The men were only ten feet from Zahra and Dina now. Both strangers looked to be heavily intoxicated, perhaps even on drugs. Their eyes were dark with heavy bags underneath them. Regardless of their current mental state, they didn’t look like they wanted to casually exchange pleasantries. These guys wanted to forcibly exchange something else.
Like bodily fluids.
Dina clutched Zahra’s left bicep. She was of slight build, petite, and Zahra knew she wasn’t athletic. The worst fight she had ever been in was probably with herself over which article of clothing to wear on a Friday night out.
Unlike her friend, however, Zahra had no fear of these two. She had dealt with far more challenging odds in her life than a pair of overstimulated, voracious sex hounds.
Zahra leaned in close to Dina and whispered. “Whatever happens, stay behind me.”
“Huh?” Dina was confused. “What do you—”
Zahra gave her a stern look and then slipped out of her grip. “Hey, boys,” Zahra said, tossing back her shoulder-length hair. She buried her piercing eyes into the bald man on her left. He was the biggest of the two, and the one she would focus on first if things got dicey.
The bald guy spoke up first. “What are you two lovely ladies, like yourselves, doin’ out at this hour?”
Every word was stilted, leaned on. He was definitely drunk, or at least well on his way.
Zahra held up the open flask, ready to play along. Goad him in, she thought. She let loose a giggle and a fake hiccup. “Getting… gettin’ tipsy. Want some?”
The left side of Baldy’s mouth curled into a small smile. He shrugged and stepped forward. “’on’t mind if I do. Gerald, by the way.” He tipped his head toward his partner. “An’ this is Mickey. What about you?”
He reached forward. Instead of going for the flask, though, Gerald bypassed it and sensually rubbed on Zahra’s shoulder with a clammy, cold palm. Mickey’s eyes latched onto the intimate gesture, and he swallowed. His face twitched with a disgusting, frenzied delight.
If Zahra didn’t know any better, this guy was about to do something terrible.
And something he’ll regret, Zahra thought.
“She’s Julie, and I’m Mar—”
Zahra cut herself off while she had them focusing on her words, then she forced Gerald away with a double-palm-strike to his chest. Without looking, she splashed the bourbon into Mickey’s face with a flick of her wrist. She followed that with a snap kick into Gerald’s crotch, dropping the man to his knees.
With him somewhat incapacitated, she turned her attention to Mickey, who was shrieking and rubbing the alcohol deeper into his bloodshot eyeballs.
Knowing that he wasn’t an immediate threat, she allowed Mickey to blindly swipe at the air. She’d focus on Gerald instead. He was still on his knees, holding his privates tightly with both his hands.
Time to teach you boys a lesson.
“How do you want it?” she asked confidently, standing tall with her hands on her hips.
Gerald growled from his knees. “Fuck off, you twa —! ”
She didn’t let him finish. Zahra stepped in close and drove her right knee into his unprotected face. The single blow rocked him back, and he fell to the sidewalk in an unconscious, bloody heap. The impact had broken the man’s nose.
Zahra was half-tempted to leave Mickey be, but she also wanted to continue her lesson in civility. She waited for Mickey to get himself into position, and then silently snuck up behind him. Zahra kicked-out the back of his left knee. The strike stumbled Mickey, but he still needed a little bit of a push. She took two steps and leaped into the air, delivering a stiff front kick into the middle of Mickey’s shoulder blades. The impact threw the man forward, driving him headfirst into the post of a nearby metal streetlamp. With a resounding gong, Mickey went down like a ton of bricks, flopping onto his back in the gutter.
Where he belongs.
Breathing hard from the cold air but not the short-lived altercation, Zahra picked up the empty flask, then handed it back to Dina. The blonde was shellshocked by what she had just witnessed. She couldn’t take her eyes off the carnage.
Zahra waved her hand in front of her friend’s eyes. “Earth to Dina…”
The Brit blinked. “Wh —,” she stuttered, still staring at Gerald, “what did you say you did in the army?”
Zahra shrugged and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “I was a linguist. Why?”
Chapter 2
Abbas
Emergency lights flashed in intermittent patterns, giving Abbas Faez a headache that rivaled the discomfort of a full-blown migraine. It was getting late, nearly ten o’clock, and it had been raining off and on since the sun had gone down. The weather was an anomaly and gave him the chills. He attempted to blink away the pain and pressure pushing on the back of his eyes but failed to achieve the bliss he desperately sought.
The tall, thickly built construction boss snarled at the incoming headlights. Their illumination sent the beast into a near rampage. He lifted one of his calloused hands, and he blocked out the pair of lights the best he could. But the damage was done. He sighed, breathing hard out through his nose. The man — the expert — that had just arrived wasn’t to blame for Abbas’ condition. Dehydration and a lack of sleep were at fault here. Abbas drank too much for his own good — and not water.
The newcomer climbed out of his well-maintained silver SUV, and he quickly popped an umbrella, not that the device did much to protect the man from the elements. His bottom half was immediately doused by a combination of the deluge and the sharp gusts. Abbas was beginning to think the gods of old had cursed this job. A week before, a sinkhole had opened up beneath the southern corner of a picturesque nine-hole golf course, swallowing a chunk of the eighth green, as well the bordering road, Othman Ibn Effan. Once Abbas and his people had cleared a large portion of the earth and rock, a second, more significant section of land had fallen in, taking a backhoe and its operator with it.
Even a man of Abbas’ rough background and character understood the historical importance of their find. They had spotted the discovery after rescuing the backhoe’s operator from being buried alive. Abbas’ team had been working through the night to clear debris until they had come across something that ground their efforts to a halt.
“Hello,” the expert said, holding out his hand, “My name is Dr. Hassan. I’m an Egyptologist with the Ministry of Antiquities. I’m here to take a look at your ‘significant discovery.’”
That was the term Abbas had used to describe what he had found, though he had said it in a much less condescending way. For that reason, he decided not to shake the man’s hand. He simply tipped his head back and muttered. “Follow me.”
He didn’t have the time or patience for pleasantries, especially with a person who carried himself in the way that Hassan did. All people like Hassan cared about was their job — in this case, to build a golf course. That was a bust, now that they had found something of historical significance — Abbas knew that immediately. This would not be the first time people had been stopped from doing their jobs in the name of history. He knew that the find below their feet would take months, perhaps years, to properly sift through and catalog.
The last time something like this happened was five years ago. That discovery had been nothing more than a hole in the ground that some thief had crawled into — and died in — 2,500 years prior.