‘Of course I do,’ Stanley said. ‘This is my battle to fight, my decision. I’m an old man, Mister Warner. All the money in the world won’t keep me alive for long enough to really enjoy it, but Amber could live a life of luxury for decades and still enjoy my device should I ever get it out into the public realm.’
‘Damn it!’ Lopez cursed. ‘I knew we should have taken that offer!’
Meyer looked at her curiously.
‘We both turned down twenty million bucks in favour of finding you and resolving all of this,’ Ethan explained. ‘It wasn’t easy.’
The two militants stared at Ethan with sudden amazement and perhaps even a hint of respect.
‘You turned down twenty million American dollars?’ the militant asked.
‘This asshole did,’ Lopez uttered contemptuously as she jabbed a thumb in Ethan’s direction.
Stanley watched Ethan silently for a moment with an admiring smile touching his old features, but then the gruff exterior fell back into place.
‘Idiots, both of you,’ he uttered. ‘There’s no good reason for you to have not sold out. You could have taken the money and run, that would have been the smart thing to do. No sense in getting heroic about it.’
‘I think I’m going to faint,’ Lopez mumbled.
‘It’s done now,’ Ethan replied. ‘Tell me what you’re hoping to achieve out here.’
Meyer gestured to the militants watching them in silence.
‘What it turns out, clearly, that I couldn’t in Clearwater. These people live in the greatest oil producing nation on earth,’ Stanley explained, ‘and their Royal Family takes the lion’s share of that wealth while they live in poverty. They are sick of the inequality, of the arbitrary use of Sharia Law to silence dissidents, of America’s support for a Kingdom whose leaders are essentially corrupt and greedy. I was wrong to trust the people of Clearwater, because they did not truly appreciate what I was doing, and they sold out at the first opportunity.’
‘Twenty million dollars,’ Ethan replied, ‘so we heard.’
‘Hard to blame them,’ Stanley admitted, ‘but they could have had so much more. But these people here in Saudi Arabia and others like them, the poor and the weak and the abused, are those who would most appreciate what it is that I’ve managed to create. It will be these people and others like them who will spread the word of my device with glee, because they understand what it’s like to have nothing. They know that passing on my device for free, so that nobody can profit financially from it, will benefit others like them across the world.’
Meyer smiled as he looked at the heavily armed militants.
‘The meek truly shall inherit the Earth,’ he said finally, ‘for they outnumber the strong by billions. They will ensure that my Fusion Cage is distributed among the masses, for it is in their own interests to do so, and the act of kindness will also cause the collapse of the House of Saud.’
Stanley looked at Ethan, the smile still broad on his features.
‘This is where the end begins, Mister Warner. The end of greed, the end of corruption, the end of energy wars and pollution: right under the noses of those who most want that all to continue. All I ask of you now is to help me protect my daughter. I will shoulder any further burden of risk alone.’
Ethan glanced at the militants, who had watched the exchange in silence.
‘You guys really want to get back at your royal leaders?’ he asked. ‘If we can liberate Amber Ryan, then Stanley here will be able to give you the device that will render them powerless. Do you have any idea where Amber is, right now I mean?’
The lead militant nodded slowly.
‘I know where she is,’ he replied, ‘and I know what will happen to her next.’
XVIII
The desert was cold in the pale light of pre — dawn, the horizon a sharply defined line of blackness against a flawless deep blue. Ethan rode in silence alongside Lopez, following a line of militants making their way across the trackless wastes like shadowy demons traversing the barren plains of hell. Stars sparkled above them in the vault of the heavens, and the silence was broken only by the occasional snort from one of the splendid Arab horses as they climbed a dune at a gentle gradient.
As Ethan’s mount crested the dune’s ridge he could see in the distance a feint line crossing the endless expanses of the desert, a metalled road linking Riyadh and Damman, both cities beyond sight but marked by the glow of their lights against the horizon.
The plan was simple. Huck Seavers always travelled as part of an armed convoy, the cautious American always mindful of the risk of abduction for ransom. The militants would set up a staggered ambush, attacking the convoy from both in front and behind and pinning the vehicles in a cross fire. Amber would then be extracted and spirited away into the lonely deserts, far from the reach of Huck Seavers. Or so the militants figured, with the brash arrogance of those fighting with a god supposedly on their side.
Ethan had extensive experience of the ability of the US military to probe deep into even the most inhospitable of terrain using UAVs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, capable of deploying Hellfire missiles and staying aloft for days at a time. With Saudi Arabia such a close ally and themselves deploying US military aircraft and drones, the idea that anybody could simply vanish into the wilderness was fast becoming a thing of the past.
‘You know we’re going to have to high — tail it out of here, even if we do get hold of Amber?’ he whispered to Lopez as they rode.
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘We can’t trust the natives as far as we can throw them. The question is, where? Can Jarvis deploy anything to get us out of the immediate area? Can we even get hold of him out here?’
Ethan rested one hand on his satchel, which contained a satellite phone Jarvis had supplied them with before they had left Chicago.
‘Probably, but I don’t doubt that the Saudis will detect the call. There won’t be much time before they vector military assets onto our position, and we won’t be able to get far before jets arrive.’
Lopez nodded and glanced at the militants. ‘They’ve survived out here for long enough with the Saudi authorities breathing down their necks. Maybe they’ve got something up their sleeves that we don’t know about?’
Ethan shrugged as they rode on toward the metalled road. It was true that despite having tremendous firepower behind them the combined might of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines had effectively failed in Iraq and Afghanistan in quelling an enemy familiar with its terrain and fuelled by an unholy determination to repel the “infidels”. Numbers and local knowledge had effectively trumped superior technology and firepower even on the modern battlefield, the ephemeral nature of militant groups hard to combat, tough to bring out into open battle. Where one force was struck down, three more emerged in their place. The brutality of the suicide bomber was impossible to predict, the cruelty of the Islamic militants so terrifying that few military folk could predict just what their limits were, knowing only that they would not stop, ever.
Saudi Dawn had planned an armed attack on a convoy belonging to an American company, and Ethan was acutely aware that he was effectively assisting them. It was only his knowledge of the corruption at the heart of Seavers Incorporated that compelled him to continue with the mission.
‘I don’t care,’ he said finally to Lopez. ‘We need to break off from these guys as soon as we can and get the hell out of Saudi Arabia.’
‘Done and done,’ Lopez agreed.
Ethan spurred his horse up alongside Stanley Meyer’s. ‘So, are you going to tell me that this is all worth it, that we’re doing the right thing, that the world will be powered for free if this device of yours goes public?’