“Well here’s what I deduced – and it’s damned little. Nuke’s not likely to stay in a vicinity that has put the alert out on him. That leaves the rest of the world.”
“Jeez, that’s impressive.”
He ignored her sarcasm. “Eight international flights left Heathrow in the intervening hours since the estimated time of Greeley’s murder. That’s not counting the ones back to the States.
Go home? She shrugged off the message. Sometimes the messages were way out in left field. Or, maybe, just her interpretation of them was far off base. “And the flight destinations are?”
His long finger stabbed at his list. “Sydney, Hong Kong, Bangalore, Paris, Madrid, Delhi, Cairo, and Geneva.”
“He’s the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“We can try to narrow the odds.”
“How?”
Pondering, Jack fingered his glorious butterscotch mustache. Exotic memories of the way it slowly feathered her belly button . . . and lower, sweeping back and forth . . . she blinked several times to bring herself back to what he was saying. “This guy, Nuke, he’s obviously not equipped on his own to set up the scientific and technological operation necessary for such an energy grid to complement the crystal chip. That is going to require a massive undertaking. And backed by a massive financial undertaking. He has only one half of the equation, the most important piece, granted you – the crystal chip, the energy-collector transmitter. He or whoever winds up with the chip would need its power grid receptor.”
“What you were working on?” She shoved her polarizing-lens sunglasses atop her billed cap. “The prototype Ram stole from you?”
“Yes, and no telling where that is now. But, I’m not the only one interested in developing a power grid receptor. Scientists have been working on various models for the last century. Your Nuke would most likely need to hook-up with someone – or some organization maybe – who is engaged in physics and energy production and needs what he has to sell. And most importantly an organization with deep pockets.”
She glanced down at the list again. Her forefinger landed on Geneva. “CERN?” The European Organization for Nuclear Research.
“Possibly.” His much larger hand lapped over hers, and her breath tripped. His fingers guided her fingertip down the list to the destination Delhi. “Babar Atomic Research Center. A premier multi-disciplinary center. It’s moved to the forefront of international research and development with an expertise covering the entire spectrum of energy harnessing.”
He knew what he was doing, teasing her, arousing her. Two could play the game. She shifted her hand slightly, so that her thumb and forefinger now encircled his forefinger, as she would a pen. With slow and deliberate strokes, her thumb and finger went up and down the length of his thicker finger. She was gratified with the flare of dark desire in his eyes. “Now here,” she tightened her milking grip as she moved his fingertip to the Cairo destination, “Nuke could have also traveled to Cairo.”
Beneath his mustache, his lips formed an in-taking of breath. “Why?” he asked huskily.
Why am I doing this? To make sure I don’t fall under this new spell-binding control you are exerting. “Why what?” she asked innocently.
“You know what,” he growled. Then, swiftly, shedding her grasp, his hand captured hers, enfolding it entirely in his. “You have talented fingers. I’ll show you just how talented mine are later.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“You can count on it.” His hand still held hers prisoner as did his glittering green-eyes. “So why Cairo?” he asked, shifting the subject deftly.
“You mentioned the pyramids – at Martin and Roberta’s. You had been talking about the crystal’s triangular shape. You had said that some scientists speculated the pyramids were built to pump power into the atmosphere.”
He blinked. “Your memory – and understanding of the subject – is impressive. He tilted his head, considering. “Any one of those destinations might serve his purpose,” he mused, and she took the opportunity of his distraction to slip her hand from his grasp. “So next we’d have to consider where he would be most able to make some kind of contact for negotiation.”
She sighed. “We’re still talking global contacts with few eliminations.”
Tracking was a skill. But, for her and most other Indian trackers, it was also a deep form of spiritual communication. It was in her spiritual consciousness where she could fuse her mind with the hunted and feel the hunted moving within her. A dangerous place, because it could become the battleground between the flesh and the spirit, darkness and light. She closed her eyes, trying to pick up on Nuke. But she saw only his darkness.
And she knew then. “The underworld.”
He looked askance at her. “The Underworld. As in Pluto and Proserpina?”
“As in graft and greed. Remember, follow the money.”
His eyes raked the list of destinations once more. After a moment, he shrugged those seven-league shoulders and said, “Cairo it is then.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
To take a piss, Jack had to stagger from the sweltering hotel’s sweat-dampened bed sheets up the rickety, inclining floorboards, step through the tiny shower stall, and cross over to the commode on the stall’s far side. Hell’s fire, the Hopi Police Department could cough up a little more funds for better sleeping quarters in Cairo. He was exhausted. Not just jet lag. Couldn’t remember when last he had slept. Trying to catch up with Nuke and all the while forced to wait for some clue for direction, some slip up by the monster.
Fists on hips, he let the hot stream flow while his thoughts flowed as well. He wanted Janet spread-eagle beneath him. Janet wanted revenge for her daughter’s shooting. The Industrial nations wanted protection from Third-World nations’ use of atomic bombs.
But something far worse lurked out there. Something that could destroy not just nations but the earth itself. In the wrong hands, the Fire Stone tablet’s crystal quartz chip could obliterate mankind and the earth as well in the twinkling of an eye.
Well, where does one start?
At the beginning
He pulled the chain to flush the toilet and in the stygian dark he groped his way back to the narrow springy bed and Janet. First things first. First her, then the crystal chip.
Curled in a fetal position, shorn of her long, finger-inviting hair, clad only in her bikini panties and bra, she slept like an innocent, sweet baby . . . unaware of the sexual predator that crept into the bed. Wrapping his arm around her tiny waist, he tugged until her back and butt fit into the shell of his chest and thighs.
From somewhere came the foreboding sound of a folding knife flipping out. From her bra? Her panties? The pillow? The mattress? “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, CSD?”
So much for sweet and innocent. He sighed and gripped her fist, shoving the knife’s blade into the lumpy mattress next to her classic nose. “Could you just soften up? Just once?”
“Could you just soften up?” She wriggled her butt against his erection then piked her torso until she faced him. “You just want sex. Then it’s back to Fermilab and the particle farticle you – ”
“Los Alamos Lab. And you just want revenge on the CSD males of the world and Nuke in particular, then it’s back to the Reservation.”
“And never the twain shall meet. Kipling, I think.”
Her eyes glinted in the dark with frustration. His male’s instinct could so easily read her now. Well, maybe not totally. Frustration at what? Sexually frustrated, yes. His gut told him that. Frustration with nailing this Nuke? Absolutely. Frustration with her diminished tracking skills? That maybe more than anything. “Tell me, what are you going to do once you nuke Nuke? With your life, I mean?” He wasn’t about to broach the touchy subject of the chip.
She stared at him suspiciously. “Well, there’s always the JLPTS.”
“The JLPTS?”
“Yeah, you know, the Janet Lomayestewa Professional Tracking Services.” Her mo
cking tone dared him. She waited for him to respond. He waited for her to trust him. “Why not a program that consists of progressive training for trackers in search and rescue, law enforcement and military fields?”
He could tell she had been giving it some thought. Right now that wasn’t where his thoughts were. “First things first. You have to earn your credentials. I can help you. Starting now.”
Yep, like he always said, first things first. Yep, he wanted her. More than he had ever wanted a woman. But he could always walk away afterwards, and that was damned important to him.
His mouth found the area just beneath her oh-so-small ear, just where her oh-so hard jaw line began. “Give me your softness for just five minutes, sweetheart, and I’ll give you my hardness. Five minutes, that’s all I’m asking for. Is that so difficult?”
She angled her jaw so that her lips brushed his. “Is that all you’ve got in you? Five minutes?”
God, she was a breathing electric charger. He whispered against her parted lips, “Five minutes – really less, maybe two – is all I need to persuade you to go soft for me. After that, well, I want you able to walk away from here.”
She laughed and turned her head to the side. “Your mustache tickles me – and so does your optimism.”
“God, I love your laughter. Rich and breathless.” And loved how when her fingers merely brushed his shoulder, he got that way . . . breathless. Funny, how all the deep-throated kisses from another woman could leave him bored but a mere touch from her left him, yes, breathless.
His hands capturing her narrow hip bones, he spun her flat on her back, pinning her below him. His knee wedged apart her thighs. His fingers cupped her mound, delighting him with their discovery. “Maybe, I don’t even need two minutes. Your panties are already wet for me.”
“White men talk too much.”
The rasp in her voice gave him the go ahead, though he doubted his ability at that moment to restrain himself had she given him the ‘not interested’ sign, which she had been continually doing lately. While his mouth traced the languid arch of her neck, he gently pealed off her silky panties. What color were they this time? Red hot red? Or Black Widow black? When they had undressed for bed, they both had been too exhausted to do anything but tumble onto the lumpy mattress in semi-comatose states.
He found the soft, petal-like folds at the apex of her thighs . . . and the damp bud waiting to unfurl at his thumb’s gentle, patient persuading. A peripheral part of him took grateful note of the pleasure in her multitude of expressions. The way her eyes grew wide, then her lids dropping to half mast . . . next her lips forming a mewing little gasp. . . and then her eyes slipping closed completely at the same time her stomach muscles tightened.
Her thighs dropped wide. “Yes . . . now!” she moaned.
His lips meandered to her open mouth to smother her sigh, as he moved up over and sank himself deep inside her. Thrusting and withdrawing, giving her no quarter. But like the few, too few, other times when with her, this was a wild, exhilarating roller coaster ride that too soon plunged deceptively into a sweet, surrendering softness before she was hurtling them up and over the next crest to an explosion of stars and semen.
Laying there afterward, with her head pillowed on his chest, he stroked the curve of her small, bare hip. “The sex was good, but it wasn’t great.”
“Yeah.” She was toying with the hair around his nipple. “No intimacy.”
“Think that’ll ever happen between us?”
“Nah. You know the equation, brain boy. No trust, no intimacy.”
They were both lying, about the sex, at least, but what the hell. In recent days, he was unaccountably feeling so in unison with her sexually, sensually. He figured he must be a glutton for punishment because it seemed he could never get enough of her.
She was figuring something else. “If Nuke is going to panhandle the crystal chip here, where would he start?”
He sighed. Farewell to the lassitude of delicious, oblivion-falling, mind-blowing sex. . Her extraordinarily thick lashes tickled his chest hair, and he shivered. “Been going over and over that in my mind. ”
“And you connect the dots with . . . ?” Her fingertip began tracing the line of hair arrowing south across his stomach.
He shivered again. “Cheop’s pyramid.”
He couldn’t see her expression, but her nettled groan indicated she must have rolled her eyes. “It’d have to be a mega-billion wheeler-dealer who could afford to own that pyramid – or buy it.”
“I know, I know.” His hand deserted stroking her hip to stroking his mustache. “Ummm, but it is what is in the pyramid that is of greater importance.”
She turned a puzzled face up to look at him. Faint stubble tufted her head and around her temples, accenting her cheekbones’ strong angles. “All the artifacts have been removed.”
“No. Not quite. The pharaoh’s sarcophagus is still there.”
She lifted a skeptical brow. “It’s empty.”
“If you study Cheop’s sarcophagus, you’ll notice it bears absolutely no resemblance to any coffin for a pharaoh.”
Thoughtful, she nodded. “All right. The next dot?”
“Some scientists, on the fringe of acceptable scientific communities I grant you, believe the Great Pyramid was built to last as an energy processing plant – and the sarcophagus served as sort of the nuclear reactor.”
Her hand slid off his stomach. “I think you just connected the wrong dot.” She sighed, stirring his chest hair again. “Maybe we took a wrong turn coming to Cairo. Maybe it should have been Geneva or – ”
“No, no, listen.” He crooked his finger beneath her chin, tilting it so he could just make out her soulful eyes in the room’s half-light. “The heart of the pyramid is the Kings Chamber and the heart of that is the sarcophagus. It may have been also the heart of the energy converting process – like a particle collider. Uranium oxide would have been fitted into the sarcophagus to facilitate just such a process.”
She lifted one black slash of a brow as if to say he must have been smoking weed. “You’re talking about nuclear fission? Created twenty-five centuries ago?”
“Why not? Secret societies say that Moses was initiated into the Egyptian inner circle of Illuminati. Sweetheart, I tell you I have seen a color photograph showing that this granite sarcophagus has undergone radiation and heat damage in a gradual manner over a very long time.”
Another heavy sigh. “Maybe, Nuke has eluded us for good this time. Maybe, by discarding his present identity and hiding among the masses of India. Or maybe by doubling back to the U.S. Maybe, we’ll never find – ”
“Think, damn’t!” He grabbed her hand, wanting to reinstate it at it’s former position, nestled in the curls at the base of his stomach muscles, but he merely held it fast. His words tumbled one after another. “The sarcophagus is fabricated from a hard granite, even harder and denser than the rest of the granite used to build the Kings Chamber. The interior dimensions of the sarcophagus are precise. Its inner surface of granite is a mirror resemblance to the interior walls of a plutonium reactor. The floor and walls of the chamber are airtight sealed. This is consistent with the Kings Chamber being flooded with water, like a nuclear reactor!”
“And the uranium would have come from where?”
“Uranium ore from the center of Africa could have been brought down the Nile River to Giza. Giza has a layer of bedrock with sand layers below it. The bedrock here can support the pyramid, and the sand layers below it could have absorbed and retained radioactive waste.”
“So why didn’t grave robbers steal the sarcophagus?”
“Because it won’t fit through the door – the chamber housing the sarcophagus, and the pyramid itself, was built around it.”
Rolling her eyes, she tugged her hand from his and pushed herself upright. Her expression intense, she leaned over him. “Okay, Einstein, let’s say you’re right. Let’s say the sarcophagus once housed the components of a nuclear reactor.
So what? It doesn’t any longer. And, besides, any nuclear reactor couldn’t put the crystal chip to use. From what you shared with the rest of us at the Mevahema’s, the quartz crystal chip would be used to tap into vertical energy.” She nudged her squared-off chin towards the sloping ceiling. “From out yonder. Your theory sucks.”
He was both impressed by her grasp of the complex subject and depressed by her summation. She was right. They were back to ground zero. Pissed, he shoved his fingers through his way too long hair. He should have gotten a haircut before they left the States but there hadn’t been time when success or failure was calculated in increments of minutes and seconds. When a miss was as good as a mile. “Can you do any better, Woman-Yes-To-You?”
“Well, matter of fact, I can,” She laughed with her whole face, a tableau vivant, which lighted like a lantern in the room’s near darkness. She swung her legs off the bed and tugging the sheet around her shuffled to the room’s single window.
Damn’t, she looked slamming. Even wrapped like a mummy she was walking eroticism. Her bare feet betrayed a freer, more sensuous life. One small hand nudged back the narrow window’s bamboo-blinds so that a slat of early morning sunlight bathed her face of blasted beauty with it’s scimitar of a character defining scar. It was a face that was preternaturally strong, even hard. It contained madness, tragedy, despair, certainly something that surpassed the everyday hum-drum. For a short while, back in Happy Hopiland, before Molly was shot, he had even glimpsed joy.
Blinking against the pale light, Janet stood there staring out, her free hand rubbing her other bare shoulder. He had noted that, when pondering or worrying, her hands seemed to move into action. Her arms wrapped around herself, as though to keep something from breaking out. Her features were far from placid – impatient, jumpy, as if she had forgotten or misplaced something of importance. When she was firing on all cylinders, like now, nothing could match her wattage.
Call Me Crazy (Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker) Page 5
