by Bob Mayer
Except it wasn’t rock.
“We go back now,” Nidar, the leader of the Kurds, called out to his five men.
Jonah was touching metal. It was dirty, rusted, and scored by weather.
“Wait,” Haney ordered Nidar.
Nidar pointed at what Haney could now see was two massive metal doors, set into the cliff face, painted to match the rock on either side. The cliff went up about fifty meters, slightly over-hanging, which explained why it had never shown up on any imagery. Haney realized he wasn’t surprised at finally having found what he’d been seeking for over a decade. He also wasn’t relieved. The key was to uncover what was inside.
“This is forbidden,” Nidar said. “That is what they said in the village. They said one must not go this way. I did not understand and they wouldn’t tell me why. But now we know.”
Jonah was moving to the left, past the two large doors, ignoring the foreign conversation behind him. As if he knew exactly what he was looking for.
“Ah!” Jonah cried out as he came to something. He threw his pack down and pulled a crowbar out of it.
“Slow down,” Haney said, moving forward. “We don’t know what—“
A piece of metal grating broke loose with a rusty protest and clanged to the ground, leaving a hole, waist high, about three feet square, in front of Jonah.
“Stop!” Haney called out, but Jonah was in his own world. He slithered into the hole.
“Idiot,” Haney muttered as he dropped his pack and ran to the hole, pulling his headlamp out of a pocket. He turned it on and shone it down the tunnel. He saw Jonah’s feet about fifteen feet down a smooth, metal shaft.
“Jonah! Listen to me,” Haney called out.
And then Jonah disappeared from sight, as if the darkness had snatched him.
There was an exclamation echoing back down the tube, then a sudden scream, and finally silence.
“Jonah?” Haney called out.
“The mountain has taken him,” Nadir said. “It is Allah’s will.”
“He fell through a hole in a metal tube,” Haney said.
Haney leaned into what was obviously a ventilation shaft. “Jonah?”
A faint voice echoed up out of the darkness. “I have found it!”
“Are you all right?” Haney asked.
“He is redeemed!” Jonah’s voice was faint and echoing as if he were in a void a distance away.
Haney pointed at one of the porters. “Rope. Belay plate. Anchor points.” As the requested equipment was extracted from various packs, Haney supervised the installation of three anchor points on the rock wall outside the tunnel.
“Nidar,” Haney ordered. “You follow me, and make sure my rope doesn’t fray on the edge of hole.”
“This is a bad place,” Nidar said.
“It’s built by men,” Haney said. “We’re men.”
“It was built by demons,” Nidar said. “That is what the elder in the village told me. Demons went into the mountain many, many years ago with some of our people. Many did not come out.”
“Men went into the mountain,” Haney said. “And now I’m going in. If you run away, it will be known that Nidar and his men are cowards. That they can be scared off by words.”
“Do not talk down to me,” Nidar said. “Men did build this, but maybe they were bad men? Maybe this is a bad place?”
“Do you want to leave Jonah down there?”
Nidar looked at the others. They refused to meet his eyes, which made the decision for him. “I will follow.”
Haney slipped on a pair of gloves. Then he looped the rope through a carabineer on the front of his harness. He considered leaving his pack, but he knew the porters would go through it the minute he was out of sight. Besides, he had gear in it he might need, including a medkit. He crawled into the pipe. It wasn’t overly tight, but he didn’t relish the idea of backing out if he had to. His headlamp illuminated the way and he crawled forward. After five meters he glanced over his shoulder. Nidar was right behind him, one hand making sure the rope was clear and free.
Haney nodded at him. Then pushed onward.
He came to a spot where the bottom just disappeared; Jonah’s surprise drop-off point.
“Jonah?” Haney called out.
“Redemption.” Jonah’s voice was low and tinged with something Haney had heard before: the onset of shock. But at least he was alive.
Haney peered down. He saw Jonah in the small pool of light cast by his headlamp sprawled on the ground directly below. One leg was canted at an unnatural angle. A grate was by his side—he must have crawled onto it and it wasn’t designed to support a person’s weight, or the years had weakened the metal.
“He’s alive,” Haney said to Nidar. “About ten meters down. I need that much slack. And we’re going to have to be pulled back up.”
He pulled on the rope, gathering enough slack with Nidar’s help, then tossed it into the void. Haney felt the edge of the opening. It wasn’t sharp. “Put something under the rope where it goes over the edge once I’m down,” he instructed Nidar.
“As you wish.”
Haney went head first, Australian rappel, sliding down the rope, braking at the last moment, then swinging his feet down below his body. Still attached to the rope, he knelt next to Jonah.
Compound fracture in the right femur with white bone sticking through the pant legs and shock was setting in fast. “You’ll be all right,” Haney said automatically, his training taking over, even though he knew Jonah wouldn’t be all right.
But Jonah was staring past him, eyes wide, a smile on his lips.
That’s when Haney felt it, that he was in the presence of something.
Haney twisted around, still on one knee. The rock floor sloped down into a large open space. Haney swallowed hard as he glimpsed what was on the floor of the cavern, that wasn’t a cavern. He forgot about Jonah as he stood. Once more training kicked in and he pulled out a small camera from a pocket on the outside of his pack and took several pictures, the flash illuminating only part of the tight space.
Looking up, he realized the roof wasn’t rock; it was metal. Metal struts arced overhead, producing the roof. There had to be dirt on top, a layer to camouflage this place. Otherwise imagery would have picked it up years ago. He’d studied the imagery many times and there’d been nothing. The space wasn’t too large, about fifty meters in circumference.
In the exact center, towering sixty feet, a rocket was aimed up at the metal roof. Large rusted gears indicated a portion of the roof above it could be retracted. There were six of the missiles, one upright and the other five still on flatbeds, the trucks that pulled the flatbeds also still attached. Those were parked tightly together, to the right.
The trucks were old, their tires rotted out. Over fifty years old.
As shocking as the missiles were, the row of corpses near the trucks told a sobering tale of a secret so important most of those who’d emplaced it had died with it. There were at least a dozen men, their corpses withered by time, but somewhat preserved by the dryness of the place. They were in a rough line and even from this distance, Haney could tell what had happened: they’d been kneeling in line, then a bullet to the back of the head. One was a little distant from the rest—he must have tried to run. The tattered remains of their clothes indicated they were locals.
“It is demon’s work!” Nidar cried out from above.
Haney looked up and he could see Nidar leaning in. He must have caught a glimpse of what the cavern contained when the flash went off.
“I’ll need you to pull Jonah up,” Haney said. But Nidar was gone.
“Nidar! Nidar!”
Haney knew it was pointless. The Kurd was gone and so was his lift out of this place. At least Nidar had left the rope.
Haney knelt in front of Jonah. “Why?”
Jonah was finally becoming aware of his leg. “I need to be bandaged. Splinted.”
“Why did you come here?” Haney asked. “This isn’t the Ark.
”
“It’s my Ark,” Jonah said. “My grail.”
“How so?” Haney asked as he put the camera away and pulled out his medkit.
“Oleg Penkovsky.” Jonah said.
“Who?”
“Soon everyone will have heard of him,” Jonah said.
Haney had a bandage out. “Do you want some painkiller?”
“No.”
“This will hurt.”
Jonah ignored the statement. “That’s the travesty,” Jonah said. “No one’s heard of Penkovsky. Yet, he saved the world. He was my grandfather. Ever since my father told me the truth of his own father, I swore that I would let the world know the truth. You’ve got to get me out of here. The world has to know of his sacrifice and bravery. You’ve—“ his words were cut off as Haney cinched down the bandage on his leg, eliciting a hiss of pain. Jonah almost passed out, his eyelids fluttering, but then he came back into the moment.
“Oleg Penkovsky’s name must go down in the annals of history as the savior of mankind.”
“The whole point of this place, I believe, is that the world never know,” Haney said. “You saw what they did here.”
Jonah shook his head. “It’s been too long. Everyone has become too complacent. The world needs to know of my grandfather and his bravery and his death.”
“Americans won’t care about some dead Russian,” Haney said. “And what happened in here—and what’s in here—can never see the light of day.”
“Not for the Americans. For the Russian people who still believe my grandfather was a traitor.” He reached out and grabbed Haney’s coat. He flipped the collar and saw the medallion pinned inside. “A Cincinnatian.” Jonah blinked, surprise piercing through the shock and his fanaticism for a moment. “How did you know?”
“We’ve been intercepting Admiral Groves’ messages for year,” Haney said. “We had a feeling his death would cause a reaction. You were the reaction. Where exactly are Aaron and the rest of the Peacekeepers? We know they’re in New York City. Where?”
“They’re not important,” Jonah said.
“Where are the Peacekeepers?”
“I’ll never tell you,” Jonah said. “I took a death oath. Even though they were just a means, their mission continues my grandfather’s legacy.”
“O’Callaghan is dead too,” Haney said. “The Philosophers have been wiped out.”
“They don’t matter.”
“Is this the Sword of Damocles?” Haney asked.
Jonah gave a faint smile. “You have no idea what you’re looking at or for.”
“I think you’ve found what I’ve been looking for.”
Haney put the camera back in his ruck and opened up one of the side pockets. He pulled out a Glock 20 with a threaded barrel. He screwed a suppressor onto the barrel.
He pressed the suppressor against the side of Jonah’s head. “Where are the Peacekeepers hidden?”
“I’ll never break that oath.”
“You broke it by coming here.”
“You know nothing.”
Haney sighed. He reached down with his free hand and pressed the broken leg. Jonah screamed, the sound echoing off the sides of the hangar. “Where are the Peacekeepers?”
Jonah closed his eyes. “It is only pain,” he whispered to himself.
Haney considered him, then pulled the muzzle of the gun away. “If you die, what your grandfather did will never become public.”
Jonah opened his eyes and stared at Haney. “You must get me out of here.”
Haney shook his head. “The break is too bad. You’re already a dead man. There’s no way I can get you out of here.”
“I’m not important,” Jonah said. “But the truth is.”
“Tell me the truth then,” Haney said. “Why are these missiles here? Why were they abandoned? We know Kennedy brokered a deal with Khrushchev using your grandfather as a go-between. These missiles were left here. We assume some of the Russian missiles were left in Cuba.” Haney waved the gun toward the missiles. “But they’re rusting away here. They can’t be fired. There’s no trace of active missiles in Cuba. This place was abandoned a long time ago. This doesn’t make sense.” He could sense Jonah slipping away, and with him the answers he desperately needed.
“The world must know, but not through the Cincinnatians,” Jonah said. “Because you’re lying to me. You would keep it secret and destroy everything he died for.”
Haney pressed on Jonah’s leg again, eliciting another curdling scream. “Why do the Peacekeepers exist? Why are they in New York City? Is this the Sword of Damocles? What role do they play?”
Haney felt wetness on his hand and looked down. He’d pressed too hard. Blood was oozing through the bandage. Jonah had only a few minutes of life left.
Haney changed tactics once more. “Please. I’ll tell the world about your grandfather. How he brokered the deal that saved us from World War Three.”
“You lie,” Jonah said. “You all lie. Even the Peacekeepers lie.” He stirred, his face pale from blood loss. “I couldn’t tell you the truth of the Peacekeepers even if I wanted to because they never told me. The Admiral told me of this place. He knew Oleg. He helped my father escape to the United States. He got me into the Peacekeepers. But your people killed him. You’re killing me. You kill. It’s all you know.” Jonah’s head slumped down.
Haney fired two rounds very quickly. Both hit Jonah’s forehead and the 10mm rounds splattered brain and blood all over the floor. It shortened Jonah’s life by only a few seconds.
Haney walked forward, toward the nearest rocket. He recognized the missiles and knew their history. There was only one key question now. Haney opened his pack and took out a Geiger counter.
He didn’t have to aim to get a reading, but the level wasn’t dangerous. The fact he got a reading at all was the key.
He turned the counter off and put it back in its case. He realized he was breathing too quickly and forced himself to remain still for ten seconds. He walked by the bodies and noted that their hands had been tied behind their backs. Bullets to the head. They’d probably driven the trucks, off-loaded the one missile and then no longer been needed. Their secret would stay here with them.
He tied his ruck off to the end of the rope, both as an anchor point but also so he could retrieve it once he got up to the tube. Then he took a set of chumars out of the pack and clipped them and their loop stirrups onto the rope. He began the ascent, sliding a chumar up, locking it in place, ‘stepping’ up on the loop, then sliding the other one up.
It took a while, but he finally reached the opening in the tube. He clambered into it, then pulled up his ruck. He turned the headlamp off and crawled toward the light. He could hear voices. Nidar was arguing with his men. Just before he got to the exit, Haney pulled out the pistol.
He shoved himself out of the tube, hitting the ground, rolling and coming to one knee. His sudden appearance surprised the Kurds who’d been debating what to do.
He shot the closest man, a gut shot, the biggest target for an unsteady position. He fired as quickly as he could pull the trigger, taking out three of the five before they could even react, sending them into the afterlife. The last two reacted instinctively to the threat.
One charged.
Nidar ran.
Haney had to shoot the one charging twice and the man still slammed into him, wrapping his arms around the American.
Haney staggered under the impact and shoved the already dead man away.
He swung about, aiming at Nadir’s back and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened and the man disappeared around the bend. Haney got on his feet to give chase, pulling back on the Glock’s slide, clearing it. That’s when the first man he’d shot, gut shot, but still moving, swung an ax at him, Haney jumped away, falling onto his back. The wounded man lunged at him and Haney rolled, barely avoiding the strike. He fired, once, twice, both headshots and the man dropped.
Haney jumped to his feet and ran back the
way they’d come. Going around the bend he had the pistol at the ready, but there was no sign of Nidar. The Kurd was running for his life, and that gave people an afterburner of adrenaline.
Haney slowly lowered the gun, knowing there was no way he could catch the man in his own terrain. He knew a Kurd wouldn’t go to the Turkish authorities so the escape was not a pressing concern.
Getting news of the shocking discovery he’d just made back to his employer was.
He went back to his ruck and opened it, pulling out the satellite phone. He hooked up an encryption device and began typing in his message.
Then he hit ‘send.’
*****
There is a theory that if you cut the head off an organization, the body will wither and die.
It’s a nice theory.
Lucius, the Head of the Society of the Cincinnati, lay dead in his office inside the Anderson House on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC, not far from the White House. His right hand man, Turnbull, was in FBI custody. His security detail were all dead, victims of Ducharme’s airborne assault. There were no crime scene investigators, no detectives combing the building.
In fact, there was currently no one in the inner sanctum of the Anderson House. The battle between the Philosophers and the Cincinnatians almost always played out in private, a dark war kept from the limelight as much as possible.
They cleaned up their own messes.
Thus, other members of the Society of Cincinnati were descending on Washington, DC, intent on reconstituting the leadership and the secret inner core and resuming their anointed role.
But they weren’t here yet.
As such, there was no one to answer as Lucius’s secure satellite phone buzzed with an incoming text message. It sat on the desk, the only company for Lucius’ corpse.
Protocol was that if a priority one message wasn’t acknowledged within thirty minutes, it would be forwarded automatically to the next in line.
Sometimes protocol isn’t a good thing.
*****
The man handcuffed to the table was as still and silent as a sphinx. His head was completely bald and his nose was crumpled from long ago breaks that had never been set right. He was staring straight ahead, as if something beyond the wall of the interrogation room held his complete attention.
