by S. A. Beck
Please don’t be a feminist right now. Please don’t be a feminist right now.
Jaxon held her tongue.
Vivian gave the militia leader another kiss. “Why don’t you radio your men and have them join us a kilometer south of here on that plain I can see. We’ll camp and get reacquainted. We had to ditch some things in the desert. Jaxon, could you lead our people to it?”
“Um, sure.”
Vivian and Agerzam strolled down the side of the dune, arm in arm, followed by his men.
“You’re lucky you had enough water,” Agerzam said as they walked away. “This is a bad place to be caught unprepared.”
Once they were out of earshot, Otto turned to Jaxon.
“What’s going on?”
Jaxon’s eyes lit up. “We found a cave with a well, and more than that! I’ll show you. Come on.”
They hurried down the dune to the Land Rover. The scientists had pulled up beside them but hadn’t dared get out of their vehicle. Once Agerzam’s men had pulled out to the south, Jaxon got in the front seat and gave Otto directions.
“We didn’t want those people to see it,” Jaxon explained. “That’s why we didn’t signal you until we got far enough away from it that they wouldn’t spot it. Vivian says Agerzam and his people can be trusted, but it’s better that no one knows.”
Within a few minutes, they came to a small canyon. Jaxon grabbed the flashlights from the luggage compartment and led them down and into a cave. It was dark inside and much cooler than the late-afternoon desert.
Jaxon turned on her flashlight. Otto and the others did the same.
When he saw what was on the back wall of the cave, Otto’s breath caught.
The entire wall was painted with lively figures dressed in bright robes ranging from canary yellow to a deep indigo. Their skin was dark, and they wore their hair in dreadlocks, but their eyes were a brilliant blue, shining out like two little dots of sunny sky from their dark faces.
Otto was amazed at how well preserved the paint was. The colors were almost as bright as if they had been painted last year, but the whole cave, and the ruins outside, gave the impression of incredible age. Here and there, parts of the paint had flaked off to expose the bare rock beneath, but enough of the painting survived to give an idea of the whole scene.
The figures were engaged in various tasks. At first, Otto was confused by groups of figures standing right next to each other doing widely different things, until he realized the images told a story, like a comic book. On the far left, several were busy building elaborate buildings. The white of the marble pillars shone bright in Otto’s flashlight. The walls and pillars were decorated with bright spots that gleamed golden. Otto leaned forward and saw that the painters had used actual flakes of gold.
In the center stood a bird’s-eye view of the city, which was made up of three rings of buildings divided by canals. A semicircular port took up one side, where tiny boats sailed on a blue sea.
To the right of this scene, more figures stood in circles, listening to men and women who stood in the center, hands raised in the air as if they were delivering speeches. The next scene showed a huge battle, with figures hacking at each other with swords. Body parts lay scattered all over. The entire background of this part was a deep crimson.
The last scene showed the city breaking apart, giant waves crashing over the buildings, while a few ships sailed away.
“It’s the story of Atlantis,” Jaxon whispered. “It’s like the old legends say—the Atlanteans built a huge city and then fell into sinful ways, and the sea covered the city up and destroyed their civilization without a trace.”
“Some got away,” Otto said, pointing to the ships.
Jaxon turned to him and nodded, a serious look on her face. He’d never seen her look so serious. “My ancestors.”
Dr. Yuhle walked closer, peering at the complex designs. “It’s remarkably well preserved. As you can see, it’s made with mineral paint. The artist ground up colored stones and mixed the powder with some sort of binding agent to create a paint that had the consistency of nail polish. That’s why it’s lasted for so long. I’ve heard of a similar technique on the Horn of Africa, in places like Somaliland and the famous cave of Laas Geel. I’ve been studying the art of Africa, looking for clues about the Atlanteans, but I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s a style that’s completely unknown to science.”
“It’s similar to Egyptian art,” Dr. Yamazaki said, peering at it.
“You mean the Atlanteans learned from the ancient Egyptians?” Otto asked.
“More like the other way around,” Dr. Yamazaki replied. “It’s just as we thought—the Atlanteans were the seeds for every ancient civilization in the region!”
The two scientists traded smiles.
“Who would have thought that two geneticists would make the archaeological discovery of the century, eh?” Dr. Yuhle said.
“Um, excuse me? We discovered this—Vivian and me,” Jaxon said.
Yuhle adjusted his glasses. “Oh, well, um, of course.”
Dr. Yamazaki studied her for a moment. “But how are you so healthy? You look absolutely fine. Even with this water, you should be half dead. You’re not even sunburned. Your lips aren’t even chapped.”
“I can vouch for that,” Otto said and got Jaxon’s elbow in his side as a reward.
Jaxon nodded. “This is no normal water. That’s why Vivian and I didn’t want anyone else to see. It healed us somehow. After the first sip, I felt so much better. Vivian was half dead, all sunburnt and with swollen, chapped lips. When I washed her face with this stuff, all that went away immediately. And when I gave her a drink, she practically leapt to her feet and did a dance.”
Dr. Yuhle bent over the pool, holding his glasses to his face so they didn’t fall in the water.
“It doesn’t look any different from regular water.”
“It didn’t taste any different either, but the effect was amazing,” Jaxon said.
Otto looked from Jaxon to the pool and back again. “So if it isn’t normal water, what is it?”
No one seemed to have an answer for that.
“We’ll be back in a second,” Dr. Yamazaki said as she and Yuhle headed for the cave entrance. “We need to get some sample jars from the Land Rover. We’ll analyze this water later.”
“And then we should rejoin Agerzam and Vivian,” Grunt said.
“Is she in any danger?” Otto asked.
“Oh, no, he’s an old flame,” Grunt said, waving the question away. “She has nothing to fear from him or his men. From the guys they’re fighting, on the other hand…”
Chapter 8
August 3, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
4:20 P.M.
* * *
The subjects had responded remarkably well. Both General Meade and Brett had come up from their chemically induced slumber completely under the hypnotic spell of Dr. Ziegler. They were now General Corbin’s mental slaves.
Both patients were otherwise lucid, although somewhat apathetic unless given direction. Meade was still on medical leave for a “bad case of the flu and exhaustion from overwork.” Corbin ordered him to make a brief appearance in his office to quell any suspicions. That would keep anyone from asking questions for another week or so.
Long enough to see how Dr. Jones’s serum had worked.
It seemed to have worked quite well. After two days of tests, Meade and Brett showed remarkable strength, speed, and agility, almost at the level of a typical Atlantean. Corbin had them training with Orion, a real Atlantean who had fallen into Meade’s clutches.
Orion took them through various obstacle courses and exercise routines while Dr. Jones took notes and General Corbin watched. At first, Orion seemed somewhat confused that Meade, whom he had been hypnotized into thinking was his master, appeared so listless and disinclined to give orders. Corbin found that he had to give orders to Meade, who would then give them to Orion.
“We’re going to need th
em to be a bit more independent,” he told Dr. Jones as Orion led Brett and Meade up a fifty-foot climbing wall without the benefit of any ropes. “A good soldier follows orders without question but is also creative and has initiative.”
“That will take time,” the scientist replied. “The mind is always the slowest to adapt.”
Corbin cracked his knuckles. Time was something he only had in short supply. He was still trying to trace Jaxon Ares Andersen, a sixteen-year-old Atlantean whom a couple of Meade’s agents had adopted in order to train up. Normally, it wouldn’t bother him to have just one Atlantean drop off the radar, since he was monitoring several in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but this one had some allies who knew too much. That meant they needed to die.
And there was no one more suited to kill them than those very same two agents—Stephen and Isadore Grant. And with a new lead he had thanks to a hacker on the payroll, he had a hunch where to send them.
He had an appointment with them this afternoon to tell them about the new state of affairs.
Corbin had accessed Meade’s files and found out that two of the people who had been helping Jaxon would be a real handful—a pair of retired Special Forces operatives currently going under the aliases of Grunt and Vivian. They’d seen action in a dozen different nations, usually covertly, and had both retired when an operation in the Sahara had gone sour. They blamed Meade and swore to get even one day. Then they’d dropped off the map and become freelance mercenaries.
What little evidence Meade had been able to collect of their movements in the past few years showed they weren’t your typical guns for hire. They only signed up for causes they believed in, which was a poor way to make money as a mercenary.
Still, an overly developed conscience appeared to be their only fault. Both were deadly, both were determined, and both had an amazing network of contacts around the world.
The rest of the group were no real physical threat—some delinquent teenager named Otto who was Jaxon’s boyfriend and whom the mercenaries had sprung from jail, no doubt to gain Jaxon’s confidence; Dr. Akiko Yamazaki, the discoverer of the Atlantis gene and former head of the Poseidon Project before she got uppity; and her assistant, Dr. James Yuhle, another geneticist. No doubt they were continuing their research while on the run.
But where? This group shouldn’t have eluded them for so long. It had made Meade suspect some hidden funding, another partner, and he’d found evidence that a hacker had been erasing their tracks, gathering intelligence, and probably supplying them with money.
Just who this hacker was and where this group had gone to were still open questions.
Luckily, he had his own hacker on the payroll. Good hackers were hard to find for a man in his position. Mostly rebels were attracted to that sort of life, people with a bad attitude toward authority. Some of these people didn’t even do it for the money—they risked their lives hacking into corporations and governments to expose corruption when they could be hacking into banks to fill their accounts. Some hackers did that too, of course, but it only seemed to be a way to earn a living while they went after their real goal—to undermine the system of government and control people like him had so carefully built up over the generations.
But every now and then, one of them slipped up. Tim Shelby was just such a hacker. A brilliant mind in a loser’s body. If they had been the same age and going to school together, Corbin had no doubt that he would have stolen Tim’s lunch money on a daily basis. Tim was that kind of pencil-necked geek. Every time Corbin saw him, he wanted to give him a slap.
The hacker had been part of a collective working for an environmental organization hacking into coal companies to find proof that they were lying about their amount of emissions.
Well, of course they were. How else were they supposed to do business? And what did these computer nerds expect—to run their laptops on solar power? Please.
Tim Shelby hadn’t actually made any mistakes that could get him traced, but one of the other members of his hacking collective had, and when the FBI had tracked him down, he squawked like a chicken about to get its neck wrung. He’d named all his accomplices in order to avoid jail. The rest of the collective had ended up in jail.
One look at Tim Shelby proved that he wouldn’t last a week in prison, and so Corbin had cut him a deal—freedom in exchange for obedience. The hacker had grabbed it as a drowning man grabs a life preserver.
Tim had proved to be a good asset as long as he was watched and bullied every now and then. He hadn’t been able to track down Jaxon’s hacker friend but did find evidence of him or her. Tim had planted sophisticated spyware in some of Corbin’s fake UFO documents, including that wonderful work of fiction—the Atlantean genetic code written on a piece of UFO wreckage pictured in a fake Roswell report. The mystery hacker would be sure to download that.
And he did. Tim had gotten enough of a trace to find out which proxy servers the hacker usually used.
Tim had noticed a change in the pattern a couple of weeks ago. Connection time was taking an extra half second or so, which meant either the hacker was using poorer-quality equipment than before (unlikely), or he had shifted his location. Even electronic signals take some time to get through the system.
The hacker, and the rest of Jaxon’s friends, had left the United States.
Corbin had immediately come to the conclusion that they had fled for one of the places the legends said the Atlanteans had fled to after their continent had sunk into the Atlantic Ocean. Corbin had agents in the Caribbean, Portugal, and West Africa on the lookout.
And one of those agents might just have hit the jackpot.
Stephen and Isadore Grant arrived precisely on time, as General Corbin expected from two experienced agents. They’d driven in from California and checked into a hotel, knowing they’d be needed for some time.
To all appearances, Mr. and Mrs. Grant were a normal pair of wealthy and successful Californians. Corbin knew better than anybody that appearances could be deceiving. Grant was a poisons expert whose products had solved more than one international political problem with untraceable efficiency. Isadore was one of the best assassins in the world. The fact that she’d been fought off by Jaxon’s helpers meant trouble.
Like that hypnotist, they’d taken the news that they had a new boss with a calm lack of concern.
“We’ve always felt General Meade was a bit soft,” Isadore said. “I could have taken care of the whole problem back in Chinatown if he’d let me take a machine gun along.”
Corbin smiled. That was his kind of thinking. “I believe Hector was trying to be subtle.”
A thin smile spread across Stephen’s mouth. It looked unnatural, as if those lips weren’t quite sure what to do with a smile. “From what I’ve heard, you’re a blunt man, General Corbin, so I won’t be subtle like Hector Meade. What’s in it for us?”
Corbin didn’t skip a beat. “An extra million a year in an offshore account. Totally tax free. Plus ten thousand dollars a month in gold for that safety deposit box in Seattle you think I don’t know about.”
Corbin had done his homework, and what he’d discovered was that the only thing the Grants loved more than their job was money. Not that these two millionaires seemed to enjoy it much. Some people just wanted to have a lot of it.
The Grants glanced at one another and then turned back to him.
“What’s the goal?” Isadore asked.
“To grab your old friends, Grunt and Vivian, and take care of Jaxon. It would be nice if you could bring her back alive, but that’s not necessary.”
“That wasn’t my question. What’s your goal?”
Corbin shifted in his seat. He’d faced the wrong end of a firearm more times than he could count, had to bail out of a burning airplane, and had a car explode right next to him, but these two people still gave him the creeps.
“My goal is power,” he admitted.
“You already have plenty of that,” Stephen pointed out.
“Not enough, just like you don’t have enough money. How much would you like?”
Stephen didn’t skip a beat. “Ten billion dollars.”
Corbin stared at him. “What on Earth would you do with ten billion dollars?”
Isadore frowned. “We’re asking the questions here. How much power do you want?”
Corbin leaned forward. Despite their posturing, he knew he had them hooked.
“Enough power that giving you ten billion dollars will seem like chicken feed.”
Their eyes lit up. Yes, he had them. He was dealing with a pair of addicts here. They wanted their money fix.
“Then we want twenty billion dollars,” Stephen said.
Corbin nodded. “You’ll get it once I get what I want. It’s not like I’ll have that kind of money overnight. In the meantime, you’ll be well paid, as I said.”
Isadore leaned forward. Corbin resisted the urge to draw back. “You’re throwing around some pretty big numbers here, General. No military or business leader can move that much cash.”
“I’ll be more than just some general or billionaire. Much more if my plan comes through.”
Isadore’s eyes narrowed. Corbin saw understanding in them, and a bit of respect. He also saw uncertainty.
Fair enough, he thought. I’m not sure this is all going to work either.
“That twenty billion will come eventually if my plan works out,” he went on. “In the meantime, you’ll have the million a year in your offshore account and ten thousand dollars a month in gold, but you have to earn it.”
He took a few grainy photographs out of a folder. “A hacker I have working for me thinks your old friends have taken Jaxon out of the country. I followed a few leads and got these.”
He handed the photos over. They showed two men, a hulking adult and a lanky teen, walking down a narrow North African street. The photos were a bit grainy and blurred. They had been blown up from an image taken by someone on a cheap mobile phone taking a picture on the sly.
“Looks like Morocco,” Isadore murmured.