UNSEEN FORCES: SKY WILDER (BOOK ONE)

by Ed Kovacs

  “No, I came to kick your butt.”

  As quickly as it began, the spigot of steam shut down, and in little more than a minute, the heat subsided, the room cleared and the water level dropped. That’s when she saw the rimstone. “What’s going on here?”

  “I lost track of time. I should have gone back and brought you in.”

  He showed her the scepter and explained his theory of the calcite formation presumably covering an altar and the tablet. With the clock ticking, they decided to remain in the cave room for now. After resting for a short time, she took up the pry bar and joined him at the rimstone.

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  “I think our problem is not simply the presence of this rimstone, but that the rock wall and altar itself must have collapsed.”

  “So it’s anybody’s guess as to where the tablet may have fallen.”

  “Exactly. It’s also a guess as to whether the tablet is in one piece or a thousand, and what kind of damage erosion might have done if it has survived. Maybe Mother Nature has already solved the problem of Man gaining the key to physical immortality.”

  They worked through another cycle of steam, then Diana swam, with scuba gear this time, back to the pool in the house. She checked in with Ping, alerting him she’d again be out of radio contact for some time. She gathered up food, drinking water and a larger pick, then swam back to the site to continue the dig.

  They worked non-stop, pausing only during the steam cycles to scarf down rations and sip water. They’d destroyed two-thirds of the rimstone formation and excavated a great deal of rockfall, but found no artifacts. No coins, nothing.

  “Houston, we have a problem,” said Sky, tossing aside his tools and sitting heavily. “I don’t think the tablet’s under the rimstone.”

  “Now you tell me,” she jibed, sitting next to him.

  “We should have found some trace of something by now.”

  She followed his gaze to the waterfall and the roiling water below it. “I’m guessing you think it’s under the waterfall.”

  “If it is, we’re screwed. We don’t have enough oxygen in the tank for an underwater excavation project. We’d have to resupply, stay hidden in the jungle until the Burmese army comes and goes, then try again.”

  “Since we freed the girls, that’s an iffy prospect.” She scanned the room. “Could there be a secret chamber somewhere, or a hidden compartment?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t check the walls that closely. In Arizona... well, you saw the photos. The tablet was in a blue jar, out in the open.” They ran their flashlights along the slime-coated walls, then stood. “I’ll start on this end.”

  “What am I looking for, exactly?”

  “You tell me. This was your idea,” he said smiling.

  After carefully checking sections of the wall for about fifteen minutes, Sky found himself standing at the small altar that had held the gold scepter. On impulse, he began wiping away the thin layer of slum, when he felt, before he saw, carved inscriptions within the outline of a rectangle the size of a paperback book.

  “Diana, we need to give this table a bath. Can you bring me some water?” he said, unable to conceal his excitement.

  Within minutes they were staring at a stone tablet, perfectly recessed into the top of the small altar. He removed a set of thin crochet hooks from his tool bag and worked them into the slits between the tablet and the altar. “This may leave marks on the stone, but we don’t have time for niceties.”

  Sky carefully lifted the slab from its resting place, Diana grabbed the edges as they came free, then together they liberated the ancient stone. Since the tablet was carved from igneous rock, the etchings remained intact. They had found the third tablet of Hui.

  “Congratulations, Doctor Wilder.” She meant it.

  He looked at her and smiled thinly. He felt a fleeting moment of satisfaction and triumph, but it had come at a terrible price. The achievement tasted bittersweet, the exhilaration hollow. “It’s a strange sensation to uncover artifacts so beautiful, so important. An earthshaking discovery, actually. Made in secret, to be kept in secret, paid for in blood.” He paused, recalling his final glimpse of Lou Burdette. “Guess we better get some photos.”

  He clicked off several frames of both sides of the tablet using the underwater camera. Unlike the Arizona tablet, no inscription ran along the edges. Sky considered that maybe the general wasn’t holding out on him, after all.

  “What now?”

  “Let’s get out of here and call in that chopper.”

  The swim out ranked as the sexiest scuba dive he had ever made. In the narrow passageways they swam as one, sharing the regulator, loins pressed together. They surfaced, quickly shed the gear, and climbed into clothes.

  Diana grabbed the two-way. “Hitchhiker, do you copy?” No answer. “Hitchhiker, this is Joyride, over.” As she looked over to Sky, the radio crackled a response.

  “Yes Diana, he’s here, waiting for you to come out. We’re all waiting for you to come out.” She recognized the voice instantly. It belonged to Simon Forte.

  Sky reached for the shotgun that leaned against the wall and Diana for her M-4, but three soldiers burst into the room with Galil assault rifles, business ends first. One of them was Sgt. Tin Oo, and Sky recognized the jade triangle he wore around his neck. Sky realized these were the men who raided Zou’s village. He looked to Diana; their mutual shock an assurance that the betrayal came from someone else.

  A smiling officer with blackened teeth and smoking a cheroot appeared. “Hands up and step forward,” barked Captain Moe.

  CHAPTER 23

  Simon Forte sat on a folding chair outside the Edwardian cottage nursing a warm Dagon beer. Rene Bailey fanned herself with the folded cardboard of a six-pack holder. Daniel Pratt, Forte’s executive assistant, scanned a tablet computer wirelessly linked to a sat phone on his belt, and wore his ever-present earpiece comm-link. Three Chinese-made troop-carrying trucks and a Yongshi Warrior, a Chinese jeep, lined the rutted driveway.

  Wilder grew disheartened, less by the thirty troops milling about, than by the sight of Steve Kraus, who amused himself by hammering red ants with the butt end of a Marine Corps K-Bar knife; Kraus practically salivated at the sight of Sky, no doubt remembering their previous confrontations. Ping stood bound and under guard, one eye swollen shut, his face a bloody mess. Wilder took some relief that the mules and the three girls were nowhere in sight; maybe the tatmadaw hadn’t found the camps.

  Wilder's gaze was drawn to Forte as Captain Moe handed over the underwater camera, gold scepter, and the tablet. Forte passed the camera over to Rene. “Hang onto this, would you dear... and see what develops.”

  Pratt smirked at the horrible joke.

  Forte waved the scepter with a flourish. The glint of gold seemed to captivate even the lowliest soldiers, many of whose eyes went wide. “A nice addition to the collection.” Forte then carefully removed the tablet from the watertight bag. He drank it all in with visible satisfaction. “Doctor Wilder, you are certainly efficient.”

  “Well thank you, that’s nice to know. I don’t think we’ve met.” Sky brashly stepped forward, his arm extended to shake hands, but was stopped by the sound of twenty rifles coming to bear, including a mini-Uzi held by Steve Kraus.

  Forte didn’t stand nor offer his hand. He smiled thinly, “That’s close enough.”

  Wilder smiled the big smile. “If I’m efficient, what does that make you? I mean, I’ve heard so much about your power and the reach of your influence, that I went to a lot of trouble not to be found. But here you are. In the middle of nowhere. At exactly the right time.”

  “It’s all in who you know.” Forte looked at Diana for the first time. “Hello, Diana.”

  “Hello, Simon.”

  ###

  Hunt kept it as even as she could, willing her worries and fears out of her mind, trying to stay centered. She mustn’t fall into past-time thought or emotion. This is a new day, she t
old herself. I’m not the manipulated pawn I used to be. She needed to keep her hate for Forte in firm check.

  “Quite a turn of events. Fate is the great equalizer.”

  “In that case, you’re in deep doo-doo,” she joked, smiling.

  He didn’t laugh. “I think perhaps you and the good doctor here are the ones in a bit of trouble. American military illegally encroaching into Myanmar, and all that. Your companion, a common looter of ancient sacred sites. Rangoon takes that very seriously. Forgive me, this is my darling Rene.”

  Diana ignored her. “How did you find us?”

  “Tradecraft, dear. You of all people should know that.”

  “You owe this to me, Simon. I served you well and never betrayed you. I want to know exactly how you found us.” The firmness to her voice wasn’t a threat, it was more of an invoice, a demand for payment.

  She watched intently as he seemed to consider the request. “Daniel, do we have confirmation in Virginia?”

  “They haven’t identified any bodies yet, but the wreckage is being examined. Our target was video uplinked via his laptop to the DARPANET after takeoff. Footage he was streaming showed him on the plane.”

  “Well,” Forte began, “since General Klaymen seems to be dead in that plane crash, I suppose it won’t matter. I have an inside man at MAHG. A sweet set-up, isn’t it, Rene?”

  “Very sweet. The man doesn’t even know he’s a traitor.” Rene seemed to take great satisfaction in the jungle heat of holding advantage over the captive Diana Hunt.

  “MAHG doesn’t know our location, you couldn’t have found us through a mole.” Diana wasn’t letting this go.

  “You’re right. But what a stroke of luck, or fate, when I found out that you’d been secretly assigned to Doctor Wilder.”

  Diana waited for the other shoe to drop. Before she could press him, he continued, “Diana, dear, when you were covert for DISC and got all those shots for every kind of Third World malady known to Man, one of the inoculations centered between your shoulder blades. You, like all of my covert operators, were injected with a trackable microchip. No moving parts to wear out, no metallic parts to alert metal detectors. A simple passive transmitter powered by the body’s electromagnetic field. My agents are too valuable to ever lose track of their location.”

  Diana stood awash with a naked sense of violation; she instinctively reached back to touch the area between her shoulder blades. Rene couldn’t help but gloat.

  “Don’t look so shocked. In ten years, every kid in the States and Europe will be implanted by the age of three. Why should parents have to worry about their children ever being lost or kidnapped?”

  “You sound like a commercial,” said Sky, interrupting. “You wouldn’t have stock in the company that makes these things, would you?”

  Forte smiled as he stood up. “As a matter of fact, I own the company. Anyway, I think our business here is complete.”

  Captain Moe stepped forward and roughly groped Diana’s breasts, saying, “I’ll take this one, so we can all ride the white horse.”

  Before she could react, Wilder lunged and spun Moe away from her. The captain unleashed a hard right, but Sky blocked it, then decked him with a treacherous left hook. Soldiers scrambled forward, including Sgt. Tin Oo, and tightly clasped Wilder’s arms behind his back. Others did the same to Diana. Enraged, Moe got to his feet, pulled his sidearm, and pointed it at Sky’s face.

  “Wait!” Forte admonished. “Captain Moe, this white horse has special training. Skills that are very valuable and take years to learn. I intend to put her to work for my company.”

  Diana looked to Sky; her mind raced but came up empty. Then she watched Captain Moe as he seethed. Wilder had humiliated him, causing him to lose face in front of his men. Moe stood surrounded by two platoons of his crack troops and Diana instinctively knew he was thinking that he held all the cards here, since the one with the most guns wins.

  “Captain Moe,” said Forte as he stood up, “since I can’t give you the woman, do you require a porter?” Simon gestured to Ping.

  “Him, he’s too smart,” Moe practically spat. “He would escape.”

  “Very well.” Simon grabbed a machete from a soldier, circled behind Ping, and with one clean swoop, beheaded the man. Ping’s head rolled into the dirt, the torso remained unsteadily erect for a few seconds spouting blood, then collapsed. “The Dayaks on Borneo are correct. They have a long and proud tradition of headhunting, and say there is no better symbol of victory than to behead your enemy. And any shaman worth their salt will confirm the power one obtains through decapitation.”

  Forte’s bloodlust seemed to have a sobering effect on all present, even Captain Moe, leaving no doubt as to who was truly in charge here. Diana knew well his capacity for cruel, senseless brutality. She refused to look away from the gruesome sight of Ping, steeling herself for what was to come, the horror she had foreseen. It was coming to pass.

  ###

  Wilder had witnessed much cruelty, but never anything like this. Taken aback, he struggled to maintain confidence that he could escape this alive. Especially with Steve Kraus and Captain Moe staring bullets at him. Sky thought of the wife and babies Ping left behind and said a silent prayer asking God to watch over them; if he lived, he’d make sure Ping's family received help. He then prayed to Isis, the Egyptian goddess and protector of humans, and asked her to bear witness to this injustice and provide him guidance, wisdom and cunning.

  “Captain, Rangoon would want a written confession from Doctor Wilder. I suggest that you leave a squad of your men here with Mister Kraus for further interrogation.” said Forte.

  “I will remain myself.” A glint shone in Moe’s eye as he relieved one of his troops of a machete.”

  “I don’t mean to spoil your fun, but we do have other important business to attend to,” rasped Forte.

  “Yes, of course, sir. Sgt. Tin Oo!” The chunky sergeant who led the gang rape of Nang Saeng stepped forward and Moe handed him the machete. “Take your time with him.”

  “Mister Kraus, after you finish, destroy the cavern.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Diana spoke quickly, “Not very smart, Simon. Wilder knows more about Hui and the tablets than anyone else alive.”

  “I have the best Egyptologists and alchemists that money can buy. And I have the information from the three tablets. Doctor Wilder has fulfilled his usefulness.”

  Sky considered using his trump card, then rejected the idea. Telling Forte he had incomplete information from the Arizona tablet would probably put Diana at risk. Simon would threaten to kill her or might even torture her on the spot if Sky refused to provide the missing inscriptions. He had another idea. A long shot but it was something.

  Diana broke free from the two soldiers holding her and ran to Wilder. She planted a brief kiss before being grabbed from behind. He tried to communicate only strength as he caressed her with his eyes.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be able to escape. And Forte won’t succeed in Cairo,” whispered Sky.

  “Cairo?”

  “Under the Pyramids. The only immortality he’ll attain is infamy.”

  “It’s you I'm worried about.”

  “Me? I'm golden. This has been a great life. Better than being a grave-robber, huh?”

  She couldn’t hold back her tears. “When we met in Sedona, I thought you wanted immortality for yourself. That you were some overgrown adolescent in denial about growing up and getting old.”

  “My job, exploring hidden places all over the world, dredging up mysteries of the past, jabbing at the status quo of traditional science... that keeps me young. I don’t need a magical elixir. I found my fountain of youth a long time ago.”

  Her eyes said it all as a troop dragged her toward the jeep. Once inside with Forte and the others, the convoy pulled away.

  Only one truck remained behind. That might have helped Wilder's odds, but Steve Kraus approached and gut-punched him as hard as he could, thankfull
y missing the cracked ribs. Kraus signaled the soldiers to release him, then delivered a kidney-punch. Hard. Then again. Wilder staggered and went down. Kraus took the opportunity to deliver a few swift kicks with his jungle boots to Sky’s prone torso.

  The soldiers picked him up and tossed him onto the back steps of the house. Kraus had found a piece of lead pipe and was taking aim at Wilder’s right knee...

  “Do that and I won’t be able to show you the gold,” said Wilder, grimmacing with pain.

  Kraus stopped the pipe just short of shattering the kneecap. Sgt. Tin Oo spoke pretty good English. He certainly knew the word gold. Kraus didn’t say anything, just stared, as if waiting to hear if there was anything real to the remark, or if it was the stupid ploy of a doomed man to add a few more seconds to his miserable existence.

  “You saw that gold scepter. We were going to make four or five more trips down to get the rest.”

  Kraus, a man with dirty money in secret foreign accounts, showed interest. “And where is this gold?”

  “The hot pool in the house. I had to use scuba gear to remove a false bottom to the pool. Below that, the real bottom is littered with treasure: gold coins, gold daggers, swords, gold statues as big as your arm.” Sky held out his arm as a gesture, but he really did it to check the time on the dive computer still strapped to his wrist: 18:01 hours.

  Sgt. Tin Oo grew excited, and started to say something in Burmese to the other soldiers.

  “Sergeant!” Kraus snapped. “Do your men speak English?”

  “No, Mister Kraus.”

  “Maybe it would be better if they don’t know about this treasure business. They can wait outside, stand guard. Maybe go off on patrol.”

  The sergeant immediately understood. “Good idea.” He barked orders to his men in Burmese, then Kraus and Tin Oo escorted Wilder into the house.

  Inside, Sky led the way into the hot pool room, the secret of which, he hoped, was unknown to Kraus and the DDSI men. The air tank, regulator, masks and other gear lay exactly where Sky and Diana had left them, meaning the dive knife still rested beneath one of the fins at the rim of the pool.