Note: I made an executive decision in this chapter regarding whether Hitch is near- or farsighted. As somebody who is only slightly nearsighted myself, I cannot possibly imagine doing all the things Hitch does without glasses (drive, operate firearms, actually make eye contact with people), much less function in my own home without tripping over the cat and breaking my neck. Since he doesn't wear his glasses consistently and seems to do just fine (and I've noticed very little rhyme or reason as to exactly when he does wear them) I figure he's slightly farsighted.

Hitch's wrists were beginning to chafe, there was sand and at least a dozen pebbles in his shoes, some unidentified desert-insect-from-hell had bitten him on the back of the neck, and his throat felt like it had shriveled up and died on him. Add to the fact that he was beginning to suffer for the clue he'd left for Troy and the others—without his glasses his near vision was a thing of the past. He only hoped Diamond didn't get too close to him; he didn't fancy that Luger becoming too fuzzy to focus on.

This stinks, he thought. Aloud he said, "Do we ever get to stop?"

Diamond, ahead by a yard or so in keeping with the obscenely fast pace he'd maintained since they'd started walking, turned to give the American a dark-eyed glare. He was already far beyond tired of Hitch's complaining, hence the private's bound wrists and the diagonal cut on his face from a whip strike too precise to be lucky.

What kind of a nut am I dealing with here? he had wondered then, and he wondered the same now as Diamond's gaze raked over him from head to toe, a sneer curving his sour Arab mouth.

"We will stop," Diamond spat, "when we reach our destination."

"Yeah, great, but I thought you wanted everybody to come find you and Moffitt handed over on a platter." Hitch tripped—more from the rocks inside his shoe than anything outside it—and clumsily righted himself. Having his hands tied really made life harder than he was used to. "Ow," he muttered.

Diamond stopped short and stalked back to where Hitch was beginning to lag what with the forty pounds of sand and rocks in his boots. He aimed his Luger right at the private's Adam's apple. "Oh, yes. Your Moffitt will be handed to me on a silver platter," he agreed silkily. "After I make him crawl across this desert to find me."

"Pretty sure he'd be driving," Hitch corrected. He leaned his head back a little, half to get away from the Luger and half to get Diamond into focus again. "Sorry."

Diamond scowled. "If I killed you now I wouldn't have to put up with you any longer," he pointed out in a steel-cold voice.

If you killed me now, I wouldn't have to cook out here in the sun any longer either, thought Hitch. Diamond didn't seem bothered by the desert heat at all, even though sweat glistened on his swarthy skin and dampened his mishmash of German and British clothing. But Hitch, on the other hand, was beginning to roast. So much so that Diamond's threats didn't bother him all that much. He figured that by the time this was done his hair would be bleached white and the rest of him toasted crispy brown from the merciless sun anyway, so he had nothing to really lose. He gave a hopeful little shrug.

"If I could have a break I'd probably shut up. Five minutes couldn't hurt, could it?" he suggested. "Moffitt can't crawl all that fast, y'know."

Diamond looked ready to throttle him and call it a day. "Soon," the Arab said through gritted teeth. "You will rest soon. It would not do for you to die in the desert like a dog."

Personally Hitch didn't want to die anywhere like a dog. It sounded astoundingly unappealing. "I didn't think I was dying at all," he said uneasily, fast growing unnerved by the look in Diamond's dark eyes. "You need me for your evil scheme, remember?" And didn't you just threaten to kill me? he added silently. Wouldn't that count as dying?

The Arab smirked. "Oh, it would be a shame, wouldn't it?" he murmured almost musingly. The Luger lowered to press hard against Hitch's collarbone. The sun-heated metal of its barrel was like a branding iron against his skin, but he didn't move. "If they should find you out here, quite dead," Diamond continued, "it would be such a pity. A waste, too. Fine young soldiers like us have such futures ahead." The Luger barrel caught up the chain around Hitch's neck, under his shirt, and pulled it out into the light. The Arab watched the dogtags dangle from it for a moment, clinking softly as they glittered in the sun. "Perhaps," he considered thoughtfully, "perhaps if they only found these." He clicked his tongue. "Are they too small to notice, though? Would they miss them?"

"Doesn't really matter," Hitch interrupted. "Those stay with me at all times. Regulations and stuff, y'know?"

Diamond stared, a muscle twitching in his jaw. "Move," he growled suddenly, and yanked hard on Hitch's collar, sending him stumbling forward into the sand.

Okay, he decided, trying to right himself using his now-aching elbows instead of his useless tied hands. I am definitely dealing with a crazy guy. I need to stay on his good side in future. But what was his good side? Sometimes he was fine—as fine as a neurotic, crazed kidnapper could be, of course—and other times anything set him off. Hitch's elbows stung from all the sand ground into them, his head hurt from all the thinking, his eyes ached from not wearing his glasses, and his feet were beginning to itch from all the grit sticking to his socks. If anyone's gonna rescue me, he thought, bordering on miserable, I wish they'd hurry up about it.

"Arab ruins," said Moffitt, thinking aloud. "Ruins. Perhaps here?" He had the map spread out over his legs, pinning it down with his elbow against the rushing wind while he tracked their path with the tip of a finger. "Don't drive so bloody quickly, Tully, I can't see where we're going with all this flapping about."

"How am I s'posed to get us there if I don't?" Tully objected. "You wanted hustle, Sarge, I'm givin' you hustle."

"Don't call me Sarge," the Brit replied stiffly. Tully shifted into a higher gear in subtle protest and tilted the wheel to stay alongside the trail of footprints, but he didn't say anything else. He and Troy both were giving Moffitt a wide berth and a whole lot of slack ever since they'd discovered Diamond's whip. The Brit was already snappier than usual, his naturally brooding nature growing worse in the half-hour it had taken them to get from the oasis to wherever they were now. To Tully it looked like utter wilderness, but the footprints unwaveringly spread before them as if Diamond had total confidence in the direction he was headed. Where's he going? wondered Tully. Dietrich said there were ruins somewhere around here. Does Diamond know that too?

Whether or not he knew it, he was planning on getting there at a respectable clip. Tully was driving the jeep as bloody quickly as he could, with his silent apologies to Moffitt and his flapping map, and he still hadn't caught sight of either Diamond or Hitch. But as long as there were two sets of prints, Tully didn't really care. Hitch was still alive—for now. Whether or not his Arab captor would want to keep him that way was anyone's guess.

"Hey, Tully!" Troy's voice came over the engine's roar and the sergeant popped him on the helmet with a dull metallic thunk. "That way—take a look!"

Tully did. It took him a minute to see what Troy had spotted from his higher vantage point, but his eyes were drawn to it as soon as it was in range. A rough, tumble-down looking building, if it could be called a building, was sprawled across the desert, its stone ancient and weathered from countless decades of eroding, sand-laden wind. While the front of it was half-demolished, reduced to a roofless, uneven set of walls and archways, the rear was mostly intact, with only a low doorway leading into its dark depths.

"That on your map, Moffitt?" called Troy as they drew nearer.

"Not a chance!" came back the tart reply. "But it will be soon enough." Dutifully he marked down another X at their estimated position and neatly folded the map. "Slow down, will you, Tully?" he asked civilly enough. "No need to announce ourselves so early in the game."

Tully eased up on the gas but glanced back at Troy for confirmation. The sergeant gave a nod, his expression inscrutable behind dust-coated goggles. Smoothly Tully drew the jeep to a stop at the base of the next dune and with a judder put it in park. Troy jumped down and, snatching up his field glasses, climbed up the sandy slope to bellyflop on its peak, peering down at the scene below. Moffitt followed. Tully stayed behind to search his pockets for more matchsticks. He had just found one when the two sergeants slithered back down the dune; the three of them gathered, automatically, at the hood to discuss their next move.

"Not much advantage to our position," Moffitt said at once. "If they're in there, and those footprints say they are, Diamond doesn't have a thing to worry about. With only one door to keep an eye on and Hitch as leverage he's rather invincible in there."

"He's obviously got a gun," Troy added, "but we don't know how much ammo."

"How much ammo does a man need to shoot a hostage?" Tully asked quietly. Moffitt gave him a gray-eyed stare but said nothing. Troy continued.

"If we split up and circle around, we can cover the back. Maybe sneak up on him while you keep his attention, Moffitt."

"Keep his attention?" repeated the Brit skeptically. "How do you propose I do that?"

"Call him to the door," Troy answered evenly, unruffled. "Get him talking. Distract him. If we're lucky he won't know there's anyone behind him."

"This all seems a little rushed, Troy," Moffitt protested. "I agree it's a good idea to check out our surroundings, but do we have to take away the element of surprise?"

Privately Tully suspected that the element of surprise was already long gone, drowned in the jeep's loud rumble that was so easily heard in all directions in the still desert air. But he stood there, wished for a bazooka, and said nothing.

He didn't have to, of course, because just then a gunshot split that still desert air into a thousand pieces, followed by a shout that carried across the sand to their hiding place.

"Moffitt! English Sergeant Moffitt!"

"Well, there goes the surprise," Tully said resignedly. Moffitt glared, but there wasn't a thing he could think of to say.