Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  "Murdered,” he whispered. “His throat was slit."

  She swallowed hard, then nodded. “No wonder it's so quiet. The Foundation got here first."

  Zack held up his hand, dripping with the dead man's blood from where he'd tried to find a pulse. “Maybe. But this body is still warm. He hasn't been dead much more than five minutes and nobody has left the ship in that time. They're still on board."

  For a moment, the soft swish of bilge water being pumped into the sea was the only sound Ivy heard.

  Then she noticed the stream of blood from the corpse into the scupper. “That isn't rusty water, it's bloody water being drained. We're on a slaughter-ship."

  He nodded. “Maybe. And maybe we should get off and rejoin Cejno and Mustafa. The Foundation Agents are going to have to get off sometime and we can trap them when they come."

  She considered. She'd seen too much death when she'd been in Iraq and didn't have any sick compulsion to see more now. Unfortunately, the easy way was too risky.

  "They may plan on helicopter evacuation or to head out to sea. The Navy is only a few miles away, you know. We've got to stay on board until we know their plans."

  "You're right. Damn."

  She liked the fact that he didn't argue with her, didn't try to hold to positions that weren't right. Most of the guys she'd known over the years would assume she was wrong just because she was a woman.

  "I'm moving toward the stern."

  He nodded and Ivy checked to make sure no Agent head had popped up from below the decks before sprinting to the next cover.

  Another corpse, his face distorted by a second grin cut into his throat, met her in what seemed to have been a smoking area. A cigarette butt still smoldered on the deck.

  She felt for a pulse with one hand while waving Zack forward with the other.

  No pulse, but there was movement. A large freight hatch groaned, then slowly opened.

  Zack hit the deck about ten meters short of his next hiding place, rolling away from the hatch as he brought his Kalashnikov into firing position.

  "What should we do with the priest?” The distinctly Midwestern America accent left no doubt in Ivy's mind that they'd discovered Foundation Agents.

  "This thing weighs a goddamn ton."

  "Adams, you're on report. I've spoken to you about that language."

  "Sorry, Jones."

  It wasn't the same Jones who'd gotten wounded in Mosul, Ivy saw. Apparently they weren't very imaginative with the names.

  "We going to take the priest on board the carrier?” Adams asked. “Not sure the choppers have that kind of heavy lift capacity."

  "Smith says to kill him,” Jones ordered. “Then pour gasoline on him and throw the veil on top. We definitely don't want to encourage any sort of Mary fetish, and the bosses can't use that kind of power."

  "You've got it."

  A muffled squawk told Ivy that Father Galen was still alive, at least for the moment.

  She waited until they'd lifted both sections of Cross onto the deck and prodded Father Galen up after before gesturing to Zack to stay under cover and then stepping out, her AK-47 aimed directly at the Agents.

  "Thank you for returning our items, gentlemen. And we'll take the priest off your hands as well. His superiors have been looking for him."

  Jones met her glare with a cool stare of his own.

  "You know, Sergeant Winters, you had a great opportunity to walk away.” His hand gestures were probably supposed to be invisible to her. They weren't.

  She fired a short burst over his head as a warning that she'd seen through his game. “Stay nice and close together, gentlemen. When I get nervous, I start shooting. Next time, the shots won't be high."

  "You're engaged in treason against your nation, Sergeant Winters.” Jones's voice was still cool, seemingly unaffected by the bullets that had just whizzed a couple of feet over his head.

  "America needs the Cross,” he continued. “There are those who claim that no weapons of mass destruction were hidden in Iraq. But they are wrong. The Cross was hidden. Just as we knew it would be. Compared to the power of the Cross, all the nuclear arsenals in the world add up to nothing."

  "Pretty handy for you that the U.S. invaded Iraq, than, huh?"

  Jones grunted out two ha's. “Handy? Not at all. We spent years preparing the nation to do the Lord's mission."

  Ivy didn't figure Jones was crazy. Maybe he was mistaken about the war being launched just to let some mysterious Foundation grab the Cross. Or maybe he was dead-on-right about who was driving what in America. What she did know was that she couldn't start shooting at a bunch of Americans who were following their government's orders.

  * * * *

  Ivy distracted the Foundation Agents for long enough to let Zack get under cover.

  He had a bad feeling about the way Jones looked at Ivy—it reminded him of the time he'd seen a shark swallow a smaller predator whole. But Ivy had taken the lead. He'd back her up.

  He kept his Kalashnikov at his hip, ready to spray a stream of death at the agents while he let Ivy try to talk her way out of trouble.

  The Foundation Agent was smooth. He played Ivy like a piano, appealing to her patriotism, her sense of duty, her Christian faith. He didn't bother talking about little things like why he'd slaughtered an entire ship full of sailors or why, if they were such good Christians, they planned to kill a Christian priest like Father Galen.

  After what they'd been through, Zack would have guessed Ivy was immune to that kind of persuasion.

  Apparently he was wrong again.

  "Do you really want the True Cross to stay in the hands of the infidel Moslems, available for them to use as a weapon against the democratic west?” Jones's voice was smooth, soft, creating doubt where only certainty had existed. “We wouldn't allow them to hold nuclear weapons, would we? The Cross is far more powerful than a bomb. You must understand that. After all, you've been in its presence for days."

  Ivy's eyes drooped and she lowered her assault rifle.

  Jones signaled Adams who dropped Father Galen, pulled a long knife and stepped toward the unmoving Ivy.

  Zack's brain told his finger to squeeze the trigger, but nothing happened.

  Then he understood. Jones wasn't being persuasive. His talking was only the carrier for his real message. After all the time he'd spent with the Cross, Zack had learned that magic exists, but he still didn't take it into account with his plans. And neither had Ivy.

  The Foundation Agent had cast some sort of spell.

  If Zack didn't do anything about it, he'd have to watch Ivy die.

  That wasn't going to happen.

  He told his lips to begin a prayer, thinking the words when his lips refused. “Hail Mary, full of Grace."

  By the time he reached the word Grace, Adams had almost reached Ivy.

  But he said “Grace” out loud. And his fingers, freed from the spell that had been aimed, after all, at Ivy and not at him, tightened around the trigger.

  Adams went down. Jones ducked.

  * * * *

  One instant, she'd been frozen, unable to do anything but watch the Foundation Agent approach her with a knife that could have been the twin of the one Smith had used to slit her throat. The next, she was free.

  She raised her weapon and fired a burst, but Jones had moved impossibly fast. Other than Adams's corpse, a few feet from her where Zack had shot him, only Father Galen remained in sight.

  She ducked back herself just in time to avoid being hit by a hail of semiautomatic fire.

  "They'll radio for more help. We've got about five minutes before the Navy gets here,” Zack said.

  Another couple of shots clanged off the ship's steel hull near her, the ricochets spraying her with paint chips and rust. They'd reached a kind of standoff but, as Zack had just reminded her, the other side could summon a lot more help than she could.

  That wouldn't help them, though, if their prize had already vanished. And the agents had lifted the
Cross to the deck before they'd ducked back for cover.

  "I'll get the Cross."

  "You'll get shot,” Zack said.

  "Maybe.” But men armed only with knives and pistols tend to duck when someone is shooting at them with an assault rifle.

  She fired a couple more bursts in the directions she thought the Agents had shot from, then scooped up the Cross.

  "I'll help,” Father Galen said. “Thank you for coming to rescue me.” He waved the veil like a flag. “Mary must have protected me."

  She didn't bother telling him he could have rotted for all she cared.

  "Get off the ship,” she ordered. “Cejno is waiting."

  "Okay.” He put his bulk in full forward motion. Even full speed wasn't too fast for the overweight priest, but the ship wasn't that big either.

  An agent popped his head up and fired a shot after the priest, but Zack disturbed his aim with a burst from his Kalashnikov.

  The priest stumbled when he hit the gangplank but he kept going. Ivy fired another quick burst, then another, until her AK-47 locked. She was out of bullets.

  "Cover me."

  Ivy scooped up both sections of Cross.

  Although the Agents had complained about the Cross's weight, it seemed almost weightless to her.

  She didn't dare turn around and head for the gangplank. Instead, she kept moving forward.

  Single large-gauge shots sounded like low rumbles over the higher-pitched chatter of Zack's Kalashnikov. The kinetic energy of a bullet smashed the Cross into her side and twisted her around. Once again, though, the Cross saved her—admittedly in a much more mundane way than before. Still, she wasn't complaining.

  She leapt off the side of the ship into the waiting green of the Marmara Sea.

  Wood floats.

  She reminded herself of that as the Cross's momentum pulled her deeper and deeper into the salt water.

  White streaks, like laser lightshows, cut through the water—bubble trails left by bullets.

  There were more of those bullet trails than she would have guessed possible from handguns. And they were closer than comfortable. Water slows a bullet pretty quickly, but that didn't mean those shots wouldn't kill.

  She hoped the volume of fire didn't mean the agents had finished Zack off. She'd never had the chance to tell him how she felt about him, hadn't really figured that out herself, for that matter. But he was the best partner, they the best team she'd ever worked on. If she had to go on alone, she didn't know how she'd make it.

  She reminded herself she didn't have time for maudlin thoughts. If she bobbed up like a cork next to the ship, she'd be easy prey for the Agents and Zack's survival would be the least of her problems.

  The wood's buoyancy slowly overcame her downward momentum and she headed up. Despite her aching lungs, she resisted the urge to head for the surface. Rather than kick for the air, she angled the Cross sections so their lift would move them forward at an angle, away from the death-ship, then paddled to extend the distance.

  Her lungs screamed by the time they finally reached the surface but she'd moved maybe twenty yards away from the ship. It wasn't far, but when you're getting shot at with short-barreled handguns, twenty yards can be the difference between safety and certain death.

  She mounted the two Cross pieces like they were a waterlogged surfboard and paddled toward the shore where they'd left the cars.

  A couple of splashes persuaded her to stay low, but the shooters gave up on her pretty quickly. Instead, they rushed Zack.

  * * * *

  Now what?

  Zack squeezed off aimed single shots at Agents who popped their heads up above the hatch, but this standoff wasn't going to end in his favor. Within minutes, they would get reinforcements from the nearby aircraft carrier. Even before that, he'd exhaust his thirty-round magazine.

  He fired again and heard one of the Agents curse.

  A few pistol shots sounded from below the decks. They were firing at Ivy out of their portholes and there was nothing he could do about that unless he wanted to go down after them.

  Unless he could get them to come after him.

  Pretty obviously, these Foundation Agents had received military training. But training isn't the same as being in an actual war, facing actual bullets, getting actual friends and fellow soldiers killed around you.

  Zack had been in a real war. That should give him an advantage.

  He'd need all the advantages he could get.

  He switched the selector to short burst mode and aimed low, trying for ricochets down below the decks. Two quick three round bursts persuaded the Agents to keep their heads down. He broke from cover, backing toward the same gangway Father Galen had taken off the ship.

  He'd lost count of his shots, so he switched back to single mode when he hit the gangplank. Time to make every bullet count.

  A flurry of bullets from the bow of the ship told him his time had run out. The Agents had found another hatchway and outflanked him.

  He fired a couple of times in the direction of the shots, dropped his rifle, and rolled down the gangway.

  Maybe they thought they'd killed him. Maybe they were just surprised by his unorthodox tactics. Either way, they stopped shooting for a moment.

  He turned his roll into an awkward cartwheel and ended up on his feet, sprinting for the cover of the rusty containers where Mustafa and Cejno were holed up.

  "Let's get out of here,” he shouted.

  The deep thrum of helicopter rotors barely penetrated his awareness. They were still a ways away, but helicopters travel quickly. He was about to have even more unfriendly company.

  "I shall hold off the men on the ship,” Mustafa volunteered.

  "Don't be an idiot. We've got to move."

  Mustafa smiled. “Hediye, give Mr. Zack your keys. The rest of you, take young Cejno and make sure he goes back to the east, to his family. I'll take the Mercedes once I've delayed them for long enough."

  Zack had little use for heroes. In the Army, heroes end up killing a lot more of their fellow soldiers than any enemy.

  "Where's the priest?"

  "He got away."

  Damn. That meant he and Ivy would have to track him down again. This was getting tiresome.

  "He gave this to me first.” Cejno pulled a piece of fabric from his pocket. The veil. “Go with Allah, my brother."

  Zack shook his head in amazement. He'd been sure the priest would holdfast to his treasure. He'd abandoned his calling, his career, his life for the sake of the veil, after all. Given what Father Galen had done to Ivy, it was hard for Zack to generate much sympathy for the dope-smoking priest. Still, when Galen had seen the real stakes, the real enemy, he'd done the right thing.

  Zack stopped arguing and went.

  He'd reached the end of the pier when a storm of pistol fire sounded.

  There were more Agents on the ship than Zack had thought. At least twenty of them were firing from the deck of the freighter or pouring down the gangplanks.

  Mustafa fired calmly, his body in the classic target shooter stance he'd probably learned during his days as a draftee in the Turkish universal military service.

  A couple of the Agents went down and Mustafa shifted his position just in time to avoid the Agents’ counterfire.

  Mustafa's bodyguards popped away at the agents exposed on the gangplanks. Another agent fell, although whether he'd been hit by Mustafa, a bodyguard, or had simply slipped, Zack couldn't guess.

  Mustafa fired again, then reached into his jacket pocket for a reload.

  An agent caught him in the throat with a knife before he finished.

  "Damn."

  "He wanted to die a mujahedeen,” Cejno said. “Let his death serve a purpose."

  Zack looked at the keys in his hand. The Cross was far longer than the little Opal, but it was their best chance.

  "Stay alive, Cejno."

  "You too, Mr. Zack. Oh, you may need this.” He handed over the fat wallet filled with the reward m
oney the Patriarch and Cejno had come up with.

  "But—"

  "I can make more. Mustafa is not the only hashish dealer in Istanbul."

  "What next?” Ivy looked like a goddess as she stepped from the sea, the Cross sections over her shoulders.

  "We're taking the Opal and I've got the Veil. Smash the Cross through the back window. It's the only way we'll make the things fit."

  She used her rifle butt rather than the Cross to make a hole in the glass while Zack fired up the engine.

  He helped shove in the Cross sections, waited until she was seated, then took off.

  "Fasten your seatbelt. The Marines are coming and believe me, that isn't good news."

  He peeled away from the harbor heading south, along a narrow gravel road that looked like it was mostly tree-shrouded. The helicopters would pick him up with their infrared scopes, but he could hope they wouldn't just start shooting anything with an engine. There was enough traffic that he could hope to get lost.

  "Aren't we heading the wrong way?"

  Zack looked back. The helicopter about a hundred meters above the death-ship looked like a hungry locust waiting to feed.

  "Anywhere away from those guys is the right way."

  "We've got to get to Venice."

  "We've got to stay alive."

  "If we can,” Ivy said. “But getting to Venice is more important."

  Chapter 17

  "How's your Australian accent?” Zack asked Ivy.

  She stopped drying herself. “Goodai, mate."

  "That was horrible. But maybe it'll be good enough."

  "Good enough for what?"

  "Americans have mostly forgotten World War I. It was a long time ago, we entered late, and only got involved in the fighting in France. My great grandfather fought there, with Pershing. I barely remember him, but I remember how much he loved France."

  "Your point?"

  "It was a World War, not just a war in France. An especially horrible part of it was fought near here. Just across those straits."

  He pointed the few miles to the hilly peninsula on the other side of the waterway.

  "Most of the world has forgotten Gallipoli. But the Australians and New Zealanders remember. They come here in their pilgrimages, the same way some Americans come to the beaches in Normandy."