Desert Fire

Desert Fire

 

H.M. PRÉVOST

 

 

 

 

The entire novel is available as an ebook on Amazon.com and will be available in paperback in April 2013.

Prologue

Intruder on Board

 

 

Wednesday, September 5, 9:27 p.m.

 

“The cargo door’s opening!” Captain Bellamy shouted. Red lights flashed on the plane’s instrument panel. Impossible. He hadn’t authorized a high altitude drop and—

Thump.

A heavy weight shifted in the hold and the small plane shuddered. The Captain turned toward his co-pilot, whose eyes were barely visible above his oxygen mask.

“The payload’s unstable. Didn’t the loadmaster secure the crates?” Bellamy demanded.

“Yessir!” Lieutenant Johnston glanced wildly at the switches and blinking lights. “Double-checked them myself.”

The plane streaked ahead in the darkness. Ten thousand feet below, small clusters of lights gleamed on the shores of the Arabian Gulf. Bellamy verified the instrument panel. They were scheduled to land in thirty minutes. What was going on in the cargo hold?

Another whump in the belly of the military plane.

“Johnston, I’m going back there. Our payload’s worth millions, and it can’t be compromised.” Whatever it is. No one had told him what they were carrying. The information was classified.

Bellamy unbuckled himself from the pilot’s seat and switched his oxygen breathing regulator to a portable unit. He instinctively touched the butt of his handgun, a semi-automatic Beretta M9, before placing his fingers against the door handle. He paused. If the cargo door really was open, he risked being sucked out of the plane.

As soon as he turned the handle, the wind yanked the door and slammed it against the wall. Blasts of freezing air swept through the depressurized cargo bay, chilling the exposed parts of his face. Bracing himself against a railing bolted to the wall, he bent over to tether his harness to the floor.

The crates had been secured on four small pallets, ready for off-loading when they landed on the aircraft carrier that waited off the Iranian coastline. Bellamy made a quick count. Three pallets strained against their tie-down straps. Where’s number four?

Something was wrapped around the top of the remaining crates. Parachutes.

His hand returned to his Beretta. Somebody’s stealing the payload.

A figure emerged from the shadow of the third crate, holding a gleaming steel blade. He wore an air force helmet, an oxygen mask, and a parachute was strapped to his back. Crouching, the man knifed the tie-down straps on the pallet nearest the door. Gravity took over. The crate plummeted out the rear.

“Johnston!” Bellamy called. “Intruder on board! He’s dumping the crates.”

The intruder stood less than fifteen feet away. Bellamy didn’t move. Even with a gun, his chances of firing a fatal shot at this distance were slim. An attacker armed with a knife could close seven yards in as little as a second and a half.

He stayed very calm, using the extra seconds to think. One slow inch at a time, he eased the Beretta out of its holster. Go for a double shot to the heart. The chest made an easier target than the head.

The intruder launched himself at Bellamy with the speed of a missile, knife extended, silver blade glinting. Bellamy unholstered his weapon, released the safety catch, and swung his arm upwards. Before he could fire his attacker smashed into him, knocked him down and punched him in the throat.

Johnston’s voice rang in Bellamy’s ears. “I’m putting it on autopilot and coming back there!”

“Hurry!”

The knife sliced Bellamy’s tether. Now there was nothing to keep him anchored to the plane. The wind howled. An unexpected fit of turbulence rocked the hold. Panicked, Bellamy rolled on top of his attacker and pinned down the arm that held the knife. The intruder brought one leg up and kicked Bellamy in the chest. Bellamy flew backward, the breath knocked out of him. He rolled twice and ended up by the cargo hold’s gaping door. Cold blasts of air sucked at him. His fingers closed over the tie-down straps on the second-last pallet. His feet dangled in empty air.

The intruder got up, rubbing his shoulder. The knife still clenched in his fist, he started to cut the straps holding down the crates.

“No!” Bellamy screamed. His feet couldn’t get a grip on the side of the door. He looked up as Johnston exited the cockpit, his Beretta drawn and ready. The muzzle flash burned brightly in the semi-dark hold. The intruder’s head snapped back, and he slumped against the wall. Making a desperate lunge forward, Bellamy hooked his right foot onto the doorframe.

Johnston clipped his harness to a hook in the ceiling and walked down the narrow cargo bay. He holstered his gun and pulled Bellamy further into the hold. They leaned over the dead man, examining the bullet hole in the helmet.

“Good shot,” Bellamy said. Clean entry wound.

Hold on a minute.

He didn’t see any blood. Bellamy looked closer. The bullet had only dented the helmet, which was reinforced with Kevlar.

The moment he realized the intruder was dazed and not dead, it was too late. The knife struck out, cutting the final strap on the third pallet. The shifting crates hooked Johnston’s tether and pulled him to the door. The boxes disappeared into the blackness, dragging Johnston with them. The wind swallowed his screams. Bellamy’s throat tightened and his pulse raced. For a second, he pictured Johnston falling through the air at terminal velocity.

He saw his reflection in the faceless man’s visor and backed toward the safety of the cockpit, clutching the railing for balance. The intruder advanced, raised his arm, and the blade’s deadly tip swung at Bellamy’s throat.

 

 

1

 

Desert Fire

 

 

Wednesday, September 5, 9:50 p.m.

 

At first, I thought it was a comet blazing through the skies over Abu Dhabi. As it plunged closer to the ground, I made out a shadow around the ball of flame. It’s a plane. The tail’s on fire. A heavy weight settled over my chest. The fiery ball rapidly lost altitude.

“Mom, come see this!” I stood so close to the window my breath fogged the glass.

“Later, Nick.” She scrunched up her face at the hairy-armed real estate agent showing us an apartment. The water and electricity had been cut off, so he was lighting her way with a candle. She followed him into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the master bedroom.

“Mom, we should call 911.” Or whatever number you were supposed to dial in this country. The plane didn’t look big enough to be a commercial airliner. Judging from its trajectory, it would fly away from the city and crash into the desert.

“Don’t you have a flashlight?” Mom came out of the kitchen, her arms raised in exasperation.

“No need flashlight,” the agent said in a thick Arabic accent. “This good flat.”

The plane disappeared behind a row of distant palm trees. How many people were on board? Cargo or passenger? My investigative juices started flowing. If I got to the scene before anybody else, maybe I could write a story and get a local newspaper to print it. This kind of article would be a great addition to my journalism portfolio and help me get into a top university. I had to get out of here. Fast. “Mom, it’s pointless. We can’t see a thing. Let’s go.” She didn’t hear a word I said about the crash.

“Yes,” she mumbled in defeat, shoulders hunched. “We’ll try again tomorrow afternoon.”

We left the building, and a whoosh of humid air assaulted us. When Mom announced we were moving to the United Arab Emirates, I envisioned hot dry days and cool nights. Instead, we were living in a sauna. The high September humidity made it difficult to breathe.

“Take a taxi to the hotel, Mom. Bliss will be there. I’m going to check on the crash site.”

“What crash? You’re not going anywhere,” she snapped. “You’ll get lost.”

“I’m not a kid. I’m seventeen, and I can get around the city just fine.” Didn’t she understand she needed looking after more than I did?

“You should be back at the hotel with your sister. It’s ten o’clock, and you have school tomorrow.” She jerked the zipper on her purse and pulled out a tissue to wipe the condensation from her glasses. Limp brown hair hung loosely around her face. A safety pin fastened the waistband of her ankle-length skirt. If she lost more weight, she’d disappear completely.

Mom couldn’t stop me any more than she could stop a bullet train. When I wanted something, I went for it. “I’m staying.”

“Just like your father.” She squeezed her purse tightly under her arm.

I flinched. Being compared to my father usually got a reaction out of me—because of him, I’d been wrenched away from my school and friends back home in Toronto—but I squelched my temper this time.

“I have enough to worry about, Nick. Don’t make it worse.”

She scrutinized my face, and I knew she was focusing on the features I’d inherited from him: the cowlick in my mop of black hair, the vivid blue eyes, the cleft in my chin, and a mouth that curled to the left when I smiled. My Elvis smile, she called it.

At a nearby street corner, I caught sight of a gold and white taxi. When I raised my arm, the car veered in our direction, coming to a stop by the curb. The bearded driver readjusted the small white cap on his head and put a cell phone to his ear.

I opened the back door for my mother to get in. “Regency Hotel,” I told the driver. “Al Salam Street.”

He nodded, jabbered into his phone in a language that didn’t sound like Arabic, and slid a finger up his nose. Crinkling her own nose in disgust, Mom got into the back seat. After the taxi pulled away, I thought about how stupid it was to chase after an airplane. I didn’t even have my motorcycle. How far would I get on foot?

It felt good to get away from my mother, though. She was psyching herself up for her new job tomorrow and was as taut as the strings on a steel guitar. Moving to a foreign country to start a new life scared her to death, and so did the idea of sitting at a desk in front of twenty whiny fourth graders. She wouldn’t have done it if she’d had any other place to go, but she grabbed the first opportunity that came her way after Dad booted her out on the doorstep because he’d decided to swap his wife for his mistress. Dad didn’t know it, but I overheard the entire confrontation from the rec room.

“Pack up and leave,” he said coldly, as if he’d just terminated an employee. His footsteps resonated on the floor, and Mom melted into tears.

To hell with you, Dad. I don’t want you around any more than Mom does.

I stepped into the street. A black Hummer with tinted windows squealed around the bend. Spinning on my heel, I leaped to the safety of the sidewalk but misjudged its height. My knee banged on concrete, and I sprawled face down, my nose right next to a gooey glob of spit.

The Hummer screeched to a stop and the door opened. A kid barely old enough to have a driver’s license leaned out. His head covering fluttered in the breeze, and it matched his white robe. “Ta’al.”

I brushed the dirt off my Maple Leafs t-shirt and a pair of jeans so frayed Mom wouldn’t notice the new hole in the right knee. “La afham.” It was the only Arabic phrase I’d learned so far, I don’t understand. Even though the Emirates was an Arabic-speaking country, most of the people I’d spoken to knew some garbled form of English.

“Wain atayyara?” He waved at the sky. “Did you see the plane?”

“It’s somewhere behind those palm trees.” I pointed.

“Come.” He gestured to the back door.

A passenger leaned over to get a look at me. He wore the same outfit as the driver and seemed to be the same age.

Hmm, get into a car with complete strangers? Not something I’d recommend in downtown Toronto, but out here the crime rate was low. Besides, I’d kill to sit in a Hummer, and this was the latest model. I reverently placed my hand on the chrome door handle.

Whoa, luxury wheels. Tan leather interior, sunroof, liquid crystal displays for the driver, a GPS on the dashboard, a video screen over my head. Nirvana! The soft upholstery hugged my body. A quick glance through the CD holder revealed a series of DVDs with Chinese lettering on the covers and bad English on the back. Most of the blurbs were misspelled: “without her, his fife would not be compete.” Pirated, all of them.

The Hummer rolled over yellow-striped speed bumps. We reached the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, where the apartments were cheaper, and the driver turned sharply onto the main road toward the desert. As we sped down a four-lane highway, the passenger turned round. “Shu ismak?”

My blank stare told him I didn’t have a clue what he’d said. The streetlights illuminated his narrow elongated face, pointy chin, and a few downy whiskers that put on a poor imitation of a moustache. Slender forearms emerged from the sleeves of his white tunic.

“I’m Faris Muhairbi. What’s your name?” he asked in remarkably good English.

“Nick. And yours?” I leaned forward to hear the driver’s answer and immediately wished my butt had stayed glued to the seat. The speedometer read one hundred and eighty klicks. I knew we were going fast, but I didn’t think we were trying to break the sound barrier.

“Mohammed,” he said. “We’re brothers.”

Before coming here, I’d read some stats about the number of traffic accidents. The mortality rate was skyscraper high. I gulped and searched for the seatbelt, which was firmly wedged in the crack between the seats. “Could you slow down a bit?”

Mohammed laughed and gunned the engine. The palm trees lining the road flew by in a blur. “If we slow down we won’t find the plane.”

The Hummer decelerated and jolted suddenly as Mohammed veered off the road and into the desert. The first thing that struck me was the absence of sand dunes. The headlights illuminated flat terrain, and the vehicle charged over scrubby bushes that scraped at the undercarriage.

“Do you like off road driving?” asked Faris. “Have you tried dune bashing?”

Dune what? My head hit the ceiling. Once more, I scrambled for the seatbelt. Hopeless.

Faris muttered a long string of Arabic to his brother. They burst into laughter. Mohammed released the steering wheel, slapped his forehead with both hands, and then asked, “Are you American?”

I rubbed the sore spot on my head.

“Faris says if you’re American, we’ll dump you in the desert and leave you to the camel spiders.”

Shit. Mom’s nagging warnings echoed in my brain. Never get into a car with strangers. They could be killers or perverts—

I pulled my t-shirt out of my pants and pointed to the maple leaf. “I’m Canadian, see?” Damn me for leaving my passport at home. They wouldn’t hurt a Canadian, would they? We’re harmless.

“Ah, Canada,” they said in unison. “Very good.”

“Number one,” Faris said with a thumbs up.

“Number two.” Mohammed gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “UAE’s number one.”

Mohammed jerked the steering wheel to the right, and I slid to the opposite side of the seat. Uneven scrubland filled the dimly lit area in front of the headlights.

We passed a piece of scrap metal. Up ahead, a soft glow lit up the night. It seemed barely bigger than a campfire, but as the Hummer bumped and bounced along, several other fires appeared among a field of debris.

“Stop,” Faris said.

Mohammed braked hard, cut the engine, and turned off the lights.

The three of us scrambled out of the Hummer. For the first time, I got a good look at Mohammed. He bore a striking resemblance to his narrow-faced brother, except he had the common sense to shave the fluff off his upper lip. Fraternal twins, I guessed.

A large section of wing jutted from the sand. As I approached, I recognized the markings. Military camouflage.

Whose military? The UAE shared borders with Saudi Arabia and Oman. We were pretty close to Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran. The Americans kept an aircraft carrier off the coast of Dubai, didn’t they? The remnants of the plane refused to divulge their origins. In spite of the high temperature, a shiver ran down my neck. Hulking shadows loomed far to my left, half-buried in the ground. Engines.

By dim firelight, it was impossible to tell if there were any bodies. Guilt squeezed my stomach. I was a trespasser. I’d come here to gape at the wreckage, and the idea that there might be people who needed help made me nauseous. The oppressive heat didn’t help. It exerted a palpable pressure on my lungs.

Firelight played on some rumpled fabric under a sheet of metal. The fabric stirred and moaned.

A survivor.

I sprinted over and knelt beside a man in a military uniform. Half his face was raw flesh. Short-cropped hair covered his scalp. A jagged piece of steel, as large as the hood of a car, weighed on his thighs. His arm flailed suddenly, and he grabbed at my waist, hooking his fingers into my belt. His mouth opened and blood trickled down his chin as he tried to speak. His eyes pleaded for help. I stared into frightened, glistening pupils, where faint firelight gleamed. I could almost hear his heart pulsing more slowly and weakly with each passing second.

What should I do?

He gurgled and a rush of blood spilled over his lips. His eyes held on to mine, and his mouth kept moving. What was he saying?

Faris and Mohammed squatted by my side. “He needs an ambulance,” I whispered.

“Call 999.” Faris elbowed his brother.

Mohammed took his cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open. Before he could dial, a siren wailed in the distance. Soon a second one joined it, and then another.

“Hear that?” I said. “Help is coming.”

The soldier’s grip relaxed, and his fingers unhooked from my belt. The gurgling stopped. His blank gaze fixed on the heavens.

Placing my shaking fingers on his wrist, I checked for a pulse. “Too late.” I’d never seen a dead body before. He was so still, as if sculpted from wax. Who are you?

Gently, I pulled at the uniform, exposing a badge with alternating dark and white stripes. Some stars were visible, but the rest of the American flag was charred and torn.

A low drone filled the air. Choppers approached, their powerful strobe lights glaring into my retinas. Military? Impossible to tell.

“Yella! Let’s go!” Faris grabbed my t-shirt and hauled me up. “We don’t want to get caught.”

“We should stay,” I argued.

“Why? To be detained by the army or the police?” Faris pointed a finger to his temple and made the crazy sign. “Majnoun.”

They’d leave me behind if I didn’t follow. We piled into the Hummer and drove off without lights, using the GPS to weave through the dark. As we headed for the highway, we followed a long scar in the earth where the fuselage had slid for about fifty meters before breaking apart. Two helicopters landed in the middle of the debris field.

Faris shrugged. “Don’t feel bad, Nick. We couldn’t do anything for him.”

Still, it felt as if we were escaping from a hit and run. New country, I reminded myself, and not a democratic one. Maybe taking off was smarter than staying. Visiting the inside of a prison was definitely not on my list of top ten things to do in the UAE.

The Hummer turned onto the main highway. Flashing red and blue lights streaked toward us. Sirens howled.

“We better forget we were ever here,” Faris said. “Where do we drop you, Nick?”

I gave them the name of the hotel.

“What school do you go to?” Mohammed asked.

“Abu Dhabi Private School. I start tomorrow.” The image of the dead soldier wouldn’t get out of my head. Questions came at me like a swarm of killer bees. How’d the plane catch fire? Where was it headed? Was it on a mission?

“We’re shopping around for a new school.” Faris grinned at his brother, who grinned back.

“What was wrong with the old one?”

“Bad school,” Faris said. “We got kicked out.”

“Why?”

“We hiked the final exam marks on our report cards. We distracted one of the teachers and got her to leave her computer for a couple of minutes.” Faris mimed typing on a keyboard. “I went from a fifty-seven average to a seventy-three.”

“But Admin found out.” Mohammed turned left on a yellow light without signalling.

“You failed your year?”

Faris guffawed, and my fingers clutched the sides of my seat as Mohammed momentarily skidded off the road.

“No! We got moved up to Grade 12. No problem!” Faris wiped a tear from his cheek. “If a school wants to get rid of you, it gives you a passing mark as long as your parents agree to take you somewhere else.”

Jet lag prevented me from probing for more information. The Hummer slowed to a stop.

“Home sweet home.” I yawned. “Until we find an apartment. Thanks for the adventure, guys.”

“Ma sallama.” Faris waved.

The Hummer pulled away from the curb in a squeal of burning rubber. I stretched, yawned again and stared at the storefront neon signs. At midnight, a lot of traffic still roamed the streets.

I scratched my hip and felt a sharp ridge in my jeans’ back pocket. It ought to be empty, since I’d gotten the jeans out of my suitcase this morning. Using my index and thumb like a pair of tweezers, I extracted a mini CD. Its iridescent surface gleamed when I held it up to the light.

The dead soldier put this in my pocket.

2

 

Alcatraz in the Sand

 

 

Thursday, September 6th, 7:30 a.m.

 

It’s not a school, it’s frickin’ Alcatraz.

The breath jammed in my throat as if someone had plugged a cork into the neck of a wine bottle. A concrete wall, ten feet high and twelve inches thick, surrounded the yard, where young boys ran after each other in a mad game of tag. Groups of teenagers hung around by the gate, hands in their pockets, looking bored.

“You’re sending me to school here?” As if last evening’s nightmare hadn’t been bad enough. We left the hotel so early I didn’t have a chance to watch the news to find out what caused the plane crash. And now Mom was telling me I’d be attending what looked an awful lot like a juvie detention centre. Not that I’ve been to a juvie detention centre. Just saying.

“We can’t afford the good schools,” my mother said in her all too familiar tone of defeat. “Since I teach here, I get a thirty percent discount on fees.”

Parents pay to send their kids to this place?

“I’ll be across the street at the girls’ school.”

You mean....

It took a while for the thought to register. I gulped and choked on my own saliva. I’m going to a boys’ school. You’re forcing me to attend a school without girls? It is a flippin’ prison.

“What about Bliss?” I hadn’t seen my sister since yesterday afternoon.

“She’s with the principal discussing her course load. She’ll be teaching grades ten and eleven.”

Not twelve? Finally, a tiny silver lining on the black thundercloud of my life. Having my own sister teach one of my classes would be beyond embarrassing. My mother swung the heavy, iron gate open. A green canopy stretched over the yard, providing welcome shade, but even this early in the morning beads of perspiration trickled down my chest and scalp. Bet I could grill a T-bone steak on the concrete.

“I bought you an agenda to write all your homework assignments.” Her raccoon eyes told me she’d hardly slept. She offered me a walnut-coloured book and then wiped a sweaty palm on her brown, cotton dress.

“Thanks, Mom.” Like a death row inmate on a slow march to the electric chair, I entered the yard. Except for the gate, which allowed the students a peek at a few trees, I was walled in by concrete.

“Have a good day,” Mom called after me.

You’re joking, right?

If I made a fuss, she’d get upset, so I let it go. “See you at two-thirty,” she added.

What, no sentries with rifles posted on the school roof? The bell’s strident ring drilled into my skull. I stood at the back of the grade twelve line with a couple of guys who shook hands and leaned forward to touch noses. A lot of boys had their arms around each other’s shoulders.

Most of the students wore the school uniform, gray pants and a white shirt. So I’d have to kiss my jeans and Gap t-shirts good-bye. Cripes.

I glanced longingly at the gate. A stretch Mercedes pulled up, and two teenagers unfolded their tall, lanky frames from the back seat. Clad in white robes, they strode through the yard as if they owned it.

The Muhairbis.

“Hey, Nick! We thought we’d give your school a try.” Faris clapped me on the shoulder. Mohammed grinned, showing a mouthful of braces I hadn’t noticed last night. They didn’t seem fazed by the plane crash. My dreams had been filled with moaning corpses and the rainbow glint of a miniature compact disc.

“We want to talk about yesterday,” Mohammed whispered in my ear. “But not here.”

I nodded. We walked single file into the school. A short round woman with a scarf over her head brandished a metre-long stick as we trudged by. They hit students over here?

As we entered the reception area, our line turned into a clump. Unruly students clogged the stairs. A huge, chest-high globe stood next to the receptionist’s desk. Made of light-coloured wood, it spun around when I gave it a push. I located the UAE, a tiny oil-rich country by the Arabian Gulf.

Somebody had gouged out the name of one of the nearby countries. Last year’s geography textbook flashed through my head. “Somebody slashed Israel.”

Faris gave me a don’t you know anything look. “We don’t recognize Israel as a country.” With a felt-tipped marker Mohammed inked the word Palestine below the gouge.

He might as well have slapped a piece of duct tape on my mouth. I didn’t know what to say, and that didn’t happen very often. Eyes fastened on me from every direction, some of them amused, others annoyed.

“Look.” I opened my agenda to the map of the Arabian Gulf and prepared to put my finger on Israel. It wasn’t on the map. The blank space that should have been Israel contained a tiny dot marked Jerusalem. How could you wipe a country off the map like it didn’t exist? I had a lot to learn about living in the UAE.

“We’ll catch up with you later, Nick,” Mohammed said.

“Yeah,” Faris added. “We have to see the secretary about the entrance exam.”

“Good luck,” I said. “I hope you get accepted.”

“Oh, Nick,” Faris said. The brothers put their arms around me as if I were a business apprentice in desperate need of a mentor. “Private schools value your wallet, not your brain. Even if all you do is write your name at the top of the entrance exam, as long as your parents pay the fees, you’re in.”

For the next two and a half hours, I sat in a crowded classroom at a small desk with a screw digging into my thigh. My classmates couldn’t sit still and chattered in Arabic through every lesson. Several teachers only spoke broken English. When the Biology teacher couldn’t figure out how to say something, he shifted into Arabic. How was I supposed to understand? This was an English language school. Supposedly. From what I could gather by questioning the boys next to me, a lot of my classmates wanted to go overseas and attend Canadian universities next year.

At ten o’clock the bell rang for break time. Thank God. I followed a milling stream of boys outside to a small canteen. There was no place to sit, and we couldn’t escape the heat because two Indian workers locked us out of the school. Jeez.

Boys piled over each other and fought for a place at the front of the line to get food. They shouted and waved money in the faces of two more Indian men at the counter, who were distributing chips, chocolate bars, and cans of Pepsi. Boys grabbed their snacks and left.

“It’s a zoo. They should stand in a line,” I said to the Muhairbis.

“Why?” Faris cut into the fray with a twenty dirham bill. His brother followed, and several of the younger students made room for them.

I sighed, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and glanced around the crowded yard. After striking up some quick conversations, I learned most of the kids in my class were Lebanese, Palestinian, or Egyptian. Some had British or American mothers. There were also a few Jordanians and Syrians.

And one lonely Canadian. From what I’d read by surfing the Net, the Emiratis made up barely twenty percent of the population, and the rest were expatriate workers.

Faris bit into a Mars bar. “We want to show you something. About last night.”

“Same here.” The wafer-thin disc weighed heavily in my back pocket. My laptop was in my mother’s room, so I had no idea what secrets the CD would reveal.

The bell rang to signal us to go inside. Although the classes depressed me, I couldn’t stay in the heat for another nanosecond. Cold air hit me as we entered the school.

“Bored yet?” Mohammed tossed his chocolate bar wrapper on the floor.

“There’s a wastebasket right over there,” I said.

He shrugged. “The Indians’ll pick it up.”

“Do you have a live-in maid?” A lot of people did, apparently.

“We have four.” Mohammed’s braces gleamed.

Faris dug a sharp elbow into my side. “Let’s ditch class. We’ll go to our house. It’s the first day of school. Nobody will notice.”

“My mother will. She teaches here.”

“Bummer.” Mohammed licked melted chocolate off his finger.

I made a spur of the moment decision. “Let’s go anyway.”

The prospect of hearing more unintelligible English killed my desire to make it to the end of the day. Usually, I liked school. Last year, I had the highest average in my class, the third-highest in my grade. My sights were set on investigative journalism.

We headed nonchalantly to the exit, but yet another Indian man stood guard in front of the main gate to make sure no students sneaked out. Damn. Maybe we could run around back and pole vault over the concrete wall.

“There’s gotta be a way out,” I said. We scouted around on the second floor. Two doors led to the roof, and both were locked. By now, we were the only students left in the hallway. What if the lady with the stick found us?

We paused by a second floor window. Promising. The window overlooked the metal roof of the Chemistry and Physics labs. Dusty and spotted with rust, it was a tetanus shot waiting to happen.

“Perfect.” Mohammed rubbed his hands together in eagerness. “Yella.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Let’s go.”

Since I had more muscle than both gangly Muhairbis put together, I wrestled the window open. A blast of hot air hit my face. One after the other, we jumped on the roof with a reverberating claaaang.

The scorching tin seared my palms. We ran to the opposite end of the roof and paused by the three-foot gap between the corrugated metal and the wall. Faris waved at four envious faces gaping at us from a classroom window.

“Cut it out!” I warned. “They’ll call a teacher.”

“Mafi moushkila,” Mohammed said breezily.

“Translation, please?”

“No problem.”

Yella

. Let’s go. Mafi moushkila. No problem. In order to survive ten months at this school, I had to make an effort to learn the language. Fast.

Without giving it too much thought, I leaped from the oven-hot roof, landed on the narrow wall, and did a quick dismount to the sidewalk below. Much easier than I expected, until Faris flopped on top of me with a grunt. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I lay face down on a sidewalk, clutching my knee in pain. I hoisted myself up before Mohammed could use me as a cushy landing pad.

We ran down the narrow street, laughing and congratulating each other on our escape. Mohammed made a call on his flashy cell phone. Minutes later, the stretch Mercedes arrived, and we were off to the Muhairbi villa on Khalifa bin Shakbut Street.

The Mercedes beat the Hummer in terms of comfort. A row of buttons on the inside door panel caught my attention. I toyed with a few of them,

 

and the seat reclined into a more comfortable position. Ah, this is the life. “All that’s missing is a bar.”

“We don’t drink alcohol,” Mohammed said.

Oops. Cultural misstep. Of course Muslims didn’t drink. “Sorry.”

“It’s haram, forbidden,” Faris added.

“So I can’t even get a beer?” Not that I was old enough to buy one at home either, but I sure liked to have a Molson at a party.

“In hotels you can. There are bars in all of them.” Slouching in his seat, Faris began to send a text message on his cell phone.

“Be careful, though,” Mohammed said. “If you’re wandering around in the street at night, drunk, the police will put you in jail for a couple of months.”

My craving for a cold one evaporated.

“It’s worse if you’re a Muslim and you get caught drinking,” Mohammed went on. “Then you get lashes. Lots and lots of lashes.”

Oh shit. My life without alcohol starts now.

High concrete walls bordered rows of stately villas. The residents of Abu Dhabi sure valued their privacy. They had a thing for trees too. Date palms sprung up along every street, along with red-blossomed hibiscus bushes and other types I didn’t recognize. For a city built entirely on sand, Abu Dhabi was remarkably green.

“Where do you get the water to keep all these trees alive?” I asked. “And the grass? It’s everywhere.”

Putting away his phone, Faris explained. “In the sixties, this was all desert. Most of the water used for the shrubs and grass comes from treated sewage. Underground tables provide us with some drinking water, but the bulk of it comes from desalination plants. Sea water is sucked out of the Gulf. It’s heated to evaporation, and then you get fresh water.”

Interesting. “What do you do with the salt that’s left behind when the desalination process is over?”

“It’s sold as table salt,” Faris said. “Or some desalination plants dump the remaining salty water back into the Gulf. The Umm Al Nar plant is close by. It generates electricity too.”

The Mercedes drove into a yard surrounded by another huge concrete wall, this one covered with masses of fuchsia flowers. I gaped at the two-story mansion.

Wow, it’s not a house, it’s a hotel.

“You live here?”

The Hummer was parked along one wall next to two BMWs, a red Jaguar XJ, and a Land Cruiser. Cripes, did the Muhairbi family own all these cars? A middle-aged man with dark skin and pyjama-style clothing—probably hired help—dragged a hose to a bed of petunias and sprayed them with water. Faris and Mohammed led the way to the glass front door. We stepped into a huge foyer with a long curving staircase. Solid marble. The room to the left of the stairs was huge, lined with plush Louis XIV style chairs and couches. Sumptuous tapestries hung on every window.

When I visited the Palace of Versailles with my father a few years back, these were the kinds of furnishings I’d seen. He thought history and culture should be important to me, so he booked a flight in his usual spur-of-the-moment fashion, and twenty-four hours later he was showing me the sights in Paris. Even though I tried hard to forget them, there’d been some good times with Dad.

A ding came from the other side of the house. It sounded again, and at the far end of the hall an elevator door opened.

It really is a hotel.

We piled into the elevator, and Faris pressed the button for the second floor. When the doors opened, I stepped into a long hall with doors on either side.

“This is my room,” Mohammed announced. He ushered me into a

 

large yet sparsely furnished bedroom.

This was more my style. Simple. A bed, a dresser, a desk scattered with sports magazines, a stereo system next to the computer, and a flat screen television bolted to the wall. He took the remote off his dresser and turned on the TV. Faris relaxed on the bed, fingering the fluff on his lip.

You can’t make it grow any faster, Faris.

“Corinne,” Mohammed called. “Coffee! Now!”

I guessed he was shouting at one of their four maids. His tone grated on my nerves.

“Did you see the news this morning?” Faris asked me.

“Missed it.” I sat on a stiff-backed chair.

“Try Al Jazeera.” Mohammed flopped on the bed beside his brother.

Faris switched to the Arab news network. “Nothing about the crash. I’ll try CNN.”

The woman at the anchor desk spoke in a rich, velvety voice. “An Iranian cargo plane crashed in the desert in the United Arab Emirates late last night. The pilot and three crew members did not survive.”

Iranian cargo plane? I didn’t imagine the stars and stripes on the soldier’s uniform or the military camouflage on the wreckage. The news camera panned over the crash site. It looked as if scraps of metal had been dropped from the sky. Where was the fuselage? The huge pieces of charred metal? What about the ragged scar the plane’s underbelly had torn into the sand?

“That’s not our crash site,” I said.

“There’s something else.” Faris pulled a video camera from under the bed. With the skill of a technician, he hooked the camera to the computer and played the film on its fifteen-inch screen.

“We were on the roof when we shot this.”

The screen showed nothing but a swimming pool lit by dim lights. A young woman in a bathing suit dipped her toe in the water.

“How’s this related to the crash?” I asked.

Faris flushed and spoke excitedly. “The neighbour’s niece is visiting. She has gorgeous legs and swims every night.”

Calm down, Faris. Your tongue’s lolling out of your mouth.

“Here it is!” Mohammed said.

The camera swung upwards. The night sky. A plane came into view. It roared and veered with the agility of a fighter jet. Brief bright light flashed from the jet. The camera trailed across empty sky before coming to rest on a larger plane—

Its tail burst into flame.

I felt as if I’d been hit on the chest with a hammer. “It was shot down.”

 

 

 

3

Secret Police

We stared at each other across the room. No one else knew what had happened. Even CNN didn’t know the truth. What was the UAE government hiding? Because they were hiding something. No one else could have staged a cover-up of a downed plane except the government, right?

If Uncle Richard were here, I could talk it over with him, and we’d lob ideas at each other like tennis balls over a net. He worked as a Staff-Sergeant with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver. Mom regularly sent me there in the summer to be under a positive male influence. My father wouldn’t exactly win a Dad-of-the-Year award for being nurturing or caring. He believed in tough love, unlike Uncle Richard, who never so much as raised his voice. He shared a lot of his experiences as a cop, and I loved it when he fed me clues and encouraged me to put all the jigsaw pieces together to figure out the who, what, where, why, and how of old cases he had investigated. This mystery would appeal to him.

A Filipina maid with dark circles under her eyes poured coffee into a thimble-sized cup. Absentmindedly, I said, “Thank you.”

The Muhairbis ignored her and sipped their steaming coffee. I raised the cup to my lips. The scent of cardamom wafted to my nose. After the maid left the room, I couldn’t keep it in any longer. “It’s a cover-up!”

Downstairs, a woman shouted and a heavy object crashed. A tangle of shouts wove up to our room. Faris shot out of bed and ran halfway down the marble steps, holding his robe with one hand. Mohammed and I pelted after him.

Faris stopped dead, and I grabbed the banister to steady myself. In the foyer, two men faced each other, both wearing white robes and head coverings. One of them spoke tersely and dangled handcuffs in the air. The other made eye contact with Faris and shook his head.

“Your father?” I whispered.

Mohammed nodded. “And that’s my mother.”

A woman in a long flowered gown stood by Mr. Muhairbi. She clutched a black veil over her hair and face.

The handcuffs jingled. For a few minutes, the men engaged in a heated exchange of words.

“He’s CID. Criminal Investigation Department,” Faris said. “Secret police.”

The angry debate continued, and then the CID officer pocketed the handcuffs, grabbed Mr. Muhairbi by the arm, and led him outside. We scrambled up the stairs to a window. Pushing the draperies aside, I watched as the police put Mr. Muhairbi in the back seat of a sleek silver car.

“Why does CID want our father?” Worry stamped itself on Faris’ narrow face.

“Because of this.” I pulled the disc out of my pocket. “The soldier gave it to me yesterday, but I only found it after you dropped me off. The police must have traced the plates on the Hummer. Somebody saw us leave the scene.”

The brothers gaped at the disc.

“Mohammed, ask your mother what she knows. Faris, let’s check out the disc.” We returned to the room to play the CD. The disc slid into the computer.

“What’s going to happen to your dad?” The secret police. It sounded like the kind of organization that conducted interrogations by plunging your head in a vat of ice water until you almost drowned.

“He’ll be okay.” Faris didn’t sound too sure, and his hands trembled as he keyed words into the computer. “He has wasta.”

“Wasta?”

Faris looked thoughtful. “Connections. Influence.”

The computer hummed and whined, but the screen remained blank. I finished off the last of the coffee. It sure beat the thick muck my sister had boiled for breakfast.

“It’s encrypted,” Faris said at last.

“Let me try.” I took his place at the computer and put my semi-pro hacker skills to work. Last June, when the teacher’s answer key mysteriously popped up on our screens during a computerized Math test, it was all my doing. Ordinarily, I’d never do anything like that, but Jenna Harding had forgotten to study for the test. She sat on the school’s front steps, her coltish legs outstretched, distraught because she was going to fail. I would have done anything to help her.

Unfortunately, we all had to take the test again in a week when the class average turned out to be ninety-seven, but I did get my classmates’ undying admiration. And a kiss from Jenna’s petal-soft lips.

Out of breath and red-faced, Mohammed rushed in. “Mom doesn’t know anything. She’s calling her brother. He knows people in important positions in the government. She’s angry as hell we’re not in school. We have to go back. The driver’s waiting.”

The maid, her liquorice-black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, returned to pick up the empty coffee cups. The Muhairbis didn’t acknowledge her presence. She left as quietly as a shadow.

“What do we do with this?” Faris removed the disc from the computer. “We can give it to our military. Or maybe if we give it to CID, they’ll let Dad go.”

“Send it to Al Jazeera news,” Mohammed suggested. “They’ll investigate.”

Rotten ideas. The Arab Al Jazeera network was even more biased than some of the American news channels. “We keep it.” In Canada, I’d go straight to the police, but in this country could I trust the police? Faris hadn’t trusted whoever was in the choppers last night. “If the wrong people find out you have this, CID will cart you off in an unmarked car.”

They both shuddered.

Mohammed chewed on a thumbnail. “Dad’ll kill us if he finds out we took the Hummer, and it’s our fault he went to jail. I don’t have a license.”

“Don’t tell him,” I advised. “Play dumb. If your family’s got connections, they might be able to spring him out.”

“What if we destroy the disc?” Faris rummaged through his desk drawer and found a pair of sharp scissors.

I snatched the CD from his hand. “Are you nuts?” The word he used on me earlier popped into my brain. “Majnoun? This could be vital classified information about terrorist cells. Or nuclear weapons. Or planned attacks by suicide bombers.”

This story’s huge, and it’s mine.

I might get a full scholarship if I cracked this wide open. It was so much bigger than the story I’d broken last year about a group of grade ten students selling Ecstasy in the school parking lot. I even got coverage in the Toronto Star when the police linked them to a prominent street gang. Budding Investigative Journalist Uncovers High School Drug Ring.

We filed downstairs and got into the stretch Mercedes. From the back seat, the driver seemed miles away. Some kind of chanting played on the radio.

“Who’s singing?” I asked.

“It’s Qu’ran recitation.” Mohammed glared at me as if I were completely ignorant.

“Oh.” Keep your trap shut next time.

Once on the main road, Faris gave the driver instructions, and next thing I knew we were making a U-turn.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“The crash site. CID arrested our father because we came here last night,” Faris said. “We have to find out what’s really going on.”

Mohammed’s head bobbed up and down in reply. “We need to make it right. Family’s everything.”

Looks like school’s out for the rest of the morning.

Ten minutes later, Mohammed leaned over the seat and spoke to the driver. “It’s here. Slow down.”

Construction barriers blocked the side road. A large wheel loader filled its bucket with sand and poured it into a yellow dump truck.

“Don’t slow down too much,” I cautioned. “We’ll attract attention. You’re sure this is the place?” To me, it all looked the same—a long stretch of highway flanked by a zillion date palms.

About a hundred feet from the loader, two red and white police cars with flashing lights waited under the shade of a row of trees. The police officers leaned out the windows of their cars and chatted. Perfect cover. It looked as if they were innocently waiting for speeding cars.

“It’s sealed off,” Faris said in obvious disappointment. “This is as close as we’re going to get.”

“We need a bird’s eye view of the area,” I said.

Mohammed’s braces flashed. “Remember the guy near the Corniche who takes people on microlight tours? You know, the motorized hang-gliders?” He pulled out his phone and punched in some numbers. After a few minutes of dialling and haggling, he hung up. “He’s been grounded. The Transport Ministry gave him a call this morning and said no one’s allowed to fly over the area. But I offered him some extra money, and he’ll fly me near the site. Not directly over it, but close enough.”

An hour later, Mohammed was soaring over Abu Dhabi in a microlight, and I was in the Mercedes with Faris. The driver showed his impatience by drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. “School,” he said. “School important.”

“Later,” Faris dismissed him.

“Won’t he tell your mother what you’re doing?” I asked.

“No.” He snorted. “You don’t want trouble, do you, Abu Bakker?”

In the rearview mirror, the driver’s forehead creased. From what I’d seen so far, neither of the Muhairbis treated their staff with much respect. “How much hired help do you have?”

“Four maids. Two drivers. One cook. There are seven of us to take care of. My parents, me and Mohammed, my two younger sisters, and my brother in university.”

“That’s it?” I rolled my eyes. “You pay seven people to look after seven people?” He nodded and seemed surprised by my reaction.

“Doesn’t it cost a fortune?”

“No, they’re mostly from the Philippines. It’s even cheaper if you hire Sri Lankans.” The cell phone played an upbeat pop tune. Faris answered. “How’s the view, bro?”

The driver sighed and tapped his watch. School would be out at two-thirty, and I didn’t think we’d make it back on time. If I wasn’t there when Mom came to pick me up, she’d freak.

“Go straight,” Faris ordered the driver.

Through the tinted window, I could see the microlight’s small green wings in the hazy blue air.

“Turn off here,” Faris said.

We drove onto another side road and then off the asphalt and into the sand. “This Mercedes, not Land Rover,” Abu Bakker objected.

“We’re almost there,” Faris said. “Just drive slow. Mohammed spotted something.”

Deep grumbling came from the driver’s throat. He slowed the Mercedes to a crawl. If I got out and walked, I’d go faster than the car. The wheels scrunched over hard-packed sand. Eventually, we found tire tracks and a white canopy spread over the ground. A parachute.

I jumped out of the car.

“Think it’s from the same plane?” Faris asked.

“Has to be.” A motorcycle had left the tread marks behind. The tracks stopped by the chute, and the kickstand had left an indentation in the sand. What would Uncle Richard want me to do now? Hmmm...would anything here have fingerprints on it? Maybe the metal parts on the parachute. “Faris, let’s pick it up.”

As carefully as possible we folded the chute, keeping our hands off the buckles since they were the most likely area for prints. The driver popped the trunk, and I placed the precious material inside.

“Can I buy a fingerprinting kit in Abu Dhabi?” I asked.

“No idea,” Faris said. “Never needed one before.”

Some websites sold kits, so it shouldn’t take too long to order one if I couldn’t get it locally. Or I could get Uncle Richard to send one by courier. We got back into the car with the grumbling driver.

After getting Mohammed from the hang-glider takeoff point, we headed to school. For good this time. As we rolled up to the front gate of my Middle Eastern Alcatraz, the bell rang. Boys screamed and yelled as they leaped down the steps and jostled each other at the gate.

“You can take us home now,” Faris told Abu Bakker, who shook his head and put his leathery-skinned hands on the steering wheel. The brothers laughed. Mohammed sounded like a braying donkey.

“Take the chute to your house and hide it,” I told them.

“Okay. Bye, Nick.”

I got out and shut the door. Dozens of cars parked haphazardly by the sidewalk, waiting for students. One young boy popped his head out the sunroof of a Lexus. Mini-buses lined the opposite side of the street. Angry drivers honked their horns as they tried to negotiate their way out of solid gridlock. Among a gaggle of uniformed boys I spotted my sister, weighed down by a pile of literature books. Loose strands of hair strayed into her plump face, and her pale skin bore the pink glow of sunburn.

“Hey, Blister.” I nudged her, almost knocking over her books. “How was your first day?”

“It was okay, but if you call me that again I’ll put you in detention. How about you?” She huffed and repositioned her heavy load.

“You know how it is,” I said breezily. “Write an essay on what you did last summer. Same old, same old.”

Her blue eyes seared into mine. “Funny, ’cuz I heard you disappeared after break this morning.”

Sorry, sis. I spent my day investigating a cover-up.

Would she keep her mouth shut or rat me out to Mom? “You’ll only upset Mom if you tell her.”

“Don’t use emotional blackmail, Nick.” She ploughed through the crowd like an icebreaker through Arctic floes.

“Are we going apartment-hunting later?” I would have offered to help with the books, but the feminist in her wouldn’t have let me.

“Yes, right now. I’m dropping these off at the girls’ school and then meeting Mom at the taxi stand over there.” She gestured with her chin. “You’re coming with us. It’ll keep you out of trouble.”

Bossy, bossy, bossy. And she wondered why she didn’t have a boyfriend. Bliss repelled testosterone the way bug spray repelled mosquitoes. “I’ll meet you there in five.”

Since I wouldn’t be allowed into the girls’ school, I wandered away from the crowd. Next to Alcatraz stood another school, much more attractive, with a landscaped lawn. Best of all, it didn’t have a prison wall around it. Off to the side, I glimpsed a beautifully manicured soccer field.

Were there any soccer clubs I could join over here? Last year, I led my league in goals against average and tied in shutouts. If I trained hard, my coach said I had a good chance of becoming a goalkeeper for the Toronto Lynx.

Still mooning over my crappy educational facilities, I walked quickly around the corner. What I saw made me gasp. A figure in a black shroud walked in my direction. Filmy material fluttered in the wind. From the shape, I guessed a girl hid under there, but I couldn’t even see her eyes. She’d dropped her veil over her entire head. Before I could stop myself, I bumped into her. A book tumbled from her grasp. As I scooped it up, I glimpsed the tip of a golden sandal. She wore black nylons over painted toenails—red, blue, green—and when I returned the book I spied black gloves.

“Cool nail polish,” I said. Can’t say if anything else about you is.

About thirty metres away, a man got out of his gold Lexus and started yelling at me. The girl turned around and walked toward him. Red-faced, the man kept shouting and coming in my direction. What the—?

“Hey, Nick!” I heard someone call.

A teenager jumped out of a half-open car door and grabbed me. Mohammed. He pulled me into the Mercedes.

“It’s Sheikha Shamsa,” he said in awe. “That’s her family’s Lexus.”

“It’s something out of a Stephen King novel.”

“She’s beautiful.” Faris was obviously under her spell.

“How do you know?” I frowned. “It could be the Grim Reaper under there.”

“Driver, get going!” Mohammed said. “You crashed into her, Nick. If she complains, you could be in big trouble.”

“Why?”

Faris put a hand on my knee. “Listen. In this country, you can have a lot of problems if you’re caught harassing women.”

“Yeah,” Mohammed continued. “If you follow a woman around in the market and shout stuff at her, the police can arrest you. And then they print your picture in the newspaper. And if you touch her—hey, it’s a lot worse.”

“So if you see a woman sprawled on the ground in need of CPR, you don’t lay a finger on her,” Faris advised. “You dial 999 for help. Then you run away. Okay?”

Culture shock. The new information jumbled in my brain. Relations between the sexes were so different, so confusing. The black shroud that was Sheikha Shamsa got into a gold Lexus with mirrored windows and a number 7 license plate.

“The lower the plate number, the more important the owner,” Mohammed explained. “That’s one of Sheikh Hamza’s cars.”

Abu Bakker squeezed our Mercedes between a Jaguar and a Toyota, and we broke free of the bumper to bumper mayhem.

“Drop me off at the taxi stand, please. I’ve had enough excitement for one day.” My thoughts returned to poor Shamsa, smothered in layers of black.

The novel is available on Amazon.com (by H.M. Prévost)