by C. S. Graham
Noah felt his heart slam up against his chest. “I’ve never shot a gun. Period.”
Alexander slid off the bench. “Well, that may be about to change.”
By the time the Gulfstream touched down at the icy airstrip on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the winter sun had slipped low in the sky to throw a rich golden light over the snow-clad, tree-covered slopes.
Bubba and Jax had spent most of the flight from London calling in a lifetime of favors, pre-assembling everything from snowshoes and an M4 carbine to a tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and a neat little red-and-white MD 600 helicopter.
Tobie took one look at the chopper and groaned. “I don’t understand why we can’t just drive out to Carlyle’s lodge.”
“Because it’s a long lake, and the estate is way down at the other end.”
“So? We aren’t planning to go in until midnight anyway.”
“Yeah. But we might need to make a quick getaway.” Jax threw open the cabin doors. “Don’t worry; Bubba’s a great helicopter pilot. He’s only crashed three times.”
“Twice,” Bubba corrected him.
“You’re forgetting Laos.”
Bubba hitched up his tattered jeans. “That one doesn’t count.”
Chapter 63
Washington, D.C.: Tuesday 6 February 8 P.M. local time
The photogenic young representative from Utah stared into the TV camera, her luminous dark eyes dewy with emotion. “I don’t think this president is a real American. Listen to him! He’s talking about joining with other countries to create international laws to restrict our freedoms. What is this? The New World Order? Americans need to be asking themselves, Who does this man really answer to? What is his agenda here? Frankly, I’m afraid for my country. I’m afraid—”
“Turn it off, Daniel,” said Senator Savoie, a gin and tonic cradled in one hand. “Why torture yourself?”
President Pizarro pointed the remote at the screen and zapped the ostentatiously frightened politician into oblivion. “Jeez. Did you hear her? Next thing you know they’ll be talking about black helicopters and stockpiling weapons in fortified bunkers.”
Savoie settled deeper into his chair, his eyes crinkling into a smile. “What makes you think they’re not already?”
Pizarro went to stand at the window overlooking the snow-filled gardens below. “I don’t understand. Why can’t they get it? We’ve entered a new era, when money and corporations move freely across national borders in a way that people and regulations can’t. We’ve got to do something to control the disastrous trends of the last three decades, otherwise the entire world will end up being owned by a handful of corporations, and the rest of us are going to be reduced to the status of wage-earning serfs.”
Savoie took a slow sip of his gin and tonic. “Careful, Daniel, or you’re going to start sounding as crazy as they do.”
Pizarro gave a rueful laugh and came to sit down opposite his friend. But he couldn’t relax. “My wife, Pat, didn’t want me to run for president. She’s convinced they’re going to try to kill me.”
“They probably will,” said Savoie, draining his glass. “At least once. We just need to make sure they don’t succeed.”
The two men sat on the snowy bleachers overlooking the ice-skating pond.
“You’re certain A.J. is dead?” said Nordstrom.
“She’s dead.” Davenport watched a small girl out on the ice tilt back her head and go into a surprisingly professional spin. “We’ve had confirmation from two different associates in Scotland Yard. The incident is being kept quiet at the request of MI6.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
Davenport shook his head. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“And the reporter?”
“We’re still dealing with the reporter.”
“The way you’re ‘dealing’ with the witch?”
Davenport tightened his jaw. “Neither one of them knows anything.”
“You think.”
“Even if they had the codex itself, they would never put the pieces together in time.”
Nordstrom glanced at his watch. “Everything is in place for tomorrow?”
Davenport pushed to his feet. “By this time tomorrow night, the United States will have a godly man as president.”
Chapter 64
The night was clear, the northern sky a deep purple sparkled with an endless universe of stars.
Bubba flew low over the lake, the starlight throwing the chopper’s shadow across the white snow as they hugged the shoreline. The quiet drone of the engine echoed off the steep, snow-blanketed slopes that rose beside them; the branches of the towering stands of fir and pine glistened white with a new-fallen snow. Looking out toward the middle of the lake, Tobie could see a black belt of open water edged by banks of white. But much of the lake was frozen over, the ice extending out for a good half mile from shore.
They passed in low over Carlyle’s estate, a blast of frigid air filling the chopper’s small cabin as Jax leaned out to study the compound. Built of rustic unpeeled logs and river-smoothed stones, the main house sat on a rise overlooking the frozen lake. They could see a pavilion down near the lakeshore and a guardhouse farther up the slope near the road, its steeply pitched roof thick with snow. Beyond that lay the runway Tobie had seen in her first remote viewing. They’d studied the compound on Google Earth, comparing A.J.’s diagram with the layout in the satellite shots. It had all lined up perfectly.
“Looks good,” said Noah Bosch, an M4 clutched awkwardly in his lap as he peered out the window.
Tobie didn’t say anything. She was so nervous she was having a hard time breathing.
About a mile up the lakeshore, Bubba brought the chopper down on a broad snow-covered clearing before an empty estate with a For Sale sign out front.
“Just give us a holler if you need us,” said Bubba, fishing a string of beef jerky out of his pocket and tearing off a mouthful. “I’ll come pluck y’all off the end of the dock.”
Jax threw open the doors. It was so cold that Tobie could feel the insides of her nostrils freeze as she drew in a quick breath. But her body was warm, almost hot, thanks to the insulated white reflective jumpsuits they wore. According to A.J. Carlyle’s notes, the estate was protected by heat-activated infrared cameras; the suits would keep their body heat from escaping and setting off the alarms.
“Ready?” said Jax, shouldering a backpack.
She hopped out beside him. The truth was, she was scared half to death. But all she could say was, “Ready.”
The night was unbelievably still, the only sound the soft exhalations of their breath and the squeaky crunch of the dry snow beneath their aluminum-and-Lytex snowshoes. They approached the compound from the frozen lake, the snow-draped mountains looming above them, silent and majestic. As they swung around a point, the lodge came into view.
“Look like what you saw?” Jax asked quietly.
“Yes.”
He glanced over at her. “What’s it like, to see in person something you’ve seen before, but only in your own mind?”
“Pretty weird, actually.”
He huffed a soft laugh.
A long, empty pier stretched out into the iced-over lake. They leaned against its rough planking and unbuckled their snowshoes. “I just hope everybody’s asleep,” whispered Tobie, staring up at the dark windows of the sprawling lodge. The place was huge.
“If anything happens to me,” Jax reminded her, “call Bubba and run like hell for this dock.”
Tobie swallowed, hard. “Got it.”
Their reflective suits white against the white of the snow, they crept up the hill to the lodge, to where a door opened off a small porch on the eastern wing.
The exhalation of her breath billowing white around her, Tobie watched as Jax slid the key A.J. had given Noah into the lock. It turned with a soft click. Jax gave the door a nudge, and it swung inward before them on well-oiled hinges.
He
cast her a quick glance. So far, so good.
Slipping inside, they closed the door quietly behind them. They found themselves in a small mudroom that opened off the kitchen. Beside a rack of skis and poles in various sizes hung a security panel blinking red in the gloom. Jax punched in the four digit code A.J. had provided, and the light blinked from red to green.
“Huh,” whispered Jax, as if surprised. “This may just work after all.”
“Um . . . Barracuda,” said Tobie as the shadow of a big black Doberman rose up, teeth bared in a low, menacing growl. Tobie held herself very, very still. “Nice Barracuda.”
“Look what we brought you,” said Jax, pulling the tub of Ben and Jerry’s French Vanilla from his pack and prying off the lid. “Your favorite.” He set the ice cream on the floor and nudged it toward the dog.
Barracuda growled again.
“It’s not working,” whispered Tobie, a bead of sweat rolling down her cheek.
“Maybe he’s in the mood for chocolate?”
“We didn’t bring chocolate!”
Barracuda took two steps toward them. Tobie stopped breathing. Then the dog’s ears came up. His tail wagged, and he dropped his head to the ice cream.
“Slowly,” mouthed Jax.
They skittered around the dog into a kitchen of rustic pine cabinets and very expensive industrial-size Viking appliances. As they cut across to the hall, Tobie slipped a Tazer from the holster on her belt and held it in a tight grip. She’d decided she really wasn’t cut out for housebreaking. Her stomach hurt, and her hands were shaking, and she was having a hard time breathing.
Jax said, “Relax.”
She glared at him.
Carlyle’s library lay at the end of the hall. Slipping inside, they closed the door carefully behind them. The insulated curtains at the windows blanketed the room in almost total darkness, and they paused to don night-vision goggles. The room suddenly came into focus, all wood paneling and soft velvet and glass-eyed dead-animal heads mounted high on the walls.
“There,” whispered Tobie. Crossing to the tall bookcase beside the hearth, she lifted the lid on a small carved wooden chest to reveal a recessed keypad. She punched in the three-digit code and a section of the bookcase swung slowly inward.
“Wow,” she said softly. “That’s neat.”
A long gallery stretched before them, lined with glass-fronted cases.
“Look,” whispered Jax. “It’s the Inanna Vase.”
Tobie studied the gleaming alabaster vessel. “That’s what I was supposed to RV?”
“Yes.”
They found the door to the manuscript chamber just beyond the vase. While Jax yanked off his gloves and went to hunker down in front of the locked metal cabinet, Tobie prowled the room.
It was much as she had seen it: the long table, the wall-mounted racks with their acrylic-encased manuscript pages. Unable to resist, she holstered her Taser and went to slide one of the mounts from its slot.
She found herself staring at an ancient sheet of papyrus, the reeds of the paper yellowed and faded, but the ink still amazingly dark and clear despite the passage of the centuries.
“Do you mind?” whispered Jax, switching on a penlight.
Slipping the manuscript back into its place, she went to hold the light for him.
“You need to teach me how to do this,” she said, watching him work his pick in the lock.
He smiled as the tension wrench turned the cylinder with a little click. “First I need to teach you how to shoot.” He eased the cabinet door open to reveal rows and rows of disks.
She started to skim through the titles, but Jax jerked the pack off his back and started dumping disks into it. “We take them all; we don’t have time to be picky.” Quickly shouldering the loaded pack, he closed the door to the cabinet and pushed to his feet. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
But when they opened the door from the library to the hall, they could see a rectangle of light thrown across the floor from the kitchen.
“Shit,” whispered Jax. “Somebody got hungry.”
Tobie reached for her Taser. “Do we wait until they go away?”
Jax shook his head. “Too risky. They might decide to check on Barracuda and find the ice cream.”
Creeping to the kitchen door, they could see a big, muscle-bound guy dressed in camos and talking into the mike he wore clipped onto his shoulder as he slathered mayonnaise on six pieces of bread. “Okay, Corey; I got mayo, turkey, ham, cheese, lettuce, and tomato. You want some pickles? I think we may even have—” He swung around, saw Jax and Tobie standing in the doorway, and yelled, “Intruders!” just as Tobie zapped him with her Taser.
He went down hard, his body convulsing uncontrollably.
She stared at him in horror and dropped the Taser.
Jax was already sprinting across the kitchen toward the door. “Come on!”
Bursting out the back door, they pelted down the slope toward the lake. Behind them, Barracuda set up a ferocious, belated barking.
“Plan B!” Jax yelled into his radio. “Now, Bubba. Now!”
A door at the far end of the house slammed open. Throwing a quick glance over her shoulder, Tobie saw a guy in boxers and a T-shirt burst out onto the wide porch, a big gun in his hands. “Oh, crap,” she said, just as a spray of bullets kicked up the snow around them.
Jax yanked out his Beretta and sent two or three slugs thumping into the thick logs beside the guy’s head.
The hero with the gun ducked for cover.
“Come on, Bubba,” said Jax as they sprinted out onto the dock.
Behind them, two guys with M16s roared over the crest of the hill in an ATV, gunning hard through the snow.
“Bubba!”
The MD 600 swooped in over the frozen lake. Bubba came in fast, bypassing the dock to take a sharp turn over the ATV. The guys on the ATV took one look at those swooping skids, cried, “Fuck!” and bailed off into the deep powder. The empty ATV roared into a snowdrift and stalled.
Bubba wheeled and swung in low. Jax dove through the open door while Noah hauled Tobie in behind him. A spray of bullets thumped into the dock and punched through the chopper’s skin.
“Shit! We’re outta here!” yelled Bubba, snow swirling around them as he kicked the MD 600 up. “Jesus H. Christ, Jax! You always do this to me. Can’t you ever just walk out of a place?”
Chapter 65
They waited until they were back in the Gulfstream and headed for D.C. before popping the disk neatly labeled “Babylonian Codex, translation” into Bosch’s laptop.
Jax set the computer up on the jet’s built-in mahogany table and flipped through the first verses. “Ha,” he said. “Here it is. The lost chapter. Right between Chapter Four and what is now considered Chapter Five.”
Tobie came to sit on the bench beside him, with Noah Bosch leaning over the table.
Jax read, “ ‘And the angels said, behold the final days are fast approaching and it will come to past that the time of the world has ripened and the time for the harvest of the seeds of the evil ones and the good ones has come. And it shall be a time when inequity, and sin, and blasphemy, and wrong, and all manner of evil deeds increase, and when apostasy, wickedness, and uncleanness increase.’ ”
He paused for a moment, thoughtful.
Bosch said in an odd, hushed voice, “It sounds just like the Bible.”
“That’s because it all came out of the same literary tradition,” said Jax.
Tobie leaned over Jax’s shoulder and read the next verse. “ ‘And it shall come to pass that the people dwelling in the nation of the Lord shall turn away from him, and they shall not perceive nor shall they hear, for they shall be given over to licentiousness. And they shall raise up cities of sin, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Babylon and Egypt, and they shall girt them with high walls and dwell there in darkness. And the Lord shall not be pleased.’ ”
“I guess you could interpret that to mean the United States today,” said Bosch,
frowning.
“Every age thinks they’re drowning in licentiousness and inequity,” said Jax. “Even the Victorians. Make that especially the Victorians.”
Tobie kept reading. “ ‘And He shall send a great rising of the sea as a warning, and many thunders and great lightnings shall cleave the sky. And the waters that flow through the reeds of life like a ruby-eyed serpent shall rise up—’ ” She broke off. “The ruby-eyed snake! There it is!”
“What?” Bosch looked from one to the other. “What ruby-eyed snake?”
“Never mind,” said Jax, and took over reading again. “ ‘A ruby-eyed serpent shall rise up and the sea with it, and then shall all the lakes and channels spill over. And the walls shall tumble down and the hills part, and the waters of wrath shall sweep over Sodom and Gomorrah, over Babylon and Egypt, killing all before them. And when they recede all shall be left as dust, and the sun shall be cut in half like the moon, and the moon shall not give her light.’ ”
“That’s the part Patterson was quoting in his sermon the other night,” said Tobie, sitting back with a soft thump. “But . . . I don’t understand. What does it mean? How could anyone use this as a blueprint for anything?”
“Maybe it makes more sense as it goes along,” said Jax. “Listen. ‘But the people shall not heed the Lord’s warning. And a bull shall come up out of the south, and that bull shall be red not white. And the wicked shall follow him as a new king, an evil-minded man, much-bloodied and given to wickedness, a dark and ominous prince whom all noble men despise, for he laid hands on the womb.’ ”
Bosch began to pace back and forth in the short aisle. “That line about ‘much-bloodied’ is interesting. I can see how the dominionists could interpret that as a reference to President Pizarro. Pizarro was a doctor before he went into politics, right? Plus you could say his parents ‘came up out of the south’.”
“Okay,” said Jax. “I can see that. And then this next part would make sense, too: ‘He shall reign a short time, but in those days there shall be all manner of evils.’ If they assassinate him, Pizarro would certainly only ‘reign a short time.’ ”