Guarding the Princess (2 page)

“You really trust me?”

“You sober?”

“For the moment.”

“Stay that way and I trust you. You’ll be well compensated.”

“Look, I don’t want your money, Sheik.” But truth was, Brandt did. He needed cash. He’d sunk everything into his farm, and to make ends meet he was forced to fly tourists out to game lodges across Botswana. A solid injection of capital would enable him to turn down the piloting work and stick to his land.

And he knew Omair would pay handsomely.

“Do this for me, Stryker, and next time I’ll owe
you.
Anything you want.”

Brandt laughed and hung up.

But he wasn’t laughing now. It was a restiveness he felt, a sixth sense of something bad closing in. Brandt had learned to trust that sense.

Quietly he left the bungalow and moved down through the shadows toward the
lapa.

The fencing along one side of the dining area was open to a low rock wall that dropped down into a grove of trees. Brandt crouched among the smooth roots of those trees, gun in hand as he scanned the group. He saw her instantly. Princess Dalilah Al Arif. An exotic bird in cocktail gold among a group of mostly middle-aged men gone soft around the center and flushed with booze.

She turned her pretty, dark head to listen attentively to a squat, lantern-jawed man at her side. In her left hand she held a drink and a diamond as big as a plum caught the firelight. If that was an engagement ring, where was her fiancé in shining armor now? Brandt wondered.

The firelight caught her face as she turned in his direction—dusky skin, smooth, her eyes like black shining pools made even darker and bigger with eyeliner. She gave the poor schmuck beside her a full-wattage princess smile.

The man held his drink up in a mock toast and Dalilah tossed back her mane of curls and laughed, showing the long column of her throat, the low cut of her gold cocktail gown, the outline of breasts that were small and firm looking. And as she crossed her legs, the slit in her gown fell open, exposing taut thighs, slender ankles, ridiculously high stiletto sandals in gold to match her dress.

She was a glimmering flame among these dull male moths bumping fruitlessly, and dangerously, against her fire. A tease, engaged to another man.

Brandt disliked—and distrusted—her immediately.

He studied the security detail behind her—two men, likely her own. His attention shifted to the Zimbabwe soldiers lining the fence.

He’d seen those same men sharing dark beer and a joint when he’d cased the lodge and outbuildings earlier. Their eyes now gleamed yellow in the firelight, skin shining, postures showing boredom. They wouldn’t be sharp. Even so, he had no intention of engaging these goons. They were most likely trained to shoot and kill on sight, no questions asked.

Shifting on his haunches to ease the stiffness of old injuries, Brandt moved his attention back to his target. She was still laughing, seductive. A temptress. The way Carla had been. He wondered why the men couldn’t see the calculated precision, the tightly scripted choreography of her movements. Bitterness filled his mouth. He’d been one of those blind men once. It wouldn’t happen again.

The food plates came and went. Drink flowed. Chatter grew loud. Stiffness cramped his limbs. Brandt cursed softly to himself—this could go on all night. Very slowly he reached into the side pocket in his cargo shorts and slipped out a silver hip flask. Cautiously, he unscrewed the cap, took a deep swig, relishing the hot burn of scotch blossoming through his chest as he settled in for the long haul, his back pressed against the smooth bark of the tree. And he told himself—seventy-two hours more, and his hands would be washed clean. His debt to Omair finally paid.

The music, the drumming, grew louder, faces more flushed, voices raucous. Vervet monkeys began to mimic the humans from the branches above, swooping in closer, hanging by their tails and using their long arms to steal food. And somewhere out in the veldt Brandt heard the first soft rumblings of thunder. Surprise rippled through him—this hadn’t been in the forecast. With his surprise came tension. A spring thunderstorm could bring early rain, flash floods, lightning and more fire.

He wanted to be up in the air and over Botswana airspace before any weather hit.

After-dinner liqueurs were now being poured. His patience grew thinner. He took another swig from his flask, pooling whiskey in his mouth, but before he could swallow, Brandt sensed something.

He held dead still, listening.

A crunch of flinty stone. The crack of dry twig. A softer warning chitter passing through the monkeys above.

All instincts sharp as razors, muscles primed, he concentrated on the ambient sounds under the bacchanalian clatter in the
lapa.

Another slight shuffle. Then a birdlike call, soft.

Human.

Slowly he swallowed his mouthful of booze, his mind sharp and clear as morning. He rose. And he could sense them approaching, surrounding. Hunters. Experienced.

Clicking the safety off his rifle, he felt for the hilt of the panga sheathed at his hip—a blade that widened and curved upward toward the tip, the weapon of choice during the Rwandan genocide—a common tool of African violence.

Then on the far side of the
lapa,
a crack of gunshot.

It echoed through hot, black air. Then followed an almost imperceptible moment of dead stillness as everything quieted and the
lapa
became a freeze-frame—shadows against flame as liqueur-addled minds tried to compute what was happening.

Another shot, and a yell. Then it erupted—men in black balaclavas wielding AK-47s, knives and machetes stormed the
lapa.
Bodyguards returned fire as guests screamed, diving for the ground, crawling under tables and through upturned chairs and over broken glass.

Brandt held back, quickly computing. The attackers numbered upward of a dozen, and they were mowing down everyone in their wake, blood flowing freely. But one man among them stood slightly apart from the others. He seemed to be searching for something, controlling the team. As the man turned, Brandt saw he had only one arm.

Amal Ghaffar.

The man laid eyes on Dalilah, pointed and yelled.

All attention seemed to turn to the princess, who was crawling under a table.

Brandt swung himself up over the low rock wall and, using tables for cover, ran toward her in a crouch. He ducked under the tablecloth. She was kneeling beside a prone man, pressing her hand tightly against his neck, her eyes wild with terror as the man’s blood pulsed thick through her fingers. Even in danger, she was trying to help.

She glanced up, saw Brandt, and a raw kind of rage twisted through her features as she reached for a fallen carving knife. Brandt raised his finger to his lips, shook his head. But her fist curled around the knife even as she pressed her other hand to the man’s neck.

Brandt crawled closer. “Leave him,” he whispered harshly. “He’s gone.”

Her gaze shot to the fallen man’s face and a shudder ran through her body. There was another volley of shots, screams, orders being barked in Arabic. Someone started to pull the table away. Bodyguards returned fire. A fresh burst of adrenaline kicked through Brandt’s blood.

No time to waste
.
He grabbed her arm, but she lashed at him with the carving knife, almost slicing across his biceps.

“Dalilah! Listen—”

Shock flashed through her face at the sound of her name, but she lunged at him anyway, this time the blade coming right for his heart. Jesus. Brandt rolled sideways, twisting her arm sharply back until the knife dropped from her fist and her cheek was forced flat against the ground. He hooked his arm around her neck. Squeezing tight, he held her head in position with his other hand until he felt her go suddenly limp. Then quickly he dragged her across the rough paving and rolled her over the low wall. Her body thudded softly onto grass on the other side.

But as Brandt began to scramble after her, a man in a balaclava dived at him. Brandt swung round, unsheathing his panga, and sliced the man clean across the throat. He saw the gaping maw of red and black where the neck had been, the white of spinal column. Hot blood gushed onto him as the man’s body slumped forward into his arms. Bile rose in Brandt’s throat and for a moment he was unable to move.

A fresh volley of gunfire shocked him back. Brandt pushed the man off, clambered over the wall and bent to pick up Dalilah. Slinging her limp body over his shoulders, he ducked into the shadows, disappearing into a night black and thick with the smell of fresh death and smoke.

As he ran, thunder rumbled again along the distant horizon, a little louder now.

Mosi oa Tunya,
he thought—the smoke that thunders. He repeated the mantra in his head as he ran through the bush, his burden heavy across his shoulders. He’d killed a man. He’d broken his vow of ten years.

She’d
made him do it.

The princess reminded him of a woman from his darkest past, and now she was hurtling him right back into the terrible black nightmare of it all. Nausea roiled. With it came rage.

Mosi oa Tunya. Mosi oa Tunya. Mosi oa Tunya.

But it was not enough to keep his demons at bay. Not enough to stop her assailants from coming after them.

And it was not enough to stop the storm he could now smell in the air. Thunder growled again over the Zimbabwe plains and a hot wind began to gust in a new direction. The fires would turn, too, now. He realized suddenly his GPS and sat phone were missing from his hip. Must’ve lost them in the tussle. No time to worry about it now. His only goal right now was to reach his Cessna, get up into the air and over the border before the weather—or Ghaffar—hit.

Something told Brandt he was not going to make it.

Chapter 2

F
irst there was only blackness, pain. Then as consciousness filtered back, Dalilah realized her head was hanging down, hair swinging, blood filling her cheeks, her body rhythmically bumping against something...

She was being carried over a man’s shoulders.

A twig sliced across her brow as her abductor began to descend a steep hill, stones clattering ahead of him. She tried to pull her vision into focus. It was night—dark, apart from moon and starlight. She could see the ground below, parts of her abductor’s body. His legs, boots. He was wearing safari shorts, thick socks, a machete at his hip.

Panic struck like a hatchet as memory slammed into her—the attack at the lodge. Men in hoods. Shooting, blood, screams. Barked Arabic commands. The delegate lying under the table, blood spurting from a gunshot wound in his neck. She realized with horror her fingers were still sticky with the man’s blood.

Leave him. He’s gone—
the fierce whisper of her attacker, his ice-blue eyes drilling into hers. Eyes so pale and luminous against his darkly tanned face it had frightened her. She’d tried to stab him with a carving knife, but he’d grabbed her around the neck, and her world had gone black.

He’d taken her!

Dalilah squeezed her eyes shut, trying to gather herself. Fight? Flee? But where to? She opened her eyes again and tried to carefully lift her head in order to assess more of her surroundings, but he felt her body stiffen because he said, “Don’t even try it. Don’t move. Fighting me will make it worse.”

His voice was rough, deep, and he spoke English with the flat, guttural accent of an Afrikaner. She knew the sound well—had spent several months in the country and had worked with an Afrikaans-speaking South African in New York.

“What do you want with me?” Her voice came out hoarse, her throat hurting where he’d strangled her.

“Hold still. My Cessna is just down there, on the plain.”

Fear spurted afresh through her, and she struggled wildly against his grip. “Who are you? Where are you taking me? If it’s ransom you want, I can—”

“Jesus, woman. I don’t want to hurt you—”

But she kicked at him hard, grabbing a handful of his short hair, twisting. He cursed viciously, swinging her forward and tossing her to the ground with a thud. Stones stabbed sharply into her back as breath whooshed out of her lungs with the impact. Dalilah’s eyes watered, pain sparking through her ribs.

“You bastard!” she hissed as soon as she managed a breath. “What do you want with me?”

“My name is Stryker—Brandt Stryker. Your brother sent me to get you.” He bent forward, hands on knees, struggling to catch his own breath. He was big. Well over six feet. Even in the milky starlight she could see he was fair. Square-jawed, broad-shouldered. Built. A rifle was strapped across his chest. His pale khaki shirt was dark with sweat, his sleeves ripped off at the shoulders, and she saw blood smeared down his arm.

Something in Dalilah stilled.

“My brother?” she asked quietly.

“Omair.”

“You
know
Omair?”

“Yes. I owe the damn sheik. Come on, get up. They’re going to be here any second.”

“Who!”

“Amal Ghaffar. Bloody one-armed jackal and his wild pack of dogs.”

Ice slid through her veins.
“Amal?”
Her voice came out a whisper. “The Moor’s son—he’s
alive?
”

Her assailant threw her an odd look and was silent for a beat.

“You didn’t know?”

Dalilah stared at him, thinking of the Arabic words she’d heard back at the
lapa.

He gave a snort. “Figures your brothers might keep that from you. Amal Ghaffar has been hiding in Africa for the past two years, ever since your other brother Tariq shot off his arm in France and he got himself onto the world’s most-wanted list. Omair has been hunting him via an underground mercenary network, but every time Omair’s men get close, Amal and his pack move first.”

Her abductor held his hand out to her.

Dalilah stared at it, anger curling into her chest.

“You’re saying my brothers knew all this time that Amal was out here, alive?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Princess. Look, we need to move. They’re going to be up our asses as soon as day breaks and they find our tracks.”

Dalilah got awkwardly to her feet. He caught her arm as dizziness spun her world and she stumbled. She held on to him, steadying herself as pain sparked through her head. She realized her cocktail gown was ripped up to her hip, her legs scraped. One of her stiletto heels had broken in half. But all paled in face of the words he’d just uttered.

“Why would they keep this from me?”

“Why don’t you ask them yourselves once we get out of here.” He tried to usher her forward, but she yanked free.

“Those other men—”

“They’re all Amal’s, a band of rogue mercs, and they want your blood, Dalilah. Omair got wind via the underground that a bounty has been put on your head. Amal wants it, literally, on a plate if he can’t kill you himself.”

Blood drained from her face. “How...how do I know you’re telling the truth, that you’re not—”

“You don’t,” he said brusquely. “But make up your mind fast, Princess. Because it’s me or those men, and I’m not waiting.” With that he spun around and started marching down the ridge alone, not even bothering to glance over his shoulder to see if she was coming.

Fear propelled her after him, her lopsided stiletto heels spiking deep into soft, drought-dry sand and making her stagger wildly. Thunder clapped suddenly overhead and Dalilah ducked, wincing as the sound reverberated right through her bones. Black clouds were beginning to blot out the stars—the storm was closing in.

“Wait!” she yelled, trying to run faster, floundering even more on her uneven heels. But he kept moving ahead of her at a clip.

“Storm’s coming,” he called over his shoulder. “Need to get the Cessna up and over the Tsholo River before it hits!”

“Where are we going?”

“Botswana.”

“I—” She lurched forward suddenly and slammed to the ground. She cursed, eyes watering as she scrambled back to her feet and ran after him again. “I need to go to Harare! You’ve got to take me to Harare!”

He stopped suddenly, spun round. “
Got
to?”

“I have to sign a major deal tomorrow.” She was panting now, breath raw in her throat. “For ClearWater. I need to—”

“You don’t get it, do you, Princess?” He pointed back up the ridge. “At first light—if not before—Amal and his men are going to find our tracks, and they’re going to follow them right here! If we don’t get into the air and over the border before that storm hits, or before they arrive, we’re outnumbered and outgunned, and you’re dead. I’m here to see that isn’t going to happen, which means the only place you’re going right now is to Botswana where I can protect you until Omair or his men come and take you off my hands.”

Anxiety, fear, desperation, failure—it all swamped through Dalilah at once, overwhelming her. “This deal,” she said softly, all the fight going out of her. “I’ve been working on it for four years now. If we don’t sign tomorrow...I...the villagers won’t get water....” Her voice cracked and tears spilled down her face. She sunk to the ground and buried her face in her hands.

Something seemed to shift in him, because he crouched in front of her and touched her arms, his palms rough against her skin.

“Dalilah,” he said quietly, “Those delegates aren’t signing anything tomorrow. They’re all dead.”

She couldn’t breathe. She started to shake as it truly sunk in what had just happened at the lodge.

“They died because they were there with you—those men mean business. Come, we need to move. Now.”

“Clean water,” she whispered. “Those people
need
water. This mining-rights deal was our way in to get it to them. It was the one thing—the
last
thing I could give them. My last mission.”

“Hey, look at me.” He tilted her face up, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were ghostly in the darkness.

“Get up onto those pretty, long legs of yours, and you’ll live to fight another day, because there
will
be another day, another deal.”

She wanted to say there wouldn’t. She’d be getting married. This had been her very last fight. Her swan song. And she’d lost. She’d lost it all.

“My Cessna is down there, see?”

She looked where he was pointing. Over the grassland in faint moonlight the fuselage of a small single-prop plane glinted. Then a cloud passed over the moon and darkness was complete—the plane seemed to vanish as she felt the hot breeze stiffen. Carefully she got to her knees, and then to her feet. He steadied her by the elbow as wooziness and nausea swept through her again.

“You ready?” he said.

Dalilah nodded. He regarded her for a moment, then said, “Stay right behind me, okay—that’s an order.” He clicked on a flashlight and started to walk.

She stumbled after him in the darkness, her brain reeling as she tried to process it all. For two full years she’d naively believed that peace had finally come to the Al Arif family and their desert kingdom of Al Na’Jar.

Now this.

The thought that her brothers had purposely misled her infuriated Dalilah beyond words. It had been like this all her life—the older alpha males in her family always trying to coddle and protect her, supposedly for her own good. Did they give her absolutely no credit? Did they not understand she could take measures to protect herself? That she held the same fierce allegiance to country as they did—and that she was marrying Haroun because of it?

Now Amal was after her blood and they’d dispatched this brusque brute of a male to “save” her.

“Hurry up!” he yelled over his shoulder as she began to lag behind.

She muttered a curse in Arabic, slowing even further in softer sand.

He stopped, spun round. “Jesus, Princess, do you want me to carry you, or what?” Frustration cut through his voice.

Refusing to dignify him with an answer, she stopped, bracing her hands on her hips as she tried to catch her breath.

“Okay, this is it.” He reached forward to grab her arm, but she jerked free of his grip, standing her ground. “You’re a patronizing misogynist, you know that?” she snapped. “Call me Princess one more time and I’ll take my chances with Amal and his men! Screw you and my brothers!”

She caught what looked like the glint of a smile crossing his face.

Her anger spiked. “They had no right to keep this from me!”

“Yeah, but they’re also paying my bills—and my job is to get you home alive.”

“I swear it, if you call me Princess one more time, you’ll be sorry.”

Brandt grabbed her hand. “Believe me, you’ll be more sorry if you stand here worrying about my manners.”

He began to drag her at a clip through the long grass toward his plane. But as they neared, Brandt felt a sudden prickling down the back of his neck. He stilled, stopping her. Something was off. Then as he squinted into the darkness, the sliver of moon broke momentarily through the clouds and he saw what his subconscious had already noticed—the propeller was gone. A cold dread sank through his chest.

Thunder growled softly over the plain, and a fork of lightning stabbed with a loud crack down to the earth, briefly and starkly illuminating the plane. Static raised the hair along his forearms.

“Get down to the ground,” he said quietly to Dalilah, eyes fixed on his plane as he doused his flashlight.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a lightning rod right now.”

Apparently sensing the shift in him, she acquiesced, crouching quietly to the soil in her torn gown. Brandt unhooked his rifle, clicked off the safety and just watched the Cessna for a few moments. Another flash of lightning forked over the grassland, and in that moment of brightness Brandt saw the Cessna’s doors and tail flaps were gone, too. But he could detect no movement around the plane.

“Wait here,” he said. “Don’t move.”

He slowly approached his little craft, wind beginning to buffet him, hot and full with the promise of rain. As he neared, his worst fears were confirmed. His craft had been stripped.

Another bolt of lightning cracked to the earth, and thunder boomed, echoing over and over again as it rolled into the distance. Sheet lightning glimmered behind clouds.

Climbing into his craft, Brandt used his flashlight to pan the interior. Seats had been ripped out, stuffing taken, the instrument panel denuded, the first-aid kit gone... Every piece had been ripped from the Cessna like meat from a carcass.

Now he had no navigation equipment, no form of communication. No water, food or first aid. No gear for his principal. Something in Brandt froze as he realized he was thinking in the terminology of his old profession. His stomach turned oily and he closed his eyes, starting to shake internally as he recalled the gaping maw that had been the throat of the man he’d just killed.

Murdered.

Another human.

It used to be so easy. Simple. He used to fight with such clear purpose.

With a trembling hand Brandt reached for his hip flask, took a deep swig, then another. He stayed crouched in his stripped plane like that for a moment, eyes closed, letting the whiskey flush through and calm him. Then his eyes flashed open.

He would not let it happen again. He could not lose another principal. Another woman in his care. Especially one who reminded him so sharply of Carla, of his mistake, of his spiraling descent into pure madness. It would kill him this time.

That left him with only one option—forge ahead and get this mission over with. But it sure as hell wasn’t going to take a mere seventy-two hours now. They would have to trek on foot to the Tsholo River, which lay at least twenty klicks to the west. And they’d never reach the dry riverbed before the rain hit. If the storm was bad, or if it was already raining heavily farther upriver, it could mean dangerous flash floods as the seasonal waters came down.

Then if they did manage to cross the Tsholo, on the Botswana side they’d face miles and miles of hazardous terrain populated with all manner of wild animals. Bushfire could also become a hazard, given the shifting winds. Plus, they’d have to stay ahead of Amal’s pack, and Amal likely had a combat tracker on his team.