The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  Jackson said nothing. Now that he’d connected DiCanio with Hans Runig, he doubted that her ambition was anything quite as altruistic as reversing climate change. He had to admit, it had been a persuasive argument, at the time. Many scientists he knew felt extremely passionate about climate change; but not enough to resort to kidnap and murder. As far as DiCanio went, he’d assumed her interest in hypnoticin was more likely to be academic – a crucial step on the way to that elusive prize of prizes; the Nobel.

  Even that didn’t make sense, in the context of what Jackson now understood.

  “Those two chambers, Connor. What are they for?”

  Above him on the ridge, Connor glanced around. “Get some sleep,” he ordered, ignoring Jackson’s question. “I’ll wake you in three hours.”

  “What are they for?”

  Still facing away, Connor shook his head. Outlined against the stars, he could see the rhythmic movement of Connor’s jaw working the cinnamon-flavored gum. “I can’t tell you that, little brother. Because I don’t know. Now get some sleep.”

  Jackson could only comply as far as closing his eyes. Unlike Connor, he lacked the discipline to snatch sleep when he saw any opportunity. Overwhelmed with the day’s experiences and the multiplicity of possibilities for his future, Jackson’s mind raced. There was no chance to rest.

  Why was he prostrate on the floor under a roof of desert stars, standing guard over a fortress with his twin brother? As far as Jackson was concerned, choice hadn’t yet really come into it; the only option he was ever given was to opt out, not in.

  Now, he had some time to think about it. With good reason, he feared DiCanio and her organization. What he had seen could well represent just the tip of an iceberg. She’d been putting the group together for years. Jackson had a piece of information which DiCanio and her group had yet to elucidate. There was little doubt that she would stop at nothing to get that information.

  Connor and the NRO were trying to uncover some greater mystery than the simple existence of ancient technology. It was pretty clear that Connor wasn’t going to divulge any more than he’d already told Jackson. Well, fine. Jackson could also play that game. Connor hadn’t promised Jackson anything yet; not safety for Marie-Carmen, nor immunity to prosecution.

  Jackson had only one card left to play – the solution to the puzzle of the Adaptor inscription.

  If he was right, it could be the answer to the mystery of the ancient chambers. Connor had referred to the chamber as ‘technology’. Maybe that amino acid sequence was a formula – a biochemical required to activate the chamber.

  Uneasily, Jackson realized that the entire body of evidence relating to this theory was held on his webmail account. Should DiCanio or Connor’s people crack his password, he would have nothing.

  Was that what DiCanio was doing inside that quasi-medieval structure? Jackson couldn’t help wondering. While he and Connor waited under the sky, was DiCanio unraveling his final secret?

  The Good Soldier

  There was still no moon. Jackson was staring into one of the darkest skies he could remember. The stars were impossibly bright, oppressive in their density. He hadn’t camped out in the desert since he’d been a small boy. Then as now, Connor had been the one to insist on tending the watch – in that case, over the small fire which they’d made themselves. Or more accurately, which Connor had built and lit; he’d barely trusted Jackson to gather firewood and tinder. Jackson remembered finding the experience difficult, uncomfortable and totally lacking in the magic he’d anticipated. Until the sky blackened completely, revealing the stars. That night too, there’d been no moon; the stars had leapt out of the sky, as tangible as a thick frosting of diamonds sprinkled over crushed black velvet. Jackson had been breathless with the clarity of that moment. He couldn’t decide which rich seam of heaven to stare at first.

  After that experience and for many years afterwards, Jackson had dreamed of being an astronomer. Eventually he’d been betrayed by his lack of ability in mathematics. By then however, he’d already begun a life-long love affair with the puzzles of the genetic code. From the moment when as a teenager he’d read James Watson’s account of the cracking of the structure and code of DNA, he’d begun to forget about the planets and wonder what secrets were stored within that remarkable molecule.

  Now, eighteen years later, he found himself once more asking the question he’d pondered all those years ago as a boy in Yellowstone National Park. Could it be that our world was alone, that amongst all those countless points of light, only ours could support intelligent life?

  Aged ten, Jackson had felt certain that there was life elsewhere. What he’d seen today made him start seriously to doubt the conventional scientific wisdom that we were, in fact, entirely alone.

  Connor had spoken of aircraft; he’d alluded to the technology of the underground chamber. The sarcophagi-like nature of those caskets, the involvement of molecules composed of amino acids; both pointed to some kind of advanced medical function. How could such technologies have existed 74,000 years ago, without external assistance? And how could a complex, technologically advanced society have vanished with almost no trace? Jackson couldn’t help recalling DiCanio’s portentous words reminding him that in the end, all of earth’s prior civilizations had been extinguished, defeated. Or like the Ancient Maya, apparently of their own volition, they had simply given up the ghost.

  One day, he mused, doom might rain down from the sky, obliterating humanity as it once had obliterated the dinosaurs. That idea was terrifying enough, but it could hardly be prevented. The idea that humanity itself might bring about its own demise was more disturbing.

  Jackson knew that his brother was at heart the good soldier; obedient and patriotic. Connor didn’t have any problem in following orders, had no inner conflict about the goals he served. The USA’s entire military strategy was predicated on their own armed forces retaining their position as the world’s supreme fighting force. The mere suggestion of anything superior had to be dealt with, ruthlessly.

  How easy it must be to live your life that way, Jackson thought, with a touch of envy. He couldn’t curb his own curiosity. He would always rather know the truth than obey orders. Fundamentally, he mistrusted everything that came out of the mouth of any elected official. Even if he had helped to elect them. That was the one, irreconcilable difference between Connor and him.

  A faint breeze picked up to the west of their position. It rustled through the fronds of a small palm grove nearby. Over the course of the next hour, Jackson stirred uncomfortably on the hard ground. The pains in his shoulder and chest had returned with a fiery vengeance, and his leg wound still occasionally stung. He was exhausted, yet unable to sleep, unable to find answers to his questions and, most worryingly, unable to decide to which side of this argument he truly belonged.

  Just as finally he began to drift off, Jackson was awakened by Connor hissing at him. He was pulling on the damp jeans that Jackson had discarded earlier that night.

  “Wake up, get everything ready to go!”

  Jackson checked his watch. It showed the time as 4:04am. Connor’s body was tense as he peered through the night-vision goggles. “A truck,” he murmured. “Refrigerated. Looks like a food delivery. My guess is she’ll use this as a way out.”

  Jackson picked up Connor’s equipment belt, noting that it held no weapons. Clearly, his brother still didn’t trust him.

  “Why the subterfuge?” he whispered. “If she reported us for following her, the police would have found us by now.”

  “No; if she bought that little ruse last night, then the police think we’ve gone ahead to Doha. She’ll be afraid to use that Mercedes again in case we’re waiting to ambush her on the way. My money’s on this delivery truck.”

  Connor slid backwards down the ridge. He stood dusting himself off, and gave Jackson a triumphant wink. “Hop aboard. You’re gonna come along and help me catch this fish. Let’s get started down the road before they work out that they�
��ve been seen.”

  They headed back onto the main road and took the highway to Doha. At this time of night, the roads were almost entirely empty. Connor sped ahead until any headlights behind them were just dimly visible. They rode across the barren landscape until they reached an even broader road, the main Eastern highway connecting most of the country’s main towns with the capital, Doha. Connor took them off the road, concealing the Harley behind a row of desert palms which lined part of the major highway.

  After a few minutes delivery truck approached. As it passed under a street lamp, Jackson could see that it was covered with writing in Arabic and illustrations of cows, milk cartons and yoghurts.

  “That it?”

  Connor nodded. “You see her?”

  Jackson hadn’t seen anyone in the driver’s cabin, except a single driver. “She must be in the cold storage section.”

  Just as they were about to start the engine once again, they heard another car approach, its lights on full beam. It passed them seconds later, about two hundred yards behind the dairy truck.

  It was a taxi – an E-series Mercedes.

  Dumbstruck, the brothers stared impotently at the car. Hurriedly, Connor started up the engine, waiting for the taxi’s tail-lights to recede into the distance.

  “I say she’s in the milk truck,” Jackson said.

  Connor peered into the mirror. “I wonder.”

  They took the coastal highway, staying barely in sight of the Mercedes’s lights. The sun had just begun to set fire to the eastern horizon. As Connor and Jackson rode closer to Doha with the Persian Gulf on their left, the sun rose directly above the water’s horizon, a blazing distraction in their peripheral vision. In front of them, the light on the road grew hazy, a vaporous chiffon which made it almost impossible to keep sight of the two cars in front.

  By the time they rode into the outskirts of the main city, the entire sky in the east had turned a delicious shade of mauve. Apart from an occasional market truck or taxi, there was no traffic. The taxi they were following slowed as it drove onto the Doha Corniche, a four mile-long stretch of waterfront gardens and coastal paths. The dairy truck, they could just see, was still ahead of the Mercedes.

  As the dairy truck approached the end of the bay, it turned down the road into the harbor. The taxi followed. On the short spur of highway within the harbor complex, the dairy truck continued directly towards the end, where a collection of elegant club houses occupied the wharf. The taxi, in contrast, took the first right turn towards the yacht marina.

  Arriving at the turning, Connor stopped the bike.

  “Follow the Mercedes. I’m gonna see where that truck goes.” He removed a sidearm from a weapon holster, and handed it to Jackson, who answered him with a questioning look.

  “For security,” said Connor, placating him. “If she’s not in the truck I’ll be back real quick to save your ass.”

  Jackson took off at a trot. The taxi had already vanished from sight, but as he turned the corner he could just make out a man and woman in traditional Arab attire getting out of the taxi and walking down the third and final pier, about a hundred yards away. By the time Jackson reached that pier, however, there was no sign of activity. The moored yachts rocked in a gentle tide. Aside from the occasional slap of water against a boat’s hull, there was almost no sound.

  Twenty boats were moored along the pier, ten on each side. Jackson began walking up the pier, peering into the window of each yacht’s cabin. He reached the end, without spotting any sign of the couple he’d seen disembark from the taxi. Jackson was turning back when he thought he saw a movement through one of the windows. For a split second he had clear sight of the woman. She was dressed in a black flowing dress, covered with a black abayah. Jackson leaned forward, balancing on the guard rail of the closest yacht, trying to take a closer look.

  A voice sounded, close behind him; a sharp, tenor voice, carefully-enunciated, American English with a distinct Arabic accent.

  “Hey, American! In my country it’s considered most impertinent to look at another man’s wife in such a way!”

  Jackson spun around. Less than two yards away, a gun was pointing at his head. The weapon was firmly gripped in two hands, by a man dressed in white robes with a red-and-white, check-patterned ghutra on his head. He looked to be in his late twenties, handsome, pale and with high cheekbones, clean-shaven. His aim was rock-steady as he waited for an answer from Jackson.

  “She’s your wife?”

  “Even if she weren’t, you’d need a lesson in manners. Put your gun on the floor.”

  “I don’t have a . . .”

  Jackson heard the click of the safety catch being removed. “Gun on the ground, friend. Now.”

  Jackson withdrew the pistol he’d been given by Connor. He placed it beside his right foot.

  “Kick it over here.”

  Jackson did as he was ordered. The guy leaned down, without taking his eyes or the gun from Jackson. He picked up the gun, tossed it into the bay.

  “This is private property. Tell me, American, do you happen to own one of these boats?”

  Jackson stared. There was something wrong with the man’s voice. Some words were pronounced without a trace of a foreign accent. Was it possible that the guy was faking it? In the distance, Jackson could hear the Harley. Connor was on his way.

  “I’m sorry if I offended . . .” Jackson began. “I was looking for someone. I thought she might be here.”

  He began to move.

  “Who told you to move?”

  This time, there could be no doubt. The young guy had fired the words rapidly, fluently. The ‘Arabic’ accent had disappeared.

  From the end of the pier, a third man’s voice rang out. “Better drop that gun, pal.”

  Jackson didn’t dare to budge. His brother had arrived.

  The guy in the Arab costume glanced briefly over his shoulder at Connor, who had stalled the Harley about forty yards away from their position. Connor was taking careful aim at Jackson’s assailant.

  “At this distance?” The young man forced a laugh. He’d thrown out all pretense of being a local. He indicated Jackson, with the gun. “I think this guy is in more danger than me.”

  “I don’t,” Connor said, drily. “But then, I’ve shot down Iraqi MiGs as they buzzed around my jet like angry little bees. A stationary target at forty yards, that’s kid stuff.”

  There was the briefest of pauses. Then a shot rang out. The Arab-costumed man gave a short, sharp exclamation. The pure white sleeve of his thobe bloomed suddenly with his own blood. The man’s pistol fell to the ground with a heavy clunk.

  Connor sounded irritated. “Jacko, what are you waiting for; slam the bastard!”

  Jackson lunged forward. He landed a well-aimed kick to the guy’s torso, knocking him backwards into the water.

  “So you can move.” Connor peered over the edge of the jetty, watching the man in the water wriggle out of his thobe. In another minute he dived beneath the surface and disappeared under the jetty.

  “That’s all I got,” Jackson said. “That’s my one move. Nice shooting, by the way!”

  “Not really. I was aiming for his head.”

  At that moment, a yacht started up its engines. It was the boat on which Jackson had observed the woman in black Arab dress.

  Connor raised his voice above the engines. “Is that her boat?”

  Jackson paused. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

  In fact, he had nothing but a hunch. He’d seen the woman’s face for less than a second and her veil had obscured most of that. But Jackson had noticed an anomalous lack of eye make-up. Most of the women he’d seen in Iraq, Bahrain and even Qatar had eyes made-up dramatically enough that even the briefest glimpse – which was all he’d ever caught – was memorable. The woman on board had paid no such attention to her eyes.

  Abruptly, the yacht pulled away from its moorings. It began to maneuver out of its position. Connor sprang into action. He hurled himself a
nd the bike forward. Jackson darted aside, balked as he watched Connor climb up the bike, standing on the seat as the bike took off from the end of the pier. In mid arc, Connor launched himself further into the air, using the seat as a platform. He flew gracelessly through the air, thudded to a crashing halt against the hull of the yacht, now about thirty yards away. One arm was outstretched and grabbed at the mooring rope.

  Connor was hanging on with his left hand. In his right hand he still clutched a gun. Scrabbling at the guard rail with his two smallest fingers, Connor had just managed to grab hold of the rail with his left hand when the woman arrived on the deck.

  She aimed an automatic pistol directly at Connor’s head. He dropped below the line of the deck, hanging by his fingers, still clinging to the boat. A second later, the woman leaned over the guard rail. The head-dress of her chador was lopsided, revealing a glimpse of the blonde hair beneath. Connor was confronted with the owl-like gaze of her dark glasses. He shifted, breathing hard. He couldn’t both hold on and point his gun at her, so he merely held on.

  “You’ve gotten a little greedy,” the woman told him. “Always a mistake.” She spoke with a faintly Texan drawl, her disguise summarily betrayed. “Now, from the heroics we’ve just witnessed, I’m guessing you’re Connor, not his nerdly twin brother. You’re gonna have to decide: do you want to climb aboard?” She paused. “So, do you want to shoot me, Captain Bennett? Can’t have it both ways.”

  Connor exhaled, eyeing her closely.

  “Let go,” DiCanio said firmly, “Or I’ll shoot.”

  “Don’t shoot me, Melissa,” Connor said suddenly, mimicking the tone of Jackson’s which most annoyed him. “Please. I know what’s written on the Adaptor. Not the Lament for Eridu – the real inscription. I’ve seen it, deciphered it.”