The Eden Prophecy dl-3

by Graham Brown

  Anger flashed through her. It made sense, but she resented such a move being made on her behalf.

  “That makes me a target,” she said.

  “Aren’t you already?”

  “Of course I am.” That’s why she carried a Kahr P380 pistol in her purse and a small carbon-fiber knife in the heel of her shoe.

  “And you are also dangerous,” Najir added, smiling and playing to her ego.

  “More than you know,” she promised.

  “Then you will be fine.”

  She nodded. She intended to be. “Ask next time,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said, nodding in a slight bow. “You have my word.”

  She and Najir spent a little over an hour at the reception before a tall, thin man tapped him on the shoulder. He whispered something and moved off. Najir offered his arm to Danielle.

  “We are to follow,” he said.

  They crossed the room, avoiding any obvious places to hold an auction and taking a rear stairwell that led to an old gated freight elevator.

  Danielle eyed the mechanical cage suspiciously.

  “In there?”

  “The auction is down below,” Najir assured her.

  Moore had said she’d be going underground, and Najir had indicated they would be bidding on items from somewhere beneath the ballroom, but considering the way they were dressed, Danielle had assumed it would be a lower level of the museum or library.

  Half her instincts nagged at her to turn away, to beg off and ask if there was another way down, or decline completely. But the rest of her thoughts focused on what was still at stake, the fact that she had her own weapon, and the fact that she was very dangerous if she needed to be.

  She pulled free from Najir’s arm and waved a hand toward the cage.

  “After you.”

  He stepped onto the elevator, Danielle followed, and the thin man climbed in last and pulled the gate shut. He pressed the button and the bulky mechanics of the elevator clanked to life.

  The car released with a jolt and began dropping into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 25

  With shouts and commotion and the wailing of the fire alarm echoing around him, Hawker stared into the recesses of the janitorial closet. He could not believe his eyes. As each flash of the fire alarm lit up the tiny space, he expected to see Sonia there. But she was gone.

  He turned. “Sonia!” he shouted, adding his voice to the madness.

  The whoop, whoop of the alarm drowned out any reply.

  Either she’d found a better place to hide or …

  He began to move, slowly at first, because he didn’t want to believe what he was thinking. And then he ran.

  He sprinted down the hall with the rifle in his hand, well aware that any security team that reached the floor would shoot him on sight.

  He made it to the stairwell, where crowds were trying to force their way down.

  A burly man got in his way. “Move!” Hawker shouted, shoving the man to the side.

  Hawker needed to get to the stairs, but to go up, not down. He pushed through the crowd. Climbed over the railing and dashed upward.

  When he broke out into the open night air he could see across a catwalk to the helipad. A French-made Dauphin helicopter was winding up. Two armed men were dragging Sonia toward it.

  Resisting the urge to shout to her, Hawker dropped to one knee, steadied himself, and fired. His first shot took out the man on her right, hitting him in the upper center of his back.

  Sonia and the man on her left fell forward, sprawling on the catwalk. The thug reacted quickly. Turning and aiming, he fired back down the catwalk blindly, but there were only so many places an attacker could be.

  As Hawker crouched, the thug moved backward, instinctively using Sonia as a partial shield.

  It didn’t matter. Hawker needed only one second of separation.

  The thug shoved her in the helicopter and Hawker pulled the trigger, killing him with a head shot and sending him tumbling off the catwalk.

  Before he could do more, shots fired from within the helicopter forced him to take cover. He tried to pop up, but at each hint of a move more shells pinged off the catwalk around him.

  “Sonia!” he shouted.

  There was no way she could hear him now. The roar of the helicopter had become deafening. As he felt the rush of the downwash, he knew the pilot had added pitch. The copter was taking off.

  He fired blindly and then ran.

  The copter was rising up, its landing gear stretching as the weight came off. Sparks and tiny pieces of shrapnel told him more gunfire was coming in that he couldn’t hear. He dove, aimed, and fired again.

  Half a dozen white-ringed holes appeared in the Plexiglas bubble at the front of the copter and the roar of the rotors instantly changed. The pilot slumped forward. The Dauphin rose up unsteadily, began tilting over, and then smashed back down on its side.

  The rotors shattered, flinging shards of carbon composite material in every direction.

  Hawker lay flat. A cut on his arm and one on his shoulder testified to how close the flying knives had come.

  Glad to be alive and glad the helicopter hadn’t gotten away, he looked up. A new wave of horror rushed through him.

  The Dauphin had landed on its side, with half its tail over the edge and part of its landing gear caught up in the three-cable guardrail that surrounded the helipad.

  The cables were stretching and their poles were bending and twisting as the copter tilted slowly, threatening to tumble off the edge.

  Hawker ran forward and scrambled onto the shifting craft. He looked inside, aiming his rifle. The doors on both sides of the helicopter were open. Sonia was looking up toward him, her arms wrapped around a seat belt in a death grip. The strain on her face showed as she tried to hold on, and with good reason. A blond man with a ponytail had a bear hug around her waist.

  He looked up at Hawker with a snarl. Beneath them, a thousand feet below, Hawker could see the street filled with cars and emergency vehicles.

  Hawker reached in and grabbed her, but his added weight caused the helicopter to shift further. It creaked ominously.

  “My arm!” Sonia cried.

  “Hang on!” Hawker shouted.

  A sound like that of a ricochet echoed through the night. The helicopter dropped a foot or more, as one of the three cables had snapped.

  The jolt caused Sonia to slip. She screamed as her arm stretched unnaturally.

  Hawker tried to get some leverage and pull her out, but there was no way he could dead-lift the combined weight of the two of them. Holding Sonia with one hand, he felt behind him, found the rifle, and swung it around, aiming into the passenger space.

  “No!” the ponytailed man shouted.

  Sonia screamed with him, but the crack of the rifle drowned both voices out.

  Ponytail fell, dropping into the darkness.

  Hawker let the rifle go and grabbed Sonia with both hands.

  “Pull!”

  “I can’t!” she cried. “It hurts!”

  “Pull anyway!” he shouted, leaning back and trying to yank her out.

  She came up sixteen inches or so, enough to get her foot inside the fuselage.

  The copter shifted again and another ping and rip sounded as the second of the three cables snapped. The final cable wouldn’t hold the weight for long.

  “Come on!” he shouted, pulling with all he had.

  Sonia screamed in pain, but she pulled hard and pushed off with her foot. Hawker leaned back, wrenching her toward him and pushing off with his legs as the last cable snapped.

  He and Sonia fell backward as the helicopter dropped away.

  Lying on the helipad, clutching her to him, he heard nothing but the wind for several long seconds. And then the sickening crunch of the impact below, followed by the echoing boom of an explosion.

  In seconds the smell of burning kerosene reached them, and waves of black smoke began to drift upward and across the helipad. It
didn’t matter: She was in his arms and she was safe. They were both safe. Now all they had to do was get the hell out of there.

  Hawker eased Sonia off him and then helped her stand. Her face was white. No tears, no words. It looked like shock.

  “Come on,” he said.

  He took her by the hand and led her back toward the shelter of the hotel.

  A crowd of people had gathered there, watching the spectacle. One opened the door for him, some of them clapped. A figure stepped forward. It was James B. Callahan. The loudmouth was gone; he looked shaken but relieved.

  “You’re not security, are you?” he said.

  “I am, I’m just not yours,” Hawker said as he pushed on past.

  Back inside the hotel, things on the eighty-first floor were less chaotic than Hawker would have expected. Twenty or thirty people had been injured in the shoot-out and a dozen killed, including the terrorists. But in the aftermath a sense of action had overtaken the crowd.

  Where Hawker expected panic, there was little. With security now swarming through the room, a sense of calm was being restored. And because the fund-raiser was connected to the medical profession, many of the attendees were or had once been prominent doctors. Some of them seemed to revert almost instantly to their training.

  In an impromptu scene of multicultural cooperation, jackets were discarded, sleeves were rolled up, and men and women sprang into action. In an instant there were people helping the wounded, attending to the distressed, saying prayers for those who were beyond help.

  Holding her injured arm, Sonia stared at the scene as if in a trance. “Savi,” she whispered.

  “What?” Hawker asked.

  Sonia looked up, more alert suddenly. “These people came for me,” she said. “That means Savi and Nadia are in danger.”

  “Savi and Nadia?” These were names Hawker didn’t know.

  “We have to get to them,” she said, color returning to her face. “Please. We have to go.”

  By the time they reached the lobby, fire and police units had completely surrounded the building. A group of paramedics rushed past, piling into the elevator car.

  The hotel’s manager saw Sonia and the bloodstained dress.

  “Praise be to God that you’re alive,” he said. “Are you badly injured?”

  “No,” she replied. “But I need a car.”

  He shook his head. “A car will never get through.”

  The gridlock outside was unimaginable. The causeway was thin enough to begin with, but the mangled wreck of the helicopter had taken out half the road. It now lay burning in the shallow water.

  “Please,” she begged. “I need to leave.”

  He studied her and Hawker for a moment.

  “We have a boat,” he said. “For tourists.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Moments later, Sonia and Hawker were on a small boat that the hotel used for tours up and down the Dubai coast. It took them across to the shore, where a car waited. Thirty minutes later they were in downtown Dubai as Sonia raced into an opulent apartment complex.

  Three stories up, she pounded on a door.

  “Savi,” she shouted. “Savi!”

  The door opened and a white-haired woman of sixty stood there. A shawl draped her shoulders and she looked shaken. She and Sonia embraced.

  “We heard about the attack,” the woman said. “We were so worried.”

  The woman stared at the blood on Sonia’s dress.

  “It’s not mine,” Sonia said.

  Hawker guessed it had come from the men he’d shot around her.

  “And who is this?” the woman asked suspiciously.

  “A friend,” Sonia said. “Someone I haven’t seen in years. His name is Hawker.”

  The woman stepped back. The look of suspicion faded, turning into a look of surprise and then warmth.

  “So you’re the one,” she said.

  Hawker’s brow wrinkled. “The one what?”

  “The one who brought them out of the Congo,” she said. “Ranga said you would help us. He wasn’t sure he could find you in time.”

  “He didn’t,” Hawker said, sadly. “At least not in time for him.”

  The old woman looked away but she held firm, far less shaken by the news than Sonia had been. At least outwardly.

  “That’s not a surprise,” she said.

  “We need to talk,” Hawker said. “But after what happened tonight, I doubt any of you are safe here.”

  He glanced around the apartment. There was utter order to the place, as if it had never been lived in. The sign of people who knew they might have to move quickly. “Looks like you’re ready to go.”

  “We can be out the door in two minutes,” Savi said, opening a closet that held suitcases, already packed. “Get your things,” she said to Sonia. “And wake your sister. She’s asleep.”

  More news to Hawker. He’d never known Sonia to have a sister.

  “It’s okay,” a meek voice said from the darkened hall. “I’m already up.”

  Hawker turned.

  A young child stood there, perhaps three feet tall. She came forward and hugged Sonia around the waist.

  Hawker stared. The child wore exceptionally thick glasses. Her face was wrinkled, her hair white and thin, and her skin marked and discolored with spots.

  At first, he thought it was a trick of the light or an illusion of some kind, but then she turned toward him, straightened her glasses, and smiled. Now he could see her plainly. And he found himself staring into the face of an eighty-year-old woman.

  Sonia crouched down and wrapped her arms protectively around the child. “This is my sister,” she said. “Her name is Nadia. She’s eleven years old.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Danielle Laidlaw held on as the antique elevator shook and shimmied and descended two levels. When it stopped it opened onto a corridor of sandstone walls. A sporadically lit hall beckoned with work lights and bare bulbs along one wall. Construction equipment rested on one side; other sections were roped off.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “As we rebuild the city we find more and more of our history,” Najir said. He pointed to what looked like an excavation. “This section was once a Roman bath.”

  Three men waited there, two holding guns.

  “This way,” the thin man said, leading them on and following the hall to the right.

  The corridor led them to a stairwell with a curved archway at the top. Old city architecture, cut from the sandstone.

  “Where the hell are we going?” she asked.

  The thin man stopped and turned. He glanced first at Najir but then responded to Danielle.

  “The auction is down below. Forty steps. If madam cannot make it or is uncomfortable, I can inform the host that she has canceled. However, the deposit will not be returned.”

  Danielle exchanged glances with Najir and then stepped through the door.

  “Madam will be fine,” she said. “She just likes to know what she’s getting into.”

  Their host stepped aside and held the door. Danielle went through first, with Najir following. They descended the stairs in semidarkness. Literally and figuratively they were getting in deeper, and Danielle felt less and less properly dressed for the occasion.

  “We are passing through six thousand years of history,” Najir said. “Down below are the first extensive catacombs ever discovered in Beirut. Phoenicians buried their dead there, as did the Romans centuries later. Some crypts are believed to contain the bodies of Crusaders from Europe.”

  “Just as long as we don’t end up buried down here ourselves,” Danielle said.

  Finally the stairwell bottomed, and a few steps ahead they reached an iron gate that might have been built during the Crusades. Two men stood guard, weapons at the ready. They let Najir and Danielle pass through the gate.

  “You sure about this?” she asked.

  “We’re safe here,” Najir said.

  During her time
with the NRI she’d been through dozens of encounters and emergency situations. Her training had included survival school and other tests, the result of which was a supreme confidence in her ability to deal with any situation. But her instructors had a favorite saying, one they all seemed to repeat: The good operatives can get themselves out of any situation; the great ones avoid the situations in the first place.

  As she looked at the gate and the walls and the narrow stairwell, Danielle felt herself walking into a trap, despite Najir’s confidence.

  Najir nodded his agreement and the two moved out into the hall, which ran in both directions. The floor and walls were wet, and water pooled in places.

  The name Beirut meant “the Wells” in ancient Phoenician, and for good reason. The city had a high water table and wells did not have to be drilled too deep to reach good, potable water. Here in the catacombs of the old city, they might have been close to that water table.

  Not another soul was in view, but twenty yards farther a door beckoned. Muffled sounds were coming from beyond it. Najir knocked.

  A bolt was heard sliding and then the door opened to reveal a large, brightly lit room filled with a dozen people, all dressed for the party upstairs.

  The room was sandstone, like the rest of the catacombs, but swept clean. Modern track lighting illuminated the space, computer terminals were set up here and there, and a small wet bar stood in one corner. Alcoves ran off the main room in spots and another gate barred the far end. Walking in felt like entering a very private lounge.

  A moment later the tall, thin man appeared, a new look in his eye. No longer the humble servant, he walked with an owner’s pride in his step. Apparently he’d entered the room some other way.

  “Now that we are gathered,” he said, calling the group to attention, “please take your time and examine the items for purchase.”

  With an ancient key he opened the gate at the far end and the group filed through to examine the prizes.

  Danielle moved slowly, trying to make some sense of things. The first two items appeared to be Greek or Minoan masks. The small clay Gilgamesh statue was the third item in the lot and the copper scroll was fourth. A clay tablet with Sumerian writing on it and the stone head of a statue from the first Persian Empire came next.