“Everyone get over here and select the most structurally sound of these boats. They’re large enough to fit everybody.”
Carl wasn’t paying any attention, as he was looking around the giant water room with Virginia in tow. The cavernous area had several doorways sliced into the stone walls. He would run the torch inside one and then quickly bring up the XM-8 and look inside. He was tired of being surprised and wanted to know his surroundings a little bit better.
“Carl?”
“Yeah,” he answered Virginia as he backed out of the fifth room he had looked into.
“This place is giving me the creeps.”
He looked at the strained features on Virginia’s face in the torchlight.
“You mean more than just the mere fact that we’re stuck in probably a ten-thousand-year-old pyramid that was reverse engineered and constructed inside a mountain surrounded by a lagoon that seems to be torn from the pages of a Jurassic history book. Why would that be less creepy than being here in the penthouse of a place that probably killed thousands of innocent Indians?”
Virginia rolled her eyes. “Smart-ass,” she said, but she still looked about nervously. “I mean, can’t you feel it? It’s like we stepped into a cemetery here.”
“Look, go on back with the master chief, he seems to become half human when you’re around, Doctor. I’ll take a look at these other rooms.”
“Don’t treat me like a child, Carl,” she said, as she turned and led the way to the next room.
As Carl smiled and followed, his nose did pick something up that had not been there only moments before. He extended the torch into a room with downward spiraling stone steps. He thought for a moment that he heard something. He listened closely but then figured it had only been the sound of the canal echoing off the walls the deeper he went on this level.
“This must be the peasant’s way down,” he said.
Virginia didn’t answer. Carl leaned back out of the opening and held up the torch. He saw Virginia’s back as she stood frozen in the stone archway of the next small chamber. Carl raised his weapon and moved forward. He gently moved the doctor out of the way and brought the torch inside. His eyes took in the sight and he swallowed. Virginia had been right; this level was creepy for a reason. He stepped into the room and shined the torch around. He had entered a mausoleum.
“Go get Jack and Sarah.”
The major stepped into the room and saw what had stopped Carl short. The navy man had lit several of the interior torches and was bent low, examining some of the treasure in the room. Not the treasure of El Dorado, but treasure that marked the march of time throughout history.
“Oh my god,” Sarah said, as she squeezed by Jack.
In every conceivable position, bodies, skeletal remains actually, were laid out across the floor. Artifacts from the history of El Dorado accompanied these humans from the past in their journey to wherever each soul’s journey took them. There were breastplates of conquistador armor, stacked next to a case of old World War II K rations. A rusty Thompson submachine gun was lying across the case. Swords were strewn about. Spears, stone axes. But by far the strangest and most bizarre artifacts were the bodies. They were arrayed in all positions, but Jack noticed one very puzzling thing: all were chained to the wall with bronze manacles.
“The animal.”
He turned toward Virginia. Carl and Sarah glanced at her with quizzical curiosity, then Sarah looked down at a sixty-plus-year-old body of an American soldier. The remains were in remarkably good condition because of the dryness of this particular chamber. Both bony arms were raised in mock surrender as the chains held them up. The body next to it was that of a conquistador, the red shirt still clinging to the bony frame, the empty eye sockets staring blankly at the intruders.
“The bodies were brought here postmortem. Their blood has stained the stones around them. The beast brought them here and actually chained them to keep them from escaping the mine, still doing its job after centuries and centuries.”
“That’s a stretch, Doctor,” Carl said.
“It is still an animal, Commander; it hasn’t a concept of death, impending or otherwise, its own or another animal’s. It just does what it was trained to do.”
“Bring back escaped slaves,” Sarah said as she went over to another set of bones. “Major, here’s a fellow soldier, look.”
As Jack and the others stepped to a far corner where Sarah was standing, they could see a skeleton that was chained by only one arm. The man, centuries before when still alive, had worked his right hand free of the manacle that dangled above him. In the torchlight Jack could see that the dying man had used a lead ball, a musket round, which now lay by the bony fingers, to etch something in the stone flooring. Sarah had seen the first few letters and already guessed at the rest. Jack leaned over and blew some of the layers of dust away from the remaining letters.
“I’ll be damned,” Carl said over Jack’s shoulder.
“‘Captain Hernando Padilla, 1534,’” the major read aloud.
“What does the rest say?” Virginia asked.
As Jack lightly and reverently moved the bony fingers of the long-dead conquistador away from his final words, the musket ball rolled away and lodged in a flooring crack and stayed. He again took a breath and blew air over the remaining words.
“‘Perdóneme,’ ” Sarah murmured, and then stood and walked away. “Even though he was dying, he was ashamed of what he had done.”
“What does the word mean?” Carl asked.
Jack patted him on the shoulder and walked away, sad for a fellow soldier lost long ago and in a place he didn’t want to be. No different than any man in the world.
“ ‘Forgive me,’ ” Jack answered. “It says simply ‘forgive me.’ ”
Carl looked back down at the skeleton and then the armor lying next to it. The scratch marks, the dents. He couldn’t fathom the remarkable journey this man had made, the horror of losing everyone in his command. He shook his head and straightened up just as he heard Virginia intake breath sharply. She had begun slowly backing away from something in a far corner.
“Major, that item you were looking for, what color case was it in again?”
“It should be yellow and—”
Jack’s words were cut short when he heard a soft beep coming from the far corner that Virginia was backing away from. Then he saw the case. The weapon was lying in a pile of other items from the Zachary expedition. The beast must have deposited it here along with its other finds. It was as if the animal simply brought anything of shiny or colorful material to its nest, its home. It was a scavenger.
The lieutenant commander joined the major, and they both looked down on the case that protected the five-kiloton nuclear weapon.
“Jack, I think we’ve found what we were looking for.”
Jack leaned over and easily unlatched the lid of the protective case. He had sent Sarah and Virginia back to hurry the others in their preparations for getting out of there.
“Damn,” he said as he saw the LED readout on the aluminum facing of the weapon.
“Looks like we finally caught a break,” Carl said as he looked over Jack’s shoulder.
“Countdown’s frozen at thirty minutes. Yeah, we may have. Kennedy turned the key but didn’t initiate the countdown. I think we may have that creature to thank for that.”
“Yeah, remind me to thank him if we run into him,” Carl joked.
Jack closed the case and nodded for Carl to take the other end. They both gently lifted it off the stone floor. As they made their way out of the room, they paused and looked at the remains of the soldiers from the past. Then Jack looked at Carl and shook his head.
“Let’s be sure not to join these fellas.”
“I always liked the way you think, Jack.”
They made their way out of the lighted chamber and into the darker passageway. They had gone just past the opening with the descending staircase when they were suddenly flanked by two men with auto
matic weapons. One came from the main chamber, the other was hidden in the dark opening and came out after they had passed. The man in the back gestured for them to continue on into the main chamber.
As they entered the lighted main water room, Jack saw that Sarah was there with Virginia and the students. They all looked dejected and terrified.
“Ah, this is like old home week. Major Jack Collins and the resourceful Commander Everett, I am but truly amazed. You two are like the taste of bad wine; I can’t seem to get rid of you.”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Sarah said.
“Do not speak again, señora,” Mendez said as he raised his hand with the gun in it, ready to strike Sarah.
Jack tensed and was about to drop the warhead when Farbeaux’s words stopped him and Mendez.
“Stop! You do not strike a lady for being concerned, Señor Mendez.”
Mendez’s hand was stayed in midair. He turned toward the Frenchman and saw to his bemusement that Farbeaux was looking not at him but at the American major.
Jack looked his way and their eyes locked. They remained fixed like that for a full thirty seconds.
“What is in the case, gold?” Mendez asked as he gestured for his remaining three men to take the case from the Americans.
“I wouldn’t do that, mate,” Carl said as he was relieved of the weight of the warhead.
Jack continued to look at the Frenchman as he allowed the handle of the case to be pried from his grip.
The two men, the third continuing to hold a gun on the two Americans, took the case over to Mendez. The greedy look in the heavy man’s face was one that history had seen millions of times as men of avarice thought they were about to gaze upon a mother lode of riches.
“Gold, artifacts? What is in it?” he asked as he leaned over the yellow aluminum container. He reached out for the heavy-duty clasps.
“Don’t!”
Mendez looked up into the face of Farbeaux, who said to Jack, “Explain why he shouldn’t open the case, Major.”
“By your temperament, I can see you’ve guessed at it. I prefer not to say anything to the pig,” Jack said calmly. He caught Mendez’s sneer out of the corner of his eye and just hoped the fat man would make a move in his direction.
“I believe what you have there is a means to seal El Dorado for all time. Am I correct?” Farbeaux reached into his satchel, placed a heavy glove on his hand, then reached inside again and pulled out a greenish lump of stone. It was coursed through with a white, chalky substance. He held it out toward Jack. “To rid the world of the source, this source.” The room became silent as everyone stared at the same.
“Mass murder doesn’t seem to be a part of your résumé, Colonel,” Jack finally said.
“The selling of material has always been my way of making ends meet. As you Americans say, I have to keep up with the Joneses.”
Farbeaux replaced the enriched sample of uranium in his satchel and removed the glove.
“What you are looking at in the aluminum case, señor, is a five-megaton nuclear warhead. What the Americans fondly call a Backpack Nuke. It’s manufactured by the Hanford Nuclear Weapons Facility in Washington State. It is designed for minor troop arrest in a battlefield theater. But would do nicely in bringing down, oh, say a pyramid.”
Mendez quickly backed away from the case.
“My Colombian friend may be slow on the uptake, Major, but the man truly does understand death and all its forms. Now as I was saying, this source material is very valuable; even in its rough form, it is capable of creating a weapon of—”
“A dirty bomb, a poor man’s nuclear device, I’m still not buying it, Colonel. It’s not—you.”
“You will share in this also, and you will—” Mendez furiously started to say.
“Señor, please be quiet while we adults speak.” Farbeaux smiled as he looked from Mendez to Collins. “Being a supplier of such material to others does not a murderer make. But I admit you’re right to a certain degree, Major Collins. Commander Everett, your reputation has preceded you, sir; please do not move another inch toward that fool’s weapon,” Farbeaux said as he removed his own nine-millimeter and pointed it toward the commander.
Carl stopped inching toward one of the Colombians who, still taking in the situation, hadn’t noticed him moving. The man snapped to and shoved him backward.
“As I was saying,” Farbeaux’s eyes lingered for a moment on Carl and then slowly moved to Jack, “The material has been bought and paid for by a former employer of mine, and his cause is the same as your country’s: the elimination of certain terrorist cells across the world. An untraceable source of dirty material that can be sent into mountains and valleys in far-off barbaric places. So you see, our ends are the same.”
“I’m afraid you have misjudged Americans, Colonel; we still do things the hard way, and some would say the stupid way. But to introduce radiation into the atmosphere to kill everything along with terrorists, well, the line has to be drawn somewhere.”
Farbeaux saw the flick of Jack’s eyes toward the darkened corridor from where they had come. He grimaced when he realized the major was playing for time. And Jack had indeed seen something that was sure to occupy Mendez and his men in the next few minutes.
“You’re beyond belief!” Farbeaux shouted just as the creature burst from the deep shadows of the corridor.
Farbeaux fired twice as the animal took down the first Colombian by slashing at him with its claws. The Frenchman’s bullets did little to slow the beast as it advanced into the chamber.
“Get them in the boat!” Jack shouted toward Carl who had taken out the man he had initially set his sights on—he had simply reached out and snapped the mercenary’s neck. Picking up the man’s fallen Ingram, he ran toward the cowering students and started to help Sarah and Virginia as they pushed the first boat they came to into the canal.
Several more rounds struck the creature and it roared in pain. It fell to one knee as it grew weak from this and the earlier attack.
Jack quickly ran to the case and opened it. The brightly glowing numbers were still locked at thirty minutes. He reached down, pulled his knife from its scabbard, and was about to smash the readout face, stopping the timer forever, when a stray bullet hit the case in the side. A momentary array of sparks shot from the housing of the weapon. Now a second set of numbers appeared to the right of the minutes. The seconds started tumbling down as the minutes digits went to twenty-nine. The countdown had been activated. The designers of the weapon had placed a fail-safe in the warhead that would not allow an enemy to try to destroy it by doing what had just happened. A bullet in the case would start any command previously placed into the central computer.
The major quickly rolled away from the case and gained his feet as the Colombians stopped firing at the animal and turned their weapons on him. Rounds ricocheted off the floor and walls as Jack ran toward the waiting boat. As he did, he gathered up an XM-8 and quickly fired into the stone-faced dam that held the flow of water at bay. The bullets struck, producing nothing but chips at first, then as the magazine of the XM-8 emptied the stone with the large handle in it cracked and disintegrated. Then, in quick succession, the dam split inside the wall and a torrent of water escaped into the canal system.
Farbeaux watched in horror as the first wave of water smashed into the aluminum case before it reached the canal. The weapon was washed away and was carried by the rush of the water into the canal ahead of the Americans as they shoved off in one of the boats.
Jack jumped into the boat with the fourteen people inside, and of course he fell on Jenks, who screamed out in pain.
“I can’t take any more of these roller-coaster rides!” Jenks yelled as the students around him yelled in terror. The large treasure boat sped into the main shaft and disappeared into the darkness.
BRASÍLIA CAPITAL OF BRAZIL
The Brazilian military chief of staff hung up the phone. He stood and paced to the open window of his residence. The man he had j
ust spoken to had called his private line. His soul had been sold to the devil, the American who would soon become the president of the United States. His future was being planned by others outside of his country. But the deal he had made with the foreign devil was struck, and he had to keep his word. Now there was a supplemental order to the one that sent fifty mercenaries into the valley to stop the American rescue effort—he had to kill to protect his assault force.
He walked back to the nightstand, picked up the phone, and called the Força Aérea Brasileira (FAB), the Brazilian Air Force; he said he wanted fighters scrambled immediately. He gave the duty officer the orders and the coordinates that had been given to him by his American caller. That done, he placed the phone in its cradle and then picked up the presidential line, to inform the president that the airspace above Brazil was being invaded by military forces of the United States and that he was duty bound to shoot them down.
ANÁPOLIS AIR FORCE BASE BRAZIL
Two Dassault Mirage 2000C fighters lifted into the sky and headed west. Used to attacking ground targets consisting of production and distribution sites for the cocaine trade, the two pilots were stunned to learn they had been ordered to intercept and down an aircraft that had been identified as a civilian airliner that had invaded Brazilian airspace. It wasn’t until ten minutes after they went to afterburner that they were informed by the chief of staff personally that the invader in question was actually a military variant of the American Boeing 747, and that the aircraft’s intentions were hostile.
THE WHITE HOUSE
The president had been upstairs with the First Lady, awaiting any word from Nevada, when the national security advisor called. The president went downstairs in his white shirt and went directly to Ambrose’s office in the West Wing, but was met by him in the hallway before he could reach the office.
“Mr. President, maybe you’d better inform me what operation is running in Brazil, since it seems to no longer be a secret.”
Legend: An Event Group Thriller Page 43