“I thought you said it was designed for stealth?”
“Stealth from Anunnaki scanners and detection systems. But it’s still physically visible.”
“Oh.” Johnny handed it over and watched Sledge deliver it to one of the pilots. The man toggled a couple of switches and placed the Conifer into an aperture on his control station. Suddenly, the Conifer began glowing red as if the ship itself were activating it.
“Back in the day, we used this shuttle for exactly the same purpose as we are now,” the Eagle said from a couch against the wall. She sat, leaning forward with her hands interlocked. “We even managed to make it feel human with the decorations.”
They were probably speeding through the air, but there was no sensation of movement. The shuttle must’ve used a gravity generator.
She rose to her feet. “Come with me.”
He followed her into a bedroom. Minus a bed. But there was a bookshelf, a desk, chair, and even a window. He shut the door behind him and joined her by it. Barely the size of a dinner plate, the window allowed only a view of the desert and the occasional traveler or camel herd. She smiled.
Contrary to Sledge’s statement, she seemed at ease. There was no note of tension in the way she stood. But he felt tense. She should’ve been upset right now. Her showing no signs of it bothered him more than if she’d screamed at him like in the bunker.
“Is everything okay?” he blurted.
“I learned a long time ago how to pretend everything was okay whether or not it was. So don’t worry about me.”
Johnny nodded. Playing the role of the Eagle had probably required a lot of acting. Acting brave when she was really afraid.
“The real question is,” she said, “are you okay? I take it you’ve heard about the deadliest earthling title.”
That pulled Johnny up short. He’d never seen her face at the crossroads of guilt, concern, and regret. She massaged the bridge of her nose between her index finger and thumb.
“It occurred to me in that bunker as I waited for all those Snake-eaters to risk their lives, risk this shuttle’s discovery and detection of our radio frequencies that I’ve truly become numb to everything that people have sacrificed all for me. To keep my legend burning strong. When a person loses that concern, it’s time they stop leading. Or pretending to.”
Johnny turned away, and his gaze fell to the carpet. It looked more comfortable than anything he’d slept on in the past few days.
What did she want him to say? He’d heard enough half-truths. Enough of her manipulating ways. And he could tell she was trying to persuade him to forgive her. She actually wanted him to understand why she did it.
The edge of his lip curled up. He wanted to tell her outright that he didn’t care. Instead, he said, “I’m not going to be the deadliest earthling.”
“The deadliest earthling isn’t something we can afford to forget about,” the Eagle said grimly.
Johnny dug his boot into the carpet, relishing the simple sensation of the friction. It wasn’t anything like the worn-out rugs of the Kandrazi homes. He pressed his palm up against his ear and rubbed out an itch. His mouth opened wide to shout. But he hesitated.
“I’m pretty tired,” he said. “Can I go rest?”
He’d traveled days, miles, gone through sewer scum, and all she cared about was making sure he could go through with being the deadliest earthling. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. And staying in this room with her any longer threatened to erase what precious memories he carried of her. He tried to remind himself of that night he cried and she piqued his hope with a whiff of hot chocolate. That seemed small in his mind, evoking next to nothing. Like somehow he was seeing the memory through a keyhole instead of through a window into his past.
The Eagle cocked her head at the door. “Go ahead.”
Stepping out, he heard her pull a slip of paper from her jacket.
Chapter 41
Besides the pilots, Laura was the only one in the main compartment when Johnny stepped out.
She wiped the sweat off her forehead. Splotches of blood hung on her sleeves.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, realizing this was the second Dagos he was asking the question of in less than five minutes.
“I’m fine.” She nudged her lip with her knuckle. “You pulled off a nice stunt there, but the Anunnaki might not make it.”
Something acidic exploded in him. He scratched his stomach, feeling the weakness at the edges from the mere pressure of his fingers against it. Her look told him that the Anunnaki was definitely going to die.
“How long does it have?” he asked to avoid silence.
“It’s fifteen minutes to our destination,” she said slowly. “We’ll be lucky if we get anything useful with its visors.”
Johnny drifted over to the couch and sunk down beneath it. He let his head sag against the cushion. Designators and visors tracked an Anunnaki’s life force so that when one died, they ceased functioning. Sure they could be reworked like the ones Orun bought them. But the identity of the Anunnaki would get locked out of the World Tree.
She dipped her head and gave a cautious smile.
“What about you? Are you okay?”
Johnny looked up, surprised at how silently Laura had snuck over to him and found a spot on the couch.
“I’m good,” he said.
“You’re good?” she asked skeptically.
Johnny couldn’t help but grin. “Yeah, you know.”
“Did she at least thank you?”
Johnny opened his mouth to talk, utterly taken aback by Laura’s keenness. Did she hear what he and the Eagle discussed?
“I’ve lived twice as long as you, so I know twice as many of my mom’s techniques,” Laura said with a hint of regret. “I’m not going to tell you it’s not her fault the way she is. She let herself become this way. But a lot of the stuff you’re going through right now, she went through too, I think.”
Johnny nodded, then realized he should be shaking his head. “She didn’t thank me.”
Laura let out an exasperated breath. She looked over her shoulder as if her mom might be watching. But the small cabin door was closed.
“She’s played that Eagle role so long, I don’t think she can ever fully break out of it. But there’s more to this deadliest earthling thing than you think.”
“How’s that?”
At that moment a door opened. The door to the room with the Anunnaki. Juan poked his head in and gestured for Laura.
“We’ll have to pick up another time,” Laura said.
After a few minutes, Johnny forced himself up, if for no other reason than to avoid getting stiff. He paced, thrumming his fingers against his pants.
A few of the other Snake-eaters passed in and out, but Johnny didn’t bother with any conversation. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Laura said. Even if the Eagle’s stuff about growing numb for all everyone sacrificed was a lie, it was a good one. The kind of lie you wanted to be true.
“Pretty crazy to think some of this stuff actually happened, huh?” said one of the Snake-eaters. He had a shaved head and his face was rough from acne scars.
Johnny was confused, then saw what he meant. A couple of posters hung on the wall there. Old-school propaganda pieces. Probably from the 2020s. The heart of the Shroud War.
One showed an eagle carrying a rifle in its talons within a ring. The eagle, rifle, and ring shone gold against the black background.
A second poster showed six human soldiers in battle poses with gritty looks, aiming their weapons at off-picture targets. A battle-damaged, ash-laden city resided in the background, jets and Anunnaki aircraft colliding into skyscrapers. At the heart of it all was the Eagle, staring up fiercely in scruffed-up body armor.
“It’s pretty cool,” Johnny said without really thinking. He was surprised to hear himself say that. For a split second he felt a flicker of that same bittersweet warmth of Dagos offering him the hot chocolate.
The S
nake-eater pointed to the poster. “That’s the one where she sets off a gravity generator to save her life. Did you know it was in this ship?”
The way she’d told Johnny about it, she didn’t use the gravity generator to save her life as much as to kill the Anunnaki who were going to capture her.
When it came time to land, there wasn’t any kind of descending or lull in the shuttle’s gravity. Johnny did see the pilots remove their helmets, toggle a bunch of switches, and press some knobs.
“We’re here,” Juan said, entering into the main compartment and heading for Dagos’s room.
Johnny jogged into the hallway and toward the room with the exit hatch. There was no one else there. Only stains on the carpet from the Anunnaki.
The hatch lay open and he dropped to the dirt road below. Noticing the lack of a shuttle above him, he made a mental note to get his Conifer soon. But all that mattered right now was the Berserker.
Johnny jogged across the dirt, watching the others hurry the Berserker inside a house at the edge of the collection of mud-brick buildings.
A middle-aged woman in a blue chador let him in and showed him to a room at the end of the hall.
Everyone was gathered silently round the Berserker, while a second Anunnaki rose out of a black leather chair.
The Berserker was dead.
Chapter 42
For a Watcher base, the interior bore surprisingly few resemblances to the hub at New Bagram or even Hassan’s compound. There were no Anunnaki trophies, no weapons stacked against the wall, no bags of explosive ammonium nitrate. If Johnny didn’t know any better, he’d peg this to be a regular house.
Most bizarre: Someone had filled a niche in the wall with dozens of copper and gold-plated wires, circuit boards, connector cords, and a triad of computer monitors.
Johnny found himself sitting with the others in two sofas arranged facing each other. The Anunnaki extended his hand to him. He introduced himself as Magu. Then Orun’s earring was meant for him.
Johnny hesitated out of habit. Orun had trained him all too well to avoid any unnecessary contact with Anunnaki.
“Don’t worry,” Magu said. “If it weren’t for me, no one in Bagram would’ve survived the firestorm.”
Johnny gave a slight, involuntary bow and shook his hand.
Magu grinned, then turned back to the Eagle. “What’s been going on since? Intel has brought in a lot of rumors but nothing concrete.”
“Even now I’m the one with all the answers,” Dagos said, crossing her arms.
“Not all the answers,” said a fat-cheeked man with mangy, greying brown hair that ended at his shoulders and a wrinkled black coat over a stained, white shirt with black sunglasses sitting in his front pocket. He looked to be in his fifties.
Johnny had barely noticed him at the wooden chair in the corner. He had apparently been reading a set of documents.
“I heard Shatha let someone in, but I didn’t think it was the fleet admiral herself.”
He had a nasal voice.
“Now, now, that was never my official rank,” Dagos said. In that moment, the wrinkles and blemishes on her face seemed to fade. “Johnny, this is Zacharia, an assignment handler and our best researcher.”
Zacharia. The one they were supposed to bring the Conifers to by Easter. Tomorrow.
“Regardless of what happened, I’ve always believed your parents were great heroes,” Zacharia said.
They exchanged handshakes. It was colder than Magu’s.
“Now that we’re through with formalities, let’s begin,” the Eagle said with no real enthusiasm or vocal inflections. Johnny couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He just didn’t want to even think about what she might have to say now. Not after their talk on the shuttle ride. “After the incident at the Kandrazi bunker, the benefactors will expect us to retrieve the three Conifers within roughly twenty-four hours. This entails knowledge of the Conifers’ locations. Currently we lack any leads.”
A pane of glass seemed to hang over their heads ready to fall and shatter on them at any instant.
Zacharia frowned. “A shame about that Berserker,” he said quietly. Two of the Snake-eaters had transferred it to a different room of the house.
“Then there’s only the deadliest earthling fallback plan,” the Eagle said ominously. “Assuming the benefactors will still accept it.”
“And what is the deadliest earthling fallback plan?” Johnny asked without bothering to excuse his interruption. He watched the Eagle keenly and noticed her bloodshot eyes.
She gripped the edges of the sofa cushion, a palpable tension spreading through the room. Finally she let her hands fall away. “The whole reason this deadliest earthling title has floated around is because I tried to give you a new identity. As soon as you took the oath, I knew we needed a contingency plan. So I began building up a new persona for you with wider appeal than the Keeper. The idea was that we’d use this new persona to leverage a new agreement with our old sponsors. Something to avoid the situation we’re currently in.”
Johnny shifted on the sofa as the implications began to unfold. The Eagle never really expected him to succeed, then. Worse, she’d constructed a new role for him. This filled in the blank on what Laura had meant to tell him. What the Eagle couldn’t bring herself to tell him at first.
He started to talk, then stopped. Conflicting emotions surged in him. He didn’t know how to respond. The whole notion angered him, but then again, at least it offered some hope. Because he had failed to gather the Conifers. The Eagle was right to make a contingency plan.
She must’ve noticed his crestfallen demeanor because she opened and closed her mouth before speaking. “These past couple of weeks, I thought it might be the only chance we had at rescinding the oath you made. The sponsors understand the power of a symbol as well as anyone. I believed if we built up a new image around you as the deadliest earthling, they might realize an opportunity.”
“An opportunity?” Johnny asked.
“To use your image rather than force you into combat.”
An old resentment lightened in Johnny at that, and he sat up straighter. This knowledge couldn’t erase the distrust the last few days had sown into him. But it proved a release valve of sorts. Because the Eagle wanted to keep him alive. And then she’d even tried to free him from becoming the deadliest earthling, hadn’t she? That was why she wanted to go out in a bang at the bunker.
That part about the sponsors having an opportunity to use him didn’t exactly fill him with joy, but he could accept that someone out there wanted to use him. So long as he didn’t have to deal with them or be lied to about it. With Easter tomorrow he didn’t see much of a choice.
“If everyone’s on board, we better try the fallback plan sooner than later,” Zacharia said, beaming at Johnny.
By everyone, he meant him.
“What would I have to do?” Johnny asked, trying to convince himself another speech couldn’t be too bad, given the alternative. A small price to pay to avoid the sponsors selling out him, the Eagle, and New Bagram’s refugees.
Five minutes later he was standing at Magu’s niche in the wall with an aluminum radio microphone in front of him.
“You’ll record it via voice, but we’re going to send it digitally. It’s less prone to being intercepted that way,” Magu said, flicking the mike with his finger. “Press that button when you’re ready.”
Johnny looked down at his line. This is the deadliest earthling. I warned you trying to capture the Eagle would be foolish. I’ve taken one of your finest soldiers as vengeance. Make no mistake: Any further attempts on myself, the Eagle, or any other resistance fighters will result in big losses on your side.
He read it through a few times and practiced it twice before recording himself saying it.
Magu activated his black visors and began typing at buttons and keys in midair that were invisible to the human eye. Interfacing, it was called.
Afterward, his normal orange eyes returned
, and he swiveled to face everyone in the room. “All right, the sponsors have the recording to use as they wish. I requested a new deal. Now we wait for their response.”
The seconds followed with a few murmurs and tired sighs. Only Morris dared break the gloomy fog of suspense.
“Okay, I need to ask this now. Is the rumored Anunnaki weapon actually the Ark of the Covenant?”
The question turned a few heads for more than one reason. Zacharia exchanged a curious glance with the Eagle. Johnny appreciated his cousin’s directness but shook his head all the same. Morris was going to get himself kicked out the room with those kinds of questions.
“Go ahead. Tell them,” the Eagle said.
The words piqued Johnny’s interest more than a little.
“You’re sure?” Zacharia said. He licked his lips nervously and scratched his ear. “The Bible has always been a code of sorts. A code of what once existed, but in a way that humans couldn’t quite understand. Tell me, Morris, what started your suspicions?”
“Well, the whole manna thing. That and then the idea that maybe the Anunnaki wanted the Conifers to activate this weapon.”
“I assume you’re referring to the Stones of Fire in the Bible. Twelve of them. One for each of the Sinsers of that time. Keys. To unlock a device from Nebiru.”
“Wait,” Johnny cut in. He glared at Laura and Sledge. “Then the Anunnaki were here thousands of years ago? That’s not what you taught me.”
They both looked dumbfounded by his accusatory tone.
“If you’re going to condemn anyone for this, make it me,” the Eagle said, pressing a fist to shut eyes. “I chose to try and rewrite history.”
Johnny was impressed at how well he’d convinced himself it couldn’t be true. Maybe he suspected it, maybe he’d known it deep down, but up until this point, he’d never let himself buy into Morris’s ideas in any meaningful way. But now that they’d admitted it, an onrush of disbelief and betrayal followed. Amazing what a few words could do. Johnny felt his eyes dimming at the finality of it.
The Deadliest Earthling Page 18