'Help me! Get his keys!'
The Palestinian leaped forward, followed by the sergeant-foreman. All together, their shackled hands threw the MAC-10 machine pistol out of the way and ripped the keys from the guard's belt.
'I'll kill him now!' shrieked the harelipped zealot, grabbing the weapon and lurching forward in the swaying truck, the gun aimed at the guard's head.
'Stop him!' ordered Azra.
'Fool!' roared the sergeant-foreman wrestling the weapon away from the young fanatic. 'The driver will hear the shots!'
'He is our holy enemy!'
'He is our holy way out of here, you miserable idiot!' said Azra, unlocking Kendrick's shackles and handing Evan the key to do the same for him. The congressman from Colorado did so, then turned to the extended wrists of the sergeant-foreman.
'My name is Yosef,' said the older man. 'It is a Hebrew name for my mother was Hebrew, but we are not part of the Jews of Israel—and you are a brave man, Amal Bahrudi.'
'I don't like firing squads in the desert,' said Kendrick, throwing his shackles on the floor and turning to the young terrorist who would have killed the unconscious guard. 'I don't know whether to let you free or not.'
'Why?' shrieked the boy. 'Because I will kill for our holy war, die for our cause?'
'No, young man, because you might kill us and we're more valuable than you.'
'Amal!' cried Azra, gripping Evan's arm as much to steady himself as to compel Kendrick's attention. 'I agree he's an idiot but there are special circumstances. Settlers in the West Bank blew up his family's house and his father's clothing store. His father died in the explosion and Israel's Custodial Commission sold both properties to new settlers for next to nothing.' Blue lowered his voice, speaking into Kendrick's ear. 'He's a mental case but he had no one to turn to but us. Yosef and I will control him. Let him free.'
'On your head, poet,' answered Evan gruffly, unlocking the young terrorist's wrist irons.
'Why do you say a desert execution?' asked Yosef.
'Because the road beneath us is half sand, can't you feel it?' said Kendrick, knowing the route they were taking. 'We just disappear, burned or buried in the desert.'
'Why us?' pressed the older terrorist.
'I can explain me better than I can you: They don't know what to do with me, so why not just kill me. If I'm dangerous or influential, both the danger and the influence go with me.' Evan paused, then nodded his head. 'Come to think of it,' he added, 'that probably explains Yosef and the boy; they were the loudest prisoners in there and their voices were probably identified—both are easily distinguishable.'
'And me?' asked Azra, staring at Kendrick.
'I should think you could answer that without my help,' replied Kendrick returning the Palestinian's look, a degree of contempt in his eyes. 'I tried to break away from you when they came after me by the toilets, but you were too slow.'
'You mean they saw us together?'
'The student gets a barely passing grade. Not only together but away from everyone else. It was your conference, big shot.'
'The truck's slowing down!' exclaimed Yosef as the van braked slightly, heading into a descending curve.
'We have to get out,' said Evan. 'Now. If he's going down into a valley there'll be soldiers. Quickly! We want the high ground. We need it; we'd never climb back up.'
'The door!' cried Azra. 'It must be padlocked on the outside.'
'I have no idea,' Kendrick lied, following the scenario as it had been rapidly drawn up in the compound's laboratory. Rivets had been removed and loosened in two panels. 'I've never been taken prisoner here. But it doesn't matter. It's as heet-steel alloy with seams. The four of us rushing together can smash out a partition. The centre. It's the weakest.' Evan grabbed the harelipped boy by the shoulder, pulling him to his left. 'All right, wild man. Hit it like you're breaking down the Wailing Wall. The four of us!
