by S. A. Beck
“And where’s Teroudant?”
“It has changed its name over the years. Since the caravan route disappeared and was replaced with a truck route on a different path, it has shrunk from a major trading town to a little village called Sheikh ibn Tulun. There’s an interesting story about how and why the named changed. You see, ibn Tulun was a ruler in Egypt—”
“Please, my friends are waiting for me.”
“Oh very well. If you take the northern road out of Timbuktu, after about two hundred kilometers you will come to the village of Araouane. From there you go another fifty kilometers to the northwest to Sheikh ibn Tulun. There’s not much there these days. Then you go another twenty miles northwest to Sebil Baraka. It’s not on any maps so you might have trouble finding it.”
“I won’t have any trouble. The last well I found, in Mauritania, I found just by sensing it. I even tested that ability by going back. If we get within twenty or thirty kilometers of the place, I’ll be able to lead the team right to it.”
Daouda and Hawa looked at each other and then back at her.
“Remember that prophecy I mentioned?” Daouda said. “Of a lost child returning and saving her people? It mentioned that the child could sense the original water.”
“Yeah, I remember. It also mentioned that she’d be rejected by her people and they’d never appreciate what she did for them.”
They stared at each other for a moment in silence. When Daouda spoke, his voice was heavy with resignation.
“God has written our fates and we can only play our part. Good luck on your journey.”
Jaxon hugged them. “I’m going to need it.”
Chapter 3
AUGUST 19, 2016, HEADQUARTERS OF THE POSEIDON PROJECT, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
11:45 A.M.
* * *
General Arnold Corbin sat in the laboratory of the Poseidon Project and watched Dr. Jones put the two Atlanteans through their paces. Well, one and a half Atlanteans. Orion was a pureblood Atlantean they had kidnapped. General Meade was an artificial Atlantean made by a special serum, just like that Brett Lawson kid. Pity he’d been killed by the Atlantis Allegiance before they had gotten a chance to run more tests on him, but the serum was relatively cheap to make and they could make as many foot soldiers as they wanted to.
But the serum had drawbacks. It had dulled Meade’s intellect, made him a psychological slave. That was a poor trait in a soldier. A soldier needed to take orders, yes, but he also had to think for himself, solve problems. Ziegler, a professional hypnotist, had been busy giving Meade the ability to think independently. Ziegler had made great strides, but Meade’s cognitive abilities were still nothing compared to what they had been.
And the hypnotic conditioning they’d put Orion through didn’t leave him much better off. It would be some time before they could operate independently.
But what physical traits! General Meade was bench pressing three hundred pounds now. No normal middle-aged man, now matter how fit, could do that. Orion could bench five hundred pounds. Plus, they both could run more than twenty miles an hour and keep up that pace for an entire morning.
Yes, it was all coming together. A few more months and he’d be ready to strike. Soon he’d be dictator of the United States, and he’d put this corrupt, lazy country back on its feet.
General Corbin had done his homework. He knew that every dictator needed three things to gain power—an external threat, an army loyal only to him, and chaos in the civilian government. The army was coming along nicely, although not nearly as quickly as Corbin would have liked. The external threat was being provided a team of photo and video forgers who were busy putting ominous reports of alien abductions and UFO sightings into the world’s media, and even into the Top Secret files of the U.S. government. Meade had fallen for it, and other members of the military, and many members of the civilian government, were quietly concerned that all these UFO reports might actually pose a real threat.
A large portion of the public, of course, had swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker. But then the public would swallow anything. Jaded, pathetic, and poorly educated with no capacity for critical thinking, they needed a dictatorship.
As for chaos in the civilian government, that was coming along nicely too. His team of hackers, forgers, and bloggers at Operation Bicker fed the public a relentless diet of fake news. He’d managed to wreck the campaigns of two major presidential candidates, one for each party, and so now both parties were scrambling to find replacements. Corbin’s connections had provided him with the list of candidates that each party had drawn up, and his team was already planning to take every one of them down. Mistresses, racist comments, drunk driving—whatever seemed the most appropriate. The folks at Operation Bicker were creative geniuses.
Of course there was pushback to all this. Some of the smarter TV pundits complained about so many of the scandals turning out to be false, but it didn’t matter, because most of the time the public had such a short attention span that they only remembered the original story, not the correction or retraction that came along a week later. The original tale was always more attractive and juicy anyway.
The old saying went: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
He didn’t need to. He just needed to get the public into a confused, bickering mess that couldn’t separate fact from fiction. Polls showed that confidence in the government had plunged to an all-time low, and elements of the right were now openly admiring fascism. On the left, everyone was too busy condemning each other for not being sufficiently liberal to notice who their real enemies were.
But he still had some obstacles of overcome. The Atlantis Allegiance was a constant thorn in his side and he still hadn’t tracked down the shadowy group of Atlanteans who had saved Dr. Yamazaki and somehow healed her from her stroke. Now reports indicated that both groups were on the move in Mali.
Things were developing too fast in North Africa, and he was outnumbered over there.
Besides Isadore, the only boots he had on the ground right now were the McKay twins. A pair of psychopaths, but professional psychopaths who could be relied upon to get the job done. They had wounded and perhaps killed Grunt, and certainly put him out of commission for a long while. Now they were headed down to Timbuktu to take care of the rest of the Atlantis Allegiance.
General Corbin drummed his fingers on his desk. As deadly as those two were, he didn’t think they’d be enough, not with Russian spies and perhaps an Atlantean group thrown into the mix. No, he needed to send reinforcements.
He called Dr. Jones over to him.
“They seem to be doing well. How’s the progress with their mental state?” he snapped. General Corbin wasn’t one to waste words.
“Good. Their cognitive abilities have grown substantially.”
“Enough that they can go on a mission of their own?”
“No, sir.”
“And the new arrivals?”
His operatives had just lured six teenage runaways off the streets.
“The serum is working well on five of them. Unfortunately, one had a weak heart and the serum proved too much for his system. He had a heart attack. We managed to revive him but he’s going to need—”
“Get rid of him. There’s no room for weaklings in this world.”
The scientist’s face turned grim. Corbin glared at him.
At last Dr. Jones replied, “Yes, sir.”
“Besides their cognitive abilities, are Meade and Orion ready to take on a mission?”
“Yes, sir. The five teenagers probably won’t be ready for at least another month.”
General Corbin slammed his fist on the desk. “We can’t wait that long. Get Meade and Orion prepped. They’re flying out tomorrow.”
“Who’s going to lead them, sir? I need to stay here and oversee the new subjects.”
“I’m leading them. It’s time
to take out the Atlantis Allegiance once and for all.”
Isadore Grant watched as the identical twins approached down the dusty street of Goundam, a town about a hundred kilometers west of Timbuktu. They looked even more out of place than she did. Not many outsiders came to this little town of about 16,000 people. There were no big factories or any other industry to attract foreigners, and nothing to see besides the main mosque, which a Western woman like her would never be allowed to enter. The only plus to this hick town was that it had a little airport with flights from Bamako, Mali’s capital. The McKay twins had been able to avoid Timbuktu, which was now on high alert.
She frowned as she saw every head turn as they passed. Heads turned for her too, but at least she dressed unobtrusively, in loose khaki pants and shirt and a headscarf. Those two stuck out like sore thumbs.
They had stocky bodies and thick, disproportionately arms that reminded her of gorillas. Both were identically dressed in black dress shoes, black pants, and a buttoned up white dress shirt.
Isadore shook her head. Granted, a Westerner could never blend in with the locals in a place like this, but they looked like they had just stepped through a teleporter from Hackney in east London.
She’d heard this was these guys’ trademark. They never wore a disguise on the job like most assassins, and if at all possible they took out their targets with straight razors. Not the most efficient method, but it did give them a hell of a reputation in the business.
They walked right for her, not needing to be told that she was their contact. She was the only foreigner in the whole place.
They stopped in front of her. She tried to put on a brave face. The things she’d been told about these two made her skin crawl.
“I’m Ronnie,” one said in a Cockney accent.
“I’m Reggie,” the other said in an identical tone. Isadore couldn’t tell them apart. It didn’t matter, they were a unit.
“I’m Isadore Grant.”
“We know. Let’s get to it.”
“Follow me,” Isadore said. She almost asked how their flight had been but decided against it. They didn’t look like the kind of people who engaged in small talk.
She had a 4x4 parked at the edge of town. It wasn’t as good as a Land Rover for navigating the tracks that passed for roads in this part of the world, but it was the best she could steal on a moment’s notice. They climbed in the back seat and Isadore drove out into the desert. They could steal a better vehicle later.
“You flew so I suppose you don’t have any guns,” Isadore said. “Look under your seats and you’ll find a pair of 9mm automatics, courtesy of some Russians I bumped off. I’ll tell you about them in a minute.”
The twins reached under their seats and retrieved the weapons, as well as some spare clips of ammunition.
“What other weapons do you have?” one of them asked. She couldn’t tell if it was Ronnie or Reggie.
“A pair of Kalashnikovs with plenty of ammo, and a selection of poisons.”
Those came courtesy of Stephen, her husband, one of the world’s leading experts in toxins. She decided not to share the bit of information with the McKay twins. The less they knew about her, the better.
“Where are we going?” one of them asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Isadore admitted. The twins took this news with silence. She glanced at them in the rearview mirror. They sat with their hands on their legs, staring straight ahead.
As she drove out of town, Isadore added. “Grunt showed up here the other day. You guys cut him up really badly, but he still had some fight in him.”
“I got him in the gut,” one of the twins said. “He’ll die of internal bleeding soon enough.”
“Don’t count on it.”
Grunt was a hard man to put down. She’d seen him take plenty of punishment and still finish the mission. He had looked pretty bad, though, and had probably run out of gas after that fight. If he went to a hospital at least he’d be out of the picture for a while.
Isadore was surprised to notice she felt a faint glimmer of hope that he did survive. He had been a fun boyfriend, a bit too soft-hearted, but in many ways more her kind of man than her husband.
She shook that thought off as unworthy. She and Stephen made a great team. That man knew how to make some serious money and working together they were going to make a fortune. That’s all that mattered. She thought back on all the dilapidated farmhouses she had lived in, all the trailer parks, all the Ramen and the cold leftover beans she had to eat instead of real food. Grunt could never have given her the kind of life she deserved. A man like him would never align himself with the likes of General Corbin. Too many principles.
Isadore snorted. Principles were for victims. No one got to be a billionaire by sticking to principles. And Corbin had promised them billions.
Once she got out of sight of the last building she slowed down and went off road for a kilometer, then stopped.
“Time to find out where we’re going,” she said.
She got out and opened up the trunk. Inside was a hulky Russian man, obviously military but with a most unmilitary look of abject terror on his face. Duct tape covered his mouth and his hands were tied behind his back with thick cords. Both his kneecaps had been broken with a hammer. Isadore knew just where to hit.
“Do you speak Russian?” she asked the McKay twins, who stared at the prisoner with stony faces.
“No.”
“It doesn’t matter. I do. I’ll take care of the questions while you make him answer.”
“Righto.”
They grabbed him and pulled him out.
Isadore got up close into the Russian’s face and said in his own language. “My companions here are homicidal maniacs.” The prisoner’s eyes went wide as a pair of straight razors shone in the desert sun. “They are going to give you a little sample of their work. After a minute or two I’ll make them stop. Then you are going to tell me everything about your mission. If I’m convinced you’ve told me everything, I’ll shoot you in the head. If not, I’ll let them work some more.”
It only took five minutes for Isadore to learn everything.
Chapter 4
AUGUST 19, THE DESERT NORTH OF TIMBUKTU, MALI
10.00 A.M.
* * *
“If anyone would like to know,” Yuhle announced, “it is currently 42.8 degrees Centigrade outside.”
“What’s that in English?” Otto asked.
“The English use the metric system. As do scientists. It’s more precise. In fact, only the general population of the United States still uses Imperial measurements. Ironically, that measurement system was invented by the English, who gave it up in favor of the metric system invented by the French.”
“Whatever,” Otto groaned. “Could you please translate?”
“It’s 109 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Otto groaned again. “Why can’t all these lost cities be in the Bahamas or something?”
“I better not have to put on that burka again,” Jaxon grumbled.
“It wasn’t flattering,” Otto said.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
Jaxon looked out the window, her mind still in turmoil. The reappearance and sudden death of Brett was a constant background ache. It felt profoundly unfair to lose him a second time. Then there was the rage at the shadowy figures who turned him into some freak and got him killed, and the fear of knowing that those same figures were after her in order to do far worse. If this mission didn’t succeed, if this longshot didn’t land a bulls-eye, she would end up a lab rat somewhere.
She looked out at the rolling dunes as they sped along a barren track. They were alone except for the Land Rover of Atlanteans a hundred meters or so ahead of them They hadn’t seen a police or army patrol all day, hadn’t even seen another vehicle for hours. This desert seemed to stretch forever.
The vastness of it, the emptiness, lulled her. At first when she got here she hated the desert. It scared her, all that em
pty, deadly space. Now it made her feel something close to peace. There was a purity to it, an honesty. And the people here had a purity and honesty too, at least most of them. Now she understood why so many adventurers felt attached to the desert. She remembered one of her foster fathers had made her watch Lawrence of Arabia. It was a total guy movie. She suspected that particular foster father had wanted to foster a boy because he was always trying to get her to play football and watch war movies. This movie had actually been pretty good, though. The shots of the Arabian desert had been beautiful, and one line had stuck with her. Someone had asked Lawrence why an Englishman would love the desert, and he replied, “It is clean.”
And it was.
It was the only place where she had ever felt at peace, first when she had been hiding out in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, and now here in the Sahara. It didn’t matter that she’d been hunted in the desert by trained killers, or that the desert itself had nearly made her die a slow, excruciating death of thirst. There was a simplicity here that appealed to her. Every time she lived in a city, everything got all messed up, and most of the time it was her fault. Los Angeles had been a disaster. So had Marrakech. So had Timbuktu. She kept leaving messes behind her.
And now she had to go out across the endless desert to fix them.
The walkie talkie crackling woke her up from her reverie. Dr. Yamazaki’s voice came over the airwaves. She was driving the lead vehicle.
“Araouane is just up ahead. I can just see it. Two options. The track passes right through it. We can pass through and stop to top off our gas tanks, or we can make a detour through the desert.”
Grunt picked up the walkie talkie lying on the dashboard.
“If they’re going to hit us, they’ll do it away from civilization. We could use the extra gas for more maneuverability. Once we get to Sebil Baraka we might have to wait for the Russkies for a while, and we might have to get out of their quick and set out across the desert.”
