Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

Khalid realized that the debt to his father had been paid and that he himself was now beholden to the royal family of Abu Dhabi, a responsibility he took seriously, not only as the Oil Minister but also as an ad hoc family member. It was in this last capacity that he’d called this hunt, not to allow him an afternoon pursuing one of his great passions, but as a demonstration.

“Gentlemen,” he called over one broad shoulder while stroking the breast of the hooded falcon. “Why don’t you join me for a much better view.”

The twenty or so men around the long table got to their feet, tossing crumpled linen napkins on their chairs and generating a polite wave of laughter from their wives and girlfriends at their parting comments. The Oil Minister of Ajman had to be levered up from the table by two brawny escorts. Hasaan bin-Rufti weighed five hundred pounds at least, his body a shapeless, bulging mass. His neck was hidden by layers of fat that hung from his chin like the dewlap of an ox. His hands resembled surgical gloves that had been inflated to the bursting point, and despite his Semitic complexion, Rufti’s skin was whitened by the internal pressure of adipose tissue. The sweat and fat on his body gave him a maggoty sheen, and his white suit looked almost as large as the tent. As he labored across the loose sand, his body quivered like some gelatinous dessert.

Khalid noted that Rufti’s pet psychopath, Abu Alam, wasn’t present. His sources had told him that Alam had been out of the country for some time. Because Khalid’s spy network was strongest in Europe and they couldn’t find the French-born Algerian who tried to pass himself off as a Muslim fanatic, he suspected that Alam was somewhere in the United States.

As the men approached, Rufti taking up the rear as he wheezed across the desert, Khalid held up a hand to stop them about fifteen yards away. Any closer and they would distract his falcon.

Sahara was an eyas, a bird taken young and raised by hand, long before she had gone through her first molt and learned to fly. Khalid had several birds that he hunted, most of them haggards, falcons taken as adults and thus more difficult to train, but Sahara was his favorite, not only for her brave heart and unbounded loyalty but also because she was the first bird Khalid had trained after his return from school. Though she was getting old, almost too old for the hunt, she still possessed a special place in his heart.

One hundred yards farther out in the desert, in the thin shadow of a desiccated tree, two assistants waited by a large plastic and steel cage. Inside was a bustard, a huge game bird with a gray body and black tiger stripes across its broad back. It was a European bird, especially brought to the Middle East for the hunt. It was much larger than the indigenous birds of the Gulf, with nearly a seven-foot wingspan.

“Just so you’ll know what to expect,” Khalid addressed his guests in English since several Westerners were present as well as UAE citizens, “when I signal my clansmen at the cage, they will release the prey and it will fly straight for us. Don’t be alarmed by its size — it will never reach us. Are you ready?”

They nodded eagerly. They might have lost some of their heritage, but the spark of their ancestors’ way of life still burned within them. It could be seen in their eyes and the alert carriages of their heads and shoulders. Wealth had not quite wiped clean the slate that hundreds of generations of desert living had etched onto their spirits.

Khalid shifted his gaze and saw that Hasaan Rufti looked bored, his piggy eyes darting back to the food left on the table.

No one saw the hand signal — it was just a discreet wrist flick — but all at once the cage opened and a massive shape flew from it, lifting itself off the desert on huge outspread wings. Its flight kicked up dust until it reached a height of about fifteen feet. Despite its size, everyone knew immediately that the hunt wouldn’t be a contest, for the falcon’s speed was legendary and the bustard was merely lumbering through the air like an overloaded cargo plane.

The bird did not see the motionless men, or chose to ignore them in its desire to get away from the cage. It flew directly toward Khalid and the small falcon perched on his arm. Khalid had devised a system to unhood his falcon and slip the jesses in one motion so he could marvel at the swiftness with which she acquired her target and lifted to give chase. Faster than any human could react, Sahara saw the bustard and was gone, her lunge aloft pushing Khalid’s arm to his side.

Khalid had timed the intercept perfectly. The bustard wheeled in the air as soon as it saw the falcon, its ungainly body seemingly turning inside out in its desperate attempt to flee as Sahara rocketed toward it. The birds were thirty yards from the men, who were tensing for the inevitable collision with morbid fascination. A couple of them actually cringed when they saw the two bodies meet in midair. But there was no strike.

Like owls and other birds that had been the prey of falcons, the bustard had a few moves left, and just as Sahara torqued her body to strike with her talons, the bustard flipped itself in the air, twisting and lifting just the few inches it needed to ensure that the raptor missed. Like a combat pilot, the bustard began driving for altitude, pounding the air fiercely. Sahara turned the instant she realized that the bustard was still in the air and started her pursuit.

This was the type of hunt that all falconers dreamed of, the hunt that had thrilled countless ages of men who had watched their birds spiral upward, circling their slower prey so as to overtake without drifting away from their masters. As he watched Sahara dissolve into the sky, Khalid felt a special kinship not only to his ancestors but to the bird itself.

The falcon quickly caught up with the fleeing bustard and continued beyond, flying upward until she was invisible from the ground. At the apex of her spiraling parabola, Sahara winged over and stooped, tucking herself into a deadly bomb aimed at the lumbering bustard, special flaps in her nostrils protecting her lungs from the 180 mph force of her fall. She was one-fifth the size of her target, rocketing downward with the courage that was her breed.

The strike was inaudible, but those on the ground saw it happen. Sahara knifed into the bustard, breaking its back so surely that its wings folded completely in on themselves. The large bird began to fall, cartwheeling to the earth in an untidy pile of shattered bones, blood, and feathers.

Khalid didn’t need the lure in the pouch around his waist to bring Sahara back to his arm; she flew to him even as the bustard was falling, alighting on his arm gently, dissimulating the power and fury she had just shown. He slipped the hood back over her head and reattached the jesses as soon as she’d finished rearranging the long feathers on her wings.

The men burst into applause, and behind them, the women added their acclamation. Sahara preened and called quietly, as if she knew the ovation was for her.

“I will be a while. Why don’t you all rejoin the ladies and start off to my house at the Al-Ain oasis. I shouldn’t be more than half an hour,” Khalid called to his guests.

The entertainment was over, so the men were now anxious to leave. None of them offered to stay and assist Khalid while he finished his work with the falcon. This was the new way, he supposed, the way taught to them in America and Europe, instant gratification coupled with attention spans shorter than young children’s.

“Minister Rufti,” he said, his gaze locked on the corpulent minister from Ajman, the smallest of the Emirates. “Why don’t you walk with me?”

Hasaan bin-Rufti realized that Khalid’s invitation was more of an order than a request, but he tried to demure anyway. “No thank you, my friend.” The pressure of fat against his vocal cords made his voice unnaturally high. “In fact, I must take my leave now and depart for Ajman. There is an important meeting tomorrow with our Crown Prince that requires my attendance. I must decline your gracious hospitality.”