Welcome to Dubai (The Traveler) (2 page)

“No, no, stop it!” the Indian peacekeeper pleaded.

A serious altercation seemed inevitable.

“You dare to hit me?” the Muslim man challenged the Pakistani. “Hit me then. You will be fired. You are already
fired
!”

The Pakistani man cursed him in his native tongue and no longer cared about the job.

As the scuffle continued on the ground, a crowd of workers watched the commotion from the floors above, which had not yet been enclosed with walls. One of the workers standing on a steel beam slipped and lost his balance.

“AAAHHHHH!”

The worker fell headfirst from twenty stories up.

The Indian peacekeeper rushed into action as if he were a superhero, attempting to catch the falling worker in his arms. But as he ran to predict the landing of his free falling co-worker, he tripped over a water bucket and fell to the ground himself. By the time he had climbed back to his feet, his co-worker had met a ghastly ending.

The shocked Muslim manager fell to his knees in the dirt and immediately began to pray.

“Oh, Merciful Allah …”

The Pakistani man and his co-workers looked on and shook their heads in disbelief. Some of them covered their eyes from the horror. As the overseer continued to pray, the Pakistani had seen and heard enough. He cursed the spiteful overseer and spit to the ground in front of him before walking away from the job.

“Saleem, what are you doing?” the Indian peacekeeper ran from behind to ask.

Saleem stopped and stared at him incredulously. “What are
you
doing, Rasik?” he responded in English, and added, “I no longer work here.” He had chosen to fake ignorance to save himself from the daily defacement, but it was too obvious that he could no longer work with such disrespect from his bosses without killing the man in authority. And as he began to walk away from the scene of the tragedy, a number of his co-workers followed behind him. The men could no longer ignore the contempt of their imported services.

Chapter 2

In the woods of Northern Virginia, less than an hour away from Capitol Hill in Washington, Gary Stevens hustled down a dirt road trail toward an open grass field, wearing long gray sweats. Over six feet tall and well-built, the thirty-one-year-old reached the open field, where four shooting stations awaited him with loaded pistols. Paper targets stood fifty feet away in front of him, shaped like fugitives and carrying assault weapons.

Gary grabbed the black nine-millimeter pistol at the station and aimed with sharp green eyes, firing two shots that zipped through the knees of his target. He then slammed the gun down and ran toward a finish line to his left.

Special Command Officer Howard Cummings waited behind the line with his stopwatch in hand. A stout military veteran in his fifties, wearing camouflage hunting gear and a matching cap, the officer grinned.

“You’re twenty-seven seconds behind your record,” he stated.

Gary kneeled over to catch his breath in the frost of Octo ber. He chuckled and said, “Yeah, I got a little too comfortable.” Beads of sweat dripped from his four-day-old mustache and beard. Combined with his short-cropped, light-brown hair, the beard and mustache made him appear more rugged and mannish than he had looked in his younger college years.

Cummings nodded and told him, “You would have made a great military man, Gary.”

“Not while my mother was still alive,” Gary countered. “She wouldn’t have allowed it.”

The officer continued to grin. “Well, you’ve come a long way since we first met.” He had expressed his confidence in the young man more than a dozen times in the three years that he had gotten to know him.

“Thanks to you guys,” Gary admitted. “I have no idea what I’d be doing right now. I’d probably still be running a record store and chasing tail in Louisville.”

“You mean, as opposed to chasing tail in Virginia?” Officer Cummings quipped. “You’re still unmarried, right?”

Gary smiled sheepishly and didn’t bother to answer.

“Yeah, I know, you’re gonna try to hold out for as long as you can.”

Gary chuckled. He appeared sharp and determined, with the maturity of life experience behind him.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings until I’m really sure,” he said.

Before Cummings could respond, they both looked back at a second man and a woman, racing out of the woods toward the shooting station. The man was slightly in the lead, but only slightly, with less than two hundred yards to go to the finish line.

“Fox is gonna catch him at the end,” Officer Cummings predicted.

Gary grinned and watched as his mentor, Jonah Brown, a nearly forty-year-old African-American woman dressed in black, ran behind the slightly younger guy in dark green. They reached the shooting station simultaneously and aimed their pistols to fire at their targets. With three rapid shots to the stomach, chest and forehead, Jonah was off and running again toward the finish line. However, the younger man struggled to control his gun with weary arms and shoulders. He needed more time to steady his aim. When he finally shot the pistol, connecting with a single shot to the chest of the target, Jonah had crossed the line.

“Great comeback,” Gary told her.

Jonah hunched over, her hands on her knees as her thick dark-brown ponytail fell over her right shoulder. She gasped for air as she rolled her eyes.

“Are you kidding me? I was trying to catch you.”

Officer Cummings laughed. “Yeah, well, get in line.”

The third runner crossed the finish line and said, “You two need to try out for the Olympic pentathlon team for Brazil.”

“Maybe
he
can, but I’ll be too old in twenty-sixteen,” Jonah huffed.

“You can do anything you put your mind to, Fox,” Officer Cummings interjected.

Jonah looked at Gary and nodded with an approving smile. She was proud of him.

“So can he,” she responded in reference to Gary. “He’s come a long way now.”

“I tell him that every day,” Officer Cummings said.

“Yeah, but I see he still won’t shoot to kill,” their third runner commented. “He shot the target twice at the knees.”

“And he hit ’em both,” Jonah argued.

Gary smiled. “I think it’s much harder to target different parts of the body.”

“Of course it is,” Officer Cummings agreed. “That’s why you’re the
Eagle
and he’s the
Beaver
; you’re
sharper.”

“Yeah, but a beaver still gets it done,” the man retorted.

“It just takes you a little longer,” Jonah joked.

The Beaver looked back into the woods at a fourth man, dressed in dark blue, who was just making it out into the open greenery.

“Yeah, but I’m not as slow as him.”

They all shared a laugh as Cummings shook his head, concerned about his latest recruit.

“That’s what happens when you allow yourself to get out of shape.”

*****

Later that evening, Gary strolled into a downtown Arlington, Virginia, bar to meet up alone with Jonah. Dressed comfortably in a long black-wool coat, the wandering eyes of young women followed Gary, just as they always had. His handsome mystique begged for attention, even though he no longer asked for it.

Jonah sat at the bar in a conversation with a tall black man in his late twenties who stood beside her. He looked huge and well groomed, like a professional athlete with money to blow. But when Jonah spotted Gary approaching her, she dismissed the young man.

“All right, I may call you. But my business partner just walked in, so you’ll have to excuse me.”

“You
may
call me?” the well-groomed man questioned. He didn’t budge. After buying her a drink at the bar, he felt slighted.

Jonah eyed him with measured authority. “That’s what I said,” she told him. “Now have some respect for your elders. As I told you earlier, I have a business meeting.”

The towering man paused and grabbed his drink from the counter. He nodded and said sarcastically, “You have a good night,” before walking away.

“Did I just break up something important?” Gary asked Jonah, picking up on the tension.

Jonah smiled. “Not at all. You know my dilemma with men. There are other things that are more important.”

Gary grinned, marveling at how young and vibrant she continued to look. Dressed professionally in a black skirt suit with her hair done, she didn’t look a day over thirty.

“Well, they never stop lining up for you,” he commented with softness in his eyes. Any man would line up for a woman as attractive, professional and confident as Jonah, if only they could handle her intimidation factor.

Having been trained in the military’s Special Forces Unit, Jonah was no-nonsense. She had been sent to guard Gary by her employer, an affluent and mysterious international businessman—Gary’s father, in fact, who Gary knew only through Jonah.

Gary had been raised in Louisville, Kentucky, where his over-achieving and beautiful young mother, Gabrielle Stevens, had pampered him alone, having never married Gary’s father. The all-American boy with no father grew to become a charmer who was super-smart, with movie star looks and natural athleticism. Gabrielle often viewed him as her overgrown puppy of a son.

When Gary was in his twenties, his mother died, a victim of a carjacking, followed by the cold-blooded terrorist murder of his best friend, Taylor. Gary was forced to grow up quickly, and it became Jonah’s job to prepare him for the world, then safely usher him through it, with the perks of Gary’s father, who had financed his son’s military training and livelihood.

At the bar, Gary took a seat next to Jonah. “Anyway, getting back to our business, because no one gets more attention than you do,” Jonah commented lightheartedly.

“Tell me about it. I need to get away from one right now,” Gary hinted. “I’m thinking about taking a much-needed trip out of the country. It’s been a while.”

That idea gave Jonah a moment of concern. The last time Gary was out of the country, he had lost his friend Taylor to murder at point-blank range.

“Are you ready for that yet?” she asked.

Gary sighed. “I told myself years ago that you have to face your fears to live the life that you ultimately want to live. So after spending the last five years of my life to finish school and complete military training, I need to figure out who I am and what I want out of life. What am I even here for, you know? I still haven’t answered those questions of myself … and I still haven’t met my father.”

Jonah looked away momentarily, feeling some guilt. She said, “You’ve been great about that. You’ve really shown a lot of patience and maturity.”

“Yeah, too bad I can’t say the same about the old man,” he jabbed.

As the intermediary between a father and his estranged son, Jonah was leery of the waiting game as well. How much more did Gary have to prove to show that he was trustworthy enough to meet his father? Maybe Gary’s acceptance of the matter had only served to prolong the issue. Nevertheless, Jonah was the consummate professional who would continue to carry out the orders of the man who had hired her, no matter how close she had become to his son.

As usual, Jonah quickly changed the subject. “So, where would you plan on going?” she asked him.

Gary shrugged. “I’m thinking I’ll fly to Dubai,” he answered. “The place looks awesome, and I understand it’s the biggest tourist haven in the world now.”

Jonah nodded and thought about it. Dubai was considered safe ground as an international tourist destination in the middle of the desert. The Middle East connected Africa, Europe and Asia.

“Good choice,” she said, thinking of Gary’s safety. “Are you taking your lady friend from DC?”

She took a sip of her drink, anticipating an interesting answer. She knew that Gary would have one. In the five years that she had watched over him, the young man had been as elusive with the opposite sex as she had been in her own personal life.

Gary paused and grinned. “That’s where the problem is,” he answered. “I really need to get away and find myself before I can really commit to anyone like that. I don’t think it would be fair to have a man who’s obviously still searching to find himself.”

“I bet she wouldn’t agree with that, especially after you tell her you’re traveling there alone.”

“Yeah, well, at least I’m going to a place where all of the women are covered in sheets,” he joked.

Jonah chuckled. “Not all of the women. I’m sure they have enough tourists over there who are not in sheets.”

“Well, that’s not what I’m going there to look for. I just need to clear my mind for a minute. And I haven’t done that in a while.”

“You
sure
have the money to do it,” Jonah hinted with another sip of her drink. “Are you gonna stay at one of their seven-star hotels?”

Gary was very fortunate, but he had barely touched any of the money he had inherited from his mother’s estate—she had done well as a political consultant for the local government in the state of Kentucky—let alone millions more that he would soon receive from his father. Money would never be an issue, and he never liked to talk about it. But Gary had definitely been spoiled by his parents’ wealth, and he knew it.

He shrugged. “I may spend one or two nights at a fancy hotel just to see what it feels like, but for the rest of the time, I’ll just stay at a three- or four-star.”

Jonah chuckled and joked, “Yeah, a Motel 6 in Dubai, right? As if that even exists over there.”

Gary laughed along with her. He joked back, “Maybe they call theirs a Motel 16.”

Jonah asked him, “Does this girl know how well-off you are?”

Gary frowned. “Of course not! Look at how I’m dressed.”

Jonah looked over his typically casual dress code and grinned.

Gary was more embarrassed and apologetic of his windfall, especially in light of the recent economic struggles in America and around the world. He never once bragged about fortune, and he had contributed more than a million dollars to different foundations for charity. After the tragic deaths of his mother and his best friend, Gary thought constantly about ways to help others. His humility had been strengthened by his painful losses.