by Richard Bard
Ripper and Papa shuffled in next, Maria supported between them. Becker followed, slamming his palm against the hatch button on his way in. The twin hydraulic pistons hummed as they pulled the ramp closed behind him. Tony looked past Becker, expecting to see Azim. Becker shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”
Tony grimaced at the loss. He’d learned that the mujahedin warrior had proved himself on the field, saving Becker’s life in the process. He hoped his end had been quick.
The first of the twin turboshaft engines wound up, and the pro rotor on the port side started spinning up to speed.
Kenny’s voice came on over the intercom. “Strap up. We’re gettin’ the hell out of here!”
Two minutes to go before the mountain blew.
Chapter 49
Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan
THE MUFFLED EXPLOSION from the grenade behind Jake spurred him on. As he ran, the beam from his small flashlight danced across the floor in front of him. The small pyramid in his baggy pocket bounced against one thigh. He held the confiscated comm unit in his hand.
Jake’s mind raced faster than his feet. The image of the spinning object blasting up through the mountain and into space was branded into his consciousness. He’d just unleashed a power beyond anything mankind had ever faced. Thanks to him, the question of whether we are alone in the universe was about to be answered once and for all, and the news wouldn’t bode well for the human race. The obelisk was on its way to its maker, carrying its false warning, paving the way for man’s annihilation. His stomach quaked at the thought.
Angry voices rose in the distance behind him. Battista was surely dead from the grenade, but his body would have shielded at least some of his guards from the shrapnel. There’d be a few moments of hesitation at seeing their leader dead, but Jake knew they’d soon be coming after him fast and hard.
The tunnel steepened, but Jake refused to slow down. The burning in his legs was a welcome distraction. The passage would take him to the main level and give him a chance to get to the clearing. Since Marshall had disabled the communication system within the caverns, Jake had to get outside so he could radio the plane and warn them about Ahmed.
He sped up at the sound of a percussive rumble not far in front of him. The ground under his feet trembled. At first he thought it was Tony’s hotwired explosive device going off early, but the sound and the shaking faded too quickly. The sulfuric, rotten-egg smell of natural gas drifted past him, getting thicker as he ran forward. The floor leveled, and he slid around a sharp bend into a large corridor.
He swept his light back and forth to get his bearings in the pitch-darkness. This was the main tunnel he had originally dropped into. The narrow tube that had nearly trapped him was to his right, and the facility’s main exit was to the left. He took three strides toward the exit and froze.
A gaping hole stretched across the full breadth of the tunnel floor, part of the laser-smooth shaft left by the obelisk’s rocketing departure. The sacred chamber must be directly below him. A wall of dust from the darkness beyond the hole billowed toward him, only to be sucked into the shaft like smoke through a chimney. Jake aimed his light around the edges of the vertical opening, looking for a way to cross over. But the hole in the floor was wider than the corridor, leaving no edges for a foothold. The smell of natural gas was thick in the air. He swiveled the flashlight to the ceiling and saw that the electrical conduit and gas lines had been sheared. The air shimmered with dust-filled waves of gas, thirsty for a flame. When Tony’s detonators ignited the explosives down below, this corridor was going to blow like it was hit by a bunker buster. Even a spark from one of the guard’s weapons could set it off.
Just beyond the edge of the hole, the flashlight’s beam pierced the thinning cloud of dust to find a wall of rocks and rubble. A cave-in—likely an aftereffect of the pyramid’s dramatic departure—filled the corridor from floor to ceiling.
Even if he could find a way past the opening in the floor, the path to the clearing was blocked.
Jake yanked the comm unit from his belt, praying that he might get a signal through the wide shaft in front of him. “Cal, Kenny, do you read me?”
No reply.
He checked the frequency and tried again. “Cal, this is Jake, dammit. Tell me you can hear me!”
Static.
The low-battery light on the comm unit flashed on.
Jake knew in his gut what he had to do, but his mind didn’t want to accept it. He flicked the transmitter one last time. “Cal, if you can read me, there’s a bomb on the plane. Ahmed has a bomb!”
He released the transmit button and listened, but the only thing he heard was the pounding boots of Battista’s men running up the small tunnel that he had just exited.
Jake spun around and sprinted in the opposite direction, his heart in his throat with the realization that the only way out was through the tight tube that led to the cliff face. He put every bit of his energy behind running as fast as he could, trying desperately to stay one step ahead of his mind. Sweeping the beam of his light along the ceiling, he searched for the opening that he knew was there. He spotted it in the distance, a mounded pile of earth and rocks beneath it.
There were shouts behind him.
Without stopping, Jake pocketed the comm unit, jammed the flashlight between his teeth, and took a running leap off the earthen pile with his arms stretched high above him. He snagged the ragged lip of the opening with his hands. His forward momentum ripped at his grip, but he held on and heaved himself up, welcoming the distracting pain from the knife wounds in his arm. With a final kick in the air, he lurched into the small crawl space.
Jake scrambled forward on his hands and knees, refusing to slow down. When he reached the impossibly narrow choke point, he threw himself on his chest and pushed forward. His fingertips curled and locked onto tiny crevasses. The muscles of his arms and wrists strained in unison with his toes and knees as he wiggled and pulled his way through the tiny aperture.
With a final panic-filled jerk, he made it to the other side.
Jake panted heavily, his lips peeled back from around the flashlight as he sucked air in his mouth. Soiled sweat dripped down his forehead and stung his eyes. He ignored it and kept moving, pushing up to his hands and knees. Three or four quick crawls and he dropped down into the man-sized tunnel that led to the opening in the face of the cliff.
He took the flashlight out of his mouth and kept running, leaping over stones and crevasses in a barely controlled headlong rush. With shaking hands, he aimed the light at his watch.
Three minutes.
Cal and Tony would make sure they were well in the air before that. That gave him less than two minutes to establish a clear line-of-sight signal to make radio contact. He ran with abandon, the flashlight out in front, its beam paving the way through the ragged tunnel like a headlight on a speeding locomotive.
The air sweetened around him, and he knew he was getting close. He slowed his pace, afraid that he might launch himself into thin air when he reached the opening. He strained his eyes in front of him and saw a sparkle of starlight.
Jake slid to a stop.
Ninety seconds to go.
He cocked his ear and the distinctive roar of the massive engines of the V-22 drifted toward him. They were in the air.
Jake pulled out the communicator and clicked it on.
The ready light didn’t come on. Even the low-battery light was out. He flipped the button several times and pounded the unit into the palm of his other hand.
No!
The battery was dead.
Jake collapsed to his knees, his face tilted up to the sky. He wailed at the top of his lungs, “God, don’t take this from me too!”
Jake’s thoughts filled with his friends, with Sarafina, with Francesca. He tried to throw his thoughts toward them, but the drug still held him firmly in its grip. He ripped at the wounds on his arm, demanding the pain, pleading for the sweep of adrenaline that might clear his hea
d and focus his thoughts into a telepathic warning. There was a small surge, but it faded instantly. He needed more, much more.
Jake searched the floor around him, looking for a weapon, a rock, anything that could deliver the adrenaline he so desperately needed.
His breath caught in his throat as the answer dawned on him.
He turned his eyes to the void that spread out before him like an inviting lake.
He stood, the toes of his boots hanging over the edge. He felt the tension leave his face, and he allowed a smile to find his lips. He took one final deep breath of clean mountain air and stepped into the blackness.
Chapter 50
Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan
THE V-22 LIFTED VERTICALLY off the ground. Francesca twisted in her seat and stared out the small porthole window. A cloud of sand and dust swirled outward and disappeared into the desert night. The nose dipped, and the big bird began to move forward. The steady thrum of the twin engines changed pitch, and she saw the shadow of the immense port-side nacelle rotate downward as the Osprey shifted to airplane mode.
They were on their way home. Without Jake.
The mountain that was now his tomb was silhouetted on a backdrop of stars that moved past the wing as they picked up speed. She wiped her eyes with the tissue that Jake’s friend Lacey had given her.
Jake’s friends.
The amazing people around her were a testament to the man. They had traveled halfway around the world and risked their lives to rescue him in Venice and then followed him into this godforsaken place to save her and Sarafina. Their loyalty spoke volumes about Jake’s character.
She couldn’t bear to turn around and face them. It hurt too much. The warmth that they each had shown her couldn’t hide the creases of sadness in their eyes. And it was all her fault, wasn’t it? She had been so easily taken in by Battista’s silky words and fatherly demeanor. Her extraordinary empathic senses had failed to alert her to the deceit behind the man’s smooth façade. It should have been her who died in these mountains, not Jake. Her life was over anyway.
She risked a glance over her shoulder at Sarafina. The child was still huddled under Tony’s bulging arm, unmoving, staring at nothing. A few days earlier—when she’d opened herself to Jake—the girl had finally taken the first crucial steps toward putting her tragic past behind her. And for her efforts she was rewarded with more anguish and loss. Now she had once again burrowed deep within herself and blocked out the world, perhaps this time forever.
Francesca looked toward the front of the plane and saw Ahmed fiddling with the contents of his backpack. He was so different than Sarafina, so confident and extraverted. He had changed dramatically since receiving the implant. He now seemed well on his way to becoming an active participant in the world around him. Maybe, just maybe, some little good had come out of Battista’s horrible experiments.
Francesca turned back to the darkness outside. The V-22 made a slow, banking turn to the left. The crown of the mountain would soon slip out of sight. And Jake would become a memory.
Francesca, stop Ahmed. He has a bomb! Stop Ah—
Jake’s thoughts filled her head and drove everything else away. Francesca spun around. Sarafina’s eyes locked onto hers with an intensity that left no doubt that she heard it too.
Jake!
Francesca’s hands shot to the buckle on her seatbelt. She screamed with all of her soul, “Ahmed has a bomb!”
It was Becker who reacted first. He jumped out of his seat and rushed toward Ahmed.
Both of the boy’s hands were scrambling in his backpack. He let out a piercing wail, “Allahu Akbar!”
Becker shoved his hands into the backpack, grabbed the boy’s wrists, and lifted him straight into the air. Ahmed’s feet kicked wildly in space. The backpack fell to the floor, trailing a twisted string of electrical wire that stretched to a black detonator in Ahmed’s small fist.
His eyes went wild, and his little thumb pressed down on the red plunger.
The click of the switch nearly stopped Francesca’s heart.
But the explosion that was meant to accompany it never happened. Tony reached over Becker’s shoulder and pried the switch from Ahmed’s grip. Becker pulled Ahmed into his chest and moved out of Tony’s way. Tony crouched down and carefully opened the flap on the backpack. His fingers slid down the twisted wires into its folds, his eyes narrowed on the contents within. Everyone was on their feet watching. Francesca held her breath.
Tony sighed. The tension melted from his face. He pulled his hand out of the pack, and with it came the copper lead that had snapped free when Becker jerked the boy into the air.
“It’s okay,” Tony said. He stood up and looked at Francesca. “There’s gotta be two pounds of C4 in there. More than enough to turn us into a fireball. How did you know?”
Francesca’s face lit up. “It’s Jake.” She rushed to one of the windows and stared at the dark mountain. “He’s alive!”
The mountain exploded.
Like a huge volcanic eruption, the cap of the mountain literally burst up to the heavens in thousands of pieces, encased in a fireball of flames. Tongues of fire snapped out of the main cavern entrance as well as the hole in the cliff face. The glow cast an orange reflection on the faces of the team.
The V-22 yawed violently from the pressure wave, the port wing dipping as Cal and Kenny fought at the controls. They recovered by using the momentum to turn the V-22 and put the conflagration on their tail to get out from under the debris that would be dropping from the sky like hail in a thunderstorm.
Everyone in the back was banged up, with more than a few bruises from the jolt. But it was Francesca who took the deepest wound, cut to her core by the knowledge that no one could have possibly lived through that blast, not even Jake.
Epilogue
Venice, Italy
Three Days Later
THEY GATHERED IN THE LIVING AREA of Mario’s home in Venice. Marshall sat next to Lacey on the couch, one of his bandaged arms cradled in her lap. She held a wadded tissue in one hand. Several half-full coffee cups rested in saucers on the wooden table in front them. Tony stood nearby in front of the fireplace, his left shoulder bulky from the bandage that was hidden beneath the sling. His other arm rested on the mantle next to an eight-by-ten photograph of Francesca’s uncle, Vincenzo, a black ribbon stretched diagonally across its corner. The last inch of a flickering votive candle nestled beside it. Mario stood next to Tony, the two men sharing a silent moment.
Sarafina sat alone on a stool at an upright piano on the far wall, her back to the group, her little hands sliding across the black and white keys, tapping a melancholy tune that floated out of the open window and drifted across the water.
Francesca rested her hands on the sill, looking down at the canal that had been her lifelong companion. Her father’s gondola was tied to the wall beneath her, rocking gently in the cool morning breeze. Her face was hollow. The joy that normally filled her features had long since abandoned her.
***
From a small, bougainvillea-covered gazebo on a roof deck across the water, Jake lowered his binoculars.
Besides his mother and sister back home, everyone he cared about in the world was in that little room across the canal. They were his family, his lifeline. And it was for that very reason that he feared joining them, afraid of drawing them into the whirlwind of danger that would soon surround him. They thought it was all over. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Three days ago he’d jumped off that cliff expecting it all to come crashing to an end. The air had rushed past him as he fell, the darkness hiding the ground that he knew was speeding toward him. Adrenaline charged every nerve in his body, and his mind screamed his warning to Francesca. A second later, with a lurch that twisted his limbs into a violent tangle, all the air was knocked out of his lungs, and darkness invaded his mind.
He regained consciousness hours later to find himself cradled in the folds of Tark’s thirty-six-foot-wide canop
y that still clung to an outcrop of rock partway down the cliff, the same one that had cocooned itself around Tony on the way up. It was a one-in-a-million shot, the kind of thing that only happened in movies. He hung precariously eight hundred feet above the ground in the middle of nowhere, with no possible means of escape.
But he was alive.
He lay there for thirty-six hours before the end of a long rope whistled by him, dropped from the cliff seven hundred feet above. Jake couldn’t believe his eyes when one of Azim’s cousins had snaked down the rope. With the help of several men from his tribe, Azim pulled Jake out of the hammock that had come so close to becoming his death shroud.
Azim explained that he’d been unable to follow the rest of the team using the BASE jumping gear because the chute pack he was supposed to wear was riddled with holes from the firefight. He survived the onslaught of Battista’s men by pretending to be one of them and escaping into the village below before the massive explosion. Only a small number of Battista’s followers had survived the cataclysm. They packed what they could and abandoned the mountain and the village. Azim returned the next day with men from his tribe to pick over the pieces. By Allah’s will, they had uncovered a small radio receiver that identified Jake’s blinking position by the tiny locator he had taken from Sarafina’s collar.
A day and a half later Jake was back in Venice, watching his friends from this roof deck, wondering what to do.
He’d gone over and over it in his mind while he hung helpless on the cold cliff face. Battista had bragged to him about the three successful implant subjects who had left the facility and were headed to America. What would they do when they learned what Jake and his friends had done to their tribe? They knew about Francesca and Sarafina, and likely Tony, Marshall, and Lacey too. Would they leave them alone and continue on their jihad against faceless infidels in the United States, or would they seek a more personal revenge? Were they on their way here to Venice even now? If so, who would protect Jake’s friends, if not him?