Incarnate: Mars Origin I Series Book III

by Abby L. Vandiver

  Coming back up, he turned to me and yelled, “Ma! Run!” So I tried.

  I turned and ran smack dab into the hard, rather large chest of Car Guy. I bumped into him and bounced off his chest. I whipped around to run away from and saw the third guy coming toward me.

  “Oh my God.” I whispered. I didn’t know how to get away. No place to go. So I screamed. “Aaauuuu!”

  Somebody had to notice us.

  Surely somebody would try to come and help.

  “Dr. Dickerson,” Car Guy said. “Don’t scream. Please.”

  So I screamed again.

  He grabbed my arms to steady me. “You need to come with us.”

  I looked around wildly, wiggling trying to break free I elbowed him. It was a pitiful attempt at self-preservation because there was no way I could have caused any injury to that guy.

  Bulky guy had reached us by then and had opened the car door and nudged me inside. He stood guard to make sure I didn’t get out until Car Guy went around and got back in the SUV. Then Bearded Guy pulled down the seat belt and handed it to the driver who buckled me in.

  Safety conscious kidnappers. Go figure.

  I looked in Car Guy’s face as he buckled himself in. “Are you going to kill me?”

  He pulled down on the gear stick, turned around in his seat to back out and said, “Not if I don’t have to.”

  What was that supposed to mean?

  I decided no more screaming.

  I turned to look out of the window, and there was Micah still fighting. He swept his leg under Bearded Guy causing him to fall just as the other kidnapper arrived back over. The driver backed up, jerked the car into gear and I heard the tires squeal as he pulled off.

  As many times as I had thought about what I’d do if someone ever tried to abduct me, I had never pictured myself going down without a fight, sitting quietly, all buckled in.

  “Omigoodness.” I let my head drop back on the headrest.

  The driver looked over at me and said with a chuckle, “I hope that guy you were with don’t hurt my guys too badly.”

  I looked over my shoulder out of the window and saw my son throw a right hook across Bulky Guy’s jaw, which knocked him to his knees. Micah turned and started toward the car. I saw the determination in his face as he came running after me. And over the loud thumping of my heart I could hear him shouting, calling out my name.

  “Ma! Maaaaa!”

  Chapter Nine

  Cairo, Egypt

  Two weeks ago, to gain access to the apartment where he was camped out, Castor had set a fire to run the family who had lived in it for the past five years out. They had lost everything but their lives that day.

  He had been feeling generous.

  He had approached the building management pretending to be the contractor called to remodel the suite. That too took a little finagling, but he needed to be able to have full, and sole, access to the space. He was adept in persuading people to go along with what he needed. A trait he prided himself on. Once he got access, he set up his command station and the first thing he did was put up a wall clock. One that had a second hand that he could hear as the time ticked away. He led a measured life. Hearing the ticking of the clock gave him an audible pulse. A soundtrack to the assassination.

  It was getting close to five o’clock. Close to end of the business day.

  Close to the end of her life.

  He would be glad to kill her. To finally pull that trigger, spill some blood and release some of this anxiety he felt. To be at the whim of an ambitious, self-centered, mad scientist had set off a low, constant drumming in his temple. A kill, he felt, would set him back at ease.

  Castor had known Aaron Coulter for years, but never had been in his employ. Aaron was young at the time they met. He was handsome, well-bred, and quite arrogant. He was smart. Something he was not using to his advantage as of late. Castor remembered thinking when he first met Aaron that archaeology was a strange profession for a man with such ambition. But only after a few years in the field Castor had heard that Aaron was making a name for himself. Now that he understand that the man also had a ruthless streak in him, he understood why.

  Castor Armeni hadn’t gone a completely different route than Aaron to get to the point he was at today. But they had landed in two different places.

  He had been born in Mozambique and raised in an orphanage until age fourteen when he ran away to find his own way in life. That life hadn’t come easy, but it was the valuable lessons that he learned on the streets that made him into a man.

  He had found love, and been happy with that. For a while. A broken heart, no different than any other person who had loved and lost, compelled him to keep moving. And he thought, maybe one day he’d find that part of life again. Unlike many others in his profession, he understood that things in life didn’t always have to be hardcore and on the edge. That life could move on a different beat. One much slower than the one he was programed at this point in his life. He knew, however, that wouldn’t happen for him anytime soon.

  He pulled the black card table over close to him, took out the burner cell phone that he and Aaron used to communicate and laid it on the table. He didn’t want to have to fumble with it when the call from Aaron came in.

  He rubbed his hands down his pants leg, cracked his knuckles and took a look through his sniper scope.

  Yep, there was a different beat that maybe someday he could live in. But for now, he was satisfied with the life he was living – and taking the lives when the price was right.

  Chapter Ten

  Giza, Egypt

  ~ 5:30pm

  Aaron checked the speedometer. He couldn’t wait to get there. He pushed in on the gas pedal. It was his second trip to the Plateau today and although better use of his time would be staying in his hotel room to form his team, make housing arrangements and secure equipment, he couldn’t sit still. He had gone to the government office to see the Director General’s secretary to take care of the last minute details. Then he set out to find something to eat. Eating had completely slipped his mind – if it didn’t come naturally, he would have forgotten to breathe. He was just that excited.

  He ended up driving through the city and fielding calls, with a burger and fries in hand. He pressed on the gas pedal even harder, turned up the volume on the car stereo. Usually he funneled music in from the playlist of his MP3 player, but now it was the Australian accented voice of a geologist that was telling him he couldn’t get a flight out until the day after tomorrow.

  The line clicked right in the middle of the geologist’s rant of how he should have been given more notice. Aaron looked at the dashboard screen and smiled. “Look, I’ve got to call you back,” he said. “But day after tomorrow should be fine. Let’s talk again tomorrow.” Without waiting for the geologist to acknowledge the end of the call, he swapped lines. Calls had been coming in non-stop for the last forty-five minutes, but this call was from the one person he wanted to share his good news with most of all.

  “I see that you were able to finally get the permit to dig under the Sphinx.” A soft voice came through the speakers.

  Aaron chuckled. Good news didn’t take long to get around.

  “Aww. I wanted to be the one that told you. How’dya find out?”

  “I always know what you’re doing. So be careful not to try to get anything past me.”

  “Never,” Aaron said and took in a breath. He smiled. “It’s good to hear your voice. That’s all I needed to make this just that much sweeter.”

  Her laugh that came from the speakers was throaty, and condescending. “Sweeter? What you’ve done is not sweet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Laura Tyler meant the world to him. She was his weakness and he was not ashamed of it. But she was strong-willed and stubborn. Not being able to control her frustrated him, and disappointing her deflated him.

  “Have you called off your dog yet?”

  “Do you mean Castor? Yeah. Of course. He
was the first person I called after I spoke with the people at the government office and got the permits.” He took a sip through the straw of his soft drink, the only thing left of his day’s solitary meal. “Hey, what’s wrong? Aren’t you happy for me? I got this. I did it.”

  “Yeah, and it just took a few shady deals to accomplish.”

  Aaron raised an eyebrow and looked down at the screen as if she could see him. “Not shady, Laura – skill. Savvy. Shrewdness.” A smile curled around the corners of his mouth. “I like to think of it as superior ingenuity.”

  “Unfortunately, that type of ingenuity can get you time in jail – or worse – killed.”

  “I’m not worried. I have you. You’ll get me out of any trouble I get into – jail-wise. And for anything else I have Castor.”

  “You seem pretty sure about that.”

  “Castor has my back. I’m not worried about him.”

  “No, I mean pretty sure about me.”

  Aaron paused. This conversation wasn’t going as he had imagined. “I know you wouldn’t let your man rot in jail. I’m sure you’d be my knight in shining armor and come to my rescue. Hey, what is a lady knight called?”

  “Dame.”

  “Yes. Dame Laura. You’d be my Dame in shining armor.”

  “My Yale law degree doesn’t work in Egypt. If you got yourself in trouble here, I’d have to find a new man, because they would throw you in jail for at least the next twenty years. And if you keep up with your antics – threatening to kill people to get what you want, I might start looking for a new man anyway.”

  Aaron didn’t need a lecture about his methods. His methods had paid off. He had his permits and he would be the one to find what laid hidden under the Sphinx. He needed her support. Plus, comments like that from her were kind of ironic. Truth be told she was just as ruthless as he.

  “You know once I make this find, I’ll be famous. Better try to hold on to me.”

  “You really think that there’s a library filled with books underneath the Sphinx?”

  “Of course I do. I thought you were with me on this. That you believed in this too.”

  She seemed to hesitate before she spoke. It gave his jitters in the pit of his stomach. “I’ve got your back, baby, that’s true,” she said. “But the stuff you’re looking for is the stuff of fairytales.”

  “What are you talking about? This is real.”

  “If you Google ‘Hall of Record’ part of the first line reads ‘mythical library.’”

  Aaron sucked in a breath and blinked his eyes tightly. Shaking his head, he bit his lip to stop himself from saying something to her he’d later regret.

  “And the Akashic Records-”

  “Akashic Records?” He interrupted her. She couldn’t be serious. “Now that’s what’s not real. I’m not looking for mystical knowledge on non-physical planes of existence. Science backs up my claims. There has been ground-”

  “Yes, I know about the ground penetrating radar that’s shown that there are cavities underneath the Sphinx.” She paused. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Look. I’ll have to call you back.” He wasn’t about to let her crash the high he was feeling. “Book your flight and call me back so you can let me know when you’ll be here.”

  “Try not to kill anyone before I get there.”

  She was really getting to him.

  He reached down and pressed the button to end the call. Veering off the main road, his vehicle jiggled up the rocky, dirt incline, the usually quiet engine revved and he shifted the gear down, came to a stop and put the car in park. He sat behind the wheel, an obvious pout on his face, and stroked the stubble across his cheek and down his jawline.

  “Shit.”

  Placing his straw panama on the sit next to him, he leaned back on the head rest and wiped the perspiration off his brow. It wasn’t the sweat from the heat but from the apprehension he was feeling.

  He really shouldn’t let Laura get to him like she did. He did what he needed to do and he didn’t need her approval. This was the way he got things done. She knew it. She stayed with him. He hadn’t actually had to kill anyone. Yet. The government official that he had threatened and his daughter were spending the evening together with her no wiser and him sitting on a pile of cash.

  And she certainly had no idea about what she was trying to insinuate. The Hall of Records was real. And the treasures purported to be there were as well. And he was going to be the man that proved it so. Still her words lingered and seemed to press on him, making him feel uncomfortable.

  He flung off the seatbelt and shifted in his seat.

  Why did he let her get him like that? Make him double guess himself? He found himself gripping the wheel more tightly than needed.

  “I’m just going to stop telling her everything.”

  A little less transparency in their relationship, he thought, that might help. He really needed to rein her in.

  The sun was hanging low in the sky and the satisfaction he had felt when he picked up his permits was starting to dissipate. He closed his eyes and tried to control his emotions. He wanted to block out her words. He wanted to block out any thoughts of this ‘not being real.’

  The sound of Giza’s traffic – fast paced cars and slow moving donkeys - came in through the window and seemed to add to his irritation. He rolled up the window, and turned on the radio. He stabbed at the touchscreen with his finger selecting “MP3 Player.” Music started and the pulsating beat of the song’s intro pushed in on the bass coming from his speakers. The sudden, supervening guitar rift roused him.

  Eye of the Tiger by Survivor.

  He sat up and cranked up the volume. Bouncing his body and head with each beat, he bit on his lower lip, closed his eyes and let the music seep down in through him.

  Boomp, boomp, boomp. He tapped out the beat with his fingers on the dashboard.

  Quietly he mouthed out the lyrics as they started. Then he rolled back his head and with each repetition of the anthem-like chorus he shouted louder and louder.

  Midway through, he jerked the car into gear and pulled off, rolling the window back down he sang loud enough to drown all the discordant sounds of traffic in Giza.

  With a hard right turn, he headed toward the Plateau.

  Slanted bands of the sun’s rays pushed through a mass of dense, white clouds and fanned the haze of the last daylight across the plateau.

  It was beautiful. And, Aaron thought, prophetic.

  He climbed out of his Land Rover. Pushed up the sleeves of his white broadcloth shirt and walked toward the Sphinx.

  Today the rope barrier stopped him from getting up close and personal.

  But that would soon change.

  As the song that he’d just listened to professed, he had the guts and now he was going to get the glory.

  He had done good. And he knew it. He got the permit he needed and he was going to be the one that discovered the find of the century. And it didn’t matter how he got the permission, he had it.

  He took in a deep breath, and stuck out his chest. From his sweat and tears, he, like the ancient Egyptian god Ra, was a self-made man who would breathe life into the history hid in those dark, damp catacombs.

  He raised his hands, his arms outstretched toward the setting sun that peeked out as if giving a reverent acknowledgment to an old friend. He tilted his head back and stared into the sky. He felt as if he were the God Ra, come back to life to show the world what treasures he had to offer. What he could offer to the world. Offer to the people of the world. His people. To all of those that would one day worship his name.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cleveland, Ohio

  “At least I’m not in a concrete basement,” I voiced out loud. I walked around the conference-style room that I had been corralled in to see if any cameras were trained on me. Reflecting on how I got here, I thought, maybe I shouldn’t have tried to tell Micah the truth about what I knew. I’m sure he’s really confused
on what happened.

  Maybe I shouldn’t tell anyone.

  Maybe I wouldn’t live to tell it anyway.

  God! Was I back to that?

  I struggled for years whether to let what I knew out to the public. I wrote a book about it, but mixed it with fiction, trying to let myself off the hook. But not being completely honest with myself, the oath I took professionally really starting to wear down on me. Then when I did decide to put it out, honestly, just tell it all, I had to deal with a murderous octogenarian and a longtime colleague, who I thought had been my friend, but turned out, it seemed, to be scandalous.

  I let out a sigh.

  My husband and seven siblings, all who I was very close with, knew for the most part what I knew. But I hadn’t shared it with my three children. And when I finally decided to share it with them, I’d told Logan, my youngest child, first. She was an archaeologist. The only one to follow in my footsteps. She seemed to take it well. Not having much to say, she reacted better than I thought she would.

  I had decided to tell Micah next. My middle child, he was my only son. He was never one to readily agree with me. About anything. Not defiant but disagreeable. He had followed in the footsteps of my brother, Greg. Not only did he became a lawyer, but he always seemed to oppose me and find my thinking irrational. My oldest, Courtney, I had decided, would be the last one I told. But right now I was wondering was I ever going to see my children again.

  I went back and sat down at the long table in the middle of the office where my captors had parked me. I knew that I should feel afraid. I was always in fear of something happening to me because of those pesky manuscripts I had discovered nearly seventeen years ago. But, judging from the contemporary décor that surrounded me, and the “niceness” of my captors, I didn’t feel like anyone was out to harm me.

  I ran my hand through my curly black hair, folded my arms on the table and plopped my head down in them.

  “God help me.”