Despite trying to keep a cool demeanor, Emma was excited. She did love to sing but had always thought choirs were not for girls as hip as her. She had fantasized plenty about standing at a mic singing (well, screaming) obscene angry lyrics at kids dancing (well, bashing into one another) in a seedy nightclub.
But Tanesa had challenged her, saying, “You probably can’t hit the high notes anyway.”
So Emma had let go with a soprano range that visibly startled her caregiver. She’d hit those upper Cs as if she’d minted them.
Which, to be fair, Tanesa had matched without any difficulty at all, then moved down the range with equal aplomb. Emma hadn’t even attempted the lower register.
Tanesa then said, “Emma, your voice has a really pure quality, even if your mind is on your underpants too much.”
That had thrilled Emma. Not the underpants part, but hearing that she had a “pure quality.” It was the first time she didn’t feel bullshitted by a compliment. Tanesa was tough. So when she said Emma could try out for the choir, actually audition for William Sr., some kind of religious man or preacher or pastor, or whatever they called themselves, Emma felt genuinely excited.
“You sure I have to go to church to do this?” she asked Tanesa as they headed out the door to the bus, suddenly nervous about meeting a whole new group of kids, especially the older ones.
“Yes, I’m sure. You want to sing about the Lord Almighty, you don’t get to try out in a shower. You go to His house, and then you thank Him for your God-given talent, because that is what you have.”
“How do you know it’s a Him?”
“I don’t. It’s just what we say. But you can think whatever you want.” Tanesa smiled as they approached the sidewalk.
Emma followed suit, thinking, Wait till Mom hears I’m going to church.
The door to the bus swung open, and they hurried up the steps. Not until it closed did Emma see the gunmen and a big black man tied up and gagged.
“Pastor William!” Tanesa cried out.
Emma looked around, panicked. Men with guns and head scarves stood on both sides of the bus. At least four of them. But the one closest wore a heavy canvas backpack that had a tube with what looked like a trigger sticking out the end.
Crossing the Yemeni border proved painless. Fahim Al Juhani bribed the border guard, as customary as praising Allah, while Candace — in hijab and veil — kept her head down like a good subservient woman. They passed through an opening in the ten-foot sandbagged barrier that divided the two nations and headed south.
Fifteen miles later, in the burning sunlight of the unforgiving desert, they passed several Bedouins on camels. One of them watched their small sedan speed by. He did not take his eyes from the vehicle. It was as if he’d never before seen an automobile.
Moments later, Fahim slowed. Candace looked up. Another Bedouin was crossing the two-lane road with his camel. The animal stopped in the middle of the road. The Bedouin climbed down and took the reins, pulling on them — to no avail.
Fahim looked tense. Candace saw his eyes searching for a way around either side of the big beast, but a culvert ran under the highway right there.
Of all places.
“This doesn’t look good,” Fahim said, wiping his brow.
She saw sweat spots on his keffiyeh. Then she glanced at her watch. “We’re fine, Fahim.” They were headed to Sana, the Yemeni capital and the country’s largest city. “We have time.”
“That’s not what I mean. Why would they be crossing here?”
He slowed to a crawl. The camel driver stopped pulling on the reins, like he was giving up. Then he turned to them with a semiautomatic handgun and started shooting.
Candace watched the horror unfold in what seemed like slow motion. The man was not shooting at them. He was aiming at the tires — and hitting them on the driver’s side. That’s when she realized they were in serious trouble. He must have known the car was bulletproof, so that meant he also knew who they were and why they were wanted. They’d been targeted.
She raised her own semiautomatic and tried to lower the window. Fahim yelled, “No! Keep them up. This is a trap. There’ll be more.”
Fahim tried to speed away on the flat tires. He bumped the camel hard enough to make it bolt, opening up the road. But they were going no more than ten miles an hour.
Off to the right, Candace saw a dual sport motorcycle race from behind a dune. A second appeared on its tail.
They overtook them in seconds, shooting out the tires on the passenger side. Not one of the shooters wasted a bullet on the windows. They were disciplined, which scared her even more.
Fahim rode on rims until a Hummer with camouflage paint pulled across the road a hundred yards ahead of them, blocking any possible path. A man raced around the back of the vehicle, shouldering a rocket launcher. He aimed at the windshield. Another man raised his hand for them to stop.
Fahim braked. Neither of them said a word.
“Get out,” one of the motorcyclists yelled in accented English. “Out! No guns! Hands up!”
Candace was hoping a car or plane, something, would come along. Someone who could stop this. But no one appeared. She guessed that all the traffic on the road had been blocked.
She opened her door, and eased out with her hands up. The heat alone was an assault.
Fahim climbed out from behind the wheel. Both of them were thrown against the car. They faced each other over the hood.
More men poured out of the Hummer. Two of them pulled her belongings from the car. Two more stripped off her hijab and took her gun. She was in jeans and a T-shirt.
No one spoke as they went about their work, plundering the trunk, tearing through their luggage.
She watched a man walk up to Fahim, followed by a guy with a camera. The first one placed his pistol to Fahim’s temple and fired twice.
He crumpled to the pavement, out of Candace’s view. The man with the camera tilted it down, then raised it and pointed the lens at her. She stared into it numbly.
A loud engine approached from her blind side, drawing closer until it stopped. Candace prayed it brought help — a last-minute rescue from friendly forces. But when she turned, her blood ran cold: It was an old truck with an open cargo area crowded with armed jihadists. They jumped to the road and rushed toward her.
CHAPTER 15
The back of Ruhi’s head throbbed. Blood trickled down below his hairline. He’d been dragged by his feet across the concrete parking area into an elevator — or so he gathered by the grim evidence: His shirt was bunched up around his armpits, and his shoulder blades were scraped and burning, and bleeding as well.
“Get up!” yelled a man he didn’t recognize.
But Ruhi was so dazed the man’s face could have been Uncle Malik’s and he wouldn’t have known for sure. All the men in his blurred vision had beards.
He heard the elevator doors clank close behind him. Someone pushed a button. Each movement, each sound, registered slowly. The elevator jerked and started upward.
“Now get up!” the same man yelled.
Ruhi could tell it was the same man, more by his voice than his shifting features.
Before he could try to stand, two other men jerked him upright. With his ankles still cuffed, he was wobbly on his legs and spilled into a fourth man, who shoved him away. Then he was pushed from one to the other like a 160-pound hacky sack. That was when he realized that his abasement also was planned. Just as he wondered when all the pushing and shoving and snarling would end, a punch plowed into his stomach. It came with the hardness of an anvil and left him doubled over, unable to take a breath.