Antony let out one final belch, then fell in behind Cleopatra, who had already started walking at a slow, dutiful pace toward the vast openness of the Sahara.
THEY HAD DECIDED TO TRAVEL INTO the middle of the target zone, to the exact coordinates given to them by Jones, and then begin a search pattern of concentric circles that radiated out from the epicenter.
The sun rose behind them as they rode west. Sunrises in the desert, to which Storm was no stranger, were hauntingly beautiful. At least at first, you could even convince yourself that this place — so infertile, so desolate — wasn’t all that bad. Or at least that it got a bum rap. Storm watched their long shadows grow shorter.
Then the sun reached a certain altitude, high enough that its rays didn’t have to slice through so much of the atmosphere. That’s when Storm could start to feel it beating through the thin, earth-colored thobe that covered his body and the white keffiyeh wrapped around his head and neck.
The sand, which had cooled with the night, began to heat. It was slow at first, but it was incredible how quickly it happened. Storm wasn’t bothering to check the temperature — what was the point? — but it felt like it was rising five degrees every fifteen minutes. A morning that had started out in the fifties was soon into the eighties. Storm felt the sweat popping on his body. He looked at his water bottle. Not yet. They had to conserve what they had.
The pretense of being nomads aside, Storm was glad for the glimpses he was able to sneak at his handheld GPS. The terrain was so featureless that he understood how it was that people ended up traveling in huge circles when they were lost in the desert. It was easy to get disoriented. The GPS kept them more or less on course.
But otherwise, they were traveling across the desert as humankind had for many millennia. On camel. In the heat. Baked by the murderous sun.
They said little. Both seemed to be conscious of conserving their energy, not wasting it on idle talk. For whatever Strike said about getting their task done before the heat of the day, that was clearly not possible. They had too far to travel.
Antony, for whatever initial recalcitrance he may have shown, had settled into a good rhythm. Frothing and spitting aside, this is what he had been bred for since his species was first domesticated in the days before the pharaohs.
It took three hours to near the coordinates Jones had provided. It was already above ninety, Storm was sure, and it was like the furnace was only beginning to roil. Storm was aware Strike was looking at him with increasing frequency as they closed in. He was allowing himself more time with the GPS out. They had locked in the proper northerly coordinate. They now just had to get far enough west.
Finally, they had arrived.
“This is it,” Storm said, pulling on Antony’s reins. In a rare fit of obedience, the camel came to a stop.
They shared a silent beat where they scanned the landscape. There was nothing. Just an ocean of sand that stretched seemingly without end on all sides. Somewhere within ten square miles, what they sought was hidden. The enormity of finding it was manifesting itself.
“Well, it’s all clear to me now,” Strike said, knowing Storm would get the sarcasm.
“It’s damn inconsiderate of the terrorists not to at least plant a flag for us or something. I mean, we came all this way.”
“Inhospitable terrorists. The worst. Next thing you know, they won’t have pulled out the good china for us.”
“I blame the parenting. People just don’t know how to raise a good terrorist anymore,” Storm said. “Let’s head to the top of that dune over there, see what we can see.”
Storm urged Antony forward, and Cleopatra fell in behind. When they reached the summit of what seemed to be the tallest mound of sand amid all the other mounds of sand, they again stopped. The camels stood side by side. Cleopatra nuzzled Antony, who let out a thunderous belch.
It was the only sound for miles.
“Oh, now it’s really clear to me,” Strike said, surveying a view that had changed only in elevation. “The silly thing is, I thought it would be easier once we got out here. If anything, it’s more hopeless than when I was looking on the satellites. At least back then I didn’t have sweat dripping down my cleavage.”
“Man, I never thought I’d feel jealous of sweat,” he said.
Strike said nothing, accustomed as she was to ignoring the fact that Storm seemed to think of sex every eight seconds.
Storm pulled out a pair of Steiner Marine 7x50 binoculars that Strike had been thoughtful enough to include in his backpack. He focused the viewfinder and began scanning the horizon. He made it a full 360 degrees around and started his way back.
He was perhaps halfway through when he saw a glint. It was sun striking off either glass or polished metal, neither one of which was known to be a surface naturally found in a desert. He noted the direction and removed the device from his face.
“There,” he said, handing her the binoculars. “Look at two hundred and seven degrees.”
“Two hundred and seven degrees is what it is out here,” she said, taking a look. “Are you sure you’re not just hallucinating?”
“No. That’s why I’m having you look. Do you see that reflection?”
“Storm, I don’t see anything but…Oh, never mind. Yeah. I got it now. Jones had mentioned there was something that looked like a Bedouin encampment but he said it was outside the target zone so they didn’t really pay too much attention to it. You think that’s it?”
“Whatever it is, it’s more interesting than anything else I see around here. I’m sure it’s outside the target zone, but let’s ditch the search pattern and go check it out.”
“Sounds good to me,” Strike said.
And off down the dune they went. In the Steiner glasses, the flash they saw had looked almost close enough to grab. In reality, it was nearly five miles away and took the better part of an hour to reach.
Again, they lapsed into quiet. The only sound was Antony’s occasional bellowing. Camels have evolved with all kinds of clever features to help them beat the heat and preserve their hydration — blood cells that are circular instead of oval, noses that trap the moisture in their exhales and cycle it back to their body, dung that is so devoid of water it can be lit on fire. Humans have no such adaptations. And as the temperature surged above a hundred, Storm and Strike began suffering accordingly. The heat felt ubiquitous, like it had now filled every ounce of available space, spinning every atom into an inflamed tizzy. Whatever oxygen there was in the air seemed to have evaporated along with whatever water there was on the entire planet.
Neither complained. Storm said nothing because there was no point. Strike said nothing because, whether she acknowledged it or not, she always felt like she was in a kind of unspoken competition with Storm: who was tougher? Who was the better agent? Who could withstand more? Even if he was unaware of the contest, she didn’t want to let him win.
As they neared what had been glinting in the distance, they saw it was not just a stray piece of metal lying in the sun. It was a settlement of some sort — a grouping of tents, some of them quite large, with trucks scattered around them. Storm kept his eye on it, watched as men in white and off-white clothing scurried from tent to tent, trying to stay in the sun as little as possible. He counted perhaps two dozen men, though it was difficult to account for duplicates at that distance.
They appeared to be doing work of some sort. What their purpose was, Storm couldn’t guess. He saw one open-sided tent where several items, some of them quite large, had been secured in crates, perhaps for transport.
When they got to within perhaps a half a mile, Storm could hear excited shouting. The sound carried through the distance, and even though the words did not, Storm could surmise they had been spotted. There was more shouting, and when they got to within a few hundred yards, Storm saw a camel-mounted greeting party coming out to intercept them.