by K. T. Tomb
“He’s the computer whiz, you’ll have to ask him.”
“I will. Hand the phone over to him.”
“Hold on a sec,” Phoe said.
“What, Phoe?” he sighed. He knew that she was going to want to do it alone; go in with guns blazing and he hated when she did that. “The answer is no.”
“Hold on before you say no.”
“I already said no.”
“Would you listen, damn it?”
“I’ll listen for two minutes and then I want you to hand the phone over to Jeremy.”
“I can do it in one.”
Chapter Nineteen
And God raised up against Solomon another adversary, Rezon son of Eliada, who had fled from his master, Hadadezer king of Zobah. When David destroyed Zobah’s army, Rezon gathered a band of men around him and became their leader; they went to Damascus, where they settled and took control. Rezon was Israel’s adversary as long as Solomon lived, adding to the trouble caused by Hadad. So Rezon ruled in Aram (Syria) and was hostile toward Israel. – 1 Kings, Chapter 11.
Knowing what she did about Raqqa and the Caliphate, she had thought that it was completely impossible that they could have any resources favorable to the west hidden anywhere in the city, however, Simon Kessler had proven once more that he was connected to very influential and powerful sources. They had been able to get landing clearance by some miracle that Captain Sanchez didn’t even understand and had only waited inside the parked jet for about 30 minutes before they were escorted out of the plain and into dark SUVs with tinted windows and out of the airport.
They were taken to a part of the city which seemed to be in ruins and hurried down a long, narrow, narrow alley and into what reminded Phoe of a cellar door like so many people in the U.S. had for outside access to their basements. They were hurried down a steep stairway and into a long tunnel, once they were inside the tunnel and they stopped and waited. Phoe heard the grinding sound of heavy stone sliding on stone. Following that sound was complete darkness. After a few moments, dim lights began to advance slowly toward them along the ceiling until the tunnel was lit in an eerie hue.
“Miss Phoenix?” the man who had directed not only them, but the others who assisted him turned toward her. “I am Eli. That’s not my real name, but that’s the only one that you will know me by. I would ask that you and each member of your team respect our security and try not to ask questions that might compromise what we are doing here.”
“We will respect that wish, Eli,” she responded look around at the others who voice their agreement.
“As you already know,” Eli began again, as they started down the long tunnel. “We are in the belly of the lion here. Were we to be compromised it would not only mean instant death, likely by beheading, but would jeopardize some major operations that are taking place throughout the region.”
“Massad?” she asked.
“Miss Phoenix,” he warned. “Please respect what I told you earlier. All you need to know is that my name is Eli and that we are going to get you and two of your team members to Guy Phillips. We have coordinated with the extraction team that was contacted by your boss thanks to some fancy work by one of your team members in getting a tracking device planted on the subject.”
“Two team members, actually,” she corrected.
“Excellent,” he responded. They arrived at a point where another tunnel branched off and Eli stopped and turned toward the group. “Which one of you is Jeremy?”
Jeremy spoke up.
“Please go with Jacob and help brief our electronics team.”
“May I go with him, sir?” he glanced at Phoe, knowing that she would not object. The two often worked together, so it was not out of the ordinary.
Eli looked at Phoe. “It’s your team, Miss Phoenix.”
“Go,” she said, simply.
She, Peter and Jonathan were led further along the tunnel, eventually arriving in a hollowed out, underground room with smaller rooms with doorways only large enough to crawl through.
“This is a command center, which is linked directly to the surveillance center where we sent you other two team members. As soon as they have briefed our electronics teams, they will be escorted out of here to the extraction group. It is our hope that if someone happens to have discovered our existence that they will follow them rather than be alerted to your movements.”
“Understood,” Phoe replied.
“Ma’am, I would offer the three of you a place to relax for a few moments,” he waved toward the smaller rooms. “But I have been informed that time is of the essence.”
“We have your subject located and know exactly how to deliver you to him. I have no idea what your plan for him is. Your boss was pretty secretive about that and I respect that. It is your prerogative to let me in on your intentions and ask for advice if you like, I will be accompanying you, however, that will put an end to my time here due to the fact that we cannot risk having me connected to the operation. I’ll go out with you and your team when you are extracted and will not ever be allowed back in the region again.”
“You’re being relieved of your command on our account?”
“Ma’am, you can ask as many questions about me as you like once we’re extracted safely, but let me assure you that I have done plenty and am more than ready to rotate out.”
“Understood,” Phoe replied. She then went into the best detail that she could about what it was that they intended to do once they caught up with Phillips, before she could finish, however, one of the nearby operators called out.
“Eli, we’ve got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“The surveillance team just told me that the subject is on the move and headed directly toward a large, heavily armored coalition division outside of the city. Satellite is picking up only one civilian carrier, but the subject is definitely in that vehicle. What the hell is he doing?”
“He’s going to test the ring,” Phoe whispered to Peter while Eli stepped over to the monitor alongside his subordinate.
“Do you really believe the ring works?” Peter replied in the same tone.
“I do,” she said. “But even if I’m wrong, we damned sure won’t be able to find that ring once that armored column finishes scattering him everywhere.”
“Miss Phoenix, if you intend to recover the item that you are after, we better get a move on,” Eli interrupted. “If we move right now, we can cut him off.”
“What about Jeremy and Eric?”
“They’re already on their way out,” Eli replied.
“Wow!” Jonathan exclaimed. “I didn’t even have a chance to hang up my hat.”
Eli allowed one corner of his mouth to turn up in a smile as he glanced at Jonathan. “Trust me, nobody really wants to stay here long. Let’s get moving then.”
The next fifteen minutes passed by so rapidly that it seemed to Phoe like she had blinked and missed it all completely. One moment they were running down a tunnel. The next moment they were in another narrow alley. Quickly after that, they were in the back of a small pickup brandishing a machine gun turret and rushing across the desert at a pace that scared the daylights out of her. How the small pickup remained upright was one mystery that even Thalia Phoenix and her team would never be able to solve.
True to his promise, however, Eli’s driver was able to cut off the “civilian carrier,” which turned out to be a dark SUV, eerily similar to the one that had been sent to retrieve them from the airport. They turned toward the approaching SUV and once they were within range, fired several shots in front of it bringing it to a stop.
As casually as though he had arrived at a restaurant, Phillips stepped out of one of the rear doors of the SUV, while two other passengers bearing AK47s slipped out of the other rear door and took up positions to fire.
“Well, there he is,” Peter said, nudging her.
Phoe took a deep breath and started to climb out of the pickup. Jonathan pulled her back to him.
> “Make sure you stay in front of him. If you get behind him, you’re screwed.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Trust me,” he said. “Stay in front of him.” Jonathan repeated his warning a bit louder a couple more times so that everyone in the pickup heard him.
Phoe slipped out of the pickup and called out. “Guy, stop! You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Ah ha, Thalia Phoenix,” he laughed. “I should have known that you’d track me down. Rather quickly too, your team is impressive. I suppose you had to come see if the ring actually works.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” she called back to him. “We need to deliver that ring to the Vatican where it will be kept hidden and not be able to do any damage.”
“If the Vatican didn’t intend to use it to do damage of its own, then why did they send you looking for it? Why didn’t they just let it stay hidden? Aren’t you curious as to why they want it?”
“Just give me the ring, Guy.”
Phillips just laughed at her and turned the ring on his finger so that the seal was on the palm side of his hand. He raised both hands above his head and smiled at her. “We’ll know if it works in a moment,” he called out in a maniacal voice.
“Guy, no!” She screamed.
“By the power of Solomon,” Phillips cried out.
The explosion of energy that followed was beyond intense.
Chapter Twenty
Phoe, followed by her team, strolled casually down the fishing pier that extended well out into the water in the Port of Haifa. She’d invited Major Levi Mizrahi, who had answered tons of her questions once they were extracted safely, but he had declined her offer. There was some good natured ribbing being passed back and forth between them as was normal, but, for the most part, they were pretty solemn, watching the sun dip closer toward the horizon.
Phoe, lost in her own thoughts about what had taken place a little more than 24 hours before didn’t hear most of the playful banter, but instead, only saw the last image of Alfred Guy Phillips the Fourth at that frozen moment after the name of Solomon left his lips.
She hadn’t been fond of Phillips from the moment they met, but she wasn’t a brute and did not particularly relish watching someone die, especially the way that Phillips had died. The entire moment replayed in her mind, complete with images, sounds, tastes and smells. She was pretty certain that it would never leave her.
Once Guy had pronounced the invocation of the ring, there had been only a split second before the powerful explosion of energy engulfed, not only him, but the SUV, the driver and the other two passengers.
Phoe had instinctively flattened herself into the sand, but looked up to see Phillips, those with him and the SUV, literally vanish in front of her. They were there one moment, particles like on a pixilated monitor in another and then gone.
The instant the explosion took place, it finished and seemed to be sucked right back up into the ring, which fell to the desert sand.
She had taken several steps forward and was standing in front of the small pickup that had carried them out to the desert to intercept Phillips. After the explosion, she looked back over her shoulder at the small pickup, which was completely unharmed.
“Is everybody okay?”
In response, heads began popping up from behind whatever cover the others had taken as each stared at what they were no longer seeing.
“What the hell just happened?” Peter asked.
With no one able to offer an explanation, the question simply hung in the air.
Pushing herself up from the ground, Phoe moved forward, as casually as she could manage and then squatted in the sand next to where Phillips had been standing. She just as casually reached between her feet, scooped up the ring and stood, putting her hands in her pockets as she strolled forward several more paces as if she was looking for traces of the SUV.
“Something from that armored column must have hit them,” Jonathan finally suggested.
“But what the hell was it?” the one who had been manning the machine gun in the bed of the pickup asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Whose armored column is that?” Peter asked, hoping that he could play along with Jonathan’s ruse.
“Russian,” Eli replied. He glanced over at Peter with a knowing look on his face.
Peter winked at him and shook his head ever so slightly.
“Do the Russians have some new weapon?” the driver asked of Eli. “It was almost like some sort of laser.”
“Yeah, I know,” the machine gunner added. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“I’ve heard that the Russians have developed some sort of new laser weapon,” Eli said casually.
“Jesus,” the driver said. “I’m glad they’re on our side this time.”
The machine gunner, seeing the grim expression on Phoe’s face as she turned back toward them, mistook it for disappointment. “Oh, shit, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll bet that laser totally destroyed your ring.”
“Yeah,” she responded with a frown. “I’m pretty sure it’s nothing more than a few thousand more grains of sand.”
“We need to bug out of here and get to the extraction point,” Eli broke in. “Won’t do us any good to get caught out in the open.”
With everyone back in the pickup and clenching every muscle in their bodies as another terrifying ride across the desert began, Phoe leaned closer to Jonathan. “Another gut feeling?”
“Nope, pure fact,” Jonathan replied.
“How did you know that we needed to stay in front of it?”
“The fisherman turned his back and raised his hands over his head,” Jonathan replied.
“You do realize that up until now, that was only a myth, right?”
“Yep, just like that ring is another thousand grains of sand,” he winked.
It wasn’t much of a surprise to her when their extraction team scooped them up in a mish-mash of military vehicles from various countries of manufacture. Neither was it a surprise when they arrived at an Israeli border checkpoint and waved through without incident.
Well inside the border of Israel, Eli had turned to her and introduce himself. He told her of some of the operations that they had been able to carry out right inside the “belly of the lion,” as he liked to refer to it. His conversation was not only filled with pride for the accomplishments that they were making in Raqqa, but he was elated to finally be rotating back home.
“Those little rooms where we slept weren’t all that wonderful,” he said.
By that point in her reverie, her team had reached the end of the pier in the Port of Haifa and a nudge from Peter brought her back to the present.
“So, what are we doing out here?” Jeremy asked.
“We have one last thing to do before wrapping up this mission,” Phoe announced. “However, I want to allow each of you to get a glimpse at what we worked so hard to find before we send it back to where it belongs.”
Phoe pulled the ring out of her pocket and passed it around to each of them. There was no sound, but the lapping of the waves against the pier. Each had a turn to examine it for as long as he wanted and pass it along to the next.
“It does look a lot like a lily,” Eric said, breaking the silence with his comment.
Once the ring had passed through everyone’s hands, it was returned to Phoe. “I hate to do this, but, well, you know…” She turned the ring over in her hands for one final look and then reared back and threw it with all of her might out into the water. It made a loud plunk and was gone.
Strolling back down the pier, no one spoke for several minutes.
“That’s really where it belongs,” Jonathan finally said.
Everyone agreed and they resumed their typical banter, as if the statement was the closing of a finished novel.
When the others had gotten a few paces ahead of them, Peter put his arm around her and leaned in close in order to speak in a low tone. “What are
you going to tell Simon?”
Phoe shrugged in response and then grinned as her phone started to ring. She fished it out of her pocket, pressed the button and spoke only one word. “Yelp.”
“I figured as much,” Simon Kessler replied.
The End
To be continued in:
The Road to Shambhala
The seventh and final Phoenix Quest adventure!
Coming soon!
~~~~~
Also available:
Ghosts of the Titanic
A Novel by K.T. Tomb
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Drums Along the Hudson
A Novel by K.T. Tomb
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Prologue
Manhattan Island in New York City is a place that is associated with wealth, fashion, power and enjoys a rich history in the eyes of many across the world.
Manhattan represents a kind of apex. As Frank Sinatra crooned; ‘If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere’. It conjures up images like Times Square and skyscrapers rising from the asphalt like daisies in early spring. It’s a place of intrigue; one that for tourists and residents alike conjures images of the New York Yankees, Central Park and the television show “Sex and the City.”
Peter Minuit is not the first name that comes to mind when considering Manhattan. There is a subway station named in his honor but it is one of over 400 such stations in the city. Battery Park has a flagstaff named after him and there is a Peter Minuit Plaza near the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Still, most have no idea that he was the Dutchman who purchased the famous island from the Canarsee band of Indians of the Algonkuin-Delaware Federation in 1626 for $24, beads and chatskas.
It would be a story of how a white man got the island for a bargain from the unsuspecting Indian tribe. Details may prove otherwise. A hasty note in a logbook was the only evidence of the sale and the British who came after the Dutch never received official documentation of the transaction; but according to Canarsee legend, there was never a sale. The Indians leased the land to Minuit for $2.40 per year and received an advance payment of twenty-four dollars for the first ten years. Compounded annually at 7.5%, the city of New York owed the Canarsee Indians about seven trillion dollars in back rent. It would take more than seventeen Donald Trumps to pay off the debt or an unacceptable and next to impossible tax hike for New Yorkers. To say the least, New York City was unfathomably delinquent on the rent payments. So much so that, in the event that evidence of Peter Minuit’s transaction with the Canarsee were ever to be found, they would have to give up quite a delectable chunk of the Big Apple just to satisfy the possible claims that would come against the city from the remaining members of the tribe .
