by Rick Jones
By nightfall the clouds abated, and Alyssa felt more at ease as they made camp for the evening. The sky was abundant with stars and constellations, the air cool and dry. Obsidian Hall’s team took by the fire, as always, claiming territoriality by the flames by chasing the others away, including Noah and the two senior archeologists, Eser and Harika, who gladly surrendered the area.
Alyssa, however, did not like their mocking banter against anyone who didn’t carry a weapon and brought her objection to Obsidian Hall, who sat away from the camp leaning against a large stone, looking skyward.
“Mr. Hall?”
He rolled his eyes. “What now, Ms. Moore?”
“I don’t think I like your children very much,” she said, standing in front of him with her hands on his hips.
“That’s makes two of us.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “They’re grown men. What do you want me to do?”
“I need you to get a handle on them,” she said furiously. “They do not own that fire. And they certainly don’t have the authority to tell my people to ‘piss off.’”
“Is that what they’re telling them to do? To piss off?”
“Yes.”
He smiled at that. Good. By the fire the commandos were hooting and hollering with the immaturity of teenagers. “Just listen to them,” she said.
“I try not to.”
Her body language became more infuriated, her stance becoming wider, the hands on her hips now balled fists. “Are you in charge or are they?”
He looked at her with features that betrayed zero emotion. “How much longer to Eden?” he asked, going off in a tangent.
But she wouldn’t allow him. “Are you in charge, Mr. Hall, or are they? I will not allow my team to be frightened by these people.”
“They’re wild boys, Ms. Moore. So believe me when I say that when the time comes for them to do the job you expect them to, there is no finer corps of people. Now, how much longer until we get to Eden?”
“Tomorrow,” she told him. And then she headed for the fire. “Apparently, Mr. Hall, you don’t have a pair. So I’ll deal within them myself.”
Hall leaned back against the stone and looked skyward. “Good luck,” he said.
#
“Well, what ‘ave we ‘ere?” said Aussie. The shadows along his face moved in macabre fashion as the flames burned and danced within its ring of stones. His downturned eye looked monstrous in the glow.
Alyssa stood her ground in the same way she confronted Obsidian Hall, with resentment. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she said. “You work for me—”
“Uh-uh,” corrected Butcher Boy. “We work for Hall.”
“Who happens to works for me.”
“Uh-uh,” he corrected again. “He funds your little project, missy. We know that.”
She took a step closer to the fire, the light reflecting ire in her eyes. “You will not treat my people with disrespect, you got that?”
“Or what?” Alyssa didn’t have an answer. And it was right here she realized for the first time that she truly had no power in the situation, none at all.
Aussie stood up. When the corner of his lip turned into a one-sided grin that appeared more like a lascivious leer, he rotated his hips in a sexually suggestive manner. “How ‘bout you come ‘ere and give ol’ Aussie a go, huh?”
“Mr. Aussie, or whatever the hell your real name is, if you so much as come near me, I swear to god, I’ll kick your nads up into your throat.”
His smile widened. “Even better,” he said. “That way you can give me a French kiss and a blowjob at the same time.” His team laughed, infuriating her. So Alyssa stormed off, feeling the sting of tears, and sat away from the camp, away from Obsidian Hall, but closer to John Savage’s location, which was sixty feet away. Apparently he’d seen the entire conflict, having a perfect vantage point but his face held no opinion of what had gone down.
So she challenged him. “What?”
He nodded. “Nothing,” he said.
“I suppose you have something to say about what just went on?” Her tone of frustration was quite apparent.
“Just one,” he said. “I applaud your bravery.”
Her shoulders eased a bit as her anger melted away. She then moved closer, seeing the somber look on the emissary’s face. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”
“That’s because you’re frustrated,” he said calmly. “You have every reason to be.”
Without invitation, she took a seat next to him. He didn’t seem to mind that she sat so close he could smell a hint of her perfume. She brought her knees up into acute angles and folded her arms around them, drawing herself tight.
“I’m not used to being around such people,” she finally said.
He nodded. “I am.”
She looked at him, his profile silhouetted against the background, strong and angular in the darkness. “You are?”
Savage hesitated, appearing to be absorbing the nature of his surroundings. And then: “I used to be military,” he answered. “I used to be like them.”
She looked toward the fire, at the men surrounding the flames, then pointed in their direction. “You were like them?”
He nodded. “At one time I was, yes. I can tell they’re skilled soldiers.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” he said. “Should something go down, then those are the guys you’ll want on your side.” He fell quiet.
“Mr. Savage?”
“Yes.” He continued to stare forward into the darkness, at the shapes in the desert.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why are you so detached?”
He turned to her. And though it was dark, she could tell he was examining her carefully. “Is that the way you see me? Detached?”
She reached out and grabbed his hand. “I do.”
He let her hand stay as he turned away, considering whether or not to follow through with an answer. And then: “When I was in the military,” he said, “I lost a lot. I gained a lot. But I lost a lot.”
“So why are you so detached?”
“I never really saw myself that way,” he answered softly.
“But you are.”
He nodded, as if coming to terms with what he had become. “I was married,” he said, “to the girl I had been in love with since high school.”
“A childhood sweetheart,” she offered.
“You could say that, I guess. But while I was serving, I took her for granted by putting my service before her, by neglecting her pleas to stay home and be a family. So I chased her into the arms of another man.” When he hesitated, Alyssa didn’t press him. “I wasn’t right after that,” he continued. “I began to lose focus and started to make bad decisions—the type of decisions that get men killed. So when my term was up, I decided to leave with the urging of Special Teams Command.” He neglected to tell her that he was a major player in the Navy SEALs, he didn’t see the point.
“So how did you end up at the Vatican?”
“My line of work had a lot to do with data gathering, and then acting on the information received. The SIV were looking for skilled people since the escalation of volatility in the Middle East. So my organization acted as a conduit and I obtained a position within Vatican intelligence without the routine of military combat. But the truth is . . . I just wanted to run as far as I could from everything, especially from her.”
When she went to cup his hand within hers, he pulled his hand away. “I don’t need your sympathy,” he told her. What he didn’t want was to break away from that sense of detachment. He needed to be unfeeling and impenitent. He couldn’t afford the liability of emotion. It would only make his job much harder when it came time to kill her. “But I thank you for your concern,” he said listlessly.
She sighed and then she patted his thigh
softly. “If you want to talk, Mr. Savage, there’ll be plenty of time.”
“Thank you,” he said. When she got up, she swatted the sand off her jeans. Savage turned upward, saw the beauty of her face, the lithe shape of her figure in the glow of the firelight. “Ms. Moore?’
“Yes.”
He wanted to thank her once more, wanting to tell her how much he truly appreciated her concern, and wanting to tell her that he wished he could open up further but couldn’t. “You have a good night,” he said.
After she walked away, he leaned back and watched the constellations in the sky. He then chastised himself, wishing he was more detached than he was. Killing her, he considered, wasn’t going to be easy.
He sighed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
On the following morning, Alyssa led the team with Noah bringing up the rear. Hall continued to have difficulty maintaining his balance, often sliding from one side to the next and hooking a leg over the hump to keep from falling.
The train maintained a straight line along the ridgeline. The sun appeared huge and full and massive along the horizon, the globe framing the caravan as they navigated their way with the aid of Alyssa’s GPS attached to her wrist. According to her father’s coordinates, they were within five kilometers of the site. But Alyssa saw nothing but flatlands.
“Ms. Moore!” Hall shouted, having slid to one side of his transport, “how much longer?”
“Soon,” she said.
The train moved over the rocky terrain at such a slow pace that Hall decided to dismount and walk the rest of the way leading the camel by its tether. When Alyssa stopped, so did the rest of the team.
Obsidian Hall dropped the line and stood with paralytic awe, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. “Is that it?’ he finally asked. “Is that Eden?” According to her GPS, it was. She didn’t answer him but kicked her heels against the camel’s sides and moved on. When Hall went to grab the tether he had dropped, he noted that his camel was trotting westbound.
His teammates were laughing. “What bloody difference does it make anyway, Captain? You couldn’t keep your arse on the damn thing anyway.” They moved forward with Obsidian Hall trying to keep up, often stumbling over stones.
As they got closer they noticed that the earth was lifted and the rise linear. That’s it! she thought. That’s the cap! When she dismounted, everyone followed her lead and gathered around her. “This is it,” she said softly and incredulously as if the moment was surreal.
Aussie moved next to her. His eyes were locked forward, and his weapon un-slung from his shoulder and firmly in his grasp. “Looks nothing but a bloody mound of dirt to me,” he said.
“You would say that,” she said, and purposely moved away from him. The walls of the rise were long with each side at least a half-kilometer in length, and its height about seven to ten meters high. From an aerial view, the entire structure was perfectly square. “It’s the cap,” she said. “This is the way in.”
Obsidian Hall finally joined the group, tired and winded from his walk. His clothes were filthy. His face bathed with sweat and his shirt held the blotted designs of sweat stains.
“Nice of you to join us, Cap,” said Butcher Boy, who didn’t bother to acknowledge Hall with so much as a look, but sensed him as he kept his eyes on the mound.
“How to wait up,” said Hall, winded. But when he realized he was standing on Eden’s threshold, he seemed to have caught his second wind.
“Hardly looks like a garden to me,” said Aussie. “Dead land is what it is.”
“It wasn’t always,” said Noah. “A river used to run through here, nourishing the landscape.”
“Whatever, mate.” And then: “So let’s get the bloody show on the road already.”
Alyssa thought the man was finally right about something. “Look for an opening halfway up the rise,” she said. “It may be obscured by rocks and boulders.” For hours they checked the east and northern walls, afraid they might have missed it, and then double checked before moving on. The day had grown hot, the sun blistering, yet the camels took it in stride as they lay on all fours on the desert landscaping.
“I found something!” Eser and Harika stood together because they always found comfort with their own kind, speaking Turkish when they could. They were halfway up the rise with boulders all around, but Eser was waving something over his head.
With Noah never being too far from them at any given moment, he grabbed the item, examined it briefly, and lifted it over his head. “It’s Montario’s flashlight!” he shouted.
Everyone converged to the location from all points. Alyssa took the lamp. It was faded and bleached. But Montario’s name was etched on it. “Then it’s here,” she said. “The opening’s here. Find it!”
Everyone scrambled like locusts, searching, finding new energy. But it was John Savage who found the opening behind a series of boulders. “Here!” he waved frantically in invitation.
As the entire team gathered around the hole, no one spoke, no one breathed. They just stood there as their minds tried to process the reality of the moment. The hole was amoeba-like in shape, about the size of three manhole covers positioned side by side, the darkness within as black as pitch.
Savage leaned back, allowing Alyssa a wide berth to pass and stand at the point of the entryway. She could feel a soft breeze eclipse her hot skin, cooling her. When she closed her eyes she thought of her father. She could see his face and envision his smile.
“Ms. Moore, we’re not getting any younger,” said Hall.
She opened her eyes, removed a flashlight from her backpack and flashed the beam in the hole. From what she could tell, the surfaces were shiny and reflected light. However, the beam of light could not penetrate beyond several meters, flashing upon nothing but dense shadows. When she lifted a foot to take the initial step inside, Noah called after her.
“Wait!” Noah moved to the front of the pack. “Alyssa dear, please wait.”
“Why?”
“There are things in the dark . . . Remember?” They both looked into the maw. “How do we know there isn’t one watching us now?” he added.
“Oh, for chrissakes, Yanks; get out of my way.” Aussie bulled his way forward, stood before the opening, pointed his weapon, and strafed the hole with gunfire. When he was finished he shot a thumbs-up and said, “Ain’t anything there now.”
Alyssa was livid. “You idiot!” she screamed, shoving Aussie back. When he slipped on the sand and fell on his backside, he took it as a personal affront and pointed his weapon at her with two of the three pounds necessary, to pull the trigger. His face was a mask of pure anger. And when Alyssa saw this, her face dropped.
He stood, the MP-7 leveled. “I ought to shoot your arse right here, right now,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Aussie!” Obsidian Hall worked his way forward. “You are being paid a great deal of money to provide protection, not to shoot up the place! Now lower your weapon.”
Aussie didn’t even flinch at the command.
“Aussie, I’m telling you to lower your weapon.” There was a measure of frustration on Hall’s voice. He then turned to Butcher Boy. “Tell him to lower his weapon.”
Butcher Boy stood for a moment as if deliberating. The air was thick with tension.
“Tell him to lower his weapon!”
Butcher Boy took a step forward, a weapon also in his grasp, and laid a gloved hand on Aussie’s shoulder. “Lower your weapon, soldier. Now!”
Aussie did, but very, very slowly. “Don’t you ever put your bloody hands on me again, Missy.”
When Aussie stood back, there was a concerted sigh. Nobody at that point realized that they had been holding their breath.
“We’re not even inside and already you’re compromising the location,” she said to him, albeit more calmly. “You just can’t walk up and start shooting. Do you have any idea of the damage you may have just done?”
“Look, missy—”
“F
irst of all, my name isn’t Missy. It’s Alyssa. But you can call me Ms. Moore.”
“Now you listen to me, Missy. We’re ‘ere for protection. And the skinny bloke ‘ere was worried that something was inside, so I took care of it. If something was there, then it ain’t there now.”
“Aussie.” The voice of Obsidian Hall was even and controlled. “You listen carefully,” he said. “Either you control your reckless behavior or leave the party. You’re becoming more of a detriment than an asset.” And then: “I’m serious.”
Aussie looked at those surrounding him. Anyone not carrying an assault weapon with the exception of the emissary, carried the worried looks of aging old men, their faces seamed.
“I hired you to be a professional,” Hall said sternly. “So act like one.”
Aussie could easily dish out the insults, but could never stand being the brunt of one. He angrily waved a hand dismissively in the air and fell back down the incline, stewing.
Butcher Boy stepped forward and laid a hand against Alyssa’s forearm. “You’ll have to forgive him, ma’am. Aussie gets a little wound up sometimes.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“If you like, I can escort you inside.”
She raised the flat of her palm to him. “It’s not necessary,” she told him. “I got it.” She hunkered down and flashed the light inside, noting the pock marks in the wall from the bullet strikes. Idiot!
“Be careful,” said Noah.”
“I will.”
She lifted her foot and set it down on solid landing, following up with the other until she was completely inside. “For you, Dad,” she whispered.
“Alyssa?”
She could hear the worry in Noah’s voice. “I’m all right, Noah.”
“Don’t go too far.”
She couldn’t help but smile. Noah was just as caring about her welfare as her father was. She aimed the light in all directions, the beam alighting on black silica walls. Every time she made a pass with the beam, her heart seemed to hitch in her chest. The hallway was beautiful, the geometrical planes perfect, the walls as smooth as glass. When she cast the light above the access, she exhaled with something that sounded like awe.