Key knew about deserts. He was practically raised in one. He was raised in the mountains of Riverside County, California. His home was located in the town of his birth, Murrieta, on a ridge overlooking the Temecula Valley; the Mount Palomar observatory glistened atop a peak on the opposite side. Wildfires caused by cigarettes or lightning frequently ripped through the adjoining Santa Rosa Plateau or hills covered with brush: there was one burning the day Josiah was brought home from the hospital. It was not wrong to say the boy was born in fire.
Key’s father Dan was a marine recruiter who worked out of nearby Fallbrook. Most of the people he signed up were sent to nearby Camp Pendleton. Key’s mother Genie, Captain Logan had called her a singer because that was how Key had listed her on all the forms. The truth is she was a former showgirl, complete with boas and fans, who had worked four hours to the east on Interstate 15, Las Vegas. Key was conceived, he later learned, during one of his father’s extended leaves. His bastard-conception had never bothered him; Genie could have had an abortion but wanted the child. A paternity test later, Dan did the honorable thing.
Genie still had a lot of friends in Sin City, and she and her son often took weekend trips there. That was when kids could be left alone in a hotel room without child services being called. Along the way, at the behest of her only child, they would pull off the main route and spend a few well-hydrated hours in Death Valley, which was more-or-less on the way.
Living at the edge of the so-called Inland Empire, Key had always watched the massive dust storms blowing by in the distance—the Bound for Glory, mountain-high balls of sand that rolled onward over and through everything in its way. Even from a height of more than two thousand feet up, he could see cars pulling off the road as their headlights were obscured by sand. Golden eagles flew wide around the tumult. And the sky, it just vanished, save for just the haziest outline of the sun. It wasn’t like one of the rare gully washers, where the wet ground and cleansed air gave the valley a different feel. When the dust storm dissipated, life would start up again as if it had simply gone into hibernation.
So Key respected and loved and feared the desert. But he was not stupidly uninformed about it. He had collected bones from the sands until his mother said it was time to go. The fragile, baked skin of snakes. The burned-to-death tarantulas who had been caught outside when they should have been under a rock. The tiny scorpions that could get in your shoe and sting like a pin. And the dry, miserable heat. At least humid heat gave you warning that you were getting too damn hot: it caused perspiration to dribble hotly down your skin. Desert heat just cooked you, the sweat evaporating before it could even be noticed. And the sunburn: what happened to unprotected skin was probably what it must have been like watching those nuclear tests in the desert without appropriate insulation. It went from normal to painful red in minutes, like the air was a magnifying glass—which, in effect, it was.
So Key knew about deserts and the kind of life that thrived there. That included human life, for there were always those sun-loonies, as his colorful mother used to call them, who loved coming out there, often naked, and becoming one with this perdition.
“They say it’s like a snake shedding skin,” she’d said when he was nine or ten and they encountered a small group in tents. “You are reborn in the heat and the sun.”
His mother could be a philosopher when she wanted to be. Showgirls were like that, which is why Key wasn’t like the ordinary straight-ahead killing machines turned out by the USMC. More than once, on leave, Key went back to the desert on his own. His mother had died of cervical cancer when she was young, but she always seemed alive when he came here. Maybe she was, having been reborn in some way he didn’t understand. He was always hoping to find a lady sun-loony who he could discuss that with, but it never happened. So like a desert prophet, he ended up camping under the stars surrounded by the creatures that wriggleth and scuttleth in the sand.
All of that was years ago, before Key had turned cynical. Before he had seen war and spilled human blood. Now the desert was an enemy—or at least, he could not assume it was a friend. He was certainly grateful for this ride, especially with the wind as it was. They had hitched from Djibouti on a couple of transports arranged by Daniels’s network of macho cronies—another reason Key wanted him as a partner. Being an oddball was great if you yearned to feel special, but not so great if you wanted to get from Djibouti to Thumrait in less than a week. As it was, they had to go from Lemonneir to Bahrain in Saudi Arabia, and only then to Thumrait—just to avoid Yemen airspace.
As per their new no-spitting-without-permission lifestyle, Key let Logan know their plans, but the Captain shrugged it off like an inattentive father. Key wondered, and not for the first time, whether the whole setup was just to keep him out of their hair—or, in Logan’s case, scalp—while they concentrated on more immediate, pressing things. No matter, Key saw what he saw.
Now he watched as Gonzales prepped the motor on a semicircular dashboard that rivaled some of the newer jets he had been in. He had little doubt Gonzales had built it all himself. Key recognized some rubber and aluminum attachments that that went way beyond wipers to keep the panoramic windshield clear. Through it, Thumrait Air Base looked like it had been built upon a giant gauze patch that God had personally pressed down on the southwest side of Oman.
The engine didn’t so much turn on as come to life, vibrating their organs and very bones. Key grabbed the side of his seat and the top of the dashboard as the thing lurched forward. Key had to yell to be heard over the machine’s consistent thunder.
“I’m not even sure how we got out of Shabhut,” he said directly into Gonzales’s right ear. “How did something else get out?”
Gonzales waved the question away as he guided the powerful Desert Demon onto the main camel way. “I know guys who are working on epic raps on how you got out of Shabhut,” Gonzales assured them. “You’re already a living legend among grunts.”
“Did he say epic raps or epic craps?” Daniels asked Key.
Key ignored him. “Okay,” he shouted at the driver. “You said something got out of there dead?”
“You know the situation, right?” Gonzales continued, without waiting for an answer. “Oman’s the cork on the Arabian Peninsula pressure cooker. Emirates to the left, Saudi Arabia to the right, Yemen down below. Iran and Pakistan right next to the pond.”
“The Arabian Sea,” Key loudly replied, more for the benefit of Daniels, who, by his wandering eyes and disinterested expression, seemed more intent on searching the growing hillsides for something to punch, shoot or screw.
“So Sultan Qaboos is trying to be friends with everybody,” Gonzales went on, keeping his eyes on the wavering road in case one of the bent, shaking palm trees suddenly flew at them, “but doesn’t really trust anybody. Yemini the least. So, in the aftermath of the Omani Spring….”
“Protests in twenty-eleven that resulted in promises of reform,” Key shouted back.
Gonzales nodded. “An Oman Study Committee was formed, made up of scientists and doctors that the Sultan sends anywhere, with as much diplomatic immunity as they can muster, to study anything he finds interesting.”
“And he found Shabhut interesting?”
“Oh yeah. Before Marine HQ did. Apparently the OSC was nearby when you guys showed up.”
“How come I never heard about that?”
Gonzales shrugged. “Neighbors quickly figured the OSC was all spies anyway, and didn’t look too kindly on their appearances. So over the last few years, they’ve become more and more low profile and secretive.”
“Then how did you know about it?”
Daniels punched Key on the shoulder. “Nothing Speedy don’t know,” he boasted. “I told you.”
“Oh, you were listening?” Key cracked.
“I can