One Night in Dubai

His shoulders twisted in place, and the thunder clapped again and another eruption bloomed. Second cop staggered back against the wall of the landing and sank to the floor, his weapon slipping free from his grip and dangling by its strap. My ears rang with a high-pitched hum.

And then Jaleh came around the corner clutching Esan's chrome plated pistol, smoke oozing out of the barrel. Her shiny, sable hair bouncing with each step, she sprinted down the stairs towards me, fingers grazing along the handrail, the toes of her shoes lightly tripping from tread to tread.

There was fear in her eyes mixed with guilt—the same emotion I'd seen as she collided with me on the ski slope. And she was there, kneeling next to me, her golden eyes filled with concern gazing into mine.

"Are you alright?" she asked, over the ringing in my ears and the question echoed around my brain, each word resonating with a lyrical richness I hadn't noticed before. I think I must have nodded. The world seemed to bob up and down even though I don't think I was moving. And then her lips were on mine.

Isn't it weird how time speeds up, and the moment is gone?

"Where the hell did you get a gun!?" Nick hissed, snatching the pistol from Jaleh's hand and tucking it in his waistband. "Never mind." He pulled me off first cop and rolled the groaning officer onto his stomach as the man pawed for the microphone on his shoulder.

Ripping open a velcro pouch, Nick yanked out the officer's walkie-talkie. "Cuff him to the railing!" he ordered Jaleh, pointing up towards second cop. "Then wipe everything down. Row, something's happening on the radio. What are they saying?"

I took the walkie-talkie from Nick and listened to the exchanges for a moment. The speakers seemed hesitant, and deliberately vague. "They're asking if anyone heard a gunshot... Nobody seems to... Someone suggested it was fireworks... Now they're asking each team to report in... Team one says all clear... Team two says all clear... Team three... Team three isn't resp--"

"They're Team three, idiot! Tell them all clear!"

It took me a second to figure out the transmit button, and when I did I parroted the other teams' responses with as much calm professionalism as I could manage. We waited a tense second before the roll call moved on to Team four.

Nick and Jaleh sat up both policemen and cuffed their hands around the steel handrail behind their backs. Second cop's breathing was labored. He probably had a couple of broken ribs, and he didn't offer much resistance. First cop struggled a bit more, but when his own sidearm was pressed to his forehead, he became real compliant.

Meanwhile, I translated the walkie-talkie chatter. It ended with a reminder to maintain radio discipline.

"It sounds like they have one team of cops on each stairwell and each exit, with another team monitoring the elevator security cams." Nick observed. "So this is the only stairwell that's unguarded. New plan—we go down the stairs."

"And then what?" Jaleh asked.

"I don't know," Nick confessed. "We'll see if we make it that far."

"Alright, let's move out," I agreed, picking up one of the submachine guns from the neat row of firearms Nick had made.

"Row, put that down. You're gonna hurt someone."

Rolling my eyes I thumbed the fire selector to 'safe', pressed the magazine release in front of the trigger guard, and set the clip aside. After pulling back the bolt to eject the round in the chamber, I shortened the stock to a better fit, and checked the sight before reseating the clip.

Nick was nonplussed. "Where the hell did you learn to do that? You don't have any military training in your file."

"How long do you think you have to work in Las Vegas before a group of high-rolling good-old-boys from Omaha asks you to take them out to the desert to shoot machine guns?" I asked with a grin, holding the weapon at high port.

"Listen cowboy, this isn't gonna turn into a shooting thing," Nick chastised me. "I'm a handler for god's sake. I'm not James fucking Bond. We are not a SEAL team. And this is not a video game.

"If this turns into a shooting thing—again," he threw a look at Jaleh, "I'm putting my hands up and letting the lawyers and politicians sort it out. Are we clear?"

"...Yeah, fine."

I wiped down the gun with my pocket square and reluctantly set it back with others. It had given me an odd sense of optimism and confidence, just to feel its weight in my hands.

"I don't get paid enough for this," Nick muttered as he started down the stairs.

I thought about telling Nick how I'd only been working in Vegas two and half weeks before I broke my poor, liberal mother's heart and took those guys from Omaha out to play action-hero with Uzis and M-60s at a desert shooting range. I thought about telling him how they'd each tipped me a Benjamin for the trouble. I thought about telling him how frequently that happened. But I didn't.

I recalled how Nick had concluded that I only care about money; that I only talk about work. And I suddenly wasn't very proud of that anecdote anymore.

***

There was occasional traffic on the walkie-talkie as we hustled down the stairs, but nothing that indicated a change in the police's posture. The authorities seemed to think we were still unaware up on the hundred and twenty-first floor, and for the moment, they were content to let us be.

"They're probably waiting for Atmosphere to clear out on its own... And the cleaning crew to wrap up for the night," Nick speculated as we took a short break to listen to radio chatter. "That's why most police raids take place around three or four in the morning. Fewer bystanders."

"We're lucky those cops upstairs aren't screaming their heads off."

"Well, one of them can barely breathe, and the other probably has a concussion. As soon as they do attract someone's attention though, you can bet they'll lock this place down tight as a tick. Let's move."

It took us nearly fifteen minutes to get down to the base of Burj Khalifa. Nick stopped us at the fourth floor, down on the hotel levels.

"Ok, here's where we split up again," he explained. "The emergency exits at the bottom of the stairs are all monitored. We have to assume they're being watched closely. Since they probably don't have my description, I'll go down the elevator and try to create some sort of distraction to draw the police away from the exits."

"What kind of distraction?"

"Probably something drunk and disorderly," Nick grinned. "You two wait five minutes. Then Jaleh, you go down to the second floor and cross over to the pool annex. Find an exit there. Row, you go down to the hotel lobby and just walk out the front door.

"I'm still dressed like a dishwasher with a fancy watch," I pointed out.

"Yeah, here take your jacket back... Jaleh, you'll probably want to wrap the hijab around your shoulders like a scarf. It will still look western, but you won't turn as many heads. And... dammit, you'd better take this back." He handed her Esan's pistol. "It's easier to explain if you're the one caught with it."

"We'll meet at the Opera House like before?" she asked.

"Exactly. It's twelve twenty," Nick read from his watch. "Rendezvous at twelve forty. No later. Five minutes starts now."

And Nick was gone. He left Jaleh and I in the stairwell and strolled away down the hotel hallway like he belonged there.

Jaleh didn't wear a watch, so I waited with her on the second floor as five minutes slowly slid past tick by tock.

"Good luck," I told her, as I started down to the first floor.

"Thanks. You too," she answered nervously standing by the fire door. "...Rowan?"

"Yeah?" I took the two steps back up to the landing.

She didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to say. This could very well be the last time I ever looked into those golden brown eyes. If this went wrong, if either of us was caught, this would be our last moment together. We both knew it. Her eyes spoke louder than words.

I kissed her.

It was a stupid, reckless thing to do, and there was no time, but I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to my chest and I kissed her like I'd never see her again.

Jaleh kissed me back. Her lips parted and I felt her tongue on mine and her arms wrapped around me, and I held her desperately as if I were clinging to the very moment, this last moment of certainty before a future with no guarantees.

And then the radio squawked something about a man jumping in the fountain.

I pushed Jaleh away and turned down the stairs and I didn't look back.

***

The foyer of the Armani hotel is certainly impressive with its twelve meter ceiling and zebra-wood floors and columns. It was sparsely occupied at this hour, but enough so that I didn't feel like I stood out. There were no uniformed police as I crossed between the expansive semi-circular sofas beneath the overarching modern sculpture.

I made it to the door without incident and walked out into the cooling night air, letting myself breath a sigh of relief. The bellman asked if he could hail me a cab, but I declined telling him I was only out to stretch my legs.

The walkie-talkie in my jacket pocket blared a sudden update on the man in the fountain. I don't think the bellman heard it, but I was lucky it didn't go off as I crossed the lobby. As soon as I was sure no one was looking, I switched it off and dropped it in a planter.

Making a conscious effort not to hurry, I strolled the long way around to the garden path, avoiding the Dubai Fountain. Up ahead of me, I saw Jaleh crossing the bridge that connected to Burj Park and I relaxed a bit, slowing my stride even more so that she would be well clear of the bridge before I reached it.

She was sitting on a bollard, smoking a cigarette when I got to the other side. We made eye contact briefly, but then she looked away. I didn't see Nick around, so I pretended to admire a sculpture for a moment before checking my watch.

Nick had two more minutes, but if he was the guy in the fountain I didn't think it was likely that he would make it. He'd instructed us to find a place to lie low if he couldn't meet us, but he wasn't real clear on how to do that.

Where could we go in the city that would be safe? And how could we get there? That was actually the more important question. We needed to put distance between us and Burj Khalifa before anyone found the cops in the stairwell.

I kept one eye on the foot bridge hoping for a miracle, but I knew I'd probably used up my allotted miracles for the day already.

"Come on," I beckoned Jaleh at exactly twelve forty, offering my hand.

"Nick?" she asked, taking it.

"I don't think he's going to make it," I nodded across the pond to the flashing lights of the police cruisers.

"Where are we going?"

"The Metro line runs north and south. If we go west towards the water, we can't help but cross it. I just hope there's a station close by."

I've never ridden the Dubai Metro. Supposedly it's easy to use. Unfortunately, despite its size and state-of-the-art technology, it doesn't really go anywhere. It was kind of added to the city as an afterthought. Every place anyone would want to be had already been built, leaving no room to add in rail stations. That may change as the city continues to develop. For now though, if you have to take a cab to the Metro, and you have to take a cab from the Metro, why not just take a cab?

Jaleh and I strolled hand-in-hand across the Opera House grounds and out to Rashid Boulevard. There was a crosswalk less than a hundred meters up, and we waited nervously for the light with a cluster of late night pedestrians.

Dubai is known for its nightlife. It's cooler and more comfortable than during the day, so being out on foot after midnight doesn't draw any attention at all. But I couldn't help but wonder how many in the throng had been watching Al Jazeera half an hour ago.

Normally, I love the energy of this city after dark. Tonight it felt menacing.

Suddenly, over the din of the crowd, distant sirens flared to life behind us. Jaleh squeezed my hand tighter, and I willed myself not to look back. A helicopter in the distance snapped on its search light, but from the ground we couldn't tell if it was the same chopper or not.

When the light changed, we crossed the street concealed in the throng. While most of the crowd turned left or right towards the lobbies of the block of hotels and restaurants, Jaleh and I made for an alley between the high-rises.

"Do you really speak thirteen languages?" she asked when we had shed the last of the crowd. I think she was just trying to fill the silence with something other than the echo of our footsteps.

"Fourteen if you count Latin," I answered nervously, glancing up. "Eh, I haven't really used Latin since high school, so yeah, thirteen."

"Well good, you. That's brilliant."

"Languages come easy to me for some reason," I continued, more out of a nervous need to fill the silence than anything. "They always have. Just the way I'm wired I guess."

"That's quite a gift. It's taken me a lifetime to learn three. And my Arabic is eh." She waggled her hand.

"Hm, not much of a gift really. Almost everyone worth talking to speaks English these days. Translators and interpreters make... well, they get by but it's not a field where anyone gets rich."

"Concierge's do?" she asked.

"They can. Being the only one who speaks a guest's language... It helps form a bond. It makes people with money feel special. They like that."

"It seems like a talent you could put to use in business," she suggested.

"Maybe, but I don't have my dad's gift for numbers and finance. And I don't have my mom's knack for lobbying and negotiation. If I went into business, I'd just end up as the translator while other guys made the real money."

Jaleh didn't have any more to say on the subject. I would have asked her about studying mathematics and what she planned to do with it, but we had reached the end of the alley and found ourselves up against the D86, eight-lanes wide.

Through the gaps in the buildings on the other side, we could see the elevated Metro tracks illuminated like a beacon. What we couldn't see in either direction, was a crosswalk.

Cars and trucks zipped past us at full speed in erratic, irregular clusters. Street lamps were widely spaced and the headlights threw weird, shifting shadows against the blank walls that boxed in the corridor. There were no crowds here; there was no reason for a driver to expect pedestrians.

And if a police car happened to come past, we'd certainly be noticed.

"We have to cross it don't we?" Jaleh asked.

"I'm afraid so."

Gauging the northbound traffic, we dashed across four lanes to the blare of car horns and stopped on the median strip, clutching each other, hearts pounding as a tractor trailer barreled past in front of us and a tour bus blew through the lane we'd just left.

Crossing the southbound lanes was no less harrowing, but at least we could breathe easier on the other side.

After another block, we finally made it to the Metro tracks. Knots of locals mingled around parked cars under the elevated platform. It provided shelter from the sun during the day, but was still a gathering place at night.

I asked a group of teenagers if the nearest station was north or south, and there was a bit of debate before they settled on north. But we had to hurry, they said. The Metro closes at one.

My watch said twelve fifty.

We hurried towards the station as quickly as we dared, and picked up our pace at the rumble of a train passing overhead.

At the station I tapped for English on the ticket kiosk. No time to practice reading Arabic now. A one way T1 ticket was only a few dirham, but weren't one way tickets suspicious? Or was that only for air travel? And how many zones were we going through? Was Gold Class more or less suspicious than standard?

I didn't know and I couldn't very well discuss it with Jaleh. She stood back and let me navigate the machine on my own.

And then my time was up. A rumble overhead foretold an approaching train and it could very well be the last of the night.

Fuck it. I tapped for two seven-day standard-fare passes, fed a thousand dirham note to the machine and grabbed as much of my change as I could before Jaleh and I darted up to the platform.

We jumped through the automated doors of a northbound train just as they were sliding closed. The train car was nearly empty. A college-aged boy with ear buds glanced at us for a moment, but went right back to his phone. Nobody else even looked up.

Jaleh and I took a pair of seats close to the door. Now what?

I had no idea where to go, no idea where to get off the train. For the moment we were safe, but that wouldn't last.

Next to me, Jaleh sat with her eyes downcast, her shoulders slumped. I could only imagine what was going on in her head. I took her hand in mine, and she gave me a small smile. The strain sort of drained away, but not completely.

At least we were together.

Nick had told us to lie low. He said find an opportunity to create a new email address, and to send a message to info at CIA dot gov. He said it would be routed to the right people and someone would contact us eventually.

As plans go, that's a thin one.

I tried to come up with a better plan. Mentally, I ran through my contacts trying to think of someone that might hide us. I figured the drug dealers and fences would be my best bet. They're used to hiding from the law, and I was pretty sure I could get us forged documents for the right price. What good could florists and maitre'ds and dry cleaners do me?

My current liquid funds were limited, but accessing any of my savings or using a credit card would probably send up all kinds of red flags. And I'd have to trust someone not to turn me in for the reward. Of course the biggest problem was how to get in touch without my phone. These aren't guys who have store fronts I can walk into.

As I pondered that, we rode through the fluorescent night over elevated tracks and through flickering tunnels. Station after station all merged together in a blur. We could have been in Munich or Beijing or San Francisco. Metro systems all start to look the same.

My contact list is backed up in the cloud. I realized I could get all those phone numbers back, but could that be traced if I tried? Could the UAE government watch my contact list and see who downloads it and trace me from there? Could the Iranians? I honestly didn't know.

I was lost in thought trying to puzzle that out when the train announced the last stop and instructed all passengers to disembark. The sign outside the window said "Etisalat". I had no idea where that was.

"Where are we?" Jaleh asked, because it was the obvious question.

"Muhaisnah, north of the airport," I answered, looking at the map in the station. "The slums."

This is where the construction companies throw up shoddy dorms to house the migrant labor that builds their gleaming skyscrapers. A lot of cleaners, kitchen workers, and landscapers end up here too.

You hear stories about companies that seize migrant workers' passports as soon as they arrive at the airport. They squeeze six men into a small dorm room, and bus them down into the city before dawn and back after dusk, working them fourteen to fifteen hours a day in fifty degree heat. Sometimes you hear that things are getting better, sometimes you hear that they're not.

Every time I hear those stories, I imagine my mother scowling at me, and I change the subject. This isn't a part of Dubai tourists ever see.

As if to emphasize that point, a young man with dark caramel skin—probably Indian or Pakistani—tapped my shoulder and asked "You are lost?" in English.

"No... No," I repeated, trying to come up with a convincing lie. He seemed genuinely helpful rather than suspicious. I didn't want that to change. "I mean, a little bit."