Matt nodded and took a seat on the couch; resting his elbows on his knees.
“We have Intel he’s after the tooth, yes. Why, we haven’t figured out yet, but I know this man — all too well and my gut tells me it’s not to demystify history. He’s up to something. He’s far too conceited to do this in secret.”
Sam watched as Matt’s knuckles grew white under his clenched hands. There was certainly history between these two men; and whatever it was showed. Matt got up and walked to the window.
“How long has she been gone? Has she made contact at all?”
“She left a couple of days ago. We have no way of getting in touch with her. Our Sat phone took a bullet and they’ve been trying to somehow establish contact with HQ since.”
Sam’s tone changed to anger. “You know she’s out there totally exposed. You promised her she’d be protected. Who knows if she’s even still alive?”
Matt placed his hands on his hips. “Did she say where she was headed?”
“Professor Graham’s office at the Wits University.”
“Great!”Matt swung around and stormed out the front door.
“You’re welcome!” Sam yelled sarcastically after him as he watched Matt join the lieutenant outside. Knowing there was someone else after the tooth and that Alex was totally unaware of the danger had him break out in a cold sweat. Yes, he had a broken wrist, but his legs still worked, and he knew her thought process. There’s no way he’d let her stay out there all by herself. Sam leaped across the lounge and at the door to join the lieutenant and Matt where they studied a map.
“I’m going with you,” Sam announced.
“Like hell you are Quinn. You’re injured and you could cause more harm than good to this rescue,” Matt replied.
“Rescue? Ha, you have another thing coming if you think you’re off to rescue Alex. She’s tougher than you think Fletcher. I’m quite certain she’s several steps ahead of Volkov; or anyone else for that matter. But nonetheless, she’s exposed and I know her like the back of my hand. I’m coming with you, and that’s final.”
Matt folded the map back in his backpack without saying a word.
“Fine, have it your way,” he said swinging the pack onto his back. “Lieutenant, I need you to get the others back to the UK safely. Quinn and I will go on to find Hunt. I’ll need one of your vehicles and a helicopter on standby at my original pick-up point in the desert. It should be safe and out of sight there until we find a way to reach it.”
“Copy that, Sir.” The lieutenant agreed and spun on his heels to execute his orders.
“We leave in an hour, Quinn. I’ll meet you out back.”
An hour later Sam was ready and stood waiting for Fletcher at the barn behind the house. The last bit of the sun’s rays hit the roof of the farmhouse where the team was also due to leave shortly. Sam stared across the farmland moments before he felt the thudding pain against the back of his head and fell to the ground.
Chapter Eighteen
Back at the zoo
“There’s no way I’m going inside that cage Alex! Forget it.”
Alex giggled while holding the blank pages of the leather book out in front of her; hinting for Ezra to use his lighter again. He did, anxiously keeping his eye on the vicious gorilla who paced the inside of its cage behind them.
“X marks the spot and this is definitely it.” Alex slammed the book closed and stuck it back down her shirt. Searching the cage with her eyes she recited the clue over and over.
Between jackets and spines lie the hidden root that reveals to all the submerged foot.
“Hidden root, hidden root,” Alex chimed. “Root of a tree, root of a problem maybe, rooted in something, rooting for someone.”
Alex walked up and down along the fence while the male primate followed her every step along the inside of the fence; grunting angrily. Her eyes searched every inch of the cage for anything that lined up with the clue, but nothing did. Something just wasn’t adding up. Hand on hip she let out a deep sigh and turned away from the cage.
“It’s got to be here somewhere. This is the exact spot Professor Graham marked in the book.”
She faced the starving silverback again, staring into his black eyes.
“Speak to me gorilla. Where did the professor hide the clue?”
The gorilla studied her pensive face. His black angry eyes relaxed and he stared back at her with deep and desperate sadness that touched the very depths of her heart. Behind him his weak female sat with their baby clinging on for dear life. Still nowhere closer to an answer Alex flipped the lid off the metal trunk she had pulled out of the storage behind the enclosure and tossed several pieces of nearly rotten fruit and vegetables over the fence. There was no way of saving these animals right now. She’d have to hope the zookeepers somehow managed to get them to safety but the food would at least sustain them a little while longer.
The male gorilla scooped several pieces of fruit up and delivered it into his female’s lap before going back for more. Alex could have sworn his tender eyes communicated his gratitude. As enormous as they were, in that moment, they seemed very human to her and she continued throwing fruit over the fence. Midway through catapulting the last watermelon into the pen she suddenly stopped.
“It’s a bloody red herring! Of course! How did I not see it? Light it again, Ezra!” Alex yelled; excitement exploding from her voice as she flipped open the book’s pages and stuffed it under Ezra’s nose.
Ezra who had anxiously been watching the gorilla’s every move jerked at her sudden command and flicked the cap of his lighter open.
“It was right here all along.”
“What was?” Ezra fumbled with his lighter once again holding it under the book’s empty pages.
“Lower, more, more, there! See it?”
Ezra cocked his head sideways. “Ok, it’s a string of numbers. The combination to the lock on the gorilla’s cage?”
Alex knelt down in the patch of dirt next to the cage and enthusiastically copied the numbers into the sand.
“No, it’s not actually in the gorilla’s cage. It’s not even anywhere at the zoo.”
“What are you talking about? The map brought us here. X marked the spot.”
“Yes, that’s what he wanted us to think. He intentionally led us astray; threw us off the trail.”
Ezra stared at her with a blank expression on his face.
“Look it’s very simple. The clue said the hidden root lay between jackets and spines. The root is R-O-O-T as in solution, not the root of a tree. The root is the actual solution which he hid in this book. Except it wasn’t the map. That was a decoy. It was the submerged foot.”
“Yeah you’re still not making any sense, Alex. I wasn’t the brightest at school but as far as I know submerge means to put something under water and well, a foot is a foot.”
“That’s what’s so genius. The professor wanted us to think literally about the clues, but deciphering cryptic is often parables or abstract. The word ‘submerge’ can also mean to conceal or be hidden and the word ‘foot’ in this case is the foot of the page. So the hidden solution was at the foot of the page. See? It’s the numbers.”
Ezra scratched his head but slowly lit up as he pieced it all together. He watched Alex fervently scratch in the dirt.
“So what do we do with all these numbers? What does it even mean?”
“Simple, it’s an alphabet replacement clue. Look, each number represents a letter of the alphabet. A = 1, B = 2, and so on, and these numbers, my dear friend, spell out RISING STAR.”
Ezra shook his head and laughed. “Who are you again? I have no idea how you know all this but I’ve never seen anything like it. You are like an amplified Lara Croft.”
He turned to face the gorillas devour their small supply of food.
“What do you think will happen to them?”
“I’m not sure, Ezra, but as much as I’d like to help them, we have to get out of here. Volkov is a smart man. I
have no doubt he’ll catch up to us very soon. It’s getting dark. If we can get a head start right now and get out of the city tonight it might just be our saving grace.”
Alex got up and kicked dirt over the numbers to bury the clue.
“Any idea what this clue means?” Ezra asked as he tossed the last medley of vegetables over the enclosure’s fence.
“You bet. The professor’s hidden the tooth back in the very place the rest of the bones were found — The Rising Star.”
“Great, and that is what exactly?”
“It’s the very cave Homo naledi was excavated. It’s at the Cradle of Humankind. Let’s go.”
Outside the zoo they arrived to where their car had been ransacked entirely. The wheels had been stolen and the steering wheel was missing.
“Oh come on!” Ezra shouted. “It’s those bloody kids. Now what?”
“We walk until we find another one. Let’s go. Be alert.”
Walking the empty streets of Johannesburg at night was suicide, even in normal circumstances. Doing it in the middle of a civil outbreak was ludicrous, but they had no other option. With their rifles on their hips, they set off down the road in search of another vehicle. The sun had just about fully set and it was as if the ghost town during the day had suddenly come alive with gangs and violent criminals who used the obscurity of the night to their full advantage. As they were about to turn the corner at the end of the block Ezra, who was walking in front, stopped and pulled Alex back against the wall. An army tanker was working its way down the quiet street towards them. If they were seen they’d be detained indefinitely. They ran in the opposite direction and hid in a narrow alley behind rotten food delivery cardboard boxes. A few rats scattered noisily under their feet causing Alex’s heart to skip several beats. When the tanker had passed and there was enough distance between them, they slipped out from behind the garbage and ran up another side road. From a block of flats above their heads screams echoed through the darkness followed by a crying baby. Alex forced herself not to think about the possible causes thereof and pushed on with caution. A few blocks further a small supermarket’s lights illuminated the dark sidewalk in front of them.
“Think we can stop to get something to eat and drink?” Ezra asked. “We’re likely not going to find another one open.”
“I don’t know Ezra. He shouldn’t even be open at this time of night under these circumstances. Let’s keep going.”
“Not sure I can Alex. I’m starving. We’ll be in and out, ok?”
“Sure, but let’s make it quick,” Alex reluctantly gave in and they proceeded into the store.
A man of Indian descent apprehensively went for his gun under the counter as soon as he saw them in their combat attire, scaring his tabby cat off the counter and into hiding under one of the shelves.
“It’s cool my friend, we’re Defense Force,” Ezra calmed the man. “We’re on patrol just looking for something to eat, all’s good.”
The man nodded and directed them to the back of the shop where he had a small supply of fresh sandwiches.
“One would think he’d be hiding in his home,” Alex whispered to Ezra as they headed toward the back of the shop.
“I guess he’s desperate to put food on the table. Tuna or Ham?”
“I’m not much of a fish person,” Alex replied back as she took the Ham and Cheese sandwich from his hand. Ezra turned and scooped two Coca Colas from the fridge. Above their heads, in the overhead mirror, Alex caught a glimpse of two hooded men walking into the shop and a second later they heard the shopkeeper beg for his life. Obscured by the tall shelving, Alex pulled Ezra down behind the shelf and out of the mirror’s reflection as she instantly concluded the store was being robbed. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears as she listened to them threaten the Indian shop owner. They weren’t out to save the world tonight, but there they were; caught in the middle of calamity and conscience. While one of the thugs instructed the shopkeeper to empty his till and hand over his money, the other skimmed the shop to see if they were alone. Alex and Ezra shuffled quietly between the shelves to remain out of sight. The owner of the shop hesitated to hand over his earnings. The criminal shoved his gun toward the owner and shouted impatiently, slamming his hand loudly onto the counter in front of him. The sudden loud noise frightened the owner’s cat out from under the shelf next to Ezra’s feet, drawing attention to the back of the shop. Alex lay flat on the floor behind one of the shelves, keeping her eyes on their feet from beneath the shelving. She anxiously watched as one of the burglars made his way toward where Ezra sat huddled behind another shelf. Quick on her feet she took a tin of baked beans off the shelf next to her and rolled it into the opposite direction. The thug stopped inches away from Ezra and swung around quickly at the unexpected noise behind him. Now sensitive to the possibility that someone else was in the shop and that they might not be alone, they instructed the shopkeeper to move out from behind his counter and down the aisle passing to the right of Ezra’s shelf. He did so grudgingly; pushed forward by the thug’s gun in his ribs. On the left side of the shelf the second thug walked down, gun pointed out in front of his nose. From where Alex hid two shelves away she watched as they moved closer to where Ezra still sat hidden at the foot of the shelf with nowhere to go.
Her mind searched frantically for the best way out and, automatically found her body moving back up the aisle towards the front of the shop. She’d surprise them from behind and hopefully, create enough distraction for Ezra and the shop owner to get away from them for long enough for her to help them escape somehow. Alex pushed a container of loose candy off the counter onto the floor. The thugs both swung around and fired their guns in her direction. Ezra jumped them from behind, pulling the shopkeeper down onto the floor behind him. Alex dove behind the counter taking cover from the incoming rain of bullets and heard several bullets exchanging at the back of the shop. Above her head the round mirror in the corner of the shop played out a grueling scene between Ezra and both burglars who now opened full gunfire at him. With Ezra’s body only half protected by the shelf, he narrowly missed several bullets. What felt like minutes later Alex watched as Ezra shot and killed one of them. Now one man down, the thief was outnumbered and Alex decided to have another go at the remaining gunman. She bobbed up from behind the counter and fired three bullets into his back. He dropped dead to the floor.
With both criminals now dead, Alex rose fully from behind the counter.
“Clear!” she shouted waiting for Ezra to respond. He didn’t. Her stomach tightened as she rushed down the aisle to the back of the shop where she found the shop owner sitting on the floor next to Ezra’s semi-conscious body.
“No, no, no! Get help!” she shouted at the shopkeeper as she pulled Ezra’s barely conscious body across her lap. The shop owner disappeared through a hidden door behind one of the fridges at the back.
“Ezra, stay with me. You’re not dying like this, you hear me? Stay with me.”
But Ezra couldn’t speak. His eyes had dulled over and his breathing slowed down to a shallow pant. Just above the neck of his combat vest a bullet had penetrated his body. Alex tightened his vest in an effort to compress the blood flow.
“Help is coming, ok. Just stay with me.”
Behind them the shopkeeper came rushing back into the shop with two burly Indian men at his side. It took just a brief instant for them to lift Ezra up and Alex found herself following them through the secret door, up a dark, narrow flight of stairs into a small apartment on top of the shop.
“No! We need to get him to the hospital,” Alex yelled in a panic as they lay him down on a couch.
“He’ll bleed to death if we don’t get him to a doctor!”
“I have doctor. This Patel, my third cousin, he doctor.” The shop owner explained in a thick Indian accent as he hurriedly pushed her out of the way and ushered one of the burly men through.
“He needs a hospital!” Alex tried again but they ignored her.
A sho
rt elderly woman, dressed in an olive green sari, pulled her out of the way and to the side of the room. Alex fought off the intense aching pain that gripped her chest as she helplessly watched Patel work on Ezra. Deep regret ripped through her numb body. She should have never agreed to stopping for the stupid sandwich. None of this would have happened. The sequence of events repeated in her mind as she took a sip of the strange herbal tea the woman gave her and, much to her surprise, observed Patel’s medically experienced hands nimbly at work on Ezra’s bullet wound. Time seemed to stand still as she waited for a miracle but in the early hours that morning, Ezra T-bone Theron joined his parents in the afterlife.
When Alex finally wiped her tears and lifted her head off Ezra’s lifeless body, she slipped her hand inside his pocket and pulled out his father’s gold lighter. Her thumb rubbed over the inscription that read ‘to the bravest man I’ve ever known.’
The lighter was meant to bring him good luck and look where it got him. But brave he certainly was. Earlier that week this young soldier had not only saved her from Volkov, but also Sam from falling to his death and now the Indian shop keeper from being killed too. He was indeed the bravest man that lived and in her eyes, a true hero.
Chapter Nineteen
Alex rubbed her swollen eyes and temples to relieve the throbbing pain in her head. She looked around the poorly lit tiny apartment and found herself still sitting in the recliner she fell asleep in the night before. She stared at the empty couch where Ezra took his last breath. A pool of dry blood stared back at her. She sat up and skimmed the room around her and found the old lady seated at the tiny round dining table behind her.
“Where’s Ezra? What have you done with him?” she yelled out angrily.
The little Indian woman didn’t answer. Alex threw the quilt off her legs and walked over to her.
“Where’s my friend? Where’s your son?”
The Alpha Strain Page 12