The Book of Bones (Harvey Bennett Thrillers 7)

by Nick Thacker

  “Etienne Sharpe?” Juliette asked. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He stopped, his hands falling to his sides. He looked at Victoria, then flicked his eyes to Harvey and the rest of his team. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  Before he could speak, Harvey Bennett walked forward, reached toward Agent Sharpe, then swung a right-hook across the man’s face.

  Victoria gasped. The soldiers with them, Peruvian, most likely, raised their weapons. The Guild Rite men behind Sharpe stopped short.

  “That’s for Egypt, you son of a —”

  “Ben,” Archie said. “Stop.”

  Harvey Bennett stopped, turned around, and seemed to recompose himself. He sniffed, rubbed his knuckles, and walked back over to Victoria and Juliette.

  Sharpe stumbled backward, holding his chin. He tried to stand upright, but Harvey loomed over him still.

  “What’s the plan, then, Archie?” Harvey said, his voice a growl, his eyes not moving from Sharpe’s face.

  “Wait,” Sharpe said. “Please. Wait.”

  Victoria watched the exchange. Harvey seething, Etienne cowering.

  “I — I wanted to warn you,” Sharpe said, casting a glance over his shoulder. “My — the men here. The Guild Rite, our group. I overhead that you were coming.”

  “And?” Harvey asked.

  “And they think you’re here with the other group. The ones funded by the Catholic Church. That you want to bring them The Book of Bones.”

  “That’s… not entirely untrue,” Juliette said. “But what does that mean for us? Where are they now?”

  “They’re outside,” Sharpe said. “Waiting for the rest of us, and waiting for you to get corralled inside here. And they’re going to kill you.”

  Harvey looked over at Victoria. “These ‘Guild Rite’ folks. They need you to find this other group?”

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  “And they can’t do it without you?”

  Victoria felt her heart sink. Are they going to kill me? She shook her head. “No, apparently they can’t.”

  “Okay then,” Harvey said, turning to his own team. “Let’s get behind this pillar thing. Victoria’s with us. She stays alive at all costs. She’s the key to finding Reggie and Sarah, got it?”

  Nods all around.

  “Sharpe, you’re either with us or you’re dead. Decide now.”

  Agent Sharpe’s head fell, but he didn’t hesitate. He walked next to Archie to the far side of the stone pillar, then turned back to face the doors.

  Victoria watched as the two massive doors in the room began to open again, and the team in front of her spread out a bit. Their guns rose, pointing toward the doors.

  “Sharpe,” Harvey said. “What kind of power are these guys packing?”

  Sharpe looked over at Harvey and was about to respond when the floodlight in the room shut off. Another second passed, and Victoria heard a pop.

  Her eyes were blistered by light, and she screamed. Pain seared into her head, and she fell sideways, blinded.

  Gunfire blasted into the room next, the battering sound of automatic rifles ripping around the stone chamber and echoing into a cacophony.

  70

  Ben

  Ben was blind. The flashbang grenade the Guild Rite men had thrown into the room had caused him to backpedal and knock over Archie, where the two of them fell into a heap on the floor. The motion might have saved their lives, as Ben then heard the telltale whizzing sounds of rapid-fire rounds shooting over their heads.

  He held a hand over Archie’s chest, waiting until his eyes adjusted. He knew it would take more than a minute to fully recover, but it would be only a matter of seconds before he’d be able to see enough to mount a counterattack.

  He only hoped the Guild Rite wasn’t already in the room and rushing their location behind the pillar.

  “Jules!” he shouted.

  She responded, telling Ben she was okay and almost able to see.

  Thoughts crashed into Ben’s mind as he tried to make sense of what was happening. Agent Sharpe was here, in the flesh. That meant he had been playing them in Egypt — either pretending to be part of Interpol, or, more likely, an actual high-ranking Interpol officer who also was a member of this secret fraternity.

  But why had he switched sides? Sharpe had told them that when he’d discovered Harvey Bennett and his friends were here in Peru, he felt compelled to warn them. Did that mean the man would only condone the brutal killing of innocent civilians if he didn’t personally know them?

  But these were questions for another time — Ben needed to stay alive, and that meant he needed to focus on the enemy he could see. Barely see, he thought.

  He heard footsteps — boots approaching from his right. He turned and fired an awkward spray of rounds in the general direction and was surprised to hear the sound of a man falling to the ground.

  His vision slowly returned, and he rolled toward the edge of the pillar where two of the Peruvian soldiers were posted, their guns aiming around the cylinder and toward the two doors. Ben couldn’t see around them, so he wasn’t sure if there were any men approaching from that side.

  He got his answer a second later, when one soldier fell, a gunshot wound in his chest. He was still alive, and Ben knew he was wearing body armor, so he dragged him backwards and behind the pillar.

  “You’ll be okay,” he said. The man — barely twenty-five, from the looks of his wide-eyed, young face — stared up at Ben as he clutched his chest and tried to breathe. Ben wished he knew more Spanish than how to ask for a beer and where the restroom was. “I — I don’t even know your name,” he said instead.

  Ben felt a sudden feeling of anxious dread, as if a car were slowly being released onto his chest. He had approved Archie’s hiring of these men, but he hadn’t even taken the time to get to know them. He’d asked them to fight — potentially to give their lives — for him, for a cause Ben hadn’t even explained to them.

  I need to do better, he thought. I need to do more.

  He patted the soldier’s shoulder and nodded. The kid nodded in return.

  Ben extended his legs a bit so his head was barely above the top of the pillar. There still was no light in the room, but the weapons were still firing, lighting up the areas directly around the muzzles of the rifles. It was clear to Ben that these men — the Guild Rite — were not trained soldiers. They were sporadic, spread out in a haphazard way, and they’d clearly overestimated their element of surprise.

  Especially since they don’t remember that we’ve got these, Ben said to himself as he reached down and grabbed a hand grenade from the wounded soldier. He pulled the pin, waited a few seconds, then heaved it up and over his head toward the door closest to him.

  He had spotted at least three muzzle flashes from that direction, so he figured there was a group of Guild Rite men over there. The grenade sailed through the air and in a brief pause between bursts of gunfire, he heard the explosive hit the stone floor and roll.

  He had no idea where it ended up until it detonated. The blast lit up the entire room and sent four Guild Rite members flying in opposite directions, one of them landing behind the pillar itself, where Archie fired a round into the man’s head with his pistol.

  The force of the explosion in the tight space blew chunks of stone and debris over the dais and pillar, but the pillar itself remained firmly in place, protecting Ben and his team.

  He hadn’t intended to cause a cave-in, but that was exactly what happened. He heard a deep rumbling sound, then poked his head up once more and looked in the direction of the blast. It was still dark in the room, but a flashlight had been turned on and dropped, its beam pointing toward the door. He saw chunks of stone falling from the ceiling and doorframe, and one massive rock fell and completely covered one of the fallen Guild Rite men.

  “We have a problem,” Ben said. He had felt the ground shake, both when the grenade first exploded and a few seconds later. “It’s unstable here. Tha
t grenade caused a bit of a shakeup.”

  “Well, I’d rather die fighting these assholes than die underneath a pile of rubble,” Julie said.

  “Same here,” Archie said.

  For a moment the gunfire ceased, but Ben knew the men were just reloading, checking their weapons, and using the flashlight’s dim light as an opportunity to regroup.

  “Here’s the plan,” Ben said. “Julie, grab another one of those grenades.”

  71

  Julie

  Julie had never thrown a grenade in her life. She hadn’t planned to, but then again she also hadn’t planned on having to postpone her wedding three separate times because she and the man she loved continued to find themselves under attack.

  Thankfully, throwing a grenade was about as simple as it seemed. She’d pulled the pin, ‘cooked’ it for a few seconds, then tossed it gently toward the same door Ben had thrown his.

  The plan was simple, and it had worked flawlessly: by throwing another grenade toward the door that was about to collapse, the team pushed the Guild Rite men toward the other door. They were able to keep them pinned down as they ran from behind the pillar toward the decimated stone opening, chunks of ceiling and pieces of floor breaking off and creating a terrible obstacle course the entire way.

  There were two Peruvian soldiers remaining in the fight, as Archie and the third man had carried the fourth soldier between them as they made their escape. Those two soldiers had proven to be extremely effective, each of them taking down two Guild Rite men as they ran.

  Julie and Ben had made it to the opening in the side of the temple first, but the rest of the team was right behind. Julie and her fiancé laid down covering fire as the rest of them escaped into the waning sunlight. They’d made it out alive, but the enemy was still only a hundred feet away.

  Worse, Garza was still out there with Reggie and Sarah.

  “What now?” Julie shouted. They were once again in the clearing, this time with an injured Peruvian soldier and two additional team members.

  “We get to the jeeps,” Ben said. “I don’t see any other vehicles here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got some. Those jeeps are our best bet.”

  They were already moving as fast as they could, keeping close to the tree line, where they could duck and hide when the Guild Rite members eventually emerged from the temple and caught sight of them. Julie ran next to the second, longer building and stepped over the two fallen Guild Rite soldiers who had been guarding that space earlier.

  They made it all the way to the jeeps, and were getting everyone loaded inside, when the Guild Rite men began firing at them. They were too far away for accuracy, but Julie heard at least one bullet pinging off the frame of their vehicle.

  “Victoria,” Ben shouted, revving the engine before Julie had even gotten inside. “You said the second pillar is around here somewhere?”

  “I think,” she said. “I mean, it has to be.”

  “Why does it have to be?”

  “The one in the temple, the one we hid behind? It’s a replica — an homage — to the pillars that led into Solomon’s Temple.”

  “Which is?”

  “A temple, built for King Solomon, by one of the first Freemasons.”

  Julie didn’t understand why that was important, either, but they didn’t have time for an explanation. “So I’m assuming this replica will have a counterpart, since there were two pillars in Solomon’s original.”

  “Exactly.”

  Ben turned the jeep onto the dirt road that led out of the clearing and back out to the main road. Julie, Ben, one of the Peruvian soldiers, and Victoria drove in this one while Archie, Etienne Sharpe, and the three other Peruvians, including the one who had been injured, rode in the jeep behind them. They were broadcasting their conversation through the jeep’s stereo using the in-car microphone and the communications rig in the back.

  “Any idea how to find the other pillar?” Ben asked.

  “Well, the pillars were originally built to guard the entrance to Solomon’s temple, so they stood on either side of it. If the one we were just at is one pillar, and we know the distance between both pillars — the radius of a circle, if you will — the second pillar will be somewhere along the circumference of that imaginary circle.”

  “I don’t math,” Ben said. “Jules?”

  Julie closed her eyes and pictured a circle, the first pillar at its center. The second pillar, then would have to be somewhere along the border of that circle. But… “We need to know the distance between them.”

  “Right,” Victoria said. “I have an idea about that. You guys have a phone with cell service?”

  Julie nodded, reaching into her pocket. Archie had given them both replacement smartphones, as both of theirs were somewhere at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea by now. They’d set up their SIM cards to use Mr. E’s communication access point, which was a global satellite array owned by his company, giving them crystal-clear connection to the internet around the world, as long as they had a line-of-sight view with at least two of the satellites.

  Victoria wasted no time, pulling open a search engine and typing in a few words. “Okay,” she said. “I’m reading that King Solomon’s temple was oriented east to west. That means the pillars were in a north-south line. And this, from the Book of Jeremiah, chapter fifty-two: ‘And concerning the pillars, the height of one pillar was eighteen cubits.’”

  “And a cubit is…”

  “A measurement used in the Bible. Which puts the height of the pillars at about…” she typed more. “Twenty-seven feet tall.”

  “But how far apart were they?” Julie asked.

  “Well, it looks like the measurements aren’t exact, but they might get us close. Seems like most experts say the pillars were three times taller than the distance between them, which would make them about nine feet apart.”

  “How does that help us?” Ben asked. “I didn’t see another giant circus tent-shaped temple nine feet away, if I recall.” He pulled the jeep around a tight bend, and Julie could tell he was getting frustrated. They were moving at a crawl, and they were no closer to tracking down the whereabouts of Reggie and Sarah.

  Even worse, if it had truly been a countdown they’d heard Reggie mention during the radio transmission, that countdown had already reached zero…

  “We need a multiplier,” Victoria said. “We have the numbers, but we need to know what scale the pillars are supposed to represent.”

  “Thirty-three,” Julie blurted.

  Ben and Victoria glanced at her.

  “It’s one of the most famous Masonic numbers. All kinds of symbolism involved with it, right?”

  “That’s right,” Victoria nodded, her eyes lighting up. “It’s the highest order attained in Scottish Rite Freemasonry, for one.” She took a breath, as if realizing something, then straightened her back and continued. “Christian numerologists revere the number — the word Elohim appears in the book of Genesis 33 times, and 33 is the age Jesus Christ was crucified and died.”

  “Don’t forget about the Temple of Solomon,” Archie said. “It stood for thirty-three years before it was sacked.”

  Victoria nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s as good a place to start as any. So that means the distance between the pillars is thirty-three times larger here than at the original temple. That’s 297… what?”

  “What?”

  “What unit?” Victoria asked. “Cubits? Miles?”

  Julie bit her lip. She had no idea where to go from here.

  Archie’s voice crackled from the jeep’s speaker system, routed through their walkie-talkie communications array. “Ben, take a left at the road we came in on.”

  Ben nodded, and Julie confirmed. “Archie, you know where to go?”

  “I think. And it is ‘stadions’ — the measurement you are looking for.”

  Victoria began running some calculations on Julie’s phone. Ben shouted over the noise of the engine. “Archie, how do you know?”
<
br />   “Because I am looking at a map of the region,” he replied. “And this valley, the Valley of the Chachapoyas, is about fifty miles long, end-to-end. It curves in a half-circle around that peak behind us.”

  Victoria spoke from the passenger seat. “‘A biblical stadion is 183 meters, or 600 feet.’ So 297 multiplied by 600 feet gives us 178,200 feet between the pillars. Which is…”

  “33.75 miles,” Archie said. “And if you position the temple we just visited on the map and trace a straight line that is 33.75 miles long in a north-south direction from it, you end up in the valley again on the opposite side of the mountain.”

  Ben reached the main road and turned left. Julie smiled, even knowing that the fate of their friends might already be out of their hands.

  It was hope — only a small amount, but it was hope nonetheless.

  72

  Ben

  The road that led toward the eastern side of the Chachapoyas Valley was rugged; potholes dug into the tires of the jeep and tested its suspension. Ben, however, was not about to slow down. They were close. He knew it.

  The farm road was paved, but so much growth and gravel covered it that the only clear way to tell they were still on it was for Ben to follow the gap in the trees, pointing the jeep toward the break and hoping there were no deathly large holes for a tire to get hung up on.

  He wondered how the young kid, the Peruvian man in the backseat of the rear jeep, was faring. The soldier had proven tough so far, but Ben knew a bumpy ride away from civilization and the nearest hospital was not going to help with his injuries. He hoped that Reggie — if they found him — might be able to patch him up a bit.

  “Ben,” Julie said from the backseat. “We’ve got company.”

  He hadn’t heard it before, but now the sound was unmistakable. “A chopper? Are you serious?” he shouted.