[Anthology] Killer Thrillers

by Nick Thacker

  “What’s the last site?”

  “This is one of my favorites,” Whittenfield said. “Easter Island.”

  “The island with those giant stone heads?”

  “Yes, known the world over for its sculptures, called Moai, somehow built and placed individually by the Rapa Nui people.”

  “Wow. You’re sure this is accurate? I mean, those are all pretty significant places, and you mean to tell me they’re all points on the same line?”

  “Yes, exactly on the line — almost as if they were placed there to coincide with the Great Circle around the globe. Here — check your messages. I just sent some images rendered on my lab computer. I plugged in the longitude and latitude coordinates of each of the symbols’ corresponding sites, and then had my terrestrial mapping software simply ‘connect the dots.’”

  Bryce checked his messages, finding the first image.

  “The first is one of the earth, in its standard elliptical shape. You’ll see the equator mapped as well. But you’ll also notice a second line — which also completes a full circle around the earth, but starts at 30 degrees south of the equator and extends to 30 degrees north of the equator.”

  Bryce listened as he stared at the small screen. Frustrated, he wanted to upload the image to a computer and view it in its full-size. He knew Vilocek would be eager for Whittenfield’s update as well, so it wouldn’t be out of the question to ask for the use of the laptop again.

  “The next image,” Whittenfield continued, “which I’ve just finished and sent to you, is of the earth in a two-dimensional typical map distortion, with the same circle stretched across from left to right as a line on that map. As I’ve kept true north and south intact, you’ll see the equator still runs through the center horizontally, so the ‘circle’ from before actually appears like a waveform.

  ”Finally, on both of the maps, I’ve plotted the coordinates of each of the sites. You’ll see them on the line as well.”

  “Bryce — you all need to understand something. This crystal — or whatever it is — has a larger implication than we originally thought. The creators of this crystal we’re looking for — the same people who probably created the hidden shafts and chamber below Giza — have obviously laid clues throughout the entire world pointing to the crystal.”

  “Obviously,” Bryce said. “They want us to find it, right?”

  “Perhaps — but we must not ignore the possibility that this is all something else entirely. Maybe the creators of the crystal weren’t trying to lead us to the crystal, but away from it. Bryce, this could be a warning — do you think there’s something about the crystal that would require it to be locked away forever?”

  “I don’t know,” Bryce said. “I’m not sure exactly what we’re after here, but I’ll let you know as we get closer.” He let out a tired breath. “I’m going to go and present this to Vilocek; thanks for the input. Oh — and one more thing,” he added.

  “What is it?”

  “We don’t have time to search all of these sites. Which one do we check?”

  “That I don’t know. The symbols, other than their individual locations around the well shaft, are all exactly the same. There’s nothing to differentiate them from each other. Unfortunately, you’ll have to depend on Vilocek and his men for that.”

  “Sir…” Bryce hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “Those notebooks of your father’s — I kept meaning to ask you. I saw one before we met, back in Iraq. I was given orders to locate and retrieve one from the encampment there, as you recall.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, it was in an envelope, one addressed with only two initials. We were attacked back in Egypt by a man who Vilocek believes will be after us from now on. Do you know anything about that? A man named Madu — ?”

  Bryce was interrupted when he noticed a shadow moving behind him. He quickly hung up the phone and turned around, finding himself face to face with Beka.

  “Dr. Vilocek has been waiting — and he wants to know what your boss knows.” Beka turned toward the living room, but quickly spun back to face Bryce. “Captain,” he said mockingly, smirking at Bryce, “I shouldn’t have to tell you what’ll happen if you try to hide something.”

  Bryce simply nodded, and followed the giant of a man into the living room of the run-down house.

  33

  1:36 am

  “So which is it, then?” A frustrated Vilocek asked.

  “He didn’t know,” Bryce said. “He’s only figured out the location of each site, and that’s it.”

  “We don’t have time to search each of these locations, Captain. We need to know exactly where the crystal is, extract it, and — “

  “Why?” Bryce interrupted. “Why do you need it now — can’t you send teams to each place? What’s your hurry?”

  Vilocek glared at him. “We have a deadline; imposed on us by the crystal itself.”

  “What do you mean, a deadline?” Professor Andrews asked.

  Vilocek kept glaring at Bryce as he answered. “The crystal, as we’ve found from the original sample in the lab, has a half-life. It is actually degrading. From what we can tell, it’s close to 12,000 years old, and it degrades at an increasing rate with each passing day.”

  “So it’ll be completely broken down sometime in the near future?” Wayne asked.

  “Yes — in June, my scientists back in New Mexico determined that it will be completely degraded by sometime late this year. We’ve been unable to pinpoint the exact date, but we can assume that we have only about a week to find and stabilize the crystal.”

  “And — you do know how to do that, correct?” Professor Andrews asked.

  Vilocek grinned. “We’re working on it.” His smile quickly faded. “But for now, we need to figure out where the stone is hiding. Professor Jensen, I suggest you and Bryce put your heads together and get me something I can use.”

  Jensen Andrews nodded, and then frowned; he stared vacantly at a point on the floor, perplexed.

  Corinne looked at him, realized that he’d just remembered something, and was trying to piece it together in his mind. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “There’s something we’re missing. The locations, the symbols — they’re all trying to tell us something, but I can’t figure it out. So far, everything we’ve seen from these clues — and whoever left them — is a pattern; there’s order in this all. We need to look at the data from that perspective, and we should be able to — “

  “Petra.” Corinne was staring at a map that Karn was scribbling on a large sheet of paper.

  “Petra?” Vilocek and Jensen asked simultaneously.

  “Yes! Look,” she said, shoving Karn aside to get closer to the map. He shot a murderous look at her, but Vilocek shook his head as Corinne examined the drawing. “It’s the northernmost point of all the locations, and since the line travels both north and south of the equator, don’t you think they would have acknowledged the significance of Petra’s location?”

  “Each of the sites are perfectly aligned to the cardinal points,” Jensen said, considering, “so they certainly included magnetic direction in their considerations.”

  “And we don’t have anything else to go on,” Vilocek said, making up his mind. “I’m not completely convinced, but we can look into it more on the way. Load up. We’re leaving.”

  Plus, he thought to himself, we’ll be in a much better position to meet up with the others. Vilocek knew that they couldn’t maintain the status quo with Bryce’s team for much longer. They were at an impasse, and he knew that if it wasn’t for Whittenfield’s orders and the three civilians, Bryce would have organized some sort of mutiny by now.

  It would only be a matter of time before Bryce realized this as well. Vilocek needed help, and he knew Madu Jabari was no longer willing to provide it. Although Vilocek had other friends in low places, he wasn’t entirely confident in their loyalty.

  Loyal or not, money was an
excellent motivating tool — and Vilocek had plenty of it. He went to a back room and opened his laptop to make a call. After three rings, the screen expanded and a quiet voice greeted him.

  Vilocek quickly explained the situation. The other man needed no clarification, and asked no questions. The entire conversation lasted less than a minute.

  As Vilocek shut down the computer and collected his things, Karn rushed through the door.

  “Boss, we got something — “ he blurted. “Beka’s contact in the states just radioed in with news. They’ve been monitoring the frequencies around Cairo and Giza. Your guy Jabari’s on the move.”

  “Where are they headed?” Vilocek asked, shouldering his bag and hurrying out. The others were already packed, all of them grabbing gear and starting outside.

  “We don’t know yet,” Karn said, “But they left Giza around 0200 hours, headed almost due east.”

  Vilocek pulled up short. “East? They’re heading to Petra!”

  “Looks that way, sir.”

  “Bastard! He doesn’t even want the crystal! He just wants to keep us from getting it!” Vilocek cursed and paced around the room. Everyone had stopped what they were doing, and all eyes were on Vilocek.

  Madu Jabari was sharp, Vilocek knew, and that attribute only increased when the man was angry. Now Jabari was out for blood.

  Their blood.

  Jabari had had enough time to amass a small army of killers and beat them to Jordan. He’d be waiting for them.They’d be walking into a trap. Vilocek wasn’t about to let that happen without stacking the odds in his favor.

  He looked around the room, his features betraying nothing of his inner turmoil. He cared nothing for these people — they were here to serve him; to deliver what he’d fought to preserve and control for so many years. His own men, though loyal, were no more important to him than an old pair of shoes, just waiting to be replaced. He’d used them many times, and he would use them again now. Their death or survival meant nothing — they were all easily replaced.

  But for now, they were his only path to the crystal. “Everyone outside,” he ordered. “We’re going to Petra, but we’ll stop along the way for reinforcements. Jabari won’t know what hit him.”

  He hoped he was making the right call.

  34

  2:22 am - Petra, Jordan

  Madu Jabari walked up and down the corridor at the entrance to Al-Khazneh, the City Treasury at Petra. The large inner room was barren, except for a few tourist brochures that had yet to be retrieved by the morning cleaning staff. Two men were with him, and their crisscrossing flashlight beams danced from one wall to the next, taking in every feature of the room. The stark contrast between this plain internal room and the impressive façade outside amazed Madu. From the outside, this new Wonder of the World was a stunning example of the pinnacle of ancient architecture and design.

  Popularized by the Indiana Jones movie that used Petra for its climactic scene, the city had been unknown to the western world for centuries. It was originally a Nabataean outpost, built around the 6th century BC, and was known as a trading center and the capital of the Nabataean kingdom. Its impressive water delivery systems made it a long-standing powerhouse, and when the Romans conquered the area shortly after the 1st century AD they continued to expand and build out the incredible site.

  A massive earthquake in the 7th century brought much of the water system to ruins, rendering most of the city useless, and after Saladin conquered the Middle East in AD 1189, Petra was all but forgotten to the West, until a Swiss explorer named Johann Ludwig Burckhardt rediscovered it in the late 1800s.

  Madu had been here many times before, as a boy. His father had wanted Madu and his brother Heri to be well-versed in their ancestry, so they spent a significant portion of their childhood traveling with him and his books. He trained them in the world’s important languages — which proved useful later in Madu’s political career — as well as the ancient histories of both eastern and western worlds.

  But part of their learning included tall tales of treasures, legends of gods and their epic battles with men, and the centuries-long dramas that seemed to put classic literary works to shame. While most fathers would readily admit to the stories’ fictional nature, Madu’s father insisted that they were not myths, but actually true stories that had been passed from generation to generation, becoming twisted, contorted, and misconstrued throughout the ages. He told the stories with a sense of wonder and pride, and told the boys that beneath the layers of human hyperbole were stories that had become famous not because they were fantastic, but because they were true historic accounts of their ancestors.

  One story in particular that had stuck with Madu was referred to by his father as the “al-Bal'laorah al-Qadeem,” or “Ancient Crystal.” Madu could still hear his father’s voice, softened by the thick red Omar Khayyam wine that he constantly drank, telling him and his brother about an ancient race of people who had built a perpetual power source from a mysterious crystal, only to have it eventually consume them and wipe their civilization from the face of the earth.

  He told of the few survivors who eventually rebuilt on a much smaller scale. They took the crystal and hid it away, insisting that no race of men would ever be worthy or capable of controlling it. They believed that the original crystal had been given to them — or left behind — by a visiting race from a distant planet.

  Their goal, Madu’s father had told his boys, was to build a map leading back to where they hid the crystal, so its rightful owners could one day return for it. They wanted to ensure that no human being could ever find the crystal, and to that end they built their map in such a way that would also be nearly impossible for people to find. This map was thought to be a line made up of places that, when viewed properly — from above, as the aliens would have seen the earth — would reveal the location of the crystal.

  Unfortunately for Madu’s father, no one knew where any of these places were, so a worldwide “connect the dots” was impossible.

  Madu wasn’t sure how much of it he believed. Most great civilizations fell, and many idolized or even worshiped symbols or objects. This civilization sounded no different, and yet his own father had been so carried away with discovering the treasures of this lost race that he’d dragged his children around the Middle East looking for symbols and artifacts that might lead him to the crystal.

  Madu’s mother had passed away when he was five and Heri only three. Taking it as a sign that he was then free to spend his life wandering and searching, he and his sons became no better than gypsies; the boys spending no more than a few months at a time in one school or another. By the time Madu was old enough to move away, his father had drank himself into a perpetual state of incompetence, and Heri had joined the Egyptian army. Heri died two months later in Operation Badr in 1973, and six months after that Madu was attending his father’s funeral in Cairo.

  Now, almost 40 years later, Madu had reached a high point in his political career and was only a few years from retirement. He had climbed high up the bureaucratic ladder, and his life and achievements would be considered a success to most of his peers.

  But there was one small thing that Madu could never let go. His greatest weakness, his superiors (and his father) had always said, was his anger, brought on by a need for revenge.

  Madu felt that anger now. He had been duped; humiliated by someone he thought he could trust. Vilocek had destroyed and desecrated a sacred archeological and cultural site, and wreaked havoc on Madu’s homeland. The men who had been killed at Giza would be avenged.

  He would punish Vilocek for what he had done. And if, in the process, the criminal led him to the prize his father had longed for, all the better. Uncovering an ancient artifact alone would be a boon to his career, but if his father’s legend was even the least bit true, it might be worth much more.

  He looked once more around the great hall.

  “There’s nothing here,” he snapped.

  One of the soldier
s looked at him. Nervously, he asked, “Are you sure this is the place?”

  “My father would not have dragged me here 20 times if he thought the legend pointed somewhere else.” The other soldier’s eyebrows arched slightly, and Madu wondered himself whether or not his father had simply been crazy. He sighed under his breath and resumed looking around the room. He called for his second-in-command to report on their preparations, then left the Treasury.

  35

  3:24 am - Petra, Jordan

  Vilocek and his strange entourage had arrived in Jordan and met up with the Israeli team Vilocek had hired, and the entire group was now en route to Petra. The four Israelis were all ex-special forces; now mercenaries-for-hire who certainly looked the part. They briefly sized up their new commanding officer and his ragtag team of misfits, then fell in, chuckling to themselves.

  Vilocek didn’t bother with pleasantries. He scrutinized his new men, clearly trying to assess what he’d gotten for his money. Finally he turned and addressed the group.

  “We will enter the city from the east, from the main tourist booth and gates through the area they call the Siq — it’s a crevice in the cliff that runs from here to the open plaza in front of the Treasury.”

  He turned to the Israelis. “You are to remain on high alert throughout this mission. Our intel indicates that we may be walking into a firefight. We are expecting resistance; we don’t know how much.”

  “Firing orders?” One of them asked in a thickly accented voice.

  Vilocek pondered a moment. “We have no reason to believe that we will meet any civilians inside the city –– you are to engage and overcome any hostile forces, but your primary objective will be keeping the rest of us alive.”

  The Israeli nodded and stepped back. Vilocek turned to Bryce. “Madu probably has the jump on us. If he’s not already here, he’ll be right behind us. We need to get in and get out as quickly as possible — no screwing around, and don’t try anything stupid.”