Ryan laughed. “If someone is going through all this trouble to hide the truth, do you think they’re really going to just open up their computers to you? Here, sure, play with our lies and see what turns up.”
“I don’t intend to ask for it,” Adam said. The grin from earlier was back and it had taken on a wicked light.
Nodding his head, Cedric began laughing.
“What?” Ryan asked. “What are you guys thinking?”
“Simple,” Adam turned and began working the keyboards like a fiend. “We’re going to steal it.”
Cedric moved to another work station, even more impressive than Adam’s, and began firing it up. Regardless of Ryan’s efforts, neither pupil nor master replied to his questions. Their eyes were locked on their screens, streaming through data like most men would watch football. Realizing he had somehow been dismissed and forgotten, he eased the door open and slipped into the hallway.
“In for a penny,” he mumbled. Sheer survival instinct told him to throw the door open again and put a stop to their snooping. No matter how good they thought they were, the powers that be behind the deception were out of their league. They had no chance of getting away with this.
Instead of throwing the door open, he put one foot in front of the other and headed for the stairs. This was bigger than they were. Much. To stop it before they could get enough evidence to let the world know what was going on, was cowardice. Worse, it would make him just as culpable for the extinction of their race as the men who had designed it.
6
Max navigated the narrow alleys of the Souks, heading away from Dubai Creek and toward the D85 where he would have a better chance of hailing a cab. If the man in Sonapor had anything relevant to share, he could be on a plane and headed back to the States in the morning.
Nothing would please him more.
Not only was he forced to wear a dress and flip flops, he had been unable to think of any way to sneak Betty through customs. Worse still, he had to be extremely careful of his drinking. Even the odor of alcohol on his breath was reason enough to land him in jail for the next six months. The six-month stint would turn into ten years after they searched him.
A bottle of Jim Beam and quality time with his Betty, her silky black-widow stock and the smell of gun oil would make all right with the world again.
Until then, the Souks at night gave him the heebie-jeebies. Hot wind sowed through the mats overhead but little moonlight penetrated the spaces between palm fibers. Oil lamps offered infrequent, flickering light, the spaces between them filled with deep shadows.
The sound of the flip flops was deafening as they slapped the concrete walk. Though he’d gotten used to walking in them, he hadn’t mastered the art of walking quietly. In the dark warrens of the Souks, it made him feel like a target.
Max stopped, silencing the relentless slap-slap-slapping of his flip flops, to listen to the alleys around him. Something in the darkness rustled and fell silent. He held still for another minute, waiting, barely breathing. The only sound that met his listening ears was the distant traffic on the D85.
His imagination was getting the better of him. Walking another few yards, he tried to turn the conversation with Mohammed over in his brain, examining it. The man had been frightened, but he had been glad to see Max leave. There would be no stalking, no retaliation from that sector.
The woman in the street, the prostitute, kept popping into his head unbidden. Something about her, something he couldn’t put his finger on, bothered him. Turning that golden maze of a necklace around in his mind, he tried to remember where he had seen it, what it stood for.
When it hit him, he stumbled and stopped. Behind him, in the darkness, the rustling could have been cloth on skin, or fingertips brushing the adobe walls of the Souks. It faded too fast for him to be sure.
The necklace had been the Bismallah, an Islamic pendant that stood for ‘In the name of Allah’. Why would a prostitute, especially in such a conservative religious environment, wear something like that while she worked the street?
She wouldn’t.
Slipping his flip flops off, he walked to the nearest patch of darkness and slipped into a recessed doorway. The minutes dragged by as he waited. Just as he was about to give up, believing it was good old fashioned paranoia following him in the Souks and nothing more, the sound came again. Tentative at first.
Slipping a hand inside his Kandoora, he pulled his knife free and held it to his chest. Closing his eyes, trusting himself to his ears, he waited. His first thought was the woman in the street, but the Souks were no stranger to muggings and robbery as the economy continued to plunge.
One way or another, he was about to find out. Whoever was out there was getting closer. Max, poised to strike, nearly dropped the knife as his cellphone began ringing.
Fighting the folds of cloth to get the phone shut down, a flash, seen out of the corner of his eye caused him to duck. Chips of gypsum and coral stone rained down on his head and shoulders as a blade sank into the side of the building.
Reaching out, he grabbed a handful of fabric and threw the assailant into the doorway, pinning them to the wall with both his own body and the blade of his knife as it slipped under the sternum. Even in the shadows, the gold of the Bismallah was radiant.
Immobilized by pain, unable to get more than a gasp of air around the blade in her sternum, she didn’t struggle or fight back while he used his free hand to rip the covering from her face.
“You have a choice to make,” he whispered against her skin. “I twitch to the right, you’re a dead woman. Do you understand that?”
“You are a coward,” she panted out on the small breaths she could manage.
Max pressed his face next to her smooth skin and laughed. It was a mirthless sound and he felt her shiver against him. “You’re a whore and a thief, so I guess that makes us even.”
Between clenched teeth, her eyes flashing pure hatred, she said, “I am no whore! No thief!”
“No? What were you planning to do with that knife? You were going to gut me like a dog and steal whatever you could find, weren’t you?”
“If you are no coward, then kill me,” she challenged.
“I said you had a choice,” he grinned. “Twitch to the right and you die. Twitch to the left and I will leave you laying, alive and paralyzed, in the street. What kind of repressed deviants do you have here in Dubai? What will they do to you if they find you while they’re roaming the streets tonight?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she flashed, but her eyes no longer looked certain.
He grabbed her by the chin and pressed his face close to hers. “Try me.”
A whimper escaped her lips. It was the only sign of weakness she had shown since the knife slipped into her chest. “What do you want from me?”
“Tell me the truth, and I’ll release you to your God.”
Her jaw clenched, and she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, they were cool. Calm. “You are marked. Your death would have insured life for my family.”
Before he could question her riddle, she grabbed his hand and pulled hard to the right. Surprised, he pulled back and she slid down the wall, her eyes never leaving his. As her damaged heart fought to get blood where it needed to go, it was her turn to smile. The gentle pull of her lips held as her life ebbed away.
Max knelt in the recess, stunned. When he was sure she was dead, he pulled his knife free and wiped the blade clean on her abaya.
Twenty years ago, he’d seen his share of Islamic extremists. This was…different. This didn’t feel like it was for God or country, but for her family. “How would my death have insured life for your family?”
The dead can’t answer, but there was still one name that might be able to shed some light on what was happening. Grabbing his flip flops, he chose to run barefoot through the rest of the Souks, putting them on only after the D85 was in sight.
A cab waited at the curb. Considering the woman’s declaration that he w
as marked, it was a little too convenient. Max waited until a new cab rounded the corner before he stepped out of the shadows and waved it down.
There would be no returning to the hotel. Nor would he be able to leave through the Dubai International Airport in the morning without a change of identity. He’d have to find another way, and soon. But first things first, “Sheikh Zayed Road at al Qusais.”
From this point forward, he had to assume he was being followed, hunted. He left the cab at al Qusais and hiked the rest of the way to Sonapor. Ripe with human despair and sewage, he smelled the camp long before the high walls and floodlights that surrounded it filled the horizon. Ironic since the Ministry of Health was only a mile away.
Though he had memorized maps of Dubai’s suburbs during his time in the golden city, he’d had no time to scout the area before coming. On the trip over, he had envisioned guarded turrets and Constantine wire. As he waited in the shadows, not a single guard walked the wall.
Outside, the camp had been as well maintained as the inside smelled. Chunks of wall were missing in places, the gates sprung from their hinges. Regular maintenance was not in evidence as many of the floodlights had burned out over time and had been left, dark eyes looking out over a dismal world. Fear and hopelessness were the only guards that stood between the population of the camp and the outside world.
Another half hour passed without anyone stepping out of the shadows. Stripping out of his clothes to change into the darker, less Emirati Kandoora, Max’s fingers brushed a hard patch in his sleeve the size of a penny. Held under the stars, he could make nothing out of the thin, stiff fabric. Rubbing his fingers over embedded filaments, adhesive on one side clung to his skin.
“Clever witch,” he whispered, tossing the tracking device to the ground.
Time had just become a precious commodity. How much did he have left?
Max chose an entryway shrouded by darkness. The stench on the outside had been nothing compared to what he found on the inside. The narrow streets ran with sewage, stepping stones had been placed in strategic points, islands in a foul sea, to allow passage without wading in it.
The note given to him by al Qassimi had listed a number. Max walked around several small houses before he found one whose number was still intact, which allowed him to get his bearings. Few windows allowed a glimpse into the hell that was the lives of these men. Those rare few that were open to the night, spoke of a desperate attempt at ventilating the cramped quarters within.
Men slept three deep on metal bunk beds that filled the small spaces. In the wane light offered by the tiny windows, Max could see a small refrigerator and table occupied the scant space left by the twelve sleeping men. If his target slept in a hut this full, he would have to move fast, killing all of them before they could get in his way or allow his quarry to escape.
Max glanced at the scribbled name once more. There was only one, Yousef. No son of this or grandson of that, just Yousef. Still, he didn’t think it would be too hard to find one Emirati in an ocean of Indians, Pakistanis, and Philippinos.
He was wrong. Though the sun had still not made an appearance over the horizon, it took two hours to find the hut he was looking for, bringing sunrise dangerously close. When he looked into a window on the other side of the camp, he knew he’d found the right one. Cast out, but still Emirati, Yousef had been given the rare pleasure of living alone.
The old man, lying naked on the bed, except for a pair of boxers, to endure the hot night air, looked desiccated. Even from where Max stood looking through the night window, he could count the man’s ribs, follow the lines of his collarbones. He was nothing but a dried out husk.
Max drew his blade and tested the latch on the door. Its rusted machinations protested, but it swung open. The old man was no longer lying down, but sitting on the edge of the bed. “I have been waiting for you.”
“If it’s death you’ve been waiting for, old man, I’ll bring it swiftly. But I have questions first.”
The old man’s laughter filled the room, a booming sound that seemed far too large and full of life for the frail body holding it. When the laughter passed, a deep sadness filled the old man’s eyes and he shook his head. He slouched as if the weight of the air had become too much to carry. “My friend, I am already dead. As are you.”
7
The first thing Mel became aware of was the burning pain in her chest. The second was the ache in her shoulders and knees. The third was unrelieved darkness.
Like an afterthought compared to the pain in her chest and arms, a hundred small scratches and cuts burned across her face and arms from the shrapnel that had flown through the cockpit when they crashed.
When she attempted to shift to a different position to alleviate the pull on her arms, she rolled over face first, on cold stone covered with a thin layer of water. Choking and sputtering on water that left a nasty taste in her mouth, she came fully awake.
Flailing to get rolled back over, she found herself trussed up like a pig with her hands and feet tied behind her back. Her flight suit had been stripped away, leaving her chilled in the cold water with nothing to protect her but her gym shorts and undershirt.
Rolling onto her side, she forced her bare feet up, putting enough slack in the line to grab the rough twine with her hands. Running her fingers over the knots and twists, it took only a few moments to figure out how to get her feet loose. Actually doing it was another matter altogether.
Exhausted, she let the line pull tight again to rest before setting to work on the knots. The pain in her shoulders reasserted itself like hot coals responding to a kiss of wind.
“Mel?” Eagle’s voice, barely a whisper in the dark, seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, kid. I’m here.”
A quiet rustling and the sloshing of water drifted to her, followed by a thump. “What happened? Where are we?”
A sleepover at Harry Houdini’s, she thought. Reigning in her own fear and frustration, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The kid couldn’t help it and a smart remark from her wasn’t going to do either of them any good. “We were hit, kid. Remember, the helicopter going down? My guess is we’re in a Chinese hole.”
“Where’s Gunny?”
She hesitated. The boy deserved a glimmer of hope, but her gut said Gunny had been true to his hateful word. The SOB had bailed on them. If the intel they had collected over the last ten years was true, what were two dead Marines in the grand scheme of things?
“Dead,” she lied. “Tried to get out of the harness to get secured after we rolled. Went out the gunwale when I lost control.”
“Jesus.” In the darkness, his soft voice shook.
“Don’t do it, kid,” Mel snapped. “Don’t you dare start crying.”
A sniff. “It’s just—”
“It’s just nothing. You’re a Marine and we are not dead yet, so suck it up. Do you get me?”
“Yes.” The first word was weak, then his voice grew stronger. “Yes, Ma’am.”
Unless they could get free, this nightmare was only beginning. The slightest sign of weakness and the Chinese would zero in on him, make things worse. She knew it, and if he’d been paying attention in Basic, so did he. “What’s your status?”
“Trussed up like Christmas turkey. Wet, cold.” He hesitated, then added, “Head feels like my first week under Gunny’s command. Chest feels like it’s been used for target practice.”
“You took a beating in the crash. As for the chest, I don’t know what they used but it feels like a stun grenade went off in my bra.”
Mel smiled as Eagle choked back a donkey’s bray of laughter. That was more like it. Panic and fear would do nothing but clog up their thinking and feed their captors. They wouldn’t be able to block it out completely, but they had to try.
Working her feet closer to her hands, Mel gave the knot another try. Rustling in the dark told her Eagle was probably doing something similar. “Before the dance start
ed upstairs, you said you had some signals. What did you see?”
“I’m not sure,” he grunted. His voice sounded strained and Mel hoped he was having better luck than she was. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Ultra high frequency, almost like natural radiation interference, only louder, higher. There was also some kind of digital signature.”
“That sounds a lot like gibberish to me.” She couldn’t tell if it was her imagination, or if the knot was starting to give way. She relaxed to take the pressure off her knees, hips and shoulders, but not enough to pull the knot tight again. “Dumb it down for the stick monkey.”
“There’s always background radiation. Always. Cosmic radiation from the sun, quasars, just crap floating through space. Our atmosphere filters out a lot of it, but it’s still there. This sounded a lot like the residual stuff we filter out, just more intense. Almost as if it wasn’t being filtered at all. As for the digital undersC.O.R.E, some kind of tech. A computer maybe. But not like anything I’ve ever heard before. Got it!”
The soft sounds of rustling grew louder and she doubled her efforts at her own knot, sure now that the knot was loose. “What’s your guess?”
The only sound that met her ears for a moment was a miserable groan, and then a sigh of relief followed by what might have been him falling back into the water. “Hands are in front. Shoulders need a minute to recover. If I had to guess, I’d say some kind of machine with a new power source. And it’s big. Huge. I was pulling that signal for almost a mile.”
The knot gave way and mimicking Eagle’s sound of relief, she fell back. Laying on her arms hurt like hell, but it was better than the constant pressure. By inches, she forced her knees and hips to straighten out. “There was nothing here. Nothing.”
Genesis (Extinction Book 1) Page 10
