they ambled to the door.
She predicted they would gasp when they viewed the carnage she had wrought in the kitchen.
They gasped.
And she needed no further demonstration that she was a woman of her word, that she would kill them if they didn’t cooperate.
She’d parked her rental car around the corner but decided on the spot that they would take Southland’s sedan and make at least one more car exchange that she’d arrange with Patti. She dug into the dead man’s pocket, tugged out his keys, and ordered Chopra and the boy into the car, with Chopra at the wheel. She and the boy climbed into the backseat.
“Just get us out of here. Now,” she ordered. “South, toward Dover.”
He started the car and pulled out. She kept the pistol aimed at the back of his head and flicked her gaze to the boy. “All right, I want to know everything.”
Before Chopra could answer, engines roared overhead, and she leaned down to watch a squadron of fighter planes streaking away.
“Something’s happening,” said Chopra. “Something very big and very bad.”
“What do you want with us?” asked Hussein.
She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re just baggage.”
“You want him?” The boy sounded confused.
“Chopra, why don’t you tell him about the secrets you carry? You’re one of the last keys left. Maybe the only one. From what I’ve read, the boy’s father was very paranoid that way, and there were very few who knew.”
The boy snorted. “What’re you talking about?”
“Come on, Chopra, tell him why I’ve come,” she urged the old man.
“She’s here because the Russians want what is left of Dubai for their own. They think they can decontaminate the oil and gain even more control over the European market. But they’re overzealous fools, and they’ll suffer another defeat — even worse than their invasion of Canada.”
“You think I’m working for the Russians?” she asked, almost chuckling. “No worries there, old man. Those days are long gone. Long gone.”
“Then who are your employers, and what do they want?”
“We know about the secret reserves. We know about the gold. And you’ll get us into the vault.”
“So you’ve come to rob Dubai of what little it has left? That won’t happen. Dubai will rise again. And I’ll die before I see you inside the vault.”
She took a long breath. “You’ll come around. A man like you does not respond well to torture.”
“He’s not the only one who can get you into the vault.”
“Shut up, boy, you’re bluffing.”
“What I mean to say is yes, there aren’t many who can get you inside, but once you’re in, he can’t give you the locations to the oil reserves, the ones my father kept secret. He doesn’t know the password, and he wouldn’t pass the DNA scan. Only someone with my family’s blood can give you what you want. I’ve been there. My father was very careful about this. He taught me a lot. I know exactly what to do. I’ve never forgotten.”
“This is a good story to help keep you alive, huh?” she asked. “You want me to think you’re valuable. That’s pretty clever for a little boy who knows more about video games than the real world.”
“He’s more valuable to our world than you know,” snapped Chopra.
“To be frank, I agree,” she answered, probably stunning him, though she couldn’t see his expression. “Let Dubai return to the world’s economy. In fact, I’d like to see the emirates return to power and undermine the Russian economy. I’d like to see Mother Russia fall to her knees. But I still want the gold and the locations of the oil reserves.”
“I’m willing to negotiate,” said Hussein.
“No, you’re not!” cried Chopra. “There’s no negotiation with this… this terrorist!”
“Shut up, old man, does it look like we have a choice here?” shouted Hussein. “Now listen to me, Snow Maiden, or whatever your name is, he can get you the gold but not the oil. I’ll give you the locations, but you’re going to split that gold with me.”
She marveled over the boy’s naivete and actually found it as charming as it was pathetic. “Okay,” she said quickly. “I’m willing to do that.”
“Very well, then. We have a deal.”
“There’s no deal, Hussein. You don’t know who she’s working with. We’re not giving her anything. And that gold doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to your country and to the other nations who’ve made deposits.”
“If you don’t deal with me, then you’ll both die,” she told them. “And Dubai will perish with you. At least if you work with me there’s a chance the country will return to power. I have friends who can help. We have the same goals, just different methods of achieving them.”
“Are you listening to her, Chopra? I’m sixteen. I’m not going to die. Now you work for me, old man. You take orders from me! And this is what we’re going to do!”
“Don’t make this mistake,” Chopra said. “Let me talk to you alone. Let me tell you about what your father really wanted. Let me share with you my own dreams for our country.”
“
“Yes. Ours.”
“You’re from India.”
“But my heart is in Dubai, with you. Don’t make this deal with the devil. You haven’t given me a chance to speak with you, to express your father’s wishes, to share with you all the things — all the dreams — he shared with me.”
The Snow Maiden grinned darkly at the boy. “He’s quite dramatic. This is, in the end, nothing more than business. And we both know that.”
“Dubai will never rise again,” said Hussein. “It’s nuked. It’s dead. Just a contaminated junkyard.”
“Please, Hussein, you can’t think that way,” said Chopra. “You must listen to me!”
“All I can do now is take some of that gold and try to build a future for myself and my sisters. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Do you hear me, Chopra?”
“No, you’re wrong. This is wrong! Please, Hussein, I’m begging you…”
“No more talk, old man,” said the Snow Maiden. “The young sheikh has made up his mind.”
Brent sprayed himself a tight path through the burning grass, then tossed the extinguisher down to Heston, who seized it and continued hosing down the hatch area.
With his eyes tearing heavily, Brent hoisted the still-unconscious Park over his shoulders and, with Lakota’s help, climbed out of the Sphinx and began running through the foam-covered path paralleled on both sides by rising flames. Brent could do little more than run half-blind, the footfalls and screams and pounding of his heart driving him on as once more images of fireballs swelled in his mind’s eye. Oh, yes, there in his mind, the images were quite clear.
That blaze of glory he sought was suddenly not far out of reach. He realized the grass fire would ignite the fumes inside the Sphinx’s ruptured fuel tanks. And within a few more seconds twin booms resounded behind him, followed by a concussion that swept him off his feet. He smashed into the ground, and Park went tumbling off his back.
Copeland was at his side as he hit the ground. Brent rolled over and rubbed his eyes. “I’m good. It’s Park! It’s Park!”
“Roger that, sir, I got him.”
As the medic began to examine Park, Brent sat and his vision began to clear. He was trying to catch his breath but almost lost it again as he took in his surroundings.
The landscape had contorted into a postapocalyptic charcoal painting, with a ribbon of mottled white separating two fields of unrelenting fire. Those fields swept out toward a greater curtain of flames beneath which lay the shattered remains of the Sphinx, its rotors tipped forward into the dirt but still rotating like a pair of massive grass edgers. The fuselage had split in two and was bathed in orange and blue beneath the faint shadow of the wings, one intact, the other hanging half off at an improbable angle. A mound of still-settling earth completely obscured the aircraft’s nose, where yet another dust cloud was still rising into the air.
