by Ronie Kendig
Cell skidded a look to the side but stopped. Quietly, he said, “Mei.”
Mercy recoiled, her spine and neck swaying as if she were about to throw up. “Dragon Mei? Are you insane?”
“Already got the lecture from Iliescu. Don’t need it from you.” Cell swung around her.
Wide-eyed, Mercy turned and met Iskra’s questioning gaze. “He’s a loon to—”
“Who is this person?” Iskra asked, following him.
“A vicious analyst recruited out of China’s intelligence service. She’s the type of hacker I can only dream of being.” Mercy shook her head. “But I wouldn’t give her an inch of room, if that much.”
“Yeah, well, don’t,” came the voice of Director Iliescu, bringing them both around. “If I get you cleared, will you work with Cell on that list?”
Mercy blinked. Snorted. “Is the Hulk fueled by gamma radiation?”
Iliescu scowled.
“That would be yes, he’s fueled—”
“Yes or no, Maddox?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good.” He whipped back toward his office.
“What about Leif?” Iskra asked.
“What about him?”
“You said there was a briefing in twenty minutes, but”—she checked the hub to be sure—“Leif’s not here.”
Something fidgeted in his expression before he shrugged and stepped into his office. “Just be there.”
***
“By all that’s holy, what is it with you people?”
“I won’t apologize,” Leif said. Not for doing the thing Dru had been promising to do for the last five years. Yet hadn’t done. “I need answers—”
“I need your head in the game now,” Dru bellowed. “That going to be a problem?”
“Why do you think I’m here?” When the director frowned, Leif chose the path of least resistance. “No, not a problem. Tell me you have something to work with. How’s Cell coming with the list?”
“Three flipping names,” Dru growled, stabbing the air. “That’s it. Three months and three names.” He huffed. “How are we supposed to stop Armageddon with three names?”
Glad to have the attention deflected from his rogue intel-hunting, Leif scratched his jaw. “It’s a starting point.”
“Which is why I’ve called in the team.” Dru nodded to the hub. “You’re lucky you came back when you did.”
“Not like you didn’t have a way to track me down.” Leif shook his head, knowing it wasn’t worth the breath to argue or accuse. “Is Iskra here?”
“Yeah. That’s two people ticked at you in this building.” Dru glowered. “Tread carefully—she won’t like that you returned and didn’t tell her.”
“You’re assuming I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t because she was in here fifteen minutes ago asking where you were!”
Okay. Yeah, that was trouble. Leif shifted gears. “Why’re you mad?” He nodded to Dru’s desk. “I’m allowed personal time.”
“Personal time would be spent with the woman you nearly killed to protect two months ago. Personal time would be a vacation in the Caribbean or a cabin in the mountains or, heck”—he flicked a hand at the door—“down with the big mouse in Florida, treating that little girl to a theme park.”
That was a whole lot of anger being thrown around. Then it struck him. Leif snorted, disbelieving this whole act. “You did know.” He smoothed a hand down the back of his neck. “You knew where I was.”
Probably from the moment Leif had picked up his ruck to head out. But how? Other than his phone, which he kept off, Leif hadn’t taken any technology with him other than very basic, nontraceable handhelds for GPS and emergency beacons. He stilled as a thought hit. “You’re tracking me.” He planted his hands on his belt. “Did you put a device in me?”
“You were told to leave it alone.”
“Yeah.” Leif felt anger rising. “Four years ago. Four!” The only thing that kept him in check was the fact that a year after the incident, Dru had thrown him a lifeline, pulled Leif out of a destructive path—in exchange for his agreement to let Dru handle things. “You said you’d get answers. Find out what happened to me. Who did it. Five years after the Banat, and I’ve got exactly zero answers.”
“I told you,” Dru said quietly, skating a glance to the door, “digging into this is tricky.”
“Dangerous is the word you used.”
Dru conceded the correction with a nod. “If we push too hard, whoever did this . . .” Torment churned through his gaze. “Leif, we don’t know who’s behind it. We go in guns blazing, we might find ourselves getting mowed down before we can do anything.”
Leif moved to the desk and pressed his fingertips to its surface. “Just . . . tell me something—anything.” The ache grew. “Please.”
Dru considered him. “If I do that, then I undo everything I’ve worked to protect and unearth. I put you at risk, leave you exposed to threats we cannot thwart. The last time we did that—tell me you remember.”
How could Leif forget? Coming to in a burning, upside-down car. He’d crawled to safety before it blew.
“Don’t ask me to be the cause of that. Not again.” Dru shifted around his desk. “I don’t know who they are or how they know, but they always do. And they burn us. Every time.”
Leif appreciated the director’s candor, but he’d heard it for four years. He was done playing it safe. “I’m not asking you to do it, but I refuse to sit around while more years pass without answers.” He tapped the desk. “I’m going to find what’s missing. Even if it costs me everything.”
“Including Iskra?” The challenge was unmistakable.
That hurt. But it just proved one more point. “You don’t get it.” Leif shook his head and huffed. “She is why I’m pushing. If I’m going to have a life with her, I have to get this void out of my head. And every day that goes by without knowing makes me feel like a target. I can’t move forward with her until I know what’s missing.”
“Then you may just throw away the best chance you’ve had at love.” Dru squinted at him. “What if they go after her? I can’t hide that she’s here now. What if they—”
“From what you’ve indicated, they know me. Which means they know going after her would be a mistake.” The thought of losing Iskra and Taissia pained him. “But I will find out what was stolen from me. What happened.” He set his jaw. “I’ve let it stay unresolved long enough.”
Dru’s shoulders sagged. “Leif . . . please.” His phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. “Promise me you’ll see the Book of the Wars through first. We—I need your eyes on this.”
Leif curled his fingers into a fist. “I’m committed. I’m not going to walk away from something I haven’t finished.”
Dru nodded to the door. “Let’s do that briefing—and I’d gear up.”
“Why?”
“Have you responded to Iskra’s texts or messages?”
Guilt left a funny taste in his mouth.
Dru offered a weak smile. “I expect it’s going to be a war zone when you walk in there. Once she sets eyes on you, the blast radius—”
“You could’ve told her I was okay, since you were tracking me.”
“I did. Every time she asked.”
Leif drew up short. Every time?
“But she didn’t want to hear it from me.”
CHAPTER 3
TEAM HEADQUARTERS, MARYLAND
If by blast radius Dru meant arctic blasts, he was right. Leif could’ve worn extreme-weather gear and still come out with freezer burns from the cold shoulder from Iskra.
Culver Brown met him outside the director’s office. “When’d you get back?”
“Now,” Leif said, eyeing Iskra.
“That explains a few things,” Adam Lawe mumbled, glancing across the hub. “Like that blistering look Viorica is shooting at you.”
Viorica. He hated that nickname. “Iskra has every right to be mad.”
“Then y
ou’d better don some humility,” Culver said with a chuckle. “Tuck your tail between your legs, scurry on over to her, and apologize.”
Dai Saito joined them. “Apologize. And beg.”
The guys high-fived and laughed.
Shaking his head, Leif started toward where she was talking quietly with Peyton Devine and Mercy. All three women turned away from him.
“Oh, ouch.” Culver chuckled. “Looks like you’ll need flowers.”
“And a ring,” Dai added.
“No way,” Lawe called. “Too soon.”
“Maybe that’s why you lost Devine,” Saito taunted Lawe.
Banter behind him, Leif joined his friend and former Afghan commando, Baddar Amir Nawabi, and tapped his arm. “You going to join the fun?”
“It is not for me to lecture.” Baddar inclined his head. “You already know it was a mistake.”
“I meant the briefing,” Leif groused.
“Okay, folks,” Dru called over their snickers as he entered and acknowledged Rear Admiral Alene Braun and Cell, who arrived at the same time. “Let’s get down to business.”
The team crowded around the obsidian conference table, and Leif lingered at the back, waiting to see where Iskra sat. Maybe he could—
Negative. Devine and Maddox provided protective cover, positioning themselves on either side of her.
Come on. Were they going to make it impossible? He considered insisting they make a hole for him. He’d always been one to cut it straight. But something in him had changed. Shifted. Altered course.
Dru stood at the head of the table with Cell. “Time is short and resources shorter,” he said. “So, Cell, Harden—go ahead. Tell us what you’ve got.”
Senior Intelligence Analyst Charlie Harden nodded. “As a recap for those who forgot—”
“You think we’re so dumb, we’d forget in less than three months after a near fight to the death?” Saito snorted.
“—and for the recording,” Harden continued with an arched eyebrow, “the Book of the Wars is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible’s book of Numbers, but it’s only a brief reference. The text was lost to humanity until it was discovered in the salt mines of Israel. It has since been stolen by one organization or entity after another and is, at this time, believed to be in the hands of the formidable Armageddon Coalition, aka ArC.”
“Which we plan to change,” Culver asserted.
“For now, since we do not have the book, we are working only with the corrupted information provided by scans of the actual book. As far as we can tell, the book lists particular wars that have not yet occurred. We intercepted the devices ArC used to stir up storms, and now . . .” Harden indicated the screen. “This is what we talked about a few months ago, but I’ve been working on it, and Mr. Purcell has been sorting another aspect. Let’s take a look.”
Harden cleared his throat and began to read. “‘. . . and those from below were come, the mighty and the vigilant like a plague. Garbed in authority, they lost their lives, breath snuffed like lamps doused. Rage in the right hand, vengeance in the left, there was naught but blood upon the lands. Kingdoms shifted. Countries collapsed. Chaos seized and reigned in answer to the summons of the enemies of kings. Upon those from below is marked the quest that tethers their soul in darkness . . .’”
“Hold up,” Saito said. “I’m not really fond of that second line.”
Culver nodded. “Isn’t that a sign we shouldn’t do this mission?”
“Hooah,” Lawe agreed. “I’m not up for my breath being snuffed out like a lamp.”
Ignoring the men, Devine narrowed her eyes at the scan and the translation below it. “‘Kingdoms shifted. Countries collapsed.’” She rubbed her lower lip. “A global war?”
“How do we intervene in something on that scale?” Iskra asked.
“That’s a really good question,” Harden said, “but I think, by considering the previous line about rage and vengeance, we might be able to interpret this war as a response to the storms.”
“This is where Charlie and I disagree,” Cell said. “He believes the retaliation line, but to me, those are unrelated. However, mention of ‘those from below’ happens throughout the text—well, what we have of it—so I don’t think that is about retaliation. And honestly, I don’t believe the two are connected.”
Noting an eagerness in Cell’s expression, Leif shifted. “You have an idea?”
“Yeah.” Cell aimed a remote. Images splashed over the concrete wall. “I think we were wrong.”
“We?” Culver asked with a snigger. “What, you got a mouse in your pocket?”
“Hey,” Saito said, “wasn’t it you who sent us to the Bahamas when we needed to be in—where was it again?”
“Greece,” Lawe said, smiling.
“I wasn’t wrong,” Cell countered. “The intel and situation changed, so we adjusted the mission.”
“Convenient,” Saito teased.
“Anyway,” Cell said, “in translating what was salvaged from the corrupted USB that Viorica—”
“Iskra,” Leif corrected.
Glancing at him, Cell went on. “We have been translating it as ‘those from below’, but I believe it should simply be transliterated”—his gaze rested on Iskra—“as ‘Neiothen.’”
She lifted her chin, fingers going to her mouth. “That is the super-army Vasily mentioned.”
Leif’s heart thudded. “You referenced the super-army before the book did.”
“Vasily told me on the yacht while it was being scanned that it mentioned them.”
“How’d you miss that?” Leif asked Harden.
“Not missed,” the analyst said with a shake of his head. “When translating an ancient text, you take words or symbols in the text and extract a meaning. For example, in Hebrew, the word phileo means “love,” so we say love, not phileo. There are also several meanings for love, but in English, we use one word. In Hebrew there are multiple words.”
“Right.” Cell nodded. “And in reading the Book of the Wars of the Lord, we took neiothen down to its meaning, which was ‘those from below,’ rather than accepting the prophecy may have meant Neiothen as a name. That for the sake of the Book of the Wars, when directly transliterated as the whole word, it’s a proper noun.”
“And what makes you think this is legit?” Leif asked. “I mean, that Neiothen are real, and it’s not referring to someone from below. Because we used that phrase to go to Burma, and it was right.”
“And I recall,” Lawe asserted, “telling y’all that this Neiothen thing was a hoax bred on the backs of veterans about some experimental program.”
“I have no intel on that,” Cell said. “I only know what this fragment and the transliteration tell us.”
The words had a bitter taste to Leif. “So we’re talking about ‘and those from below were come, the mighty and the vigilant like a plague.’ That’s who you’re talking about?”
Cell blinked, glanced down at a handheld. “You said that word for word.”
“Yeah, we stopped being impressed with his near-perfect recall years ago,” Lawe grumbled.
“So you’re saying it should be read as ‘and Neiothen were come, the mighty and the vigilant like a plague.’” Leif leaned forward. “Which means we’re hunting people who are likened to a plague.”
Expression heavy, Cell nodded. “Yeah. Soldiers, probably.”
“When we first considered the text of the scroll,” Harden spoke up, sounding older than his forty-something, semibalding self, “we read it as if those people were saviors. Avenging angels, if you will. But the more we look at the wording, the more we examine the context and references, we are convinced that they are what we need to stop.”
“We all are,” Dru pronounced with a sharp nod. “Which is why we’ve taken our time analyzing and dissecting what little we have. It’s also why it is absolutely imperative we reacquire that book. I have Cell and Mercy looking for it, scouring channels and searching for trigger words.”
&
nbsp; “Think that’ll work? It’s not like someone will be on the radio, saying, ‘Yo, Big D, I got the book that talks about the Neo-whatever.’” Though Culver taunted, he was concerned, as evidenced by his thinned lips and knotted brow.
“True, but we have specific intel and terms to aid us in that search,” Mercy reassured them. “This isn’t our first rodeo. And it has worked”—she eyed Cell—“to a degree.”
“Right,” Cell said. “So, using that terminology, I started following a hunch that maybe Neiothen—whether an organization or whatever—was tied to a government project. It’s a delicate process, digging into these channels without tipping our hand or drawing attention. However, it seems likely that the Saudi Arabian wedding murders are connected to the Neiothen, because I think the suspected killer, Wafiyy Ibn Sarsour, is on that list.”
“Bull,” Leif objected. “I saw the names you pulled, and he wasn’t there.” But what if . . . “Unless there are more you haven’t shared with the team.”
“Why would I hide vital intel from Reaper?”
Culver frowned. “Reaper?”
When the others shared the same confused look, Cell shrugged. “We needed a code name.”
But Leif noticed Cell hadn’t denied withholding information. “There was no Wafiyy Ibn Sarsour in that excerpt.”
“True,” Cell agreed, seeming a little too happy. “We aren’t going to look in the Book of the Wars and find Culver Brown.”
“Right,” Culver asserted, “because I ain’t one of them.”
“Because,” Cell said, “the names in the book are more like code names or ancient call signs. And the three I was able to lift from the excerpt have been decrypted. Interesting thing to note: all of them mean warrior or fighter.”
“If they’re call signs,” Lawe asked, “how were you able to connect one of them to this Waffle person?”
“As I explained,” Cell replied with a growl to his words, “we’ve been using keywords to track down the book, but I’ve also used those words to”—his gaze skidded to Dru then quickly away—“lurk on foreign servers.”
“Lurk,” Leif repeated.
Cell nodded. “I have a worm digging under the radars of certain military and government servers. It’s looking for trigger words. When you walk through an airport, NSA, CIA, etc., can pick up words, filter out insignificant ones, and isolate key phrases connected to possible threats. Using a similar but not nearly as sophisticated program—due to lack of time—I’ve got my worm-bot searching keywords to identify these next two Neiothen. When it detects any of the trigger words, it’ll shoot a code back to C&C. From there, I figure out how to get into the server and retrieve the data.”