Sean Wyatt Compilation Box Set

by Ernest Dempsey

  Time had given the clear glass a grimy, dusty film. There were boards over most of the glass. But Sean could see out through a small opening in the wooden planks. Large snowflakes poured from the sky through the dim glow of the streetlights. In the short time they’d been in the church, a thin layer of snow had accumulated on the sidewalk and street. He wondered how long the storm would last and how much snow it would dump on the region. His thoughts returned to Tommy and his job with IAA . Was Firth telling him not to quit? Sean knew Tommy would be okay. There were plenty of good people who could do what Sean did for the agency.

  Firth’s voice startled him from a few feet away. He turned to find the professor standing right behind him.

  “I’m not telling you not to quit,” the professor said, virtually reading Sean’s mind. “I’m just telling you that if you are called, you must answer. It’s who you are.”

  Sean nodded, understanding. He understood what Firth meant. The professor gave a single nod.

  Adriana’s voice cut through the silence. “I think I found something.”

  Firth and Sean turned their attention back to where she sat; her face virtually glowed in the darkness. Jabez was leaning over the back of the pew, staring at the screen. Sean rushed back over to her and looked at the screen, the professor followed closely behind. The older man seemed to be letting curiosity get the best of him for a change.

  The Spanish woman’s delicate finger rested on the screen. It was pointing at a strange rock formation. The shape was a long rectangle canyon, cut oddly from valley between two mountains.

  “I haven’t seen anything like this before,” she stated.

  “How big is that area?” Sean wanted to make sure they were looking at the right spot.

  She turned her eyes back to the electric glow of the display. “From what I can tell, it is only a few hundred feet long and about half as wide.”

  Sean turned to Jabez then the other direction to see what Firth would say.

  His mouth was agape. He shook his head slowly. “It can’t be,” he whispered in awe. After a moment, he stood up straight and looked down at Adriana. She had moved her attention to the old archaeologist. “It would seem, young lady, your theory about the footprint in the sand might have been correct after all.”

  Chapter 35

  Atlanta, Georgia

  The clock on the dashboard read a few minutes after four. Joe and Helen had hurried from their home in the foothills down to Atlanta. Helen reasoned it would be better for them to visit the Biosure facility during operating hours rather than after. With more people milling around, they would be better able to go unnoticed. Breaking in when no one was around would surely draw the attention of the building’s security.

  A little recon had revealed what Helen had suspected. While the company employees did have ID cards, access was granted via a five-digit code. Thanks to her nifty work on the computer, they basically had unlimited access to the entire facility.

  A steady stream of people dressed in business suits flowed in and out of the main entrance. The gray building was immense. It rested on the side of a hill overlooking one of the main expressways. Hundreds of huge windows along all facades provided the interior with views and natural sunlight from every angle. Enormous concrete columns supported an overhanging second floor on the entire front side of the structure. The letters spelling out the company name jutted out just over the entryway.

  “Hardly a small-time operation,” Joe quipped as he and his wife stared at the monstrosity.

  “Shows you how much money is in the pharmaceutical industry,” she commented.

  Joe laughed. “Looks like you and I went into the wrong line of work, huh?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “I wouldn’t trade my soul for all that money.” Her southern accent carried a twinge of bitterness. “Especially with this company.”

  Joe and Helen had been married a long time, but he was starting to find out there was way more to his wife than met the eye. He stared at her for a moment as she peered into the building.

  “We should head in,” she interrupted his thoughts, “while there is a steady stream of traffic.”

  He nodded and opened the door while she exited out the passenger’s side of the car. They had both donned business suits, hoping to look as professional as possible. Joe had wondered if they should have lab coats until his wife had apprised him that most of the people coming and going from the facility would be marketers, accountants, and other cubicle dwellers. He had dug out an old, navy blue suit from the closet that was probably five years out of style. His hope was that no one would notice. He hadn’t had to wear a suit tie in years. Fortunately, he remembered how to tie the thing.

  “You clean up pretty good,” Helen had told him as he stared goofily at himself in the mirror.

  Of course, she had looked stunning. For a country girl, Joe’s wife could pull off the sophisticated city look whenever she wanted to. She was wearing a sleeved black dress that sported a dramatic v-neck. A few buttons on the side of the loose skirt added a unique element of style. Her matching high-heel shoes completed the look. When he’d seen her standing in the mirror behind him he couldn’t help but gawk for a few seconds. She had even added some waves to her hair, making it cascade over her shoulders like a shimmering golden brown waterfall.

  They passed several rows of cars, walking as casually as possible as they approached the entrance to the facility. A brown-haired man in gray suit pants and a white-button up shirt, probably in his mid forties, strolled out of the glass doors talking busily on his cell phone. He carried his jacket over his shoulder. The conversation was something about sales and advertising. His voice trailed off as he made his way into the parking lot.

  Helen looked at Joe and prodded him to keep moving. “We have to look like we belong,” she urged.

  Joe smiled awkwardly and opened the front door for her. She nodded politely and entered the building ahead of him. Inside, the facility was a web of activity. A security desk sat off to the side where a guard was busy checking off a form. Men and women in suits, lab coats, and a few business casual outfits hustled up and down the stairs, and across the floor. In the center of two spiral staircases, a circular water fountain stood in the middle, sending water spraying into the air in a constant stream. The pool of water was surrounded by a short wall crafted from mountain stone. Different kinds of plants and foliage accented the corners and pillars in the atrium. And several long, metal cylinders extended down from the ceiling, each holding a bright white light bulb in the center.

  Helen had done her research before the drive down to Atlanta. She had memorized the layout of the building so they would look like they knew where they were going. The longer they stood still in a spot, the more suspicious they would appear.

  “This way,” she said, making sure to keep moving.

  He tried to keep up, staying close to Helen’s side, but she was walking fast, like all the other people in the building appeared to be.

  “The entrance to the packing facilities should be around this corner.” Her assessment proved correct as they rounded a turn in the walkway. Straight ahead was a set of double doors with a keypad just to the left of them.

  Helen went straight to the keypad and entered in the five-digit code she had enabled earlier on her computer. Joe shouldn’t have been surprised when it worked, but he was. There was a quick buzz of an electronic lock then a click just before the door swung open. She glanced sideways at him with a smirk.

  “Oh, you’re good,” he praised her as they passed beyond the threshold and into a more sterile-looking hallway.

  It reminded him of a hospital corridor. As fantastic as the atrium had been, the hall was the polar opposite. The walls were bare, and the tiled floor seemed antiquated compared to the modern exterior. The two hurried along at a brisk pace, but tried not to look like they were hurrying. It was a fine line.

  The passage wrapped around to the back of the facility. Along the way Joe and Hel
en passed several doors, none of which were the ones they were searching for. Helen’s pace began to slow slightly, and she looked back a few times at some of the doors they had already passed.

  “You remember which one we’re looking for, right?” he tried not to sound panicked.

  “Yeah,” she didn’t sound confident. “I thought it was right here but...” They came to a sharp bend in the corridor and were greeted by a steel door at the end of the hall.

  There was a keypad next to it just like the one they’d seen at the entrance to the passageway they were currently in. The only difference was the man in the security guard outfit sitting next to it.

  Chapter 36

  Ararat, Armenia

  “It will have to wait until the morning,” Jabez said as he stepped away from the group huddling around the electronic glow of the tablet. “And it may be later in the morning if this snow keeps up.”

  Sean turned his attention back to the image on the screen. “My concern is that even if we are able to get out on the road and into those mountains, will we be able to recognize this place?”

  Adriana zoomed in on the key spot on the map then tapped a few other places on the screen. A green pin plopped onto the oddly shaped canyon.

  “Now we have a digital waypoint to follow. GPS will guide us straight to it,” she explained. “I just hope the roads are safe enough. With all the snow, some of the mountain passes could be potentially dangerous.”

  Sean’s face blushed slightly. “Yeah, I should have thought of that.”

  The stress was getting to him. He should have slept well the previous night in Istanbul, but instead he had tossed and turned in the soft, luxurious bed. All he could think about was stopping the mad man, who called himself some kind of prophet. He thought about calling Mac to see if his friend had made any progress with the Biosure investigation, but he resisted. Joe would need at least a little time to figure out a way into the facility, and even more time to get the samples to Dr. Solomon.

  “I suppose for now, we will just have to try and be patient,” Adriana cut into his thoughts.

  He snapped out of it and nodded quickly. “Yep. Guess all we can do is hunker down and ride out this storm.”

  “The forecast says it will clear out later tonight and that the late morning temperatures will be in the upper forties,” Jabez informed the group before wandering away to talk to some of his men.

  “Hopefully it gets close to that warm up in the mountains,” Sean commented. “But the temperature drops three degrees every thousand feet you climb in elevation. So, it’s unlikely it will be that warm up there.”

  Adriana’s eyebrows crinkled together and she turned to face him. “How do you know that?” She wondered. “That is a fairly random bit of knowledge.”

  Sean let out a snort. “I learned it in a high school ecology class I took. Weather is something I’m fascinated by,” he explained. “I don’t know why. I’ve just always found it interesting.”

  “You really do have your mind’s fingers in a lot of cookie jars, don’t you?” she asked the question with a thin smile.

  “I guess,” he shrugged. “I’d like to have them in a few less jars.”

  She switched off her tablet and shoved it back into her small backpack. A few seconds later, she removed the leather book Sean had noticed her reading before. He let his curiosity take over and prodded.

  “What is that? I noticed you reading it earlier.”

  She held it out to him. “It’s a journal I found while I was in Germany.” He took it out of her hand and examined it.

  The inside was full of stuff he couldn’t translate. He recognized many of the Greek letters, mostly from his days at the University of Tennessee. But what any of it meant was a mystery. Sean knew how to speak a few languages, a few of them ancient, but Greek wasn’t one of his specialties. It was, however, one of Adriana Villa’s.

  “What kind of journal?” he asked as he fingered through the pages. “Obviously, it’s very old.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “It is quite old. If I had to guess, I would say mid to late seventeenth century.”

  He nodded. “Looks that way.” Sean had come up with the same assessment based on the materials used for the pages and the cover.

  Scrolls, books, and tablets were all traceable to a specific period of time in history based on the materials used. Cultures could also be identified by whatever the message had been written on.

  “It seems the person who wrote this was very interested in finding an ancient Greek device,” she stopped his progress momentarily and flipped back to the cover.

  Her finger rested on the image of the strange mechanism. It appeared to have gears and wheels, with a few hands on it, almost like a clock, but seemingly not a clock at all.

  “I’ve seen something like this before,” Sean said with a tone of uncertainty. “I can’t remember where, though.”

  She nodded. “You are talking about the Antikythera mechanism. It was discovered in 1900 off the coast of the Greek island of the same name. No one could determine its use for over a hundred years. A research team claims that the device’s use was to give captains of nautical vessels a more accurate way to chart the stars and planets. It is a logical conclusion, since seafaring ships used celestial bodies to guide their voyages.”

  “You don’t sound convinced,” he eyed her suspiciously.

  Her eyebrows flicked up for as second. “I cannot say I am entirely convinced. Though that may have been the purpose of the one discovered near Antikythera, this book suggests there were others. And they were not created for a singular reason.”

  Sean’s curiosity was definitely piqued. “So, what then?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t finished the book.” Adriana pulled the journal out of his hands with a gentle tug.

  He returned the smile. “I’ll let you get back to your reading then. But I’d like to hear what you learn about it.”

  Her expression changed to one of doubt. “I thought you said you were going to retire? That you were tired of all this?”

  A snort of laughter escaped his nostrils again. He couldn’t get anything past her. “Yeah. I know. But I’m not retired yet.”

  Chapter 37

  Atlanta, Georgia

  The guard looked up from his computer screen and gave a nonchalant smile. The computer was positioned on top of a small desk in the corner of the wide hall. Joe imagined the guy must have had the single most boring job on the planet, to just sit there and check people’s clearance for access to a room.

  At the time being, that boring job presented a huge problem to what they were trying to do. Helen and Joe continued moving forward, hoping the guy hadn’t noticed their pace slow upon seeing him. As they neared, he gave a single nod to them, and shot a quick glance at the ID badges that hung around their necks. Almost as quickly, he returned to staring at the computer screen while Helen rapidly entered in her five-digit code.

  She pressed the enter button, but instead of getting a green light accompanied with the door opening, a red light appeared on the pad. Her code hadn’t worked. Joe checked out of the corner of his eye to make sure the security guard hadn’t noticed. For the moment he hadn’t, his eyes still glued to whatever it was he was looking at on his monitor. Helen swallowed hard and entered her code again. She took a breath as she hit enter. A shot of fear ran through her as the red light beeped again.

  This time, the security guard did notice. The man looked up from his computer with an irritated expression on his face. When he stood up, Joe realized how big the guy really was. The guard was easily three four inches taller than Joe and was built like a Mack truck, with muscles bulging out of the tight guard uniform. He had a military haircut, something Joe hoped was more related to fashion rather than a previous line of work.

  As the huge man stepped out from behind his desk, Joe had a million thoughts run through his head. Some of them were wild, fanciful ideas of taking the guy out at the knees then kno
cking him unconscious. That might have worked, but to what end? They would still be stuck there in the hallway entering an invalid code. And if it didn’t work, which was the more likely scenario, Joe would probably end up in a hospital or dead.

  The tension built as the guard stepped closer to where they stood next to the keypad. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We’ve had problems with this thing all day. People have been entering their access code, and it isn’t letting anyone through. The tech guys are supposedly working on it, but it may be tomorrow before they have it fixed.” He smiled as he cut in front of them and punched in a different set of numbers. “They gave me an override code just in case anyone else had any problems.”

  “Thank you so much,” Helen offered, forcing a grateful smile. “I was starting to think I was losing my mind for a second there.”

  “No trouble at all, ma’am.” The guard tried to sneak a quick up and down at Helen, hoping she hadn’t noticed. Joe almost couldn’t contain his laughter.

  Finally, the door clicked open. Helen made herself contain a sigh of relief. “Thanks again,” she said and almost rushed through the opening. Joe simply gave the young man an appreciative nod.

  Once the door closed behind them, they both let out a gasp.

  “I thought we were done for sure,” Helen related.

  “Done? Did you see the way he checked you out?” Joe nearly exclaimed as they disappeared around a left corner in an even more sterile hallway.

  She let out a doubtful hiss. “Honey, that boy is half my age.”

  “I don’t know. You might qualify as a cougar to these young guys.”

  She shook her head and his comment as they rounded another bend in the corridor and came to a long, glass window. Through it, they could see a vast warehouse full of boxes, crates, and plastic containers. There were mechanical loaders moving about, lifting some of the plastic-wrapped shipments onto pallets for other automated vehicles to take to another part of the room.

  “This is a high-tech operation they got going on here,” Joe observed. “I only see a few people inside that warehouse area.” He motioned to a few people in white lab coats. Each one of the workers wore a white mask over his mouth and nose.