Shakir Kadir was living in a romance novel.
But no author would write such a fanciful plot. A beautiful
princess kidnapped by an evil sultan and held captive in a
harem? A daring rescue attempt by an ex-lover, parachuting
in on a moonless night? Not many novels could be this
outrageous. Yet here he was, stuck inside an unbelievable
reality.
Would he end up the hero or the fool in this melodrama? It
didn't much matter. Shakir could do no less for the woman
he'd once loved—despite both his brothers' concerns to the
contrary.
As he grimly waited for the chopper pilot to arrive at the
jump zone coordinates, Shakir watched the desert floor
below. Flying at low altitude through eerie darkness, the
quiet drone of the Merlin Mk3's engine made talking
difficult. But infrared night vision goggles allowed him to
pick out objects despite the lack of light. He hadn't
traveled to this desolate wasteland since he'd been a teen.
But the backward country of Zabbaran had not changed all
that much in the intervening years.
Without the aid of running lights, their chopper blew like
smoke through starlit skies. Shakir recognized rock
outcroppings and herds of sheep below them. He remembered
that late at night the desert could be as lonely and as
silent as death.
Attempting to focus his attention away from the coming
mission, he thought of how he had come this far. His
extended family had opted to form a new intelligence unit
under his younger brother, Tarik's, control. Tarik, a genius
in covert strategy, resigned his commission in the United
States Special Forces in order to organize an undercover
operation for the Kadirs. It was Tarik's embedded undercover
operatives that had provided them with current maps and
architectural drawings for a hostage rescue mission.
Shakir's new position was as head of black ops for the
family. It still amazed him that the Kadirs had suddenly
needed to organize and operate like an army during a time of
war. The answer to why was complicated.
The Kadirs had been forced into engaging in a cold war of
sorts with an old enemy, the Taj Zabbar clan. The Taj had
initiated this conflict unilaterally a few months back,
supposedly in revenge for centuries-old perceived grievances.
To Shakir's mind, that was just so much rhetoric and showed
insane thinking.
The Kadir family were Bedouin peoples. Nomads. They did not
claim any country as their own and had never occupied any
territory with borders to defend. In the modern era, the
Kadir family no longer belonged strictly to the desert. The
family ran international shipping operations and traded
legitimate goods between various countries of the world. So
why should a nonviolent family of traders and shippers like
the Kadirs be forced to engage in a fight with an ancient
tribe of thieves and murderers? It didn't make sense.
The Taj Zabbar clan had recently won their independence from
Kasht, a neighboring country. With their independence, the
Taj gained control of the territory of Zabbaran, a vast
desert with millions of barrels of oil lying directly
beneath the surface of the land.
The Taj Zabbar's sudden great wealth seemed to have opened
up painful memories and long-ago hurts for them, and now,
apparently, they intended to get even for ancient grievances
by destroying the Kadirs. It was not the peoples of Kasht,
who had been their true oppressors, that the Taj wanted to
hurt. No. The country of Kasht had licked its wounds and
made trading pacts with the Taj. Then the imprudent Taj
turned all their hatred to the task of injuring and
destroying the Kadir family.
Shakir wasn't particularly politically-minded, but he would
be willing to wager that money and power lay at the bottom
of the Taj's cold war. Someday, he was sure the answers
would come out. In the meantime, the Kadirs were fighting
back and trying to reveal the truth of the Taj's intentions
to the world.
"Brother." Tarik's whispered voice broke through the silence
of his earpiece. "One last chance to back off this fool's
errand."
"The hostage extraction is on," Shakir muttered through his
lip microphone.
Tarik was convinced this journey would lead them into a
trap. But then, Tarik's job entailed questioning everything,
every fact and every rumor, until all answers became clear.
Shakir's job, on the other hand, was black ops. See a
problem. Fix the problem. By stealth or by force, whichever
worked best.
The hostage rescue mission clearly seemed to require both. A
group of western women were being held inside one of the Taj
Zabbar's desert fortresses. The females had been either
kidnapped or lured there to be auctioned off to the highest
bidders. Great fortunes could be had by selling to the
international pornography, sex and slavery trades.
The Taj Zabbar were well known as middlemen in every sort of
illegal trade. It mattered little to them why their clients
wanted the women. Only that they would pay dearly for them.
Shakir would never forget the exact moment he'd spotted the
name Nicole Olivier on the list of abducted women
that a Kadir undercover operative provided. Shakir had
carried a mental picture of her around in his head for the
past six years. But when he'd first read the name, he
couldn't bring her face to mind. Years of trying to block
her memory, and the hurt that went along with it, had
temporarily wiped his mind clean.
But it didn't take long for everything to come back in a
painful rush.
It was about that same time when his brothers had cautioned
about any rescue attempt becoming a trap. Darin and Tarik
both believed it was possible that the Taj Zabbar could've
somehow learned of Shakir's old relationship to Nicole, the
Princess of Olianberg. If that were true, his brothers
worried that the enemy would be trying to lure the Kadir's
middle son, Shakir, to Zabbaran for blackmail, or possible
execution.
Shakir didn't buy it for a moment. Princess Nicole's family
had been out of the news for several years. Ever since they
were forced to abdicate their claims to the throne of their
tiny European principality. After their failed coup attempt,
the family had quietly dropped out of sight. Even Shakir
could find no word of them.
When he'd first fallen for Nicole at university, the
Olianberg royal family had insisted on keeping their only
daughter's relationship to a Bedouin from leaking to the
press. Shakir hadn't even realized it was a problem at the
time because when they'd first met, Nicole had kept her
royal heritage hidden from him, as well as from the rest of
the world.
Coming back to the present, Shakir had no idea how the Taj
had managed to capture Nicole. But he knew why. She was
beautiful. Stunning. He was convinced the Kadir name had not
come up in connection to hers. After their youthful affair
had ended, the royal family seemed intent on burying the
relationship, hopeful that no one would ever find out.
Giving his pack, chute and assault weapon one last check,
Shakir turned the thumbs-up sign to his baby brother and the
six other men on his team. Their plan was simple. They would
drop into the country covertly, sneak into the fortress and
rescue the women without drawing the attention of the main
unit of fortress guards.
The operation had to be timed to the minute. Two hours and
thirty-six minutes to be exact. Then they must return to the
pickup point to meet the extraction choppers. In and out.
Simple. He'd bloody well been through tougher assignments
and hostage rescues during his years in a Royal Parachute
Regiment in Afghanistan.
This one was a piece of cake.
Not long after they'd dropped into the desert, Shakir and
Tarik stood in shadows at the base of a wall, waiting for
the signal. Tall stone walls surrounded the enormous Taj
fortress, but Kadir operatives had uncovered a secret
passage to the inside.
The midnight chill crept into Shakir's bones as he waited
and concentrated on executing his job. He shook it off,
reminding himself not to let his mind slip. If he was to
remain focused, he couldn't think about the
possibilities—what he might find were the physical
conditions of the women being held inside these walls.
The Taj Zabbar weren't noted for their humane treatment of
prisoners. That these prisoners were also female did not
bode well for their safety. So far the Kadirs hadn't found
any tangible proof that the Taj Zabbar clan posed a threat
to the whole world. But the Taj record on torture and abuse
of their own citizens and neighbors, including women and
children, was legendary.
Two clicks sounded in his earpiece.
"There's the signal," Tarik whispered. His brother
disappeared into a nearly invisible slit in the wall and
three of the men fell in behind.
Shakir hefted his Israeli-made Micro Tavor assault rifle,
adjusted his NVGs and moved out, protecting their six. By
using a grappling hook, the Kadir rescue unit hoisted each
other over the outer perimeter walls and down onto the first
in a series of multi-level lawns, porches and terraces.
Instead of making their way straight to the main house, the
little troop of rescuers turned south and crouch-walked
along the inner wall, heading toward a smaller building with
Moorish influences. The small house, originally used as a
Kasht palace, was now used as the harem for the new Taj
fortress that had been built around it.
The main quarters of the new fortress, recently constructed
by a Taj Zabbar elder, were reputed to be a showplace. With
ornate tiled halls, splashy and expensive artwork and lavish
furnishings, the palace was ripe with ostentatious wealth
and fit for the elder Umar. He had spared no expense to make
it a true paradise on earth.
Shakir didn't need to see the new palace to dislike
everything about it. His mission was clear. Following the
others, he made his way down the wall to the small ancient
building situated to the east of the main palace.
When the Kadir troop quietly entered the former concubines'
quarters, Shakir noticed immediately that the Taj elder had
done nothing to modernize these original buildings. Faded
oriental carpets covered the floors, exactly as they had
done for a hundred years. Cracked and stained rock walls and
winding, narrow hallways led them through a maze of tiny,
dark rooms.
It was a good thing he was wearing NVGs. But it was by using
only his more feral abilities, the ones honed and trained by
his warrior grandfather, that Shakir recognized the distant
scent of precious water.
Intel claimed the women were being held in a private chamber
beside the ancient harem baths. He caught the slight whiff
of mold, heard the low drip of water and led the way.
As the unit of Kadir men silently crept forward toward the
baths, Shakir's mind went back to the first time he had ever
seen Nicole. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He'd been a
lonely outcast, barely surviving his first year at a British
university. She was the shy but beautiful student from some
unheard-of European country who had offered to tutor him in
English.
They'd struck up the friendship of two misfits. Then slowly
the friendship developed into a romance. He'd fallen hard.
But when she'd finally confessed the truth of her royal
background and told him she was promised to a man that she'd
never met, he walked away without a fuss.
Only to die a thousand solitary deaths in the six years since.
Scrubbing the back of his hand across his eyes to wipe away
the sweat, Shakir checked those memories. No point in a
rehash. The past was in the past. Today, the mission was
rescue—not reopening a festering sore that would never heal.
Another click sounded in his earpiece, and he halted
mid-stride. They'd come to the door leading to the women's
damp prison. Tarik and one other man peeled off from the
group to dispatch the two guards—unseen, but nevertheless
standing between their position and the chamber.
Counting down, Shakir gave his brother thirty seconds and
then led the way into the harem with his weapon at the
ready. It was a huge open room, with gigantic columns rising
thirty feet or more and then disappearing into the darkness
of a vast ceiling. Low torch lights reflected off the
rippling waters of the bath.
He pushed the NVGs up his forehead and searched the shadowed
chaise longues and steps beside the pool, looking for
Nicole. Two of the women he'd also expected to find slept
fitfully on top of ratty-looking beds. Two others reclined
on the steps, staring bug-eyed off into a nonexistent
distance. The whole atmosphere reminded him of an opium den
he'd once visited in his rougher days.
"They've been drugged." Tarik came up behind him, whispering
low. "We expected something like this. But it will make it
tough leading them to freedom in their condition."
Tarik spun in a circle and counted heads. "Have you spotted
her yet?"
"She isn't here." Shakir didn't know whether to be relieved
or panicked.
He went with standby mode. "Take these four and move
out. I'll keep looking."
Tarik nodded and silently crept away toward the closest
woman. Shakir was grateful that his brother had not
mentioned the obvious. Time would not allow an extensive
search. If he didn't locate Nicole soon, the extraction
choppers would leave without them.
As he flipped the NVGs back over his eyes and moved into
darkness, Shakir's lifetime of training overruled his
all-too-human mind. Long ago he had developed the instincts
of a predator. A hunter. He would use those instincts now to
locate his former lover.
And he would not allow himself to dwell on the other
possibilities. He would not consider the chance that Nicole
may have already been sold into slavery. Or that the Taj
elder might have picked her out for his own household. Or
that she had already been accidently given a lethal overdose
of the drugs.
Shutting out any of those potential pitfalls, he moved
swiftly. Those thoughts were inconceivable and therefore
they did not exist.
Not for the hunter.
"Your plan is too dangerous, miss. Please reconsider." The
old handmaiden's shoulders were rounded and bent and her
ancient eyes watery. But her sharp gaze seemed bright with
intelligence, good sense and a healthy dose of fear.
Nikki Olivier went against her better judgment and hugged
the woman. "I must go tonight, Lalla. I cannot manage
another day of pretending to take the drugs. The guards will
soon uncover my stash of unused pills and you and I will
both suffer the consequences."
"But if given another day or two…" The old woman continued
with her pleading. "The moonlight will guide your way to the
coastal village of Sadutan. The Zabbaran desert is full of
dangers on moonless nights, but you dare not travel during
the day."