He brought the lamp close to check the transmitter. Even protected by the bulletproof plastic, the bullet had still managed to smash the metallic casing. The transmitter had saved his life, but it was useless now.

“No help,” she said, crestfallen.

“Not necessarily,” he said.

“I don’t follow.”

“If you were tracking somebody and all of a sudden the transmission stopped, where would you look for him?” he said grinning.

“The last place the signal came from,” she said brightly.

“It’s a bit of a stretch, but I think even those room-temperature-IQ geniuses in the CIA can figure out that much.”

“But can they find you from that?” she asked dubiously.

“The signal from this is designed to be picked up by a receiver in an SR-71 flying too high to be seen or heard and bounced back to a RAVEN on the ground. I think our side knows exactly where we are,” he said confidently. It sounded good, he thought. With a little luck, it might even be true.

But he’d already had a lot of luck. Too much, he thought. In battle two mistakes are not permitted, Sheikh Zaid used to say. But they’d need every bit of luck, because unless an overflight had picked up his last signal as the bullet smashed the transmitter, they’d had it. Because even if he could somehow get them out of the well, he couldn’t take on all of Abdul Sa’ad’s men single-handed. They’d need an army of Scorpions to do that, he thought.

“How does it feel to come back from death?” she asked, her voice sounding odd in the shadowy light as she fingered the smashed transmitter. For a moment, the odd note confused him and then he recognized it. She was beginning to hope again. The life force was surging inside of her too. His pulse began to throb in his temple like a drumbeat.

“It feels like I’ve been blind all my life and suddenly opened my eyes on a magnificent sunrise,” he whispered. She came up to him and rested her silky head on his shoulder.

“It’s like electricity,” she whispered, her fingers dancing lightly down his chest. Every place she touched tingled with a feeling that had no name. He had almost forgotten how special it could be.

He felt himself being drawn to her like an iron filing to a magnet and then he couldn’t stop himself. His arms wrapped around her. He could feel her body trembling against him and their lips found each other. They were so soft and salty, because she was silently crying and then they were grabbing desperately at each other like survivors from a shipwreck. Their mouths sought each other out, tongues exploring and they shared the sensation of floating in the shadows of space.