Valley of the Templars ts-7

by Paul Christopher

  “It’s starting to smell bad, Kate, I’m warning you. This Holliday is more than a monkey wrench in the works. He’s a mother-humping Sherman tank.”

  The elderly woman smiled. “You’re showing your age now, Max; nobody’s used Sherman tanks since Castro at the Bay of Pigs.”

  “Very funny. We’ve got everyone on our side now. Lobo, Bacardi, DuPont, all the hotel chains. We’ve made promises, Kate, and if we can’t pay the piper we’re going to be in some very hot water.” The ruddy-faced man took a long pull at his drink.

  “Come, now, Max, the country is imploding. Its economy is a black hole, for God’s sake. How long can Raul survive by selling off the contents of the State Museum to keep the country stumbling along? He’s released a crowd of criminals along with the dissidents from his prisons because he simply couldn’t afford to feed them. The country’s being run by Alzheimer’s patients.”

  “Worked for Reagan,” grunted Kingman. “For a little while, anyway.”

  “Relax,” said Kate Sinclair. “Tomorrow Fidel dies. Raul and his family will be on his jet to Spain within hours of his brother’s demise and the Brotherhood will be in charge.

  “And try to remember, Max—Lobo, Bacardi and all the rest are paying us huge sums of money for a chance to reclaim their properties, and with the Brotherhood’s agreement they’ve also hired Blackhawk Security as a counterinsurgency force during the period of ‘transition.’ Relax, Max. We’ve just won the lottery.”

  “We’re killing a lot of people to do it, Kate.”

  “Having second thoughts, Max?”

  Kingman shrugged. “I never did like Orlando much.”

  “They’re suitcase bombs. Nuclear firecrackers. The estimate if both of the bombs go off is less than two hundred thousand people dead, maybe less—Lake Buena Vista or whatever it’s called is twenty miles away from town.”

  “And the one in the Everglades?”

  “Backup. The point is the bombs are the key that opens the door. It’s going to make nine-eleven look like a house fire.” Sinclair raised her glass. “The bombs are the rationale for an invasion that should have succeeded fifty years ago.

  “They’ll rewrite the Patriot Act; they’re going to be hiring private police forces, shoot-to-kill border patrols. Think of it as one big business opportunity. Those bombs are the keys to the magic kingdom, Max, and we’ll be the ones sitting on the royal thrones.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Joseph Patchin, entering the study. A nine-millimeter Glock 19 was held firmly in his right hand.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” Kingman said, half rising from his leather chair.

  “I’m the director of operations at the CIA, you fat old bastard,” answered Patchin. “I’ve still got a few chops.”

  It was clear to Kate Sinclair that Patchin was at least as drunk as Kingman. She calmly opened the bag on her lap, took out her lighter and cigarettes and lit one. “Perhaps you could enlighten us on the reason for your presence here.”

  “Sure, Ms. Psycho Sinclair, you crazy bitch.” Patchin closed his eyes for a second or two and swayed slightly. “There’s been a Pinnacle Nucflash alert for Orlando. Where do you think that came from? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count. It’s your old goddamn pal Holliday—that’s who. The president, in all his great fucking wisdom, has asked for NEST teams to descend on Florida like locusts. The signal traffic between the American Interests Office at the Swiss embassy in Havana is burning up the airwaves. The jig is up, as they used to say. I think what it really means is we’re screwed. We’re all going down.”

  “NEST?” Kingman asked, his face slack and his brow furrowed, not quite getting it.

  “Nuclear Emergency Support Team,” said Kate Sinclair. “They find lost atomic bombs and the like.”

  “Full marks, sweetie.” Patchin grinned drunkenly.

  “But…but there must be something we can do!” Kingman said.

  “Sure there is,” said Patchin. “We can die.” He fired two quick shots, one into Kingman’s chest and another into his throat, killing him instantly and blowing him back even more deeply into his chair.

  Remarkably his drink stayed firmly gripped in his hand. Blood began to spread across his starched white shirt and bubble from his mouth in little pops and burbles as the life drained out of his body. Patchin watched for a moment, fascinated, then swung around to face Kate Sinclair. “Your turn now, Lady Crazy, and then I’ll join you in hell myself.”

  “I’ll take a rain check, Mr. Patchin.” She slid her little Khar PM45 pocket pistol from her purse and shot Patchin once, taking out his left eye and blowing his brains out through the door and into the hall outside the study. Patchin collapsed like an empty suit of clothes.

  Sinclair stood, walked over to Patchin and took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of the man’s suit jacket. She wiped off her own handprints from her pocket pistol, then went and placed the weapon in Max Kingman’s dead right hand, squeezing his index finger into the trigger guard and pressing his other fingers around the grip.

  She took the Scotch glass from his other hand and put it on the table beside him. She finally retrieved her own glass, emptied its contents back into the Scotch decanter, then wiped and dried the glass before putting it into the bar cabinet with a dozen or so others just like it.

  Sinclair looked around the room, nodded once, then left the room, careful to step over the mess Patchin’s brains had left in the front hall. She paused at the front door, took out her cell phone and made a quick call.

  “File a flight plan for Zurich. I’ll be there in half an hour.” She closed the cell phone, put it back into her purse. Using Patchin’s handkerchief, she turned the doorknob and stepped out into the muggy evening air. She closed the door, put the handkerchief into her purse.

  “Goddamn it to hell,” she said quietly, then headed for M Street and a taxi to take her to the South Capitol Street Heliport.

  So far the growing storm had kept the Zhuk at bay, the high, choppy waves throwing both the patrol boat and the Corazon de Leon around like a kid’s bath toys. She had come abreast of them but was standing about a mile away, the red, angled stripe on her hull occasionally visible as she rode the crest of a wave.

  Every ten minutes or so, there would be the popping, tearing sound of the twin forward and aft machine-gun turrets, but so far they hadn’t done much more than blow off the upper portion of the mast and boom and splinter a few of the piled lobster traps on deck.

  Eddie was at the wheel while Geraldo and his son were belowdecks checking out the boat’s sluggish response to the helm. Will Black was in the galley trying to prepare them something to drink and eat while Holliday stood beside Eddie, staring through the binoculars.

  Carrie was clutching a bulkhead and trying to keep her feet under her as the bow of the lobster boat smashed into a wave, then rose to the crest and then dropped into the trough on the other side. The sky was black and what they could see of any horizon was dark gray. The rain beat down furiously, drumming on the deck and the roof of the wheelhouse.

  “I don’t understand,” yelled Carrie, raising her voice above the bluster of the storm. “She’s been over there for an hour. Why haven’t they blown us out of the water?”

  “The machine guns can only traverse to a certain angle. If she got any closer she’d be shooting over our heads, comprendez?” Eddie said. “And they probably have very little ammunition.”

  Eddie hauled over on the wheel as they hammered into another wave, then rode it upward. On the downward slide he hauled in the other direction, trying to keep the Corazon de Leon from slewing broadside into the next wave. “Besides, they are probably afraid, as well. They are a long way outside Cuban waters.”

  “Pretty soon they’ll figure out that the only way they can deal with us is to ram us, and that’ll be that,” said Holliday, lowering the binoculars.

  “Brew up!” Will Black called as he staggered out of the wheelhouse, somehow managing to balance a
tray of mugs in one hand. He began handing them out. “Coffee, strong, hot and sweet.”

  “Shit,” said Holliday.

  “That bad?”

  Holliday shook his head and pointed to the windscreen of the wheelhouse. The rain was streaked with shades of pink. “The paint is coming off the roof. We’re done.”

  Geraldo stumbled into the wheelhouse through the starboard-side hatchway. He spoke to Eddie in rapid-fire Cuban.

  “Well?” Holliday asked.

  “The boat is leaking badly,” translated Eddie. “Ricardo is trying to make repairs, but we’re taking on a lot of water.”

  “Double done,” said Holliday.

  Suddenly the storm clouds above them split wide, casting down a huge, golden swath of dying sunset light and blue sky like something out of a Rembrandt painting or one of the apocalyptic horrors of a John Martin canvas. It was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

  “Están cambiando de dirección!” Geraldo yelled, eyes wide and pointing in the direction of the patrol boat. The Cuban crossed himself. “Madre de Dios,” he whispered.

  “He is changing course!” Eddie said as they topped another wave. It was true. As well as it could, the Zhuk was angling itself slightly across the breaking seas, her bows taking a terrible pounding, spray flying far above their bridge. It would take a while, but within no more than ten or fifteen minutes they would be on a collision course and that same steel bow would crush the Corazon de Leon into splinters.

  “Bloody hell!” Will Black said.

  “What can we do?” Holliday asked Eddie.

  “Nothing, mi compadre. If we try to do the same thing away from them, we will capsize. We are wood. They are steel.”

  “Then it’s over,” said Holliday, staring out at the terrible sunlit sea.

  Following the establishing of the PINNACLE NUCFLASH ORLANDO message on the roof of the Corazon de Leon’s wheelhouse roof by Paul Smith and the further knowledge that a Zhuk-class patrol boat was following it led to a predictable chain of events that moved up and down the chain of command with remarkable efficiency.

  When the first aerial NEST team flying over the Orlando area reported an anomalous and extremely large radiation signal originating in the Lake Buena Vista area and since the Zhuk was both of Cuban military origin and well outside both Cuban territorial waters and even beyond its economic fisheries zone, it was deemed both prudent and proactive to send up one of the new Predator C Avenger drones from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada for a look-see.

  After a four-hour flight the Avenger, at an elevation of just under sixty thousand feet and using its highly sophisticated Advanced Low-observable Embedded Reconnaissance Targeting, or ALERT, system, spotted what was deemed to be hostile intentions from the Zhuk, and this information went rapidly back up the line to the Pentagon and from there to the Situation Room, where the president and several other notables were gathered around the same monitors they’d watched Osama bin Laden ascend to Paradise on.

  Based on the fact that one of the NEST ground teams had discovered two suitcase nuclear devices in a Disney hotel parking lot, the president of the United States had no compunction at all in his next order.

  “Do it,” he said firmly, simultaneously wondering if he was guaranteeing his reelection or sending it around the toilet bowl.

  And the Avenger did what it was told, releasing its single two-thousand-pound BLU-109 Penetrator laser-guided bomb normally referred to as a “Bunker Buster.” The needle-nosed bomb sliced down through the full sixty thousand feet at ten minutes before sunset, its perfectly calibrated systems guiding in toward the heat signal coming from the Zhuk’s engines.

  The Penetrator bomb was traveling much too quickly for the human eye to follow, but the explosion that followed was spectacular. Riding up to the crest of yet another wave, Holliday saw the Zhuk disintegrate in front of his eyes. He also knew exactly what was going to happen next. “Everybody, down!” Holliday bellowed, dragging Eddie down off the wheel.

  There was a brain-rattling concussion and a split second later all the glass windows in the wheelhouse blew out. Suddenly the interior wheelhouse was being flooded by sheets of stinging rain and salt spray.

  Eddie struggled to his feet and grabbed the wheel as they heaved down into a wave trough. When they rose to the crest of the next wave, the Cuban Zhuk had completely disappeared.

  “What was that!” Carrie Pilkington asked, squinting her eyes.

  Holliday grinned, relieved. “That, Miss Pilkington, was the U.S. cavalry.”

  “Dios mio!” whispered Geraldo.

  33

  Fidel Castro died right on schedule, shortly after his private celebration of St. Lazarus Day at his Punta Cero estate. By that time the president of the United States, the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada had agreed on a joint occupying force of Cuba based on the incontrovertible evidence of a planned nuclear attack by Cuba on the United States, an unprovoked act of war by any definition of the term.

  The occupying force would be under U.N. observation until the first untainted and uncorrupted democratic elections in the country since 1933 and the Revolt of the Sergeants, which left Fulgencio Batista as the de facto leader of the country ruling through a series of puppet governments until he took over the presidency himself.

  The uncovering of the suitcase bombs, and a day later the bomb in the Everglades, put the president’s numbers through the roof, virtually guaranteeing his election despite the state of the economy. As predicted by Kate Sinclair, plans were immediately drawn up to increase governmental and police powers under the Patriot Act.

  The deaths of Max Kingman and Joseph Patchin never made it onto the news cycle, and as the huge corporate conspiracy involved in the plot became known to the White House, that, too, was swept under the rug, at least for the time being, hanging people from meat hooks having become politically incorrect and not good for the incumbent president’s image.

  Lieutenant Colonel John Holliday and Eddie Cabrera lay on identical lounge chairs under the shade of an umbrella on Cable Beach, sipping Kalik beer. They had been keeping under the radar at one of the smaller hotels, waiting for things to blow over. Holliday knew it couldn’t last forever; eventually there’d be a closed Senate investigation and he at least would be subpoenaed. Until then he’d rest as best he could.

  “I’m sorry about your brother, Eddie,” Holliday murmured.

  His friend shrugged. “I am sorry, too, but he is dead and I am alive. This is Cuba, my friend.”

  Holliday’s new cell phone beeped at him. He knew who was calling because he’d only given the number to one person. He took out the phone. Lines of text began to appear on the screen.

  “Uh-oh,” said Holliday.

  “What is this uh-oh?” Eddie asked.

  “Where my cousin Peggy is involved, it usually means trouble.” Holliday shook his head, laughing. “Apparently she and Rafi found the secret diaries of Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett. They’re arriving in Nassau on the ten o’clock flight.”

  “Faucet, this is the tap to get water, yes?” Eddie asked.

  “The water part’s right, but don’t think of tap water. Think of the Amazon.” He switched off the phone. “I think we’re in for another wild ride, my friend.”

  EPILOGUE

  The two old men sat on the porch of the older man’s farm in the mountains of the Spanish Sierra Morena and looked out over the hills.

  “It is pretty here, don’t you think, brother? Nice and hot, like home.”

  “Pretty enough,” said the older of the two. Behind them in the house, he could hear the sound of the evening meal being cooked. “Pretty enough and hot enough for my old bones, but it is not home, is it?”

  “No, but you can rest here. There was no peace at home—you know that.” The younger brother laughed. “And here you can watch your own state funeral on the television while your nation mourns you. This is an opportunity given to very few men, compañero.”r />
  “Poor Benito. He was with me for many years. I pray he did not suffer too much.”

  “It was very quick,” the younger brother lied. In fact, the man’s death had been excruciating and had taken hours.

  “And that mariquita pedófilo, Ortega?”

  “He had a heart attack shortly after your death. Between the eyes.”

  “Bueno,” sighed the older brother sleepily, his eyes closing. “Muy bueno.”

  The younger brother waited for a few minutes, listening to his brother’s steady breathing, and then tiptoed back into the cool shadows of the porch.

  And the old man slept and dreamed of the bright stars on a dark, cold night, a toboggan ride and making angels in the snow.

  Read on for a special preview of

  Paul Christopher’s next thriller,

  Lost City of the Templars

  Coming from Signet in January 2013.

  If you were looking for a word to describe Peggy Blackstock’s mood as she walked down the strand in the seaside English town of Torquay, “bored” would have sprung to your lips, immediately followed by “If I see one more ye olde English pub advertising the best fish and chips in Torquay, I’m going to hurl.”

  She’d been in town for two days, and there were still three more to go until Rafi’s World Archaeology Congress convention was over. She was already at her wit’s end. Being in Torquay was like being in Coney Island without Nathan’s, the Cyclone or the bumper cars. There were just as many people, but the sand on the few beaches was muddy and dirty, the English Channel water was freezing cold and most of the food tasted like library paste.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in her husband’s work. In fact she was more than interested—she was fascinated. Rafi specialized in the archaeology of the Crusades in Israel and it took them both to dozens of sites from Jerusalem and Jaffa to Turkey and Turin, from Bosnia to Berlin and just about everywhere else in Europe. The Crusades had covered a lot of ground from the tenth century to the fourteenth century, and they had reached as far as Sweden in their scope.