The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011]

by David Sakmyster

  #

  “iPad,” Phoebe said after a minute of intense focus. She held her hand out to Orlando, who quickly passed it over. “I think I’ve got the next leg of this map.”

  She leaned in to Caleb and whispered, “Just keep faking it, big brother. I’ve got you covered.”

  “You’re the best,” he replied. “I’m trying but . . .”

  “Nothing?”

  “I keep seeing her. Lydia. But it’s not like our visions. They’re just memories.”

  “Ah. Worse, then.”

  Caleb nodded. But maybe just as important. A catharsis, perhaps. A flood of images played against the back of his eyelids every time they closed. Meeting her for the first time at the book signing in SoHo; their growing connection on the book tour, working together on research trips to exotic ancient locations, the steamy nights under the stars, or under the cool sheets in five-star hotels; the reunion after he had thought her dead, the moment her emotions cracked through and she revealed he had a son.

  All these memories swam in his thoughts, clouding the psychic pathways like arterial blocks, suffocating the power he kept trying to access.

  He couldn’t fight it any longer, and didn’t want to. She was there, in his mind, living in the only place left for her. Part of him hoped that he was seeing all this because she was trying to show him one more thing, to force him to understand some vital aspect of himself he needed to learn.

  Or else, it was only his guilt.

  He had killed her. As surely as if he’d pushed her off a cliff. By his silence and distrust. By his arrogance in thinking he alone could own and protect the Emerald Tablet. It was a guilt he needed to accept and overcome if he was to move on.

  It’s up to you now. Her last thought, he was sure of it, was about their son. But how could he save Alexander when his hands were tied? He could only stand by, watching and hoping the others could do what he couldn’t.

  Someone coughed. He heard the soldiers’ raspy breathing over his own. Every sound was amplified in the cavern, the slightest movement roaring in his ears, explosions rattling in his head. The splashing of the oars echoed off the walls, and it was easy to imagine the flashlight beams scraping the ceiling or the sides, and eliciting sounds like nails on a chalkboard.

  Phoebe sighed, the sound grinding in her ears as well. She took a deep breath of hot air and began drawing, expanding the previous sketch, filling in the right side of the diagram. Renée moved closer, stepping around the men rowing so she could watch.

  “What’s that?” She pointed to the bottom of the screen where Phoebe had drawn the terminus of this river passageway that ended at the boundary opening up into a larger section: broad at the far end, but peppered with dots. Phoebe kept jabbing at the screen, creating the dots in a haphazard pattern until it began to look like an actual formation.

  “Don’t know,” Phoebe replied. “I saw faces. White faces. Hundreds of eyes. Thousands, maybe.”

  Qara made a snickering noise.

  “What?” asked Renée, turning in the boat, then peering ahead. The flashlight’s glow had bounced off her mask, amplifying a mix of fear and excitement beyond the plastic. “What’s up ahead?”

  “Death,” Qara said. “And I don’t need to be psychic to see that. We’re all—”

  “Shut her up,” Renée snapped. “Phoebe, elaborate on what you saw.”

  A gasp, and Phoebe dropped the stylus pen, causing Orlando to jump for it, and scramble at the bottom of the boat before they lost it. She shook her head, blinked and stood up. Ahead, the flashlight beams speared around, barely penetrating the thick gloom hanging over the silvery river.

  She squinted, rubbed her faceplate, and tried to peer through the unresolved shadows. “Wait! There’s something before we reach the shore, something—”

  But that’s when an iron sphere as large as a refrigerator came swinging down from the cavern’s roof on a steel chain, crashing into the first boat.

  #

  Soldiers scattered like bowling pins, two of them taking direct hits, bones shattering, bodies crumpling. The hull cracked and the boat capsized, spinning to the left and upturning the whole team.

  “Duck!” Chang yelled as the sphere swung all the way back up, just missing the prow of the second boat. Everyone ducked low and his men paddled sideways, moving the boat out of the reach of the sphere’s downswing.

  One member of the first craft wasn’t so lucky. A soldier had scrambled back into the boat after flipping it, and just stood, dripping and coughing, when the ball swung back and caught him in the chest, bringing him along for the ascending trip. A hideous crunching sound echoed off the ceiling, and his body splashed down in the darkness.

  Men were screaming, splashing, scrambling. Flashlights spun around and dimmed as they went underwater. Chang and the two soldiers in Caleb’s boat kept their lights trained on the first boat, keeping it illuminated for the capsized men to get back on.

  The sphere came back for another swing, but this time both boats were out of its range, off to the side.

  “Shit!” Renée grumbled. “What else do we have to contend with?”

  “You have no idea,” Qara said.

  “I do,” said Phoebe. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking close enough. But that’s it. Just that iron ball, a little pre-welcoming gift from Genghis.”

  “You’d better be right,” Renée said, ruefully counting the soldiers ahead as they climbed back into the battered boat.

  “We lost three,” Chang said, shining his light on the three floating, battered bodies.

  Renée nodded. “Acceptable. Keep going. And you”—she glared at Phoebe—“had better be right about this.”

  Phoebe nodded, but Orlando stepped up between them. “Listen, you want our help, you better start asking nicely.”

  “Orlando,” Caleb cautioned.

  “Fine,” Renée said, raising her gun in front of Orlando’s face. “Please just do what I tell you, or I’ll shoot your girlfriend and toss her over the side.”

  “Hey,” Phoebe said. “I’m nobody’s—”

  “Save it. Kid, help her out. And Caleb, maybe you should actually start contributing. I don’t recall your being of any use so far, except for prattling your academic bullshit.”

  “Which,” Caleb said, “if I recall, helped to get us this far.”

  Renée looked around the gloom, past the dead bodies. “Which is where, exactly?”

  Caleb glared at her through his fogging facemask. Then he peered over her shoulder, to where the lights of the first boat were striking something a hundred feet ahead. A rough shoreline. “Here,” he said, moving to the head of the boat.

  Chang barked a command to the lead boat, and a soldier pulled out a gun, aimed ahead as the boat approached the sandy shore, and fired.

  The crimson flare left a sparkling smoke trail on its ascent. It rose at a slight angle, and kept ascending, illuminating odd shadows, glinting off impossibly white structures.

  Caleb’s boat pulled up alongside the other, and all eyes were on the still-ascending flare. Chang whispered something, and three more flares fired out into the darkness. The first one dipped over a tall minaret and was lost over a skyline of domes, walls and turrets. The other, rising at a steeper angle, hit the roof of the immense cavern and stuck, sparking and smoking.

  “More,” Renée said.

  The flare guns fired again, four of them lighting up the darkness, dispelling shadows that had ruled undisturbed for eight centuries.

  “Holy crap,” Orlando whispered, as they all gazed at the flickering red outlines of the city visible over the walls: palaces of polished white marble, temples of golden tiles and blue mosaic domes; winding walkways and soaring bridges, fountains and ponds; pillared temples and massive halls.

  “The real Xanadu,” Caleb said.

  Qara bowed her head, whispering something in Mongolian.

  “Wait,” Renée said, pointing ahead, to the quarter-mile field stretching before the immense wall.
Hard to see with the flares so high up, but it looked like the ground was composed of ridges, bumps and pockets. “Flares. Fire them straight ahead, now.”

  As the men prepared to shoot, Phoebe cautioned, “I don’t think you want to see this.”

  Three flares streaked out from the first boat, heading off at slightly different angles. The first struck something only fifty feet out, fizzled and then dropped. The other two went farther; one hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet.

  Then each struck something and held, smoking, casting the surrounding area in a ghastly glow.

  “Double crap,” Orlando said.

  Twenty-thousand strong, they stood organized by their regiments, infantry on the right, cavalry in the center; archers on the higher ground to the left; and chariots, catapults, siege machines and banners on immense poles interspersed throughout. Grayish-white terra cotta statues, each one carved perfectly, detailed down to the grooves in their armor, the notches on the saddles, the hardened eyes brimming with loyalty, ferocity and menace.

  “The welcoming party,” Caleb said. “Genghis’s army.”

  7.

  Montross covered his face with his sleeve while Hiltmeyer and Harris coughed, backing away from the boat. “No way,” the colonel said, pointing to the cavern and the river with the silvery sheen that bent around a quick curve and headed into the blackest reaches beyond their flashlights’ beams.

  “Hang on,” Montross said. He backed up, closed his eyes and hugged the Emerald Tablet close. “Alexander, let’s see how your father handled this from his side.”

  “Masks,” the boy said at once. He was rubbing his eyes, also breathing through his shirt. “I saw them. All the soldiers had them, and they left three behind. For us.”

  “Three?” Harris said, choking on the word. “Come on!”

  “Easy,” said Montross. “Nina, go fetch them, and—”

  “Be careful, I know.” She smiled wolfishly. “Your concern for me is touching.”

  “I just want my mask.”

  As she left, Montross pulled Alexander back to the tunnel leading from the room with the trap ceiling. “We’ll wait for her here where the air’s clearer.”

  “What about us?” Harris asked.

  Montross shrugged. “Tear your shirts, or jackets. Make yourselves something to cover your faces.”

  Hiltmeyer grumbled, “You’ll poison us.”

  “Either that, or I’ll shoot you.” Montross waved the Ruger. “Your choice.” He cleared his throat, then turned to the boy. “And you, Alexander, I need you to use this time to scout out the area ahead while I keep an eye on these clowns.”

  Alexander shook his head. “But I don’t want to. Anytime I try, I know I’ll just see Dad, and I can’t, don’t want to see . . .”

  “See what?”

  “Can’t bear it.” He shook his head, covering his eyes. “What if I see him die, too?”

  Montross knelt down and switched his gun to his other hand, still keeping an eye on their prisoners. “Just focus your mind, ask yourself a question, and only think about that question when you let your visions come.”

  “What question?”

  “Jeez, didn’t your father teach you anything? Never mind. I already know: ‘Learn by doing, learn from experience.’ Still, you must have sat in and listened to the Morpheus Initiative sessions.”

  “A few times,” Alexander admitted.

  “Well then, you know how it is. The question frames your visionary experience. You remote view what you’ve asked your mind to show you. In this case,”—he waved beyond, to the darkness along the river—“we need to know what’s waiting for us. Ask to be shown any traps on this river, anything that could stop us from reaching the great underground cavern and the city of Genghis Khan.”

  “Too vague,” Alexander said.

  “What?”

  “The question. I know enough about it, as you said. I sat in on a lot of sessions with my dad, with Aunt Phoebe. I know you can’t have those multiple-part questions. Or you get crappy visions, something that just might get us killed.”

  Montross grinned. “All right, smarty-pants. Just remote view the next section of this river. Period.”

  Alexander nodded. “I’ll try. And I’ll try not to see my dad.”

  “Try hard,” Montross said. “I know it’s not easy to pull away from your feelings, or your fears, but it’s the only way. If you want to see him again, trust that he knows what he’s doing, and trust that for this part, we need your skills. Go to it.”

  “Can I touch the tablet first?”

  Montross held it out, balancing it in the palm of his right hand, watching as it reflected in the boy’s deep brown eyes, mixing with his irises, turning them a swirling shade of green.

  Alexander reached for it slowly, his fingers trembling.

  #

  Nina found the masks, as predicted, on the shore beside the two posts and empty chains that had tethered two boats. She waved her flashlight ahead, scoping out the area, but couldn’t see a thing. She held her breath, sucking in a whiff of the foul, toxic air and holding it just to listen.

  From somewhere, far, far off, something loud, a report followed by another muffled thump echoing along the stretch of the dark underground waterway, reached her ear. A tiny ripple stirred along the shore.

  She didn’t need to be psychic to know that the other team faced something deadly at the end of the waterway. But all the same, she felt a twinge, a sudden connection with someone.

  And it wasn’t Montross.

  Caleb.

  She felt him, saw through his eyes just for a brief instant . . .

  . . . a flickering field of immobile warriors, thousands-strong, weapons ready, facing them, barring their advance.

  Why? Nina thought. Why did I glimpse that? Why Caleb? Why now?

  She took the masks and slowly backed away, shaking her head, clearing that nagging sight, when something else, something that suddenly blossomed like an exploding fireworks display in her mind. . . .

  Two sets of small hands, gripped by larger ones, held in a grandfatherly grasp.

  Two hands . . . belonging to two boys.

  Two scared boys, looking out over a harbor from a great height, gazing out at hundreds of boats while a raspy voice whispered of destiny.

  Nina trembled.

  She coughed, fell to her knees, heaving. Gasping.

  What . . . the hell . . . was that?

  She closed her eyes, but the visions were gone, leaving behind nothing but wispy shadows.

  She gathered up the masks and stumbled back to Montross.

  #

  They pushed off as Nina stood behind the rowers, Hiltmeyer and Harris. She had a gun in each hand, the Beretta in her left, the muzzles at the back of their heads, and she couldn’t help but feel like a slave master on the old Roman galleons, ready to execute whoever dropped out of pace first.

  Harris complained through his makeshift face mask of his torn sleeve tied around his neck and across his mouth. Colonel Hiltmeyer only rowed in silence, his eyes burning as each stroke released fumes that stung at his eyes.

  “What next?” Montross asked.

  Alexander sat in the front, gas mask wrapped extra tight around his head. He held up a hand. Then pointed. “Hug the right wall.”

  Nina nudged the gun against Harris’s head, prodding him to row harder, pushing the boat in that direction.

  “Farther,” Alexander said, scanning the rooftop as nervousness crept into his voice. “Otherwise we’re bowling pins.”

  Montross directed his flashlight along the ceiling, locating a huge round ball tucked into a niche in the center, to their left now as they steered around it. “Good catch, kid. What else?”

  Alexander closed his eyes and focused his breathing. Don’t do it, don’t view Dad, or Phoebe.

  Instead, he saw his . . .

  . . . mom, engulfed in the flames.

  Except she wasn’t hurting. Wasn’t even singed. She walked thr
ough the fire calmly, arms out to him, a sweet smile on her face.

  “You’re not alone,” she whispered, smoke puffing from her mouth.

  “Not . . . alone . . .”

  He snapped out of it, blinked and then saw—

  “Spikes!” he shouted. “At both sides. Stop!”

  Harris pulled back, oaring fast the other way, and Hiltmeyer slipped, a second later, turning and jamming the oar. He coughed, hacking into his mask and cursing. Something black and shiny roared straight up from the river a yard from where Alexander had been sitting in the prow. It pierced the tunnel’s roof, dislodging stones and dirt, and then withdrew with a silent splash.

  “What the hell!” Harris said. His oar was out of the water now, and he was bent over, almost hugging his knees. “What do we do?”

  “Remain calm,” Montross said. “Alexander’s got it.”

  “Cutting it a little close, don’t you think?” Hiltmeyer said.

  “Turn now,” Alexander said with a shaking voice. “Straighten it out. And stay straight if you can. There’s just a narrow channel where we’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah,” said Nina, jabbing the soldiers with her guns. “We get it. You heard the kid. Straighten out and row.”

  They moved ahead, cutting through the luminescent water. Moving slower, carefully.

  “What else?” Montross asked.

  Alexander shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything else, except . . .”

  “What?”

  He slumped forward, then straightened his back. He turned his head and Montross could see the pained eyes filling with tears.

  “I saw you again,” he said. “Your mom and dad—”

  “What?”

  “Alexander!” Nina started.

  “—dying. The car crash. Except, he wasn’t your dad.”

  “I know that,” Montross snapped. “But why? Why are you seeing this? What question are you asking?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t ask a thing. I just keep seeing it.”

  Montross stared, open-mouthed, and Nina glanced at him, taking her attention away from the soldiers. “Xavier, it’s nothing.”