Maze Master

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  “Hazor’s awake,” she said.

  The soldier sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes.

  “Good. Let’s pack up and be on our way.”

  They rose and walked side by side across the sand toward Hazor.

  CHAPTER 31

  OCTOBER 18. 0800 HOURS. FORT SAINT ELMO, MALTA.

  Joseph Logan stared down into the water glass that sat before him on the conference room table. His reflection shocked him. His short gray hair had started to turn pure white, and the crags and folds of his face appeared to be set in concrete. Only his crystal-blue eyes seemed unaffected by the numbing events of the past month.

  Morning light streamed into the gray room, striping the faces of the people present. Captain Bowen and Major Bibi had their elbows propped on the wooden surface and were staring uncertainly at General Cozeba, who leaned back in the chair at the far end of the table. Cozeba appeared annoyed. His jaw moved, teeth grinding. His clean black hair and lean face shone. Beyond the windows, clouds scudded across a dusk sky.

  “Well?” Cozeba said. “You told me this was urgent, Captain Bowen. Get started.”

  She cast a glance at Zandra Bibi, who sat to her right, then cleared her throat. “Sir, Major Bibi and I finally finished our analysis of the evidence taken from the Egyptian cave where we tracked Anna Asher. The French college student may not have been the first victim of LucentB.”

  Logan sat forward. Cozeba appeared as stunned as he was. The general stared at her as though she was speaking gibberish.

  “Explain.”

  Bowen ran a hand through her black hair, and said, “Just before the computers went down my lab team finished running the samples we took from the Egyptian cave. Zandra and I have been correlating the data by hand ever since.”

  Cozeba’s back had gone ramrod straight. “Get to the point, Bowen.”

  “Yes, sir. The relevant information for this discussion relates to a skull found in one of the ossuaries. The Maryam ossuary.”

  “Maryam?” Cozeba asked. “As in Mary, the mother of Jesus? Or Mary Magdalene?”

  “Our language people said the name Maryam was carved into the exterior of the ossuary, General. There’s no way to know if it relates to a New Testament personage.”

  “What about the skull?” Logan asked.

  “The contents of the ossuary turned out to be far more interesting than we’d imagined. The long bones were the remains of an old woman, at least old for her day, approximately fifty to fifty-five years of age. The skull, however, came from a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy. The boy had a number of microscopic lesions.” She glanced around the table. “They are very similar to the lesions produced by LucentB.”

  Cozeba’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the significance?”

  Bowen exhaled the first few words, “We carbon-dated the remains. The old woman died during the mid–second millennium BC, approximately 1330 BC. The young boy died 34,000 thousand years ago. And he was a Neandertal child.”

  “What?” Cozeba said in surprise. “Are you saying that LucentB devastated Neandertals over thirty thousand years ago?”

  “I’m saying that something very similar—”

  “But”—Logan rubbed a hand over his face—“that’s not possible … at least not if General Cozeba is right that the Chinese developed LucentB as a biological weapon.” He glanced at Cozeba, who was staring daggers at Bowen.

  Cozeba looked around the table. “Perhaps they rediscovered it, then engineered it for lethality. More important, what was the skull of an extinct species doing with the three-thousand-year-old body of a woman? The mixture of dates is bizarre.”

  “I can’t explain why the boy was in the ossuary. Fossil keepsake? Maybe his remains were important to the old woman. Maybe someone deliberately hid them in the ossuary for us to find.”

  “Why?”

  Bowen shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m following some bizarre trail that goes back 34,000 years and maybe longer.”

  A soft conversation broke out, Bibi and Bowen speculating about the possible answer.

  Finally, Captain Bowen said. “Colonel, we beg you to allow us to use the laboratory aboard the USS Mead to analyze the flesh fragments you found in the dunes near Bir Bashan.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “You may have inadvertently collected physical evidence of Cozeba’s ghosts. Twelve of them had Charlie Two surrounded. If they were blown to bits along with our own people, and we can isolate their DNA, maybe we can answer General Cozeba’s question about Neandertals and Patient Zero.”

  Cozeba’s lips set into a grim line. He stood and walked around quietly for a time. As he did so, he reached beneath his coat sleeve to scratch, and Logan saw what appeared to be an infection of some kind. A shiny film of dried pus coated the skin around the welt. Probably from his vaccination. They’d all been vaccinated repeatedly, evidence of desperate epidemiologists testing hypotheses.

  Logan watched Cozeba’s expression go from irritated disbelief to something more like dread. “You’re asking a lot, Bowen. Every instant you are aboard that submarine you will be in danger of contracting the virus. Do you understand that? I desperately need every scientist I have.”

  “I understand, sir. Even worse, I can’t do this alone. I need help in that lab, and it has to be someone with a scientific background.”

  Cozeba stopped pacing. “Well, I’m not giving you Bibi. I can’t risk both of you. I’ll assign a medic and give you the use of one computer terminal in the Mead’s lab. Make due. Also, I’ll provide you with some German genetics information recently uncovered by our scientific team there. I want you to—”

  “What information? From where in Germany?” Bowen asked in surprise.

  Cozeba said only, “Proceed to the Mead immediately, Captain.”

  CHAPTER 32

  1900 HOURS. OFF THE COAST OF ISRAEL.

  As the evening deepened, ash began to rain down from the darkening sky. Micah watched it silently alight upon the hair and shoulders of the people in the boat. Their pathetic sail flapped in the cool night air, pushing them onward across the gleaming leaden ocean.

  “What are they?” Nadai asked, and gestured to the ocean ahead where dozens of bonfires lit the horizon.

  “Burning oil platforms?” Anna suggested.

  “Or burning cities onshore. Perhaps it only appears they’re floating on the sea.”

  Micah thoughtfully chewed his lower lip. The ringing in his ears had finally stopped, and some of his memory had returned. Though he did not often try to recall the images of Gembane’s flayed body or Beter’s final wrenching seizure, at least now he knew they were all dead. He could finally stop worrying about them and start grieving. Had their deaths been his fault? Deep down he had the sense that he’d done something. Missed something. Maybe led them into an ambush. Each time he fell asleep, the first thing that seeped up from his unconscious mind was Gembane blurting, “Sir, I don’t … they … I swear to God. They’re straight out of the ancient texts … Angels of Light.”

  Micah didn’t think Gembane had actually been talking about angels. He seemed to be staring at the same creatures Micah and Ranken saw just before the choppers chewed the world into tiny pieces. The Silver Guys. Angels without wings.

  Every town they’d passed since they’d swung northward along the coastline and headed toward Israel had been empty. Dogs loped along the beaches in packs. Cows wandered the streets aimlessly, lowing in desperate voices. Yet he saw no definite signs of nuclear war, meteor or comet impacts, or massive volcanic eruptions. Such events would have filled the atmosphere with enough dust and debris to bring about either “volcanic winter” or “nuclear winter.” He should be seeing the distinctive evidence: global palls of dust, smoke from massive forest fires, dramatically diminished sunlight, dying vegetation, rioting in the streets. The temperature should already be dropping like a rock.

  He longed to get a message to his family. But he had no idea how to do it. Were they all r
ight? What about the rest of America?

  As the darkness deepened, the bonfires grew larger and more numerous. The boat sailed closer. Dozens of fires now scattered the ocean. At some point, the black water ceased being black and resembled a vast luminous expanse of polished amber. White-crowned waves rolled through the surface like glimmering serpents swimming for shore.

  A strange quavering rode the night air.

  Martin and Anna shipped their oars to listen. It seemed to originate from the fires.

  “Do you hear that?” Anna asked.

  Martin said, “Screams.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Micah interjected, “He’s sure.”

  Moments later the smoke shifted, and they could make out the silhouettes of burning ships and smell the reek of melted plastic.

  Unconsciously, Micah counted them. The flaring brilliance now hurt his eyes. “Thirty-seven,” he said. “Thirty-seven ships that we can see.”

  “They’re cruise ships,” Martin said. “The big ones that carry thousands of people.”

  “They must have been attacked.”

  “Who would attack cruise ships filled with innocent people?”

  As they neared the first ship, engulfed in flames, it suddenly listed to starboard, and the hull slid toward them, the massive bulk looming like a fiery wall. A low wave rolled out from the ship, moving fast.

  “Get us headed into that wave!” Anna shouted.

  They managed to turn their bow into the five-foot-high wave just before it swamped them. Their boat flopped up and down, riding the surges for three or four seconds, before settling down.

  Micah’s rib cage expanded in relief, then he saw the firelit faces.

  The dead sprawled on starboard verandas, as though the people had been leaning on the railing watching the sea when they’d been overcome. Or maybe they went outside to watch the ocean as they died? I would have. Many were naked. Probably from the high fevers they’d suffered. The victims appeared to be sculpted from abalone shell, pale and almost translucent. On the white hull behind them, the flames revealed scrawled messages. To Margaret, I love you … For Donny, my husband in Miami … One message read, Stay away! Some of the lines had been bleached almost colorless by the salt air.

  Micah made out the name of the cruise line. “Holland America.”

  “I didn’t know Holland America cruised to the Middle East?” Asher replied.

  “Maybe they weren’t on a cruise. Maybe boatloads of people were fleeing Europe.”

  No one wanted to say the word America. But they all realized the messages scrawled on the walls were in English.

  “Maybe it’s a refugee ship?” Nadai said. “Survivors from the war?”

  “Let’s move away,” Micah told them. “Sometime soon those flames are going to hit the fuel tanks.”

  High up on the lido deck, the flames danced over a handful of people scrambling around like ants. Shrill cries echoed.

  “My God, there are survivors!” Martin Nadai shifted the sail, and aimed their boat straight on for the dying ship, trying to reach them.

  Micah sat forward. “Do not—I repeat do not—get close enough that the people aboard can see us. Stay beyond the halo of firelight. They’ll swamp this boat in a heartbeat!”

  The people aboard must have heard them. Children ran to the railing to peer over the edge.

  Suddenly, the handful became ten, then twenty, finally maybe fifty. They lined up on deck, frantically waving their arms. Flames leapt behind them. A man with a Southern accent screamed, “Help us, for God’s sake!” A little boy cried, “Don’t leave us, please!”

  Micah’s fingers tightened on the AK. When desperate people started diving overboard and swimming toward them, it would be a wall of humanity … He would have no choice but to fire. My God, these people could be from Georgia. My family might be aboard this ship.

  Anna ordered, “Martin, turn the boat away. Now.”

  The roar of flames grew deafening. They were close enough that heat warmed Micah’s face.

  Nadai stared fixedly at the children on the ship, as though imagining himself up there with them, then he shifted the sail so that the boat swung eastward toward the distant shoreline of Israel.

  Relieved, Micah nonetheless couldn’t help but stare at the children on the lido deck who were screaming at them to come back. People barely strong enough to walk started throwing themselves overboard, floundering in the water.

  Nadai never looked back. He kept a firm grip on the sail. The waves became more violent as they neared the shore. The boat rode up, then plunged down into a trough, only to soar up on the crest of another wave.

  Even from a half mile out, Micah could smell the acrid scent that wafted from the shore. Rotten latrine.

  The spray.

  “Do you smell that, Asher?”

  She lifted her nose to scent the wind. “Same smell that filled the air the night Bir Bashan was destroyed.” The sea breeze fluttered auburn curls around Anna’s granite-hard face. “What is that smell, Hazor?”

  “CW.”

  “What’s CW?” Martin asked.

  “Chemical weapon.”

  Something about the cut-crystal intensity of Anna’s gaze gripped Micah’s heart in a stranglehold. It was a silent promise. No matter what happened, when the fight came, she would not run away. She would be the one he could turn to for help.

  As waves shoved their boat closer to the shore, Micah scanned the landscape drifting by. Dead animals scattered the beach. Apparently, they’d managed to run to the water before they’d succumbed.

  To the north, massive bomb craters gleamed in the moonlight. All roads into Israel had been obliterated, as if the spray had failed and the Israelis had resorted to sealing their border the only way they could. Or had it been a multinational force? A few lights glimmered in the distance, but they had a soft glow, like candles or oil lamps. Someone had survived. That was obvious. But the survivors may have been refugees who’d made it across the border after the spray dissipated and the bombing campaign ceased.

  Anger shook Nadai’s voice: “Why did they do this? What possible purpose—”

  “Firewall,” Micah said.

  “Firewall…” Anna whispered and bowed her head. Ash cascaded from the moonlit sky, coating her hair. “Dear God.”

  Micah wondered why it had taken him so long to realize that his mission at Bir Bashan had been a minuscule part of a plan to create a massive quarantine zone. Operation Mount of Olives. Images of Jesus healing on the mount filled him. Peaceful images of salvation. Is that what the architects of Mount of Olives had believed? That they were saving the world?

  Had they?

  How far northward did the quarantine zone extend? All the way to Europe? Across China? Had North America escaped? The passengers on the cruise ships might have boarded at a European port. He knew lots of people from Atlanta who flew to Rome to take cruises. Maybe the disease had not reached North America.

  Surely, as soon as the United States realized what was happening, it must have grounded every plane, blocked every port, fired upon any ships that came close to American shores.

  Had they acted soon enough?

  You’re being a doomsayer. Mount of Olives, as far as you know, was only operational in Africa. The Joint Chiefs may have extended it into the Middle East to create a buffer zone, but that’s as much as you can guess. Don’t start jumping to wild conclusions.

  Nadai pulled his oar out of the water and turned to look at Anna. “The dead on the cruise ship. They resembled the sick people in Bir Bashan, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” she softly answered. “The Angels of Light have arrived.”

  Micah stopped breathing. Almost imperceptibly, his arms shook … I swear to God. They’re straight out of the ancient texts …

  Nadai’s gaze drifted back out to sea where fiery glows bobbed upon the dark water. “But if they’re plague ships from Europe, and the plane passengers were Scandinavian…” He couldn’t fini
sh the sentence.

  Anna nodded. “It’s probably reached all the way from the Arctic to Australia.”

  “Maybe, but those passengers were all Americans. What about America?”

  Anna blinked solemnly and looked away.

  CHAPTER 33

  OCTOBER 19. 3:00 A.M. NORTHERN ISRAEL.

  A light drizzle fell over their starlit beach camp. Martin tugged his fedora lower and held his hands over the tiny fire, rubbing them to warm them. Anna slept on the other side of the flames. She’d rolled up in her blanket, then shrugged her slicker on over the top to keep dry. Only he and Hazor were awake. The captain cradled his AK-74 in his arms beneath his oiled canvas poncho. The weapon made a distinctive bulge. He had propped himself on packs beyond the halo of firelight, so the flames wouldn’t night-blind him. Anna did the same thing when it was her watch, which it would be in another two hours.

  All night long Martin had been fighting to get the scrawled messages of the dead out of his mind: To Margaret … For Donny … For some bizarre reason, they had affected him even more deeply than the pleading faces of the children. He didn’t know why. It just seemed odd that in their last moments people would write messages to loved ones thousands of miles away. Did they actually believe those people might one day see them? Perhaps it was just that seeing the names of their loved ones in big letters reminded them of who they were, where they’d come from, and what was important in their lives.

  Martin stared at Anna. She’d pulled up her black plastic hood to keep her head dry; it draped around her face in sculpted firelit folds. Even in deep sleep, her expression remained tortured.

  He’d always considered himself to be a fiercely rational being, but the cries of the children on that ship had stripped away his reason and left behind a wild-eyed panic filled only with the overwhelming need to save them. The fact that his brain could shut off like that was a frightening revelation. Is that what Anna feared? Is that why she couldn’t fully trust him? Did Hazor fear the same thing? That Martin would fall apart at the exact moment they needed him most?… Would he?