by Rick Jones
As many scarabs had been laid waste to the fires, many still escaped the slaughter.
They had gathered in recesses away from the flames, many injured and incapable of moving on, some resigning to die from their wounds and becoming the sustenance for those who would survive.
But many more remained.
And there was prey to be had.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
John Savage stood as impotent as a man could feel.
Hillary was still on his knees, blessing the man who fired the killing shot that saved his life.
Savage on the other hand loathed the soldier, truly believing that he could have saved both lives without firing a single shot. But life is what it is. He’d seen it before—people panicking and the respondents reacting with the conquer-all solution of placing a bullet to the head.
“You’re supposed to be men of elite status,” he told them, knowing that they couldn’t understand a single word he said. “You’re supposed to be men of repose.”
Their answer, however, came by shouldering him off and heading for the archway.
Hillary was just getting to his feet. “Thank you,” he said to Savage.
“I didn’t do a thing,” he said. “They killed a man when a man didn’t need to be killed.”
“I beg to differ.”
“You can differ all you want,” he told him firmly. “The man was afraid. And a man’s fear can be dealt with.”
“Sometimes.”
They looked back at the scene where the dead minister lay. Beside him lay his backpack. Inside his backpack was his camera bearing the photos and schematic of Mintaka—without it, they’d be running blind.
The thought occurred to them simultaneously.
“I’m not going back,” said Hillary.
“Neither am I. We go through Mintaka using our wits from here on in.”
They moved forward. Following the lead of the soldiers, they entered beneath the archway and into darkness.
Just as they reached an opening there was a muffled sound somewhere in the distance. The noise was unmistakable. It was the sound of a hand grenade going off.
“What was that?” asked Hillary.
Savage waited a few moments and listened for something further, perhaps for another explosion. But nothing came. “That was a hand grenade,” he finally said.
“Perhaps the young man we left behind?”
He nodded. “Now the question is, was the moment effective enough to allow us time? Or is it that whatever it was he was fighting still coming after us?”
Hillary didn’t want to even consider the possibilities.
“We move,” said Savage, and then he ushered Hillary beneath the archway to the next area.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The scale tipped with glacial slowness, as if trying to find an equal balance between the two sides. The side bearing the stones-of-predetermined weight rose as the scale bearing the crystal lowered. The scales seesawed to a mutual level on both sides, vacillating in teasing manner, one side threatening to outweigh the other. But then they stopped when the balances were perfectly aligned.
At the far end of the room one of the two doors opened, the one on the right.
No one moved. Everyone was waiting for Mintaka to come alive with a sudden shift of weights and balances.
But it didn’t. The world around them remained steady.
“Are you sure, Alyssa, that that’s the correct doorway?” asked Demir.
She looked at the faces of the ministers who were slack-jawed, and at the faces of the soldiers who appeared neutral because it was required of them as military elitists, despite their underlying emotions.
“Are . . . you . . . sure?” he emphasized.
“That particular crystal made sense . . . logically. It had to be the answer.”
“Had to be?”
“Look. It made sense. It was the logical choice.”
“And you decided upon the decision without the input of the ministers? Without their counsel?”
“Let’s get one thing straight, Demir. These blowhards have no interest in listening to what I have to say because of my gender. You know that. They live in a world where women are second-rate citizens. Well let me tell you, and them, something. My life, your life, their lives and the lives of your teammates are at stake here. I will not be held back because of cultural prejudices. And neither should they. I made what I thought to be the wisest choice to benefit us all.”
Demir held back. His face was flat and even. His eyes remained steady. Finally, he conceded. “And this door, the one on the right—this is the way?”
“It’s a way,” she told him.
“Both doors provide a way,” he returned. “But do you know for certain if this particular door will provide us the route necessary to get to the Chamber of the One?”
She hesitated. “All I know is that the door responded to what I believed to be the most logical answer regarding the number of questions given.”
“But you’re not sure?”
She wasn’t, not completely. But logically speaking and reasoning out all options, she was somewhat confident in her assessment.
“Regardless how you feel about the cultural differences between us, you had no right to make such a decision on your own.”
“I felt impelled to do what I thought was necessary. I’m sorry you feel the way you do, Demir, but I was brought along this mission because of my skills as a cryptanalyst. I will not rely upon the opinions of those who do not possess the skills to read archaic script dated more than 14,000 years ago.”
Demir stared at her for a brief moment, then, “How sure are you on your decision?”
“More than fifty percent.”
“More than fifty—are you kidding me? There’re only two doors. So it has to be a fifty-fifty chance, regardless.”
“Either you trust me, Demir, or you don’t. Right now it doesn’t really matter now that the door is open, does it?”
He looked at the passageway. “No, I guess not.”
“You have to trust me.”
“I want to,” was all he said. “When will we know if we made the wrong decision?”
“When it’s too late to do anything about it,” she said.
Demir looked at the faces around him. Their numbers were growing significantly smaller.
“Demir?”
He snapped back.
Suddenly there was the sound of a distant explosion, though the sound was muted. But it was a sound Demir clearly recognized. And so did the members of his team.
Alyssa turned. “What was that?”
“An explosion,” he said distantly.
“From what?”
“A grenade,” he said simply. “That was a hand grenade going off from somewhere down below.”
“A hand grenade?”
He ignored her, cocking his head hoping to hear to get a fix.
But nothing happened.
“Dem—”
He raised his finger pointedly. “Shhhhh!”
The silence held a certain enigma to it, something that required answers to obvious questions.
“We all carry grenades,” he finally offered. “My entire team.”
“What’s left of your team is right here,” she said.
He shook his head. “No-no,” he said. “Someone’s down below. Someone’s still alive.”
“How? And why the grenade?”
Why? Because someone was being attacked, that’s why.
“Someone’s still alive,” he whispered to no one in particular. He moved away from the group and listened, hoping to hear something else, wishing beyond hope that someone from his squad was still alive.
Alyssa held out the same hope, suddenly thinking that John was still out there, somewhere, wanting to believe that he was working his way toward her.
John.
“The door,” said Demir with urgency, “Does it take us to a level below?”
“They both do,” s
he answered. “They’re intertwining staircases that end up at different locations At least according to the schematic.”
“Then we hasten,” he returned. “And we pray that your decision is the correct one.”
As they neared the open doorway she could feel her heart skipping irregularly within her chest. John was alive! she told herself. She could feel him, the umbilical tie between them growing stronger.
After they entered the doorway and began to descend the black silica stairway, the door closed behind them, locking them in. No matter what their path had been chosen. There was no turning back—not at this point.
And as they descended Alyssa prayed that she had chosen well.
But darkness reigned in front of them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
John Savage was surrounded by men whose names he did not know, names he probably couldn’t pronounce even if he did know with the exception of John Hillary, a simple name, and a man who was just as silent as he was while ascending a winding staircase.
Savage took point with his assault weapon directed forward. With his flashlight throwing a bright spotlight to the curving walls in front of him, the light incapable of wending around corners, John wondered if something was waiting for them just around the bend.
“Please,” said Hillary, the man out of breath, the climb proving too much for his legs, “I just need a moment.” He sat down to the displeasure of the two commandos who wanted to press on.
“All right,” said John. “We’ll take five.”
“Thank you.”
Deciphering from Hillary’s and Savage’s exchange, and deciding from Hillary’s body English that he wasn’t about to move within the immediate moment, one of the Turkish commandos spoke harshly in his native tongue in admonishment.
Hillary tried to explain his position, only to be cut off curtly by the soldier with a flippant wave. When the argument was completed the soldiers moved on without them.
“Where are they going?” asked Savage.
“Ahead,” he said. “To make sure that there’ll be no spring traps ahead.”
“That was a long conversation just for him to say that.”
Hillary waved his hand feebly through the air. “He also said that I was slowing them—and you—down. And that it was dangerous to do so. He also said that they should’ve let that man kill me back there, that I was becoming too much of a liability.”
“They’re scared. That’s all.”
Hillary shook his head. “Am I slowing you down, John?”
“We’re in this together.”
“That’s not what I asked. I said: Am I slowing you down?”
“Look, Hillary. I have no worries about that. We are a team.”
“They don’t think so,” said the archeologist, pointing his finger upward into darkness, to the route taken by the commandos. “When that minister tried to kill me, were you going to allow it?”
“I was trying to get to you. I could have saved you both. He was scared and didn’t want to be abandoned, so he latched on to you out of desperation. He wasn’t purposely trying to kill you. He was trying to anchor you down so that you wouldn’t leave.”
“But the Turks saw differently, yes?”
Savage remained silent. He realized that there were different codes of honor amongst soldiers, a different setting for each man’s moral compass. SEALs were different from Deltas. Deltas were different from Green Berets, and so forth. Many had a different mission statement to serve their specialized unit, like ‘Leave no man behind.’ The Turks, however, took a man’s life to preserve a life, which, by the code of ethics, could be classified as a justifiable act. But John believed that intervention was a better solution in this case. It was a far better resolution than the pull of a trigger.
He finally answered Hillary in even measure. “Yes,” he said. “The Turks saw differently.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“Am I a liability?”
“You are what you are, Hillary. I will not leave you behind.”
The aged man smiled. “Thank you.”
Hillary finally got to his feet and gestured his hand limply toward the ascending staircase. “After you,” he said to John.
They moved forward.
#
The two Turkish commandos made it to the top of the stairway and cautiously scanned the area, their shoulder lamps alighting throughout the circular chamber. The walls glistened like tar, the black silica as polished and smooth as glass. The ceiling was rounded, a rotunda that was perfectly curved, perfectly domed, with crystals embedded into the ceiling to resemble the pinprick sparkles of light in the universe with perfect alignments of constellations and stars, a magnificent celestial map.
They pressed slowly onward with their heads on a swivel, appraising their surroundings like creatures sensing great danger.
And there they were, shapes rising up from the chamber floor, the forms now standing beneath the canopy of a faux universe.
The soldiers directed their weapons, drew a bead, and waited.
When their lights drew upon the nature of the beast, when the shine cast away the shadows and gave light to the shapes within, their hearts hitched.
Eden was exposing herself in a most wondrous way.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Alyssa began to suspect that she had chosen poorly. The stairway was a spiral staircase that was very thin and completely vertical with hardly enough room for their shoulders to clear the flanking walls as they descended.
The further they moved downward the darker the staircase became, the shadows before them seeming to push back the light even though the power meters on the lamps continued to read at ‘maximum.’
“Stop,” said Demir.
They did.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he said. “Perhaps if we go back—”
“There is no going back,” she told him. “Mintaka has seen to that.”
“So we should give up and move forward, where death obviously awaits us?”
“You don’t know that!”
“I know enough. This doesn’t feel right.”
She couldn’t dispute him, either—couldn’t deny the fact that she was feeling the same edginess, placing her on the cusp of indecision. “There’s no going back,” she repeated. This time she sounded repentant, her voice almost begging for forgiveness regarding her choice. She looked at the faces of the ministers and the soldiers, thinking how much they were strangers to her, didn’t even know their names, but driving them to their deaths regardless. I’m so sorry.
She thought about John, wondering if he was somewhere within, wondering if he was looking for her as she was him. That simple line of thought quickly brought her back with initiative that wasn’t false or feigned, but quite real, the intensity in her eyes suddenly afire, the squaring of her shoulders a sign of strong fortitude. “I made a command decision based on the best option available. This is the way.”
“I’ve lost many men today,” said Demir. “I’m not committed to losing any more under my command.”
“I understand that. But if you want to live, if you want your team to live, then we move downward.”
“Toward Paradise,” he stated cynically. “It seems like a very dark place.”
“Mintaka is full of deception. You have to remember that these pyramids, these temples, were built specifically to hold the secrets regarding the true origins of mankind. Their vaults were built to preserve those secrets. And we are the trespassers.”
“So you’ve said.”
“This is the way.” This time she sounded more confident and less conflicted.
Demir studied her for a long moment. Then he sighed. “How much further?”
“Thirty, maybe forty meters if the schematics were true. Not far.”
Demir wondered as to what lay at the bottom, Paradise or Stygian darkness. Then he quietly directed the mouth of his weapon to the commando taking point: keep going.
&
nbsp; The soldier clearly appeared hesitant. After a long read of Demir’s face, he realized that the lead commander wasn’t going to alter his decision.
The point man began to descend, asking God to invite him into His embrace should He decide to end his life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“What is this place?” John asked in a hush.
By the time they reached the landing, they found the two commandos circling what looked to be a scaled-down version of Eden, the model made entirely of crystal. It was a magnificent structure that outlined the rivers Pishon and Gihon, now gone, having dried up over the millenniums under a hot desert sun. There were aqueducts and roadways, walking bridges and lands for husbandry, community living with houses of delightful architecture and not the primitive style of mud huts, a true utopia of an advanced civilization.
Sitting at the central point of the model were the three pyramids, the three temples, with Eden the most central, the most massive, the temple dwarfing the construction of its surroundings and, by scale model, large enough to dwarf Khufu, the largest pyramid in Egypt.
The pyramids were connected by tunnels that seemed to be elevated from ground level, the conduits running from one pyramid to the next, umbilical ties that connected them at great distances.
More so, John Savage recognized the pattern. The pyramids were shaped in the arrangement of the three main bodies in the Orion Belt: the stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. And they were seated directly below the configuration of those stars represented on the dome above the model.
Hillary’s eyes flared as if completely enamored with the setting. “Do you see this, John? Eden was a megatropolis, an advanced city beyond our greatest imagination. If you look over the spread—” He did. It was massive, rivaling the sizes of modern-day cities like Boston or Las Vegas with tens of square miles of structural advancement.
Amazing!
“The city resided at the mouth of the four main rivers,” Hillary added. “It became a major center of trade worldwide.” He continued to circle the model. “Absolutely amaz—”