'I know the whole story now and I feel like a damned idiot.'
'The whole story?'
'Everything. That Inver Brass crowd, Bollinger's munitions bandits, that bastard Hamendi who my royal Saudi brothers in Riyadh should have executed the moment they caught him… the whole ball of wax. And I should have known you wouldn't do what I thought you did. “Commando Kendrick” versus the rotten Arab isn't you, it never was you… I'm sorry, Evan.' Ahmat walked forward and embraced the congressman from Colorado's ninth district.
'You're going to make me cry,' said Khalehla, smiling at the
