by Alex Archer
“Garin got out of jail and Bhalla is still alive.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I keep tabs on Garin when I can, and I knew he was chasing you, which interested me because it’s never good with the two of you. I didn’t think I would need to get involved, but as it turns out, this is about the Tower of Babel. I couldn’t stay away. As for Bhalla, my information specialist tells me that he and a group of his people are headed this way, as well.”
“How?”
“Evidently they’re following Garin, who is following you. Garin’s so wrapped up in this Tower of Babel chase he’s forgetting one of the first things I taught him about survival—always watch to see who follows you.”
“You could have called me to let me know.”
“I could have. You would have stayed out here, though.”
“What are you doing here?”
Roux walked to the back of the Land Rover, opened it and took out a large duffel bag. He also took out a staff for walking. “I thought it was entirely possible that you found some bauble from Babel.”
“I will.”
“And I thought that if you did, that could be a dangerous thing. The Tower of Babel was filled with raw power, it is said. God’s wrath is a potent thing, and has a tendency to hang around. Like as not, if you don’t know how to handle whatever you find, it will kill you instead of Garin or Bhalla.”
“O ye of little faith.”
Roux harrumphed. “You could be more appreciative of the efforts I’ve gone to.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
He peered up at her. “You could at least help an old man ease his burden.”
“You passed old a long time ago. And I’ve never seen a day when you weren’t able to handle yourself.” Except for when he’d been wounded on occasional adventures and hospitalized. Those memories still plagued Annja from time to time.
Roux muttered something under his breath and strode up the mountain effortlessly despite the pack he carried and the staff that was supposed to support him. In just a couple minutes more, he joined her on the ledge.
“What have you found?”
* * ** * *
Annja quickly related the events that had landed her in possession of the brick, keeping the information concise because Roux didn’t always have a long attention span. While she finished her version of the tale, she and Roux made it over to the seventh ledge and began searching the surface.
“Do you know what we’re looking for?” he asked.
“No.”
Roux grunted. “It would help if you did.”
Annja didn’t comment. The sun was going down quickly now and the sky was starting to darken. She was also distracted keeping watch for Garin and Bhalla. Still, she worked at the surface with a stiff-bristled brush, hoping to uncover some kind of sign.
After a few more minutes, Roux straightened and massaged his back. “We’re wasting our time. It’ll be better to get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning.” He picked up the duffel. “Or maybe rethink that translation you’re working with.”
Annja didn’t want to leave. She was certain what she was looking for was here, hidden in plain sight. Only she’d looked everywhere....
Then she realized she hadn’t looked everywhere. Abandoning the ledge, she scrambled down, knowing then where the entrance trigger would be hidden and hopefully protected.
Find the entrance hidden from God’s wrath, in the shadow of His mercy.
Below the ledge now, she took out her mini-Maglite and switched it on. She wiped at the surface with her brush, and stared till her eyes burned. The image of a fish, the early sign of the Christians, stood out against the stone.
Around the symbol of the fish, she saw lines too straight and clean to be natural.
Annja put the flashlight aside and pressed on the symbol. At first, nothing happened, giving her a strong sense of déjà vu. Then, slowly, it recessed and she heard a hollow click from within. She stepped back as a section of the mountainside pulled inside, just as it had at the mouth of the tunnel to the hidden cave, and left an open space the size and dimensions of a child’s coffin. A chill coursed down Annja’s spine at the unintended comparison and she shivered.
“You found it,” Roux said. Then he scowled back down the mountain. “And it appears your opponents have found us.”
Annja turned and stared, watching as a small convoy of trucks braked to a halt at the foot of the mountain. She recognized Bhalla as he got out. If she had to be found right now, she wished it would have been by Garin. At least with Garin they would have had something of a chance.
Bhalla shouted orders to his men and pointed at her.
“Come on. You’re not going to do any good standing around out here.” Roux took her by the hand and pulled her into the mountain.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bhalla charged uphill, cursing his ill luck. How many times had he been in this very valley? How many times had he stared at these mountains?
And the Babel treasure had been here. After he’d lost Annja in Damascus, he’d felt certain she would come here. If she hadn’t, he would have lost her. But he had gotten close in his estimations of where the location was. The man who had recovered the brick had sent him part of the inscription, but he hadn’t sent it all. The man’s lack of knowledge about the brick had almost given him away. If he’d given too much information, Bhalla would not have needed the brick.
He ran with his men, a big pistol in his fist. “When we find the woman this time,” he ordered over the radio tucked into his ear, “kill her immediately. Kill the old man, too. Take no chances.”
Bhalla still didn’t know where Annja Creed had gotten the sword she’d nearly killed him with.
* * *
The tunnel ran for thirty feet and opened into a large chamber with three tunnels at the other end. Annja crossed to the three openings and stared at the symbols carved over them.
“Which way?” Roux stopped, dropped the duffel bag and reached inside it.
“Three symbols. A flaming sword, a calf and a shadow on a rock. The translation says to choose God’s mercy.” Annja stared at the symbols, trying to make sense of them.
On one knee now, Roux brought out a claymore mine and set it at an angle that would cover the entrance. “An archangel with a flaming sword drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. That’s not the one you want.”
“A fatted calf could be a sacrifice. In the Old Testament, when the tower was built, sacrifices were often offered to God.”
“The man who hid this thing was doing what he believed was God’s will.” Roux shrugged. “That could be a connection to God’s mercy.”
“God’s mercy wasn’t something that was talked about a lot in the Old Testament. In fact, the only time I remember it was the compassion He showed to Moses.” Annja looked at the third symbol, the shadow on the rock. “Moses was in the wilderness and the Israelites had made God angry. He talked to God and asked for mercy.”
“You might want to hurry this along. Those people aren’t waiting.”
Outside, Annja heard the slap of boots closing in.
“Moses also asked God to show him His divine nature. So God hid Moses inside a boulder so he would be safe.” Annja pointed to the third tunnel. “This has to be the way.”
Roux had belted on a pistol, and taken two machine pistols from the duffel. He kept one and tossed the other to Annja, who caught it.
“You know how to use that, right?”
Annja worked the action, making sure a round was chambered. “I do.”
Roux tossed her four spare magazines and she stored those in the thigh pockets of her cargo pants. He set another claymore mine in the middle tunnel and activated it once he was safely back out of the way.
Annja raced down the third tunnel and into the darkness with Roux at her heels. She scanned the walls, looking for markings or signs of travel.
Something ahead of her clicked, and she heard the w
hoosh of a ponderous weight in motion.
* * *
Bhalla followed his men into the tunnel. He was the fourth man in line, so when the explosive detonated ahead of him and blasted shrapnel into his men, he was protected. Still, the concussive force knocked him down and deafened him.
Stunned, he lay there for a moment, covered in the blood of his men, blind in one eye from it. Then he forced himself to his feet, his senses whirling from the blast, and waved the next man in line forward. The first two men were dead, torn to pieces. The third man had survived but was missing an ear and three fingers of his left hand.
Bhalla brushed by the wounded man and ordered more men forward to pursue their quarry. Seeing his men moving more slowly and cautiously now, fearful of another mine, Bhalla cursed Annja Creed and the old man.
He entered the chamber, almost slipping in the blood pooling from the dead men. For a moment, he gazed at the three tunnels, not knowing what they meant.
Angry and frantic, he ordered his men into them. They couldn’t hear him, but they understood him well enough. Only an instant after a couple disappeared into the second tunnel under the calf drawing, they vomited back out of the opening, propelled by another explosive. Their bodies thumped to the cave floor.
Bhalla grabbed another and shoved him into the second tunnel. If Annja Creed and the old man had taken time to put an explosive there, then they must have gone that way. Bhalla followed and watched in horror as a huge stone slab sudden dropped and crushed his man to pulp.
In disbelief, Bhalla stared at the stone and knew the way was a dead end. He retreated to the main chamber again. No one had returned from either the first or the third tunnel.
Then a blast came from the third and an arm came flying out to land in a smoking heap.
Taking a deep breath, Bhalla plunged into the first tunnel and stopped short when he saw two of his men writhing on rods that had pierced their flesh. Even though Bhalla couldn’t hear, one still yet lived and cried out for help as blood dribbled down his chin.
Bhalla lifted his pistol and shot him in the head, then turned back to pursue the third tunnel. There was nowhere else his quarry could have gone.
* * *
As the sound of gusting wind closed in on her, Annja wheeled around and flung herself at Roux, wrapping the old man in her arms and taking them to the ground as a giant scythe sliced through her right shirtsleeve. Roux’s flashlight beam caught the immense blade as it disappeared in the upper reaches of the ceiling.
“That was close,” Roux said.
Slowly, Annja crawled off him and stayed almost flat on the ground as she moved forward. “Maybe we should be a little more humble through this section.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.” Roux dug out another claymore and set it up behind them. Then when they’d crawled through the arc of the scythe, he placed another one. He shook the duffel, indicating it was empty. “I hope that does enough damage. But we can’t keep crawling through here. They’ll catch us.”
At that moment, the first claymore in the tunnel detonated in a crescendo of noise and flashing light.
Knowing they had to move, Annja pushed herself to her feet, listened for the sound of another trap and felt for the displacement of air. Nothing. Moving more cautiously, but moving as fast as she dared, she went forward.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Party’s already started.”
Seated in the military helicopter passenger seat, Garin silently agreed with Friedrich’s assessment of the situation. Then he waved at the helicopter pilot to take them down.
The three helicopters he’d brought with him were filled with DragonTech Security people. Garin held private security contracts with the Iraqi and American governments. He was inside the country and heavily armed—with a license to kill.
Bhalla and his people had scrambled to secure weapons. Unfortunately, getting weapons wasn’t hard. The irony that Garin was partly at fault for that was not lost on him. Hopefully he’d made a profit from Bhalla before he killed the man.
When the helicopter landed, Garin popped the door open, pulled on his NVGs and held his MP5-SD3 at the ready as he raced down the mountainside to the cave. He opened fire as soon as he saw the guards posted at the door.
When he stepped inside the tunnel and saw the bodies and the empty husk of the claymore mine in the main chamber, Garin knew Annja wasn’t alone.
“Spread out.” Garin waved his team forward. “Find out which one of these tunnels they went down.”
* * *
The tunnel descended quickly and the cavern walls and floor grew steadily damper. Annja knew they were below sea level, and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers drew groundwater to them, as well. The tunnel also rounded in a spiral, going deeper and deeper as it narrowed.
The walls revealed tool marks now. At least part of the tunnel had been chopped from the stone. A preexisting fissure or tunnel had been here, but someone had put in a lot of time making the way clear.
A few feet farther, the tunnel opened up to another cave. About forty feet long and nearly that wide, the ceiling was twenty feet overhead. The cave floor had been cleared of stalagmites, but a few stalactites had crashed to the floor and shattered, either from earthquakes in the area or a result of the artillery shelling.
Six columns made from stone cubes a yard to a side were spread out across the chamber. Each exposed facet of the cubes told some of the story of the building of the Tower of Babel. Annja ran her fingers over the nearest one, finding a strange groove that ran along it at the top of the first cube.
A recessed area in the far wall looked like an altar or a puppet theater, a rectangular opening beneath a banner she didn’t recognize. Mesmerized, Annja was pulled forward, shining her flashlight across the opening.
On the altar lay a thick scroll. Two smaller scrolls lay beside it. On either side of the scrolls, partially decomposed baskets held gold and silver coins and a collection of gemstones.
“Careful,” Roux said softly as he joined her. “Things are not always as innocent as we may believe.”
The scythe in the tunnel they’d come down was a deadly reminder of that. Still, she wanted so badly to pick up the scroll and see what it held. At the same time, she realized she wouldn’t be able to read it.
But she had found it. Whatever story it contained, whatever lore and history, she would get to know it. She’d opened a door to the past.
“The inscription above the altar says that only a humble man may receive the story of God’s wrath, and that an arrogant man will be divided.”
“Split in two with a giant scythe, maybe?”
Roux shook his head. “I hate when people try to be clever with these things. It most always means they want to kill you in some vile and nasty way. Whoever put this scroll here, he was setting a trap and he knew it. Do not touch this until we have a chance to look at it more properly.”
“We don’t have time.”
“Then we’ll have to be humble, Annja, and trust that what was meant to come to us will.” Roux looked around. “Of course, trust would be a little easier to manage if there were another way out of here.”
Footsteps at the other end of the room drew her around.
Bhalla stood behind a dozen men, some of them ragged and bloodied.
Annja and Roux dove to the sides, taking cover behind two of the cube columns. They readied their weapons and tried to bring them to bear, but Bhalla’s men kept them pinned down.
“Annja Creed, you can hide, but you are not leaving this cave alive. You have cost me too many men, so do not think you can throw yourself on my mercy. I only pray that we take you alive so you can watch me gut the old man.” Bhalla spoke in his language to one of his men.
The man, covered in Kevlar, reached the altar while gunfire kept Roux and Annja ducking for cover. Bullets ricocheted off the walls around them and stone splinters stung her face and hands. She shifted and managed to fire a short burst that caught Kevlar Man in the sid
e. He was still able to grab one of the baskets of jewels.
Mechanisms clicked behind the wall and the column where Annja took cover shuddered. Vibrations ran through the floor.
Annja looked at Roux, who called to her at the same moment. “Humble man!” he said, and they dropped simultaneously into prone positions.
The man standing in front of the altar died in the blink of an eye as a thin wire came out of the wall and rocketed across the room. The columns were designed with space between them, two sections anchored to the ground and to the ceiling at the same time. The wire whipped through half of the columns and two more of Bhalla’s men before catching for an instant on a column that had shifted slightly over the past two-thousand-plus years. The wire strained for a moment, pulled by the counterweights that propelled it, before snapping. Even then, the whipping wire sliced through another of Bhalla’s men.
While they were standing there stunned, watching their comrades literally fall to pieces in front of them, Roux rolled to his feet and leveled the machine pistol, opening fire. Two of the remaining men fell, but the others started shooting back.
The rumbling in the room continued, and Annja realized it wasn’t just the hidden gears in motion. The room was spinning, too. She watched as the door to the tunnel leading back to the surface disappeared. She stood with knees bent, her center low to better keep her balance.
On the other side of the room, Roux reloaded and glanced anxiously at Bhalla and his gunmen. “I don’t suppose that translation mentioned anything about the room spinning, Annja?”
“No.” She watched the walls. “I’m assuming this isn’t good.”
“It so rarely is.” Roux spun around and fired a three-round burst at one of their opponents, dropping him in a loose sprawl.
The room ground to a stop, and the altar suddenly jumped backward, tipping slightly as it began a descent into a dark tunnel.
Annja oriented herself by the stalactites shivering above. Even as she watched them, two cracked free of their moorings and dropped. One of them plunged toward Roux’s position.