Sora was still kneeling on the dirt when the shadow of a soldier fell across her hands. She looked up through the dark sunglasses.

“Get up and come with me,” the soldier said in his native language. “The doctor says he will treat your tooth.”

Sora grimaced dumbly. She put her hand to her cheek.

“Don’t sit there whining. Get up and get in the line.” The soldier reach for her, jerking his head back toward the military vehicles. She thought he was reaching for the money and tossed it at him. Scrambling to her feet, she darted back toward the town wall.

With a crunch, crunch, crunch of his combat boots, the soldier caught up with her and swung her back around. His tone of voice alarmed Sora. She didn’t understand a single word. “What’s the matter? Are afraid you will hurt more if the tooth is taken out?”

“Inshallah,” Sora mumbled around her plastic tooth device and dragged her heels as she was pulled to the tent and shoved into the line. As soon as the soldier let go of her arm, she backed off. Her yanked her back, glaring fiercely.

“Stand right there, boy. That’s an order. You’re going to see the doctor.”

Sora stood very still. The soldier wiped his hand on his fatigue after touching her. He stood there, guarding her. She hadn’t figured all this out, but she kind of thought it might mean big trouble. Swallowing, she looked inside the tent. She saw the doctor and his assistant wind a bandage around a baby’s hand.

Ahead of Sora, a heavily pregnant woman held one hand against the small of her back. It was no less than a hundred and ten degrees in the glaring sun. Sweat beaded on Sora’s dirty skin.

The pregnant woman had to be ready to die inside that inhumane black shroud Saudi law force he to wear. A wave of pity and feminist outrage threatened to blow Sora’s cover. But she wasn’t sun-crazed completely and kept her muttering to herself. It wasn’t going to do a pregnant woman one bit of good to hear an English tirade on her civil rights. Fortunately, the bus going south was loading.  Everybody who doesn’t live in that pitiful town or who were stock there by royal command wanted on that bus. Off they went in a cloud of rising dust. The medical technician led the pregnant woman to the other tent and came back to Sora. “All right, let’s have a look at you. Open your mouth.”

Sora just stood there, not comprehending his rapid –fire Arabic. The soldier scowled at her darkly. “Open your month, boy. Are you hard-headed or what?”

“It isn’t really necessary for you to do that,” the med tech said to the solier.

“This one is stupid, can’t you tell?”

“Hamil, take a break now. You’ve been very helpful.” The doctor stepped out of her tent, drying his hands on a towel. Ready for the next case, he looked at Sora expectantly.

Realizing that the jig was up, Sora pondered the odds of outrunning bullets, versus the ignominy of having a plastic extraction. She shrugged her shoulders and shuffled into the tent. The med tech put his hands on her shoulder and pushed her down on the steel stool.

Laid out on the standing tray were a variety of probes and scalpels. The doctor put his hand under her chin, lifted her head and probably said, “Open wide.”

Sora pushed his hand away, smiled, then tucked a dirty finger in and pulled out the wad of plastic. The doctor growled, snapped the wad out of her hand and threw it in the trash. He fussed profusely with gestures that were pretty easy to understand, demanding to see inside , anyway.

The men tech got involve in that point. When the doctor withdrew his fingers, Sora smiled her perfect, polished, orthodontic grin – the most charming one she had – and shrugged endearingly. The technician to the doctor, “He’s a beggar from the city, I’ll wager.”

“What is your name?” the doctor demanded. He reached for Sora’s dark glasses, taking them off her face. Still holding her chin, he pulled a pocket light, then stopped, taken back by the different skin color around her eyes.

“Kyuhyun,” Sora answered, hoping the man was asking for a name. “Al.. Haaris.”

The doctor frowned and look at the cotton sponge from the bowl. Dipped it in an alcohol and scrubbed it across her check. “What is your name? Where did you come from? You are not Saudi.”

Sora jerked her face away, hastily rubbed her check with her grimy fingers and stood up. 

“Are you Kuwaiti? Iraqi?”

“He doesn’t understand anything we say.”

Sora shook her head backing away from men. It was definitely time to go. She bowed he head. “Salami, salami,” then she sprinted out of the tent. She leaped over the sand embankment, determined to get away from the checkpoint. Several of the soldiers shouted. No guns fired. She ducked out of sight behind a drop in the ground and ran due north along the empty road. 

She hadn’t run far before she had to give up that expenditure of energy. It was too damned hot for running. That probably explained why no soldiers came after her by foot. Her lungs felt scorched.

Before she’s walked very much farther, she severely regretted the loss of her sunglasses. The sun was really harsh at this time of day. The heat, brutal. In spite of the kuffiyah, and the turban covering her head, her brain felt as if it were on fire. She kept moving north by walking on the other side of the pipeline from the road. It just went on and on, as far as her eyes could see.

She prayed for sunset soon. 

The palace of Sheik Leeteuk was looking pretty good when she collapsed under the only shade to the bed, beneath the pipelines. The swatch of shade was narrow, the ground beneath the contact of skin to sun, she’d gained little benefit from the maneuver. It was definitely the wrong time of day to be at odds with the desert, she mused.

How long she crunched there feeling every pore in her sin open their floodgates, Sora didn’t know. No matter how much she perspired, her skin never felt cool.

The urge to sleep was overwhelming, but it was so hot she couldn’t even doze.

Just sitting there, moving only to occupy as much shade as she could while the sun tracked across the western sky, Sora began to doubt her scheme. Her biggest fear had centered on no getting caught breaking purdah. That had not happened. Neither had she anticipated getting stuck in the desert before she got to the Vixen.

Later, when the sun was still several hands high and the heat hadn’t decreased a degree, Sora still huddled under elongating shadow of the massive pipes. She was so thirsty she couldn’t think five seconds about anything except water. Her eet hurt from blisters and burns that the sandals hadn’t protected against. She wasn’t sure she could get up and walk one inch farther north.

“For a smart girl, I’m pretty stupid!” she said out load. How idiotic and foolish she had been. There was no way she was going to make it to the base where the Vixen waited for her.

Right then, she wished a whole truckload of religious police would pull up and take her into custody for dressing like a boy and wondering about without a veil. Their punishment wouldn’t be anywhere near as final as the sun’s. She was going to die out here.

Realizing that, Sora staggered her feet. She leaned against a pylon, gathering what remained of her wits. She still had the dates. Now was definitely the time to eat some.

The sweet fruit stuck to the roof of and her teeth. She couldn’t manufacture any saliva to wash it down. That frightened her. She forced herself to move, she crossed the rocky distance of the road. For now, she would stay on that sand-swept pavement. Someone would come. Someone had to.

Sunset came, it was lingering and very beautiful. The sand turned into scarlet. The sky glowed red, then purple and faced the cerulean blue. Far to the north, lights shimmered out of reach. But they were actual lights, man-made halogen.

Too late, she realized how impossible it was to judge distance here the way she did back home. Too late, came the realization that the pipeline wasn’t getting her where she wanted to go. If this was the road to the air base, it would have had traffic on it. There hadn’t been a single vehicle since she’s stuck out of it. She’d gone the wrong way from the checkpoint.

Then darkness came. The temperature dropped, Sora couldn’t go on.

Saudi patrol, three soldiers in the jeep, found her sitting in a dazed circle of her own blind footprints. Tossed into the back of the jeep, sora greedily drank a small cup of water, then closed her eyes. Red burned through her shut eyelids. Her contacts felt as if they’d turned into coals. Water made her nauseated. She’d have been a babbling idiot if she could have uttered a word.

The Saudis seemed to understand that the desert made one unable to comprehend anything. At least with the dark had come a blessing of the air. But Sora was too far gone to be revive by that alone. She had no awareness of entering the military base. The next thing she knew after being picked up was collapsing in a heap of the floor of a small, too brightly lit infirmary.

He intern was confused about her as she was with him. He gave her biscuits to eat and small cup of water one at a time. She felt very tired, weak. Her stomach ached. Little by little, her mind came out of its sluggish inertia. She’d made it to the military base. But was it the right one?

The intern was so offended by her filth that he stuffed her off the corner and left her alone. That was fine with Sora. Only a small portion of her mind seemed to be operating at this point. She was a feral, hostile creature intent only on self-preservation.

She huddled in the out-of-the way corner and put off all the attempts at communication with a closed face and tight mouth. The intern let her be, refilling the jug of water for her intermittently. Safe there, Sora tucked her head on her knees and dozed.

This was apparently acceptable. A beggar boy wasn’t worth a soldier’s trouble. While the intern was out eating his supper, Sora sneaked away.

There were no lights out-doors. None. It took her sometime to recognize the humps in the earth as the camouflaged hangars that she’d seen days – or was it weeks – ago. Time had taken on an eerie, attenuated quality.

It was as if she were the only living soul on earth. She wandered aimlessly, lost, through the blackout, crossing runways and cluttered stretches of concrete jammed the vehicles and planes she couldn’t recognized any markings on.

Row after row of parked, idle planes. They were so big and ugly. None were silk blue-and white. As she walked on rows in a state of confusion, trying to recall Arabic calligraphy painted on the tarmac, she stopped beside the F-14. She stood there in the middle of the parking lot, then turned full circle, looking at the size not color.

She walked diagonally across two more rows and came to the last row, pacing off a slow, agonizing lithany, a roll call of manufacturers by nation origin. American, American, British, American, French, Italian, Italian, American.

Vixen.

She stopped before the cone and reached up to touch the sleek, wicked-looking nose. A humdinger of a needle point that swelled wonderfully around the smooth bubble of fiberglass and molded smart glass that gave the pilot one-hundred-eighty degree view of the sky. Vixen.

Not blue-and-white.

She touched the fender over the nose wheel, she run her hand under the fiberglass belly beneath the cockpit. She sniffed deeply, smelling oil and paint and high-octane petrol. Her beautiful blue-and-white Vixen was unrecognizable in morbid gray, mottled green and dirty tan.

Crossing under the plane’s belly, Sora stumbled to the pilot’s plot. The door was locked digging inside the deep pocket of her toursers, she fumbled around her scant possession for a small silver key.

She found it, opened the lock and scrambled upward, wiggling onto the fine-leather-upholstered contoured seat, it ressed the aches in her spine like a glove. A feeling of being home and safe at last washed over her. A minute courtesy light glowed on the instrument panel, illuminating the cockpit, which had not been altered in any way.

“Vixen,”

Sora spread her hands on the butterfly wheel, sighed and pulled the door shut to extinguish the courtesy light. Setting the lock made noise. Shutting the door made noise. Sora sat in the dark, scanning the field of planes and held her breath. No one came, no alarm went up.

She dreaded what would happen when she started the engine and hijacked her own plane. She stared out the widescreen making a mental map of the obstacle she would have to dodge to clear the parking lot and reach the tarmac.

What if something really big tried to land when she attempted an illegal take off? She could lose her licenses –all of them – forever. Somehow, that didn’t seem important. If she got airborne, everything else would just have to work out whatever way it did.

But she didn’t move. She sat there in the dark, staring with burning eyes in the field of planes, almost holding her breath. Still, no one came.

It was weird. Really weird. No soldier moving around. No planes coming in. No runway lights. No lights in the tower. A ghost base. Empty. Quiet as a tomb. Except for her pounding heart and the odd way her breath rasped in her dried out sinuses and parched lungs.

They must be on maneuvers of sleeping or maybe watching some entertainment, she thought. There was activity but none of it was near this field of parked, idle planes. By degrees, she let her breath out and began to feel safe.

First, she had to empty her pockets. Deep in the trouser pockets under the long tunic shrt, she carried her wallet, passport and all the vital paper for the plane.

Sora felt like crying. A sob escaped , but no tears washed out of her eyes. She closed her eyes because they hurt. Her gritty contacts welded into her corneas. Even though she knew better, she still rubbed them with the heel of her palms. Very soon she was going to have to take her contacts out and give those orbs a rest. But now she had to start the Vixen and coax the lady into the sky.

That was a tall order. Suddenly, all her courage seemed to have deserted her.

“This is not the place to fall apart, Sora.” She told herself crossly. “So what if you’ve been into hell and back. So what if you’ve done the stupidest thing in the world, like falling for a man who will never love you back! In one second, no less! He damn sure doesn’t give a fig about you. Get a grip!”

Her voice broke then and she shook her head violently.

“You just get down to business and do what you’re supposed to do. Get this plane started and fly to Kuwait. One hour, you can be in and out of the airport like a hawk. Five minutes on the ground to get Appa and Jack on this plane and you’re out of here. That’s what you’re going to do. Now get a grip!”