Every so often she’d come across another, satisfied that she’d be the first and most likely only one to see it, and in some cases, whatever it held. The treasures that this planet held were truly incredible. Some of them were earthly treasures, untouched troves of natural wealth. But some were those of human design, forgotten by time.
Like Asia, she thought, remembering one she found hundreds of years ago. It still intrigued her to this day…but it also frightened her too. She wouldn’t go back there. It was best left alone.
The subterranean world as a whole was her safe spot. As long as she willed it to happen, she could stay beneath the surface for years. She could truly be at peace.
Like before…
They hadn’t been called upon in decades until now. It was the final step until the master would finally rise. She and her family would be the key that unlocked his prison. They would be the ones to free him.
“And Hank Boyd is the combination,” she said, continuing to sob at her part in his eventual death. It wouldn’t occur immediately, but it would most definitely come to be.
“Terra!”
14
Tassili n’Ajjer National Park
Algeria
It was just over nine miles from town to the outskirts of the park. Ben used that entire time to try and relay what he’d seen and also have help sent back to the dig site. He selfishly thought only about his son. The other men’s lives were just as valuable, but like most parents, Ben put his own blood above the rest.
“What’s going on, Ben?” Nicole asked through their comms.
“Just out for a stroll, Ms. Andersson.”
“Ben…”
“Right, sorry, Nicole.”
Ben had a habit of calling women he’d recently met by their proper titles. Olivia had also become Ms. Dubois. She, like Nicole, corrected him too. Both women were very informal and it actually made working with them pleasant. He’d, unfortunately, had some bad experiences with the opposite sex in his field. Most were uptight, always trying to outdo their male counterparts. Ben just wanted to study and work. His days of trying to impress women were over. His nasty, heartbreaking divorce all but stamped out his interest in trying.
“Where are you?” Nicole asked quietly, whispering.
“Coming up on Tassili,” he said, glancing in his mirrors. “I’m going to see if I can lose him in the park somewhere. Once I hang up with you I’m going to call in for help.”
“Okay, I’ll have Todd do the same.”
“Already am,” said a familiar voice.
“Todd?” Nicole asked.
“Yep,” he said, nonchalantly. “I have an SOS going through our proper government channels.”
“How’d you hear what I—” Nicole began to ask.
“I’m a cyber ninja, remember?”
Ben just shook his head. Todd had really taken to Kane’s nicknames, carrying a different persona while working. He would sometimes act like a stone-cold killer…with a keyboard and mouse, that is.
“How’s Hank?” Ben asked.
“He’s been better,” Nicole replied, again hushed. “He’s been worse too. Currently, he’s passed out across the backseat. The last fight really took it out of him. He had to go full-on superhero to get us out of South Beach alive. What’s worse…” she paused and mentally reflected on the fight.
“Nicole?” Ben asked.
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I was going to say that what was worse is I don’t think we even hurt the guy.”
Ben thought as much was true. He’d didn’t see exactly what happened to Agent Anu, but he couldn’t fathom the men stationed here not getting off a couple of good shots. He’d at least be injured, but he hadn’t seen any injuries on the man while gazing at him through his zoomed in specs.
Anu… Hmmm.
Ben didn’t think about it before, but he remembered studying the ancient gods of old years ago and remembered the name from somewhere.
“Todd,” he said, “you still there?”
“Yes sir, I am.”
“Look up the name Anu for me—A, N, U,—specifically, what it has to do with the ancient deities.”
He could hear the clicking of keys as he approached the last passable road. He’d have to hoof it on foot from here. He braked hard and grabbed someone’s half-full bottle of lukewarm water from the center console.
It’ll have to do.
“Okay, Ben. I got a hit.”
“Go ahead, Todd,” he said, opening the door and jumping out. Ben ran for the closest cover and got his bearings. With as much time as he’d spent in northern Africa in his life, he’d only come out here once before a few months ago. He figured that if he had to be out in the heat, he’d make it worth the time and effort and keep working, getting the job done quicker. Plus, the underground tunnels were so much cooler. It helped keep the fact that he was a thousand feet underground off his brain.
“Anu was an ancient Sumerian god of the sky if I’m reading this right.”
I knew it!
“You don’t think it’s actually Anu? The god, I mean,” Nicole inquired, thinking what Ben was.
“No way of knowing without asking him, but I do think that it’s either him in the flesh, or that the Sumerian Anu was based off our friend here.”
“Great,” Todd said, “more gods.”
Ben couldn’t agree more. While neither of them was involved in the original happenings in Algeria, they’d been brought up to speed. They’d also seen firsthand what these people could do with the events in D.C. three months ago.
“Nicole?” Todd asked.
Still listening, Ben ran for the next arch looking up and back, seeing the storm incoming. There was a much larger, but lower arch a quarter of a mile away. If Ben could make it under it before the tornado hit, he might have a chance.
“What?” she answered.
“What was your guy’s name again?”
“Susan,” another voice said, yawning. “His name was Susan.”
“Hank?” Ben asked. “How are you feeling?”
“To put it simply… I feel like shit.”
Ben smiled. Hank had a way with words sometimes.
“His name was Susanoo,” Nicole said. “Susan with two O’s at the end.”
“Dang.”
“What?” Ben asked, moving as fast as he could. The sand wasn’t the issue, it was mostly compact and dense. It was the heat and incoming wind that caused him great concern. The temperature threatened to suck the moisture from his body and the wind did its best to knock him down.
“Susanoo was the Japanese god of ocean storms.”
No one spoke. Everyone stayed silent and let it sink in.
“Are we dealing with real gods?” Ben asked. The wind really began to howl now, it was going to be close.
“When it comes to their abilities, yes,” Hank said, “but not them as beings. So far with my experience, these are just over-privileged power-hungry brats with less than righteous goals. We can’t look at them as gods in a spiritual or religious way.”
“I agree,” Ben said, barely being able to hear himself speak, “but we should still—” The wind slapped against his back hard enough to force the air from his lungs. Then, the sand around him lifted off the ground and cut at his skin and stung his eyes.
“Ben?” a voice said in his ear.
Before he could comprehend his next thought, he too was lifted off the ground, but instead of being returned to the sand below, he was thrown into the side of a rock formation. He hit hard and felt something in his body burn. His head was woozy and his thoughts scattered. He couldn’t put two and two together quick enough to figure out, if and how badly injured he was.
“What happened?” asked another voice.
He could wiggle his fingers and move his neck, but as he tried to do the same with his lower body, he stopped, hearing a voice above him.
“You should have just died willingly, Dr. Fehr. All those men back at your little camp wouldn’t have had to perish as a r
esult.”
Does he mean Daniel?
No, he decided. Anu came straight for him after he attacked the camp. He may not even know that they had men down below.
“Talk to me, Ben.” He barely heard the last communication.
Ben’s mind spun and his eyes began to close. The knock to the head was serious, as was the assault his body took. He passed out as he was again lifted off the ground.
“Ben!”
* * *
“Anu, report.”
Anu was really getting sick of Susanoo interrupting him while he was in pursuit. They all knew what kind of strength and mental ability it took to control the sky. He was altering the winds themselves. If they got too out of hand, the air currents could also affect more than just who he was after. They could disturb the weather in the area, causing massive droughts or even the exact opposite in some cases.
He watched from above as Dr. Fehr was lifted and thrown against the base of one of the large arches that dotted the landscape around them. There was a beauty to the place that Anu loved, but the dry air was what drew him to the deserts of the world. He excelled in the dry heat above all the rest. The wind resisted him less, carrying little, to no moisture. He could handle the humid air of a rainforest or another similar place too, but these winds offered a minuscule amount of opposition.
He merely called, and they answered. Simple as that.
The waterless air made them solely his, easy to control, like an extension of his physical body. There was something freeing about that. He ruled these skies. The man down below just felt that supremacy.
Anu lowered himself with quick bursts of air, landing softly in the sand behind the unconscious Israeli. Fehr proved himself to be cunning and daring. He even fled further into the desert, away from civilization, deeper into Anu’s preferred battleground. He must have feared for the people’s lives to make such a foolish move. A foolish mistake.
“You should have feared for your own life instead.”
He held out his hands and pulled in the winds, condensing them. They then reached out and easily plucked the ragdoll-like body off the ground. All he’d have to do was simply toss him into the sky and watch him fall.
Just like the men with the guns.
As he raised his hands to do so, Anu felt another pulse. Angered at the disturbance, but feeling something urgent in it, he answered.
“What!” Anu yelled in frustration.
“Have you succeeded?” It was Susanoo.
“I was about to, but was interrupted.”
“Calm yourself, Anu. We have a change of plans. Things aren’t going as well as we had hoped.”
“And?” Anu asked, growing even more irritated. He didn’t need to hear everyone’s sob story. He fulfilled his end, incapacitating his target with relative ease. He did his duty. Now was the time to finish it.
“Take Dr. Fehr to the master…alive. We will bring Boyd to us instead.”
Anu ground his teeth, feeling them about to break. He wanted nothing more than to kill this man but knew he was going to have to resist his primal urges for the time being.
“Very well, you will have your bait, but I can’t promise what condition he’ll arrive in.”
“Neither I nor the master, care,” Susanoo said. “Just as long as his heart beats. However, Boyd won’t come for a corpse.”
He cut the communication and smiled. Fehr was most definitely not dead, but the man was unquestionably broken. Anu could at least gain some satisfaction in knowing that.
KNOWLEDGE
15
Safe House
Blairsville, Georgia
“Have you been able to locate him yet, Todd?” I ask, pacing the front office. I still get a weird vibe from this place, but it’s as secure and off the radar as it’ll get right now. We need to find Ben and the network in place here is only rivaled by the one in D.C.
“Nothing yet, Hank, but his glasses were still transmitting after he went silent. I’m attempting to pull up the feed now. It’d be faster if we were back at the Castle, though.”
“You know that’s not possible right now,” Nicole says, calmly leaning against one of the walls. She has a foot propped up, standing on one leg, looking like Sharon Stone from The Quick and the Dead. The fact that’s she checking over her new weapons lends to the description.
Nicole ditched her twin Rugers and upgraded to something a little more formidable. Her new Glock 25 .380 AUTO is specially made for law enforcement only and features a nice low-recoil option too. It even holds an impressive fifteen rounds, without making it overly bulky. While it’s still classified as a ‘compact’ handgun—perfect for someone with smaller hands—the G25 is anything but compact in stopping power.
Not that Nicole couldn’t handle something bigger, I think watching her look over her pair of G25’s. She has twin holsters around the small of her back, perfectly concealed by her jacket.
“I don’t like being here,” she says, looking up at me. “I can still sense him.”
I nod in agreement. John Frost was a bad dude for sure. He orchestrated countless hits on our lives and personally put a bullet in my father’s back. Now, his vacated abode is our secondary location—our safe house. Kane had the homeowner records changed to a dummy corporation out of God-knows-where. The transfer would be next to impossible for anyone to figure out and if someone did…the CIA would see to the matter.
We left everything as it was, not wanting to alert the neighbors. Moving trucks would have sent up a huge red flag and with the remaining members of Zero in hiding, we all agreed it would be better to leave things as is for now. At least until things simmered down more.
Once we were in place, we upgraded the software to his already impressive PC and installed Todd’s custom-made security features. The rooms were also cleaned and redone, allowing us a more comfortable sleep at night. His master bedroom was turned into a lab for Olivia though. No one wanted to stay in there after we found blood in the shower drain. It’s once the body of Sara “Raven” Carter was discovered beneath a bed of roses out back that we put two and two together. She was a tough adversary, one Nicole personally bested in our battle atop Kukulkan’s pyramid. We never knew what happened to the mercenary for hire until recently. Apparently, she came here to seek refuge, but instead only found death.
There are three bedrooms upstairs and a pull-out in the living room across from where we are now. So far only Kane and Olivia have bunked here, wanting to scope out the town and do a little recon. Kane’s superstition won over my revolt and we acquired the suburban home as well as all of Frost’s assets and, more importantly, his intel.
Like the possible location of the Tower of Babel.
“You sure we need to go to Iraq?” Kane asked from the doorway. He was in a white tank top undershirt and a pair of black cargo pants, showering and changing upon arrival. Olivia was still upstairs getting some shuteye.
“Very sure,” Todd said, not looking away from his wall-mounted monitors. “Frost’s research that Coaxoch gave him tells of its location near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in ancient Mesopotamia.”
Kane raises an eyebrow.
“That’s in Iraq,” I add, helping the big guy out. “Until recently, and as far as the public knows, the tower was a myth. Where exactly it was said to exist, no one knows. There hasn’t been any definite proof.”
“Unless you believe the accounts from the various religious texts,” Nicole says.
“True enough,” I agree with a nod.
“Why hasn’t it been found then?” Todd asks. “People have been living in the region for thousands of years.”
“Because it’s Iraq,” Kane says, getting everyone’s attention. “Do you really think the people controlling those territories give a damn about historical relics? No, the only thing they care about is killing.”
Kane speaks from experience. I can tell by the venom in his voice that he’s personally seen it unfold up close and personal.
“Regar
dless,” I say, taking back control of the conversation, “I think if a structure that big did, in fact, exist when it fell it would have smashed and destroyed everything in its wake. It would have driven itself deep into the sands of the area and once the dust settled it would have vanished.”
“Which means?” Kane asks.
“I think the remains of the towers are right there for everyone to see, but they were obliterated when they fell, turning to dust and rock.”
Silence tells me they’re intrigued.
“What makes you think that?” Nicole asks.
“It’s just a theory, but I think that’s the reason it’s never been discovered. The people that settled there afterwards, unknowingly built their cities right on top of it.”
“Sounds a little farfetched,” Olivia says, stepping into the room. She then casually stretches up and kisses Kane on the cheek.
“We excel in the farfetched,” I say.
“One thing we can all agree on,” Nicole says, ending the potential argument “is just because it’s never been recorded in history doesn’t mean it never existed.”
She means Atlantis of course. The Tower of Babel could be this area’s version. A prolific kingdom’s dirty little secret buried with the fall of its beacon to God. The tower wasn’t the real secret, however. It had to be something else. I can feel it.
I turn and sit on the large office’s love seat, patting the spot next to me. Nicole looks up and smiles, crossing the room and joining me. She checks the safeties, holsters her weapons, and sits. I wrap my arm around her and squeeze, needing her resolute form near me.
“Have you been able to find anything out about our four friends?” I ask Kane, but he quickly shakes his head.
“No, once the firestarter disappeared I called it in. They said they’d look for anything and everything linked to them and would keep us in the loop if their faces popped up anywhere in the world with surveillance. Even the damn street corner traffic cams will be looking.”
“I still can’t believe she just let you go,” Nicole says, still in disbelief.
Babel Found Page 10
