“Then hurry down and send for help,” she insisted. “Go on.”
The mokhtar studied her for a beat, as if committing her face to memory, then nodded. “I’ll help you make a fire.”
“No, just go. I can do it.”
He looked at her with eyes that were dark with remorse. He gave in reluctantly, threw one last angry glare in Corben’s direction, then led the horse away from her, towards his fallen son.
They split up the lighters and the torches — the mokhtar would need to see his way down — and the blankets they managed to recover. Moments later, the mokhtar helped his son onto the saddle before climbing on behind him, and with a final, heavy-hearted wave of the torch in his hand, he rode off. Holding up a flaming torch of her own, Mia watched him ride off, her eyes clinging desperately to his receding figure until the darkness swallowed him up entirely.
Chapter 72
She checked on Corben again. There wasn’t much she could do for him, apart from keeping him warm. With a different kind of chill seeping into her bones, she sought out the bodies of both villagers. She found them, one, then the other, lying on the cold ground, bereft of life. She checked each of them for pulses, just in case, and felt a bile of anger at Corben’s reckless actions rising in her throat. Remorsefully, and with a tremble in her hands, she pulled the jacket off one of them and brought it back to cover Corben.
She then got to work on building a fire. The winter rains hadn’t yet arrived, and the twigs and branches she collected were dry and brittle. She managed to get a good fire going opposite the tree Corben was against and gathered a small pile of additional wood to keep it fed.
She wondered how long it would be before help arrived. Given that they’d ridden for close to two hours to get to this spot, she reckoned it would take at least twice as long before anyone appeared, probably even longer given that they’d be making the entire journey at night — and that was assuming they would actually attempt it at night and not wait until morning. A warm feeling spread through her as she thought of Evelyn and Tom wistfully. She knew they wouldn’t wait till morning, and yet, at the same time, she didn’t want to put them in any more danger.
The exhaustion — both physical and mental — was overwhelming the last traces of adrenaline that had kept her going. She surrendered to it and slid down to the ground beside Corben. They just lay there in silence for a while, staring at the bonfire, listening as it crackled and popped, watching as the flames licked and curled around the twigs before pulling them down and consuming them.
“Last thing I remember is going out to meet my mom for a drink,” Mia eventually said. “How did we end up here?”
Corben chewed on it for a brief moment. “Because of assholes like the hakeem. And me.” His hollow voice was laced with regret.
Mia turned to him. “You wanted it that badly?”
He shrugged. “It kind of beats everything, doesn’t it?” He winced. “Everything except a bullet in the gut.”
“Did you kill Farouk?”
Corben’s nodded faintly. “He was badly hit, but…yes.”
“Why?”
“Greed. Self-preservation.” He mulled his words. “Greed, mostly.” He leaned around so that he was facing her. “I’m not a good person, Mia. I wasn’t trained to be good. I was trained to be effective. To get things done. And I’ve done some questionable things, some awful things that were applauded by my superiors.” He shook his head with remorse. “I guess somewhere on that road, I decided I could also do it for myself.”
“So my mom, me…we were just, what? Useful?”
He shook his head faintly. “There was no master plan. It just kind of took me — took us all by surprise and sucked us all in. Something happens, an opportunity pops up, and you go after it. But the last thing I wanted in all this was for you to be put in harm’s way, to get hurt. That’s the truth. And regardless of my motives, I always thought I’d get your mom out, as soon as it was possible. The thing is, in my business, the first lesson you learn is that things rarely work out the way you plan them.” He coughed up a bit of blood and wiped it off his mouth. He looked up at her. “For what it’s worth, I…” He shook his head, as if deciding against saying it. “I’m sorry. About everything.”
Just then, a spine-tingling cry shattered the stillness of the night. It was the unmistakable howl of a wolf. Another quickly responded, its cry echoing around them.
Not a wolf.
Wolves.
They never hunted alone.
A sudden feeling of dread wrung Mia’s gut. Her eyes swung over to Corben. He’d heard them too.
“It’s the blood,” Corben reported gloomily, straightening up. “They’ve smelled it.”
Another howl pierced the night, this one much closer.
How quickly did they travel?
Mia sat up, her eyes and ears on high alert.
“The guns,” he mumbled. “Get the guns.”
Mia hurled herself to her feet and pulled a flaming stick out of the fire. She scurried away on rubbery legs towards where she remembered the mokhtar’s son had fallen. She thought she remembered seeing the mokhtar put the boy’s rifle down there. She’d seen submachine guns by the two fallen villagers, but they were further afield, and she wasn’t sure she dared venture that far.
She advanced cautiously, sweeping the lighted brand left and right, scanning the murky obscurity for any sign of the predators. Her eyes picked out the old hunting rifle, propped up like a talisman against the tree where the mokhtar’s son had lain. She stepped towards it, and just as she reached out to grab it, she saw the gray forms lurking in the shadows. Her heart skipped a whole bar as she watched them skulk there, eyeing her. She stabbed the brand at them, causing them to flinch and retreat a step, but they weren’t easily cowed. They inched forward again, baring their teeth menacingly, their sleek bodies taut with anticipation.
She steeled herself and sliced the air with the brand, shouting at them as she took a careful step to the rifle. She snatched it with her free hand, its weight taking her by surprise, then pulled away, keeping her back to the bonfire, retreating while swinging the stick manically around her. Farther away, she heard yelps and angry snarls, and the three wolves that had been stalking her rushed off into the darkness. She heard them working feverishly on something and realized they had found the villagers’ dead bodies.
She hustled back to Corben before they came back for more. He’d managed to get himself up and was half-crouched, his back to the fire, a flaming brand in his hand. Mia handed him the gun.
“What about the automatics?”
“I couldn’t get to them,” she said fearfully.
Corben checked the rifle and frowned. It was a Russian SKS carbine, ex-Iraqi-army-issue. Its magazine had a capacity of ten rounds. Corben thought he’d heard two of them go wild, and the third had ripped through him, which meant he had seven shots left, if it had been fully loaded. He felt under its barrel. Its bayonet, normally swiveled, tucked in under it and nondetachable on the military-issue weapon, had been taken off, much to his dismay.
Mia was watching him from the corner of her eye. “What have we got?”
“Seven rounds, tops,” he informed her glumly.
The ghostly shapes soon materialized in the darkness around them, the golden glint of the flames flickering in their eyes. They swirled around Mia and Corben like a legion from hell, crisscrossing each other’s paths calmly, almost as if they were conferring with each other and planning their onslaught. They snapped their jaws and bared their teeth, taunting their prey, darting forward and lurching back just as fast, playing with them, testing their defenses.