When Joe reached a covered spot beside the gray machine, Kurt pulled the cloth of the caftan across his face. He stepped from his own hiding spot and walked toward the men, holding his hands out and muttering something about a lost camel.
The men snapped to attention and moved toward him. One put a hand on his sidearm but didn’t draw it out, perhaps because Kurt looked like a local, perhaps because he had his hands up as he spoke.
“Nãqah, nãqah,” he said, using the Arabic word for female camel.
The men seemed utterly baffled. They continued toward him looking angry, never seeing Joe move in behind them.
“Nãqah,” Kurt said once again, and then watched as the men stiffened and dropped to their knees.
They fell forward silently. Reveling Joe grinning and holding a Taser, which he’d fired into the two men.
“Oh where, oh where has my little nãqah gone?” Kurt finished.
“Great thing about Tasers,” Joe said, “they work so quick, people can’t even yell out.”
The coiled wires were still attached, and when the men began to move, Joe zapped them again.
“I think they’ve had enough, Dr. Frankenstein.”
Joe switched the power off, and the tension left the two men instantly. Kurt was on them, jabbing a tranquilizer dart into each and watching their eyes roll up in their heads. As the men went limp, Joe pulled out the Taser wires and helped Kurt carry the two back to the helicopter.
They piled the men inside, climbed in after them, and then slid the door shut.
A few moments later the door opened. Kurt and Joe came out dressed in the guards’ dark blue clothing, complete with kaffiyehs that covered their faces and hair. While Joe pretended to watch the helicopter, Kurt looked around for the tunnel he’d seen.
He discovered a cut in the stone and followed it to a ladder that dropped straight down. At the bottom he found a door made of steel with an electronic sensor lock above the handle. It looked familiar, like the locks in any hotel.
“Let’s just hope we have a reservation,” he said to himself as he rummaged through the guard’s pockets. Finding a card key in one, he slipped it in the card reader and pulled it out. When the light went green, he turned the handle.
“Easy as pie,” he whispered.
Propping the door open with a small rock, he climbed back up the ladder and whistled to Joe. A moment later they were in the tunnel and taking a steep set of stairs downward.
“Into the rabbit hole,” Kurt said. “Just keep an eye out for the Jabberwocky.”
“What exactly is a Jabberwocky again?” Joe asked. “I was never quite sure.”
“It’s something bad and scary,” Kurt said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
They descended the stairs and came to a warren of tunnels. They took one that angled downward and came to another crossroads.
“I feel like I’m in an ant farm,” Joe whispered.
“Yeah,” Kurt said. “I can just imagine giant people watching us through the glass.”
They moved down the tunnel to another intersection.
“Which way?” Joe asked.
“No idea,” Kurt said.
“We either need a guide or a map.”
Kurt’s brow wrinkled. “If you see a lighted display that says ‘You are here,’ be sure to let me know.”
They found no such thing, but then Kurt noticed something else.
Up above, a series of pipes ran through the tunnel. Power conduits and possibly water or natural gas. All the things a production center needed.