by Jack Du Brul
It took them two and a half hours to reach the Scilla River where it flowed into the Chinko. Someone had destroyed the makeshift ferryboat Mercer had mentioned, the barrels lay scattered along the riverbank, and there was no sign of its corrugated metal deck.
“From here it’s all on foot,” Sykes said, unlimbering his big frame from the Jeep. “Let’s hide the truck and wait until dawn. I don’t want to go stumbling around the jungle without knowing who’s out there.”
“You mean what,” Bernie said.
“That too.”
In the predawn hour, they made their approach to the village where Mercer had seen the stele. The nocturnal animals had already found their dens for the day and the diurnals had yet to emerge. There was no evidence that anyone was in the area, but they took no chances. They crossed the ancient mine, noting the breach in the levee where Mercer said he and Cali had been sluiced down to the river. Farther on they came to the village. Covered by Cieplicki and Rivers, who stayed at the tree line, Sykes entered the clearing. Nothing remained of the village but the burned husks of the huts, blackened piles of grass and mud that had once been home to the innocent. The air reeked of putrid flesh.
The utter futility and waste of it all sickened him.
He cast around for the stele. Mercer said it was about seven feet tall and impossible to miss, but Sykes didn’t see it. Unable to shake the feeling that he was being watched, and not only by his own men, he methodically crisscrossed the jungle clearing. The grass was littered with hundreds of spent cartridges. He picked up one to sniff it. It still smelled of gunpowder. He passed a pile of loose rocks and was about to ignore it when he stopped and went back. In the tricky dawn light he had to squint to make out the odd writing that remained on the larger pieces.
“Oh, Mercer ain’t gonna be happy ’bout this.”
He jogged back to the tree line where Rivers and Cieplicki waited.
“What’s the word, Boss Man?”
“The stele thing’s all smashed up. Can’t be more than a few pieces the size of a brick.”
“Explosives?” Cieplicki asked.
“No. I’d say they broke it with hammers or rifle butts. Also I’ve got the feeling we aren’t the only people in the area.”
“Could be villagers returning.”
“Not at five o’clock in the morning.” Sykes went quiet, thinking through his options. He had gotten a few hours of sleep on the flight to Africa but that had been thirty-six hours earlier. He was exhausted. His eyelids felt like they had an inner liner of sandpaper. But he’d been trained to ignore such distractions. He came up with his plan and issued his orders. Cieplicki and Rivers took off at a run while he remained in the jungle watching over the clearing. He heard no movement, no coughs or the scrape of cloth over vegetation, but he was certain he wasn’t alone.
Moving as carefully as a stalking leopard he made a wide half circle around the village, careful not to step out on the exposed bluff overlooking the river. He found nothing.
Rivers and Cieplicki were back in eleven minutes, and had Sykes not been so uneasy he would have reproached them for how long it had taken to run the mile to the truck and back. They brought back three military-issue backpacks, heavy nylon bags that could support more than a hundred and fifty pounds. Leaving Cieplicki to cover the woods, Sykes and Rivers took the bags to the ruined stele and carefully started filling them with pieces of the ancient marker. They were careful about weight distribution, for while Bernie could more than handle a load, Sykes and Rivers were much bigger and stronger men.
When they had one filled, Rivers heaved it off the ground.
“What do you think?” Book asked.
“Hundred and sixty, hundred and seventy.”
“Thank God it’s only a mile,” Sykes said and looked up sharply when a bird suddenly launched itself from a tree. He waited a beat but nothing more happened.
They had secured all the larger pieces and were down to fragments the size of acorns half-buried in the ground when Cieplicki opened fire. His single shot was answered by at least eight guns ripping on automatic. Sykes and Rivers dove flat, shoving the bags into a row for cover, their guns resting on the priceless relic.
Cieplicki came out of the woods a moment later, laying down a wall of fire to keep the rebels in the woods. He reached his teammates, leaping over the bags and rolling around so his AK was pointed back at the woods.
The jungle fell silent again.
“This isn’t good.”
The Delta operators only had two spare magazines each; that’s all the kids they’d taken the guns from had carried. It wasn’t nearly enough for a protracted fight with more than a half dozen rebels.
“Discretion and all that,” Sykes said. He fired a quick spray into the woods and slid his pack’s straps over his shoulders, using the power of his legs to deadlift the heavy burden. Cieplicki and Rivers did likewise. As a team, they started running back toward the Jeep at the confluence of the Chinko and Scilla rivers.
The packs were too heavy to slap against their backs as they jogged along the embankment, and before he’d gone a hundred yards Sykes felt the tendons and ligaments in his lower back popping. Then the muscle pulled. It was a merciless knife-edged pain that exploded against the top of his skull, and every step served to deepen the agony. Yet he did not slow. He gritted his teeth against the torment, the thought of dropping the pack never entering his mind.
The gunmen kept to the woods as they pursued the team, taking poorly aimed potshots that forced the team to zigzag as they ran, adding tremendous pressures to knees and spines as they returned fire to keep the rebels at bay.
Grimacing with each footfall, Sykes kept telling himself to ignore the pain, but the agony was beyond belief. Searing waves of pain radiated from his lower back, and when he jinked, the added strain sent a bolt of fire to his brain. He could barely twist to return fire, so he held the AK one-handed and popped off covering shots.
He’d carried an injured man in Afghanistan, a local fighter who’d taken shrapnel to the gut, but it was nothing like this. The deadweight in his pack ground him down, made him question everything he’d ever done in his life to bring him to this torture. He glanced at his men. They knew the pain too. It was etched in their faces and in the sweat that poured from their skins. Even Paul Rivers, a towering ox of a man, was feeling it.
And still they ran on.
They reached the mine, plunged down into the section of blown-away levee without pause, and gutted their way up the other side, legs moving like pistons. Sykes faltered near the top and felt Bernie ram his shoulder into the pack to see him up those last couple of feet.
Unbelievably they were outpacing the rebels thrashing their way through the thick jungle. One of the rebels realized their quarry was getting away and dashed out from the bush. As rear guard it was Rivers’s job to cover their backs. Every few moments he’d look over his shoulder. He saw the skinny African leap out of the jungle and start sprinting. Without breaking his pace, Rivers fired a quick burst. The rebel went down as if he’d been jerked by a string.
“Last one…,” Cieplicki panted, pausing to swallow the pre-vomit saliva that flooded his mouth. “Last one to the Jeep is a rotten egg.”
He retched and a trickle of bile dribbled down his chin onto his khaki bush shirt.
More of the rebels emerged from the jungle behind them, a phalanx of them coming on hard.
“Cap’t,” Rivers called out.
Unable to stop running because they knew they’d never start again, the three men slowed enough so they could lay down a blistering wall of autofire. The range was pretty extreme for firing from the hip, but one rebel spun to the ground when his shoulder was shattered by one of the 7.62-millimeter bullets and the others dove for cover.
The last part of the run was down a slight grade and the men let gravity work for them, their boots slapping the hard African ground with each rubbery step. Sykes had tears coursing down his cheeks as he ran those last couple h
undred yards. It was the first time he’d cried since his grandmother died when he was twelve.
The Jeep was well hidden off the main road. Rivers didn’t bother pulling away the branches they’d used to camouflage the vehicle. He popped the rear door and turned to lower the backpack into the cargo hold. The shoulders of his T-shirt were sodden with blood from where the straps had chafed his skin.
Despite the agony, or maybe because of it, Sykes let Cieplicki unload his pack next. Rivers was already moving to the driver’s door. Cieplicki dumped his pack and just shoved Booker into the back of the four-wheel drive. He climbed in after his team leader and slammed the door.
As soon as everyone was in, Rivers gunned the Jeep’s engine, reversing out of the jungle just as three of the rebels reached the mud flats around the convergence of the swift Scilla and sluggish Chinko. They opened fire as soon as they saw the Cherokee emerge from the jungle. The rear window exploded, raining gem-sized chips of glass on Cieplicki and Sykes. Cieplicki was working on a large bundle in the cargo area, opening it flat and maneuvering the three packs onto its rubbery surface, while Sykes returned fire though the shattered window.
A bullet found a rear tire, blowing it flat. Rivers fought the steering wheel, not daring to slow but knowing that the tire would slough off the rim if he didn’t. “Talk to me back there.”
“I need a minute,” Bernie replied without pausing from his work.
“Shit!” Three more gunmen raced out of the jungle in front of the Jeep just as they started back down the road to Kivu. “You don’t have a minute.”
More automatic gunfire ravaged the Jeep, punching holes through the windshield, blowing off the passenger-side mirror, and puncturing the radiator, so steam billowed up from under the hood.
“We gotta do it now,” Rivers shouted. The steering wheel shook so hard he felt like he was holding an electric fence.
“Don’t wait for me!” Bernie cried.
“I’m not. Hold on!”
He cranked the wheel to the left, aiming for the broad river cutting though the jungle. The banks were about five feet above the level of the water, so he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The tired engine responded as if knowing it was going out in a blaze of glory.
The Jeep hit the bank, reared up, and shot over the water. It hit like a charging hippopotamus, a frothing swell of water surging over the windshield and a bow wave curving out to crash against the far bank. The SUV was caught in the slow current almost immediately, pirouetting in unseen eddies so it soon faced backward. It also started sinking.
“How’s it coming back there?” Paul asked as the water quickly filled the foot well.
“You could help by bailing,” Bernie said as he struggled to readjust the packs that had lurched forward when the Jeep slapped the water. Sykes helped him as best he could, but his back had so stiffened, now that he’d stopped running, that he could barely move.
Paul Rivers climbed over his seat and knelt on the rear bench, helping Cieplicki with the packs. The water was only an inch or so below the blown-out rear window. Once it found that inlet, the Jeep would sink like a stone.
“Any piranhas in these waters?” Bernie asked without looking up.
“That’s South America, dipshit. But they got crocodiles here the size of speedboats.”
A wave washed over the rear sill and in seconds the cargo space was flooded. The men braced themselves as Bernie lunged to open the rear door. Then the Jeep slid below the surface, leaving just a small ripple on the water.
The rebels on shore watched it vanish, and after a minute they began to cheer when none of the men surfaced. They’d been denied any spoils but were just as satisfied with the kill.
Thirty yards from where the Jeep disappeared, the water heaved upward unexpectedly and a huge set of jaws emerged from the river, a gaping red maw surrounded by daggerlike white teeth. The rebels pointed and shrank back as the rest of the flat, oval monster erupted from the depths. Then it seemed to spit out bodies. Three heads emerged next to the creature. First one, then another jumped onto the animal’s back. One of the men helped the third one mount the beast while the first man did something near its broad rump.
“Hurry,” Bernie said as he helped drag Sykes out of the water.
The three-man inflatable boat had been Mercer’s idea. He’d reasoned that since they were going to be along a river it might not be a bad idea if the roads were impassable. Sykes had bought it at an outfitters in Virginia, liking the model with the shark’s mouth painted on the bow, and paid extra to have it flown to Africa with them. They’d shoved it out the rear of the Jeep moments after it began to plummet to the bottom of the river. Cieplicki had waited as long as he dared to pull the lanyard that filled the rubber raft’s hull with compressed air, something they’d neglected to tell the airline about.
As Sykes rolled over the soft rail Paul Rivers wrestled with the five-horse outboard motor. He didn’t bother mounting it to the transom. As soon as he pulled the starter, he greased the throttle and held the whirling prop underwater. The overloaded inflatable didn’t exactly roar down the river but they picked up speed quick enough. The rebels on shore merely watched them vanish from view, not sure exactly what they saw.
“All together now,” Bernie called out merrily. “Row, row, row your boat…”
Despite the pain, Booker couldn’t help but laugh at Cieplicki’s antics.
Samarsskaya Mine, Southern Russia
The sun had burned away the morning mist that had filled the valley like a blanket of snow. A few birds fluttered around the tops of the nearby pine trees, and the cloudless sky seemed to arch forever.
Ludmilla and the other Russian scientist, whose name Mercer didn’t know, had salvaged a pair of radiation suits and some radiation detection gear from a crate that had survived the chopper crash, and using a handcart found on a small siding under the ore-loading hoppers, they had headed down the tracks to make certain none of the barrels had been breached by the train derailment.
Sasha Federov was resting while the pilot, Yuri, was inventorying their meager supplies.
As soon as Professor Ahmad had told Mercer the stele had been destroyed, he had gotten to his feet and begun to pace with his head bowed. He’d sent Booker and his team on a fool’s errand into one of the most dangerous places in the world. Book knew how to take care of himself, and Mercer wasn’t too worried about him, but the thought was heavy on his mind. What bothered him more, or at least in a different way, was the dead end he now faced.
He was convinced that the stele would have told him the location of Alexander’s tomb, especially since one of the conqueror’s generals had erected the marker well after his death. Archaeologists had been searching for the tomb for centuries, so without some new clue Mercer was stymied.
The worst of it was he was sure Ahmad hadn’t been lying about not knowing the tomb’s location. The Janissaries’ system of protecting the location eliminated temptation among their members. It was truly brilliant.
Mercer returned to where Cali and Ahmad sat on the ground, but he said nothing as Cali and Ahmad continued to talk.
“What became of the woman?” Cali asked. “The one that your mentor fell in love with.”
“Montague and Capulet I’m afraid,” Ahmad said, lighting a cigarette. “Her father would never allow her to marry a Turk and he made her return home as soon as he learned of the affair. He was enlightened only to a point, you see, and the girl had already been promised to another, a member of a royal household.”
“That’s so sad.”
“They were different times, although I’m sure if it happened today the results would probably be the same. Marrying outside one’s tribe is a modern idea that has really only taken root in the West.”
“Outside your tribe?”
“For lack of a better word. What I mean is it isn’t uncommon for an American to marry someone from France, or Germany, or a white to marry a black, for that matter. In the Middle East you would n
ever see a Shi’a marry a Sunni or a Turk marry a Kurd. It just isn’t done. And ever since 1980 any chance there could be a melding of the various sects and ethnic groups has been further eroded.”
“Why is that?” Cali asked. “What happened in 1980?”
“Iraq invaded Iran,” Ahmad told her. “That conflict is largely a footnote to you but it was a watershed moment in the Middle East. The Iranians were totally unprepared for the invasion and were nearly defeated early on. In order to inspire his people Ayatollah Khomeini delved back into history, resurrecting the story of the Battle of Karbala, when in 860 Husayn ibn ‘Ali, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, was defeated by the Umayyad caliph, Yazid. The date is still a holiday for Shi’a Muslims. Khomeini cynically turned what was a sectarian grab for land and oil resources into a holy war.”
“How is that?” Mercer asked, drawn back into the conversation despite his foul mood.
“Husayn and his army were slaughtered to a man. They became Islam’s first martyrs. What Khomeini did was tell his people that Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, was the modern reincarnation of Yazid and that in order to defeat him it would be necessary for every Iranian to sacrifice themselves, as did Husayn. He went on to decree that anyone who martyred themselves was guaranteed a place in heaven. In one move he negated the Koran’s pronouncement that suicide was a sin against God and created the Middle East’s first suicide bombers.
“Even as he was battling the Iraqis, Khomeini sent cadres of trained men into Lebanon during their civil war and occupation by Israel, to spread the word that suicide bombing is not a sin, but a glorious sacrifice to Allah. Remember this is something expressly forbidden by the Koran, yet he managed to convince desperate people that his word superseded the very words God uttered to Mohammad.
“Of course word of his pronouncement spread from there to the West Bank and Gaza, where again Muslims were fighting a superior force. Thus we had young men convinced by a madman that taking your own life by blowing up a bus or a restaurant serves God’s purpose.”
