Hollywood Scream Play Read Free

Al Qaeda has been detonating car bombs all over Yemen’s larger cities—the capitol, Sana’a, and Amanat Al Asimah.
    For all we know, it’s already too late, and Bilqis’ tomb has also been blown to smithereens.
    This is a three-man mission—just Jack, Acme’s pilot George Taylor, and me. So as not to attract the attention of either the rebels or the local police, George flew our Super Puma helicopter from a Saudi Arabian airstrip just across the Yemeni border, touching down four miles from the GPS coordinates of the dig site, which is in a remote canyon. The Puma’s cargo hold also contains three motorcycles, on the off chance our getaway has to be made on land instead.
    While Jack oversees all satellite reconnaissance within a forty-mile range of the dig, I’m to go in alone, via motorcycle.
    An hour before we landed, Al Qaeda set off a bomb at a major shopping mall in Sana’a. Thank goodness, Yemeni police squads are too busy herding fleeing citizens through security checkpoints to notice a lone biker zipping through the desert on a starry night.
    So that I don’t unwittingly run into roving bands of Al Qaeda Shi’a, I’m riding without a headlight. To compensate, I wear infrared night vision goggles under my helmet.
    I keep my eye on the digital GPS system of my Supermoto as I parallel the road, and I zigzag through the desert at the first sign of lights in any direction. For this journey, I’m not in regional garb—a headscarf to cover all but my eyes, and a floor-length  abaya , both made of plain white linen. Instead, I wear a bike helmet with a tinted visor and a bulky black leather jumpsuit that obscures my womanly curves.
    Better to be shot as an enemy than raped as a victim.
    For that matter, the marauders have plenty of others to traumatize during the chaos. By staying off-road, I’ve barely sidestepped a group of livestock-herding Bedouin women, heading south.
    But just a mile behind them is a car, commandeered by two men. The one in the passenger seat shoots an Uzi skyward, just for the hell of it. At the speed at which they’re traveling, they’ll catch up with the women in no time. What will take place won’t be pretty, and unfortunately, the memories will stay with the women forever—
    That is, if they’re allowed to live.
    I turn my motorcycle in the direction of the car.
    Because my GPS coordinates are being tracked by Jack through my contact lenses and ear buds—which also give him wireless feeds of everything I see and hear—I’m not at all surprised to hear him warn me, “Donna, you don’t have time for a detour. It’ll be daylight soon. We’ve got exactly one hour to pull off this mission and turn the plane around.”
    He’s right. Stopping to help them will set me back badly. But it will haunt me for the rest of my life if I don’t do something, so I circle back around.
    When I finally spot the rebels’ car on the side of the road, I turn off my engine. So that they don’t hear me, I jog the last quarter of a mile.
    I get there just in time to see the driver yank the youngest—a girl of about thirteen—out from the cluster of frightened women, and drag her behind his car while his compatriot holds her screaming mother and aunts at bay with his Uzi.
    The man has already shoved his pants to his ankles with one hand and is holding the sobbing, struggling girl down with the other when I come up behind him.
    When my switchblade slices the rapist’s throat, he lets out a groan, more painful than orgasmic.
    Every time I take a life, I’m awed and humbled by the act: the stark fear glazing my victims’ eyes, that final gasp of realization, followed by the peaceful calm of resignation; then, finally, the anticipation of oblivion.
    Will I feel the same, when my time comes?
    The young girl’s hysterical screams are so loud that, by the time I get to the other man, all it takes to finish him off is a single shot to the back of his head with the rapist’s handgun.
    As the