30 Pieces of Silver: An Extremely Controversial Historical Thriller

by McCray, Carolyn

  “He came in under the cover of the second missile attack,” Davidson reported, sounding far stronger than she knew he was.

  Free of his burden, Brandt strode forward. “Why didn’t you sound off?”

  Davidson tried to rise but fell into Rebecca’s supporting arms. She chimed in as the private regrouped. “After the first firefight, we went into hiding. I don’t think he wanted to give away our location.”

  The private pushed away from Rebecca. “He was on our six when the deck came down.”

  “Did you get a fix on any other hostiles?” Brandt asked.

  The private tried to answer, but another wave of pain crossed his face.

  “Well?” the sergeant asked impatiently.

  Jesus, couldn’t Brandt see the kid was struggling? They both were.

  After her latest jungle adventure, Rebecca honestly did not believe that her body had any more adrenaline. How could it? Then, that first missile hit, and she felt that electric jolt of hormones cover the pain from her knee and convince her that she could run. And run they did. Then fall. Then hide, holding their breath for fear the assailant would find them before Brandt did.

  But now the hormonal high was wearing off, and she could feel her hands start to shake. Tears threatened to spill for no other reason that they had actually survived when they had no right to. And now the sergeant thought he could give Davidson shit?

  Rebecca met the sergeant’s gaze. “Avoiding a painful, explosive death was kind of foremost on our minds, Brandt.”

  He opened his mouth to retort, but abruptly closed it again.

  Instead, Brandt turned to the private. “You good to go?”

  Davidson nodded vigorously, except this motion caused him to sway and catch himself on a girder. Rebecca helped him into a sitting position.

  “He’s got a dislocated shoulder and at the very least a mild concussion.”

  Brandt knelt beside them. “I can take care of the shoulder.”

  Rebecca backed away and pulled out her laptop.

  Adrenaline. Danger. Fear.

  Sick of all three, she retreated into her world of science.

  “This is going to hurt like a mo’,” Brandt said matter-of-factly.

  Rebecca made certain that she was too busy working on her laptop to watch Brandt. Only a grunt from the sergeant and a strangled scream from the private marked Davidson’s shoulder being shoved back into the socket. Just hearing her favorite student’s pain made her stomach lurch.

  Once Brandt rose, Rebecca chanced a look over at Davidson. The boy’s face was a sickly grayish pallor, but he was already rotating his arm to check his shoulder’s range of motion.

  Soldiers.

  She definitely needed to recruit some for her postgraduate work.

  * * *

  Brandt helped Davidson up, making sure he was steady on his feet. They were surrounded by an unknown number of hostiles. It was only a matter of time before the missiles started flying again.

  “Do you think you can triangulate the shooter’s position?”

  The private nodded, but much more slowly than earlier. A soldier would never admit he had a concussion. A bitch of a headache, maybe, but a concussion? Never.

  “All right, let’s move out. We’ve got some ground to cover.”

  The doctor shook her head as she typed furiously. “Wait.”

  “We don’t have time for your research, doctor.” Encaged in a metal shell still smoldering from a barrage of missiles, Brandt was in no mood for Monroe’s antics. “Now.”

  “I’ve got streaming video coming in from the Den.”

  His ears pricked up at the mention of their command’s code name. “How? We’ve been cut off since the ambush.”

  Davidson spoke up. “She e-mailed them.”

  Brandt could not believe his private had just suggested that Monroe had spammed the Pentagon. “E-mail?”

  “It took a couple of letters back and forth to authenticate our identity, but yeah, she e-mailed the E-ring.”

  He turned to the doctor and looked at her with a level of respect he normally reserved for those in uniform.“So what does the Den have to say?”

  “In a sec.”

  Her words were snippy and her tone condescending. He wanted to snap back, but under all her bravado he could see that she gnawed on her lip as her eyes flickered across the screen, processing more information then he ever could. Anybody who raised command through a freaking e-mail had earned a break.

  For now.

  “Doctor, I just want to remind you that—”

  “That one more missile and the whole building’s going to come down around our heads? Sure, go ahead and explain that to my phone.”

  He was going to retort, but Davidson cut in. “The metal is acting as a conductor for the phone, allowing her to stream the data at a faster rate.”

  Brandt bristled, not so much at his private defending Monroe, but the fact that he didn’t realize that himself.

  “Oh crap,” the doctor said, as her cheeks paled. “You’re going to want to see this.”

  She turned the screen toward him. It showed streaming video of satellite coverage centered on the hangar. Not only that, but the picture was enhanced with thermal imaging. His party’s four figures were clustered on the north side of the hangar, but it was the nine bright orange figures creeping toward the hangar, converging on their position, that had blanched Monroe.

  The doctor’s voice shook as she looked up. Fear replaced any sarcasm or disrespect. Pure, unadulterated fear. “They’re coming in,” she moaned.

  A fierce smile rose to Brandt’s lips

  “Excellent.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Skies over the Atlantic Ocean

  Tok closed his eyes so that he might soak in the ambience of the private jet. The clink of ice against a glass. The fizz of soda being poured over the cubes. The hum of computers all around him. So much to assimilate.

  He couldn’t help but marvel at the plethora of sounds contained within such a small space. Tok barely wanted to open his eyes anymore. The visual palette was no longer adequate. For so many years he had relied on sight, but now he knew how little he had truly comprehended.

  How could he have known that running your finger along a linen seat created the subtlest of whispering hums? Even now, the plane’s thick pile carpet muffled his mentor’s approaching footsteps. Such things Tok noticed.

  “Petir?” he asked, before the older man could tap him on the shoulder. Their old traditions were no longer necessary.

  The older man smiled warmly as he bowed. “Master, they are ready to enter the hangar. Do you still wish Dr. Monroe taken alive?”

  Tok shook his head.

  “And Sergeant Brandt?” Petir cocked his head to the side. “Do you wish him interrogated for Lochum’s position?”

  Again, Tok shook his head. But instead of his mentor’s usual diligence, Petir did not immediately move to fulfill his wishes.

  “Any who have heard Lochum’s name must be extinguished.”

  The older man nodded, but did not pass on the order. With his implants, Tok could hear the slightest wheeze as Petir’s nostrils pinched in concern. He had learned to read his mentor’s moods long ago and knew what they meant, but that whistle expanded his understanding of the man who had become more than a father to him. His mentor would never voice dissent, except that wheeze carried on a conversation of its own.

  “Air your concerns, Petir.” Tok indicated the chair next to him.

  His mentor declined the seat, but took in a deep breath before speaking. “At the least, Sergeant Brandt knows of Lochum’s location, and Dr. Monroe’s expertise might be of future use.”

  “Well spoken,” Tok acknowledged. “But an officer of Brandt’s stature will not break easily or quickly. Therefore, extending his life would only provide him with opportunities to escape. And as for Monroe, her knowledge has become a liability.”

  The old man again inclined his head, but the wheeze did
not subside.

  “Petir, out with it.”

  “Master, is there not another option? Allow the group to escape and simply follow them to Lochum.”

  Tok had considered this proposition hours ago and dismissed it as untenable, but Petir was at his most effective when he knew Tok’s heart.

  “Now that we have shown our hand, they will take precautions in their route. We will reveal more of ourselves in trying to follow them than we shall in discovering our good friend’s location.”

  “Might one ask then, why did we attack in the first place?”

  A wise question. One that Tok wished he had asked himself back in the jungle, but with Lochum’s name burning into his mind, impatience had gotten the best of him. He had set the ambush in motion before deliberating upon his choices, seeing four or five moves out, before deciding upon on any one selection. But this was Lochum, and the flint was struck.

  Monroe had suddenly been demoted from the queen to a pawn. Tok had sought to eliminate all other loose ends so that his mind could hone in upon the only target that mattered. Despite their bond, he did not share such musings with his mentor. For as loyal as Petir was, the older man held an even higher allegiance to the Knot. It would be not only his mentor’s responsibility, but his duty, to report Tok’s emotional misstep.

  Patient as always, the older man stood quietly, awaiting his answer.

  “I have narrowed our search for Lochum down to only two locations.”

  His mentor’s face transformed from concerned to quizzical. “How so?”

  Tok indicated the largest plasma screen. It showed a detailed map of Europe. “We know the French would never let such artifacts as important as Roman-era Christian remains to leave their borders.” The rest of Europe faded as France enlarged.

  His mentor added, “The native’s mention of Paris.”

  “Now we need only look at the facilities in the city. Just a few have the scientific equipment that a man such as Lochum would require.” The map melted again to highlight the central city. “We can only assume the American would have insisted upon the tightest security measures. Which refined my search to these four research facilities, including the Panthéon-Sorbonne.”

  Petir studied the map. “But we have men within the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Paris Descartes University, and Jussieux Campus.”

  “Who would have alerted us if any unusual activity had occurred in their facilities, leaving only these two targets.” After the extraneous locations dissolved away, the remaining facilities glowed brightly. “The Schepartz Laboratory at Yale University and the Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris.”

  The older man’s wheeze finally subsided. “I shall have the team in Belgium execute your orders.”

  Tok watched as Petir set his words into motion. Now there was nothing that stood in his way. The professor, and all that he knew, would be his. Then Lochum would die.

  The Knot’s secret would again be truly secret.

  * * *

  Rebecca tasted iron as her lip-biting drew blood. Her nerves were shot as the glowing orange assailants boldly approached the hangar.

  “They’re coming,” Rebecca said. “Like right now.”

  The sergeant sounded decidedly unconcerned. “I gathered that much from your pitch.”

  She could imagine the scowl on Brandt’s face. But who could blame her for a little squeak? They were practically sitting out in the open. Their only cover was three oil barrels pulled into the center of the hangar, barely enough to hide both of them, let alone all five.

  So Svengurd and Lopez were over at the derelict aircraft, while Davidson was in the northwestern corner doing God knew what. There didn’t seem to be any specific rhyme or reason to the sergeant’s plan.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t find better cover?”

  “You’re tracking them through thermal imaging, correct?”

  “That was kind of the point.”

  Brandt looked back over his shoulder. “And how do you think the men armed with RPGs are locating us?”

  Luckily, the sergeant went back to his task, so he didn’t see her blush. Of course their assailants had the same tracking equipment. And they probably didn’t even have to paper clip their phone’s antenna to keep the data flowing.

  Watching the enemy encircle the tiny hangar, Rebecca realized the odds were nine to five. Really, nine to four since she had proved herself useless with a gun. And if you counted Davidson’s injuries, it became nine to three-and-a-half. Not good odds.

  Hands shaking, Rebecca had to stop typing. She flexed her fingers. This was ridiculous. Hadn’t she just come from three months in the Amazon? Hadn’t she just survived a snake’s clutch?

  But these situations were night and day. Nature might be cruel but evenhanded. There was no malice when a jaguar attacked. The anaconda had just wanted a meal. She had stayed alive in the jungle by simply avoiding confrontation. Stay out of a piranha’s way, and it stayed out of yours.

  This situation was so very different. The men approaching had one intent and only one intent. To kill them. Not because of a social misunderstanding or territorial dispute. They had been hired to do a job, and they wouldn’t stop until they had fulfilled their objective.

  Maybe Brandt had realized she’d stopped typing or had just glanced over his shoulder, but when she looked up, he locked her gaze. “We’re going to be fine,” the sergeant said, and she might have believed him, if the enemy wasn’t scant yards away.

  Then a dot flickered and disappeared. But it wasn’t one of the approaching enemy. It was a dot inside the building. And it wasn’t just any dot, but the dot in the northwestern corner. She tapped the screen, checking her jury-rigged satellite phone, but all seemed to be working properly.

  “Davidson just disappeared.”

  The sergeant handed her a set of earplugs. “Put these in, and—”

  * * *

  The RPG blew the hangar door off its hinges as Brandt pulled his goggles down. “Get your—”

  He pulled Monroe to his chest, shielding her eyes as Flashbang grenades exploded all around. His tinted goggles cut the explosives’ intense glare. For him, it was more of a decorative fireworks display, but with her eyes unshielded, Monroe could suffer temporary blindness.

  “Stay down,” he urged, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. But even with her earplugs, she trembled in his arms with each explosion. “It’ll be over in a minute,” he soothed.

  Through the grenade’s smoke, two figures emerged, laying down cover fire. The sergeant didn’t even bother to raise his gun. With his team this outnumbered, they could never win a firefight. Instead, Brandt yanked a pulley from its mooring. Wearing earplugs, their assailants couldn’t hear the rattle of the metal as chunks of the second-floor wreckage fell from high above. Crushed under the girders’ weight, the men only had time enough to let out startled cries before even they were stifled.

  Turning his attention to the other side of the hangar, Brandt watched as the three men who had breached from the south abandoned their cautious approach and charged forward, determined not to be caught in the same trap as their companions.

  Obviously these men were well versed in American tactics. From their assault formation, to the Flashbangs they used, these professionals were running an offensive right out of a West Point playbook.

  Luckily Brandt wasn’t even close to following rules. While the three men were distracted searching above them for more girders, it was his soldiers they should have been worried about. Lopez gunned the decrepit plane’s engine while Svengurd shoved the spinning propellers to the left, mowing down the assailants. Not one of them got off a shot before body parts splattered across the hangar.

  Not bad. Within ten seconds they had evened the odds.

  Now it was time to fight.

  * * *

  Rebecca held Brandt’s hand as tightly as the anaconda had squeezed her. Crouched, the sergeant guided them through the hangar, but she didn’t know where. Still seeing b
right shining stars before her eyes, she had to trust in Brandt. Where he led, she followed.

  The faint echo of gunfire made it through the earplugs. It sounded almost surreal, as if it was happening in another hangar. Another world.

  As the sergeant pulled to a halt, Rebecca recognized where they were. Back to the tangle of second-floor wreckage. Brandt spoke, but she couldn’t hear him. He pulled out her earplugs.

  “Dig in here,” Brandt whispered as he turned to leave.

  “Here?” she hissed.

  The sergeant checked around him before answering. “They won’t hit us with an RPG with their men inside. Now go.”

  Rebecca wanted to argue, mainly just to keep Brandt’s gun nearby, but the scrap of metal captured the sergeant’s attention, and he slipped off before she could protest. Tucking her laptop under her arm, gunfire sounded all around, driving Rebecca deeper into the tangle of steel.

  Before, she’d wanted better cover, but now that she had her wish, Rebecca wanted nothing more than to know what was going on. She might have to stay hidden, but that didn’t mean she had to stay ignorant.

  She opened her laptop to find the screen blank. Rebecca yanked a rubber band from her braid and tied it around her phone. The screen sparked to life again. The two men Brandt had killed were on the floor, their body heat rapidly dissipating in the northeast corner, but all around the plane were warm spots. Bodies. Or more likely, parts of bodies.

  Rebecca was glad Brandt hadn’t shared that part of his plan.

  Inside the hangar, there were seven figures. As hard as she stared at the dots, the doctor couldn’t tell friend from foe. The only one still unaccounted for was Davidson. Rebecca hugged herself as gunfire rattled off the hangar’s metal walls. The fight had turned from a cat-and-mouse game into full-out Rambo action. Brandt’s actions had narrowed the margin considerably, but they were still outnumbered.