Incarnate: Mars Origin I Series Book III

by Abby L. Vandiver

  “Yes. Maybe you should have just contacted her first.” She sat down and buckled her seat belt.

  “What’s wrong?” the Senator said. “I’d thought you’d be happy about things going so well.”

  “I am,” she said.

  “Well if you’re happy, Elaina, show it! Smile.”

  ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ

  Cleveland Heights, Ohio

  The house had quieted down, and everyone but Micah had left. He was watching television with his dad. I had time to think.

  I curled up on the sofa in my study. It was nice to come home to family. I had been so scared in that room thinking that I wouldn’t ever see any of them again. And it surprised me that Nikhil Chandra had been at my house when I got back.

  I would have told him everything about my meeting with the Senator, but I couldn’t while my other family was in the house. Mase and Greg should have known, too. They deserved to know. Even though they may not have of approved of the conversation.

  I had told the Senator that I had deciphered the Voynich Manuscript. That I had had the blueprint of a space vehicle drawn to spec and it was like no modern day man had ever seen. I also told him that I had genetics of a disease proof society. A virtual fountain of youth formula. Then I had told him he could have it all.

  He seemed to want to make up for the way he acted in our first meeting. In fact, he sort of even apologized. Maybe just to get my cooperation, but I didn’t care what prompted his new behavior. I wasn’t going to hold a grudge, especially now that he was taking this burden off my shoulders.

  And I seemed to do the same for him. He took a sigh of relief when I told him he could have what I had. And then he opened up to me. He told me that he had a scientist he was working with at NASA that had information confirming what I had written in my book. Things going back more than twenty years.

  The AHM Manuscripts had read that the Ancients hadn’t been able to hide all the ruins they left on Mars. It seemed like now NASA had found proof of it. It had only been a matter of time.

  Micah knocked on my door and stuck his head in.

  “Hello, my super hero son.”

  “Can I come in, Ma?”

  “Yep.” I sat up and patted the sofa next to me. “Come sit right here.”

  “So, I realized today that I don’t tell you enough that I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “But, Ma, you’ve got to do something about getting into shape.”

  “What kind of shape are you talking about?”

  “Today, you couldn’t run. You couldn’t fight. You didn’t even tell me someone was following us until it was too late for me to get you somewhere safe.”

  “So you’re talking about mental and physical shape?”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “I’m not laughing. I’m old. You can’t do things when you’re old.”

  “Why do you always say that? You’re not old. Fifty-five is not old.”

  “I’m fifty-six.”

  “Oh well, in that case, I guess you are old.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. Seemingly not too thrilled with my response to his efforts.

  I smacked his thigh. “Don’t get smart mouthed with me, boy.”

  “Fifty is not old.” He stood his ground. “Not at all. And, Ma, if people are going to be coming after you about those things -” His eyes searched mine. “What are you going to do about all of this?”

  “I’m going to do what they want me to do.”

  “Wait. Stop. You don’t mean you’re going to do what Senator Cook asked you to do?”

  “Yes. I am. I’ve decided.”

  “Ma. You can’t -”

  Mase came into the room and interrupted our conversation. He handed me the phone. “It’s Logan. She says it’s important.”

  I took the phone, but before I diverted my attention to Logan on the other end, I searched my son’s face. It had grown dark, worried lines filled his forehead and he was clenching his jaw. I noticed he was rubbing his hands together. I was going to have to talk to him more about all of this because at this point he didn’t seem too happy about the things he had found out about me or my decision.

  I, on the other hand, thought it was probably the best decision I had ever made when it came to dealing with what I knew. There was one person I did plan on talking with before I gave up everything, though. That person, Jack Hughes, worked for the government – my dubious kidnappers - but he was someone I trusted. And someone, the only one, in spite of Micah’s stellar display of fighting skills, and Nikhil’s secretiveness that I felt could protect me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Langley, Virginia

  Major Jack Hughes took the drive over to NASA in Langley, Virginia instead of having Dr. Phillips come to his office at the Pentagon. After speaking with Justin about her meeting with Senator Bruce Cook he’d gotten suspicious.

  It had been years since the first - and only time - he had spoken to Mark Phillips. At that time, Jack had worked under senior counterintelligence agent Robert Kevron. It was he who had informed Mr. Kevron of the nuclear activity they found in the soil samples that had been sent back from Mars. That was in 1997.

  Robert Kevron, at the time, was in charge of public relations between NASA and the general population. That department, due to budget constraints, was now defunct. But it appeared that the problems caused by letting out information on NASA’s space program were not. And he still had to put out fires every now and then.

  Justin had called him and told him about her unplanned chat with Senator Bruce Cook and what he told her he wanted.

  What the heck did he know? And how did he know it?

  Those thoughts had Jack’s brain going in a loop. It was all Jack could think about once he hung up from her. He decided he would look into it. It wouldn’t take much of an investigation, there was only one place the Senator could have gotten his information.

  Jack flashed his badge at the guard in the gatehouse and guided his car into a space in the Visitor’s section of the parking lot.

  Senator Cook’s activities had been on secret watch lists for a while. Mostly because he was in a group that half the government was a member of and the half that wasn’t in it felt threatened by it. No need to guess which side put him on the list. And no need to guess which side Jack was on.

  “I got wind of a report that you sent over to the Subcommittee on Science and Space over at Capitol Hill.” Jack had found Dr. Phillips in the hallway near his lab.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Jack realized that maybe he didn’t remember him. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Major Jack Hughes. I work for the Pentagon. I spoke to you about seventeen years ago concerning some findings your Mars’ probe sent back.”

  “Seventeen years ago? I spend all my time thinking about Mars and what happened billions of years ago. Sorry, can’t say that I remember you.”

  “I can’t say that I would have remembered you either, except I just got word that you spoke to a Senator recently about the information you told me about back then.”

  “And what information would that be?”

  “Soil samples. On your billion year old planet.”

  “Mars is much older than one billion years, Major.” He stopped walking and looked at Jack. “I didn’t think I had to go through the Pentagon to let the Subcommittee on Science and Space know what I’d found.”

  “You didn’t.” Jack followed him into the lab. “But I do have an interest in this. For the public’s sake. I need to know what it is you’ve found, Dr. Phillips. I mean other than the radioactivity you’ve known about for nearly two decades,”

  “I don’t know if I should – can share that information with you.”

  Jack let a half smile curl up on his face. “You are not obligated to share anything with me. Personally. But in my formal capacity . . .”

  “How is it that you, personally, are interested in rock formations on Mars?”

  Jack h
adn’t been completely on board when he first heard about Dr. Justin Dickerson from his twin sister, Addie. But Addie was convinced that what Justin had written in her book was true. And he trusted his sister. Initially Justin seemed like another alien enthusiast crackpot. But she had shown him proof of what she had found. He believed in it so much that he followed her to Jerusalem, even taking a bullet that was meant for her.

  And now he felt like he needed to protect Justin. But it looked like who he needed to protect her from was his own employer. Whatever Senator Cook was up to it seemed to be his own agenda and not that of the United States – at least the agenda he had sworn to defend.

  After he finished with Mark Phillips, he decided, he’d have a visit with the Good Senator of California.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Caracol, Belize

  Simon Melas had taken one of the two copies of Justin’s book The Dead Sea Fish from Hannah Abelson’s house after he had killed her. He hadn’t been aware of the other copy or that an edition of her first book was there. He hadn’t been looking for that one when he spotted it.

  He only took the book to see what Justin Dickerson was working on that would so consume the maniacal little woman, Hannah, that she would want Justin dead.

  Ending Justin’s life had so consumed Hannah that she had forgot about helping him. He thought he knew some of what Justin was working on because she had called him and questioned him about the Book of Enoch. But he had thought wrong. What he found out was more than what he bargained for.

  He sat in his green, topless Jeep Wrangler in the tangle of jungle growth at the foothills of the low, thickly forested mountains of Belize. From there, every day, he’d watch the excavation site that surrounded the main pyramid.

  Leaning back in the jeep, with his legs hanging over the door he peered at Logan through his binoculars.

  He was going to use her to lure Justin to him.

  Simon had truly learned to like Justin when he first forged their friendship even though it had been predicated on an arrangement with Hannah. But those feelings were long lost. Now he just wanted her dead. And he knew that if he ever saw her again, dead is what she would be.

  Pulling his eyes away from the binoculars he glanced over at his glove compartment where he kept his gun. Smiling he thought, Justin wouldn’t have it so lucky. Nothing as quick or impersonal as being shot. No. He wanted to see death in her eyes as it crept up on her. He wanted to feel her soft skin as he wrapped his fingers around her throat . . .

  Putting Logan back in his site, he saw her as she stood speaking to one of the workers on the outside edge of the square grids marked off with orange string. She was smiling, doing her job. A newly minted archaeologist. And she had fit in with his plans perfectly.

  Dr. Hannah Abelson, when she was first hired at Case Western Reserve University as a Professor Emeritus of Semitic, had recruited him to watch Justin. She was hard pressed to find out whether Justin knew about a set of manuscripts found with the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1997. Hannah had left Israel and moved to Cleveland in order to keep tabs on Justin. It was just that serious to her. And she refused to tell him what the manuscripts contained, how Justin might know about them, or her interest in them. But it hadn’t mattered, Hannah turned out to be an unexpected ally in what he wanted to do.

  And he and Justin became fast friends. Ten years his senior, she had a personality that had a youthful edge, and her smile was warm and genuine. He soon learned that she had a good heart and loyal to a fault to her friends. And she was smart.

  And what had made him and Justin kindred spirits was her belief in God and how she had professed her love for Him even in her choice of professions. They had enjoyed long, erudite discussions about the creation of man as opposed to evolution and the proof of it that she had spent years digging up. And as it turned out, she never mentioned anything about the manuscripts. And what he observed was that he liked Justin and soon forgot all about Hannah’s covert snooping mission. It became more like a joke to him - that is until Hannah found out about Justin’s book.

  He pulled his legs inside the jeep and set up. Logan had finished talking with the worker and was headed toward the pyramid. He watched her as she walked up the steps of Caana – the largest pyramid – and disappear inside. He watched her every move, every day. Just waiting. And each day for the first two weeks he had watched her walk into the pyramid and then come back out hours later. And after she left he’d go in and try to figure out what she would do in there by herself for hours at a time. And each night, searching in the dark and trying not to wake her team sleeping in the tents that surrounded the site, he saw nothing she could have be doing all day. Now, with no reason she had changed her routine.

  She was as sneaky as her mother.

  The smart Biblical archaeologist, Dr. Justin Dickerson had turned from a respectable biblical archaeologist to a crackpot alien theorist. The author page of Justin’s second book had told him that her first book had been written as a fictionalized account of a different origin for man than the one in the Bible. But, she admitted, the alternative history she told of in that first book was true and that she would provide irrefutable proof of it. He had got a hold of a copy and what he read cut at the very core of his being. It was pure agnosticism.

  He hated her even more after that. Hated what she had become and what she’d done to him. To his life. If it hadn’t been for her Hannah would have had time to tend to his needs.

  Simon, an anthropologist, archaeologist and linguist, was Harvard educated. He had been a lead research scientist at MIT in anthropology helping the institution forge critical acclaim in an area other than engineering. But he had gotten caught siphoning grant money from his projects. Hannah didn’t have time to help him, as she had promised to restore his good name, but once she found out that Justin had published a book on the manuscripts all bets were off. She became obsessed. It was about that time that he also realized that Hannah wasn’t playing with a full deck.

  And that fact - that Hannah was crazy - had become over time, a comfort to him when he’d agonize over killing her. And the anger he felt for Justin, although not based on any of her actions toward him, was enough to make him want to kill again. And he vowed he would the very next time he crossed paths with Justin Dickerson.

  He had tried to help Justin when Hannah first set her sights on her. Without giving away his relationship with Hannah, he had tried to discourage Justin from pursuing the proof that she sought to prove her incredible claims. But that hadn’t worked. She wouldn’t stop and Hannah wouldn’t either. So he killed Hannah. And he tried to set Justin up to die too. That hadn’t worked.

  But now, he had another plan.

  And it took stealing government money - again - to get it done.

  A cacophony of noises skirted its way out from the green canopy hills of the hot and humid rainforest and shot into his ears, banging into his brain giving him a shiver. He ran his fingers through his shoulder-length, coal black hair that had drawn up from the humidity, and wiped his sweaty palms down his white cotton shirt.

  He picked up the binoculars and aimed them at the backside of the pyramid. There he saw Logan coming out of the pyramid and heading over behind to the astronomic observatory and into the jungle.

  Although he had searched the pyramid each night after Logan left to see what she was up to, he didn’t much care. Nor did he care why she took to the jungle now every day. She was green, new to the world of archaeology. It wouldn’t be long before being in charge of such a large endeavor would be more than she could handle. Overwhelmed she would need help. She would have to call her mother.

  He couldn’t wait for that to happen.

  It might have seemed like an elaborate plan to kill Justin, but in his mind it worked. Kill her in a jungle. Bury her in ancient structures. No one had any idea he had killed Hannah. He was sure he could get away with killing Justin, too.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Where did you find it?”

 
I had to start the conversation. Logan seemed lost in thought as she drove. We were in Logan’s rental car heading out from the Belize City International Airport. She started rushing me as soon as I arrived. I hadn’t seen her when I got off the plane, so I went to the restroom. Before I could squat, she was calling my phone.

  “Where are you?” was what I got from the other end. Not, a “Hi, Mommy. Thanks for coming. I’m here to pick you up.”

  It was so hot and the breeze that met me when I stepped off the plane made me wet and my clothes sticky. I had needed to take a minute and catch my breath, go to the restroom, but she was ready to go. I threw some water on my face and dried my hands. But once she got in the car, she got quiet. And now she wasn’t answering my question. So I asked again.

  “Where did you find it?”

  She glanced at me while she was driving. “You know that a lot of the area around the excavated pyramids have shown, through ground penetrating radar, that a large part of the complex is still unexcavated, right?”

  “No. I didn’t know that. But go ahead.”

  “Hold on, Mommy.” She took a quick left, missing the exit out to the highway. “I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. I want to trade this Focus in while I’m here at the airport. I need a 4x4. This car is not practical at all out in the jungle.” She pulled into Hertz. “I already have the reservation, won’t take but a minute. Just stay there until I pick up the jeep, then we’ll transfer your stuff.”

  She’d left the car running and the air conditioner on. Thank goodness. I ran my fingers through the tangle of the curls on my head frizzled out by the humidity. I noticed her phone in a hard vinyl covering with a huge, thick black antenna. I picked it up, just as she was opening the car door on my side of the car.

  “What kind of phone is this?”

  “Satellite phone. That way I can use it out in the jungle. Otherwise I wouldn’t have any reception. It’s really a good thing to have. Now, c’mon. I got the jeep. Grab your satchel and I’ll get your luggage.”