Sam said, “For starters, you have purple eyes.”
“So did Elizabeth Taylor, but I don’t see anyone locking her up for life.”
“You had bloods taken.”
“And what did they show?”
“I have no idea. Maybe there’s a genetic trait. An ancient marker.”
“So they think I share DNA with ancient engineers,” Ben asked through narrowed eyes. “I hated science at school and struggled with math. I mean I got it, but it didn’t come naturally to me either.”
Sam took the helicopter up a notch to clear a bridge, before quickly descending again. “Not everything’s genetic, I guess. How were the rest of your grades?”
Ben had been at the top of every educational institution he’d ever been part of. “I did okay.”
Sam lifted his eyebrows. “So some things were passed down.”
Ben nodded his agreement. “Maybe. The rest of it makes sense.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The questions they were asking at the Pentagon make more sense now.”
Sam grinned. “What sort of questions?”
“Had I ever been sick, more than a sniffle? Had I ever been seriously injured? How was my memory? Did I have to work hard to memorize facts and figures?”
Sam added, “Why are your eyes violet?”
Ben’s lips curled into a half-smile. “Yeah. They did ask that. At the time I thought they were just trying to irritate me, you know, get under my skin, but there’s a connection, isn’t there?”
“Eye color seems to be a dominant gene in Master Builders. Not that we have a lot of living ones to go off.”
“That’s good to know,” Ben said. “So they’re taking this little bit of nothing and turning it into a witch hunt.”
“Yes. But we’re running out of time. People are starting to panic.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Some believe the descendants of the Master Builders are working toward a coordinated attack on governments around the world.”
“World War III?”
“No,” Sam replied, shaking his head. “Think of it as more of an insurrection. Master Builders will infiltrate all levels of government in countries around the world.”
“For what purpose?”
“We don’t know that either. But it’s a frightening thought, isn’t it? A group of highly intelligent people, capable of dominating entire civilizations thousands of years ago. What could they achieve once they gained control of modern government?”
“Yeah, that’s a scary thought.” Ben grimaced. “So it’s to be guilt by ancient DNA.”
“Looks like it. Either that, or this has nothing to do with Master Builders and you really are a terrorist planning a deadly attack.”
Ben opened his mouth to defend himself. Instead, he cursed loudly.
Because a highway patrol car had just spotted them.
Chapter Fourteen
Sam pulled back on the collective, sending the JetRanger into a steep climb. At a hundred feet, he jammed his right foot on the antitorque pedal, dipped the collective, and swung round in a wide arc, finishing in an easterly direction.
“Where are you going?” Ben asked.
“That highway patrol officer is going to report our location. We need to be somewhere else before they can scramble any fighter jets to greet us.”
Ten minutes later, Sam zigzagged into a southwestern direction again, keeping the helicopter down low.
Ben glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, it looks like you lost him!”
“Of course we lost him!” Sam replied. “He’s in a car and we’re in a helicopter. The trouble’s going to be keeping hidden from the fighter squadron that I have no doubt is currently being scrambled to find us.”
Ben swallowed. “What’s your plan?”
“I don’t have a plan. This is your show remember?”
“I thought you said you believed me. I’m innocent!”
“I never said I thought you were innocent, but I had a fair idea why they’re after you despite you having never done a thing wrong in your life.”
“Hey, that is innocent!” Ben protested.
“No, it isn’t. You may be going to do something in the future. Who knows? The Defense Department doesn’t generally arrest people before they decide to commit a terrorist act.”
“That’s not me. Never has been. Never will be.”
Sam shrugged. “If you say so.”
“I do!”
“All right, tell me about yourself.”
Ben’s eyes widened. “Now?”
“We’ve got time.”
“I thought fighter jets were on their way?”
“They are,” Sam admitted. “But what are you going to do? Get out and push? It’s not like we can make the JetRanger go any faster than it’s already traveling.”
“All right,” Ben drawled, “I’m a half-human scion of some kind of alien race or something…”
“They’re not an alien race, just ancient,” Sam corrected. “And I meant what really happened to you? What’s the deal about Bolshoi Zayatsky?”
“I have no idea. I’d never even heard of the place before today. I have no idea where it is even.”
Sam blinked and said, “Russia.”
“That’s right!” Ben yelled, as though he’d just remembered. “He said it was in Russia!”
“Who did?”
“Special Agent Ryan Devereaux.”
“Who’s he?”
“I have no idea. The man who interrogated me. He said my parents were from a terrorist organization in Russia. That’s all I know.”
Sam turned and met his eye. “Were they?”
“Beats me,” Ben announced. “I mean, I don’t think so. They both died in a horrible car accident when I was three.”
“What did they do before they died?”
“They traveled a lot.”
“Really?” Sam raised his eyebrow. “To Russia?”
“No. Never. Only ever in the USA. They were substitute teachers,” Ben said, as though that justified things.
“Okay, what do you know?”
“I’m the son of two perfectly normal people, John and Jenny Gellie. I don’t know how far back my family goes in America; I’ve never really cared. But I know that all four of my grandparents lived here, in the States, until their deaths. My family didn’t sneak over here or anything like that.”
“And your parents?”
“Like I said, my parents died when I was three years old, which was after the death of most of my grandparents. Grandma Gellie was still alive, but she wasn’t in the best of health – there was no way she could have coped with a three-year-old boy on her own. So I was fostered by my parents’ best friends, the Fulchers. I don’t remember much about my own parents. I remember my father reading me bedtime stories with him balanced on the edge of my bed. I remember my mother chasing me through the house for hide and seek. I remember what they actually looked like better from photographs than from their real faces in my memory, but what do you expect? I was three.”
Sam remained silent but gave a curt nod, like he was listening.
Ben took it as encouragement and continued. “The Fulchers made pretty good replacement parents, even though they’d never intended to be parents in the first place. They loved me and supported me, and gave me good advice. If it wasn’t for them, I probably never would have made it past my anger at my parents’ death. It hung around for a long time. I’d lost everything I’d ever known, and the only people I had to blame were them. I’m sure I broke their hearts about a million times, until I grew up enough to understand how much I was hurting them.”
“And you said you now work at the State Department?”
“That’s right,” Ben nodded. “I’m ajunior law graduate.”
“Good for you.” Sam smiled kindly. “I mean, for someone in your position, a background in law has gotta help, right?”
“You’d think so. But according
to Special Agent Devereaux, all those rights go out the window when you’re suspected of terrorism. Obviously those rights disappear when you donate blood too.”
“What happened at the hospital?”
“I went to the hospital in order to donate blood because my friend was in a motorcycle accident, and the hospital’s blood supplies were getting low. I volunteered to show up and donate. I’ve never donated before, but it was more because I didn’t get my ass in gear than for any real reason. I’ve always meant to, I just never got around to it – until today.”
Sam made a wry smile. “Guess you’re not going to become a regular?”
“No. Never again. I mean, I wanted to help, but not if this is the outcome.”
“So tell me what happened when they took your blood?”
“I didn’t know what the actual procedure for donating blood was supposed to be. They started taking multiple samples for tests. You’d think they’d be able to just take the blood donation and test it for whatever they needed to test it for…after the donor had left the building. Now that I’ve had two minutes to think about it, it seems especially odd, what they did. Tests. More tests. Still more tests!”
“How many blood samples did they need?”
“At least seven before I eventually got fed up and tried to leave. But they stopped me. They tried to talk me out of it, they tried to get in my way, and finally they injected me with something that knocked me unconscious.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, questioningly. “After that, you woke up in the interrogation room of the Pentagon?”
“That’s right. I woke up tied to a chair with tuff-ties, which I can’t imagine would be considered even remotely professional unless you were at a riot or something, I don’t know, where a bunch of prisoners had to be restrained for a relatively short period of time. Then Devereaux appeared and started questioning me. Just one of them at first. Asking me all kinds of intrusive questions. Why are my eyes violet? Have I ever been sick? What was my real age? Who were my parents, really?”
“Yeah, I’m seeing it.”
“I feel like they got the wrong guy, like I have a look-alike who’s sitting in a waiting room somewhere, waiting to get interrogated, and getting bored because everyone has forgotten all about him.”
“Maybe this is all a mix up,” Sam said. They looked pretty serious though… maybe something about your parents makes you special? Maybe you’re genetically different than everyone else?”
“I don’t want to be special. I don’t want to have a secret background. You know what? I have a pretty good life. I don’t have a secret fantasy about being someone else, some kind of weird-ass chosen one or something like that,” Ben said, defiantly. “My parents are my parents. My life is my life. I’m not some kind of sleeper terrorist, like that agent was trying to imply. I don’t want to wake up one morning and be Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall. I’m happy the way I am, and I don’t need this crap.”
Sam tried to take all that in. He tried to read between the lines for some kind of gap between Ben’s words and the man who was sitting beside him in the JetRanger.
“You did pretty good taking me hostage for a guy with no military experience.”
Ben shrugged. “Football in high school and college. Running back. I was pretty good, too. Could have made it big, but I had other plans.”
“You were holding back. You’re agile enough that you could have gone pro, if that’s what you wanted.”
“Maybe I didn’t feel like taking football too seriously. It’s just a game. Besides, it’s one of those jobs. You get injured you’re out.”
“Did you? Get injured?”
“No. Never.”
“Do you do any drugs? For football or otherwise?”
“I tried weed in high school. Just to be friendly. But no steroids or experimental drugs or anything hard. I never had any need for them.”
Sam shook his head, his lips curled into a slight grin.
“What?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to work out if you’re the most unlucky son of a bitch, or the best liar I’ve ever met.”
In the distance three Earth shattering explosions filled the velvet of night. They were followed by the loudest clap of thunder Sam had ever heard. They seemed to shatter the entire sky.
Ben squinted, his eyes searching the clear horizon for the sound’s origin. “What was that?”
“Sonic booms,” Sam replied.
“From what?”
“My guess…F16 Fighting Falcons!”
Ben felt his gut lurch with the inherent rise in fear of something sinister approaching. “What does that mean?”
Sam swallowed hard. “They’ve found us.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sam banked the helicopter to the right, taking a northern course into the Appalachian Mountains and the densely forested Shenandoah National Park. He dipped the nose, descending hard into an unknown valley.
Fifty feet off the valley floor, he pulled the cyclic collective back, leveling the JetRanger until it was riding just above the canopy of the thick forest below.
Ben shouted, “You have any idea where we’re going?”
“Not a clue,” Sam replied, taking the helicopter so close to the spur of the mountain that he had to watch that its rotor blades didn’t nick the tree line. “But we have to find somewhere to put down before those fighter jets reach us.”
“Agreed.” Ben played with the JetRanger’s GPS digital map. “It says we’re over the Shenandoah National Park.”
“It sounds like a beautiful spot, but that doesn’t help me much!”
“What do you need?” Ben asked.
“I need a clearing!” Sam replied, his voice only just able to be heard over the whir of the rotor blades overhead. “Somewhere we can put down, where the fighter jets can’t follow us.”
“They won’t be able to spot us once we’re on the ground. I’ve hiked in the Shenandoah National Park. The forest canopy is so dense it’s hard to see out and impossible for an aircraft spotter to see in.”
“That’s great, but I still need that clearing!”
Ben said, “I’m looking! I’m looking!”
High above them, three F16s raced by, the flames of their afterburners leaving a trail like rockets in the sky above.
Sam said, “I suggest you look faster!”
“I found it!” Ben yelled.
“Where?”
“Over the next ridge at your nine o’clock!”
Sam’s eyes darted toward the ridge. “That’s the peak of a mountain!”
Ben ignored the semantics. “On the other side is a deep valley, in which the Piney River runs. There’s a small clearing a couple of klicks north of it.”
“That’s the best you can do?” Sam asked, turning his head to look across his shoulder, where the fighter jets had headed. “It won’t take those fighter pilots long to realize we’ve turned off I-211!”
Ben looked at him through raised eyebrows. “You got a better idea?”
Sam gritted his teeth. He didn’t. “All right. Here goes.”
He banked to the left, following the natural curvature of the mountain range, keeping his nose mere feet off the tree lined ridge. In the darkness of night, the canopy looked like a blanket of black velvet, impenetrable to his gaze.
Behind him he heard the sound of the fighter jets changing direction.
As soon as the JetRanger cleared the crest of the mountain range, he lowered the nose and raced down into the deep valley below. With no moonlight penetrating the valley to assist his vision, the river below appeared a slightly darker shade of black.
Sam brought the helicopter down toward the river, careful not to let the rotor blades overhead catch on the valley wall.
Three F16 Fighting Falcons raced through the valley, coming within twenty feet of the JetRanger before racing by, pulling up hard, and racing toward the sky in a near vertical display of the jets’ raw power, then disappearing over
the distant ridgeline.
Sam glanced at his radio, confirming that it was still set to the local frequency. None of the fighter jet pilots had tried to communicate with him. He expected they would have tried to direct him to a specific landing location of their choice, but instead they had flown by without a delivering a single radio transmission.
It was impossible to think that they had missed him completely. The squadron of F16s flew close enough that Sam could see the whites of the pilot’s eyes as they raced past.
Ben asked, “What the hell are they doing?”
“I don’t know. A reconnaissance flyover, I guess.”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Sam replied. “Maybe they send in a helicopter with a team of elite soldiers on board just to make sure they don’t lose you. I don’t know, but I’m not sure if it’s still in our interest to land.”
“Can you turn around, find somewhere else to land?”
Sam nodded. “We can try that.”
He slowed the helicopter to a near stop and planted his foot on the left pedal, turning the JetRanger round on its axis until they were facing the way they had come.
Sam lifted the nose of the helicopter and raced along the steep slope of the valley wall. They needed to get out of the valley if they were to lose the F16s before they returned for a second flyover. The forest was a dense mixture of chestnut, oak, spruce, fir, and poplar tulips.
He wondered how much of a radar shadow they would provide.
Above them, he spotted the three F16s flying in formation. They were making a broad turn, setting up to fly above the valley, in a bombing run.
Sam swallowed hard. “Get your harness unhooked.”
Ben looked blank. “What?”
A flash erupted from the wing of the first fighter jet, followed immediately by a second one.
“Jump.”
“Are you fucking crazy?”
Sam peeled out of his harness and ripped the helmet’s comm cord out of the panel. He threw the JetRanger door open. No time to waste arguing with a civilian.
It might already be too late.
“Jump!” he shouted, already putting action to word.
The Holy Grail (Sam Reilly Book 13) Page 7