AllFreeNovel
Share Us
From fifty kilometres an hour down to five.
They were sitting ducks.
Three shadowy figures stepped out from the dark, heavily armed with AK-47s and grim faces blocking their path through the weave of burned-out vehicles. These guys weren’t amateurs like the fools back at the plane.
“Let me do the talking,” Asher murmured. “And don’t fire unless they do. To my left at ten o’clock there’s secondary men on the ridge with launchers or some shit. I saw a flash of metal.”
Harry’s face was neutral, blank. Asher wasn’t sure if it was his game face or if he was scared.
He was going with the latter.
One of the men stood by Harry’s window, his gun pointed at Harry’s head. Harry kept both hands on the wheel. Another stood in front of the car, rifle aimed at them. The third went to Asher’s side.
Asher put one hand up and wound the window down with the other. He spoke Arabic, hoping these men did too. “My name is Michael. I’m a fixer guide for this man. He—”
The man opened Asher’s door. “Get out.”
Asher got out slowly, hands up. “I am a fixer, a guide, for this man. He is Australian. We need to get to Oman so he can fly home. I have a bag with his papers on my seat.”
The man standing in the front of their car now pointed his rifle at Asher while the man closest to Asher went to the seat. He took the backpack and walked to the front of the hood so he could look inside it.
The other two men never took their eyes, or their guns, off Harry and Asher. Not for one second.
The man opened the bag, looked inside, then glanced over at Asher. He’d no doubt seen the four remaining bundles of cash, Asher assumed. Then he took out the passport and looked over it, though it may as well have been a scrap of garbage for all the interest he showed.
“It’s all he has,” Asher said quietly.
The man stared at him for a long few seconds. For too long. Asher was sure this was it. This was where it all ended. And for some stupid heart-stopping second, he regretted bringing Harry into this.
They weren’t supposed to die like this.
Asher didn’t breathe. Time didn’t exist. All that remained was regret.
Then the man took the passport and held it out for Asher to take. That was all he offered. He kept the backpack and took a few steps backward. The other men stepped back as well.
Holy fucking shit.
Not a word was said, but Asher understood. He nodded, almost bowing his head, and couldn’t get in the car fast enough. “Drive,” he whispered. “Drive!”
Harry drove slowly and accelerated faster as they cleared the last burned-out truck. And he kept driving. Neither of them spoke—neither of them even freaking breathed—until they’d gone a few kilometres. Asher waited for gunfire or the rocket launcher... but it never came.
The valley with ridge lines, or dunes, or whatever the fuck they were in flattened out, from what Asher could see. The road became more of an actual road, and Asher let out an unsteady breath. “Fuck. You okay?”
Harry nodded. “You?”
Asher nodded in return. “Yeah. I’ve been through all kinds of tense situations, but that’s in my top five, for sure.”
“I’m thinking it’s number one for me,” Harry said.
Asher laughed out of relief. “I thought we were dead for sure.” He decided not to tell Harry that he’d thought of him in that moment... It was something Asher would have to unpack later, if at all.
“What was in the backpack?”
“About forty thousand.”
“No wonder he took it and asked no more questions.”
Asher nodded, his heart now back to its normal rate. He took out his phone and called Four. “It’s me—”
