Final Flight

message. Yes, paradise will be green and flowering, with pools of clear water and abundant grass and majestic trees that reach deep into the earth and drink of Allah’s bounty. And the believers shall spread their rugs on the grass in the shade of the trees and make their prayers to Allah, the all-merciful, all-compassionate. Truly, man loves best what he has not.

* * *

The stars had begun to fade one by one. Time dragged on slowly. Then he realized he could distinguish the outline of the top of the escarpment from the lighter black of the sky. Even as he watched, the relief became bolder and the sky beyond began to gray.

He left the camel and crawled toward the edge. The wadi below was still enshrouded in darkness. Behind him he heard the camel rise, then urinate, groaning against the rag around its muzzle.

He stared expectantly into the wadi, trying to distinguish features as the eastern sky changed from gray to a pale, thin blue. He listened intently, trying to hear something, anything, but all he could hear was the pounding of his heart. Finally the top of the sun flamed the stones around him. The wadi was still impenetrably dark.

He saw the flash in the wadi and heard the bullet slap the stone near him at precisely the same instant. Then he heard the shot, a flat crack that boomed off the rock and died, leaving a deeper silence. He couldn’t fire back because he might hit the camels. He backed away from the edge and felt his stinging cheek. A piece of stone or shard of lead had caused it to bleed. So this is how it feels!

He changed positions, surprised at how alive and vigorous he felt. He would not die. Even if he did, he was vibrantly alive now, aware of everything, a part of the universe.

When he looked again over the lip of the rock, he could see the hobbled camel in the sandy bed of the wadi, which was lined with boulders larger than a tent. There were four camels. He gently eased the rifle forward and thumbed off the safety.

He saw a head, searching again for him. He lined up the Enfield and tried to quell his rapid breathing. The rifle fired before he was ready.

The weapon slammed back against his shoulder. He crawled backward away from the edge, the barrel of the heavy rifle dragging against the rock.

“You are surrounded!” His uncle was shouting. “Lay down your rifles and step out and you will live. Allah is merciful.”

“We have the water.” The voice was high-pitched, a boy’s voice.

“Surrender or die!”

“You will kill us anyway.”

“I swear by the Prophet. If you surrender, you live.”

Qazi crawled back to the edge and looked down.

“As Allah wills it,” the boy said, barely audible. He and his companion stepped from behind the rocks. Only one of them had a rifle. He tossed it on the ground before them.

* * *

“I don’t think anyone is coming, Colonel,” Ali said.

“Perhaps later. Relieve the men on the roofs when you relieve the perimeter guards.” This was done every two hours.

“Who could it have been?”

“Anybody,” Qazi shrugged. “Even curious neighbors.” He glanced at his watch. It was three-thirty. He stood and picked up the radio on the table. “I am going upstairs to sleep. Wake me at five o’clock. Put only men who are not going with us on guard duty. All the others should meet in the dining room at five for a briefing.”

* * *

Jake threw the telephone receiver onto its cradle with a bang. “The whole damned afternoon wasted, all because of him!”

“Now, Jake,” Callie said, “don’t be nasty. It’s not Toad’s fault.” They had ridden the same ferry back from Capri that they had ridden over, and Jake had stopped by fleet landing and talked to the ship by radio. He had spoken to the XO, Ray Reynolds, and told him of Callie’s suspicions about Judith Farrell, Lieutenant Tarkington’s new flame. He had left word that Toad was to personally call Captain Grafton at his hotel. And Jake had asked to be telephoned when Lieutenant Tarkington was located.

In the lobby the Graftons had telephoned Judith Farrell’s room, but no one answered. They had even gone to the fourth floor and knocked on the door. All to no avail.

“They say he isn’t aboard. They’ve just figured out that he had liberty all day and cycled through the ready room at ten o’clock, on his way ashore again. No one knows where he is.”

“How about the Shore Patrol?”

“Reynolds has already alerted them. If they run across him, they’re to secure his liberty and send him back to the ship immediately, after he calls me.”

“Surely you don’t think Judith is behind the disappearance of those petty officers?”

“I don’t know what to think. Goddammit, I don’t have enough facts to do any thinking with. Sailors are over the hill. Sailors go over the hill all the time when the ship is in port. The captain has a big mast when we get underway and kicks a lot of kids’ butts for overstaying liberty. But petty officers rarely do that. And Judith has a funny accent — a faint, funny accent that only a linguist can hear. She’s not what she says she is and she’s not in her room and she was aboard the ship in Tangiers. And Toad can’t be immediately located. So what does it all add up to?”

“Nothing.”

“Maybe. Or it may mean Judith has been a part of a ring kidnapping American sailors. Maybe she’s a terrorist. Toad could be her next victim. Maybe she just has a speech impediment. Or that pussy-hound Tarkington may have her flat on her back this very minute and be fucking her silly. Goddamn if I know.” He threw himself into a chair.

“So what do we do next?”

“I’m all out of ideas. What do you suggest?”

Callie stood and examined herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. She tucked in a stray lock of hair. “Well, let’s go have a drink someplace and contemplate where we’ll go for dinner.”

“Leave Toad to his horrible fate, huh?”

“You’ve done all you can. But at heart Judith is a very nice young woman and Toad is a nice young man. I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

“Aaaahg! Women! Why don’t you panic like you’re supposed to?” She grinned at him. “How men ever managed to keep women from running the world, I’ll never know.” Jake grabbed the room key from the desk. “Com’on, I’m tired of sitting around the hotel.”

As he stabbed the button for the elevator, Jake muttered, “The whole afternoon down the tube. By God, I hope that horny bastard catches the clap.”

“Jacob Lee Grafton! You do not! Now calm down and stop that cussing!”

18

Toad Tarkington sat at the bar of the Vittorio and watched the desk in the lobby reflected in the mirror. He had sipped his way through two slow beers and now a third beer sat untouched on the table before him. He was hungry and tired and discouraged. Maybe she would never come. But why hadn’t she checked out of her room? Sooner or later she had to come to that desk and ask for messages or check out.

Behind him a crowd was gathering. It looked like a wedding reception. Men in formal dress and women in sharp fashions gathered around a table of hors d’oeuvres against the back wall. The bartender passed drinks across the counter to the lively crowd. The volume was rising. Toad didn’t understand a word of it. Couples entering the lounge kept obscuring his view, but he kept his eyes on the mirror anyway.

When he could stand it no longer, he used the house phone on the end of the bar and dialed her room.