UNSEEN FORCES: SKY WILDER (BOOK ONE)

by Ed Kovacs

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say these items are authentic,” stated Frank. “Probably hidden here in Arizona within the last seventy-five or one hundred years. As map coordinates became more accurate, the secret society carefully noted the exact location of their stash. Bad luck for them, because finders, keepers. This is public land and legally, after our discovery, no one can lay claim to these goods. Now where’s the tablet?”

  Wilder didn’t respond, just stared at the jar. Finally he crossed to it and, with a little effort, removed the lid. He looked inside, then carefully reached both hands into the jar and lifted out a stone tablet about the size of a paperback book. Egyptian hieroglyphics were etched onto the stone.

  “Is that it?”

  “Yeah, appears to be.”

  “Jeez, man, why aren’t you excited?! You should feel, I mean, this is big. This is the vindication you need. You’re not on the outside anymore. You’ve proved your theory, you’re mainstream all the way!” Frank ranted with elation.

  Wilder put soft goatskin on top of the altar and set the tablet on its side. He remained silent as he quickly took photographs, then used tracing paper on both sides and on the edges of the tablet to duplicate the etchings. He finished quickly. “We’re in deep trouble here, my friend. And we certainly can’t tell anybody about this.”

  “What?! You find the Holy Grail and you want to put it back in the box and pretend you didn’t see it?”

  Sky fixed Frank with a dead serious look. “Six weeks ago a guy in his fifties came up to me in the men's room of the Waldorf-Astoria lobby in New York City. After he checked to make sure nobody was hiding in the stalls, he told me he was an army general who’d read the galleys of my new book. He was interested in my work, and said some other organization that wasn’t so friendly was also interested. He told me to be careful, extra careful, and to call him if I ever got into trouble.”

  Sky produced a business card from his wallet. “General Klaymen. A couple of times since then, I’ve been followed. And you and I have been stalked by bobcat enough times, you know that I know when I’m being watched.”

  “Were they the General’s men?”

  Wilder shrugged, folded the tracings, then stashed them in his hiking boot.

  “So that explains the camouflage netting. And the thirty-eight snubby in your fanny pack.”

  “Call it a paranoid precaution.” Sky looked deeply at Frank. “Sorry to get you involved in this, brother.”

  Frank smiled. “You would never have brought me along if you thought there was going to be trouble. Which means you didn’t expect to find anything here. You weren’t really sure that you broke the code. You always liked the hunt, didn’t matter if we bagged anything or not.”

  “The only thing that matters right now, is that two other tablets are unsecured and waiting to be found. If I broke the code, somebody else can, too. Until I have the other two tablets and they’re well-protected, we can’t go public with this.”

  “Sure we could, if we’re careful. These artifacts belong in a museum. Even if there was a Book of Spells somewhere, you don’t believe someone could consume a potion and become physically immortal, do you?”

  “Of course I don’t believe that. Although if I’d seen Moses part the Red Sea, I might be giving you a different answer. The problem is that other people, desperate people, will stop at nothing, will kill without an afterthought, to find out whether Hui’s elixir works or not.”

  “That’s probably true,” Frank sighed.

  “Even if we found all three tablets, it would be safer to never go public. And instead of vindication, I’ll still just be a fringe archeologist, a kook on the margins.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Marcus Townsend sat at the bar in The 51st State Tavern in Georgetown, his favorite Washington, D.C. watering-hole, drinking a Bud draft and munching on a couple of fifty cent Happy Hour tacos that served as his dinner. Marcus did this every Monday night. It seemed to make economic sense, although the spicy snacks made him thirsty to order more beers, which he justified since he saved money by not buying a meal.

  Not that Marcus needed money. Even after alimony payments, his salary as a GS-12, topped with LEAP and locality pay allotment spiffs, enabled him to live more than adequately.

  None of his friends sat in attendance tonight. Different sporting events, mostly baseball and soccer, flashed on the strategically placed monitors. There was no big game as such; his Monday night habit existed simply as an extension of Monday Night Football. Thanks to satellite and cable, regardless of the season, teams battled on the tube, like the women’s badminton match between Thailand and China, playing on the monitor closest to him. Those Asian girls were tall, but he fantasized about doing the ones who didn't look too butch.

  In 51st State, Marcus got lucky maybe once a month, so to maintain his .250 average, he needed a hit tonight. He’d been following a particularly spirited volley, so he didn’t notice the woman come in. Before he knew it, she had settled one bar stool away from him as she chatted into her cell phone. He surreptitiously checked her out in the mirror behind the bar: smallish brunette, maybe thirty-two, dressed sharp in a business suit, narrow nose and fine features, sparkling blue eyes.

  “C’mon, Sue, I’m here already. You can’t wuss out on me again.”

  He gave her a side glance as she set her purse on the stool next to him. A Louis Vuitton bag. If it was fake, then the Gucci watch was too, but somehow he doubted it. “Okay okay okay,” she said resigned, and put away her phone.

  The bartender, not one to ignore a beautiful woman, stood waiting patiently for her order. “Grey Goose martini, very dry please. And what’s with this badminton crap? We’re in baseball season now, can’t you get the Cardinal game?”

  “You a Cardinal fan?” Marcus asked, casually.

  “Yeah, but as usual, we don’t have enough pitching. Injuries will just make it worse. We can hit a ton, though.”

  Marcus liked baseball and had been stationed outside of St. Louis in the air force. And as his friends knew well, he loved petite brunettes. Especially ones who knew how to dress. She looked like one of the sharp, corrupt White House lawyers he resented so much and longed to put in their proper place, which in her case, was underneath him in bed.

  He bought the first round, the woman who called herself Shelley Carver picked up the second. When she moved her purse so he could sit on the stool next to her, he knew he was in.

  They left the bar early. At 9:30 P.M., as they trolled through a parking structure looking for her car, he became strangely faint and disoriented. Damn, how can I have sex with her if I’m this drunk? But it was okay, he felt warm and glowing and perfectly peaceful. Perfectly peaceful.

  ###

  A chill breeze fresh with the sweetness of dewy spring curled around the sweet gums along Jefferson Street in Reston, Virginia on this brisk May morning. At 2:00 A.M., the city’s hush already held sway, since the town didn’t exactly rock. It wouldn’t be for another three hours, with the stirring of the first morning commuters, that the city’s blood would begin pumping again.

  Pound for pound, the sleepy D.C. suburb of Reston housed more intelligence cut-outs and fronts, defense and intelligence service companies and consultants, and ex-spook start-ups than any other burg in the States. The inauspicious three-story office building housing Athanor Group made no exception. Like competitors Strategic Insight Group, Private Intelligence Corporation, Diligence LLC, and Kroll, Athanor functioned as an international private intelligence and security organization, but Athanor was staffed by former members of CIA, FBI, DIA, Interpol, MI-6, GRU, Mossad, GSG-9, and dozens of other military and intelligence organizations.

  The bread and butter for Athanor and its competition were lucrative government contracts—from any government—and lucrative corporate clients—from any country. The operators at Athanor worked their old connections, bribing and blackmailing the right politicians and bureaucrats to get the right thing done at the right time.
Outfits like Athanor were true adherents to globalism and a borderless loyalty only to currency.

  It would surprise most citizens of the great nations to know that their prized intelligence agencies were sometimes controlled or influenced by financial considerations having nothing to do with nationalism. Were companies like Athanor de facto extensions of the world’s intelligence community, or was it the other way around?

  As far as the Reston Fire Department knew, three subterranean parking levels were below the lobby of Athanor Group at 512 Jefferson Street, although there were actually six underground levels. And the most sophisticated side-looking, ground penetrating radars could only “see” down to forty-five feet. It had only a few key bribes to pull off the ruse during construction. And the bribe recipients, curiously, all suffered untimely accidental deaths: two heart attacks, one car collision, one small plane crash.

  The construction workers comprised men culled from the nationwide pool of Black Projects workers, men who never know who they’re working for, don’t know exactly what they’re building, know better than to ask, and love their families or life itself too much to ever divulge a speck about what they built and where.

  Upon completion of the structure, Athanor, like the White House, possessed a significant secret underground complex complete with connecting tunnels, some large enough to accommodate a vehicle. Such as a late model Ford Taurus containing the unconscious body of Marcus Townsend.

  On B6, the deepest level, the Taurus sat parked next to an Aston-Martin DB7 and a black Mercedes S600 with deeply tinted windows. Nearby beckoned a massive set of doors over ten feet high and almost as wide, thousand year-old teak and iron doors from ancient India studded with hundreds of sharp steel spikes, the spikes having once been both a practical touch in terms of defense, and no doubt a psychological one as well.

  Having just flown in, Simon Forte operated on another time-zone, and two in the morning meant time for an aperitif on B6, the level housing his private residence. Rotating through new interior design phases every couple of years as he became bored, Forte’s Reston digs currently featured an Indian decor, and as he sat in the dining room at the massive, ornate, gold-gilded dining table he’d looted from a royal palace in Bangalore, he conceded to himself that he couldn’t get used to the fine carving; it was simply too busy and somehow not manly enough.

  His six-foot two-inch body sat erect in the gold gilt chair, but Forte always sat erect, a habit he forced on himself to suggest breeding and refinement. Forte’s deep hazel eyes and thick black hair competed for attention with a squarely set jaw and strong, high cheekbones. He would not stand out in a crowd anywhere in Latin America, and could also pass for a Lebanese or other Middle Easterner, a Russian, Turk, or a European.

  Nine years in American intelligence gave him very specific on-the-job training in the arcane arts of money laundering and offshore banking, insurance scams, how to run a profitable front company, forgery, stock fraud, Drug-Dealing 101, and murder. Forte left government service with $400,000 he’d siphoned off from various operations and bought a small commodities brokerage in Arkansas, quickly making a killing when he stumbled on a unique way to manipulate soybean and wheat futures.

  The next ten years saw him branch out into telecommunications, semiconductors, real estate, natural gas, and insurance. He progressed quickly, but lacked the muscle to make it to the top, the rarefied atmosphere of the global elite. He needed leverage and protection to become a major world player, so he donated heavily to key politicos.

  The leverage presented itself, and eyebrows raised, when Forte snagged the directorship of DISC, the Defense Industrial Security Command. A scandal de jour presidency helped Forte’s appointment to the low-profile unit be quickly forgotten inside the Beltway. DISC’s charter was to protect the secrets of the US defense industry, while in reality, under Forte’s tutelage, it became a para-military secret police agency operating in a netherworld of complex loyalties.

  The veritable fox was guarding the hen house, and through bribery, black-bag-jobs, hijacking, extortion and assassination, Forte acquired super-sensitive information: weapons systems designs, stealth technology, space-age ceramic matrix formulas, ad infinitum, and discreetly sold it all to foreign powers.

  Generous bureaucratic payoffs up and down the line and on both sides of the aisle, in addition to placing strategic generals, federal prosecutors, intelligence executives, well-connected attorneys and Washington power brokers on the boards of his growing list of profitable companies, insured no prosecutions would ever result from his indiscretions. Controlling a small army of assassins, however, was the ultimate insurance.

  Yes, Simon Forte felt great pride in having done so well for himself. As he silently sipped from a flute of Larmandier Cramant Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brut Champagne, he engaged a remote control device. A section of the wall immediately in front of him receded into the ceiling with a hush, revealing a window looking into an adjacent room. A glance of this room to an untrained observer would suggest part medical clinic, part torture chamber. Exactly what it was.

  Marcus Townsend sat listlessly, strapped into what looked like a dentist’s chair. His glazed, hollow eyes had a reddish tint, but not from drinking. An IV drip coursed into his left arm, his nine-millimeter automatic still holstered under his left armpit.

  “Progress?” Forte spoke through an intercom, although the microphones and speakers were hidden.

  “Not just progress, success,” smiled Rene Bailey, looking fresh as a just picked peach. The contrast from her covered-up street assassin guise loomed strikingly: willowy, fair-skinned, natural auburn hair set off by sprightly aqua-green eyes of such luster they could upstage a Caribbean lagoon. At not quite thirty she still got carded in bars, and had the kind of Ohio born-and-bred wholesomeness that belied any notion of her true sadistic nature. Simon Forte had never grown tired of looking at her.

  Shelley Carver, real name Rina Ziv, the woman who manipulated Marcus Townsend into picking her up, watched all this with unconcealed boredom as she sat smoking on a couch against a wall. Forte watched Ziv on a video monitor, well aware that Rina and Rene hated each other's guts. Rina’s two husky accomplices in dark running suits—they’d been the ones to carry Marcus’ body—sat impassively on the other side of the room at a table scanning men’s magazines. Forte didn't know these men, they were merely cannon fodder who would be killed before the night was out to keep the loop tight.

  “Success already,” Forte checked his Audemars Piguet eighteen-karat rose gold chronograph, “in four hours?”

  “He’s a somnambulant. I knew his psychological profile and exactly what had to be done. It’s not like I had to create multiple personalities. Just a little simple programming. And don’t forget dear, I had an excellent teacher.”

  “The best. But still, Mister Townsend’s importance can’t be over-stressed. Perhaps an exhibition would be in order.”

  “It so happens I have one in mind,” replied Rene, as she removed the IV drip from Marcus’ arm. Within a few seconds, Marcus shook his head and seemed to revive. Rene engaged the tiny play button of a micro digital recording device she wore on her wrist like a watch and held it near Marcus’ ear; three tones sounded, two short high, one long and low. His eyes snapped open.

  Rene held her index finger practically touching the tip of his nose. “Marcus, do you see the President and Vice-President sitting over there reading magazines?” She slowly moved her finger in the direction of the husky men in dark jogging suits, and his eyes followed the movement.

  “Yes, I see them.” His voice was flat, perfunctory.

  “And do you see the woman sitting on the couch holding the gun?” Rene moved her finger, a bit more quickly now, in the other direction and again, Marcus followed.

  Although Rene spoke softly, Simon watched as Ziv perked up, surprised. She certainly wasn’t holding a gun, but no doubt wished she were as a flash of utter shock swept over her face. Ziv had provided outstanding service during
her two-year stint with Athanor as an undercover operator and Forte hated to lose her. He'd seen many patsies hypno-programmed with drugs and hypnosis before and knew what they were capable of doing, but he needed to be certain about Townsend.

  “Shoot her now, Marcus, before she can harm the President.” Rene spun out of the way as the big secret service agent pulled his pistol and instinctively sprang into the Weaver stance, sighting on Ziv.

  Israeli agents are extremely well-trained. Ziv dove for her purse on the floor, rolled and retrieved her Glock 36 slim-line compact forty-five. At twenty ounces empty, it performed as a back-up weapon designed for concealed carry with six rounds in the mag and one up the pipe. But loaded with jacketed hollow-points, Simon knew she only needed to hit him once—anywhere on his body—and he would go down, big man or not.

  She was one second too late. His first round tore into her upper thigh, the second found her abdomen. Even then, she was still bringing her pistol to bear and squeezed off a shot, when two more slugs hit her center mass. She slumped back against the couch. Two more rounds found her head: one shattered her front teeth, the other entered through her left eye socket. Coup de grace head shots from seven meters. Townsend will do nicely, thought Forte.

  The two husky men had taken cover before the first shot. Rene, on the other hand, had stood in the open, a huge smile on her face like a kid in a candy store whose mom had just announced carte blanche for chocolate. She casually walked over to the two men and shot them both in the head.

  Forte didn’t bat an eye. The glass was bulletproof, after all, and he’d fully expected a successful exhibition. He knew Rene would have been certain of the outcome and would not have chanced disappointing him. He luxuriated in another sip of champagne as he held a coin-size zip-lock bag containing hair and nail clippings up to the light and smiled with smug satisfaction.