Ascendant

by Sean Ellis

  The attack had swept her off of the motorcycle, laying her out on the floor of the warehouse. The Harley Davidson continued on, keeping an arrow-straight course out of the building and across the dock. Without any intelligence to guide it, the motorcycle sailed unhesitatingly over the brink, vanishing into the Rio de la Plata with a loud splash and the hiss of steam.

  Mira lay on her back, struggling to rise even though she was too disoriented to remember where she was or why it was important to keep moving. A figure interposed between her and the dim overhead lights—a man wearing a dark balaclava, holding a two by four.

  She could tell he was laughing behind his mask, grinning in triumph beneath the knit fabric as he tossed the broken length of wood behind him. Mira made a silent vow to wipe that smirk of his face if it took her last breath, and through a supreme effort of will she rolled over onto her stomach.

  Her arms refused to work. A tingling numbness spread across her chest and down her arms, intercepting the commands sent from her brain to the muscles and tendons of her extremities. Somehow, she brought her knees up, rolling into a ball from which she was able to raise her upper body. It wasn’t much of a defense, but she could see that it had given her assailant reason to hesitate.

  Gritting her teeth, she willed her right arm into motion. Her hand flopped onto her thigh, then crept toward the butt of the pistol holstered under her left arm.

  The eyes of her attacker grew wide through the slits in his mask. She could see the awe, the disbelief . . . the fear. The smirk was gone.

  Did it, she thought.

  Another vehicle rolled slowly into view, opposite the place where the man had lain in ambush. It stopped, equidistant from both Mira and her assailant, forming the third point in a loose triangle.

  Mira’s fingers curled around the grip of her gun, but she knew it was an act more of defiance than defense. Her attacker hastily brought his own sidearm to bear. She could tell by the way that he fumbled with the safety that her unwillingness to accept defeat had him rattled. Small comfort. But she refused to bow her head in acceptance of her fate.

  The suddenness of the shot surprised her because the man was still trying to work the action to advance a round into the firing chamber. She felt no different after the ear-splitting thunderclap of the gun’s discharge—the numbness in her arms was slowly turning into a throbbing ache—but she was pretty certain that the shot had gone astray. She looked for the gunman’s eyes again, but this time they were different.

  The masked gunman toppled forward like a felled tree. As he went down, Mira could see a moist shadow spreading across the black cloth of his combat blouse.

  “Need a lift?”

  DiLorenzo stepped out from behind the Suburban, looking strangely out of place wielding a sub-machine gun. The barrel of his weapon—a commandeered MP5, not the silenced .22—was still smoking from the three-round burst that had felled Mira’s assailant. He laid the gun on the hood of the vehicle and rushed to her aide.

  “Now, aren’t you sorry you tried to get rid of me?” he murmured softly, helping her to her feet.

  Actually, I’m glad I did, she wanted to say, but though her mouth could shape the words, but her lungs denied her the breath to make them a reality.

  Somehow, DiLorenzo understood. “You’re welcome.”

  Rachel Aimes leaned back in the overstuffed chair, closing her eyes against the coming storm. “Tarrant,” he had said. “I gave the name up all those years ago. Now I’m taking it back.”

  Tarrant would not be happy about the unsanctioned attack, or its subsequent failure. She was only thankful that she had been left out of the loop by their Argentine counterparts, and thus would bear none of the blame.

  Montero paced nervously, waiting for the figure in the shadows to respond to his disclosure of the afternoon’s disastrous events. His anxiety at their de facto leader’s reaction was only one of the burdens weighing on his conscience; two encounters with the intrepid Mira Raiden had put a dent in the paramilitary arm of his organization. Tarrant, all but invisible in the shadowy niche where he spent most daylight hours, was eerily silent for a long time, heightening the anxiety.

  “Nothing changes,” he sighed, startling both Rachel and Montero in spite of the softness of his tone. “Sixty years ago, your predecessor’s lack of patience cost him and his empire the privilege of reuniting the Trinity. His insistence on treachery and violence has, it seems, been handed down to his heirs.”

  Montero’s head sank lower, but his eyes revealed that his shame stemmed not from recognition of his own poor judgment, but from the fact that he would have to continue looking to the old man for guidance. “So what do we do now?” he asked in heavily accented English, the same language Tarrant had used.

  “We do as I directed at the outset. Your failure at the U-boat should have underscored the need to leave our enemy to find the treasure for us. The cost of openly opposing her has been too high. Better to let her brave the uncertain path ahead, follow in the trail she blazes, and seize the artifact from her once she has cleared the way.”

  “And if she eludes us again? We don’t even know where to begin looking for her. Or the sanctuary.”

  “That signifies nothing. She has the Trinity of Lemuria. I am attuned to it in ways that you cannot imagine. Even now, I see her clearly as if she alone carried a torch through the darkest night. No, my friend, if you are to find the treasure you seek, you will have to learn from the failure of your predecessors. You will have to learn to trust me.”

  EIGHT

  DiLorenzo paused to catch his breath, shouting down his body’s incessant demand that he beg Mira to slow down and wait for him. After thirty seconds of labored panting, he lurched into motion and attempted to scramble up to the next turn in the switchback trail in a single push. Mira was already rounding that bend and seemed to have hardly broken a sweat.

  The five days that had passed since their narrow escape from Montero’s goons in Buenos Aires had been a whirlwind of activity. Though Mira appeared to thrive under such conditions, DiLorenzo found himself counting the moments until his next brush with total physical and emotional breakdown.

  He had been so pleased with himself for rescuing Mira from the menacing gunman in the Puerto Nuevo warehouse. He had been so calm, so focused in that instant when he reached across the interior of the Suburban, steering it away from an almost certain plunge into the harbor. His confidence bolstered, he had slipped behind the wheel of the big vehicle and wandered into the maze of stacked crates, searching for Mira. He had not hesitated at all to fire a burst from the machine pistol, killing the man that was a heartbeat from shooting Mira, and he had felt no guilt after the fact. For a single shining moment, Michelangelo DiLorenzo had become a hero.

  It had pretty much gone downhill from there.

  After ditching the Suburban a few miles down the highway from the densely populated metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, he and Mira had hitched a ride in the back of an empty cattle truck. Despite her injuries, Mira seemed incapable of slowing down. He could see her wincing with every breath, the pain of bruised and cracked ribs making every inhalation an ordeal, yet she had made climbing onto the elevated platform of the truck look easy.

  It had been well past dusk, with Buenos Aires several hundred miles behind them, when the driver had stopped the truck long enough to open a gate that appeared to lead directly into the untamed expanse of grass collectively known as the Pampas. DiLorenzo was shocked when the man returned to the cab and unhesitatingly drove the truck into the field, somehow locating the twin grooves of an overgrown track. By the time they arrived at the hacienda, where the owner of the ranch and his gauchos resided, the detective could have sworn that his innards had been pounded to jelly.

  Things had not improved with the morning light. Though the owner of the ranch, Diego Cordova, was the epitome of hospitality, DiLorenzo found himself with only the clothes on his back; he did not have even a single change of underwear, to say nothing of a too
thbrush, razor or deodorant. His discomfort multiplied when, adorned in the previous day’s apparel, replete with the odor of cattle manure from the long truck ride, he joined their host at the breakfast table, where Cordova’s son, also named Diego, appeared to have become obsessed with Mira.

  Upon later reflection, he would admit that Diego, Jr., was merely infatuated with the lovely adventuress—what sane straight man would not be?—and that his judgment stemmed more from jealousy at the attention showed her than from any sort of malicious intent on the part of the young man. However, as he sat at the table, watching the handsome and clean-smelling Diego Cordova, Jr., fawn over Mira, DiLorenzo’s distrust for the man grew out of all proportion to the threat he might have posed. When Mira announced that Diego, also an accomplished pilot, had agreed to fly them on to Bolivia, he almost exploded in rage and frustration.

  Perhaps, he thought staring up the trail, panting like a tired dog on a hot day, I should have indulged that urge. Mira certainly would have rejected his companionship at that point, but it would have spared him the hell that followed.

  Without being consciously aware of it, his feet heaved into motion and he trudged ahead, up the trail. The dull throbbing behind his eyes had grown by an order of magnitude over the past few hours, but he had striven to hide his discomfort from Mira, not wanting to call any more attention to his shortcomings.

  Their benefactor had flown them safely, as promised, to the remote city of Ouros in Bolivia. The town, like the mining industry it had once supported, appeared to be on the verge of drying up altogether. It was a rough and inhospitable place, desolate and underdeveloped. Mira had seemed to know exactly where to go, so DiLorenzo had kept his mouth shut and followed blindly. His relief at parting company with their pilot was short-lived, for the headache that had settled in shortly after taking off from the private airstrip on Cordova’s ranch had not relented upon landing. Instead, it had continued to grow with each passing hour. DiLorenzo had never heard of altitude sickness, but at nearly ten thousand feet above sea level, his ignorance afforded no protection from the affliction.

  Mira had been forthcoming with information about their goal, but the detective had retained little of what she had told him. The documents she had recovered from Mann’s case contained rough directions for finding the Nazi refuge, located in the Altiplano region of Bolivia. The papers were not designed to be a guidebook to the redoubt, but rather a chronicle of Mann’s achievements, both in recovering the artifacts of the antediluvian world and in building an underground city worthy of the ancients.

  There was mention of an underwater entrance from the Pacific coast, which could accommodate several U-boats, connected to the refuge by a long tunnel equipped with an electric trolley to speed the trip along. The distances involved made the tunnel sound like more of a long-range plan than a reality, but if such a submarine base did exist, it would help to explain the demise of Mann’s U-boat. Perhaps the captain of the vessel had blundered onto the seamount while negotiating unfamiliar waters in search of a submerged entrance to the base. If such an underwater passage did indeed exist, the only record of its location was in the sodden remains of the captain’s logbook, deep beneath the Pacific.

  Finding the alternate entrance into the Nazi stronghold would require some legwork, but there were sufficient clues in the narrative to put their goal well within the realm of possibility. Mann had mentioned using existing mineshafts and naturally occurring tunnels for ventilation purposes. To top it off, he had harnessed the power of steam, tapping into geysers to produce electricity for the entire underground complex. There were enough clues to flesh out the bare bones directions to the refuge, and Mira seemed confident that they would find what they sought.

  DiLorenzo snapped out of his reverie as he reached the crest of the hill they had been climbing for what seemed an eternity. Mira knelt there, her eyes roaming over the landscape below. Though his headache clamored for attention, he found the sight of her gazing serenely toward the horizon more refreshing than a cold beer or a dose of aspirin.

  When their eyes met, she treated him to a sincere smile that conveyed no sense of frustration at his plodding pace. “We’ll camp here.”

  No one in Ouros knew the old man’s name. Some wondered if even he remembered the name he had been christened with. To most of the people in the city, he was simply a crazy old man, wandering the streets with his burro. To the occasional tourists, mostly adventure-seeking Europeans and a scattering of American backpackers, he was the local colour; a toothless Quechua in a straw hat and stained white cotton garments, always willing to bare his gums in a smile for the camera. To the handful of people with whom the man regularly had dealings, he was know as “El Borro”—a nickname derived from the Spanish word for drunkard. The appellation was accurate, as the man did love intoxicating beverages of any quality, so long as the quantity remained copious. Since he appeared to have no form of employment, those who did not know him other than to see him sometimes wondered aloud at how he had managed to stay alive—and constantly pickled—through the years. Those that knew him as El Borro, however, did not have to ponder this riddle. They knew the answer well.

  El Borro was roaming the streets of Ouros, much as he did every day, when the airplane descended into the city. Aircraft were not uncommon in the backwaters of Bolivia, but the old man decided to investigate anyway.

  The plane returned to the skies before he could complete his journey, but this did not trouble him, because he was no longer looking to the skies. His rheumy eyes were fixed on the road and on the cars that periodically passed by. He did not have to wait long.

  A battered orange car of indeterminate make rumbled past the him less than five minutes after the mosquito buzzing of the airplane’s single engine had faded into the distance. Black stenciled letters identified the vehicle as a local taxi, but this was something that the old man already knew. His attention was fixed on the passengers in the rear seat. Strangers were easy to spot in the remote city, and these two could not have looked more out of place. Especially the man, thought El Borro. He looks like he is sick or scared to death. Or both.

  The woman seemed surer of herself, gazing out the window with an almost lackadaisical disinterest. She’s a looker. If I were twenty years younger . . . He didn’t allow himself to finish the thought. Alcohol was his mistress, and a jealous one at that.

  The arrival of the strangers was not really a noteworthy event, but El Borro made a careful effort to remember everything he could about the pair in the taxi. Delacortes would ask many questions before paying him for the information.

  As Bolivia’s mining industry withered, the rural peasants had soon found a different resource to tap for their livelihood. They had always grown and harvested coca, chewing the leaves as a mild stimulant when they worked as their ancestors had for untold generations, little realizing that it would prove to be the cash crop of their age. A growing global demand for refined coca—cocaine—had arisen just in time to rescue them from the economic blight that had settled over the region. That it was illegal made it all the more lucrative.

  Rafael Delacortes was one of a handful of local businessmen who had grown fat from the labors of the campesinos. He did not grow, harvest or refine the coca, nor did he smuggle the cocaine out of the region. He was simply a middleman, taking advantage of other people’s willingness to break the law to become wealthy.

  Delacortes maintained a network informants like El Borro. In his profession, ignorance could prove deadly. The arrival of the strangers described by the old man troubled him.

  They did not sound like tourists. Narcotics agents from the American DEA perhaps? One could never be too cautious.

  A couple of discreet phone calls had helped him track down the plane and its owner and had revealed the flight’s point of origin in Argentina. Soon he possessed enough information to alleviate his concern that the strangers might be drug enforcement agents, but their presence concerned him nonetheless.

  The
man that Delacortes had contacted in Argentina had not been completely forthcoming. He knew a great deal about the pair the old man had described to Delacortes, especially the woman, and as soon as he had ended the conversation with the Bolivian cocaine merchant he dialed another number.

  Within one hour of her arrival in Bolivia, Jorge Montero knew where to find Mira Raiden. The handsome heir to both a prodigious cattle-ranching fortune and the mantle of leadership for the reborn Odessa smiled haughtily as the news was relayed over the telephone lines.

  “Tell your man in Bolivia to follow them,” he instructed, not entirely comprehending the relationship between the corrupt government official and the cocaine baron. “But under no circumstances are they to approach. I will be there very soon. Your loyalty will be remembered.”

  Returning the handset to its cradle, Montero leaned back in is chair, gleefully triumphant.

  “The Raiden woman has been found?”

  The voice belonged to Guillermo Petronilo, Montero’s foremost lieutenant and lifelong friend. His roguish good looks had been marred by a bandage over his left ear, the result of a pistol-whipping suffered at the hands of Mira’s companion. They had identified the police detective, but remained unsure of his role in her quest. Petronilo nevertheless looked forward to meeting up with DiLorenzo in the near future.

  “We do not need that old meddler’s help. We will reach the prize ahead of him and take back what should have been ours all along.”

  Petronilo echoed his superior’s laughter, the shooting pain along his jaw reminding him of his personal motives in the matter. Montero allowed his mirth to subside and picked up the telephone. There was much work to be done.