Information about the book
Northern Yemen, near the Saudi border August 1967
Tariq al-Khalif hid his face behind a cloth of soft
white cotton. The kaffi yeh covered his head and wrapped around
his mouth and nose. It kept the sun, wind and sand from his
weather-beaten features as it hid him from the world.
Only Khalif’s eyes showed, hard and sharp from sixty years in
the desert. They did not blink or turn away as he stared at the
dead bodies in the sand before him.
Eight bodies in all. Two men, three women, three children;
stripped naked, all clothes and belongings gone. Most had been
shot, a few had been stabbed.
As the camel train at Khalif’s back waited, a rider moved
slowly up toward him. Khalif recognized the strong, young fi gure
in the saddle. A man named Sabah, his most trusted lieutenant.
A Russian-made AK-47 lay slung over his shoulder.
“Bandits for certain,” Sabah said. “No sign of them now.”
Khalif studied the rough sand at his feet. He noticed the tracks
disappearing to the west, headed directly toward the only source
of water for a hundred miles, an oasis called Abi Quzza—the
“silken water.”
“No, my friend,” he said. “These men are not waiting around
to be discovered. They hide their numbers by sticking to the hard
ground, where no tracks are left, or they walk on the softest sand,
where the marks soon fade. But here I can see the truth, they’re
heading toward our home.”
Abi Quzza had belonged to Khalif’s family for generations. It
provided life-giving water and a modicum of wealth. Date palms
grew in abundance around its fertile springs, along with grass for
the sheep and camels.
With the growing number of trucks and other forms of modern
transportation, the caravans that paid for its gifts had begun
to dwindle, and the role of camel-raising Bedouins like Khalif
and his family were fading along with them, but they were not
yet gone. For the clan to have any prospects at all, Khalif knew
the oasis must be protected.
“Your sons will defend it,” Sabah said.
The oasis lay twenty miles to the west. Khalif’s sons, two nephews
and their families waited there. A half dozen tents, ten men
with rifl es. It would not be an easy place to attack. And yet Khalif
felt a terrible unease.
“We must hurry,” he said, climbing back onto his camel.
Sabah nodded. He slid the AK-47 forward to a more aggressive
position and nudged his camel forward.
Three hours later they approached the oasis. From a distance
they could see nothing but small fi res. There were no signs
of struggle, no ripped tents or stray animals, no bodies lying in
the sand.
Khalif ordered the camel train to a halt and dismounted. He
took Sabah and two others, moving forward on foot.
The silence around them was so complete, they could hear the
crackle of wood in the fi res and their own feet scuffl ing in the
sand. Somewhere in the distance, a jackal began to yelp. It was a
long way off, but the noise carried in the desert.
Khalif halted, waiting for the jackal’s call to fade. When it died
away, a more pleasant sound followed: a small voice singing a traditional
Bedouin melody. It came from the main tent and fl owed
quietly.
Khalif began to relax. It was the voice of his youngest son, Jinn.
“Bring the caravan,” Khalif said. “All is well.”
As Sabah and the others went back to the camels, Khalif
walked forward. He reached his tent, threw open the fl ap, and
froze.
A bandit dressed in rags stood there, holding a curved blade
to his son’s throat. Another bandit sat beside him, clutching an
old rifl e.
“One move and I slice his neck,” the bandit said.
“Who are you?”
“I am Masiq,” the bandit said.
“What do you want?” Khalif asked.
Masiq shrugged. “What don’t we want?”
“The camels have value,” Khalif said, guessing what they were
after. “I will give them to you. Just spare my family.”
“Your offer is meaningless to me,” Masiq replied, his face
twisting into a snarl of contempt. “Because I can take what I
want, and because . . .”—he gripped the boy tightly—“except for
this one, your family is already dead.”
Khalif’s heart tightened. Inside his tunic was a Webley- Fosbery
automatic revolver. The self-cocking revolver was a sturdy weapon
with deadly accuracy. It wouldn’t jam even after months in the
desert sand. He tried to think of a way to reach it.
“Then I’ll give you everything,” he said, “just for him. And
you can go free.”
“You have gold hidden here,” Masiq said as if it were a known
fact. “Tell us where it is.”
Khalif shook his head. “I have no gold.”
“Lies,” the second bandit said.
Masiq began to laugh, his crooked teeth and decay-fi lled
mouth making a horrifi c sound. Gripping the boy tightly with
one arm, he raised the other as if to slice the boy’s neck. But the
child slipped loose, lunged for Masiq’s fi ngers with his mouth and
bit down hard.
Masiq cursed in pain. His hand snapped back as if he’d been
burned.
Khalif’s own hand found the revolver and he blasted two shots
right through his tunic. The would-be murderer fell backward,
two smoking holes in his chest.
The second bandit fi red, grazing Khalif’s leg, but Khalif’s shot
hit him square in the face. The man fell without a word, but the
battle had only just begun.
Outside the tent, gunfi re began to echo through the night.
Shots were being traded, volleys fl ying back and forth. Khalif
recognized the sound of heavy bolt-action rifl es, like the one in
the dead thug’s hand, they were answered by the rattling sound
of Sabah and his automatic rifl e.
Khalif grabbed his son, placing the pistol in the young boy’s
hand. He picked up the old rifl e from beside one of the dead
bandits. He plucked the curved knife from the ground as well
and moved deeper into the tent.
His older sons lay there as if resting side by side. Their clothes
were soaked with dark blood and riddled with holes.
A wave of pain swept over Khalif; pain and bitterness and
anger.
With the gunfi re raging outside, he stuck the knife into the
side of the tent and cut a small hole. Peering through it, he saw
the battle.
Sabah and three of the men were fi ring from behind a shield
of dead camels. A group of thugs dressed like the bandits he’d just
killed were out in the oasis itself, hiding behind date palms in
knee-high water.
There did not seem to be enough of them to have taken the
camp by force.
He turned to Jinn. “How did these men get here?”
“They asked to stay,” the boy said. “We watered their camels.”
That they’d played on the tradition of Bedouin generosity
and the kindness of Khalif’s sons before killing them enraged
Khalif further. He went to the other side of the tent. This time he
plunged the knife into the fabric and drew it sharply downward.
“Stay here,” he ordered Jinn.
Khalif snuck through the opening and worked his way into
the darkness. Moving in a wide arc, he curled in behind his enemies
and slipped into the oasis.
Preoccupied with Sabah and his men at their front, the bandits
never noticed Khalif fl anking them. He came up behind them
and opened fi re, blasting them in the back from close range.
Three went down quickly and then a fourth. Another tried to
run and was killed by a shot from Sabah, but the sixth and fi nal
thug turned around in time and fi red back.
A slug hit Khalif’s shoulder, knocking him backward and
sending a jolt of pain surging though his body. He landed in the
water.
The bandit rushed toward him, perhaps thinking him dead or
too wounded to fi ght.
Khalif aimed the old rifl e and pulled the trigger. The shell
jammed in the breach. He grabbed the bolt and worked to free it,
but his wounded arm was not strong enough to break loose the
frozen action.
The bandit raised his own weapon, drawing a bead on Khalif’s
chest. And then the sound of the Webley revolver rang out like
thunder.
The bandit fell against a date palm with a puzzled look on his
face. He slid down it, the weapon falling from his hands into the
water.
Jinn stood behind the dead man, holding the pistol in a shaking
grip, his eyes fi lled with tears.
Khalif looked around for more enemies, but he saw none. The
shooting had stopped. He could hear Sabah shouting to the men.
The battle was over.
“Come here, Jinn,” he ordered.
His son moved toward him, shaking and trembling. Khalif
took him under one arm and held him.
“Look at me.”
The boy did not respond.
“Look at me, Jinn!”
Finally Jinn turned. Khalif held his shoulder tightly.
“You are too young to understand, my son, but you have done
a mighty thing. You have saved your father. You have saved your
family.”
“But my brothers and mother are dead,” Jinn cried.
“No,” Khalif said. “They are in paradise, and we will go on,
until we meet them one day.”
Jinn did not react, he only stared and sobbed.
A sound from the right turned Khalif. One of the bandits was
alive and trying to crawl away.
Khalif raised the curved knife, ready to fi nish the man, but
then held himself back. “Kill him, Jinn.”
The shaking boy stared blankly. Khalif stared back, fi rm and
unyielding.
“Your brothers are dead, Jinn. The future of the clan rests with
you. You must learn to be strong.”
Jinn continued to shake, but Khalif was all the more certain
now. Kindness and generosity had almost destroyed them. Such
weakness had to be banished from his only surviving son.
“You must never have pity,” Khalif said. “He is an enemy. If
we have not the strength to kill our enemies, they will take the
waters from us. And without the waters, we inherit only wandering
and death.”
Khalif knew he could force Jinn to do it, knew he could order
him and the boy would follow the command. But he needed Jinn
to choose the act himself.
“Are you afraid?”
Jinn shook his head. Slowly, he turned and raised the pistol.
The bandit glanced back at him, but instead of Jinn buckling,
his hand grew steady. He looked the bandit in the face and pulled
the trigger.
The gun’s report echoed across the water and out into the desert.
By the time it faded, tears no longer fl owed from the young
boy’s eyes.
Indian Ocean
June 2012
The ninety-foot catamaran lolled its way across
calm waters of the Indian Ocean at sunset. It was making three
or four knots in a light breeze. A brilliant white sail rose above
the wide deck. Five-foot letters in turquoise spelled out numa
across its central section—the National Underwater and Marine
Agency.
Kimo A’kona stood near one of the catamaran’s twin bows. He
was thirty years old, with jet-black hair, a chiseled body and the
swirling designs of a traditional Hawaiian tattoo on his arm and
shoulder. He stood on the bow in bare feet, balancing on the very
tip as if he were hanging ten on a surfboard.
He held a long pole ahead and to the side, dipping an instrument
into the water. Readings on a small display screen told him
it was working.
He called out the results. “Oxygen level is a little low, temperature
is 21 degrees centigrade, 70.4 Fahrenheit.”
Behind Kimo, two others watched. Perry Halverson, the team
leader and oldest member of the crew, stood at the helm. He wore
khaki shorts, a black T-shirt and an olive drab “boonie” hat he’d
owned for years.
Beside him, Thalia Quivaros, who everyone called T, stood on
the deck in white shorts and a red bikini top that accented her
tan fi gure enough to distract both men.
“That’s the coldest reading yet,” Halverson noted. “Three full
degrees cooler than it should be this time of year.”
“The global warming people aren’t going to like that,” Kimo
noted.
“Maybe not,” Thalia said as she typed the readings into a
small computer tablet. “But it’s defi nitely a pattern. Twenty-nine
of the last thirty readings are off by at least two degrees.”
“Could a storm have passed through here?” Kimo asked.
“Dumping rain or hail that we aren’t accounting for?”
“Nothing for weeks,” Halverson replied. “This is an anomaly,
not a local distortion.”
Thalia nodded. “Deepwater readings from the remote sensors
we dropped are confi rming it. Temperatures are way off, all the
way down to the thermocline. It’s like the sun’s heat is missing
this region somehow.”
“I don’t think the sun’s the problem,” Kimo said. The ambient
air temperature had reached the high in the nineties a few hours
before as the sun had been blazing from a cloudless sky. Even as
it set, the last rays were strong and warm.
Kimo reeled in the instrument, checked it and then swung
the pole like a fl y fi sherman. He cast the sensor out forty feet from
the boat, letting it sink and drift back. The second reading came
back identical to the fi rst.
“At least we’ve found something to tell the brass back in D.C.,”
Halverson said. “You know they all think we’re on a pleasure
cruise out here.”
“I’m guessing it’s an upwelling,” Kimo said. “Something like
the El Niño/La Niña effect. Although since this is the Indian
Ocean, they will probably call it something in Hindu.”
“Maybe they could name it after us,” Thalia suggested. “The
Quivaros-A’kona-Halverson effect. QAH for short.”
“Notice how she put herself up front,” Kimo said to Halverson.
“Ladies fi rst,” she said with a nod and a smile.
Halverson laughed and adjusted his hat.
“While you guys fi gure that out, I’ll get started on the mess for
tonight. Anyone for fl ying-fi sh tacos?”
Thalia looked at him suspiciously. “We had those last night.”
“Lines are empty,” Halverson said. “We didn’t catch anything
today.”
Kimo thought about that. The farther they sailed into the
cold zone, the less sea life they’d found. It was like the ocean was
turning barren and cold. “Sounds better than canned goods,”
he said.
Thalia nodded, and Halverson ducked into the cabin to whip
them up some dinner. Kimo stood and gazed off to the west.
The sun had fi nally dropped below the horizon, and the sky
was fading to an indigo hue with a line of blazing orange just
above the water. The air was soft and humid, the temperature
now around eighty-fi ve degrees. It was a perfect evening, made
even more perfect by the notion that they’d discovered something
unique.
They had no idea what was causing it, but the temperature
anomaly seemed to be wreaking havoc with the weather across
the region. So far, there’d been little rain across southern and
western India at a time when the monsoons were supposed to be
brewing.
Concern was spreading as a billion people were waiting for the
seasonal downpours to bring the rice and wheat crops to life.
From what he’d heard nerves were fraying. Memories of the previous
year’s light harvest had sparked talk of famine if something
didn’t change soon.
While Kimo realized there was little he could do about it, he
hoped they were close to determining the cause. The last few days
suggested they were on the right track. They would check the
readings again in an hour, a few miles to the west. In the meantime,
dinner called.
Kimo reeled the sensor back in. As he pulled it from the water,
something odd caught his eye. He squinted. A hundred yards off,
a strange black sheen was spreading across the ocean surface like
a shadow.
“Check this out,” he said to Thalia.
“Stop trying to get me up there in close quarters,” she joked.
“I’m serious,” he said. “There’s something on the water.”
She put down the computer tablet and came forward, putting
a hand on his arm to steady herself on the narrow bowsprit. Kimo
pointed to the shadow. It was defi nitely spreading, moving across
the surface like oil or algae, though it had an odd texture to it
unlike either of those things.
“Do you see that?”
She followed his gaze and then brought a pair of binoculars to
her eyes. After a few seconds, she spoke.
“It’s just the light playing tricks on you.”
“It’s not the light.”
She stared through the binoculars a moment longer and then
offered them to him. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing out there.”
Kimo squinted in the failing light. Were his eyes deceiving
him? He took the binoculars and scanned the area. He lowered
them, brought them up and lowered them again.
Nothing but water. No algae, no oil, no odd texture to the
surface of the sea. He scanned to both sides to make sure he wasn’t
looking in the wrong place, but the sea looked normal again.
“I’m telling you, there was something out there,” he said.
“Nice try,” she replied. “Let’s eat.”
Thalia turned and picked her way back toward the catamaran’s
main deck. Kimo took one fi nal look, saw nothing out of the
ordinary, then shook his head and turned to follow her.
A few minutes later they were in the main cabin, chowing
down on fi sh tacos Halverson style while laughing and discussing
their thoughts as to the cause of the temperature anomaly.
As they ate, the catamaran continued northwest with the wind.
The smooth fi berglass of its twin bows sliced through the calm
sea, the water slid past, traveling silently along the hydrodynamic
shape.
And then something began to change. The water’s viscosity
seemed to thicken slightly. The ripples grew larger and they moved
a fraction slower. The brilliant white fi berglass of the boat’s pontoons
began to darken at the waterline as if being tinted by a dye
of some kind.
This continued for several seconds as a charcoal-colored stain
began spreading across the side of the hull. It began to move upward,
defying gravity, as if being drawn by some power.
A texture to the stain resembled graphite or a darker, thinner
version of quicksilver. Before long, the leading edge of this stain
crested the catamaran’s bow, swirling in the very spot where
Kimo had stood.
Had someone been watching closely, they would have noticed
a pattern appear. For an instant the substance shaped itself like
footprints, before becoming smooth once again and slithering
backward, headed toward the main cabin.
Inside the cabin, a radio played, picking up a shortwave broadcast
of classical music. It was good dinner music, and Kimo found
himself enjoying the evening and the company as much as the
food. But as Halverson fought against divulging the secret of his
taco recipe, Kimo noticed something odd.
Something was beginning to cover the cabin’s broad tinted
windows, blocking out the fading sky and the illumination from
the boat’s lights high up on the mast. The substance climbed up
the glass the way wind-driven snow or sand might pile up against
a fl at surface, but much, much faster.
“What in the world . . .”
Thalia looked to the window. Halverson’s eyes went the other
way, glancing out at the aft deck with alarm on his face.
Kimo swung his head around. Some type of gray substance
was fl owing through the open door, moving along the deck of the
boat but fl owing uphill.
Thalia saw it too. Heading straight for her.
She jumped out of her seat, knocking her plate from the table.
The last bites of her dinner landed in front of the advancing mass.
When it reached the leftovers, the gray substance fl owed over the
bits of food, covering it completely and swirling around it in a
growing mound.
“What is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Kimo said. “I’ve never . . .”
He didn’t have to fi nish his sentence. None of them had ever
seen anything like it. Except . . .
Kimo’s eyes narrowed, the strange substance fl owed like a liquid,
but it had a grainy texture. It seemed more like metallic powder
sliding across itself, like waves of the fi nest sand shifting in
the wind.
“That’s what I saw on the water,” he said, backing away. “I
told you there was something out there.”
“What’s it doing?”
All of them were standing and easing backward.
“It looks like it’s eating the fi sh,” Halverson said.
Kimo stared, vacillating between fear and wonder. He glanced
through the open door. The rear deck was covered.
He looked around for a way out. Moving forward would only
take them down into the catamaran’s berths, trapping them.
Going aft would mean stepping on the strange substance.
“Come on,” he said, climbing onto the table. “Whatever that
stuff is, I’m pretty sure we don’t want to touch it.”
As Thalia climbed up beside him, Kimo reached toward the
skylight and propped it open. He gave her a boost, and she pulled
herself up through the opening and onto the cabin’s roof.
Halverson climbed onto the table next but slipped. His foot
slammed into the metallic dust, splashing it like a puddle. Some
of it splattered onto his calf.
Halverson grunted as if he’d been stung. Reaching down, he
tried to swipe it off his leg, but half of what he swiped clung to
his hand.
He shook his hand rapidly and then rubbed it on his shorts.
“It’s burning my skin,” he said, his face showing the pain.
“Come on, Perry,” Kimo shouted.
Halverson climbed up on the table with a small amount of the
silvery residue still clinging to his hand and leg, and the table
buckled under the weight of the two men.
Kimo grabbed the edge of the skylight and held on, but Halverson
fell. He landed on his back, hitting his head. The impact
seemed to stun him. He grunted and rolled over, putting his
hands down on the deck to push off with.
The gray substance swarmed over him, covering his hands, his
arms and his back. He managed to get up and brace himself
against the bulkhead, but some of the residue reached his face.
Halverson pawed at his face as if bees were swarming around
him. His eyes were shut tight, but the strange particles were forcing
themselves under his eyelids and streaming into his nostrils
and ears.
He stepped away from the bulkhead and fell to his knees. He
began digging at his ears and screaming. Lines of the swarming
substance curled over his lips and began fl owing down into his
throat, turning his screams into the gurgles of a choking man.
Halverson fell forward. The spreading mass of particles began to
cover him as if he was being consumed by a horde of ants in the
jungle.
“Kimo!” Thalia shouted.
Her voice snapped Kimo out of his trance. He pulled himself
up and scrambled through the opening onto the roof. He shut the
skylight and sealed it hard. From the spotlights high in the mast
he could see that the gray swarm had spread across the entire
deck, both fore and aft. It was also creeping upward along the
sides of the cabin.
Here and there it seemed to be swarming over things as it had
done to the fallen dinner items and Halverson.
“It’s coming up over here,” Thalia shouted.
“Don’t touch it!”
On his side the invading swarm had made less progress. Kimo
reached over and grabbed for anything that would help. His hand
found the deck hose and he turned it on, grabbing the nozzle and
spraying high-pressure water at the gray mass.
The jet of liquid swept the particles backward, washing them
off the cabin’s wall like mud.
“On this side!”
He stepped to her side and blasted away at the muck.
“Get behind me!” he shouted, directing the hose.
The pressurized stream of water helped, but it was a losing
battle. The swarm was surrounding them and closing in on all
sides. Try as he might, Kimo could not keep up.
“We should jump,” Thalia shouted.
Kimo looked to the ocean. The swarm extended out from the
boat and onto the sea from which it had come.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
Desperate for something that would help, he scanned the deck.
Two fi ve-gallon cans of gasoline sat near the aft end of the boat.
He aimed the hose at full pressure, sweeping it from side to side
and blasting a path through the swarm.
He dropped the hose, ran forward, and leapt. He landed on
the wet deck, skidded across it and slammed into the transom at
the rear of the boat.
A stinging feeling on his hands and legs—like rubbing alcohol
had been poured over open skin—told him some of the residue
had found him. He ignored the pain, grabbed the fi rst jerry
can and began pouring fuel across the deck.
The gray residue recoiled at the fl ow, curling out of the way
and retreating but probing for a new path forward.
Up on the cabin’s roof, Thalia was using the hose, blasting the
water around her in an ever smaller circle. Suddenly, she cried out
and dropped the hose as if she’d been stung. She turned and began
to climb the mast, but Kimo could see the swarm had begun covering
her legs.
She screamed and fell. “Kimo!” she shouted. “Help me.
Help m—”
He splashed the deck with the rest of the gasoline and grabbed
for the second can. It was light and almost empty. Fear knifed
through Kimo’s heart like a spear.
Only gurgling noises and the sound of struggling came from
where Thalia had fallen. Her hand was all he could see, writhing
where it stuck out from beneath the mass of particles. In front of
him, that same mass had resumed its search for a path to his feet.
He looked once again to the surface of the sea. The horde covered
it like a sheen of liquid metal all the way out to the limits of
the light. Kimo faced the awful truth. There was no escape.
Not wanting to die like Thalia and Halverson had, Kimo
made a painful decision.
He dumped the rest of the fuel onto the deck, forcing the
swarm back once more, grabbed for a lighter he carried and
dropped down to one knee. He held the lighter against the
gasoline- soaked deck, steeled himself to act and snapped his fi nger
along the fl int.
Sparks snapped and the vapors lit. A fl ashover whipped forward
from the aft end of the catamaran. Flames raced through
the approaching swarm all the way to the cabin and then roared
back toward Kimo, swirling around him and setting him ablaze.
The agony was too intense to endure even for the brief seconds
he had left to live. Engulfed in fi re, and unable to scream with his
lungs burned out, Kimo A’kona staggered backward and fell into
the waiting sea.
