Dead Wrong

by Richard Phillips

  This time when Tupac began laughing, he found that he couldn’t stop, even when it changed to a loud, sputtering gurgle in the back of his throat.

  As the timer ticked to three, then to two, Tupac managed two last, joy-filled words that distorted Conrad Altmann’s face into a snarling mask of fury.

  “Time’s up!”

  Then the world came apart around him.

  CHAPTER 105

  With a mental count ticking down in his head, Jack again felt the dimensional shift that placed him back in a past that wasn’t his. But this time he was ready. He’d just learned that rage could pull him back to the present, and right now rage was in plentiful supply.

  Jack took another step forward, thought about the woman he could no longer see or feel in his arms, thought about the being that was trying to make Jack sacrifice both their lives, and let that liquid red rage take him. Around Jack, the tunnel shifted so that it was once again dimly illuminated by his bobbing flashlight beam. When he rounded a corner with Janet Price held in his arms, his mental count now stood at thirty.

  Ahead, the rock pile from the cave-in rose almost to the ceiling. Jack stumbled, shifted Janet’s body over his right shoulder, and scrambled up.

  Twenty seconds.

  At the crawl space that would take him to the other side, Jack lay Janet down and squeezed through. Turning he reached back, grabbed her arms, and roughly pulled her through. Only then did he notice that he’d dropped the flashlight on the far side.

  Shit!

  Ten seconds.

  Jack grabbed Janet’s limp body and again slung it up over his shoulder as he scrabbled down the rubble pile. When he reached the bottom, he ran blindly, hit the wall with his left shoulder, and staggered to his knees. As he tried to climb back to his feet, the floor of the passage lurched. The shockwave propagating away from the altar cave impacted the blockage, causing another section of the roof to give way behind him.

  Jack stumbled forward blindly with Janet in his arms, keeping his left hand on the wall. Thick dust swirled through the passage making it impossible to draw breath without coughing. For a moment, the rumble behind him grew in volume and then subsided as Jack rounded a last bend and halted. Far ahead there was a feeble glow of light from the outside world, a sliver of moonlight that sliced through the swirling dust.

  The dead man’s corpse still lay sprawled through the entrance. Jack’s next step felt oddly squishy, and he realized that his foot now rested on another man’s corpse. Then, from outside, he vaguely heard voices and froze, his battered brain struggling to cope with this new complication. As he gently lowered Janet to the ground and readied himself for the action he felt coming, a tired thought edged its way past his natural defenses.

  Christ! Can this night get any better?

  CHAPTER 106

  Janet felt something sting her cheek, tried to brush it away with her hand, and then felt it again, this time more painful than the last. Then she remembered. Dolf had hit her on the side of the head. Now he must be beating her while she was down.

  She lashed out with her hands, but he caught them. As Janet started to kick, the voice that had been speaking finally registered. Jack’s voice.

  “Easy, Janet. It’s me.”

  Janet stiffened, opened her eyes, and saw nothing but darkness. She tried to take a deep breath, but inhaled more dust than air, and succumbed to a fit of coughing. When it abated, she spoke, her voice a hoarse croak that echoed in the darkness.

  “Jack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it over? Are we safe?”

  He paused.

  “I wouldn’t be waking you if we were.”

  She struggled to a sitting position, the pain in her skull so intense she thought she would puke her guts out. But she could do that later. Right now she needed to know where they stood.

  “What’s our situation?”

  “Ahh, let’s see. We have no guns, no night-vision equipment, no flashlights, and no working communications gear. An explosion has collapsed the tunnel behind us, trapping us against the entrance we crawled through to get in here this evening. It’s still open but I hear men moving around outside. I’m thinking bad guys.”

  “Jesus, Jack! You woke me up to tell me that?”

  “You asked.”

  Janet rolled to her knees, fought off another bout of nausea, and managed to climb to her feet, guided by Jack’s hand on her right arm.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked.

  “This is Bolivia. It looks like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for us.”

  Janet knew he was trying to use levity to help clear her head, but it wasn’t working. Another memory returned, elevating her heart rate. The last time she’d seen Jack, he’d walked like a zombie right into a Nazi ambush in the altar cave, almost getting them both killed. She couldn’t really assume he was functioning normally.

  Jack continued.

  “I checked the dead guy here at my feet for weapons and found some full magazines and a knife, but nothing else. I want you to help me search the rest of the passage to see if we can find any guns that he or others may have dropped during the initial fight.”

  “And if we don’t find any?”

  “Then I’m going to try to drag the dead guy lying in the opening back inside without getting killed. He has a weapon in his holster.”

  Janet took a breath, coughed again, and tried to blink the crustiness out of her unseeing eyes. Then, angry at the situation and angry at Jack for making it worse, she lowered herself to all fours and began searching the floor around her. Her voice left little doubt about her mood.

  “Let’s get started. I don’t have all goddamn night.”

  CHAPTER 107

  “Jack, are you in there?”

  The voice echoed through the opening and down the passageway to where Jack groped through the darkness on his hands and knees, gradually working his way methodically back toward the entrance. At first he thought he had imagined it. Then he heard Janet’s urgent whisper from beside him.

  “Who is calling for you?”

  The voice called out again, louder this time.

  “Yo, Jack. Can you hear me?”

  Jack’s reply reflected the mixture of surprise and relief he felt at hearing the familiar Hebrew accent.

  “Efran? Is anyone with you?”

  “Just Pablo.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Except for some scattered dead guys, we’re it.”

  Jack heard Janet rise to her feet, and he did likewise. Janet reached the opening two steps ahead of him, crawled over the corpse and out of the hole, taking the dead man’s gun as she exited.

  “That guy looks better than you two,” Efran said as Jack climbed out through the hole and stood in the pale moonlight.

  To Jack’s left Pablo crouched at the southeast corner of the Kalasasaya ruin’s outer wall, rifle at the ready.

  “You didn’t see any other Nazis when you got here?”

  “They were here, but when the explosion collapsed part of the inner wall, they hauled ass back toward town.”

  As glad as he was to see the man, Jack spoke the accusation anyway.

  “I thought you told us that you two wouldn’t give us any active support.”

  Efran laughed. “I said not much.”

  Janet interrupted. “How about we cut the small talk and get the hell out of here?”

  Efran shook his head. “I’d love to offer you a ride, but our vehicle crapped out about a mile from here, and we had to abandon it. Same story with our cell phones.”

  Jack pointed east.

  “Our van’s parked a couple of kilometers that way, and it still works.”

  Efran’s grin revealed teeth that looked whiter than normal in the light of the quarter moon. He unholstered an H&K P30S, handing it and two extra magazines to Jack.

  “Just in case.”

  Despite Efran’s assurance that they were alone at the ruin, Jack ducked low, moving from
cover to cover in a zigzag pattern that turned the two kilometers into three. When they reached the van, Jack reconnected the battery and closed the hood. Janet started to climb into the driver’s seat, but Efran stopped her.

  “Pablo can drive. Hop in the back, and I’ll take a look at that head wound.”

  Janet shrugged, tossed the darker man the keys, and followed Efran into the back of the panel van. Jack came last, sliding the rear side door closed behind him. When the engine rumbled to life, Jack breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the floor next to Janet, leaning back against the driver’s side panel.

  For an hour and thirty minutes, Pablo drove along rutted dirt roads, without headlights, maintaining enough speed to make Efran’s attempts at first aid less than perfect. By the light of a red lens flashlight, Efran cleaned and bound Janet’s and Jack’s wounds, and even though the bandages didn’t look pretty, they were effective.

  Finally the van turned off onto a rocky trail across the high desert and then slowed as Pablo parked it inside an abandoned barn. Efran slid the side door open and stepped out, switching on his flashlight. Following close behind, Jack’s nose filled with the smell of dust and old hay. As Efran swept the flashlight beam around, Jack noted the partially fallen roof, broken stalls, rotting leather scraps, and rusted blacksmith tools scattered about. Seeing boxes piled next to one of the stalls, Jack stepped forward to take a closer look.

  “Military rations and water?” Jack asked.

  Efran spread his arms welcomingly.

  “This is as close to a safe house as I can do. Help me unload your stuff from the van. You’ll be staying awhile.”

  Janet tested a pile of straw with her boot, a movement that sent two large rats scurrying away into a dark corner. When she turned back toward Jack, her head swathed in red-stained bandages, she spoke just one word.

  “Outstanding.”

  CHAPTER 108

  Jack Gregory’s battle beneath the Tiahuanaco Ruins had drained Anchanchu, an altogether new experience in the infinity that comprised the mind worm’s existence. Panic had forced it to try to take control of its human host. The destruction of one host’s mind to prevent the alien device from being used to recall the Others was a sacrifice worth making. But despite the mental battering Anchanchu had delivered, Jack Gregory had somehow managed to reassert self-control at the critical moment.

  More startling, Jack had resisted his own desire to use the staff to free himself of his immortal rider, something Francisco Pizarro González had accomplished five centuries earlier. Instead, Jack had yielded to an irrational emotional urge to save the human female.

  Despite the explosion and the resulting collapse that had prevented the humans from completing the activation sequence, Anchanchu knew that no amount of falling rock could destroy the Sun Staff or its altar. As it evaluated the probabilities associated with the changed timelines that spiraled outward from this event, Anchanchu remained troubled. Jack Gregory had chosen to allow the native priest to bury the artifact instead of using the staff to destroy itself.

  Anchanchu shuddered at the knowledge that humanity’s chances of survival had just dwindled. Yet at each future inflection point where human survival remained possible, Jack Gregory danced. Apparently, it was a dance that Anchanchu was destined to share.

  CHAPTER 109

  Admiral Riles stared through the op-center glass at the ongoing activity in the war room. After more than six hours, the NSA’s unauthorized nighttime cyber-attack on a backwater section of Bolivia continued. As expected, in addition to the direct tasks posted on the game board, a number of much more difficult objectives had arisen, designed to mask this evening’s NSA activity from other intelligence services, foreign or domestic.

  Once again Jamal Glover was leading the game board, much to the dismay of his closest rivals. But they still had time to overtake him. Regardless of how Janet came out on the ground, Riles planned on tightening the cyber-vice throughout the night. When he pulled the plug just before 5:00 A.M., he’d let the Bolivians decide whether the disruption had been caused by solar flares, Shining Path rebels, or evil spirits. In the meantime, his crew would keep them so screwed up that they would have no hope of mounting a coordinated response to the assault Janet and Jack had initiated.

  Levi Elias stepped to his side.

  “Sir, we’ve just received an encrypted satcom message from Janet Price. During the battle inside the altar cave, Tupac Inti triggered a suicide explosion that also killed Conrad Altmann and the woman we believe to be Dr. Bones McCoy. I’m sorry to report that Janet believes that the Sun Staff was also destroyed when the ceiling of the altar cave collapsed.”

  Riles gritted his teeth and looked away in an attempt to hide his bitter disappointment at this news. An operation into which he’d invested significant resources and three years of detailed planning had failed to recover the Sun Staff. That meant the NSA would never get the chance to study an artifact so intricate in design and manufacture that it was impossible to imagine how the Incas had made it.

  Conrad Altmann and Klaus Barbie had been so fascinated by the Incan Sun Staff and the legends surrounding it that they had come to believe it was of alien manufacture, that the solution to its symbolic codes would somehow trigger a beacon that would summon its makers back to earth where they would restore the master race.

  That was, of course, complete bullshit, but apparently Tupac Inti had also believed it. It was one more thing Riles had overlooked. How could he have seen that Tupac would destroy his people’s most sacred artifact, all to prevent Altmann from doing what? Calling E.T.?

  Admiral Riles swallowed hard, thrust the bitterness from his thoughts, and shifted gears to something he could do something about.

  “What about Janet and Jack?”

  “They both suffered minor injuries but have established a temporary base of operation at a remote safe house.”

  “Do we have their location?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Riles took a deep breath and turned to look directly into his chief analyst’s hawkish face.

  “Okay, Levi. Keep the War Room going until five in the morning, then shut it down. In the meantime, I want an exfil plan for Janet and Jack on my desk by noon.”

  “And if Jack won’t come?”

  “I’m betting he will.”

  As Admiral Riles walked out of the op-center and back to his office, he tried to find a bright spot in this whole disaster. But the way he felt right now, if there was one, he just couldn’t see it.

  CHAPTER 110

  Stefan Rosenstein walked into the Meier-on-Rothschild tower, nodded at the security guard, and took the private elevator directly to the penthouse apartment that occupied the 38th and 39th floors. Unbuttoning his black cashmere topcoat, he hung it in the coat closet and walked directly to his office.

  Since Miriam had taken their daughters to visit her sister in Jerusalem, Stefan had the apartment to himself for the next two days. That was good because he had much to do. Last week’s events in Bolivia had not gone as he had wanted, but what in this life does? News of Tupac Inti’s death had saddened him greatly.

  Stefan thought about going to his office, but instead walked to the wet bar and filled a glass with Chivas Regal 25. Stopping to stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over Tel Aviv to the Mediterranean Sea, he swirled the amber liquid below his nose, and sipped, letting the Scotch spread its warm glow from his esophagus down to his stomach.

  Bolivian officials had released a statement saying that the army had successfully interdicted an attack by Shining Path rebels on the historically valuable Tiahuanaco ruins. Although a number of people had been killed during the attack and a small part of the ruins had sustained damage, the heroic actions of the Bolivian military and police units had defeated the rebels and prevented them from destroying the ancient site.

  There had been no mention of UJC or other neo-Nazi involvement, but a separate story reported multiple attacks on Conrad Altmann’s Co
chabamba estate by a rival neo-Nazi faction. Conrad Altmann himself was reported missing amid growing suspicion that he had been kidnapped by the same rival group and executed.

  Despite the propaganda spread by the Bolivian government, news of Tupac Inti’s death and his role in killing Conrad Altmann had leaked out. Stefan’s man, Pablo Griego, had made sure of it, and the senator couldn’t have stopped the loyal Quechua man if he had wanted to. The Quechua people deserved to have Tupac’s heroism confirmed. They would mourn the loss of their charismatic shaman, but his uniting influence on the indigenous peoples would linger alongside his legend.

  Stefan’s thoughts turned to the Nazi hunters who had spent so many years tracking down Klaus Barbie, finally arranging his arrest and extradition to France, where he’d died in prison. It gave Stefan great satisfaction to know that, by hiring The Ripper, he had played a significant role in stamping out the Butcher of Lyon’s undead agenda. And by so doing, Stefan had helped free many Bolivians, both native and of German descent, Jews and Gentiles, from a ruthless neo-Nazi godfather’s yoke.

  It troubled Stefan that The Ripper had refused to take payment for this job. Though it was true that The Ripper hadn’t managed to save Tupac Inti, he had accomplished the underlying goal behind that task, something worth far more than the amount Stefan had offered him.

  As he watched the bright winter sun sparkle off the Mediterranean Sea, Stefan shook his head. It was nice to know that an archaic sense of honor lingered in one exceptionally rare individual. Of course, in the end, it would get him killed. Such unrealistic attitudes always did.

  CHAPTER 111

  Sitting at a small table outside one of the many cafés that lined Miami’s South Beach, Jack sipped his cappuccino as he awaited Janet Price’s arrival. The two weeks that had passed since that night Tupac had blown up the altar cave had healed most of his physical wounds. The mental trauma was taking a bit longer. That was the difference between winning and losing. Though they’d stopped Conrad Altmann, this sure hadn’t been a win. Not for Janet and not for Jack. Jack wasn’t used to losing, and he didn’t like it.