The Jewel of Babylon (The Unusual Operations Division Book 1)

by Jacob Hammes

  The area the taxi let them out at was quiet and nice. It seemed like an almost normal area to Bishop. The buildings were mostly residential high rises painted in terrible colors but occasionally there was a shop with twenty or so mopeds, motorcycles, and Vespa-like motorbikes. Every third door was some sort of food establishment and every other door was a business dealing with God-knows-what.

  Two blocks later and the high rise buildings stopped abruptly giving way to a strip of undeveloped land and then nicely decorated houses. Here and there the sloping roof changed into yet another high building. The population was much less dense, though still had easy access to the greater city.

  Bishop could see why their target had chosen the area. It was quiet and he had a thousand different places to which he could bug out.

  The restaurant was a two story building with a decorative clay-tiled roof that had been painted red. Statues like dragons and beautifully trimmed bushes lined the edges just beneath the sprawling wrap-around deck. On the deck were four or five different places to eat, tall heaters, long benches, and the occasional barstool.

  The entrance had been draped with red tape which obviously meant ‘do not cross’. Bishop was thankful that he couldn’t read the Chinese characters. If he could, he would have known not to enter the building. Within a minute he had popped a window open and bounced through the opening. His dark haired accomplice stood watch before she, too, bounced in.

  As Cynthia went to lower the window behind her, something unusual caught her eye. She noticed that two or three hundred feet down the road, hidden in some trees and facing the wrong direction, was a police cruiser. She hoped they would not be doing patrols, but closed the window behind her anyway.

  The inside of the restaurant was just as nice as the outside. There were low tables throughout with hoods covering open Hibachi grills. All the seats were cushy and covered in red fabric which matched perfectly with the overhead cloth lamps. Ornate decorations sat in cubbies all along the walls, from a Buddha that must have weighed tons to bells that were just inches high.

  It smelled like ginger, soy sauce, and death. Two large stains at the front of the restaurant near where the two had entered showed just how ugly the scene of the crime must have been.

  “Where do you think he was staying?” Cynthia asked. “This place is big, but not too big. Maybe he was shacking up in the back?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Bishop. “You try upstairs and I’ll look around down here?”

  Cynthia nodded and headed for the broad stairway in the center of the restaurant. It was, like the rest of the place, decorated with red carpeting and ornate balusters.

  The upstairs was nothing but private rooms where high paying customers could eat without being bothered but Cynthia looked through each room anyway. Bishop, on the other hand, headed back to the kitchen to see if there were any rooms they would be missing from the front of the restaurant. Just through the doorway he saw the entrance to the basement. A sudden alarm shot through his body. He knew just from the look that this was the right place.

  “Cynthia, come down here. I found a basement,” Bishop yelled back through the kitchen doors. They would have to hurry this up. The sun would be up soon and he was pretty sure they did not have permission to be snooping around the scene of a crime. Besides, they were pretty much going against what Henry had told them about only assisting the local government. They hadn’t seen a government official since they left the airport.

  In a moment, Cynthia had bounded down the stairs and was ready to descend into the basement with him. Both of them had pulled their sidearm from their holsters and were pointing them into the darkness. They both relied on the flashlights below the barrels to see in the intense darkness of the cavernous space.

  The stairway was rickety but it held the two of them as they quietly crept down into the darkness. The place was eerie, to say the least. Bishop hated snooping around where people had just been murdered and after his last encounter with a flashlight and a dark space he was sure this was just the place he did not want to be.

  Pallets were stacked along the walls on either side and there were even some in the middle of the expansive basement. It was definitely the best area someone could be hiding in. The floor was nothing but dirt and gravel and spilled rice and each step made a crunching noise that echoed throughout the room. Every movement would have given them away to someone hiding behind one of the obstacles ahead.

  Cynthia crept as quietly as she could along the left wall while Bishop advanced along the right. They cleared the room as quickly and as quietly as possible and, when they had finally determined that no one was with them, dropped their guard.

  It was obvious someone had been living in the basement. Bishop and Cynthia both saw a number of tracks surrounding a makeshift bed toward the back of the room. Nearby were the outward opening basement doors. Bishop looked over the bed thoroughly as Cynthia tried her luck near the exit, searching hopefully for any clues.

  It only took a moment for Bishop to find something interesting. Through the dusty tracks that had been stampeded into the floor of the basement, there was something legible. At first Bishop thought it was a symbol, something he could not discern. He cocked his head first to his left, then to his right before deciding it was something written in English.

  Though there may have been many words written before, only one still remained. It said ‘home’ as plain as day.

  “Cynthia, I found something written in the dust,” Bishop said. “I think it says home. What do you suppose that means?”

  “I don’t know what’s going through this guy’s head,” Cynthia admitted. “It probably means he’s been trying to make this place feel more like home. He wrote a welcome mat out for himself. Maybe China is his home now. Maybe he misses his mommy and daddy. It could mean a thousand different things, how am I supposed to know?”

  “Yeah,” Bishop whispered. “Home…”

  “There is nothing over here,” Cynthia said. “This guy is good. He hasn’t left us one track, one trace to even say he exists, since we started this damned case. You know, the least he could do would be to leave us a greeting card.”

  Suddenly she went very still. Cynthia crouched to the ground, made a shushing noise to Bishop and turned her flashlight off. Bishop followed suit. By the look she gave him, Cynthia had heard something just outside.

  Bishop strained his ears to hear over the tinnitus that came with having multiple concussions. Shuffling feet just outside the doors made him think back once again to the cave. Could the same thing happen here? He wondered if there was something carved into the floor of the cave that he had missed. He realized, before he started searching the floors and ceilings madly, that his flashlight was still shining brightly.

  A beam of light cut through a slit in the door and through his fear of encountering some strange apparition. Either the policeman from down the street was doing his rounds or the man who had just hours ago committed murder was back for something he may have left behind. Either way, a new pit of concern was growing just above his belly button.

  Cynthia tried to hold her breath. The feet had approached quickly and quietly and were now just outside. She could hear a man breathing but dared not move. She was afraid that if she moved, breathed, even blinked the person outside would hear. Though she had her Department of Defense credentials, Cynthia doubted it would get her out of breaking and entering in a foreign country, especially into a crime scene. At worst, it could label her as some secret agent sent to spy.

  The thought of stealth went out the window when Cynthia heard a key enter the locked door. Bishop and Cynthia had the same reaction. Moving as quietly as they could, they ran for the back of the basement toward the stairs. Within a second the door was being flung open and a man was bolting down the stairs, gun in hand and ready to open fire. Bishop hardly caught a glance of the cop’s face before he blasted off a round in their direction.

  By fortune alone, Bishop and Cynthia were up the
staircase when the first shots rang through the basement. The bullets impacted the wall just two steps behind.

  “He’s shooting at us?” Bishop exclaimed loudly. “Breaking and entering and this guy is shooting!”

  The premise of a stealthy visit was long gone. The two bolted headlong for the doors at the front of the restaurant. Though the doors were shut and locked, Bishop could cover Cynthia while she opened them. The thought of crawling through the high window with no cover did not sit well with either of the two agents. Without speaking, they knew that they should first try the doors.

  If the cop was frightened in the least bit, he did not show it. He walked robotically up through the staircase and threw the swinging doors to the kitchen wide open. Cynthia was just a moment from opening the deadbolt when a bullet tore through the center of the lock, sending shrapnel from the ruined metal into her face.

  She ducked and Bishop tackled her out of the way as another shot tore through the door where she had been standing. The two were quick to recover and scrambled for cover behind one of the low tables. Luckily, they found that it was one of the tables with a Hibachi grill and would stand to provide a more adequate shield from hot lead projectiles.

  Cynthia yelled something in Mandarin through the dark at the oncoming policeman. The guy must have been dead set on killing the two because his only answer was two more pop shots through the dark.

  “What did you say?” Bishop nearly yelled.

  “I asked him to stop shooting at us,” Cynthia answered. “We’re not going to get out of here without someone getting hurt. Any ideas?”

  “Yeah,” Bishop said. “Shoot the bastard.”

  “That’s a cop,” Cynthia said through gritted teeth. Talking over the occasional gunshot from an oncoming foe was not something she relished. If anything, shooting a cop would land them in more trouble than they were already in and both of them knew it.

  “Stop shooting, we are American Federal Agents,” Bishop tried. He was answered with a blast from the cop’s pistol that sent a piece of wood flying into the air. He huddled closer to Cynthia for the protection of the center of the table.

  “Draw his fire,” Bishop said before diving into a military low-crawl through the darkness and behind another table. He was on his belly before Cynthia could protest, leaving her angrily gaping after him in the direction he had crawled. The view of him scurrying off into the darkness would have been comical in any other situation, but for now it only meant that she was alone.

  Cynthia had to think. She had heard the man take eight shots already meaning that if she was dealing with anyone who played by United States Law Enforcement rules, he would have at most five shots left. That was assuming the man had a twelve round magazine with one in the chamber. If he had any other magazine, her calculations would be off and she could be dead because of the mistake.

  She poked a hand up through the darkness to test the man’s eyesight. Before she could get it back a round ripped through the air way too close for comfort. He had to be less than five feet away now. It would only be a few seconds before the top of her head was exposed and in all likeliness blown off. If he had planned on killing her, he was definitely going to get his way unless she did something.

  To Cynthia the choice was fairly obvious. Either she had to shoot the guy and save herself the heartache of death or he was going to make the possibility of her death a quick reality. Taking a deep, steadying breath she poked her head around the corner of the table and fired two shots into the man’s right shin. The bullets tore through fabric, bone and flesh effortlessly. They even had enough inertia to carry on through a cushion near the far side of the dining area.

  The man stumbled backwards and nearly fell over but quickly regained his forward momentum. No one could walk on what was almost a severed leg without so much as a cry of pain. This guy was either on drugs or they had found a zombie with a pistol. She risked another peek at the man from around the table, keeping her head low enough so that she would not be seen. To her amazement, no blood was visible at the site of the obviously horrific injury.

  Cynthia tried her hardest to duck closer to the ground. She was practically lying sideways along the length of the table to keep her small frame from being exposed. The man fired off the remaining few shots in his magazine and an audible click echoed through the dining room signifying the need to reload. It was like breathing for the first time for Cynthia, but it wouldn’t last long.

  She poked her head back out around the corner once again. Realizing the man was wearing body armor and reloading his weapon as quickly as any trained operative she had ever seen, she decided to improvise. Two more shots flew like lightning from her weapon and grouped tightly in the center of the man’s chest. The equivalent of what must have been a sledgehammer sent the crazy policeman stumbling back a few more feet.

  Like a ghost through the darkness, Bishop appeared so suddenly it startled both the cop and Cynthia. He speared the cop to the ground with his shoulder and was on him like a lion on a wounded wildebeest. The force Bishop had packed into the football-style tackle sent the cop flying sideways. Cynthia grimaced as she saw the cop’s head bounce from the corner of one of the tables as they slammed into it with enough force to knock it over. The pistol he had been wielding went spiraling across the floor as it escaped the now unconscious man’s hand.

  Cynthia caught the glint of something as it bounced away across the floor in the opposite direction of the pistol. Light refracted from its smooth surfaces as it skipped again and again and then came to a spinning halt in the beam of light cast by the policeman’s flashlight. Once still, the distinct lines of a finely cut red jewel made it easy for Cynthia to see that what she was looking at was a ruby.

  As Bishop found his feet again, Cynthia quickly grabbed the ruby and held it up to her own light. Silver veins cut through the jewel from end to end, making the beautiful stone sparkle all the more. There was something very special about that stone, Cynthia could feel it.

  “You’re not going to tell me how my tackle was?” Bishop said, brushing the dust from his pants and shirt.

  “I’ll give you an eight out of ten,” she joked. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

  “We need to get out of here, now,” Bishop said, winking at her as he did. Cynthia agreed immediately. The gunfight would have obviously attracted attention to the restaurant, attention that they definitely didn’t need.

  She slipped the jewel into her pocket without a second thought and the two made a hasty escape through the front doors like they had planned in the first place. They would have to make good time and hope the sun was not going to rise too fast if they were going to get away from the restaurant before more police decided to show up and sweep the area.

  Either the policeman did not have a partner or he was too frightened to show himself. Bishop and Cynthia took that to their advantage and bolted up the road past the parked police car. They would make it out of the city into more rural country before calling for an extraction. It would be easier to hide and if they were questioned, easier to explain.

  As the two passed the cop car they noticed something that stopped them both in their tracks. Whoever the cop’s partner had been he was dead, not missing. The passenger side of the vehicle was red with blood, the window was shattered and the two could see through the man’s head like it had been hollowed out with a jack hammer.

  They gave the black stain on the asphalt a wide birth as they passed by, out into the dark of the pre-dawn morning. Back in the restaurant, a policeman was bleeding to death with a partially severed leg making a stain across the restaurant like the one on the pavement. If he ever regained consciousness, he would never have any recollection of the events that had just transpired.

  Chapter 16

  Dust flowed up through the cracks of a door that had been hidden beneath a carpet between two very closely placed shelves in the shop that Marcus and his teammates were investigating. The man who was now responsible for the shop, Mister Chung
, was adamant the team leave the door untouched. Jeff was finally doing something useful by holding the man back while Marcus ignored his cries of protest. Whatever was down there was most likely important to the investigation and Marcus had no intention of leaving it untouched.

  Marcus pulled an ancient, extremely dirty Persian rug back out of the way revealing a long skinny hatch to a staircase that would have remained out of sight. Before opening it, he turned back to Mr. Chung and asked him once more; “What are you hiding from us?”

  “Nothing,” Jeff translated, though he probably did not have to. “He swears it is only a storage compartment.”

  The EMF detector simply did not agree. Its needle was buried in the red. The electro-manometer in his backpack was buzzing, as well. The place was pressurized with static electricity.

  The door swung up and opened lengthwise. Beneath was revealed a very skinny staircase. Marcus did not waste his time with an acknowledgement as to whether he was allowed to descend the stairs. He took the steps two at a time. By the time he hit the bottom, the light was all but gone from above. It was replaced with dull, flickering florescent bulbs that lined the narrow storage compartment beneath the shop.

  The place was wide and lined with shelves filled with everything from books to boxes of old discarded jewelry. Marcus did not need the detection devices he was carrying to know that this place was full of Relics. He also did not need to be a detective to know that Mr. Chung was well aware that this place was full of dangerous materials.

  A few pieces in particular stood out amongst the jumble; boxes with swastikas and German words. The cave and the shop were connected after all and in more ways than Marcus could have possibly imagined. The Germans must have used China, specifically old and impoverished places like this, to hide more of the old world antiquities.

  “It’s time you explain yourself,” Marcus said to the man at the top of the stairs when he had seen enough. “This is no coincidence. You have lots of bad stuff down there, stuff that you purposely keep hidden. Why did John come here?”