Out of Sight (20 page)

Six-fifty.

Six…

"Thank you." She fired, hitting Mr. Mole bull's-eye. A good, clean shot was messy. A dermatologist would've done a better job, and the man's life expectancy would've been guaranteed. Unfortunately for him she wasn't a dermatologist. When she removed a malignancy, it was fatal.

She fired again, a deterring pattern, and the man's camel veered off from the others and went plodding off, back the way they'd come. Mr. Mole's companions split up, their camels drifting apart until ten yards or so separated them. As if making them harder to hit than when in a group. Instead, they'd just made it easier forAJ.

Behind her, Kane continued firing the AK-47. Awkward without room to maneuver. But they managed to eliminate several of the bad guys in a one-two burst of fire that seemed perfectly synchronized and well choreographed.

Five hundred feet.

As their attackers closed the gap, AJ counted fifteen-plus men… Shit, no—
eighteen.
She and Kane were pitifully outnumbered and needed an advantage. She glanced around. Cover. They needed cover. And fast.

Four hundred feet… "Holy dromedary, Batman. Their camels must be on speed! Kika's never moved
that
fast."

" 'Specially carrying two." Kane didn't sound particularly perturbed. "There's a rocky outcrop about half a click ahead," he shouted, still firing.

A hole appeared in AJ's sleeve as if by magic, missing her arm by a cotton thread. She felt the cold heat of the bullet passing over her skin. Her heart leaped into her throat, and sweat broke out on her brow, but she ignored it. She fired again. And again.

"The brothers have headed over there to high ground," Kane shouted. "Kika, get the lead out.
Har-eeb! Har-eeb! Har-eeb!
"

Apparently, Kika, bless her little camel heart, didn't like the noise of bullets whizzing by, and picked up the pace, breaking into a clumsy, swaying gallop, which made their aim even iffier. Still, AJ got another three bad guys in quick succession. Kane, two.

"Damn, we're good," she shouted, feeling the rush of doing her job and doing it well.

"Don't count your tangos before they fall," Kane shouted back, firing an impressive round and still managing to support AJ with his thighs so she didn't fall off the careening camel.

The men were a lot closer.

Four hundred yards and closing.

She aimed for the lead camel, a bigger target, and hoped it would be a clean kill. She loved animals, so it was a tough, but necessary, shot. The shot was true. The camel and rider went down in a heap and were promptly trampled by the camel and rider behind them. AJ winced as she got off another series of shots. One more down. This time she aimed at the human vermin.

The air smelled of cordite, gun oil, and hot metal.
Better than Chanel,
AJ thought with satisfaction, as another bad guy dropped off his camel like a fly. The camel continued running.

Kika let out a god-awful loud, braying cry as a bullet winged her right flank. The poor beast, burdened by two riders, picked up even more speed. This time in sheer terror.

Plod-plop-plop-plod-plodplopplopplod, faster and faster.

AJ was flung against Kane as Kika started to climb. He pushed her back with the butt of the AK-47 and held her there until she centered herself on the saddle.

"I'm good," she told him as soon as she felt balanced. She resumed firing. She felt the hardness of the stock on her shoulder as Kane paused, making sure she wasn't about to tumble to the rocky ground. "I'm good," she repeated, and Kane grunted before twisting around to get off a few shots himself.

The small hill was an island in the middle of a sand sea. The rocks dry and crumbling beneath Kika's feet as she did a mad scramble to safety, scattering bits of rock and showering the desert behind them with sprays of sand and gravel.

Several hundred yards away, in a small depression of rock, the brothers hunkered down out of range. Kane could just see the tops of their camels' heads.

They came to a small, flat area. "Down, girl," Kane instructed Kika, nudging the camel hard with his foot. She immediately rocked forward and then back, folding her legs beneath her.

AJ and Kane swung their legs over the animal's back before flattening themselves on the ground on top of the rocks and pebbles. In his peripheral vision, Kane saw a head pop up.

"Keep your heads down," he shouted in Arabic. The brothers didn't need to be told twice—they ducked, and stayed out of sight. "Call Kika," he added.

One of the boys whistled long and sharp, and Kika lumbered to her feet and sauntered up and over the rocks to safety.

Kane reloaded, glanced at AJ, then continued to get off several rounds as she did the same. While her appearance wasn't exactly by the book by any stretch of the imagination, Kane was hard-pressed to imagine anything sexier than AJ with her red hair wild and tangled around her shoulders, and her eyes glittering with excitement as she lay flat on her stomach, caftan hiked about her thighs, bare legs spread for balance.

He grinned. Jesus, she was great. And he had it bad. "Left. Three o'clock," he told her. And she immediately swiveled the Dragunov and dropped the guy. There was no sign now that she'd ever been afraid. It was as if the woman who'd landed in Cairo days ago and the woman before him now were two different people.

Her aim was incredible.

He'd never seen anything like it.

She didn't miss.

There was nowhere for the tangos to hide. He suspected they'd planned to be at this outcrop of rocks before their prey and had miscalculated. The morning sun rose higher in the sky as the remaining men got off a few more shots. They were wasting bullets. They couldn't breach the place where Kane and AJ lay. And unless they planned to outwait them, they were screwed.

"Pick them off," Kane instructed, wiping sweat from his eyes and feeling the unrelenting beat of the sun on top of his unprotected head. Their hats were in Kika's saddlebag with their sunglasses and sunscreen. He wanted this over.

"Leave the big one on the right. Maybe we can get some answers."

AJ nodded. Sweat gleamed on her skin, strands of honey-red hair clung to the dampness on her cheek and neck, and lay in a gleaming pool on the dirt beside her head as she rested her cheek on her weapon like a mother with her child.

"The fat ugly one, or the tall ugly one?"

"Which looks the most intelligent?" Kane asked facetiously. The men were covered from nose to toes in black.

"Fat and ugly." AJ picked off the other three as easily as shooting at tin cans, although they were three hundred yards away and the sun was in her eyes.

"Nice work," he told her easily.

She turned and gave him a brilliant smile that shot straight to his heart, before turning back to keep the Dragunov trained on the last man, a hundred and fifty feet away.

"Off the camel," Kane shouted in Arabic. "Hands up."

He and AJ rose to their feet, weapons still pointed at the last man. The bad guy's camel danced in place as he manipulated the reins.

"Son of a bitch is going to bolt." She squeezed off a warning shot. But it was no use. The man wheeled his animal and took off across the desert in a cloud of dust. She hesitated.

"Drop him," Kane told her grimly.

"We need him," AJ shouted, aiming for the camel's hindquarters. She squeezed off the shot. The camel's legs buckled. Damn it. Damn it. She hated, hated,
hated
hurting animals. The man jumped free, his legs tangling in the enveloping galabayya as he fell to the ground, and rolled over and over. His camel bolted.

AJ trained her weapon on the man, keeping his face in her sight. Fifties. Small, close together black eyes. "Tell us what Raazaq's up to, you bastard," she yelled, not even aware he probably didn't understand a word she said. The weapon didn't so much as waver in her hands.

"Put your hands up, and walk toward us," Kane shouted in Arabic.

Ignoring the order, the man remained where he was.

One moment he was standing still, his hands at his sides, the next he had a pistol in his right hand.

"No. No. No!" AJ yelled as the guy blew out his own brains in a spectacularly messy display. "Damn it to hell. Why'd you
do
that?"

"Apparently," Kane said flatly, "failing Raazaq was a worse alternative than anything we might subject him to."

"Hell."

Now they had no more information than they'd had an hour ago. "Yeah," Kane said laconically, dropping the AK-47 to his side as AJ did the same with the Dragunov. "Sure they were Raazaq's?"

"Hundred percent. I recognized several of them."

He believed her. Her eyesight was remarkable. "Then we're close enough to make the bastard antsy. Come on, let's hit the road and ruin Raazaq's day."

It couldn't be any later than seven
a.m.
, but the day was already hot as the sun rose into a cloudless blue sky. They needed hats, sunscreen, and water. Now.

Kane called to the brothers. No show. "Poor bastards must be scared out of their wits."

"I hope they weren't hit." AJ walked faster up the small rise. Kane grabbed her arm as her booted foot slipped on the rocks.

"I doubt they raised their heads the whole time," he told her dryly, releasing her. "They're fine."

They crested the rocks and stared down into the small depression where their guides and the camels had been. "Had been" being the operative phrase. Kane swore. The Shaaeawi brothers were gone. No great loss.

They'd taken all the camels with them. Oh, shit. Now,
that
was a
huge
loss.

A couple of saddlebags hurriedly tossed aside—and a cooling pile of camel dung—were the only things the brothers had left behind. By the look of overturned rocks, and the tracks in the sand, they'd taken off in an all-fired rush, headed back the way they'd come.

Kane glanced up to gauge their distance. While he and AJ had been fending off the attack, the brothers had barely waited for the bullets to fly before they'd made tracks. They were already mere dots on the far horizon.

And in way better shape at the moment than he and AJ.

Jesus. Two people, alone in the middle of the Western Desert's Great Sand Sea. No transportation. No navigational equipment. No form of communication.

No one knew where the hell they were. No one
was
looking for them. Worst of all, no one was on Raazaq.

They were screwed.

Talk about your Bad Day at Black Rock.

"Alone at last," AJ said wryly, apparently unperturbed by their dire situation. Except that Kane could see the rapid beat of her pulse in her sweat-dampened throat, and recognized the underlying note of tension in her cheerful voice.

Good for you,
Kane thought with some relief. She wasn't about to panic at the daunting prospect of crossing the inhospitable desert in the heat of the day. There weren't many
men
who could look at this situation with a cool eye and no panic. But she was doing it. And damned if he didn't experience a rush of admiration for her. AJ Cooper was way more than he'd ever expected. And sometime soon, he hoped he'd get the chance to tell her so.

Right now, though—training or no—the situation certainly scared the bejesus out of
him
.

She crouched down and started rummaging through her saddlebag. "At least they left some of our stuff. We'll need our hats. It's going to be a hell of a long walk."

"Take necessities," he told her evenly. "Nothing else."

They couldn't stay where they were, and the walk was going to be long, hot, and dangerous. They couldn't be more exposed, more unprotected than they would be during the duration of that walk across the almost flat, barren landscape. Hell.

They'd be sitting ducks for miles.

Head bent, AJ saluted without looking up. Kane went over to his own bag and extracted his hat first thing. After settling it on his head, he grabbed sunblock, extra clips for the Sig and AK-47, and all the water containers they'd brought with them. Chugging down a couple of swallows of the warm water, he stuffed all the protein bars they'd tossed into the saddlebags into his pack. The less they ate, the less water they'd need to drink. And they'd have to make their water last. Yet their bodies would need fuel for the grueling trek.

One did not conserve drinking water in the desert. One drank it. And prayed there'd be enough to last the trip.

"Ready?" he called, glancing at his wristwatch. Still inoperable. He hadn't expected differently. How far did the block extend? And to what extent? And, fuck it, for how long?

Under normal circumstances there would be planes overhead, vehicles in pursuit, the snap, crackle, and pop of verbal communications from the Sat Comm link. Action. Movement. Noise.

Instead, there was this unearthly, surreal silence.

AJ blew out a breath as she stood up. "Ready as I'll ever be."

Kane ran a quick look over her. She'd braided her hair, then tucked it beneath her hat. Her skin glistened with a coat of sunblock, and she was standing hip-shot, slugging back water. She was also carrying a small lightweight backpack. In fact, the same make, color, and size as his own. He hid a smile. "Let's move out."

"Know any jokes?" AJ asked, trudging along beside him, her long legs matching his strides in a comfortable rhythm. Neither fast nor slow, as they paced themselves.

The sun was high overhead in the brilliant blue, cloudless canopy. The temps had reached the high nineties. Thank God the brothers had left their supplies—if not, they'd be doubly screwed, without protection from the unrelenting sun and a respectable supply of water.

Which was the only reason Kane wouldn't kill the little bastards if he ever caught up to them again. A good thrashing would be enough.

Kane kept an eagle eye on AJ, even though he pretended not to. She was holding up well. Her initial panic had evened out to a healthy apprehension. She'd done well today. Damn well. It would keep her sharp. However, the heat and the monotony of walking were soporific and might well slow their reflexes. They should've stopped and made shelter an hour ago. But his gut told him speed was necessary.

The intense and oftentimes seemingly cruel and inhumane training T-FLAC gave their operatives in desert survival gave them a better shot of making it now.

If
the next oasis wasn't too much farther.

If
their water lasted that long.

If
they didn't get heatstroke.

"No," Kane told her, drinking from his canteen. He sloshed the water in the container—half-full—and clipped it back on his belt.

"Come on," she cajoled. "Everyone knows a joke or two."

"I don't. Stop wasting your breath. It's not going to get any cooler, and so far we haven't come across anything resembling a Hilton."

"See?" she prodded. "That was mildly amusing."

"It's too hot to be amusing. Tell me more about the beauty-pageant business."

"I was trying for light and friendly." AJ sounded mildly irritated now.

Kane laughed.

"Now,
that
wasn't supposed to be funny." AJ glared at him through the shaded brim of her straw cowboy hat. "Talk to me. Tell me something interesting about you. Since you didn't emerge from the womb as a T-FLAC agent. How about an episode of Kane Wright—The Early Years."

His lips twitched. Damn it, she was fun. "Like what?"

"Anything,"
AJ said heatedly. "Geez, Louise. We're out here in the freaking middle of nowhere, under a broiling noonday sun, gasping our last parched breath. Can't you think of 
something
interesting to break the monotony? And in case you haven't noticed, you never answer any of my questions. Why is that, I wonder."

"Tell me this," he asked, not answering the question. Again. "Are we headed in a
facsimile
of the right direction? Or are we going around in circles?"

"We're going around in circles," she told him tartly. "I wanted to torture both of us and see how long it would take you to notice that our tongues were turning black and our skin was peeling off our bodies in sheets."

"Great visual. Thanks," he muttered.

She huffed out a breath. "Oh, ye of little faith." She punched his arm, and he imagined behind her dark glasses she was rolling her eyes. "Of
course
we're heading in the right direction. Look at the sun."

He had. They were headed southwest. He'd merely asked to distract her. The monotony of putting one booted foot in front of the other, for mile after mile, was tedious. And if he hadn't been sure of their direction, all they'd had to do was follow Raazaq's tracks in the sand. Although it would've made their stroll through hell a bit more bearable, thank God there hadn't been even a slight breeze in twenty-four hours to blow away the impressions Raazaq had left in his wake. Arrogant bastard.

He hoped to God the pyramid AJ had mentioned was where she thought it was. Otherwise they were walking into the Valley of Death, he thought with real trepidation. Even if the damn pyramid was there, though, they wouldn't reach it for at least another six to eight hours, walking at this pace. They had hardly any food, but fortunately, they had just enough water to last that long.

Particles of sand refracted the sun like tiny diamonds in a light so brilliant, so fierce, it hurt the eyes, even with the specially fabricated lenses of their glasses. The heat rose off the umber-colored sand in glassy waves. It beat down unrelentingly from above, and radiated brutally from below. Inside his boots, Kane's feet burned fiercely. So must AJ's, but she hadn't said a word.

"It's too hot to go on," he said, practically. "We'll stop, make a shelter, and rest until dusk."

"We've got a rhythm going here." AJ wiped her face with her sleeve. "Let's walk another hour before we stop."

Kane shook his head. If he'd been alone, he may very well have continued another hour or two. And it would've been suicide. It was just past noon, and the sun was straight up and lethal.

"We're probably losing two pints of water an hour in sweat equity. We'll need to drink more water if we expend this much energy in this heat. We can't afford to waste a drop. Come on. That dune looks like a good spot."

The dune was already casting a small, very small, shadow, and they erected an open-sided canopy, utilizing the dune's protection. Within minutes they crawled inside, out of the sun. It wasn't noticeably cooler by any stretch of the imagination, but at least they were out of the direct rays.

AJ removed her hat and scratched her scalp with short nails. "My kingdom for a shower." She flopped down flat on her back and hiked up the hem of her caftan to expose her legs to the thigh. She wiggled her feet in the heavy boots. "How long do we have to wait?"

No time at all,
he wanted to say. The knot in his stomach, the one that warned of danger, was coiling tighter and tighter by the hour. He lay his backpack next to hers, then started undoing the laces of his boots.

"At least four hours." He drew off the heavy boots and ditched his damp socks to dry in the sun. As much as his body needed the rest, needed to cool down as much as hers did, Kane's instincts urged him to keep moving. To speed up. To get there—
Where,
for Christ sake?—
now.
Not four hours later than now.

He leaned over and started unlacing AJ's boots. The high-tops were military issue, specially made for desert terrains. Impervious to sand, they were lightweight, but bulky-looking, and made her slender ankles look insubstantial and sexy as hell. He drew off her left boot and set it beside his own, then reached for the right.

"Oh, you prince. You're going to massage my poor aching feet for me?"

"You really
were
a cat in a previous life, weren't you?"

"Let me put it this way." AJ stretched. "If someone offered to give me a full-body massage right now, and we were in the middle of Grand Central Station, I'd strip down butt-naked right there and then lay on the cool, marble floor."

Kane drew off her damp socks and tossed them up onto the canopy overhead with his own. Her feet were a little pink. He inspected her soles for cuts and abrasions, and she sighed as his thumbs made a slow circuit of the balls of her feet. She was a tactile woman, and he found he enjoyed touching her as much as she enjoyed being touched.

"Did your trainers know about this little quirk?" he asked, manipulating her toes between fingers and thumbs. "Because," he continued while she sighed blissfully, "this could be a problem. We get intense training and psychological counseling in the event we're captured. Torture prep, et cetera. All the bad shit. But hell, if someone found out about your massage fetish, think how simple it would be to get anything out of you. You'd spill your guts for a foot massage."

"No I wouldn't—
Yes.
Riiiigh-t there. Not a mere foot massage. Now, a full-body? Hell, yeah. I'd tell them anything."

He dug his thumbs into her instep. "What's your real name?"

"A—" She opened her eyes, her lips twitched, and she wiggled her toes in his palms. "Nice try, camel boy."

He patted her feet and scooched back. Before lying down, he dug a clean pair of socks out of his pack, and lay the AK-47 and a clip beside him on the tarp.

After watching him, AJ imitated his actions, then lay beside him on her back, not touching but close enough for him to smell the heat of her body.

"Do you know that bushmen in the Kalahari find the deepest part of an old water course and dig a hole in the sand about an arm's-length deep to find water? Then they take a reed tube as tall as they are—which isn't very tall, now that I come to think about it—and insert it into the hole and pack the sand around it. Then they suck on the tube for two minutes until water comes into their mouth."

Kane rolled onto his side, his head supported on his arm. "There aren't any rivers—dry or otherwise—around."

"I wasn't suggesting that
we
tr—"

"Close your eyes, Abbreviate Jabberer."

She wriggled her brows. "Wanna fool around?"

"Sleep," he ordered.

She obediently closed her eyes, but she was smiling. "Can we, after?"

"If you can work up the energy," Kane said dryly, brushing a sweat-dampened curl off her forehead.

"Maybe you should just give me a little smooch to see me through." She opened her eyes to peer at him through her lashes.

He ran his thumb over her full lower lip, and she drew it into the damp cavern of her mouth and sucked on it. The sensation shot directly to Kane's groin. He groaned.

"Is that a ye—" AJ's jaw cracked with the huge yawn.

He extracted his damp thumb, and smiled. "Go to sleep. It'll be cooler for all sorts of interesting things when you wake up."

" 'Kay. You take first watch." Her voice slurred as she closed her eyes. She was fast asleep in seconds.

Hours later, with nothing to do but walk and think, AJ realized that as far as Kane Wright was concerned, she was insatiable. This couldn't be a good thing. She was a career agent. She didn't want anything more. Which, when she thought about it, was probably fine and dandy, since she doubted Kane wanted anything more than a roll in the hay—sand—himself.

She scowled. What was he hiding. Something interesting, she bet.

Raazaq's tracks marked their path. An easy, no-brainer route, which gave her far too much time to think, damn it.

And with this much thinking time, her brain naturally turned to Kane.

After knowing each other such a short time it wasn't as though she expected a declaration or anything. They were both getting exactly what they wanted. Spectacular sex.
She
was perfectly satisfied. She frowned, trudging along beside Kane in the moonlight. God only knew, they both wanted the same unemotional… encounter, so what the hell was her problem? Why wasn't that now enough?