Wildcard

by Rachel Lee

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  She had no intention of staying in the command tent, blind to the tactical situation. She’d learned at Dos Ojos that a combat leader couldn’t lead from the rear. But telling him that would only create problems. She would simply handle things her way.

  Brown Pass

  “They’re coming.”

  Tom had found himself almost dozing as he looked up at the brilliant night sky. Renate’s voice in his earphone snapped him out of his reverie. “How long?” he asked.

  “Ten minutes,” she said. “I’ll let them pass, then join you.”

  “Copy that.”

  He turned and looked back through the trees to the west. Against the pristine white of the snow, through the light drifts that blew in the freshening wind, he saw a line of shapes approaching. But it was not the line he’d expected to see, with each man trudging blindly in the footsteps of the one in front of him. Instead, they were in an inverted V phalanx, weapons at the ready.

  “They’re in combat formation,” Tom said quietly, knowing how sound carried at night, hoping the snow would muffle the sounds.

  “Yes,” Renate said. “Apparently they know your friends are waiting for them.”

  Shit, Tom thought. This wasn’t going to be the simple ambush the Bureau had expected. If Dixon was forewarned, he would have planned accordingly.

  Looking around, Tom took stock of the terrain and the situation, and tried to put himself in Dixon’s shoes. He would have to descend the steep slope. There was no way around that. Nor could he outflank the ambush; the craggy walls of the mountains made that impossible. If Dixon’s men had skis, they might rush down the slope faster than the SWAT team could handle and pass right through their positions. But how likely was it that a bunch of Guatemalans knew how to downhill ski? Not at all.

  Still, Tom was sure Dixon wouldn’t simply walk into the trap. Speed would be his ally. The faster he could get into the midst of the SWAT team’s line, the better the chance his men could take advantage of the confusion and gain the upper hand.

  “How are they moving?” Tom asked.

  “Snowshoes,” Renate answered. “Why?”

  “Are they carrying anything with them?”

  There was no answer.

  Tom shifted onto his good leg and looked into the darkness. “Renate? Are you there?”

  Still no answer.

  Seconds turned to minutes that seemed like hours. He could clearly see Dixon’s men now, trudging up the final slope, awkward in their snowshoes, but every eye alert. There was no sign that anyone had broken away to deal with a threat. And yet Renate was not answering.

  “Renate?”

  “Sorry.” Her voice came in an almost inaudible whisper. “They passed within ten feet of me. And they have shields on their backs.”

  “Shields?”

  “They look like little canoes.”

  “Dammit!” Tom said. “They brought sleds. Of course.”

  Dixon had known from the outset that his men might have to get away from trouble quickly. With men who were not trained for arctic maneuvers, what better way to be ready than to have sleds? They required little if any skill or training. Just hop on and let gravity and the frictionless ice work together to create velocity.

  “I’m coming to you,” Renate said.

  Minutes later, Dixon’s men had passed and Renate appeared wraithlike out of the blowing snow.

  “We have to warn the Bureau,” Tom said. “They don’t know he knows, and they don’t know he’s prepared.”

  “We can’t,” Renate said, shaking her head. “And don’t even try to argue with me. We’ll do what we can from here, but we can’t expose ourselves.”

  “Bullshit,” Tom said. “Miriam’s down there.”

  “Yes, she is,” Renate said. “But you knew the rules when you came with me. I’m sorry, Tom. This is how it has to be.”

  “There must be something—”

  She put a gloved finger to his lips. “There isn’t, Tom. I’m sorry. There isn’t.”

  He turned away and watched Dixon’s men deploy for battle, anger raging again in his heart.

  32

  Brown Pass, Montana

  “Charlie One, Command One. Targets in sight.”

  “Copy, Charlie One,” Kevin said. “Give me the details.”

  “Looks like about twenty of them, Command One. But they’ve stopped at the head of the pass. Taking off their packs.”

  “Maybe they’re admiring the scenery,” Kevin said, turning to Miriam.

  “Somehow, I don’t think so. Something’s wrong.”

  Kevin keyed his mike. “Command One, Charlie One. What else can you see?”

  “Charlie One, I can’t be sure. It’s as if they’re setting up camp. They’re sitting down.”

  “Sitting down?” Kevin asked. “Say again?”

  “Copy, Command One. Sitting down. It’s hard to describe. They’re rubbing their butts on the snow.”

  “Shit,” Miriam said, turning toward the door of the tent. “I know what they’re doing.”

  “Get back here,” Kevin said.

  “Tell them to get ready,” Miriam said. “And tell them it’s going to happen a lot faster than they thought.”

  With that, she left the tent and began to make her way up to the line.

  If it hadn’t been so deadly, Tom thought, it would have been comical. The Guatemalans shed their packs and laid out their small sleds, then sat on them and began to experiment with movement and balance. It was quite obviously a new experience for them, and a few immediately toppled over. But they quickly learned how to manage, and Tom felt as if he were watching a freight train bear down on an unwitting victim, unable to stop it or even cry out a warning.

  After a few agonizing minutes, Tom saw Dixon look at his men and give a signal. The men leaned forward on their shallow, bowl-shaped sleds, their packs between their legs for balance, weapons at the ready, and headed down the icy slope.

  Kevin took a step to catch Miriam, but then heard the radio erupt.

  “Charlie One, Command One. Holy shit, they’re on sleds. And they’re coming fast.”

  Miriam had seen what was coming before it happened. And she was right. In this kind of fight, sitting in the command post was utterly useless. Kevin grabbed his rifle and headed out as the gunfire began.

  Tom had a bird’s-eye view of the developing battle. Muzzle flashes along the Bureau line revealed their surprise; they hadn’t had time to switch on the powerful searchlights that had been intended to blind Dixon and his men. Worse, he’d seen Dixon’s men donning night goggles. This was a far more even fight than the SWAT team had expected. And it was not going well.

  Dixon’s men swooped down the steep, icy slope as if powered by rockets, quickly passing through the prepared kill zone that the SWAT team had set up. In less than a minute, they were into the Bureau line and all hell broke loose.

  Miriam reached Alpha Section just as the Guatemalans descended on them.

  “Mark your targets!” she said, taking aim and squeezing off a round at the nearest approaching form. “Careful of our positions!”

  The Guatemalan toppled as her rounds impacted, the sled shooting out from beneath him and up into the air. Miriam ducked as it whizzed past, and looked for another target. She ignored the distant thoughts that these men were no different than Miguel Ortiz, and focused on the task at hand. The manic chatter in her earphone told her that Dixon had achieved the surprise and confusion he needed. Now it was an even fight, their carefully laid plans disrupted and scattered like snow on the mountain wind.

  A man beside her turned and loosed a ragged three-shot volley at a passing Guatemalan, and a cry erupted from the position to her left. It was what she had feared. Firing at fast-moving targets this way, it was all but impossible to avoid hitting their own.

  The military called it “friendly fire,” but there was nothing friendly about it when a 5.56 mm round ripped into a leg. It was pain a
nd spurting blood and panic and terror, with the only “friend” the man beside you who stopped to clamp a hand over the wound.

  The air seemed to be alive with bees, though Miriam knew better. Bullets were flying everywhere, in every direction, from every direction.

  It was chaos, and men were dying.

  “Goddammit!” Tom said, watching the melee below. He turned to Renate. “We could have warned them.”

  Deep within her snorkel hood, tears glistened on her cheeks. “No, Tom. We couldn’t. We couldn’t. We…”

  For the first time since he’d known her, her composure shattered. He pulled her to him, squeezing her through the Nomex parka.

  “You’re right,” he said. “We couldn’t. And even if we had, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Damn this,” she said. “Damn this job.”

  Tom couldn’t disagree. After a moment, he pushed her away and looked in her eyes. “We can still help. Get your rifle. The Bureau people are still in their camoflagued positions. So whoever we can see is a live target.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding.

  “The SWAT team doesn’t know we’re here,” he continued. “They may shoot back.”

  “That’s part of the deal,” she said. “And they need our help.”

  He met her eyes for a moment, nodded and rolled into firing position. Sighting carefully, he began to look for targets.

  Dixon whipped around, rolling off his sled and spraying fire into the hollow beside him. His heart tore at the thought of killing fellow Americans, and yet he owed a duty of command to his troops. If they were going down, they were going down together.

  A white-clad FBI agent turned in the hole, trying to bring his weapon to bear, but Dixon fired first. A black hole opened on the agent’s forehead, and he toppled back into the snow with a look of astonishment frozen on his features.

  They would not survive this, Dixon knew. He had been in battle before, and he’d always known he would come out of it intact. This time, he knew he would not. But he could still die with honor, as a soldier.

  He looked for another target and spotted a woman with an M-16, scanning the battlefield as she reloaded. He settled into the snow and took careful aim.

  Miriam ejected one clip and rammed another home, pulling back the slide to chamber a round, her eyes flitting over the melee. Almost buried in the snow, she saw a man lying, facing her, the muzzle of his weapon pointed straight at her chest. She thought of Terry as she fought against time to shoulder her rifle and take aim.

  Tom had spotted Dixon and fired, but the man had rolled off his sled just as Tom pulled the trigger. Before he could correct his aim, Dixon had turned to kill an FBI agent. And now he had another in his sights. Tom didn’t need night vision goggles or binoculars to recognize the posture and movement of Dixon’s target. It was Miriam.

  He steadied his front sight on the side of Dixon’s head, exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger.

  Miriam saw Dixon’s head explode in the same instant she saw the muzzle of his weapon flash. She dropped to her knees and felt a tug at her parka, but no pain. Looking down, she realized the bullet had punched through the thick padding and missed her. She turned to see who had shot Dixon and saw the wink of another muzzle flash, high in the pass.

  Tom.

  She waved quickly, then returned to the deadly business around her.

  “You saved her life,” Renate said, calmly picking off a Guatemalan who rose up out of the snow. “Good job.”

  “It matters,” Tom said, hardly realizing where the words had come from.

  “Yes,” she replied. “It matters.”

  Kevin fired three quick rounds into the back of a rebel who was trying to flee. And then it was over. As he walked around the bloodstained snow, the butcher’s bill revolted him.

  “Four of ours,” Miriam said, joining him. “And three more wounded, though they’ll be okay.”

  “And twenty-two of them,” he replied. “Including Dixon. None of them even tried to surrender.”

  “Fool’s courage,” she said. “What a waste.”

  He looked at her torn parka. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “Whoever shot Dixon saved my life. He must’ve flinched as he got hit.”

  “You were supposed to stay in the command tent.”

  “Look, Kevin—”

  He put up a hand. “But you were right not to. You reacted to the tactical situation and tried to assert control of the battle from the only place you could. You did good, Miriam.”

  “Thank you,” she said, looking around at the sprawled, leaking bodies. She ejected the clip from her rifle and worked the bolt to empty the chamber, watching the round spin through the air, brass glistening in the moonlight. Then she slung the weapon over her shoulder. “But you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel good about it.”

  West of Brown Pass

  Tom winced at the pain in his leg as he strapped on his skis.

  “You’re sure we have to do this now?”

  “They’ll scour the area looking for evidence,” Renate said. “We can’t stay here.”

  With a final glance down at Miriam, he nodded and turned to follow Renate into the night toward Bowman Lake.

  And invisibility.

  Paris, France

  March 18, 1314

  Jacques De Molay watched from his cell as a spit was prepared in the shadow of the great Notre Dame. Today he would be roasted alive. He knew he should be terrified at the possibility, and yet he was not. Tonight he would be in heaven, with the Light. He only regretted that he had not been able to finish his work here first.

  The Knights Templar had built well and quickly over the past two centuries. Aided by ancient wisdom, and cool, calculating financial minds, they had amassed much of the wealth of Europe in their coffers. Only a select few knew what De Molay knew, that the supposedly Christian Templars worshipped a far older religion and a far older goal.

  The goal had seemed within his grasp. Perhaps he had reached too far, too fast. Perhaps he had been overtaken by his zeal to be the Great Restorer, the Pharaoh-Aten, the Pharaoh of Light, who would once again bring the one true faith to mankind and renew the empire in which that faith had been born. So much had been gained. So much had seemed ready. And now it was lost.

  An informant among them, among the select few. It was impossible, and yet there was no other explanation. Why else would Philip, that dolt of a king, have conspired with Pope Clement to declare the Templars heretics? And just when great plans had been laid for a fourth and final Crusade? French kings and Papal legates had longed for such for two hundred years, and yet, now that the opportunity had been created for them and served to them on a secret silver plate, they had turned on the very deliverers of that dream.

  The only possible reason was that someone among his most trusted body had leaked the real reason behind this grand new adventure. Someone had told them that, if their armies succeeded, they would accomplish naught but to relegate themselves to the margins of power as New Egypt rose from the sands to rule again.

  It had been so close. And it had come to ruin. Seven years ago, on Friday, October 13, 1307, Philip and Clement had destroyed the Templar order in France. But some had slipped away. The cleverest of the financial minds had melted into the darkness with the Templar fortune, ready and waiting to open the great banks that would once again put kings and princes in their debt and at their whim. And that would happen, De Molay knew. The power of the Light and the ancient mysteries was too great to be overcome by temporal powers. Sooner or later, his disciples would rise up and claim for their forebears a rightful place in the history of man, and the Light would become the one and only beacon by which all men guided their steps. It was only a matter of patience.

  But De Molay would not see that day. Instead, he would die. And go to the Light.

  Epilogue

  Washington, D.C.

  Miriam curled tightly into Terry’s arms and listened to his soft, meaningless words. In the p
ast three months, the country had gone into a furor over what the press had dubbed “the Idaho Killers.” The firefight had been front-page lead story news for a week. Guatemalan rebels in the U.S., killing FBI agents. Documents recovered from a buried bunker on the Dixon ranch confirmed that Wes Dixon, a West Point graduate turned right-wing renegade, had orchestrated the murder of Ambassador Kilhenny and the attempted assassination of Grant Lawrence.

  It was mostly bullshit, of course. Miriam knew that. Whatever documents had been recovered had been modified to fit the story the Bureau needed to tell and the country needed to hear. Ominous rumors of vast conspiracies might sell in the tabloids, but deep down inside, people longed for clear, unambiguous justice. The Bureau’s press reports gave them what they wanted: a crazed villain, an idealistic victim…and a courageous heroine.

  She hated that part worst of all. She’d received a Presidential Commendation for her work in Guatemala, Idaho and Montana, and she’d answered more questions in front of more bright lights than she’d ever wanted to in her life. The simple fact was that Tom and Renate had done most of the work, including setting up the final ambush that destroyed Dixon’s militia. Including saving Miriam’s life.

  She wasn’t a heroine. She’d killed too many people in that frantic week ever to think of herself as a heroine. In her head, she knew she had done what was necessary. In her heart, she longed to sit down with Steve Lorenzo and find some measure of peace.

  Lorenzo had disappeared into the jungle, along with Miguel Ortiz and the rest of the refugees from Dos Pilas. She had no idea where they were, and no inclination to look for them. Whatever secrets might lie in the depths of the Mayan past were probably better left buried. Lorenzo would see to that, or try to. Miriam had to trust that he would find a way to do what needed to be done.