“I GUESS I don’t have a choice,” Alana said as she took Juan’s proffered hand.

The shed was far enough away from the rest of the compound that none of the guards could see it directly. They knew what was supposed to be taking place within, so none made an effort to watch it overtly. Juan was able to lead Alana from the building to a low ridge beyond. Once over the ridge, they lay flat against the hot stone and waited, Cabrillo watching the camp for any sign they’d been seen.

Everything appeared to be normal.

After a few minutes, Juan judged it safe to move, and he and his new charge slid down the face of the ridge and started for the open desert, moving away from the distant terrorist training camp and deeper into the barren wastes.

He estimated they had at least an hour before anyone thought to look for the missing guard, and when they performed a head count of male prisoners capable of breaking another man’s neck they would discover everyone accounted for. The confusion would add to the delay if they chose to send out patrols. However, once clear of the camp, he wasn’t worried about pursuit. He’d seen the performance with the escapee during lunch and understood that the guards let the desert do the work for them and waited for the buzzards to lead them to their quarry.

Most likely, they would send out a patrol car in a day or two to search for circling vultures.

By then, he fully expected to be lounging in the copper tub in his cabin aboard the Oregon, with a drink in one hand and a Cuban cigar in the other. And because he’d lost his sat phone, there would be a blood-soaked bandage on his leg.

TWENTY

A N UNFAMILIAR ALARM WOKE DR. JULIA HUXLEY. HER cabin was located next to her office, with the door perpetually open. The alarm was coming from her computer, and when she glanced over she could see the screen coming to life, a milky glow that spilled across her tidy desk and glinted off the stainless steel arms of her rolling chair.

Julia threw aside her covers, her hands automatically bunching her hair into a ponytail and binding it with the elastic band sitting on her nightstand. In her one major, although secret, feminine conceit, she wore a hand-laced white satin nightgown that clung to her curves like a second skin. If she knew there would be a chance of a middle-of-the-night emergency, usually when the Oregon was gearing up for combat, she slept in an oversized T-shirt, but when things were quiet she had a whole closetful of clingy sleepwear. She’d nearly been found out a couple of times, but with a pair of clean scrubs folded at the foot of her bed she could change in seconds and no one was the wiser.

Julia padded in bare feet across her cabin and plopped herself in front of her computer. By the time she’d flicked on the articulated light clamped to her desk, she knew what the alarm was. One of the biometric tracking chips implanted in all shore operators’ legs had failed. There were several tones the computer generated, depending on the nature of the failure. Most commonly, it was a dying electric charge, but what she heard sent a chill down her spine. The sharp electronic wail meant that either the chip in question had been removed or the owner was dead.

The story was writ across her computer screen.

Juan Cabrillo’s tracking chip was no longer transmitting its location to the constellation of orbiting GPS satellites. She scrolled back to check his movements over the past several hours and saw he had left the general area of the terrorist camp and old mine, striking out to the south at a steady four miles per hour. He’d covered almost twenty-five miles. He had then stopped ten minutes earlier, and, without warning, the chip had ceased functioning.

She reached for the phone to call Max when the alarm stopped. The chip was transmitting once again. Julia typed in a command to run a system diagnostic, noting the Chairman hadn’t moved. The tracking chips were still a new technology, and while they hadn’t had too many problems, she understood they weren’t infallible. According to the system, Cabrillo had either been dead for thirty-eight seconds or the chip had been pulled from his body and then returned to it, recontacting with pumping, oxygenated blood, completing the circuit it needed to transmit.

Just as suddenly as the alarm went silent, it started up again, keening for thirty or so seconds. And then it started dropping in and out, seemingly random.

Blip, beep beep. Blip, beep. Beep, blip, beep. Blip.

Blip, blip, beep. Blip, beep beep, blip.

Through the chaos of tones, she thought she recognized a pattern. Making sure her computer was recording the telemetry from Juan’s chip, she opened an Internet connection and checked her hunch. It took her nearly a minute to decipher the first series of sounds even as more came in.

Wake . . . up . . .

Blip, blip, blip, blip. Blip, blip, beep. Beep, blip, blip, beep.

Hux . . .

Juan was interrupting the signal from the chip somehow and was sending a message in old-fashioned Morse code.

“You crafty SOB,” Julia muttered in admiration.

And then the alarm shrieked a continuous cry that went on and on.

Julia knocked over a cup of pens reaching for the phone.

AFTER TREKKING THE FIRST four miles from the terrorist camp, Cabrillo had found a sheltered spot out of the sun’s brutal gaze to hole up. He and his new charge, Alana Shepard, would need to wait until nightfall in order to tackle the open desert. He told her to sleep while he backtracked a mile to make sure their spoor had been obliterated by the wind. He knew Muslims didn’t keep dogs, even for tracking purposes, so he felt confident that no one would be on their trail, at least for a while.

When they started out again shortly after sunset, he wanted to put much distance between themselves and the camp, sensing that once they stopped he wouldn’t be able to walk much farther afterward. If he and Alana were still alone in the desert come dawn, the vultures would start circling. With food so scarce in the desert, the vultures would loiter for days waiting for their prey to die. It would be the same as raising a sign that said ESCAPEES HERE. If the terrorists sent out a patrol, especially the chopper, they would be spotted quickly.

One more thing he had to consider was Alana’s endurance. She appeared in better condition than the other prisoners he had seen, but she still suffered from deprivation. He had swiped a couple of canteens during his earlier meanderings and allowed her to drink as much as she could, yet she remained sorely dehydrated. And there was nothing he could do for the rumbling in her belly that she felt compelled to keep apologizing for.

It was three in the morning when he could tell she was spent completely. She might make it another mile, but there was no real need. It was time now to rely on his people and not her stamina.

“So tell me more about the dig you were heading up,” he invited to distract her, settling himself on the ground with his back against a rock. He had led her up a small outcrop of rock with a natural bowl at its summit that provided cover as well as a strong vantage point.

Because he had pushed the march so hard, they hadn’t really spoken much beyond introductions.

“It’s frustrating.” She sipped from the canteen. Despite what must be a raging thirst, she had good survival instincts and drank sparingly. “The original source material strongly indicates the Suleiman Al-Jama’s Saqr is still buried in a cave someplace, but I’ll be darned if we could find any sign. For one thing, the geology is all wrong for caves or caverns.”

“And for all you know, this guy Lafayette’s bearings were off and you’re searching the wrong riverbed,” he said, finishing her thought. He rolled up his pant leg.