Harry went next, Asher close behind. There were four men waiting for them, and by the time Asher took the last step down, each had guns drawn and pointed at them.

  “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Harry said.

  It was very dark, so it was hard to tell, but they appeared to be holding Uzis.

  Uzis?

  Then one of them spoke to the other, smiling. It was an Arabic dialect Asher wasn’t overly familiar with.

  Where the hell are we?

  “Put your bags down slowly,” one man said in stilted English.

  These men were not organised. They were excited and nervous. Hardly professionals. But there was an air of desperation that Asher wasn’t about to write off. He threw his duffle bag down with a sigh and Harry let his backpack drop near his feet.

  “They haven’t killed us yet,” Asher said to Harry. “So they must want us alive. Let me guess.” Asher stared at the man who had spoken. “You think Interpol will pay?”

  “Double fee,” he said with a smile that showed off his missing teeth. “My brother is paid for flying you out of Algeria. We will be paid for handing you over. If not Interpol, someone will pay.”

  “Brother,” Asher mumbled, staring at the pilot. He took a step to hide behind his brother.

  “Oh, someone will pay all right,” Harry said. Then, in the blink of an eye, he took his gun from the back of his jeans and shot all four men in the head. They fell down like crumpled dolls, and the pilot fell back onto his ass, scrambling backwards in shock and fear.

  “Those were some beautiful shots,” Asher said to Harry. And they were. Four rounds, four headshots, in less than two seconds. “I’m impressed.”

  Harry smiled at him. “Thanks.” Then he turned to the pilot, who was still scrambling backwards, all legs and arms, going nowhere fast. “You!”

  The pilot shook his head, frantic, pale. “No, no. My brother,” he cried, looking at the man on the ground with a bullet hole above his left eye. “Nooo.”

  “You called him,” Asher deduced calmly. “While we were asleep. You told him who we are, that we could be worth something. Whoever owns this plane is going to be so pissed.”

  He shook his head no, mouthed the word a few times, but no sound came out. Tears streamed down his face.

  Harry sighed. “Yeah, fuck you too,” he said, then shot the pilot square between the eyes.

  “Goddammit, Harry,” Asher said.

  “He sold us out!”

  “I was going to ask him where we are.”

  “Oh.” He looked around. “Are we not in Saudi Arabia?”

  Asher shook his head. “Don’t think so. I couldn’t make out the dialect.” He took one of the Uzis from the closest dead man. “These are twenty years old. Corroded, haven’t seen a decent oil in years, probably doesn’t even fire.”

  “They were amateurs,” Harry said.

  Asher dropped the gun near the dead man and picked up his bag. “We need to leave. Now.”

  Harry grabbed his bag and hurried alongside Asher to the cars waiting by the landing strip. They were older style Toyota Cruisers. One didn’t look any better than the other but only one had keys in the ignition.

  “You drive,” Asher said, putting his duffle bag on the floor in the back.

  Harry reversed the car, headlights on. There was no sealed road, just a sandy path through the desert. Their only guide was tyre tracks.

  Asher had his phone out, and he called Four’s number. He picked up on the second ring. “Asher, my darling. How was your flight?”

  “Change of plans,” Asher said quickly. “I need a location check. Can you track me?”

  Four’s tone changed immediately, suddenly very serious, and there was a faint clicking of fingers on a keyboard. “What the hell happened?”

  “Pilot sold us out.”

  “Fuck!” More keyboard clicking. “I’m zeroing in on your location . . . Oh Jesus . . .”

  “What?”

  “Tell me you’re driving, that you have a vehicle of some kind.”

  “Yes. Harry’s driving. But I don’t know where we are. It was Arabic, but the dialect was not familiar to me. Their guns were old. There isn’t exactly a road—”

  “You need to drive east. Right now. And as fast as you can.”

  “Bit hard to know where east is when it’s pitch black,” Asher replied.

  “Okay, okay,” Four said, fingers tapping on the keyboard. “Hang on, I can see you’re moving. You’re going in the right direction. Keep driving. Don’t stop for anything. You’ve got about twenty miles to go.”

  This didn’t sound good. Asher rarely heard him speak with such urgency. He looked at Harry. “Twenty miles until what?”

  “Till you cross the border into Oman.”

  Asher baulked. “Oman?!”

  “I hope you shot that fucking pilot,” Four said. “He flew you into Yemen, Asher. He dropped you off in a war zone.”

  THIRTEEN

  “There are only two border crossings into Oman,” Four explained. “But you’re not near either of them. You’re too far north. You’re in the freaking Empty Quarter, Asher.”

  The Empty Quarter. Great.

  “We’re on some kind of road,” Asher said. “Except it’s not a road. It’s sand. I think we’re in an old ravine; there are walls either side of us. They could be big fucking dunes. I can’t tell. We’re in the middle of the fucking desert. And it’s pitch black.”

  “Keep driving. Do not stop. I don’t know if you’ll come to a fence of some kind or if it will be manned. But if you have headlights on, they’ll know you’re coming.”

  Fuck.

  “You couldn’t be in a worse part of a worse country,” Four murmured, panicked, urgent. “There are roadblocks, checkpoints, that are not military. That entire region is run by rebels. And they will not mess around, Asher. You need to get across that border.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “How much cash do you have?”

  Asher looked to Harry. “How much cash do we have?”

  “About 50K. Give or take. Mostly euros and American dollars.” He was glaring out the windscreen, into the dark, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, concentrating. “We gonna buy our way through?”

  Asher shrugged. He tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder so he could use his hands and he emptied Harry’s backpack. He stuffed everything under his seat; bundles of cash, his toiletry bag, passports, and Harry’s other pistol, ammunition. “Maybe. Better than shooting. It’s not an official crossing point. I don’t know if there’ll even be a point of entry. Or if there’ll be one guard or a whole rebel squadron.”

  Asher could hear Four typing away frantically. “I’m seeing what I can find out,” he mumbled. “Okay, I can’t see any kind of road on the Yemen side, but there’s an unsealed road on the Oman side of the border. You’re heading toward it. I can’t see any kind of compound or fence. Satellite imagery of Yemen is non-existent.”

  Harry glanced up to the rear-view mirror. “Ah, fuck. We got company on our six. Coming fast. One set of headlights. Looks high, a four-wheel drive, maybe.”

  “I have to go,” Asher said into the phone.

  “You better call me back in ten minutes, Asher Garin, or so help me God.”

  Asher disconnected the call and turned in his seat. He reached through to the back and unzipped his duffle bag and pulled out his MP7. “Hello, pretty baby,” he said.

  “Christ,” Harry mumbled. “You always talk to your guns like that?” He was driving fast, but the vehicle behind them was coming faster. Then he saw what kind of gun Asher had. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Just you worry about driving and not running us off some embankment.” He clipped in the mag and loaded one round into the chamber. Then he rolled down his window, hung backwards out it, bracing himself against the door frame with his foot on the backrest of his seat.

  Asher saw the muzzle flash behind them before he heard the thud and metal ting of a bullet hitting their car. And then another. Harry ducked instinctively. “Asher,” he yelled. “Jesus. Get in the fucking car.”

  Asher lined up the sight. The cool press of metal against his skin was always a familiar comfort. Even when he was perched backwards out of a moving car being shot at. He fired three rounds. “Tyre. Tyre. Engine block.”

  The vehicle behind them veered off the road into a sandbank and an abrupt stop.

  Asher righted himself back into his seat, grinning at Harry. He was buzzing! “That was fun!”

  Harry shook his head. “You’re insane.” But after a few seconds, a smile won out. “That was some pretty good shooting.”

  “Not as good as your four clean headshots,” Asher allowed.

  “It was five. And you took out a car.”

  “Because it was a bigger target,” Asher said. “Moving at eighty kilometres an hour, in the desert, at night. While hanging out of the window. Backwards. And if I shot the shooter or the driver, they could still keep coming. Take out the car, they’re not going anywhere for a while. So, you’re welcome.”

  Harry rolled his eyes. “Might wanna put your pretty baby away. There’s something up ahead.” He squinted out the windshield, slowing the car down.

  “More reason to keep it out.”

  What Harry had seen up ahead turned out to be one burned-out truck on its side, then another and another, placed in such a way any vehicle wishing to pass had to slow right down to zigzag through.

  From fifty kilometres an hour down to five.

  They were sitting ducks.

  Three shadowy figures stepped out from the dark, heavily armed with AK-47s and grim faces blocking their path through the weave of burned-out vehicles. These guys weren’t amateurs like the fools back at the plane.

  “Let me do the talking,” Asher murmured. “And don’t fire unless they do. To my left at ten o’clock there’s secondary men on the ridge with launchers or some shit. I saw a flash of metal.”

  Harry’s face was neutral, blank. Asher wasn’t sure if it was his game face or if he was scared.

  He was going with the latter.

  One of the men stood by Harry’s window, his gun pointed at Harry’s head. Harry kept both hands on the wheel. Another stood in front of the car, rifle aimed at them. The third went to Asher’s side.

  Asher put one hand up and wound the window down with the other. He spoke Arabic, hoping these men did too. “My name is Michael. I’m a fixer guide for this man. He—”

  The man opened Asher’s door. “Get out.”

  Asher got out slowly, hands up. “I am a fixer, a guide, for this man. He is Australian. We need to get to Oman so he can fly home. I have a bag with his papers on my seat.”

  The man standing in the front of their car now pointed his rifle at Asher while the man closest to Asher went to the seat. He took the backpack and walked to the front of the hood so he could look inside it.

  The other two men never took their eyes, or their guns, off Harry and Asher. Not for one second.

  The man opened the bag, looked inside, then glanced over at Asher. He’d no doubt seen the four remaining bundles of cash, Asher assumed. Then he took out the passport and looked over it, though it may as well have been a scrap of garbage for all the interest he showed.

  “It’s all he has,” Asher said quietly.

  The man stared at him for a long few seconds. For too long. Asher was sure this was it. This was where it all ended. And for some stupid heart-stopping second, he regretted bringing Harry into this.

  They weren’t supposed to die like this.

  Asher didn’t breathe. Time didn’t exist. All that remained was regret.

  Then the man took the passport and held it out for Asher to take. That was all he offered. He kept the backpack and took a few steps backward. The other men stepped back as well.

  Holy fucking shit.

  Not a word was said, but Asher understood. He nodded, almost bowing his head, and couldn’t get in the car fast enough. “Drive,” he whispered. “Drive!”

  Harry drove slowly and accelerated faster as they cleared the last burned-out truck. And he kept driving. Neither of them spoke—neither of them even freaking breathed—until they’d gone a few kilometres. Asher waited for gunfire or the rocket launcher . . . but it never came.

  The valley with ridge lines, or dunes, or whatever the fuck they were in flattened out, from what Asher could see. The road became more of an actual road, and Asher let out an unsteady breath. “Fuck. You okay?”

  Harry nodded. “You?”

  Asher nodded in return. “Yeah. I’ve been through all kinds of tense situations, but that’s in my top five, for sure.”

  “I’m thinking it’s number one for me,” Harry said.

  Asher laughed out of relief. “I thought we were dead for sure.” He decided not to tell Harry that he’d thought of him in that moment . . . It was something Asher would have to unpack later, if at all.

  “What was in the backpack?”

  “About forty thousand.”

  “No wonder he took it and asked no more questions.”

  Asher nodded, his heart now back to its normal rate. He took out his phone and called Four. “It’s me—”

  “Tell me you’re okay?”

  “We’re okay.”

  He let rip in his native tongue, a whole rant that Asher didn’t quite catch. He got the gist though. Four was relieved but pissed off about the pilot and helpless that he couldn’t do more.

  “I said we’re fine,” Asher said again. “Forty thousand dollars lighter, but alive. And we still have our guns, so there’s that. May need a change of underwear though.”

  He half laughed, half sighed. “Thank God you’re okay.”

  “Whatever we were going to Saudi Arabia for will have to wait.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Do you still have the USB?”

  “Yes.” Asher could feel it in his sock. “Can you still see our location?”

  “Yes. You’re in Oman. In about fifty kilometres, you’ll come to an intersection. Turn left. There will be a town on your right. Get fuel if you have to, but I want you to keep moving. Get to Muscat and I’ll arrange transport from there. You should be safe in Oman . . . well, safer. They do have an extradition treaty with Gibraltar, but it’s not likely to be enforced; they don’t exactly have much faith in Interpol. Just try not to break any Omani laws and you should be okay. You still may need to lie low for a few days because I don’t know who I know in Oman. Let me see what I can arrange.”

  “Thank you.”

  Four was quiet for a long moment. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Asher smiled, but then he remembered . . . “Oh. When we left the airport in Algeria, our two Australian tracker friends were on our tail. Just minutes behind us.”

  “Christ.”

  “Find out where they are now.”

  “I will. You be safe.”

  “Talk soon.”

  Asher ended the call, took out his sugar-free mints, and popped one in his mouth. He handed one to Harry, who took it without a snide or sarcastic comment. “Thanks.”

  And they drove for what felt like hours, until the sun was up and neither of them could keep their eyes open. They made it to Muscat, not a huge city, but large enough to afford them some anonymity, and Asher found them a motel.

  This one was nicer than any of the other motels they’d stayed in. Well, there were no stains on the floor, which was nice. The shadier places tended to not have cameras or ask questions or demand ID, and they appreciated the cash payment, just like Asher appreciated the bed and the hot shower. There was even a TV.

  He dumped his duffle bag at the foot of the bed and sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I’m too tired to argue about the bed. It’s a double. We’ll both fit. If you lie on your side, maybe.”

  Harry took Asher’s arm and turned him around. He had an odd expression, much like the scared look he’d worn when they faced the rebels. Then he slid his other hand up to Asher’s jaw, his gaze a penetrating blue.

  “What are you doing?” Asher whispered.

  Harry’s hand at Asher’s jaw tilted his face upwards, and he held him there. Harry moved in, leaned closer . . .

  Asher realised, far too late, that Harry was about to kiss him. His heart was hammering and he thought he might pass out, or puke, or die. “Harry,” he whispered. He was so close, their noses almost touching. Asher’s blood was electric, he felt warm all over, and his head was spinning.

  Then Harry closed the final inch and kissed him.

  “What do you mean they never landed in Saudi Arabia?” Parrish barked down the phone. “Where the fuck did they go?”

  “We’re waiting on the flight logs,” Gibson said. “The plane they were in can only get so far without a refuel—seven hours, maybe.”

  “Hm.”

  “Oh, and get this. Brett Fitzgerald spoke to Harrigan when they were waiting on the pilot. Had no idea he was wanted by the cops. Just got back from two weeks’ vacation and had no idea about anything, apparently. Said Harrigan told him he was in the private sector nowadays and was with a French guy. We showed Fitz the photo of Asher Garin and he said it was him. Without a doubt.”

  “Christ.”

  “We were a few minutes behind them. So freaking close. Now we’ve lost all that time. They’re hours ahead of us again. If we hadn’t gone for the cops to make it all look legit, we would have had them for sure. Now we don’t even know where they are.”

  Parrish huffed out a sigh. “They were heading to Saudi, for Chrissake. From Algeria to Saudi Arabia. Like they’re looking for information. Information I don’t want them to find.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “Find out what the hell they were doing in and around those oil fields. Who they spoke to, what they found. And if they left on a private jet, find out who the hell paid for that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And next time, don’t wait. To hell with making it look legit. When you get close again, you do whatever it is you have to do to take Harrigan down.”

 

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