Will Adams - The Alexander Cipher

As she stood there, Mustafa explained how they and Knox had hurried down here to find her father already cold, his blood everywhere, how they had offered to help Knox take his body back to the truck, how he had snarled at them.

She looked around at where they had parked. "You mean that truck?" she asked.

"Yes."

She felt a little weak. "My father's body was in your truck?"

Mustafa looked a little sheepish. He told her how much he and Zayn had respected her father, what a tragedy it had been, how unnecessary. Gaille stared upward while he talked. The rock face rose sheer and high above them. It made her toes tingle. She felt light-headed, a little nauseated. She had never been good with heights. She took a step back, stumbled, and might have fallen had Zayn not grabbed her by the arm and restored her to balance.

Her sense of vertigo stayed with her as she and Mustafa climbed the rock face. Zayn elected to stay behind with the truck, in case of robbers. Gaille had snorted softly when she heard that. Robbers! There was no one for fifty miles. But she couldn't blame him. The growing heat and the gradient made the climb far more difficult than she had anticipated. There was no path, just a series of steep shelves of rock too sandy to provide secure footing. Mustafa led the way, dancing up in his ragged flip-flops, careless of his thick white robes and heavy pack, five times bulkier than her own. Each time he got far enough ahead, he would squat like a frog on an outcrop to smoke one of his foul cigarettes and watch amiably as she labored to catch up. She grew increasingly indignant. Didn't he know that men his age shouldn't be able to ingest tar so relentlessly and still be fit? Didn't he realize he should be a physical wreck? She scowled up at him. He waved cheerily back. Her feet ached despite her leather boots; her calves and thighs were trembling with exertion; her mouth was tacky with thirst. She reached him at last, slumped down, fetched out her water bottle, swilled and swallowed a mouthful, and asked plaintively, "Are we nearly there yet?"

"Ten minute."

She squinted suspiciously at him. He had said that every time.

The sandstorm hit lightly at first. Rick sat back in his seat with a relieved smile. "This isn't so bad," he said.

"If it doesn't get any worse."

It was still light enough outside that he could see the track, despite the sand being blasted against his door and window. Sandstorms tended to fall into two broad categories. One was effectively a dust storm, hundreds of feet high, that blocked out the sun and was disorienting without being particularly brutal. The other-like this one-was a true sandstorm: a fierce wind picking up sand from the dunes and firing them like shotgun pellets.

It wasn't long before Rick was regretting his complacency. The wind buffeted them so hard, they were creaking back and forth on their suspension; the paint and windows were being assailed by a nonstop barrage, loud and frantic, that seemed certain to break through the fragile old glass. Visibility deteriorated so badly that Knox could barely see the track anymore. He kept skewing into soft sand that cloyed beneath their wheels, or over stray sharp rocks that threatened their tires, so that he had to go down into first gear and slow almost to a crawl.

"Shouldn't we stop?" asked Rick.

Knox shook his head. Stop for even a minute, and the wind would blow away the sand beneath their tires, making them sink into the pits it created, until they were stuck. Then it would pile up a drift against their side until they were completely buried and their doors pinned, making them dependent on being rescued. And there wasn't much chance of that out here.

The winds grew indescribably fierce, causing the Jeep to rock precariously back and forth. The left wheels dropped suddenly just as a gust blew viciously hard, so that for a moment it felt as if they were about to be blown onto their side.

"Christ!" muttered Rick, clutching his door handle as they slammed back down onto four wheels. "Have you been through one like this before?"

"Once," said Knox.

"How long did it last?"

"Seven days."

"You're fucking with me."

Knox allowed himself a small smile. It wasn't often he had seen Rick rattled. "You're right," he admitted. "It was more like seven and a half."

A waft of tobacco smoke tickled Gaille's throat and made her cough. Mustafa held up a hand in apology, then screwed the butt into the dust with his flip-flop. Gaille dribbled water onto her palm, ran it over her brow, and rose reluctantly to her feet. "How much further?" she asked.

Mustafa nodded keenly. "Ten minute," he said. She clenched her teeth together. Damned if she would give him the satisfaction of begging for more recovery time. She followed him wearily up a gully in the hillside. After a little while, it suddenly sheared away, so that she could see for tens of kilometers over the golden desert. It looked endless. "You see," said Mustafa with an impresario's whirl of the hand. "Ten minute."

By God, they were high up. Gaille inched closer to the edge. It fell away beneath her directly to the rocks below, fawn cliffs riven by black shadows. A ledge ran above the precipice before reaching again the safe embrace of a gully, but it was ridiculously narrow, more like stepping stones than a path. "You crossed that?" she asked.

Mustafa shrugged. He kicked off his flip-flops and walked quickly across, left hand against the cliff wall, soles of his feet molding themselves to the meager holds. He dislodged a small stone, and she put a hand against the cliff wall and leaned out to watch it fall. It hit a knob of rock and bounced away from the cliff. Still it fell… and still. She could barely see the cairn on the rocks far below.

Mustafa reached the far side. "See?" he grinned. "Is nothing."

She shook her head. There was no way she could do it. Her balance was poor; her ankles were tired. It would be difficult enough at ground level, but up here… Mustafa shrugged and came back across. Chills cramped Gaille's toes just watching him. He placed his hand on her back to give her courage. She reached her left foot tentatively onto the first small outcrop and brought her right foot to join it. She spent an age looking at the place where she had to set her foot next. She made that step jerkily, then another. The world warped and grew indistinct around her, shearing away from her at the same time that it rushed up at her face. She wanted to go back, but she couldn't move. She closed her eyes, pressed her back against the cliff wall, stretched out her arms for balance. Her fingers and toes felt bloodless and weak; her knees threatened to buckle. It was then that she understood at last what had happened to her father, and Knox's part in it. Tears sprang from her eyes as she realized how wrong she had been about him, about everything. "I can't do this," she said. "I can't-"

Mustafa grabbed her hand and pulled her to safety. "You see," he grinned. "That was all Knox must do."

She shook her head at him and collapsed, dry-heaving, into a bowl of rocks from which she couldn't possibly fall. She turned onto her back, covering her eyes with her hand while wiping away the tickle of tears from her cheeks. Her father's life insurance policy had included a handsome bonus for accidental death, enough for Gaille to buy herself an apartment. An apartment! She felt wretched. She struggled to her feet and, with weak, rubbery legs, followed Mustafa on the long, silent walk down to the truck.

Knox and Rick drove through the sandstorm for what seemed like hour after hour. The whine and screech and roar got to them both, like furious harpies clawing at the Jeep's metalwork, trying to get at them. The engine was increasingly strained, too, with unsettling glugs and belches coming from the radiator. But finally the storm began to abate; and then, in what seemed little more than a moment, the wind died away altogether and they were through, with nothing but open desert around them.