“It’s difficult . . .” He shaded his eyes with one huge hand and squinted toward the sparkling light. “Thirty, perhaps forty legions.”
“Legions?” I asked. “What’s a legion?”
Abby said to him, “Not all, then.”
He shook his head. “A search party.”
“A search party of what?” I asked.
“Can we outrun them?” she asked.
He said quietly, “ ‘Their horses are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.’ ”
“I’ll take that as a no,” she said. “Then we engage.” She started to turn away. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“No!” he said in a fierce whisper. “Our mission is to acquire the target. There is still time.”
“Time for what?” I asked, but I really didn’t expect an answer by this point.
Now the orange on the horizon had deepened to a fiery red mixed with bright white sparks. The stars winked out as the burning light advanced, filling the night sky, and a breeze noticeably warmer than the cool desert air began to blow across our faces.
“We must take cover,” Op Nine said. “Immediately.”
Abby turned and started toward the others, making some kind of complicated hand signal as she went, and right away they opened the storage compartments on the foils and began pulling out what looked like brown tarps.
Op Nine had said we needed to take cover immediately, but he didn’t move a muscle. He stood stock-still and stared at the flickering lights of white and gold. The breeze had turned into a full-fledged wind that grew hotter with each passing second. The ground started to tremble.
“Uh, Op Nine, didn’t you say we had to take cover?”
He shook his head as if rousing himself from a dream.
“Yes. Come, Kropp.”
He threw my arm over his shoulder and helped me back to the foils. The agents had spread the brown tarps over the vehicles and now were crawling underneath them. Ashley crouched beside one, motioning to us.
“Alfred,” Op Nine said. “This is very important: do not look into their eyes. They will know what you fear.”
He lowered me to the ground and I started to crawl under the tarp. He grabbed my arm and pulled my face close to his.
“And what you love.”
He had to shout over the wind, which was howling by this point, spraying us with stinging grains of sand. He let the tarp fall and I felt someone’s hand on my wrist, pulling me away from the edge.
“Don’t move,” Ashley whispered. “Don’t talk.”
The darkness under the tarp faded, or maybe I was getting used to it, because after a minute I could see her bright blue eyes darting back and forth. Ashley’s hand was white-knuckled on the CW3XD that lay across her lap, her index finger caressing the trigger. Ashley was afraid.
The tarp rippled and snapped around us as the gale worsened and sand popped against the material, making this strange hissing sound like gas escaping from a bottle. I could hear something else too, as if the wind was a curtain rippling as this sound passed behind it. Voices, or maybe not voices but somehow the echo of voices, and I started to shake as the tarp around us began to glow red.
It was very close now, whatever it was, and the closer it got, the more I shook. It was hot and stuffy under the covering and I was sweating, but I shivered like I had a fever. Op Nine’s warning echoed over and over in my head: Don’t look into their eyes! Don’t look into their eyes! My mind became like a slice of Swiss cheese, stretched thin, full of holes filled with darkness, and that darkness was full of horror.
Dimly, under the howling wind, I could hear someone screaming. She needs to be quiet, I thought. Ashley, be quiet! But it wasn’t Ashley screaming, of course; it was me.
Then, as if it shot through one of those holes in my mind, a hand reached for me in the darkness, soft and warm, and without thinking I pulled her into my arms.
19
“Alfred, it’s over.”
She pushed on my chest and I unfolded my arms. Every inch of me ached. In the half-light beneath the tarp, I saw her brush back a strand of hair from her forehead.
“What was that?” I whispered hoarsely. My throat ached from the screaming. “What the heck was that?”
I flipped back the edge of the tarp without asking for permission. Enough of this, I thought. I was testy now. I wanted some answers. Everybody seemed to know what we were getting into except one key person.
Sand fell into a heap where I lifted the tarp. The winds had piled the sand all around us, like a snowdrift. I stood up and my knees popped. Twelve mounds of desert sand now stood where the foils used to be. And these twelve mounds were the only feature left in the Sahara. The desert was as flat and featureless as an enormous tabletop; the rolling dunes were completely gone.
But the night had returned and, with it, the brilliant stars and the cool air.
The others had already emerged from their hiding places and gathered in a circle around Op Nine. He saw me crawl out and waved me over. I waited for Ashley. Her cheeks were wet and her eyes red.
I grabbed her hand. She pulled it away.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said, and I grabbed her hand again and this time she didn’t pull away.
We joined the other agents, who for some reason were kneeling in this circle, even Abby. Their eyes were downcast and their expressions somber, and I wondered why we were having a prayer meeting. Op Nine was the only one upright, standing in the center of the circle, arms folded over his chest, looking very grim. Even the big agent with the cocky, let’s-mow-’em-down attitude looked like somebody had gut-punched him.
They adjusted themselves to make room for Ashley and me. Op Nine motioned for us to kneel. I don’t know why, but I went down to my knees at once and so did Ashley. She pulled her hand free and this time I didn’t take it back.
Op Nine said, “The worst has come to pass: the Hyena has unlocked the Seal. Yet Fortune smiles upon us, for we have escaped his minions’ notice. We may assume he has divided his legions to search for us, thus exposing his position. A frontal assault will be the last thing he expects.” He took a deep breath. “So that is precisely what we shall give him.”
He reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and pulled out a small metal flask. He walked up to Abigail and stopped. He opened the flask, tipped the opening against the pad of his thumb, and then traced the sign of the cross on her forehead, muttering something I couldn’t hear. He worked his way around the circle, wetting his thumb, muttering, making the sign.