Rebecca took a nice long, slow breath. There she was, doing it again. Believing what other researchers have said without any confirmation. She should be better than that.
“Okay, so let’s say the ark really has been in Pakistan this whole time. Why in the world would the Chinese go to investigate?” Brandt asked.
“As strange as it sounds, the Chinese have the largest and best satellite coverage of the area. Even Britain buys time on their network.”
Rebecca tried to put it all together in her mind. “So we think that China somehow saw evidence on satellite footage that the Ark was in the Noshaq mountain region and sent in a drilling team under false pretenses.”
“But whatever they found was not to their liking,” Davison continued. “And they killed off the team to keep a lid on it.”
“We believe their trespass angered God,” Sallah explained. “And triggered the second flood.”
Rebecca put a hand up. “We are going to table the theological stuff until later.”
Sallah shrugged.
“Bottom line it, ‘Becca,” Brandt requested.
“I think we need to pick up the Book of Enoch, then head to Pakistan.”
“Oh, is that all?” Vanderwalt snickered.
Rebecca went to answer when Stark’s mother cut in on the line. “Sorry to interrupt, however, I think we found something. The dimensions of the new ark weren’t making any sense, so we took a second look at them. The dimensions are actually exactly the same as the original ark, and if you take the rest of the numbers out, they become ancient coordinates.”
“Which lands us in the Noshaq mountain region?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes…” Stark’s mother answered sounding surprised. “How did you know that? Or are we playing catch up?”
“No, we just figured it out for ourselves,” Rebecca stated. “Just a few moments ago. You are right on pace.”
She clicked off as Rebecca turned to Sallah. “Where is the Book of Enoch?”
“I told you I have read it front to back and back to front, there are no other clues.”
“You couldn’t find any clues. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any. Where is it?”
“I left it in a bus locker.”
“It’s here in Venice?” Rebecca asked.
The Foremen nodded.
Lopez clapped his hands. “Alright. Let’s go grab an old book and head to Pakistan!”
It appeared that Lopez was the only one excited about this notion.
* * *
Davidson didn’t have a dog in this fight, but that didn’t mean the SUV wasn’t tense. Vanderwalt was going back to England, apparently with his tail between his legs. It looked like it was going to take more than a pint to patch things up between Brandt and the Brit.
Sallah was coming with them, but only because Brandt couldn’t shoot him and couldn’t leave him behind to tell the Foremen what they were up to.
They had already picked up the Book of Enoch. Rebecca was bent over the pages reading intently, as Lopez drove them to the airport.
The corporal was being very cagey about how exactly they were getting to the Noshaq region. Lopez had just smiled and said trust me. Which of course was what he had said before the goat carriage appeared.
It had been all quiet on the Bunny front. Davidson wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. He hadn’t inquired. He trusted Stark. If it was bad news, and him going into Pakistan, maybe it was best he didn’t know.
Rebecca chewed on the edge of her thumbnail. “Look at this. Just like Noah’s tomb, Noah’s drunken ramblings, he talks a lot about how ‘man will decide the flood.’”
“Noah was drunk?” Lopez asked.
Davidson nodded. “It is well documented in extra-canonical accounts that Noah liked his wine a little too much.”
“Go, Noah,” Lopez said putting a handout for high five, then lowering the appendage when no one met it. That wispy sadness that had been swirling around Lopez came back for moment.
Then Brandt with a frown put his hand up and Lopez slapped it, smiling ear to ear. Sergeant knew his corporal too well.
A very soggy Venice slipped by outside the vaporetto. Already the streets were being blocked off as the canals began to flood without Lopez’s help. Venice and other canal cities would be the most vulnerable during a mega-storm like this.
Low lying islands and coastal regions around the world were already being evacuated.
Was God doing this as a punishment? Davidson didn’t know. Just because he’d shed the Knot and its cult beliefs, he had not lost his faith.
If God wasn’t creating this mega-storm and it was a natural phenomenon, could it be stopped?
Even better question…
If it was the work of God, was there any way to convince Him to make it stop?
These questions were just too big for Davidson right now. He was feeling too many deep emotions at one time. They became entangled with one another, and it became impossible to think on any one of them at a time.
Instead he decided to focus on the leftovers that Lopez had packed.
Now those morsels were way easier to think about.
CHAPTER 19
Rebecca’s nose was so dug into the ancient book, that she barely noticed when they arrived at the airport to board a private jet.
In some ways, Sallah had been correct. The Book of Noah read more as Noah’s private diary. It read more like, how many planks they put together that day, and that they ran out of nails and had to run to Home Depot, kind of thing.
Surprisingly Noah had some writing flair. It appeared that the drunker the man was, the more poetic he waxed. Love poems to his wife, things he wished he had said to that lazy worker who was kind of a bully. Stuff like that. Very human stuff.
Like an ancient Office Space.
However, there was something off about the cadence. Just as Stark’s team realized that the ark dimensions were off, which led to the parallel discovery of the supposed location of the Ark, Rebecca felt that if she could just find the reason for the variable pace, she could uncover one of Noah’s many secrets.
But, alas, the mystery eluded her.
It wasn’t until the turbulence became so great that her teacup bounced right off the tray that Rebecca realized Lopez was having trouble keeping the plane in the air.
She looked to her husband. “Should we be worried?”
Brandt should his head. “Lopez is up there checking a few boxes on his bucket list. He’ll get out of the storm if he needs to.”
Funny, that statement wouldn’t usually ease her nerves, but it did.
Before going back to the book, Rebecca looked out the window as the rain pelted the glass. From all accounts, this was a biblical-scale storm.
What did it say about her life, that she was in the middle of it?
* * *
Brandt looked up to find Lopez exiting the cockpit. Sure the storm had died down a little, but what exactly was Lopez doing outside the cockpit?
The corporal clapped once and rubbed his palms together. “Who wants to jump off the plane?”
Brandt was mildly worried. “We’re going to parachute?”
“Oh, Hell, no,” Lopez responded. “In these high winds over those mountains? If we did survive we’d be blown off course and land hundreds of miles away from each other.”
Thank goodness. Brandt feared that Lopez had some crazy scheme he’d dreamt up.
“Nope. We are jet-packing it.”
Well, at least Brandt didn’t have to be worried about any hidden crazy. Now it was right there out in the open.
Everybody was chiming in, basically freaking out.
Lopez put up both hands. “Bet a goat carriage doesn’t sound so bad now, does it, huh?”
“Lopez…” Brandt growled.
“What? These are next generation jet packs. I commissioned them over two years ago with some guy in the Balkans. He finally came through.”
“You have lost your mind,” Prenner stated.
“Really you too? I thought you’d totally be into this,” Lopez commented.
“Where did you ever get that idea?” Prenner retorted.
“I don’t know. You’re tall.”
“What?”
Brandt stepped into the conversation, literally. “You’d better start convincing me, Lopez, or we are going to stop and drop you off in the Balkans.
The corporal pulled units out of his pack. That was pretty darn small. Like two thermoses strapped together. The rest of the frame unfolded.
Lopez sounded like a used car salesman and was using Vanna White hand gestures. “Look how compact it is, and light.” He hung the thing off of his pinkie. “And so easy to operate. I had them move all controls to one hand so you can shoot a gun with the other. How forward-thinking is that?”
“Lopez…”
“Watch!”
Brandt had to admit that the device assembled easily and within moments Lopez had the jet pack on his back. He snapped the last buckle with a huge smile.
Then suddenly the corporal was off the floor. No huge whoosh, no flames. It truly did seem like magic. “See? See? Solid fuel is so much better,” he said as he flew up and down the aisle. “The problem was always using highly combustible fuel. It made it hot, heavy, and hard to control.”
While Brandt was mildly impressed by the demonstration, that didn’t mean he wanted Sallah strapped to one. Let alone Rebecca.
“We need a backup plan, Lopez.”
“Um, land hundreds of miles away, take dirt roads up the mountain, and hope an opium Lord doesn’t kidnap us.”
“There’s got to be another way,” Davidson stated.
Lopez opened his palms. “Tell me, Davidson, and I will do it.”
“You know it is bad when I am pining for the goat carriage,” Prenner added.
Surprisingly, Rebecca pulled one of the packs out of the bag and put it on. “Kasa is going to want one, you know. We can never speak of this at home.” With that, she buckled in and was floating over the aisle, bumping against the luggage compartment with her head. “Not bad.”
“That’s in here,” Brandt grumbled. “Not out in the winds, and the rain, and the mountains coming up really fast.”
“That is why I have this built-in,” Lopez stated. He pointed to a control panel on his left side. “I can override and pilot them all if I need to.”
Brandt was rapidly running out of hurdles for Lopez to jump. It didn’t help that Davison got his pack on and started doing donuts in the center aisle.
He looked over the last holdout, Prenner, because let’s face it, Sallah was their prisoner and was going to do whatever he was told.
The point man frowned as he nudged one of the packs with his toe. “I guess if all the cool kids are doing it...”
* * *
As Lopez opened the hatch, and the wind and rain slapped her in the face, Rebecca began to feel like Brandt had been correct in his initial assessment.
She looked over to Davidson who looked like he had won the lottery. Even Prenner, who had seemed the most reluctant, looked pretty damn eager to jump out of this plane. And even though Brandt wouldn’t admit it, he had a look very similar to when his twins first got the taste of ice cream.
It seemed only she and Sallah were still nervous. Which kind of made sense, they were the only two non-commandos.
“I am going first, because, duh,” Lopez said, “but remember I can help you all out. Now. Everybody turn on their safety lights.”
No one was able to.
“Come on, guys, it’s the little button that has the flashing light symbol.”
Oh yah, there it was.
Once everybody was blinking a bright red, Lopez waved and threw himself backwards out of the hatch with a very loud, “Wahoo!”
Perhaps not quite as enthusiastically, Davidson jumped face first into the storm. Then Prenner and Sallah, leaving just Rebecca and her husband.
“It seems as if we’re about to crash into a mountain, so we might as well jump.”
That was her husband, always such an inspirational speaker.
Holding hands, they jumped off the plane. Almost immediately she was ripped from Brandt’s grip.
She didn’t panic. Lopez had told her pretty much how this should go. The first half of this jump was going to be pretty much like a parachute jump. At first it was terrifying. You were literally falling out of the sky. Once you got it through your head that you were supposed to be falling out of the sky, it became exhilarating.
Her control panel would tell her when she was at the right altitude to engage the jet packs, just like her altimeter on her parachute.
She looked ahead. The others’ bright red lights blinked against the gray sky. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie starring Tom Cruise. Then Lopez’s pack lit up with a light blue flame. The sight was simply stunning. Then the other men’s packs went off and it was like angels were floating down to earth.
Sallah hit his and zoomed away. Even a Foremen could get the hang of it.
Rebecca looked over to her husband. He gave her a thumbs up as her little red flame button blinked, telling her it was time.
She had it, bracing herself, even though she’d used the pack before. But again there was no jerk, vibration, or rolling. Rebecca simply leveled herself like a little Iron Man, stopped her fall, and streaked in the direction of Lopez.
The wind and rain were brutal, however, somehow it didn’t seem to matter as she flew, literally flew through the sky.
This was probably the best experience she could never share with her children.
* * *
After all of his grumbling, Davidson was a little embarrassed to admit that when the time came, he really didn’t want to land.
These jets packs really were the closest experience you could have to being bird.
Fantastic, spectacular, life-changing really didn’t describe what it felt like to be up there, soaring high above the earth.
He hoped to God that Bunny survived, just so they could jet pack together.
Ahead, Lopez was hovering ten feet off the ground, mainly just to show off while he waited for the rest of the team to join him.
In rapid succession, the others flew in.
“I didn’t even need any help,” Sallah proclaimed.
Lopez’s chuckled, “You just keep telling yourself that.” He turned to the rest of the group. “I’m going to warn you, this is the hardest part. When these engines go off, they go off. So I suggest that you get yourself as close to the ground as you can before you disengage the engines, or get ready to roll.
The corporal was right, as the people had varying levels of success at landing.
Davidson watched and studied everyone’s technique. Actually, he didn’t think that it was how low you were to the ground, but the angle.
It looked like if you were perpendicular to the ground, you were going to hit hard and knock yourself off your feet. Instead it looked like you wanted to be at about a twenty percent incline to the ground.
He tilted forward just slightly, landing lightly on his feet.
“Show off,” Lopez complained, dusting off his knees.
Brandt, never a slave to pomp and circumstance, asked, “So where is this Ark?”
* * *
Vanderwalt rewound the footage. Boy, were the Chinese going to have a blast reviewing that spectacle. Normally he would shake his head and say, “crazy Americans.”
But the vast majority of Americans would never have tried what Lopez had planned. No, the corporal and the team that bought into these crazy ideas were in a league of their own.
Vanderwalt was so glad that he hadn’t flown all the way home. Instead he just hopped over to Greece and had talked his way into one of the NATO facilities there.
Which was for the best, since he got a text that he had been fired. Guess grouchy old parliament member was making good on his promises. Vanderwalt’s secure phone and ID card no longer worked. Good thing th
ose weren’t his only ones. Like no one had pulled his security clearance before.
He might look young, but this wasn’t his first rodeo.
So here he was monitoring the team’s progress. Lurking about, waiting to see if they needed any outside help. It was the least he could do, after withholding such important information.
Brandt had been right. When the right thing to do and what your boss wanted you to do were two very different things, you always chose the former.
The door behind him opened and two Greek guards stepped in.
“We are sorry,” one said in barely English. “We have been asked to escort you off the premises.”
Vanderwalt turned in his chair and leaned back. He studied the two men for a moment to determine what their leverage points were.
One had silver glitter on his shoes. Now one might point to that and think it was from a stripper, however, there was none on his hands or his neck. So Vanderwalt guessed that the guard had a little girl.
As did the other guard. That one was easier. He had a tiny set of pink lips on his cheek. And that looked like Hello Kitty pink to Vanderwalt.
“So… your daughters want to meet My Little Pony?”
That set both of guards back a bit.
You see if you offered cash immediately, that just reeked of a bribe. Arranging to have a My Little Pony-attended private party in Greece, that was just more of an “I’ll make your little daughters insanely happy if you let me stay in the secured facility for another two hours,” kind of situation.
* * *
Brandt walked up the last of the steep incline. His knee was grateful that Lopez had gotten them so close to the mark. Over the ridge should be the valley where the Chinese did their test drilling.
“Holy…” Lopez exclaimed as he looked over the edge.
That got Brandt’s knee moving faster. He joined his team at the top of the ridge.
As the rain poured upon them, sending rivulets of water down his face, Brandt looked out over the valley.
It was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the ground and fractured it into a thousand shards. You could tell that beneath the broken earth there was an enormous chamber down below.
It seemed unreal that they could have found Noah’s Ark.
The 3rd Cycle of the Betrayed Series Collection: Extremely Controversial Historical Thrillers (Betrayed Series Boxed set) Page 20