Davidson’s voice was about five times huskier than normal. “You know it.”
The phone beeped, signaling her money was about to run out. Shocking how fast you could burn through a hundred bucks calling the Congo.
“Gotta go,” she said. Bunny would never know what he said back, as that annoying “You have been disconnected” beep sounded in her ear. She closed the phone, stepped on it with her heel, then dropped the plastic carcass into the dumpster.
“Are you going to share why you are sending them to Egypt?” Prenner asked.
Putting a knuckle to the corner of her eye to draw away the tears before her makeup was totally ruined, Bunny shrugged. “I’d prefer not to.”
By the look on both Prenner and Emily’s faces, that wasn’t going to fly.
“Fine,” Bunny conceded. “But we are going to need some coffee first.”
No one disagreed there as they made their way back to the Toyota.
Which was good, because what she had to share, no one was going to like.
CHAPTER 12
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Skies over Africa
8:29 p.m. (CAT)
Rebecca’s head lolled to the side, rousing her. She cracked open her eyes, taking in the luxury jet. Their fourth plane since hopping the British aid helicopter back in the Congo.
Looking out the plane’s window over the dark desert, it was hard to imagine the press of the jungle. Not that Rebecca was trying very hard, of course.
Oranges sparked along the horizon. The sun must be setting. Which meant she had slept far longer than the three hours she had allotted herself. Nestled in the crook of Brandt’s arm, she would not be complaining any time soon. Under his other arm was Vakasa.
A little girl who held such big secrets. Or was she just a child like any other? The Disciples were on a hair trigger after the destruction of the tablets. Had they jumped to conclusions? Or was Rebecca looking at the Messiah? Even asking a question such as that sounded absurd. And to have to explain it to Brandt? That seemed downright impossible.
Vakasa rubbed her eyes, looking around.
“Where are we?” Rebecca asked for the girl.
Brandt moved, stretching his arm. Rebecca was loath to leave his embrace, but she lifted her head up to give him room to work out the kinks.
“Chad? Sudan? Libya?” Brandt answered. “I can’t remember what Levont said.”
Levont? Rebecca was surprised to find Lopez crashed in the overstuffed chair across from them. The corporal must have been truly exhausted if he let someone else fly the plane. Must have been all that filming.
Davidson stood up from the other side of the couch and leaned to the right, then left. “O for three,” he said, indicating the eastern window. “Check it out.”
Rebecca was confused, until she noticed a glistening ribbon of blue flanked by a greenbelt in the distance. The Nile. They were already in Egypt.
“Levont is giving Lopez a run for his money.”
“I heard that,” Lopez said, unfurrowing himself from the pretzel-like position.
“Yet it is strangely so much easier to sleep with Levont at the helm,” Davidson teased the corporal. “Far less structural shaking.”
Rebecca knew Lopez would never take that lying down. He hopped to his feet, yawning. “Easier to do when you aren’t being shot at.”
So true. To imagine they had made it an entire flight without an RPG strike? They truly had hit the jackpot. Rebecca noticed that no one said a thing, though. For how brave the men were, they were pretty damned superstitious. No one was about to jinx their luck.
As Davidson and Lopez stretched, Brandt leaned in close.
His presence was intoxicating. His words were not.
“Are we going to talk about it?”
Before she had to answer, Davidson turned around. Either he hadn’t heard Brandt’s question or was coming to her rescue. “Like the selection?”
Rebecca found a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt on the seat next to her. She picked up the items and brought them to her nose. Clothes. Real, actual clothes. No more torn and stained wedding dress.
“Not sure if they are the right size,” Davidson added. “Found them in a closet in the back…You gotta love private jets.”
Yes, Rebecca loved them, all right.
“They have even got a shower back there.”
“Do not be teasing me about that,” Rebecca stated.
Davidson laughed. “Dead serious. Hot water and everything.”
Rebecca felt herself almost melt at the thought.
Grabbing the clothes, Rebecca rose.
“Don’t take too long,” Davidson added. “We should be landing in forty minutes.”
Lopez scoffed as he headed to the cockpit. “Make it thirty-six minutes.”
Rebecca would take anything at this point. As she headed toward the back, Brandt caught her hand.
“I’ve been exceedingly patient.”
And that he had been.
“Then can I beg you for another thirty-six minutes?” she asked.
The corner of his lip twitched up. “How about thirty-one minutes and you give me five minutes to get cleaned up?”
“You got it.”
He released her hand, sliding their palms against one another. If there wasn’t a little girl in the room, she might have suggested they share that shower, but there was a little girl in the room. One who might be…
No. Rebecca wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to enjoy possibly the most decadent shower in her life.
Then she would have to explain to Brandt…well, everything. And she’d thought the information she had learned in that Roman cave last year was bad.
The gold cross around Brandt’s neck caught the light and glistened.
Could his faith survive the news she carried?
Sighing, Rebecca continued toward the shower. That was a question for thirty-six minutes from now.
* * *
Bunny rubbed her eyes. She could only look at the computer screen for so long. How Stark did his bug-eyed stare for hours upon hours was beyond her. The activity of the all-night Internet café had settled down, but not died. It was pretty amazing how many people wanted an anonymous Internet connection at midnight.
Emily walked up to their table. “My sources confirm Bunny’s calculations.”
She looked over to Prenner and gave the lieutenant her best “I told you so” look. Because, well, she had told him so.
“I still don’t understand how you went from a few runes in Iceland to deducing the one man in all the world Brandt and the others need to talk to is living in Cairo,” Prenner grumbled.
Probably because you don’t think a civilian, a chick, might know something you don’t. But Bunny took in a big breath. She had held off explaining the entire thing until they had confirmation from Emily that she was on the right track. And given that it had been super early in the morning over in Egypt, that confirmation was a while in coming.
Bunny brought up several pictures that Rebecca and she had taken in Iceland. Crap, had it only been four days ago? Bunny could have sworn that little adventure was four months ago.
Ah, sleep deprivation. How it skewed your perceptions.
She pointed to a row of symbols. “The Vikings were all about their runes. And documenting their conquests.” Bunny flipped through the pictures. “This set recounts their arrival on Iceland and beginning a settlement there.”
“Not exactly earth-shattering information,” Prenner interjected.
“Perhaps,” Bunny said, then scrolled down to the last picture. “Except, they happen to mention the Disciples and thank them for all their help.”
“What?” Prenner said, now glaring at the symbols like he could read them.
“Bunny,” Emily chided, “they don’t exactly talk about the Disciples.”
“They might as well,” Bunny defended, then translated the runes from Old Norse to English
. “We hailed from the east. We conquered sea and beast to find our home. But we could not have done so without the help of those that do not wish to walk the halls of Vallahalla. Those of one God. Those of Moshe hold great secrets. Oden has blessed us with their companionship. To might. For might. Forever.”
Bunny looked up. “Tell me that isn’t about the Disciples.”
“And the Egyptian connection?” Prenner asked, still looking a bit skeptical.
Bunny flipped through several pages on the laptop that Stark had jury-rigged for her. Wires poked out from the frame and she had gotten more than one shock from using the trackpad, but hey, it was untraceable.
“Rebecca and I were not the only ones making the Viking connection,” Bunny explained. “As a matter of fact, we followed this article—The Found Tribe of Dann: Did the Scales of Justice Migrate as Far as Newfoundland?”
From the blank look on both of their faces, Bunny was pretty sure neither Prenner nor Emily was well schooled in ancient Jewish studies.
“Dann is one of the ‘lost tribes.’ As a matter of fact, it was the northernmost tribe of Israel until they got booted out of the Holy Land by the Canaans.” Off of their blank expressions, Bunny asked, “Ring a bell?”
“Vaguely,” Emily answered.
Great. They wanted quick answers, but it was going to take Bunny a semester to get them up to speed.
Prenner leaned back in his chair. “I think we get the whole lost tribe thing. Those Jewish tribes disappeared from the historical record after the Canaans invaded. But why the focus on the Dann tribe? Isn’t it as lost as the others?”
“All right, this is a bit more obscure but all the more important for it,” Bunny said as she brought up the passage Rebecca had found. “The legions of Dann…” Bunny stopped to explain. “Dann was the second-largest tribe.” She restarted. “The legions of Dann will leap from Bashan to become those prophesized.”
Bunny looked up. “So you can see why we were so interested.”
“No,” Prenner said with a chuckle. Maybe the guy was human. “Not at all.”
“Bashan is to the east,” Bunny emphasized. Still, they didn’t seem to get it. And people called her an airhead. She brought up a map of ancient Israel. “The Danns settled to the far north. That passage makes absolutely no sense. The Danns had never been granted or settled land to the east. And not a single scholar knows why the passage clearly says they would come from the east.”
“Okay…” Emily said. “I am sure that just gets religious scholars’ panties in a bunch. However, I am with Prenner in that I still don’t care.”
“Well, Nyura Massari would certainly disagree,” Bunny said as she brought up the Viking article again. “He has brought together a huge amount of research on the Jewish tribes and where their genetic markers have spread across the globe. He has spent his whole life trying to track down the Dann tribe.”
“I am sure Rebecca is fascinated by this stuff—”
Bunny cut off Emily. “It is more than academic minutia. You really don’t see it?”
The woman cocked her head, squinting her eyes. The CIA operative clearly did not like being behind the curve. You could see her mind trying to unwind the mystery. Finally, Bunny put her out of her misery and pointed to the author of the article’s name.
“Massari? It means ‘Egyptian’ in Arabic,” Bunny explained. “It is the equivalent of saying you are Mr. Smith.”
“So he is using a false last name?” Prenner clarified.
“Oh yeah,” Bunny said as she brought up the letters and shuffled them. “But when you shake them just a bit, you get…Saramias.”
Emily sucked in a breath and stepped back from the laptop.
“What?” Prenner said. “What am I missing?”
Bunny smiled, then looked to Emily. “Should I tell him, or will you?”
Emily just waved her off as she opened her phone and walked toward the corner of the café.
Bunny turned her attention to the lieutenant. “Saramias is Aunush’s last name. I believe the author of that article is Aunush’s father—apparently the only person to ever get away from the Disciples. Of course, until us.”
Stark looked over his shoulder. “Why do you think he isn’t with the Disciples?”
“You do not publish work on the genetics of ancient Jewish genes showing up in current populations if you are with the Disciples.”
“Why not?” he asked.
Bunny sat down, pointing at the screen. “He is obviously trolling for their new Messiah. He is scientifically trying to find…” Bunny had to stop herself before she blurted out one of the most tightly held secrets in the world. “He is trying to find an individual of high value to them.”
“But why publish if he is in hiding?”
Rebecca and she had asked the same question before heading to Iceland. “I don’t think Saramias can travel freely, so he has been publishing to try and induce others to follow up on his research. We call it ‘leapfrogging.’ You take someone’s conclusions and go out and prove or disprove them, moving the research forward.”
“So you are sending Brandt to Egypt to interrogate this Mr. Saramias regarding the Disciples’ interest in the African girl?” the lieutenant clarified.
“I gotta give it to you, Prenner,” Bunny said, glad that he hadn’t asked why the girl was such a priority for them, “you do catch on quickly.
* * *
Brandt tried to dry off. Except, that meant he had to apply pressure to his bruised and scraped skin. The deep purple of his most recent shoulder scar stood out against his skin. His finger followed an older, lighter scar that ran ragged along his side and down his groin. He looked like a patchwork doll, sewn by someone not all that skilled with a needle. Brandt knew he was lucky. Damned lucky.
The shower had proved a great wake-up, though. Now to get some thick Egyptian coffee, basically a hit of straight-up caffeine, and he might actually be ready for the day.
As he dressed, the only sign that the plane had landed was by the slightest rattle of the gilded faucet. These luxury jets certainly were worth every penny. Now, if he could only convince Command to put a couple hundred million into one for his team, he’d be a happy man.
Pulling on a bulletproof vest over his shirt, Brandt walked out into the plane’s “great room.” A crystal chandelier hung in the center of the “room.” Gold-veined mirrors lined the “walls.” A huge sectional couch wrapped around in a “U,” creating a conversation “circle.”
Like he said. Luxury.
Last night, when they’d boarded, all Brandt had cared about was the fact that the plane was dry and had no wildlife. Now, though? The place was insane. Like they’d walked into an oil billionaire’s mansion.
Rebecca turned, unconsciously smoothing back her hair. She hated those strands that framed her face when they got all wavy and unruly. She called them her “little seditious streaks.” Brandt, though, liked the way they went their own way. Smiling, Rebecca walked toward him.
So you know what? Strike that whole two-hundred-million-dollar luxury plane. He was already a happy man.
Vakasa spotted him and jumped off the stool that was cozied up to the old-fashioned ice cream parlor counter, on a plane. That was the super rich. Gilded mirrors and strawberry malts. As a matter of fact, Vakasa’s lips were rimmed in bright pink from her shake.
It had killed him to leave the little girl back in Africa. Even with a medicine man who swore to protect her. But Brandt hadn’t even bothered to ask the brass to extract her from the Congo. He knew the policy regarding noncombatant civilians, even orphans. They just couldn’t take home every kid. Besides, if he had asked, then Command had declined, someone might have asked what the hell they were doing that day and a half it took to stash her deep in the jungle.
Now, though? Now that the Disciples were interested in her? Now she got her own luxury jet, at least for the next little while.
Vakasa ran to him, arms up, so when she was close enough, despite all
his injuries, Brandt swooped her up in his arms and spun her so fast that her feet flew out behind her. She giggled as only a child could. All the horror she must have witnessed erased, at least for a moment, by a good spin.
Unfortunately, his body could remember all too well the abuse he’d put it through. Not that he would admit it to anyone, but he’d gotten a tad dizzy. Easing into a stop, Brandt propped Vakasa up onto a hip. The girl’s arms draped around his neck as she leaned her cheek against his chest.
“Thor…” She sighed.
Rebecca’s eyebrow went up.
Brandt patted his sidearm. “Lopez told her my gun’s name was Thor’s Hammer.”
“Ah,” Rebecca said. She headed over. “So anyone wielding his hammer must be Thor.”
“Apparently,” Brandt responded, soaking in this moment of quiet. Soon, too soon, they would be out again, outwitting and most likely outrunning the Disciples.
“Want one, Boss?” Davidson asked, holding up a stainless steel cup, pouring a spoonful of malt powder into a vanilla shake.
“No, thanks,” he answered. He was about to ask where the rest of the men were when they strolled from the forward compartment.
Lopez held up his hand. “My fault we are one minute and twelve seconds behind schedule, Sarge. We’ll make it up, I promise.”
Of that, Brandt had no question. “A low-profile car, Lopez. Low. Profile.”
The corporal was tasked with getting them a car. Unfortunately, his taste in automobiles ran nearly as rich as his taste in aircraft.
“This is Egypt. I get it,” Lopez stated, waving him off as he headed toward the hatch.
Talli and Levont followed behind. They had their own shopping list.
“Sarge…” Davidson asked with a frown.
Normally, the private was their procurement guy, but his blond hair and blue eyes were not going to charm the Egyptian merchants. Especially with all those scars. His most recent round of surgeries had helped tremendously. However, in Egypt, his flawed Midwestern good looks were going to rouse suspicion. In this part of the world, Talli and Levont blended in perfectly. Even Lopez’s darker complexion helped.
The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection Page 105