Valhalla

by Robert J. Mrazek

“I’m glad we’re still alive to see it,” Lexy said.

  “I spoke to Mark Devlin at Anschutz before we took off,” said Macaulay, “and he assured me the FBI would be here waiting for us. We’re to be placed under immediate federal protection.”

  As he taxied the plane off the runway, Bangor tower control radioed him with directions to deplane at a security gate near the general aviation terminal. They taxied past the brightly lit main terminal, some dark hangars, and the long-term parking facility.

  A dozen small planes, all deeply covered by snow, were parked on the apron. At the security gate, Macaulay brought the de Havilland to a stop and shut down the engines. He and Lexy climbed out of the cockpit.

  She began shivering again as soon as they were on the ice-coated tarmac. In the distance, Lexy saw four Bangor police cars, their strobe lights flashing, deployed at the front and rear entrances to the terminal. At the rear entrance, two men in overcoats were waiting for them under the concrete portico. One was tall; the other quite short.

  “Welcome home,” the short one called out.

  Inside, the terminal was deserted, its overhead lights revealing a large waiting room with old leather chairs and couches surrounding an empty flight desk.

  “All the charter flights have been canceled because of the weather,” said Langdon. “I had the Bangor police stake out the terminal in case news of your arrival somehow reached the wrong people.”

  Macaulay asked to see their credentials. The taller man, Langdon, was a member of the White House domestic antiterrorism task force. He looked ex-military. The smaller one, Eamon Gallagher, Jr., was a regional FBI agent. He looked like an accountant.

  “I’ve arranged for us to talk in a secure office on the second floor,” said Langdon.

  The second-floor corridor was as empty as the first. A bulletin board on the painted concrete block wall proclaimed that Carlos Lugo, a member of the lavatory staff from Orono, was the terminal’s employee of the month.

  Langdon led them into a well-lit conference room surrounded by leather armchairs. When Langdon removed his overcoat, Macaulay noticed the Silver Star ribbon on the lapel of his suit jacket.

  “Second Gulf War?” asked Macaulay.

  Langdon nodded. “Operation Iraqi Freedom, they called it.”

  “I was there for the first one,” said Macaulay.

  “I’m sure we both lost friends over there, General,” said Langdon.

  He asked them to take the two seats opposite the video camera mounted on one side of the conference table.

  “I know you both must be tired, but we need your statements as soon as possible,” he said, opening his briefcase and removing an iPad. “A transcript of the interview will go out electronically as soon as we’re finished. These days, nothing is hoarded. Fifty agents from different shops will be working this case by tomorrow morning. For now, we just need to know everything that happened so we can go after the people who did this.”

  As Lexy sat down, the little agent set a plastic tray in front of her and then delivered a second one to Macaulay.

  “Maine’s finest,” he said, smiling.

  She gazed down at a lobster roll stuffed with big chunks of meat surrounded by a heaping mound of onion rings and French fries. A hand-baked chocolate chip cookie flanked the plate.

  “We thought you might be hungry,” said Eamon.

  “I’m ravenous,” said Lexy as he brought over two mugs of coffee.

  While they ate, Langdon turned on the video equipment and adjusted the settings.

  “The fragmentary reports we’ve received about what happened up there sound pretty ridiculous,” he said. “The first one involved an Arab commando team and the second concerned a group of Vikings.”

  “There weren’t any Arabs up there,” said Macaulay as he finished his coffee. “Someone sent you a red herring there.”

  “Fine,” said Langdon. “Let’s get started.”

  Lexy began first, describing her arrival at the expedition site, the discovery of the Vikings in the deep cave, the existence of the rune tablet, and the events that followed, including the arrival of the attackers, the removal of the artifacts, and the destruction of the camp.

  “So you’re saying that every member of the expedition, with the exception of Professor Jensen and General Macaulay, is dead,” said Langdon.

  “Yes,” responded Lexy.

  Macaulay took over at that point and described what had occurred in the wake of Falconer’s murder, the sabotaging of his helicopter by Jensen, the return to the destroyed base camp, and the trek across the ice cap to the coast.

  “I’m sure they are still looking for us,” he concluded.

  “Without a doubt,” agreed Langdon. “You’re incredibly fortunate to be here.”

  In spite of the harrowing nature of the events the pair described, Eamon was riveted by each new revelation. This was why he had joined the FBI, to bring a band of vicious terrorists like this to justice.

  “Well, I guess that does it,” said Langdon, turning off the video recorder and pulling a large brown envelope out of his briefcase. Opening it, he sorted through a sheaf of photographs that were inside, and handed one to Lexy.

  “Do you recognize this man?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s Hjalmar Jensen.”

  “And this one?”

  “Sir Dorian Bond,” she said.

  “How about this man?” he asked, handing her a third photograph.

  It was the blond leader of the commando team.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “His name is Joachim Halvorsen. They call him the Lynx,” said Langdon. “He is a former commando in the Norwegian Special Forces.”

  “Then you already know who they are,” said Lexy. “That’s a relief.”

  Langdon nodded and said, “Could you recognize any of the attackers aside from those two if you saw them again?”

  “I’m sure I could,” said Lexy.

  As Langdon took back the photographs, she noticed the lower rim of a small tattoo on the back of his wrist. Most of it was hidden by his watch, but it somehow looked familiar.

  “You said this other archaeologist, Mr. Falconer, was murdered by Professor Jensen because he acquired valuable information about the discovery, is that correct?” asked Langdon.

  “It’s a memory card from his Nikon camera,” said Macaulay. “Our assumption is that Falconer photographed the rune tablet containing the saga of Leif Eriksson’s last voyage, including his burial place somewhere on the East Coast.”

  “That would change history,” said Eamon.

  “Where is the memory card now?” asked Langdon.

  Lexy felt a growing sense of alarm. She tried to get Macaulay’s attention by prodding him in the knee, but he was already answering the agent’s question.

  “We have it here with us,” said Macaulay.

  “Good,” said Langdon. “Then we have everything we need. The sooner we get the memory card to Washington, the sooner we can begin to decipher its secrets and get a better understanding of why it was important enough to massacre fourteen men.”

  “I can’t think of any reason to send it into the bureaucratic maze,” said Lexy, looking to buy time. “There is no one there more capable than I am of deciphering those markings. I would be one of the first people they called to make the translation.”

  Macaulay sensed the change in attitude.

  “That may be true,” said Langdon, “but there are national security implications involved here, and the card needs to be put in the hands of people who can measure its overall importance.”

  “I’ve already measured its importance,” she said. “As long as General Macaulay and I are receiving federal protection, these issues will resolve themselves.”

  “Please give me the memory card,” said Langdon.

 
“No,” said Lexy as Macaulay continued staring at her.

  Langdon reached back into his leather briefcase. His right hand emerged from it holding a Heckler & Koch P2000 semiautomatic pistol. A silencer was screwed into the barrel.

  “I’m sorry about this, Eamon,” said Langdon.

  He pointed the pistol at the FBI agent and fired a single shot into his chest. Eamon’s eyes registered shock and pain as he collapsed to the floor behind the conference table. Lexy stared down at his lifeless body. A dense stream of blood began spreading across the polished linoleum floor.

  “I need that memory card,” said Langdon, aiming the pistol at Macaulay.

  “Why should we make it easy for you?” said Macaulay. “You’re going to kill us anyway.”

  “My orders are to kill only one of you,” said Langdon, his eyes filling. “I take no pleasure in murder, particularly people like Eamon who did not deserve to die, but I am on a mission and it’s a sacred one. I must do what is required of me. Each one of us is expected to fight, to sacrifice ourselves, to die if necessary.”

  “Why did you have to kill him?” asked Lexy.

  “No one must be allowed to learn of this discovery, at least right now,” said Langdon, training the pistol on them. “The future of the world is at stake. I know this will give you no solace, but I am part of a movement committed to saving it. I must have the memory card.”

  “No,” repeated Lexy firmly.

  “Since one of you obviously has it and I don’t know which, I have to ask you to remove your clothing and pass it across the table.”

  “You are sick,” said Macaulay.

  “The world is sick,” said Langdon. “No more delay.”

  Lexy knew their only hope was to buy more time. The memory card was still in her boot, and it was the last thing she planned to hand over. By then, someone, maybe one of the police officers outside, would come to investigate where they had gone and end the nightmare.

  Macaulay handed over his shirt. Langdon spread it on the table and used his left hand to examine the pockets and lining while keeping the gun aimed at them with his right. Lexy’s flannel shirt came next. Removing her bra, she tossed it across the table.

  “Would you like to examine these too?” she said, trying to sound provocative.

  “No,” said Langdon, watching Macaulay.

  As Lexy reached down to unlace her boots, she saw a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye. The little agent was lying on his side, facing away from her, but his right-hand fingers were moving through the expanding pool of blood. His fingers paused for a few moments and then started moving again as his consciousness came and went.

  She left her boots on the floor and stood up to remove her corduroy pants. After dropping them on the table, she glanced down again. Eamon’s hand was now at the hip holster on his slacks.

  Langdon finished searching Macaulay’s trousers and said, “Let’s have your boots.”

  Macaulay handed them over.

  The gun was now in the little agent’s hand. She gently prodded Macaulay in the ribs, trying to signal that something was about to happen. He glanced back, trying to divine her thoughts.

  Eamon was close to losing consciousness for the last time. God, there was so much of his blood on the floor. He didn’t know he had that much inside him. There couldn’t be much left. There was only the chance to save the others.

  Through the dizziness and pain, he could see Langdon’s legs on the far side of the table. He considered shooting upward through the table and trying to hit him in the chest. But what if he missed? His knees were less than five feet away. It would be hard to miss at that range. But first he needed to raise the gun off the floor.

  “And now your boots, Dr. Vaughan,” he heard Langdon say.

  The handgrip of the baby Glock was slippery with blood and felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. It took all his strength to raise the barrel a few inches off the floor. Langdon’s legs were swimming in and out of focus as wave after wave of nausea swept over him.

  “Thank you, Dr. Vaughan,” said Langdon as he pulled the memory card from her boot. “We’re done here. Now if you promise me . . .”

  When the shot roared out, Macaulay saw Langdon’s face contort with pain before he staggered to his feet and fired the silenced pistol three times through the tabletop. The third round ripped through Eamon’s forehead, blowing his brains out. By then, Macaulay had launched himself across the table, grabbing Langdon’s gun hand and wrestling him to the floor.

  Grunting with desperate effort, they fought for the gun. Even with a bullet in his knee, Langdon was stronger and far more experienced in hand-to-hand combat. Trapped in a headlock, Macaulay watched as the barrel of the pistol turned inward toward his belly.

  Another shot rang out, and Langdon went limp in his arms. Macaulay wrenched the pistol from his hand and shoved him away. He looked up to see Lexy standing above them and holding the other agent’s gun in her hand.

  Langdon rolled over on his back. The bullet had torn through the side of his chest and punctured his lungs. They watched as he spit out bloody foam. His breathing was reduced to brief spasmodic gasps as he stared up at them.

  “Valhalla,” he cried out before his eyes rolled up inside his head.

  Macaulay felt his carotid artery.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  Lexy knelt next to Langdon and raised his left arm. Unstrapping the wristwatch, she examined the tattoo in the harsh overhead lights. It wasn’t the flukes of an anchor. She recognized the symbol immediately.

  “I doubt the police outside could have heard your shot over the noise of the wind,” said Macaulay while he dressed. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  He stepped out into the corridor and listened for movement from the first floor. Apart from the wail of the wind, there was none. When he returned to the conference room, Lexy was dressed and gazing down at the body of the little agent.

  “Thank you, Eamon,” she said.

  Macaulay’s mind raced. By now he had hoped to be lying in a Jacuzzi with a Jack Daniel’s in his hand and looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Instead, there were two federal agents lying dead at their feet. It was all too big, too complicated to begin to figure it out.

  He opened Langdon’s briefcase and pulled out his federal credentials.

  “If these aren’t forged,” he said, “and I doubt they are, this guy worked directly for the president. If the White House is part of this thing, whatever this thing is, who knows how far the tentacles go? One thing is for sure—whoever sent him won’t hesitate to send a replacement.”

  “If we don’t stay here to tell our side of the story, they will think we murdered them,” said Lexy.

  “If we stay here, we may end up telling our story to another executioner,” he replied, glancing around the room. “Anyway, a good team of homicide investigators should be able to reconstruct what happened here. And they’ll have the video.”

  “But he turned it off before he showed us the photographs and shot Eamon.”

  “No one looking at those interviews will believe we had murderous intentions.”

  “How can you trust whoever gets here first not to destroy them?” asked Lexy.

  “You’re right,” he conceded, his exhausted mind reeling. “The only thing we can do at this point is go to ground until we can find out who we can trust.”

  “Go where?” asked Lexy.

  “One burning building at a time,” said Macaulay, removing the disk drive from the video recorder and putting it in Langdon’s briefcase along with the sheaf of photographs still lying on the conference table and his federal credentials.

  Lexy noticed that Langdon’s iPad had fallen to the floor. She picked it up.

  “We should take this too,” she said. “Maybe there’s something on it that will explain what’s behind this.�
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  While she added it to the briefcase, Macaulay went over to the bodies and pulled out their wallets. Langdon had sixty dollars and the little agent ten. He took the cash and put their wallets back where he found them.

  “We’ll leave everything else as it is,” said Macaulay.

  “Our fingerprints are on those guns,” said Lexy.

  “And everywhere else too,” he said, turning out the lights behind them.

  When they reached the first floor, Macaulay saw that the staircase kept going down to a subbasement. Following it, they came to two intersecting corridors, one leading to a series of underground offices, and a second that led into darkness.

  Macaulay produced the flashlight from his pocket, and they continued along the second corridor for another hundred feet until arriving at another set of concrete stairs that led up to a steel door with a self-locking security bar. Macaulay opened the door and stepped into what appeared to be a small emergency power plant. Two large diesel generators sat in the center of the room.

  “These probably provide backup power to the terminal,” said Macaulay.

  Wind-driven snow was lashing the windows. Looking outside, he couldn’t see any sign of the police cordon, but he assumed they still surrounded the general aviation terminal.

  The small building backed up to the long-term parking facility, and that gave him an idea. Picking up a flatiron bar from the workbench along the far wall, he said, “Wait here.”

  Forcing open the exterior door, he stepped outside and let it slam shut behind him. Walking quickly across the parking lot, he scanned the first row of cars and trucks. All of them were buried by more than a foot of snow.

  A Ford Ranger pickup in the second row had less than three inches on it. Macaulay assumed that if the owner had just left the vehicle in the long-term lot, there was a good chance he wasn’t coming back right away.

  Using the bar, he smashed a small hole in the rear window on the driver’s side and reached inside to unlock the door. Climbing in, he shined his flashlight on the ignition switch.

  It was no challenge to hot-wire the ignition. Long before he fell in love with fighter jets, Macaulay’s passion had been working on fast cars. Using his jackknife, he pried the plastic cover panel off the ignition tumbler.