Too bad there was no way in hell Montgomery would let him air that footage as it showed a covert U.S. military operation inside a sovereign country, and American drones engaging international mercenaries in what appeared to be a mineral hunting expedition. Maybe there was something more politically toxic that could be aired, but Hank couldn’t imagine what it would be. This footage wouldn’t be declassified until somewhere around the year 3000.
Hank suddenly wondered how Conrad Yeats was faring. He hadn’t heard from him lately, which was a sure sign Conrad probably had already found something big. He always did. Probably was in trouble for his usual practice of replacing the trowel with dynamite too. But while Hank could complain about Conrad’s techniques over a brew in Cape Verde and wax poetic about his resonation of a Bronze Age portal, Conrad was going to beat him to the Queen of Sheba’s secrets.
As for himself, Hank’s work was done. He’d pack up his City of Sheba, edit the B-roll for the TV pilot and head back to Niantic. He could think of about 13 investigators who would marvel over the results of his resonation.
Not much, Hank Johnson, but not nothing either.
Outside, Hank was ordering the crew to break everything down when his Iridium 9555 satellite phone rang.
It was Montgomery.
“Sir,” Hank began, “I’ve got good news and bad news…”
“That’s not what I’m calling about,” crackled the voice on the other end. “A distress signal came down off the OPS scanner. Relayed from the general himself. Top priority for the African theater. You’re gonna love this.”
“Play it, I’m listening,” said Hank, looking up beyond the tree canopy overhead trying to imagine the RQ-4D Global Hawk loitering at 60,000 feet relaying their conversation across the airwaves.
The encoded transmission buzzed for a moment, then a series of morse code beeps began. Hank listened, trying to sort them out in his head. His morse was rusty as usual. Then it all became clear.
Conrad had been captured in the Sudan by forces loyal to one or both of the Zawas brothers. Intel said Conrad had been moved to Egypt before the signal quit.
“I had a drink with him the night we reefed that floating terror camp,” Hank told Montgomery, the surprise fading into resolve. “I’m done here. I’ll head out today. Can you get me the triangulated coordinates of that signal?”
Montgomery’s voice said, “I’ve got a favor or two left from a guy over at CECOM. I’ll get back to you. Might as well help General Yeats’ son, whether he wants me to or not.”
“OK. Thanks.”
“Yeah, and if you want to deliver hurt to the Zawas brothers, feel free to deal me in. I’ve got my own issues with those thugs.”
“Will do, sir.”
Hank sat there for a moment, swatting away a persistent tsetse fly buzzing near his ear.
I’m not going to miss the jungle.
But Montgomery would have more to do here. Strategic Explorations would be back, and if Hank was right about his theory that XM exposure creates conflict metals, among other things, this whole area would actually look like a quarry in two years if something wasn’t done.
Hank took a breath and began to punch in the number to Calvin back at Niantic. “This month’s bill is going to be expensive,” he said to no one in particular as the satellite call switched into a phone relay, and a very distant line began to ring.
After a moment a voice answered. “Calvin here.”
“Calvin. It’s Johnson. Look, I’m going to be away from Niantic a while longer.” Hank paused for a reaction, but only breathing came back from the other side. “I’ll try to make it short, but I’ve got another thing I have to do.”
“Yeah. I know. Yeats got snagged.” Calvin’s voice sounded perturbed. “How many masters do you serve, Johnson?”
“Too many. But rescuing Yeats might actually be helpful to us in other ways. If we proved nothing else here, we proved that the ancients knew about portals. Yeats might be able to harvest more data about this.”
“I saw your portal light up.”
“Neolithic resonators, Calvin. You understand the implications of that?”
“Yep. Lynton-Wolfe is frothing at the mouth. Lightman wanted to go down and take a look. Dalby wants them in his video.”
“Sounds like Rosier has been filling you in.”
“Yeah. And I want to hear about the drone battle. Sounds like I missed a combat geek-a-thon.”
“Yeah. It was a real party. Tell L-W that his power cube is working fine. By the way, how’s the project going? Anything interesting happening?”
Hank threw out the line to get the spotlight off himself. He wanted to see if Calvin would say anything about Bogdanovich and Jarvis.
“Sorry, you cut out there for a second,” Calvin’s voice said after a minute. “I’ve got to get into a meeting. Be careful with Montgomery. I know you two are old friends, and I saw him in the Hindu Kush anomaly event. He’s as spooky as they get.”
“Duly noted. Give my best to everybody. Good stories to come.”
Calvin didn’t say anything else. He was gone. Hank noted the dodge on how the project was going. He couldn’t imagine Calvin wouldn’t level with him. Maybe Calvin was afraid of ADA. Maybe Calvin didn’t want to taint him with knowledge.
Life was getting interesting.
The text he was waiting for now lit up his phone with a simple set of digits — coordinates to where the SOS from Conrad had likely originated from.
Thank you, Montgomery.
Hank read the numbers aloud to himself as he tried to parse the coordinates in his mind. After a moment, he sat back and frowned. “Any of you guys been to Egypt’s eastern desert? I need a nice hotel.”
CHAPTER 13
Egypt
For days Conrad Yeats was treated to the same ritual of humiliation at the Zawas estate: putrid shock showers and blunt trauma in the morning, followed by tea and philosophy in the library, and a whole lot of harsh hosing down in PSYOPS treatment they were giving him. But the beatings had stopped, and the needle tracks were beginning to fade on his arms.
One morning the dousing stopped too, and Conrad knew something was up. The clothing he had been captured in was returned to him, freshly pressed. Then his guards, in dress uniform, escorted him up a different flight of whitewashed steps to a spectacular terrace with travel magazine-quality views of the Red Sea Coast.
The Zawas family villa, Conrad could now see, was nothing short of a Moorish palace boasting arches, fountains and lush courtyards in the hazy heat. There were also majestic swimming pools, but no harem of beauties in bikinis sunbathing like Conrad would expect with Zawas’s brother Abdil. Ali’s estate here, by contrast, was surrounded by a high wall. Beyond the wall palm trees swayed against the backdrop of shimmering waters.
The thought that he had been detained in a dank little corner or two of this palace while Zawas roamed like a mighty pharaoh infuriated Conrad. So did the table beneath an awning on the terrace with the white cloth, gleaming silverware and a couple of bottles chilling in a bucket.
Colonel Zawas was under the awning with a man in a crumpled white linen suit, and it wasn’t Omar. They were laughing, and when the distinguished guest turned, Conrad beheld none other than Hank Johnson, all smiles.
“There he is!” Hank called out. “Hey, buddy!”
“Buddy?” Conrad was stunned as he approached the two men. “What the hell is this?”
Hank moved to the side, and then Conrad saw the bars of gold bullion piled up like a pyramid on the table and stopped cold. “This, buddy, is your ransom. Courtesy of Uncle Sam. But Zawas here says it’s not enough and won’t let you go.”
Conrad looked at Colonel Zawas, who was now lighting up a cigar. “Haven’t you gotten what you wanted, Zawas?”
“I got what I can get, Little Yeats,” Zawas replied, waving out his match and taking a smug puff of his cigar. “Let’s see just how much Daddy wants you back in the States.”
Conrad looked
at Hank, who was still smiling, but whose eyes told him to play along. “Your dad found out about your, uh, situation here and relayed it to Montgomery, who sent me, even though it’s been a few years since we last saw each other.”
“Really?” asked Zawas. “My informants, the ones I have looking out for my no-good brother, tell me they saw the both of you in the Cape Verde islands not long ago. I also understand you’ve been to the Congo recently.”
That wiped the smile off Hank’s face. He cocked his ear. “You hear something?”
Conrad and Zawas looked at each other as Hank took out his phone as if it had rung, looked at it for a moment and then handed it to Zawas.
“It’s for you, Colonel.”
Curious but wary, Zawas took the phone and held it up to his ear. “I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s because it’s talking to you from up there,” Hank said, putting on his sunglasses and pointing up at the sky.
Conrad followed the colonel’s gaze to a bright flash way up high, like a mirror reflecting the sun in their faces. It was a drone aircraft of some kind, probably armed with a couple of hellfire missiles. Just then it tipped its wing.
Zawas shielded his eyes and shoved the phone back at Hank. “The U.S. won’t always have the edge in technology,” he fumed, then turned to Conrad. “American, go home.”
Hank coughed and pocketed the phone inside his linen suit, then smiled. “The United States wants to thank you for your partnership, Colonel Zawas. Always a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Until next time,” Zawas replied, not breaking his gaze with Conrad. “Give my regards to Generals Yeats and Montgomery.”
“And I’ll give my regards to your brother and tell him you have the money I owe him,” Conrad shot back, and turned to walk out with Hank close behind.
* * *
Conrad and Hank passed two guards inside and started down a grand stairway curving down into an even grander salon with a spectacular black-and-red mosaic floor.
“What the hell was that?” Conrad demanded when they reached the bottom. “I’m getting the crap kicked out of me in some cellar, and you’re having drinks with Zawas and smoking Cubans.”
“Got here as fast as I could after your distress call, Conrad, but I had to work through official channels.”
Conrad said, “So that b.s. up there about my dad wanting me back in the States is true?”
“Yeah. They say they need you for some big deal in D.C.”
A black Range Rover was parked in the circular drive next to a fountain. Conrad climbed into the shotgun seat while Hank slid behind the wheel and started the engine.The iron gates of the palace slowly opened as two Alsatians on chains at the guard station began barking angrily.
“It took me years to get away from D.C., Hank,” Conrad said as they turned out onto the long drive lined with palm trees, which seemed to be nodding them goodbye in the hot wind. “No way I’m going back.”
“I know that, but Zawas doesn’t. I didn’t want to tip our hand about our private venture. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing he didn’t already know about Meroe.”
“So you found her?”
“Her tomb, anyway. And a medallion made of some black ore.”
“Black?” Hank asked, suddenly very interested. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Had some jewels and an inscription: Ada the Queen of Sheba.”
“Ada?” Hank repeated, like this was too good to be true. “That’s the acronym for the computer algorithm we talk to all day long at Niantic. ADA will be happy to know that she’s a demon.”
“That’s her name,” Conrad said. “At least that’s what Serena Serghetti said before she stole the medallion along with a military chopper.”
“Mother Earth was there too? She’s everywhere!” Hank shook his head. “So did you get anything out of Zawas during your stay at the villa?”
“Yep, but Zawas has probably already figured out it’s missing, so you better floor it,” Conrad told him, and then removed from inside his shirt an old leather journal. “It’s got a map of the entrance to the Queen of Sheba’s mines.”
Hank did a double-take and almost drove them off the road before he recovered the wheel. “You sure you want to do this, Conrad?”
“What are you talking about? I already did it.”
“I mean go to wherever that map takes us. Because if what I think is there is there, you won’t come back the same.”
Conrad wasn’t exactly sure what Hank was getting at. “Do we ever come back from any adventure the same?”
Hank shook his head. “This one’s different, Conrad. I promise you. I’m warning you. This isn’t your regular neolithic smash-and-grab. There will be forces arrayed against us.”
“Aren’t there always?”
“Yeah. But when you’re lying on the ground in some God-forsaken hole in the universe I want you to be able to say, ‘Hank warned me.’”
“I’m all in, Hank,” Conrad assured him. “Where else am I going to go? Back to whatever my father has in store for me in D.C.? Forget it. Back to Zawas’s brother Abdil? No way. Onward and downward. No regrets, no retreats. And I won’t say you didn’t warn me.”
“OK then,” Hank said. “Just wanted to discharge my responsibilities.”
Conrad looked Hank dead in the eye. “You done?”
Hank held his gaze. “Yeah, I’m done.”
“Then stop wasting our time,” Conrad told him. “Floor it. Before Zawas figures out I stole the journal and comes after us.”
“Oh, he’s going to come after us,” Hank said, looking at the speedometer. “Can’t push her any faster. I’m going to have to call in some bird dropping to slow Zawas down.”
* * *
After seeing off Yeats and Johnson, Colonel Zawas immediately went to his private library where Omar was examining one of the gold bricks Johnson had delivered.
“Well?” he demanded.
“It’s been refined to 18 karats, and we can further refine it to a pure 24 karats,” Omar told him excitedly. “But this gold didn’t come from Fort Knox or the Federal Reserve. It was created.”
“Created?” Zawas repeated.
“By some ancient alchemy,” Omar explained. “I suspect from the same black minerals that the Scottish Mason described in his journal here.”
Omar glanced at the leather journal on the ancient Egyptian funerary table beside him.
Zawas said, “Then for your sake I hope that tracking chemical you pumped into Yeats’ bloodstream works, and that he doesn’t simply lead us to Washington, D.C.”
“Yeats won’t return to his father,” Omar promised. “He and Johnson will lead us straight to the mines your family has been searching for ever since your forefathers accompanied James Bruce on his digs.”
Zawas, who was as secular as they came in modern Egypt, picked up Bruce’s journal with the same reverence he would tender the Koran if he were a religious man. The worn leather felt rich in his hands, but something about its weight was different. He took a closer look and suddenly realized it wasn’t the journal of James Bruce after all but a selection of verses from the Book of the Dead taken from the open slot he now saw on his bookshelves.
“Yeats!” he cried out as a hellfire missile hit the villa, collapsing the side of the library by the windows and scattering papyrus and scrolls to the desert wind.
Omar dove for cover over his gold brick as shattered glass and dust rained down. But Zawas ran straight toward the blown-out window, the white drapes twisting in the breeze, and looked out in time to see the glint of the American drone soar away. He could hear the villa’s alarms blaring and the rumble of his two antiaircraft batteries on the roof shooting fire into the empty skies.
His aide burst into the library with a shout, “Colonel! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine!” Zawas brushed the broken bits of glass from his uniform and then felt a trickle along his cheek. He touched his hand to it and saw blood.
“Tell the men at the forward base to prepare to move out.”
“Yes, sir!” the aide saluted and left.
Zawas turned to the cowering Omar. “Get up, you fool! If Yeats has the journal, he’s probably already figured out what we couldn’t. We have to track him to the mines and then kill him. Once we control Ada’s mines, we and the world will never have to fear the Americans again.”
CHAPTER 14
Luizi Crater
Congo
Hank abandoned his ATV in the bush and joined Conrad at the edge of a boulder field that rimmed the crater like a bull’s-eye. The old journal that Conrad stole from Zawas had turned out to be invaluable. In no time Hank matched the Mason’s drawing of the Queen of Sheba’s circular “abyss” to the Luizi Crater in the Congo, a few hundred miles from the portal he had activated only days before.
The portal and the crater had to connect somewhere underground, and that somewhere had to be the Queen of Sheba’s mines.
Satellite overheads, meanwhile, revealed the zigzag bridge over the abyss to be, in fact, a deep gorge cut along the floor of the crater — a natural trench much like the man-made passageway Conrad had followed into Ada’s tomb in Nubia. This gorge, if Hank was right, would lead them to the hidden entrance to her mines — and the all-time mother lode of exotic matter, maybe even Conrad’s so-called Pillars of Creation.
Probably one and the same.
Hank started across the cracked terrain toward the crater’s impact cone, a natural dome formed by the gigaton blast. Domes usually blew off in a titanic mushroom cloud. But for some reason this one didn’t. “What do you make of this, Doctor Yeats?” he asked, but got no answer.
He turned around and saw Conrad crouched down with his ear to the ground, M16 rifle on his back, listening intently to the rolling savanna beyond the crater rim that rose around them. “We’re being followed.”
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