As the tanks approached Abdul Sa’ad’s forward positions, the lines erupted in white smoke. He saw a National Guard tank hit a mine and explode in a fireball spitting metal fragments and black smoke. Three army tanks lurched out of the citadel behind him like prehistoric beasts, their cannons pointed like ugly snouts. They lumbered forward, firing straight at the attackers. Fire erupted on all sides and the attacking line began to waver. The Scorpion could see the tribesmen being mown down like wheat and still he could do nothing.

Short savage firefights reached a crescendo at a dozen points. It was hard to determine what was happening, like a chess game with a confused board. Suddenly, the thought struck him that in this battle as in chess, the winner would be determined not by how many of the enemy you removed, but by who captured the king.

Salim! he thought, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had to find Salim! There was no time left.

The Scorpion fired from behind the corpse at the fortress, then rolled sideways from the body and suddenly began an insane zig-zagging sprint towards an ancient rubble pile near the fortress wall.

One of the tanks swerved towards him and began firing its machine gun at him. The steel treads ground towards him, cutting him off from the fortress. The bullets stitched a jagged line in the sand, racing relentlessly towards the Scorpion. He was running wildly, as if his lungs would burst. The bullets drilled into the sand with tiny explosions of white dust almost at his feet. His spine tensed for the inevitable bullet in his back. Just then, a royal Saudi jet fighter loomed behind him firing at the tank. He dived behind the rubble pile.

There was a massive explosion close by. The Scorpion buried his face in the sand as a clatter of red hot metal rained all around him. He heard screams and looked up. Thick oily black smoke poured from the burning tank. He saw two crewmen, their clothes on fire, leap from the turret and run blindly towards the minefield before collapsing in blackened heaps.

The jet fighter banked in the distance, then tore back for another pass, its cannons blazing. The fighter’s needle nose seemed to be pointed right at the Scorpion. It came in very fast and so low he could see the pilot’s face. The fighter’s bullets tore through the ancient mud-brick fortress wall behind him. A large section of wall, virtually puréed by the slugs, collapsed in a heap of dust. Even before the fighter had passed over, the Scorpion was already up and running at the newly created gap in the fortress wall. Leaping over the shattered brick remnants of the ancient wall, he was through the gap and into the courtyard before Abdul Sa’ad’s men even realized he was there.