Falling Sands
By Leoni Venter
Prologue
Sands walked very slowly and carefully, trailing his left hand against the wall. Around him sounds assailed his overloaded senses, disorienting him. Footsteps and voices of people about him on the sidewalk; cars passing both ways down the street - the noise from their engines reflecting from the wall and startling him constantly; leaves rustling... it was all too much.
His head spun with pain and weariness and blood loss. Two days of hiding out with the little boy had not lessened his suffering, if anything, it was worse now that the adrenaline had worn off. During those awful minutes and hours after his eyes had been torn from his skull, only the need for revenge had kept him going. Now he rather wished he was dead. He had no idea why he hadn't died already, except that perhaps some perverse stubbornness kept him clinging to life. For he had nothing to live for. Nothing at all. Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. Central Intelligence Agency. Yeah right.
The Company had disowned him, no doubt about that. He was a kite, after all. If things went south, they cut the string. Plausible deniability. No rescue for Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, who had set it up, and had watched it fall all to pieces. That is, when he still could watch anything at all.
He kept moving forward, feeling his way. He wasn't going anywhere in particular, but since the boy had failed to return to their hideout, Sands had to assume the worst. He couldn't have stayed there, trapped. Now of course he was a blind man in a crowded street and probably sticking out like a sore thumb. Or a sore head, which was more to the point.
No melting into the populace for Sheldon Jeffrey Sands either. Nobody would mistake him for a local. His Spanish was good enough, sure, but he lacked the laid back attitude, if nothing else. It was always better to be a tourist, running the country with his cell phone.
But all that was over now. All that remained was that perverse urge to keep breathing, kicking and most importantly, moving.
A car honked right next to him and Sands jumped almost out of his skin in fright, imagining the impact of metal against his bruised, battered and wounded body. It never came, and he realized after a moment that it hadn't been directed at him after all. Heaving a sigh of relief he resumed his torturous walk.
"Idiot," he told himself. "Concentrate, or they'll scrape you off a bumper before the day is out."
He was therefore aware when something strange started to happen. A rushing, roaring sound of wind suddenly approached from all sides, and there was a strong smell of electricity or ozone in the air. He had time to wonder about tornados and lightning strikes before something sucked him bodily into the air, spinning him around and around. Then everything became perfectly still, leaving him trapped in a senseless limbo. Everything was black, of course.