Doorway In The Sand
(chapter title an homage to my favourite author, the late R. Zelazny)
It
was a familiar tangle of clichés; the sun was beating down, the sand
was hot enough to cook eggs in the shell, and Pete's throat was dry as
a bone. He wasn't sure now how much time had passed since he and the
rest of the rescue team had begun their mission. He'd been wounded
during the attack, then captured by the escaping terrorists. They'd
taken him along as a hostage when they'd fled to Afghanistan for one of
their hiding place in the north of Africa. After a few days he'd
managed to escape them by running into the desert. He had feared that
they'd pursue him, but now he realized that they more likely had given
him up as good as dead-- just as his own people had probably done by
now.
But Pete wasn't dead and he wasn't going to give up on
himself so easily. The Thornton's were a tenacious breed, even among
Irishmen, and Pete was as stubborn as they come. He laid in what little
shade he could find by day and walked in the night, for as long as the
water in his stolen canteen lasted.
That water was long gone,
but Pete kept his canteen, just in case he found a well or an oasis. It
banged softly against his leg as he walked, like an echo of hollow
laughter. Each dune he crossed looked familiar, and he wondered if he
were indeed walking in circles.
There was a dancing wave of heat
above the crest of the next dune. A mirage, perhaps, or water vapor--
Pete hoped for the latter. He sloughed up the dune and down the far
side. His feet sank into the muddy soil as he slid down the last few
feet. He had found water.
But he had found trouble, too. The mud
sucked at his feet and held him firm. The edges of the pit crumbed away
as he clawed for a hand-hold to try to escape. He sank deeper, until
his chest was buried and the hot mud seemed to be sapping the strength
from his body. The cruel sun mocked him. He drew in a breath to shout
his defiance, but it came out as a call for help.
A rope slapped
the surface of the quicksand, knocking dirt and filthy water into
Pete's face. He shook his head to clear his eyes, and tried to crane
his neck around to see from where it had come.
"Don't move
around! You'll sink faster." The rope was pulled taunt, closing the
noose around Pete's chest below his arms. He reached back and grabbed
the rope, pulling desperately to draw himself out of the mud. "Just
keep your head up. Dingo will pull you out. Hut! Hut!"
With
a great surging jerk, Pete was hauled up out of the mud and dragged
several yards through the sand. He could hear someone bellowing Whoa!,
but it wasn't him; his mouth was full of sand. He rolled over and
coughed, fumbling to get the tight noose from around his bruised chest.
Hands were helping him, and that was the first thing he noticed
about his rescuer; his hands were long-fingered, tanned; weathered but
young. And the voice was pure American with an unmistakable Minnesota
twang. "Told you we'd get you out, bud. Piece of cake." The hands
offered a canteen. Pete took it and drank, spacing long sips with long
breaths.
Pete studied his rescuer as he recollected himself. The
man wore a turban with a long scarf wound over his nose and mouth, in
the style of the Bedouin in the deep desert. He was dressed in
sand-coloured robes and dirty white athletic shoes. He tapped at the
knees of the large camel until it knelt on the sand, casting them both
in a long shadow, then he coiled the rope and sat on it. He opened a
second canteen and drank from it, then poured some onto his hand to rub
on the camel's nose. "Good boy, Dingo," he said to the beast, slapping
it's dusty flank with rough affection.
After he had washed the sand from his mouth, Pete spoke. "I would be dead if you hadn't come along, stranger. Thanks."
"Just glad I could help," the man answered. "My name's Mac."
"I'm Pete."
"Hi, Pete. Do you mind if I ask what you are doing on foot in the middle of the Nafud?"
"Would
you believe I'm a tourist?" Saving his life or not, Pete was still
aware that his mission was classified, and he couldn't tell anyone the
real reason he was there.
Mac's eyes sparkled with humor above
the concealing scarf. "Right. Me too. And I suppose that the pack of
Afghanistan terrorists that are riding around the Empty Quarter,
searching... are just looking for a contact lens that someone
dropped... and not a US Army officer who's been presumed dead for over
a week."
Pete spilled some of the water he was trying to drink.
He glanced sharply at Mac, but the man was climbing to his feet and
retrieving the canteens. "We had better be going."
"Where are we going?"
"Jedda
is close, but the sand between us and it will be crawling with people
we don't want to meet. If we can make it to Cairo, we can...
"Cairo? Egypt? That's hundreds of miles from here!"
"Exactly. It'll be the last place they'll look."
Pete
was still trying to protest as Mac grabbed one of his feet and hoisted
him onto the back of the camel. ‘Dingo’ snorted at the extra weight
when Mac climbed up behind him, but he swung into an easy loping-trot
when Mac touched his flanks gently with the coiled rope.
“Hut! Hut!”
It
was all Pete could do just to keep from sliding off. He groaned through
clenched teeth and grabbed two hands-full of scruffy fur.