Yet being an antique made it no less deadly when fired from point-blank range. Raynes had the weapon pressed against Katie Comely’s temple. He was using her as a shield from the rest of the party.
“Hands up,” Raynes ordered. “All of you, hands up. Nothing crazy here, or she dies.”
Storm, the three graduate students who had been driving the cargo trucks, and the four guards slowly raised their hands. The only one who didn’t comply was Strike. She had brought the M16 up to her shoulder and was aiming it at Raynes from perhaps thirty feet away.
“I’ve got the shot, Storm,” she said calmly.
“Don’t,” Storm said.
“I can take him out,” she insisted.
“No! For God’s sake, you’re on a camel and that gun is stuck on automatic. There’s no way you’ll be able to control your aim or the muzzle climb. There’s too great a chance you’d hit them both.”
“Better listen to your boyfriend, Ms. Sullivan — or whatever your name is,” Raynes said, hiding more of himself behind his terrified postdoc.
“I’ve. Got. The. Shot,” Strike said again, not lowering the weapon.
“And Katie has got a family in Kansas,” Storm said.
“Drop the weapon! Drop it, now!” Raynes was shouting as Storm spoke, pressing the barrel of the Pocket Police tighter against the side of Katie’s head.
Storm wished he could place his body between Strike and her target. But she was too high up on the camel. All he had were words. The ones he chose were soft: “Clara. Please. Not for her. For me.”
Strike took a deep breath, moved her finger to the trigger, tightened her grip on the gun…
Then tossed it on the desert sand below her.
“Damn it,” she said.
“All right,” Raynes said. “And while you’re at it, let’s get rid of those handguns you have, too. I’ve seen what’s in those shoulder holsters. Do it real, real slow. If I even think you’re making a move to draw, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
Storm and Strike slowly discarded their sidearms, moving deliberately so their actions could not be misinterpreted.
“Okay, all of you, over there, away from the trucks,” Raynes barked. “That’s right. And let’s keep those hands up.”
Storm, Strike, and the others herded themselves into a small clump a short distance away from Raynes, who still had his gun trained on the side of Katie’s head.
When he felt the group was a sufficient distance away, Raynes moved just slightly away from Katie.
“Okay,” he said. “Now you’re going to keep your hands up, but you’re going to sit down.”
Exchanging glances, the nine people who suddenly found themselves at gunpoint reached the conclusion that they didn’t have much of a choice and took a seat on the sand.
“Very good,” Raynes said. “Katie, there’s a bunch of rope in the truck. You’re going to go get it and use it to tie up all of these people. Start with Mr. Talbot here. Then Ms. Sullivan. And you had better make it tight.”
Raynes shadowed Katie’s movements as she went to the cargo truck, retrieved the rope, and began tying up her friends and colleagues. He stayed within a few feet of her, never letting the gun drop.
Storm and Strike communicated with their eyes only. At one point, Storm — as if responding to a suggestion Strike had made aloud — shook his head.
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
“No talking!” Raynes ordered. “And let’s keep those hands up.”
“But my arms are getting sore,” one of the graduate students complained.
“A bullet will hurt a lot worse,” Raynes snarled.
Katie, who was finally recovering from her shock, began fuming. “It’s been you, all along. You’re the one who told the bandits what we’ve dug up. You’ve been telling them when to make their raids. All as a front for selling this…this promethium, whatever that is. How could you do this to us?”
“You’re very naïve, Katie. All this equipment. All these supplies. All these workers. You think I’ve been getting that kind of money from the university? Please.”
“But…why just dig it up and let someone else take it?”
“Because if these people didn’t take it, the Egyptian government would. Either way, I don’t see a dime of it.”
“But you get credit for the discovery!”
“Oh, fabulous, credit,” Raynes said with a scoff as Katie continued her knot work. “Let me explain to you how credit works in the real world, my young postdoc. You make these amazing finds. You publish them, like a good academic should. You get all this quote-unquote credit. And then the university chancellor says, ‘That’s wonderful, professor. Congratulations. But, sorry, we have to cut your funding.’
“And then there are the foundations. Oh, let me tell you about them. They make you travel halfway across the globe to grovel at the feet of their almighty boards. And they tell you how fantastic you are. And then a week later, the executive director calls you up and says, ‘Sorry, our portfolio didn’t perform as well as we hoped this year. But we’ll fund your dig two years from now, for sure. Good luck keeping it going.’”
Raynes punctuated this by lobbing out a few words that cannot be said on network television.
“And so there I was, slowly sinking, watching my budget and my staff whittle down to nothing, losing everything I had worked for. And then, one day, I noticed an unusual geological formation in one of the seismograms. I dug just a little and found a limestone cave that had a deposit of something that wasn’t limestone. I had it tested and, lo and behold, it was this thing called promethium, the rarest of the rare earths. It sells for three thousand dollars an ounce. And what was I supposed to do at that point? Tell the Egyptian government, which would immediately claim mineral rights and take it all for themselves? No way.”
Katie had furious tears streaming down her face. “You’re a monster,” she spat.
“Am I? I didn’t hear you complaining when you were collecting that postdoc stipend and padding out your resume so you could get yourself a tenure-track job back in the states. Where do you think that money came from?”
Katie did not reply. Raynes went over to her and cupped the back of her head.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, jerking herself away.
“I was going to let Bouchard through. You know that, right? All the truly important finds got through. I just…I needed the bandits as a cover. I couldn’t risk selling the promethium on the open market. I would have lost it all and we would have had to close the dig.”
“So instead you sell it to terrorists,” Storm said.
“Shut up!” Raynes said, briefly swiveling his gun in Storm’s direction. “I sell it to a man named Ahmed. What he does with it is his business.”
“He’s using it to make a weapon that blows up commercial airliners laden with innocent people,” Storm said. “But, hey, you’ve got a dig to fund, so what do you care?”
Raynes ignored him. Katie had bound the nine other members of the expedition.
“Very good. Now get in that truck,” he said, pointing to the middle cargo truck, the one with the promethium still in back.
“I’m not coming with you,” she said indignantly.
“Oh, yes you are. You’re my insurance plan in case anyone here gets any ideas about playing hero. Actually, sorry, you’re the second part of my insurance plan. This is the first part.”
He walked to the front of the first truck, aimed the Pocket Police at the front left tire, and shot it. The truck jolted down. He followed suit by shooting out the front right tire. Then he went to the back truck and similarly disabled it with two well-aimed shots.
Raynes returned to Katie, who needed a little extra cajoling to enter the passenger seat of the truck. Raynes got into the driver’s side, turned the engine over, then rolled down the window.