The Medina Device

by T. J. Champitto

  “Of course, you will. I’m Cameron freakin’ Lyle.”

  She laughed. It was just enough to keep the tears back. “I can only assume you need to neutralize the threat first?” Hannah Lyle was in full military-wife mode now.

  “Yeah, something like that. I’ll be out of the country for a couple days, but I’ll call you the second my feet hit the ground back home.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. I love you and the girls so much, keep your heads down. You know what to look for.”

  She nodded silently. “I love you, too. Be careful.”

  “I will. Talk soon.” He hung up and shoved the small phone into his pocket.

  Rand watched with heartache. This criminal—this soldier—that had saved him from certain death, was displaying remarkable resolve. Cameron Lyle wasn’t just a trained killer but was also a husband—a father who had just spoken to his children like any other loving parent would have.

  In that moment, Rand respected Cameron more than he thought possible. He watched as the muscle-bound SEAL wiped tears from his face, bracing for what was to come next—whatever monumental hurdles the soldier would have to endure before being able to reunite with his family. It must’ve taken amazing strength to not drop everything and go to them—a strength that Rand didn’t have or didn’t understand. There was something important about what lay ahead. Something important enough that Cameron was willing to leave his family for. Rand began questioning his own resolve, and more importantly, his purpose.

  The taxi pulled up on the curb at the International Terminal. Cam tossed the driver a twenty-dollar bill and grabbed his backpack.

  “Where are we going, Cameron?”

  “Follow me.”

  “No,” Rand snapped. “Where the hell are we going? Do you have any idea the trouble I’m in?” he said under his breath.

  “You’re in more trouble than you can possibly imagine, agent. I need to get online.”

  “Not so fast,” Rand grabbed the soldier’s bicep. “You said you’d show me the asset.”

  “Assets—plural,” Cam corrected. “And I will, but first I need to check on Michael.”

  “There’s an internet cafe inside,” assured Rand. “But we’ll need to get through ticketing.”

  “There,” Cam pointed. “American Airlines.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You’re an FBI agent and this is a federal emergency,” Cam envisioned. “You’re carrying a prisoner to Paris. Just demand two seats on the next flight out and they’ll push us right through security.”

  Rand hesitated.

  “Look, Agent Kershaw, this place is probably already crawling with CIA operatives. We don’t have time for considerations.”

  Cam was right. Rand needed to keep them moving. They were too exposed.

  “Fine,” the agent complied.

  Cam pulled a blue passport from his pocket and handed it to Rand.

  “Howard Groves?” the agent stated as he read the name inside. “Nice.”

  They made their way to the American Airlines ticketing desk. Cam pulled a ball cap from his pack and slid it onto his head. His gray cargo shorts, faded blue t-shirt and red Phillies hat provided camouflage among hundreds of other casually dressed travelers. Rand’s disheveled suit, however, had all the markings of a federal agent.

  After a few tense minutes at the desk, Rand was issued two tickets.

  They proceeded to the first security check where Rand flashed his FBI badge at a TSA officer, who promptly escorted them around the metal detectors. As casually as possible, they rushed to the atrium and found an internet café.

  In the back corner, Cam jumped behind a computer and began typing away on the keyboard. After a hurried login to a nondescript website, he scrolled through a message board until he found what he was looking for. LibertyBell_12 had posted a message just over an hour ago.

  He sat back and read the post. A sense of relief washed down his shoulders.

  “What is it?” inquired Rand. He was getting more agitated as the seconds passed.

  “Good news, that’s what.”

  Cam began typing a response.

  LibertyBell_75: stay where you are.

  Unfortunately, there had been no pre-determined code phrase for it. Cam had to be direct and literal in his request for Michael to remain in Dublin. Now that they’d been made by the CIA, he couldn’t risk his brother trying to re-enter the United States.

  Rand watched with interest. “Stay where?”

  Without answering, Cam stood and threw the backpack over his shoulder.

  “Give that to me,” demanded Rand. “The backpack.”

  Cam raised a disgruntled eyebrow at the agent.

  “Prisoners aren’t allowed a carry-on, dumbass. Besides, I need to put these guns away.”

  With a scowl, the soldier turned over the navy blue backpack. “Fine.”

  “You know we’re not really flying to Paris, right?” said Rand, covertly placing both firearms in the pack.

  “Yeah, sure. Follow me, I want to show you something.”

  They slid their way around gift shops and coffee kiosks until spotting a concierge desk outside the British Airways VIP Lounge.

  “Passport,” Cam insisted. “I need my passport back.”

  Without question, Rand handed it over. They approached the desk and flashed their IDs to the attractive young female and were immediately welcomed through the lounge and into a members only area. The two men casually turned left down a long hallway with cheap carpeting and light yellow walls. Finally, they reached the spa—a small room with several dozen lockers stacked along the right wall.

  Cam retrieved a key from the backpack and shoved it into a locker at waist-level. Rand stood behind him, guarding against anyone who may have followed them in.

  With a firm pull, Cam yanked a small brown duffle bag from the locker, then closed it shut.

  He flashed a grin at his new friend. “You look like you could use a drink.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Michael Lyle got off at Connolly Station and walked hurriedly toward the Dublin Coach sign ahead, keeping one eye over his shoulder. An uneasy feeling fell over him as the corridor slowly emptied.

  Then he saw them. His only escape was a public restroom immediately to his left. He lowered his shoulder and lunged hard, barreling through the door.

  The two strangers bolted into action, pursuing their target into the bathroom, only to find a few travelers cleaning up at a row of white porcelain sinks. The men waited calmly for everyone to finish. And after the last traveler exited, one of the goons posted up outside, assuring no one else would be entering.

  The second operative, a tall muscular man in street clothes, checked under the stall doors one-by-one. Nothing. As he made his way to the fourth stall, the metal door suddenly sprang open, hitting him in the face and tossing him several feet back.

  Michael leapt from the stall and bore down on his assailant who swiftly countered the attack with a barrage of uppercuts. The two large men were now tangled up, tossing each other in unison against the wall, then to the sinks. A chunk of porcelain fell to the floor and shattered with a loud crash. With his hands around the man’s throat, Michael swung to the left and launched him through another stall door, which snapped from its hinges and rested below the man, who now lay dazed on his back.

  Just as Michael pulled a knife from his waistline, he could feel the cold steel tip of a silencer pressed against the back of his head. He’d felt it before, there was no question what it was. He slowly held the knife in the a
ir as it was snatched from his hand.

  The giant grizzly resting in the stall picked himself up and rose to his feet, grinning at his prey.

  “End of the line, princess.”

  . . .

  The foot traffic at Philadelphia International was starting to thin out. Cam and Rand sat at a small high-top inside Cibo Bistro & Wine Bar in Concourse B. They’d watched airport security, local police and federal K-9 teams pass by at a steady frequency. The walls were closing in, and Rand could only hold out on this charade for so long.

  A couple gin and tonics sat in front of them.

  “We were told it was excavated in South America. Supposed to be over a thousand years old,” Cam explained, as he lifted the duffle bag onto the high-top and opened it up.

  Rand leaned over his drink and peeked inside, unsure of what he was looking at. After a brief glance, he lifted his head nervously and leered over his shoulder, then back to the duffle bag for closer examination.

  “Are those photographs?” he whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that a goddamn lightsaber?”

  Cam rolled his eyes. “Yeah.”

  “You’re totally fucking with me, right?” Rand’s voice began to rise.

  “No. I’m not fucking with you,” replied Cam as he sat back in his chair and took a pull from his glass. “People are dead.”

  Rand finally pulled his head back from the bag and returned to his seat. His mind spun a web of what ifs? The agent stared in bewilderment at Cam, the guy he’d been chasing for so long—one of the ghosts that had haunted his sleep.

  “We snatched it from the freighter off the coast of Mexico. Got out clean until we were ambushed at the rendezvous point the next day. That’s when we lost Trip.”

  “Ambushed by who?”

  “About twenty hard-ons from the CIA.”

  “Who hired you guys?”

  Cam sat silent, contemplating how far he was willing to go, but ultimately, he was ready to put all his cards on the table. He couldn’t think of a single reason not to.

  “Who was it, Cameron?” Rand repeated.

  “It was a fella named ‘Rook.’ He blew in on the fuckin’ wind one day and blackmailed us into pulling off a job at open sea. We figured why the hell not, nothing to lose. It was a lot of money, too.” Cam paused for another taste of gin. “This Rook character was part of a mysterious order of Knights from Western Europe—The Knights of Medina.”

  “The Knights of Medina?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This all sounds like a fantasy, Cameron. How much money are we talking here?”

  “Millions,” Cam confirmed. “Many millions.” He polished off the drink and signaled for another. “The four guys Rook sent for the handoff are all dead.”

  “How did you and Rook communicate?”

  “Doesn’t matter because he’s dead, too. When a guy pays you fifteen million and never follows up to receive the product…he’s likely dead.”

  The bartender brought over their order and abruptly left with a smile.

  “The body count is gonna keep climbing if you don’t figure out a way to end this.” Rand’s attempt at resolve seemed futile.

  “Trip was a good guy. He was smarter than Michael and I combined. Had a good heart, ya know.” Cam took a moment to ponder a life that would never be lived out. “He left a fiancé behind. I only met her once.”

  “You knew his brother, Mark?”

  “That I did,” Cam assured through another sip of gin.

  “Then I guess you were there when he died?”

  “Yep. We’d been kickin’ doors for months in a bunch of random villages outside Kunar. The Taliban had gotten pretty agitated, so they planned an attack on one of our Fobs in the region—”

  “Fobs?”

  “Forward Operating Base. We were twenty clicks north of the base at an outpost the Army had setup overlooking the valley. After the Fob got hit, we knew they were coming for our outpost next. And we were right. The Taliban surprised us before we could even get a patrol together. Non-stop mortar fire, heavy artillery and small arms pot shots. It was a real cluster fuck.” Cam vividly remembered the faces of the young soldiers he fought next to that day. “We had a whole platoon of Rangers pissing their pants and squeezing off random bursts into the night,” he laughed. “They were lucky Echo Team was there.”

  “A lot of casualties?”

  “Not at first, they punched some holes in a few guys early on, but nothing lethal,” Cam continued. “So, the next evening, under another wave of artillery, I gathered a small fire team and slipped down into the valley to try and untangle their positions. We made contact three or four times, little pockets of fighting here and there. When we returned to the outpost that night, everything seemed to quiet down. Guys were saying the enemy had been spooked off, but we knew better. We knew they were still on the mountain somewhere.”

  “And Mark?”

  Cam smiled. “Mark had been fighting hard all day. And sure as shit the Tallies came back, only this time they had somehow managed to climb right up to our front door. We were fighting these dudes from ten yards away; it was ridiculous. Inbound med-evac had to abort and turn around, casualties started mounting, guys were getting picked off left and right. Mark was planted next to me, tracers flying everywhere. He’d pulled his NVGs down and was locating targets, but eventually we got pinned down behind a sandbag wall together. I had just put a burst on a 50-cal, Mark popped up and was waiting for the guy to get back on it so he could take a kill shot, but before he had a chance, he took one to the shoulder. It was like slow motion. We actually locked eyes. We were in disbelief, both stunned that he got hit, ya know. Everything stood still, frozen in time.”

  A long pause followed.

  “Then what?” anticipated Rand.

  “Then he was shot through the head. Killed instantly.”

  “That couldn’t have been easy for you. And then to lose Trip.”

  “Trip died in Michael’s arms…in the backseat of a Range Rover while we escaped the ambush. The kid said he wanted to go home.”

  Rand peered down to the floor. “I’m really sorry, Cameron. But it’s only going to get worse. You have to shut this down,” he implored.

  “Can it get any worse, Agent Kershaw? Not only is Trip dead, but four Knights of Medina are dead. Rook is probably dead. The archaeologist who discovered all this shit is dead. And you and me? Well, we should be dead.”

  “We need do the right thing here.”

  “I keep hearing that. But you don’t understand. My brother is being hunted down in Europe by CIA operatives as we speak. I need to figure out what the hell we’ve stumbled across—to see what’s so important that millions of dollars and countless lives are being put at risk.”

  “You don’t need to figure it out, you want to figure it out,” Rand corrected.

  “Either way.” Cam shrugged. “My brother may have deciphered the tablet.”

  “Tablet? What tablet?”

  “Along with the device and the photos, we found this small six-by-eight tablet. It’s got symbols carved into it; we had no idea what it meant. Until now.”

  “Is that what Michael’s message said?”

  “Yes. And there’s a man,” Cam continued, as he pulled the photos from the duffle bag. “This man,” he pointed with his index finger, “is in almost every single one of these pictures.”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Rand screeched as the photos continued to drop on the table. He picked one up and studied it closely. “Is this… is this the Great Pyramid of Giza? Cameron are these… I don
’t understand.”

  “Listen,” Cam whispered. “This shit was stuffed into an ancient ossuary when we took it. It had only recently been unsealed. We have no explanation.”

  “No kidding. I mean, how does the CIA fit in? And what the hell is this thing?” Rand asked, as he reached for the lightsaber in the bag.

  Cam grabbed him by the wrist and held firm. “Careful, pal.”

  “I don’t get it. If this stuff is legitimately that old, then we’re dealing with some sort of ancient technology. This thing has copper wiring and steel plates,” Rand observed. “And photo prints? I mean, if those are real, I’ll eat my goddamn hat!” he blurted, pointing at the stack of images.

  “Keep your voice down,” Cam sternly instructed.

  “Fine. But who’s this guy you mentioned in the photos?”

  “A physicist. He’s retired now.”

  “No shit, he’s retired!” Rand sarcastically gasped, as he snatched another photo. “Here he is with Napoleon’s army, sooo…what…that makes him about four hundred years old? Yeah, let’s fly to France and look him up.”

  The agent reached for his gin and took a large pull.

  “Calm down,” Cam grumbled. “People are getting killed. A group of weird old men paid millions of dollars and risked everything for whatever this is. But if it is what it looks like it is, then we’re holding onto evidence of—”

  “A time traveling physicist.”

  “If the United States government had a previously unknown piece of technology, and the ability to do something like, I dunno, change history,” proposed Cam, “how far would they go to protect it?”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “But what if it was possible?”

  “They’d kill everyone in their path to get their hands on it. As would just about every other nation in the world,” Rand surmised.

  “Exactly. This is important, Agent Kershaw.”

  “Call me Rand.”

  “Okay, fine—Rand. I need to figure out what this is. And there’s a man in France that can tell me. You got into a gun fight with CIA agents today and were supposed to bring in a known-fugitive hours ago. It’s over.”