He said nothing, but went back to work on the engine, wiggling a wire with one long finger until he got it into the position he’d been apparently aiming for. “This should work.” He went around, reached through the driver’s side window and turned the key. The motor came to life.
The sweetest sound she had ever heard. Her eyes nearly teared up with relief.
He shut it off almost immediately.
“You should sit and rest.” He pointed to the small patch of shade the car provided.
She looked at him, then to the car, noticing that he had already cleared out the back—no bodies there. Nor anything else. Their briefcases were missing. Hers had held her laptop, cell phone, all her money, her passport and her plane tickets. She sank to the sand. It was marginally cooler in the shade.
Tariq walked back to the front and slammed the hood, which had to be hot enough to fry eggs and sausage.
“Why did they do this to us?” she asked.
He gave her question some thought, although she was sure he must have considered it himself while he’d worked on the motor. “Could be we were at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Who were they?” She tried to rub dried blood off her hands.
He shrugged, the movement filled with tension. “Gun trade has been a profitable business in this part of the desert for the last couple of decades. Sex trade’s fading, but as long as there’s still some money in it, it won’t be completely abandoned. Drugs are always a possibility.”
Outrage unfurled inside Sara and nudged her out of her shell-shocked state. If they knew this, how could MMPOIL have brought them here? “So this happens all the time?”
“Not in the last four years, since the country stabilized,” he said darkly.
All she could think of was that they should have waited for the chopper to be fixed. She tried to make sense of the events of the past hour as Tariq took off two shot-up tires and replaced one with the spare, the other with an unharmed one from the other Hummer, refusing her offer of help. Then he got a short-handled shovel from the back and began digging in the sand a few yards from the vehicle.
She watched the shimmering horizon, petrified that the attackers would return. Only when the sound of digging stopped did she look back at Tariq. He seemed to be swaying. The heat of the sun was powerful.
“Are you okay?” She got up and walked to him, holding out the half-empty water bottle.
Instead of responding, he went back to digging again.
“I can help,” she said.
“Go back to the car.”
The arm of his dark blue shirt was soaking wet, she realized for the first time. Blood trickled down the back of his hand onto the shovel. And she remembered now that he’d been shot when he’d come to save her. How could she have forgotten that? She could barely think with all this death and destruction around them.
“You’re bleeding.” She handed him the water, trying to examine his arm.
“It’s fine,” he said through gritted teeth, but stopped for a second to take a few measured gulps.
“I’ll dig. You could bring over the bodies.” Now that the grave was taking shape, she’d finally figured out what he was trying to do.
She reached for the shovel, and at first he pulled away. But then he let her have it with a faint nod of appreciation, and started across the sand.
She could have been digging in talcum powder, she soon discovered. The sand flowed where it pleased, slowing her progress. She tried not to look at the dead as Tariq dragged them over one by one, but saw enough to register that they were all men who’d come with them. Her breath left her, her chest tightening painfully when she saw Jeff.
Jeff was dead. Jaw clenched tight, Sara kept digging.
It had been years since they’d been lovers, and God knew, they hadn’t been the best of friends lately. But they had history. She had been ready to have him out of her life for good, but not this way. She’d been hoping to scrape together enough money to buy him out. She felt the first tear roll down her face, quickly followed by an army of others that evaporated in the heat before they could reach her chin.
Tariq was by her side, taking the shovel from her. “Go back to the shade.”
Seven bodies lay in a neat row. She knelt next to Jeff and untucked her shirt to wipe his face with the clean part, straightened his tie and jacket, smoothed down his blondish hair.
She barely recognized her own voice, it sounded so hollow when she spoke. “Where are the rest?” She’d seen more men than this die in the fierce battle.
“The smugglers took their own. Cleaning up evidence.” He tossed the shovel aside and dragged the bodies into the shallow, wide grave, one after the other.
She helped as best she could, pushing sand over the fallen with her bare hands while Tariq used the shovel. At the end, he said a few words in Arabic, and she added a simple prayer, said a teary goodbye to Jeff. When she was done, she followed Tariq back to the car.
He picked up the driver’s kaffiyeh, then went to the other Hummer and brought a suit coat from there, laying them on the grave. “It’s an old Bedu custom, to pass on the clothes of the dead to some poor wanderer.”
“They were Bedouin?” She couldn’t consolidate the sharp business suits with her idea of desert nomads.
“We are all Bedu,” he said as they got into the car.
She tried to picture him in a goat-hair tent. It didn’t work. That West Coast accent threw her off.
“We can tell the families where they are,” she said as he put the vehicle into motion, feeling guilty for being alive. “The bodies can be found again, right? The other Hummer will be here.”
He drove in silence for a few moments before he responded. “My people are at rest. We believe that we come from the desert, so we go back to the desert when we die. No marked graves. The sand is sufficient.”
It did seem fitting. The vast desert in itself was a breathtaking monument. She was sure, however, that Jeff’s parents would want his body to be returned to the States. Guilt pushed deeper into her core. It didn’t seem fair that all these people had died and she was alive. Not that she didn’t feel grateful. She did. Then felt guilty about the quiet appreciation that she was still here to draw hot air into her lungs.
“How about the GPS?” Both Hummers were well equipped. “Don’t those things have panic buttons or locators or whatever?”
“The other one was shot to bits. This one I had hope for….” He gestured at the display, at the small hole in the middle, then shook his head, his masculine lips pressed in a flat line.
From his expression she figured the damage was bad enough to render the unit unusable.
“Where are we going?” she asked after a while. “What’s closer, Tihrin or the well we were heading for?”
“Wouldn’t make it to either. A bullet nicked the oil pan. We have a slow leak.”
She looked at the profusion of holes in the door next to her and the dashboard before her. Everyone had been trying to take cover behind the vehicles, which had taken the brunt of the attack. That Tariq had been able to salvage one of them was a miracle.
“Without oil to lubricate the engine, it’ll overheat and stop. If we’re lucky, we’ll make it as far as the oasis,” he said. “We need more water. And we should get out of the open as fast as possible.”
She pictured palm trees nodding in the wind, green grass and a glistening blue pool where some underground stream