by P. W. Child
Black Sun Rising
Order of the Black Sun—Book 3
Preston Child
Heiken Marketing
Copyright © 2014 by Preston Child
All rights reserved. No part of this publication might be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed
"Attention: Permissions Coordinator," at the address below.
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Publisher's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Other Books in This Series
Ice Station Wolfenstein—Order of the Black Sun Book One
Deep Sea One— Order of the Black Sun Book Two
Prologue
Descending from a clear blue sky, the AgustaWestland AW119 sent waves of sand scudding across the ground below. The woman sitting by the window gazed out over the desert, lost in thought. The end of the Grand Canyon spread out in the distance, but it had long since lost its ability to impress her. Too many years of traveling the world had taken their toll. Now the world's geographical wonders were little more than an inconvenience, standing between her and her latest destination.
The chopper touched down. The woman uncrossed her legs, smoothed down her flowing linen trousers, and stood. A man with long, ash blond hair was approaching, ready to offer her a steadying hand as she alighted. "Hey," he called, over the noise of the propeller. "How was your flight?"
The woman replied with a one-shouldered shrug and allowed herself to be helped down onto the sand. "Is everything ready?" she asked.
Her lack of niceties and small talk did not offend the man. "You know it!" He followed as she strode purposefully away from the helicopter. "I knew you'd want everything to be perfect, so I've been keeping a super close watch on every detail. How are you feeling about it, anyway? I'm kinda invigorated, myself. If we pull this off, it's going to be bigger than anything we've ever done before."
She stopped abruptly and turned to shoot him an icy glare. "If?"
He raised his hands apologetically. "When."
"Exactly. When. Now, I know that we're setting up the surface area the same way as usual, and the entrance to the medical compound will be the same. I saw the developments over at the cinder cone a couple of weeks ago. All I need you to show me is the new installations here."
"Sure thing, S. It's all in place. The screening facility won't be fully functional until tomorrow, though. Some problem with the—"
She cut him off with an abrupt gesture. "Tomorrow? We agreed it would all be ready by today."
"I know, I know, and I'm sorry. It was working this morning and now it's glitching. I've got some people working on it right now. Tomorrow, I promise you—hey, where are you going?"
The woman had turned and was walking swiftly back toward the helicopter. The man ran after her, diving in front of her so that she had to stop. She sighed. "Don't get in my way, Cody," she said. "It's not ready. You have one more chance. I will come back tomorrow, and it will be ready then."
"It will, S, I promise." Perhaps it was the desert heat, but a thin film of sweat was beginning to form on the young man's brow.
"I'm sure it will." She stepped up into the chopper. As she turned to look at the man, her stony expression suddenly melted into a smile. "You know that I require nothing less than total commitment. I know you understand."
With no further conversation, she was gone. The man watched as the helicopter took off, shielding his eyes from the sand it churned up. He did not seem comforted in the slightest by her words.
☼
Chapter One
Sam Cleave lay awake in his bed, glaring resentfully at the glowing red digits of his alarm clock, which were helpfully informing him that it was 4:17 AM. His thin summer blanket lay in a heap on the floor, the window was wide open, and the cheap electric fan was on its highest setting. Its whirring was getting on Sam's nerves and preventing him from getting to sleep, but he knew that if he switched if off he would have no chance of sleeping in this heat. Tired and irritable, he flipped his pillow over in search of a cool spot. Much to his annoyance, his pillow seemed to be warm all over.
Tossing the pillow aside, Sam hauled himself to his feet and stumbled through to the kitchen. In the dim predawn light he managed to find a clean-looking glass, but his plans to fill it with water were thwarted by Bruichladdich, who was asleep in the sink. Instead Sam turned and headed for his desk. For want of anything better to do, he opened his laptop and fired up the Internet. An email notification caught his eye.
Hey Sam,
Long time no see! Seems like no time at all since we were all in Ushuaia. What a crazy experience that whole thing was!
I don't know if you've seen much of Matlock lately, but if you have then maybe he's told you that I've gone in kind of a different direction these days. No more polar exploring for me—I think I've done my time out on the permafrost! I've been exploring a more spiritual way of life instead.
When I got home I was blessed enough to make contact with a group of people who run Vision Quests, and I've been spending a lot of time with them out in the desert in Arizona. Have you ever been there, Sam? It's a whole different world, and when you're out in the playa or in the valleys where there's nothing but sand, it does something to your mind. It makes everything clear.
You're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. Well, as you can probably tell, my time in the desert has been an important experience for me. Life-changing, I would say. I'm really eager to share what I've learned with the world, so I want to write a book about it. I had someone who helped me with my books about the Arctic and Antarctica, but I think this book's going to need a totally different flavor, and I was hoping you would be able to help me.
If you're interested, I think you'd need to experience the desert for yourself. There's no way anybody could capture it without living it for themselves. And of course I would need you to spend some time interviewing me and working on a structure.
So what do you say? If you would be prepared to come out here for, say, six weeks? I would pay for your flights and all your living costs, along with your fee. Whatever you want to charge, I can pay it. It's worth it to me to know I have the right man for the job.
Let me know what you think. It would be great to see you again, and I think I can promise you that this will be a life-changing experience for you, just like it was for me!
Jefferson
Sam blinked a few times and stared blearily at the screen. The words squirmed before his tired eyes. He squinted as he reread them, trying to wake his brain enough to process the message. Was Jefferson Daniels really proposing that Sam should drag himself to America and join him for a bit of navel-gazing meditation in a teepee somewhere?
"I've only just got settled in after last time," Sam thought aloud. Bruichladdich leaped into his lap and shoved his ginger head against Sam's cheek. "What do you think, Bruich? You don't want me disappearing again, do you? And I can't say I fancy it much." As the cat curled up on Sam's lap and began a ragged purr, Sam's eyes wandered to the half-empty bottle of Lagavulin stan
ding on the bookshelf. It was easily within arm's reach. It would help him to sleep. Or if it didn't, it would at least take the edge off of being awake, just as it had so many times before. He leaned in and closed his fingers around the comforting shape. The glass was cool against his palm. He pressed the bottle against his forehead and felt a brief moment of relief from the oppressive heat. "If I'm too hot in Edinburgh in August, I'd probably melt in Arizona."
He set the bottle down. It sat tauntingly next to an invitingly empty tumbler. For a long moment Sam looked at it, then tore his gaze away and reread the email. "What is a Vision Quest, anyway?" he wondered. Reaching over the cat, he typed the phrase into his search engine and hit return. A split second later he had a screen full of results, telling him about everything from Native American Indian rites of initiation to the recent trend for wealthy people with no cultural connections to the Native Americans to pay large sums to become dehydrated in search of spiritual enlightenment. Somehow Sam was unsurprised that this kind of thing had appealed to Jefferson.
"This doesn't look like much fun at all, Bruich," Sam said, scanning a list of recommended preparations for a quest. "Fasting, meditation, solitude . . . no, I can't say I fancy this in the slightest. Even the fancy version aimed at white people with more money than sense doesn't look great. Look at this . . . 'purge your body of all toxins, learn rituals of incorporation'—what the hell is a ritual of incorporation? 'The threshold of the unknown' . . . Seriously, Bruich, can you see me lasting five minutes at one of these things?" He reached for the whisky bottle again and poured himself a generous measure. "Keep your judgment to yourself, cat," he muttered as Bruich stared up at him with eyes full of feline reproach. "If you'd read what I'd just read, you'd be drinking too."
The life raft rocked and nearly tipped as the wave crashed against it. Sam grabbed hold of the side and felt his fingers fail to grip the wet, slippery rubber. He forced his eyes to stay open despite the stinging salt. The destroyer was getting closer by the second, churning the water so that the raft and its occupants were tossed about helplessly. He saw Purdue leaning over the edge, yelling at the destroyer. Sam could not make out the words, but he could see that Purdue was about to lose his footing. He opened his mouth to scream a warning, but then the next wave crested. It broke over them and the water choked the words out of him, so all he could do was lunge across the raft and hope to pull Purdue back to safety. But as he reached out, he felt nothing in his hands.
As he heard Purdue's voice in a watery hell of beckoning, he turned to see that he was standing on the oil rig, Deep Sea One. From all sides came Aryan giants, stalking toward him, each of them armed with replicas of the Spear of Longinus, the battering waves rising behind them. He called out to Nina, but she only wept somewhere in his mind, her whimpers echoing like peals of demon laughter while the tidal wave swallowed the platform. From the sea arose the face of the shrine that sheltered the Godwomb, and it lazily stretched its stone mouth to suck him in.
"Sam?"
Sam opened his eyes. Slowly he again became aware of his surroundings—the overstuffed, low-slung chair in which he sat, the gently clinical scent of the therapy room, the late afternoon sunshine streaming in through the window. A soft-spoken young man sat opposite him, watching Sam with professional concern.
"Would you like a glass of water?" he asked. It was not really a question. He was already filling the glass even as he asked, and he pressed it into Sam's hand without waiting for a response. "Before we finish, I just wanted to check—how are you getting on with the drinking?"
It wasn't an unexpected question. In fact, sitting in the waiting room before the appointment began, Sam had debated how honest he ought to be. He felt sure that his unshaven face and bags under his eyes told the true story. It could not, he was sure, be that difficult to figure out that he had lulled himself to sleep in the arms of mistress usquebaugh last night. His plan was to be straightforward about it. This young man had not seen half the things that Sam had. He could not possibly understand that sometimes drink was the only thing that would soothe his aching mind. Well, Sam intended to make him understand. He would be clear and concise, and let the therapist know that he did not require any help managing his drinking.
"Yeah, not bad," Sam cringed inside, as he heard the words leave his mouth. He felt his head bob involuntarily in an enthusiastic nod, which made him acutely aware of the tender, underslept feeling plaguing the backs of his eyeballs. "The odd dram now and then, you know. Nothing to worry about."
The therapist smiled. "Good. Now, I'd like you to take it easy for the rest of the day, Sam. Don't worry if you feel a bit shaky during the next couple of days, it's perfectly normal when you've been working through this kind of trauma. You might feel a bit sick or have a headache. If that happens, just check in with what's making you feel that way, drink plenty of water, and let yourself rest. If there's anything you're not sure about, you've got my number. Now just take your time."
Sam sipped the water, feeling idiotic. He had no idea how he was supposed to take his time drinking it when there was someone watching him. The hypnotherapist was a nice enough lad, but there was something about his bland smile and relentless caring that made Sam uneasy. How are you supposed to take your time drinking your water when you know there's another appointment right after you, and this guy probably just wants you to get out so he can have a quick smoke before the next person's due in to cry about his problems, Sam wondered. Losing his nerve, he knocked back the rest of the water in one gulp and handed the glass to the therapist. He muttered a brief word of thanks and then fled.
The elegant streets of the New Town were bustling with tourists, shoppers, and the first office workers to make their escape for the day. Sam wandered along George Street, trying to stave off the moment when he would have to head home and get back to work on the latest local interest story assigned to him by the Post. After a couple of trucks plowed into a low bridge up at Cameron Toll, the Edinburgh Post had begun a campaign to have the bridge rebuilt. Sam had conducted the usual weary round of interviews with concerned residents eager to have their say. His next task would be to weave those words into an article that struck the right balance between tolerable journalism and the kind of righteous indignation that would sell the paper. It was not the kind of work he relished.
After returning from the nerve-wrecking experience on the platform of Deep Sea One, he had elected to hold on to his records of the expedition until Purdue contacted him. This profound discovery had to be carefully exhibited at the risk of luring the wrong attention toward the owner of such a relic. After all, he thought, this was Purdue's expedition, Purdue's money, and, ultimately, Purdue's relic. After he had disappeared with it a few months before, there was no knowing of what had become of him or the artifact. Releasing any sort of report on it would be futile, as he did not have the actual item as proof. For now he had to maintain his run-of-the-mill routine.
As he strolled toward Princes Street and began the steep walk up the Mound, which separated New Town and Old Town, Sam glanced up at the distinctive skyline of Old Town. This had been an eventful city, he knew. Battles had been fought here. Edinburgh Castle had been besieged and conquered and besieged again. Bloody murders and all sorts of sinister misdeeds had been carried out in the densely packed closes. But now there's nothing more interesting going on than a couple of idiots driving their trucks into a bridge, Sam thought. This city's come down in the world.
Still, at least his therapist assured him, his dissatisfaction with the lack of interesting events in his hometown was a good thing. It was a step in the right direction, apparently a sign that he was no longer feeling quite so apathetic and depressed as he had in the previous years. Whether his most recent experiences in Antarctica and Tibet had helped to restore him to his old self or whether it was just the passage of time making his grief less acute, neither Sam nor his therapist could tell. All they knew was that he seemed to be taking a little more interest in life these days, and thi
s was considered to be a good thing.
Sam knew full well what most of his dreams conveyed, what their recurring purpose was. He knew what they were based on and that the images he suffered during his clawing nightmares were indeed not entirely fantastical, but he dared not reveal this to anyone in the real world, let alone a mind-probing, know-it-all, like his therapist. Imagine such a thing, telling your shrink that you had your hands on the only true Spear of Destiny and that the object had powers that controlled the ocean, among other things. And that under the North Sea a sinister organization was actively hatching plans to take over the world now, after failing in the 1940s.
Sam scoffed as the thought became a scenario. Across his face a silly smile peeked at the absurdity of it all—but he had been there. He tried to soothe his paranoia, Thank god there aren't people like that influencing the world anymore. Imagine if the Nazis had access to today's technology! Wouldn't that bring about a clusterfuck of epic proportions?
It had been nearly six months since Sam's return to normal life after he and Nina barely survived the collapse of Deep Sea One. It was long enough for him to get over the feeling of strangeness at being home again, and long enough to become disgusted with his home and his job once more.
He reached the top of the Mound and made his way along George IV Bridge, heading for Southside, which meant battling his way through an army of fresh-faced young actors who were in town for the Fringe Festival and desperate to hand Sam flyers for their shows. He jammed his hands into his pockets and stared fixedly at the ground in front of him, refusing to make eye contact.
It's amazing how quickly the boredom sets in, he thought. Maybe Purdue had the right idea. Maybe being a mega-rich thrill seeker is the way to do things. I should give the mad bastard a call and find out what he's doing—see if he still wants me to write that profile on him. Purdue had not been seen since the chaos on his offshore oil rig, but word of mouth dictated that Purdue had been busy. The last thing Sam had heard was that Purdue was developing some complicated new piece of technology that he was unable to talk about, but which would, of course, revolutionize the entire world.