she’d learned of the man during her association with Jack. He was ex-CIA, hardheaded, and loyal to a fault. She knew that her chances of talking Duckey out of stepping into the fray were next to none.
“Thank you” was all she could think to say.
“Think nothing of it,” Duckey said.
12
Jack was awake for five minutes before he moved, despite the feeling that an ant was crawling up his pant leg. He mustered every ounce of determination that he had to ignore it, trying to concentrate his attention on the world around him.
He thought dawn was still an hour off and he could hear Templeton’s light snoring from somewhere off to his right. After waiting to be certain that the man was indeed asleep, Jack tested the bonds around his hands. He’d convinced the Englishman to untie him the previous evening so that, under Templeton’s watchful eye, he could wash off with a rag and a bowl of water. When Templeton had bound him again, having Jack make the first loop around his wrists while the Englishman kept a gun leveled on him, Jack had been sure to keep his wrist curved. Now, as he worried at the coarse rope, he straightened his hand and felt the rope slacken. It wasn’t much, but beyond the few minutes given him to bathe, his range of motion was better than it had been since he’d first been tied up in the safe house. Even so, it took him several minutes to slip one of the loops past his hand. But once he’d accomplished that, the ropes were off in less than a minute.
That done, he listened for any change in Templeton’s breathing. Still sound asleep. As quietly as he could, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, stifling the groan that threatened to announce his collection of pulled muscles. Templeton had wrapped a rope around Jack’s legs, the other end secured to the jeep. Even with having the full use of his hands, it took Jack longer to loosen these, and during the process he kept expecting Templeton to awaken and end his flight attempt. But Jack heard no break in the man’s steady breathing.
A few minutes later he’d freed himself and gotten his feet underneath him, ignoring the pins and needles as the blood rushed back to his feet. Though the sun wasn’t up yet, it was hot, and Jack was sweating as he put a hand on the jeep and rose along its side.
A part of him wanted to see if he could overpower Templeton while the man slept, but he knew the man had bedded down with the gun and Jack wanted to avoid the prospect of getting shot if at all possible. And in lieu of turning the tables on his captor, there was only one other option.
He leaned into the cab. No keys in the ignition. With that means of exit unavailable, he turned away from the vehicle but then thought better of it before he’d completed his first step. Instead, he reached into the back of the jeep and pulled out a duffel bag holding the rest of their bottled water. He had no idea where he was, other than that they were somewhere in Tunisia. Before they’d bedded down for the night, all he’d seen in any direction was desert. He suspected the three water bottles in the bag wouldn’t take him far, yet in a situation like the one he was in, it did no good to pine for what he didn’t have.
There was, however, one additional item in the jeep. With the duffel bag removed, Jack could see the entire length of the bundled artifact, its length such that it could not rest even on the floorboards but at an angle, rising behind Jack’s seat, where it almost reached the window. Without a moment’s consideration, Jack removed the serpent staff from its resting place. There was no way Jack was going to leave without it.
By the time he started off into the desert, he could see a thin line of light touching the place where sand and sky met. He kept to the road, knowing his only chance of getting away was to put as much distance as he could between himself and Templeton before the man discovered he was gone. Heading into the desert—where travel would have been more difficult—would only have slowed him down. He remembered seeing some break in the sameness of the landscape a few miles back as he’d