Moon Mask
Page 30
An NSA satellite had given him and his action group a real-time feed of the assault which had been projected onto a wall-spanning SMART screen. Dozens of other sleek-looking computers littered the dimly lit space, collating shared intelligence from all member states of the Security Council. He had purposely included service men and women from numerous countries into his action group to prove to the doubters in the council that the mission to find the Moon Mask was indeed a joint U.N. venture and hadn’t been hijacked by the United States. Nevertheless, no one on the team knew what it was the Special Forces team was after, referring to the Moon Mask at all times as ‘the package.’
“It was Raine,” Gibbs said vehemently over the com-link. “It was all part of his escape plan. Now he’s got King and the book he’ll find the rest of the package and sell it to the highest bidder.”
“Raine knew nothing about the mission’s destination or objective until you and King briefed him en-route. And you’ve restricted his access to all com equipment.”
In truth, that had been one of President Harper’s provisos in releasing Raine. He’d be a free man once the mission was completed. Until that time, however, he would have no access to communications technology of any kind, including mobile phones and computers. The only thing he was permitted was an isolated shortwave radio to keep in contact with the team. There was no way he could have gotten a message to the still unknown attackers.
“Besides,” he continued. “From what I saw, Raine did everything he could to stop those men.”
“All theatrical, sir. Staged to make his escape look convincing. He’s been in with these people from day one. How else do you explain the same soldiers that were in Venezuela showing up here?”
Langley was about to offer a further argument when he was interrupted by one of the TOC’s technicians. He handed him a data tablet. “Sir, we got a hit on one of the soldiers.”
Langley glanced at the profile. During the fighting the satellite they had been using had snapped a usable photograph of the hostiles’ leader. They had run it through watch lists from the NSA, CIA and FBI as well as Interpol. They’d got lucky.
Port Royal,
Jamaica,
Gibbs scanned through the document which Langley had just uploaded to the laptop. He ignored the noise of the emergency sirens, the flashing blue and red lights, the sounds of screaming and crying emanating from the injured and bereaved party-goers. Several helicopters circled the town, some from story-hungry media outlets, and others from the Jamaican coastguard.
Acting under the authority of the United Nations Security Council, Gibbs had been allowed to isolate the survivors of his team on the jetty, leaving it to Langley to smooth it over with the Jamaican government. Only five minutes ago, Garcia and West had retrieved the two cases containing the piece of the Moon Mask and the Fake Mask from the remains of the helicopter. Built to withstand a nuclear blast, the black shells had suffered only minor grazing when the helicopter crashed to the ground. It had been easy enough to locate their transponder codes within the burning wreckage of the Super Stallion. David Sykes’ body on the other hand had been charred to a crisp.
Anger stirred in the pit of his stomach at the loss of his comrades. Nelson and Sykes were dead. Lake had ejected just in time but had sustained severe bruising upon landing. Garcia and O’Rourke had suffered burns and shrapnel wounds when the enemy had blown the museum’s north wall.
Pushing his thoughts about the sorry state of his team aside for the moment, he read the details on the man he recognised as the enemy team leader displayed on the laptop.
Captain William ‘Bill’ Willis had apparently served in the Australian SAS. Although his service record, as was to be expected, was unavailable, it was known that he was dishonourably discharged. Following that, he had been recruited by C.H. Logistics, a mercenary unit based in South Africa before branching out on his own. Now self-employed, he ran numerous mercenary operations, charging his clients disgustingly large sums of money for his services.
He knew that mercenaries were being used by world governments more and more each year, bringing much needed man power to the War on Terror. But Willis’ operation was small and did not come in to consult or even to add numbers as IED cannon fodder in Afghanistan. He was only called in when a particular job needed completing. In the sometimes seedy world of mercs, he was the best of the best, running a highly paid, highly trained ‘Delta Force’ of men for those that could afford it. No questions asked. He was brutal, but he got the job done.
Was Raine in league with this man?
It was possible. Raine had been similarly discredited and had been on the run for three years. But, much as he hated to admit it to himself, it didn’t quite fit. Langley was right. Raine had been denied access to all communication equipment. And other than his presence in both Venezuela and here, there was nothing else to link them together. Additionally, if Raine was earning the big bucks of Willis’ operation, then why had he been shunting supplies to and from a godforsaken mountain top in the middle of the jungle?
Of course, discovering that the soldiers who had attacked both the expedition in Venezuela and the mission here were mercenaries only opened an even bigger kettle of fish. Mercs didn’t work for themselves. Someone was paying them. But who? Someone else who was after the mask. It couldn’t be the Chinese as their own team had clashed with the mercenaries. The Brits maybe? Or the Russians?
He glanced at Nadia who stood by the water’s edge, peering worriedly into its inky depths but Langley’s voice cut into his thoughts, laced with its own concern.
“Any sign of Raine yet?” he asked. Gibbs also peered down into the water where the hovering helicopter circled, its bright light searching for the traitor who had not been seen since he’d dived into it.
“Negative,” was his curt reply.
There was a pause, and then: “Keep me informed.”
West cut the com link between the two men then followed his superior’s gaze. “He must be dead.”
Gibbs didn’t take his eyes from the water as he shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “That son of a bitch ain’t dead.”
Raine found Mrs Marley, of all places, up on the roof of the Hand of Freedom Building. He knew that time was against him. Sooner or later, Gibbs would work out where he was. He was a good soldier, Raine knew, but he wouldn’t get the information they needed out of the old woman.
After watching the enemy plane fly off with King and Sid, he had swam to shore and made his way back to the battered museum. The emergency services hadn’t arrived yet and, with the book gone, the building was no longer of any interest to Gibbs and his men.
He approached the obese woman from behind, moving silently across the rooftop, skirting the ruins of air ducts and ventilation shafts. Still ten yards from her, though, she surprised him by addressing him without so much as turning around.
“You know, Mister Attorney,” she said, her heavily accented voice deep and husky. It held a sombre element to it that Raine hadn’t noticed before. “In the great earthquake of 1692, a church was swallowed by the sea.” She paused, staring off into the distance. The pitch black sky was softening in the east to a moody indigo and, her giant body silhouetted against it, Mrs Marley took on an almost ethereal presence. “They say that sometimes,” she continued, “you can hear the bell tolling from beneath the waves.”
Then she turned to face him and if she was surprised by the gun which he levelled at her chest, she did not show it.
“Can you hear the bell, Mister Raine?” she asked him pointedly.
Despite himself, Raine found himself straining to listen into the darkness. All he could hear, other than the gentle breaking of the surf, was the distant whine of emergency sirens.
“It is the toll of history,” she whispered before he could reply. Then she glanced at the gun in his hand before fixing on his eyes. “You’re here to torture me, then?” It wasn’t so much a question as it was a statement.
“I know no such thing, young mon.”
“You’re lying.”
“It seems you are an adept at that yourself.”
Raine hesitated for a second, considering how much to tell her. “The secret that the book protects,” he said. “It could be used to kill hundreds of thousands of people. We’re here, under the authority and command of the United Nations, to stop them.” He studied her, trying to read her, but her face remained impassive. “You had the book, the diary, all your life. You must have read it. You must know its secrets.”
She laughed bitterly and shook her head. “I know nothing.”
“Do you really want the blood of innocent people on your hands?” Raine demanded. The old woman seemed to snap, his words striking something within her. Her face twisted angrily.
“Get out of my house!”
“Not until I have what I need to find my friends.” He made a display of unlatching the safety of his gun. “I’ve explained myself. I’ve asked you for your help.” His eyes darkened. “I won’t ask again.”
“And what will you do?” she snarled. “Shoot an unarmed old lady?”
Raine’s icy eyes never left hers. His tone was flat and even. Honest. “I’ve done a lot worse.”
Mrs Marley studied his handsome, chiselled face and noticed that he did not waver in his resolve. But neither would she. She responded by hacking up a glob of mucus and spitting it in his direction. “You won’t do it!”
A moment later, Raine pulled the trigger.
Airborne,
Location Unknown,
High in the sky above the Caribbean, Benjamin King was jolted awake by a powerful hand which slapped him around the face. He just about stumbled out of the seat to which he had been tied but the restraints held him in place.
He was disorientated. Flashes of memory assaulted him, as though he was waking from a bad dream. One moment he was in Lagos, General Abuku’s gun searing into the flesh of his forehead, branding him. Then he was at the Wassu Stone Circle with his father, hearing the tales of Kha’um and the Bouda. He remembered running through the hellish realms of Xibalba, dodging razor-sharp balls and lunging caiman. And then he was back in the Hand of Freedom building, falling from a great height, an agonising pain in his chest. Then nothing but random visions of men in black, of racing through cobbled streets, things exploding all around, people screaming-
His head swam, his brain thundered with the most incredible headache he had ever experienced and for a moment he thought he was going to vomit all over the deck of the Catalina Flying Boat.
He took several deep breaths, gathering his senses, and glanced at his surroundings.
The hold of the decommissioned airplane had been gutted out of its original furnishings and redesigned with state-of-the-art military equipment. It looked more like an Apple Store than an airplane.
Three black motorbikes were stashed by the aft section, in a hold designed for five, just within the closed rear cargo door, while arranged in a methodical manner, strung in combat webbing in the rear hold, was a small arsenal of some of the meanest looking weapons the archaeologist had ever seen.
The main cabin, where he was held, had been kitted out to look like a scene from a science fiction movie, the bulkheads adorned with flat, touch-screen, high durability computer monitors, microscopes and all manner of other equipment, some of which he recognised, others which were utterly alien. It was like a flying laboratory. No, he realized a second later: a flying war room. From here, it looked to him like his captors could organise a military operation anywhere in the world.
“Wakey, wakey,” a voice broke into his thoughts, redirecting his attention to the not unhandsome face of a man in black combat clothing. In his younger years, King suspected he would have attracted the attention of many women with the hard lines of his face and jaw bone and his grey eyes which held an intensity not dissimilar to Nathan Raine’s. But this man was older, the grey stumble of his leathery skin, lacerated by too many wounds, merged seamlessly into his equally grey buzz-cut. He had the twang of an accent, Australian perhaps, but it was faded, mellowed by years away from home. He also had the bearing of a soldier. Not the mindless ‘yes-sir, no-sir’ automatons he had seen wandering the halls of Fort Leavenworth days earlier. This man held himself with the same confidence he had seen in each of Gibbs’ men. He was Special Forces. Australian SAS, perhaps.
King pulled against his restraints, though he knew it would prove fruitless. “What do you want?” he demanded.
“What?” the man said, “no pleasantries, Doctor King? No demanding to know who I am and who I work for?”
“I don’t give a toss who you are or who you work for,” King admitted.
The man glowered at him. “At least you’re honest.” He shrugged. “Well, for conversation sake, why don’t you call me . . .” he seemed to pluck a name out of thin air “. . . Bill.”
“Bill?” King said, deadpan, his mind plucking at memories of watching ‘Bill and Ben, The Flower Pot Men’ on TV with his sister as children. It was strange how his mind kept flashing back to long forgotten moments from years ago. He considered the possibility that it was a side effect of his head injury but then realised he had been thinking about the past an enormous amount these last few days.
Ever since laying hands on the Moon Mask.
“Okay, Bill,” he said, pushing aside his thoughts. “What do you want?”
‘Bill’ smiled insincerely. “Your help, Doctor King,” he replied, pulling a dirty brown leather-bound book from a pouch on his combat webbing.
“You want me to help you find the mask?” King laughed. It was pointless playing games. He’d known, of course, from the moment he woke up, what his captors wanted from him.
“That’s right, Ben,” Bill replied, then added, as an afterthought: “May I call you Ben?”
King ignored his last question, confident that the man would call him whatever he wanted to. “And if I don’t help you, I suppose you’ll kill me?” Again, the threat was too obvious to bother tiptoeing around.
But Bill threw him a curve-ball. He laughed, sincerely this time. “No,” he shrugged. “I’ll kill her.”
King followed Bill’s direction to the far end of the hold, just outside the doors of the cockpit. Obstructed by a large soldier in black combat gear, he hadn’t seen Bill’s second hostage. Until now.
“Sid!”
Port Royal,
Jamaica,
Mrs Marley hit the rooftop in a spray of blood, letting out a startled scream. Raine was at her side instantly, pulling her enormous bulk away from the rooftop’s edge so that she wouldn’t accidentally topple.
Had that been her plan anyway? To jump? Why else would she have been on the roof?
He slapped his hand over the gunshot wound in her shoulder, tightly applying pressure.
“You . . . you shot me,” she gasped, her dark Jamaican skin paling.
“I told you I would,” he replied, fixing her with a serious gaze.
Whatever jovial man with an ever-ready sense of humour Mrs Marley had seen earlier was gone. This man was cold, humourless.
“The bullet has shattered your collar bone and punctured an artery. If you don’t get to a hospital, you will die.” His voice was a serious growl. Intense and dangerous.
Mrs Marley felt a terrified shudder swell up from the pit of her soul. Nevertheless, she remained defiant. “What do you want from me?” she growled, teeth gritted against the pain.
“I want to know where the diary leads.”
“I don’t know-”
Raine’s index finger dug inside the bullet would, grazing at the torn nerve endings. Marley screamed in agony and tried to throw her bulk away from him but she was pinned d
own by her own weight.
“I can’t tell you anything!” she cried.
“Can’t?” He dug deeper and new spasms of pain assaulted the woman. Her eyes were rolling upwards so he slapped her across the face, bringing her back into the moment. “Or won’t?”
With a renewed surge of determination a twisted snarl warped her features. “Won’t!” she spat. “I won’t!”
Raine withdrew his hand from the wound and the sight of so much blood terrified the old woman. Raine gripped her face with his blood soaked hand, smearing it over her chin. “My friends are going to die, Mrs Marley,” he hissed, his voice barely even discernable. “I don’t want them to die. I don’t want you to die. But if I have to choose between you and them-”
“I took a vow!” she stated forcefully, tears streaking her face.
“A vow to whom?”
She hesitated. “My father,” she said. “My grandmother. Her father. To every generation that has lived since that goddamn book came to my family!”
“A vow to protect its secrets?” Raine asked.
Marley laughed. “You’re pathetic!” A shudder of pain. A grimace. “You and all your other little treasure hunters. Is it the gold you’re after? The jewels? Or just the glory?”
Raine finally realized what it was that Marley was protecting. “The mask,” he answered and from the look on her face he knew she understood.
“What mask?” she asked flippantly. Her head was spinning and she felt nauseous. Pain, the likes of which she had never felt, racked through her enormous bulk.
“You took a vow to protect the location of the Moon Mask. The location which is hidden in that book.” He sat back onto his haunches and glanced at the bloodied old woman. His hands did not tremble nor did his mind reel at the horror of what he had done to her. That would come later. It always did.