He tapped it with his knuckles. The hollow thud echoed up the pit. Louder than he would’ve liked.
After removing a few more stones, he finally had it—whatever it was—free. It was about the size of a standard backpack with a hard plastic shell. Seemed like a carrying case for a professional camera.
He strapped it over his back then checked the stone pile again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. But he found nothing else.
His head still throbbing, he started the climb. This time, he tested each foothold better, avoiding anything that even hinted at being a little loose.
Finally, he made it to the top. His fingers grasped the earth, and he began to pull himself up. Before he could, a dark shape towered over him, blotting out the single weak beam of sunlight.
“They said you might come back here,” a man in khaki trousers and an olive jacket said in Arabic.
Darkness masked the man’s features. But his silhouette was more than enough to see he was built as thick and powerful as any of the castle’s defensive towers.
“We’ve been looking for that,” the man said, pointing to the backpack. “Thank you for leading me to it.” He pressed a boot over Balagh’s fingers. Pain shot through his knuckles. “Hand it over.”
Balagh cursed inwardly. He should’ve known better. Wherever he had been before Petra, whatever clues he had left for himself, someone was waiting for him. Watching for him.
He needed to learn how to watch his back better. To make sure that every set of prying eyes was nothing more than a curious tourist or onlooker.
But that relied on there being a next time.
“Who are you?” Balagh said through clenched teeth.
“You are not in the position to be asking questions,” the man said as he ground his boot over Balagh’s fingers. “You think you can survive a fall from the top of this pit?”
Balagh gritted his teeth. It had been painful enough to drop a few feet. He had no illusions what would happen if he lost his grip. “What do you want?”
“I thought I made myself clear, brother,” the man said. Then he reached behind his back, and Balagh heard the click of metal on metal, the unmistakable noise of a pistol being cocked. “Maybe I can help you to understand.”
As the man brought the pistol to bear, instincts erupted from the recesses of Balagh’s mind. He had been trained for situations like this. On how to disarm a person. How to fight.
Just like back in the hotel room.
He wasn’t sure how or why he knew these things, but that didn’t matter. He gave in to the ferocious, calculating beast hiding within.
His muscles coiled, then he sprang. His free arm shot out and grabbed the man’s ankle. He pulled back on the man’s leg, twisting around to break his balance.
A gunshot exploded, the noise deafening against the stone walls. Balagh’s ears rang as he threw himself over the side of the pit, drawing up into a fighting position.
The man lunged up just as quickly, grappling with Balagh. They struggled in furious combat. Balagh’s body was a weapon piloted by the instincts surging from deep within his brain. He countered every punch, struck whenever he had an opening. His deftness was only matched by his opponent’s sheer power.
It was a battle between a tiger and a grizzly. Each with their own strengths, their own desperate aggression.
Balagh was definitely a fighter in whatever life he had had before. But so was his attacker.
Somehow the man managed to get around Balagh. He tore the pack off, whipping it away. The plastic clunked against the wall, masked by the shadows.
The attacker tried to aim his handgun. Balagh managed to wrap his fingers around the man’s wrist then twisted it until it verged on breaking. The man’s fingers splayed; he let out a pained grunt, and the pistol clattered away.
But before Balagh could snap the man’s wrist, the man let out a furious roar and slammed Balagh backward, throwing his weight into a brutal blow that sent him sliding over the floor. He felt his shoulders and head hanging over the edge of the pit again.
The man seemed to smell victory, placing a boot on Balagh’s chest, beginning to push him over the edge. Balagh’s weight shifted. A few more inches, and he would tumble into nothingness. Even if he survived the fall, he would be a pile of broken bones. The man would retrieve his pistol and ensure Balagh never left this dungeon, just like prisoners from centuries past.
This would all be over in a few seconds. He would die with no answers. No knowledge of who he was or why he was here. Alone and confused, just like he’d started this horrible adventure.
“May Allah have mercy on your crooked soul,” the man said. His boot pressed harder into Balagh’s sternum.
But while Balagh’s mind told him this was the end, his body knew better. His hands found the boot on his chest. He pulled hard, yanking the man over the edge with him.
They both started to fall. The man yelled as his head slammed against the side of the pit. Balagh had been ready for the sudden shift. His hands shot out for the opposite edge, allowing his legs to fall in. His weight yanked on his shoulders, but he held on, clinging to the stones.
A sickening thud sounded from below. Balagh’s attacker went quiet. Not so much as a groan escaped the pit.
Chest heaving, gasping for breath, Balagh climbed back over the side. He pushed himself up to a knee.
Somewhere outside he heard yells, voices. People must have heard the gunshot. This place would soon be swarming with police.
He scanned the room, barely catching a glimpse of the backpack on the far side then the glint of the handgun. He rushed to pick up both items and stashed the weapon in his new backpack.
Hurrying back through the palace and barracks, he stayed underground while others trampled the earth above him. He wondered how long it would take them to find the man’s body in the pit.
He didn’t plan to stick around and find out. He left the castle with the rest of the fleeing tourists and hiked back through town to his hotel room.
Once the door was locked and braced by a chair, he opened the backpack. He found another fake passport. This one was from England. His face was on it, but the name, James Hamed, was definitely not one he knew. Then another from Israel. Yaakov Gallin. More cash. Beneath the cash, dozens of vials.
All these vials were like the first he’d found in Petra. Full of a silver, viscous liquid that sparkled when light hit. A thorough search of the backpack revealed no other explanation of what these items were nor why he had hidden them.
But the sight of them awakened some deep-seated dread. He could almost feel them radiating some kind of terrible power.
The only other thing he found was a single sheet of paper. On it was a name and a phone number. Neither of which he recognized. Was this a friend? Someone who could tell Balagh his true name and purpose?
Only one way to find out.
Skylar floated in the Dead Sea. She knew the extremely high salt content meant that she would be extra buoyant, but she hadn’t been ready for what it actually felt like.
“It’s like I’m just laying on top of the water,” she said. “Better than an actual waterbed.”
Alex drifted alongside her. The man looked like an ancient Greek statue come to life, his chiseled physique barely breaking the surface of the water. His blue eyes and square face set in a stoic, determined expression. He didn’t even notice the trio of female tourists staring at him with obvious interest.
She twisted so she was no longer floating and planted her feet firmly in the muddy sand, squishing it between her toes. The water continued to push at her body, almost as if it wanted to squeeze her out of the sea and back onto land.
“Very strange,” Alex agreed. He stood now, too, and stared across the sea. Even though they were on the Jordanian bank at the Marriot Dead Sea Resort and Hotel, they could see Israel on the opposite shore.
From the briefings that Kasim had sent, they knew Skylar and Jaber were not the only ones that had been affected
by the weapon they were now calling the Ring of Solomon. This same strange agent was being inflicted on people across the Middle East, including their Israeli neighbors.
After studying those briefs, they’d had precious little else to do but wait. It was up to Morris and the rest of Vector to come up with a new lead. The weight of waiting for answers, hoping what little they had uncovered from that bureaucratic goon Jaber would be enough, had been getting to both her and Alex.
They couldn’t just stay holed up in their suite ordering room service. The hotel staff was eventually going to get suspicious. Not to mention, Skylar got the sense that her constant pacing and complaining about wanting a beer was grinding on Alex’s nerves. They had finally decided to play the part of Western tourists, soaking in all the Dead Sea had to offer.
Which meant basking in the highly salinated waters and watching tourists smear mud from the shores over their bodies in a ridiculous attempt to rejuvenate their skin. Neither activity was enough to keep Skylar distracted for more than fifteen minutes or so.
Her mind kept turning back to the briefs and videos Vector had sent, to the attack on their safe house with Jaber.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” she said. “But there’s something I need to say.”
Alex waved her off. “I know you couldn’t control what happened to you in Amman. You don’t need to apologize.”
She scoffed. After only one other major mission together, this guy thought he could read her mind. “Wasn’t going to apologize. I mean, I guess I do want to thank you for saving my ass, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what?”
Skylar glanced back toward what passed as a beach. There were two rows of chairs on a shore that consisted mostly of smooth rocks. The women who’d been checking Alex out had moved on, and the only other tourists nearby were a pair of newlyweds who couldn’t keep their muddy hands off each other. No one was paying them any attention.
“If I lose my mind again, if I threaten you like that,” she started, “I won’t hold it against you if you have to, you know, disable me.”
“Skylar, I’m not—”
“I’m serious,” she said. “If I go crazy, do what you have to. Take out a leg, an arm.” She looked down at her prosthetic leg. “I’m no stranger to losing limbs.”
She wanted Alex to give her a knowing grin. Maybe laugh a little at her sad attempt at a joke.
But he looked deadly serious. Hell, he almost looked hurt.
“I’m not going to ‘disable’ my partner,” he said.
Figures the Boy Scout would say that.
Every time they saw a person in trouble, Alex went out of his way to help them. Didn’t matter if they were in the middle of a shootout. Collateral damage was the worst curse someone could utter in front of him. And while she admired that, she feared what that might mean for their mission.
“Alex, I’m serious.”
“I am too.”
He started back toward the shore, the gentle waves crashing over the small of his back.
“You know I’m right,” she said.
He turned, his eyes narrowed. The orange glow of the evening sun made it look like there was actual fire in his gaze. “I don’t care what happens. I’m not hurting my partner on purpose. End of story.”
“I don’t want you to hesitate. No way in hell I’m letting you die because I lost control.”
Alex’s fingers curled into fists, knuckles turning white. “No, Skylar. No way can you just tell me something like that. The physician Kasim sent said you’re all good. There’s nothing left in your blood. You’re fine. End of discussion.”
She hadn’t expected him to take this so personally. After all, she was the one that had gone crazy.
But she recalled the story he’d told her when they’d been in Vietnam on their first operation. About how he’d lost his brother in an anthrax attack when they were both kids. Alex still carried that guilt. A death he thought he could have—should have—prevented.
Since then, she had seen the burden of that memory weigh on his actions. He had made it his life’s purpose to stop those types of attacks. And now, she realized, maybe he might be blaming himself for what happened to her.
After all, when he’d let Jaber slip, she’d had to stop the van. Had to expose herself to whatever they were trying to poison the crooked bureaucrat with.
She was no stranger to those type of nagging “what ifs” playing across her own mind. Back in the Marines, when she’d been flying her chopper over the Sandbox, there were too many times when she wondered if she had just been a few seconds faster, if maybe she had gotten to the target sooner, more of their boys would’ve made it home on their own two feet instead of lying in a box.
It wasn’t something she liked to talk about.
But she knew that letting it eat away at her wouldn’t help anyone. You couldn’t ever rescue the people that lived only in your memory, no matter how hard you tried. The only people you could still save were the living.
That meant focusing on their mission. Finding out where Ballard had gone. Uncovering what the Ring of Solomon and the Dead Sea and all this other bullshit had to do with it. Sinister forces were at work, and they hadn’t even begun to tap the surface.
She reached out, hesitant, and then clapped her partner on the arm. “I know we haven’t worked together long. Hell, I’ve had deployments longer than we’ve been in Vector together. But you’re like a brother to me, Alex.”
He was silent, the waves rolling up against them as they looked out at the sunset.
“Losing my leg was terrible,” she said. “But I would lose my other leg and both arms before I’d lose my mind again. That’s something you don’t come back from. And if it happened once, it could happen again. I want to know that you’ll do what’s right for the mission if it does.”
Alex turned and stared at her for a long while, icy intensity radiating out of those blue eyes. “I’ll do what I have to if it means stopping the people responsible for these weapons.”
His answer wasn’t exactly as clear as she’d hoped. But it would have to be enough for now. She couldn’t stand any more of this kind of talk.
She jerked her head toward the shore. “’Bout time to get some dinner, huh?”
He didn’t move. “Skylar, I want to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
“If the situation was reversed, if I would’ve been infected and was attacking you, would you kill me if you had no other choice?”
She would be lying if she said she hadn’t considered it. Hadn’t gamed through what might have happened if he’d been the one in that van with Jaber and the creep in the gas mask instead.
“Skylar?” he asked again.
The last rays of sunlight cast long shadows behind him toward the shore. The other beachgoers had already started their hikes back up to the resort.
She steeled herself, grappling with a storm of emotions as she contemplated just such a scenario. It would be a nightmare, but she knew what she would do.
The mission came first. Saving people from whatever terrorists were responsible for these strange weapons had to be the priority. After all, that’s what they had both dedicated their lives to doing. They knew what it might cost every time Kasim called them in.
“I would do it,” she said.
But even as the words came out of her mouth, she wasn’t sure. Maybe they were both bluffing, agreeing to a scenario neither could truly stomach. Maybe they would back down, unable to pull the trigger even with their own lives at stake. Even with the world at stake.
She just hoped neither of them would ever have to find out.
-15-
Frederick, MD
Kasim sat at a desk in his office with a mug of coffee, desperately wishing it was wine instead. He had his phone pressed to his ear.
“Another long night?” Divya asked. Even over the cell, he could tell she was exhausted.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I should’ve known what I was getting into,” she said. “Saving the world again?”
“It’s nothing.”
She laughed at that. “How long have we been married?”
“Going on…” He did the math in his head. “Thirty-seven years.”
“Thirty-six,” she corrected.
He took a sip of the coffee if only to clear his head. “Thirty-six. Feels like yesterday we got married.”
“I’m not sure I’d say that,” Divya continued. “But I can tell when nothing means something. Just try not to work so hard. Maybe this weekend we can go out to Patapsco. Take the afternoon off for a hike.”
“Maybe,” he said.
They both knew it was a lie. But the mere thought of spending some quality time with Divya was enough to change Kasim’s mood.
First things first: he had to solve what might be turning into an international crisis.
Because truth be told, if Vector and the intelligence community didn’t stop the rash of strange incidences associated with the weapon they were now calling the Ring of Solomon in the next week, he feared the world as they knew it would change.
And it would change quickly.
A weapon that could alter the minds of human beings, turning them into unruly mobs or, perhaps worse, shutting them down like an invisible plug had been pulled. The possible repercussions were almost too terrible to comprehend.
Divya sighed. “Don’t work yourself too hard.”
“I won’t.”
“You will,” she said. “But I have to say it anyway.”
She hung up.
He couldn’t tell if she was upset or if she’d just gotten used to his increased absence since he’d started Vector. He couldn’t decide which of those options troubled him more.
Before he could contemplate the matter too long, there was a knock at the door. He barely had time to say “enter” before it cracked open.
Morris waltzed in as if this was actually his office. He sat down in one of the chairs in front of Kasim’s desk with a manila folder and his laptop in hand.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 13
