by K. T. Tomb
“I’m all for that.”
They headed for the checkout counters, cursing the fact that there was a long line of people backed up at each of the registers. Angelo lifted up his head and whispered into her ear.
“Hombres malo. Muy malo. Tengo miedo.”
Thalia kissed him on his head.
“Well, he certainly knows how to talk. I just wish I understood him.”
Peter patted the little boy’s shoulder.
“He says they are very bad and that he is scared.”
“You speak Spanish too? Wonderful! I knew I had asked the right person to come with us. Here, hold on to him, would you?”
Thalia handed the little guy over to Peter, pulled her compact out of her handbag and pretended to powder her nose. She slowly turned the mirror until she spotted the three young men in it. They had obviously been watching her closely, because when she caught sight of them in her mirror, they were waving at her.
Peter murmured, “You and Eric get Angelo out of here, now. Here are the keys to the car. I’ll take care of this stuff and see if I can keep them away from you.”
Thalia held tight to Angelo and headed out to the parking lot. “Come on, Eric. Just walk as though you mean business. We’re going to the car.”
She didn’t want to run in the crowded mall; that would call attention to them.
As soon as they were in the parking lot, Thalia spotted three more guys. With their dark hair, dark eyes and golden skin, they looked like the sort of guys who could be cleaned up to be centerfold models, if only they didn’t have those weird tattoos on their faces.
“Here, Eric. Take Angelo and get in the car, now. I’ll head those guys off.”
The three men were gorgeous, Phoe almost hated the thought of having to hurt them. They closed in on them, just as Thalia handed Angelo over to Eric.
“Ten cuidados. Ellos son peligrosas.” Be careful. They’re dangerous.
Another one spoke.
“No seo mas que la mujere.” She’s only a woman.
The first one spoke again.
“Nuestra pedidos son para capturarlas ye mantenerlas para el rescate. Ten cuidado.” Our orders are to catch them and hold them for ransom. Have care.
Eric turned white. Thalia didn’t know what rescate meant, but she had more important things on her mind as two of them drew out stiletto knives. She kicked the first one down, then grabbed the second attacker by his ears and flipped him over, so that he landed hard on the pavement. The third guy made the mistake of getting too close. She kicked him square in the groin and gave him a roundhouse punch to his jaw that sent him crashing onto the pavement, where he lay, holding his groin and groaning. The first guy rolled over and tried to throw his knife at her, but Thalia was faster. She kicked the knife out of his hand so that it skittered uselessly across the pavement, and stomped hard on his elbow.
“You won’t be throwing knives again very soon.”
Guy number three pulled out a gun and aimed it at Eric.
“Movió, y el esta muerta.” Move, and he’s dead.
“Sorry. I don’t speak Spanish,” Thalia said as she backflipped across to where he stood, landing with her feet on his chest, and knocking him flat. That was the end of those three mestizos.
Eric was pale and shaking, but before he turned to unlock the car, he grinned at Thalia and said, “All in a day’s work, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s the way it goes.” Thalia marched back to the store, grumbling. “Come on. I never did like this store.”
Inside the mall, Peter had alerted the security guards. They arrived on the scene, frisked the first three criminals down and discovered a cache of weapons in the pockets of their jackets, their sleeves, and the legs of their jeans.
Peter rejoined his friends, holding the bundle of clothes.
“It looks like they were carrying more than just cell phones.”
“Yeah, we need to get out of here. If we move fast, we can eat dinner on another continent. I always liked real Indian cooking.”
Peter shifted the load of packages in his arms. “Ambitious, but damn tempting. Come on, let’s go!”
They piled into the Alfa. Peter steered the car out of the parking lot and Thalia called her flight crew.
“We’ll be arriving at the airport in about half an hour. Can you have things ready for us on such short notice?”
“You know we have to follow flight protocol. We can be ready in about two hours.”
“That was my mistake, Captain Sanchez. I should have called sooner. Make tentative preparations for travel then; perhaps Jonathan has thought this out better than I have. Ensure that the ground crew is on the ready to receive Mr. Kessler’s jet.”
She hung up the phone.
“Peter, when you said my limo would attract too much attention, you were thinking your bright red Alfa Romeo wouldn’t?”
“Well, it only looks a little like a souped-up racecar.”
“Problem is, we’re being followed.”
“Do you think you can shake them off, Peter?”
Peter was doing his best to get away. Dodging traffic, spinning around corners and speeding through stop lights, was all part of an effort to shake the black SUV that would not leave their tail. He headed down a tunnel, and then turned onto the major highway as soon as they emerged.
“Now we can go. They won’t be able to keep up. We need to lose them fast and before we can even think of heading to the airport. I wonder if we can fool them into thinking that we are going one direction, when we’re really going somewhere else.”
“Well, Peter. I could call Santino with the limousine and have him meet us somewhere.”
“It’s a thought. Then you guys could get into the limo and I’d use Old Red here as a decoy, to make them think we’re going around in circles.”
They were barreling down the highway, heading for the outskirts of the city, when shots rang out.
“Oh shit! Are they for real? I didn’t really think they’d break out the heavy artillery on a major highway,” Eric said. Phoe put Angelo down in the footwell between her legs and bent over him to protect him.
“Wow! My gut wasn’t kidding when it told me there would be trouble.” Eric crouched down on the floor of the back seat, and peered up over the back of the front seat. “Looks like they don’t care who they hit, or how much attention they attract.”
“Well, good for your gut.”
Three more shots rang out. One of them shattered the back windshield, one of them pinged off the side of the car, and the third one burst the right rear tire. Peter had been going ninety miles an hour in the fast lane, and he had to swerve sharply in order to keep from crashing into the car beside him. “I knew I should have had this car bulletproofed when I bought it. Why, oh why didn’t I?”
“Too eager to own it and drive it, huh?”
“Something like that.” Peter carefully slowed down and began to pull over to the side of the road, then changed his mind. “Nope. Can’t do that. Gotta get us out of here, even if I’m driving on the rim of the tire.”
Thalia turned to Peter. “Maybe if I just got out and faced whoever is in that van, you guys would stand a better chance of getting somewhere.”
“No.”
“Yes. In fact, I don’t think we have a choice.”
Chapter Four
Eternal youth is a gift frequently sought in myth and legend, and stories of things such as the philosopher’s stone, universal panaceas, and the elixir of life are common throughout Eurasia and elsewhere. An additional hint may have been taken from the account of the Pool of Bethesda in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus heals a man at the pool in Jerusalem. —Wikipedia
***
Peter had slowed down to about forty miles an hour and the van was starting to pull up in front of them, when he quickly pulled onto a side road that wound through some parkland woods, before opening out onto another major highway.
Thalia chose that moment to open the passenger door an
d roll out of the car. She landed on a leaf and bramble-covered hillside that sloped down to a stream. She tucked her head under and rolled with the momentum, letting the stream break her fall. Aside from a few scratches and bruises, she was fine.
The guys in the SUV had not seen Thalia dive from the vehicle. She hopped up onto the road and pulled out her Beretta, shooting at the tires of the SUV. She managed to hit both the back tires and one on the passenger side. That should slow them down, she thought. Her next shot shattered the passenger window, and she took off down the road after them. They were going so much slower that Peter managed to get his Alfa a couple hundred yards down the road in front of them before he had to stop it. He hopped out of the car, pulled out his Glock 19 and headed back to the SUV.
Thalia had already forced the driver’s side door open and was yanking the driver out onto the road. Two guys, with the now-familiar star cluster tattoos on their faces, came out of the van.
“Is anyone else in there?”
“Que? No hablo inglese.”
“Surrre. I bet.”
Peter aimed his gun at the driver, who had been carrying an AK-47, and encouraged him to lay the weapon down and kick it far away from him. Thalia busied herself, securing the two passenger’s hands behind their back with their shoelaces. An unseen thug came around the van and aimed his rifle at Thalia just as she was getting up.
“Oh, you want to play,” she said as she shot his trigger hand. “Peter, my guy is hurting. Maybe you can get yours to change our tire for us.”
“Sounds like a plan. You, no-speaka-ze-English, get over here.”
Thalia dropkicked the passenger, just to make sure he wouldn’t give them any more trouble and went over to give Peter a hand with the driver.
“You see this?” Peter parked the driver in front of their ruined tire. “You see this?” He rolled the spare tire beside the wrecked one. Peter pulled the jack and tire iron out of the trunk of his car, while the man cringed in front of the blown-out tire. Thalia kept her gun pointed at him, just to make sure he wouldn’t cause any more trouble.
“Now, get to work,” Peter said, once all the tools were assembled.
The man continued to stare uncertainly at all the tools. “Move it!” Thalia shouted at him.
English or no English, the driver understood, and he got to work changing the tire. It was a warm day, and after a few minutes, his shirt was sticking to his back from sweat. He pulled it off and used it to wipe his face. Tattooed on his back was a black phoenix. It did not begin to have the detail that Angelo’s did, but it was definitely the same bird.
Once he had the new tire on and the lug nuts in place, Thalia and Peter hopped back into the car. Before he closed the door, Peter called out, “Just to show you how nice we are, we’re leaving you with the jack and the tire iron. Have fun!”
“Did you see that bird on the guy’s back, Eric? What do you think it means?”
“They have to belong to a gang of some sort. I want to look it up. When can we get near an Internet connection?”
Thalia checked her watch.
“Looks like we have another half hour before the plane is ready. Maybe we could stop and get some lunch.”
Peter was beginning to get a little nervous. “Why don’t we just go straight to the airport? At least the security should be better there.”
Thalia’s jet was one of her prized possessions; a symbol of her freedom. She’d purchased it with the help of a friend and had the engine and fuel tanks customized, so it could handle the stress of longer flights and heavier loads. That friend, Kadan Alexander, had arranged for all her ideas to be implemented and she’d had the inside of it gutted and a modern interior installed that accommodated both serious business and homey comfort all in one space. She’d even had a shower and a galley kitchen put on board, where meals could be prepared for more than a dozen people.
When she bought it, she had intended it to be her home in the sky. Thalia had secretly dreamed of spending her life flying from one port to another, touching down only when they needed to refuel, or stock up on fresh food. She would explore the world on her own terms. If a city appealed to her, and she wanted to spend weeks or months poking through all its nooks and crannies, she would. And if a city or a country seemed too humdrum, she could hop back on board and go somewhere else. It would be a gypsy-like experience, but much more comfortable. Money did have its perks, after all.
As it turned out, the reality was somewhat different. Once the Vatican had got their hooks into her, she had adjusted neatly into the life that came along with steady work from a single employer. What more could she ask for, though? They gave her exciting assignments, paid her well and opened unimaginable doors for her, both personally and professionally.
Knowing nothing about the aircraft’s technical aspects, she had hired a pilot and crew who did everything by the book, which was good. They would not take off without first checking, and then triple-checking, to make sure every bolt and every strut was straight and as tight as it should be, and that every moving part on the plane was fully functional before they consented to lift off. Thalia liked it when people took such pride in their work.
But she now had the members of her crew and team—plus Angelo—to think about, and she wanted them off the ground; the sooner the better.
Onboard, Jennifer had made modest refreshments. She made sure they all had something to eat. Sandwiches, chips and Coke for the grownups, and chicken nuggets, an apple and a cup of milk for Angelo.
“Hey, no fair,” Eric said, pointing at Angelo’s plate. “I want chicken nuggets!”
Phoe shook her head and smiled.
“Do you think we were followed?” Eric asked her.
“I don’t know, and that is why I want to get us all into the air.”
Peter understood her tension. “As soon as we have eaten, we’ll get going.”
Thalia put her half-eaten sandwich down and headed back to the parking lot to unpack their gear from Peter’s trunk. At the other end of the parking lot, a pickup truck pulled into one of the spaces. A family of four climbed down from it. There was the father, a middle-aged man with distinguished looking gray hair at his temples and in his beard. After him, two school-aged boys climbed down. They were dark and handsome, and moved with a grace that would make them stand out on any school playground. The mother was several years younger than her husband. She simply looked worn out. Her hair was in a bun on the back of her head and it had not been combed or properly pinned that day. Her dress hung on her like a sack, as though she had lost weight and it no longer fit. They appeared to be North African, or they could simply have been Mediterranean.
Thalia checked for any telltale tattoos, but didn’t see any. They were at a private airport that catered to people who could afford to rent or buy their own aircraft, and they seemed a little out of place. The man walked over to her and asked if there was an aircraft repair center at the airport.
“I’d like to find out about some engineering work.”
“Honestly, sir,” Phoe replied, “I could not answer that question.” The man looked too distinguished to be a mechanic but confident enough to know his way around an aircraft.
Hmmm. Former pilot, perhaps? Possibly air force.
“You should ask the manager. He’s inside the main office, over there.” She pointed across the parking lot where the offices were located. This certainly had been the day for strange and out of place people.
Her encounter with this family had Thalia wondering. If this wasn’t her missing friend suffering from the youthful effects of the Fountain’s water, who could Angelo’s real mother be? Where was she? Why did she leave him at her door? Was it her who did that? In any event, she would make sure the child was well taken care of until she could safely return him to his family. Thalia would be relieved if Angelo belonged to a family like that one. They seemed like nice people and she would feel good about returning him to people like those. However, this little boy was special. Exactly
how special would be determined by the true story behind the elaborate phoenix emblazoned on his back.
Jonathan Kessler had proven to be loyal and surprisingly brave when push came to shove. He also knew how to hack his way into nearly any website or Internet community in existence. When Jonathan was around, Thalia had to constantly remind herself that very few people had endured the intense training in self-defense that she had. Jonathan had never had any training, except in mathematics. And apparently, in being in the nick of time.
It seemed to have been hours that Thalia and her team had been waiting to board the jet. When she asked Sanchez if they had the all clear, he had to advise them that they had been grounded for an additional half-hour by air traffic control. That was when the Gulfstream G-150 pulled up in front of the hangar doors. Jonathan appeared at the door and ran down the steps toward them.
“I figured we could just take my ride!” he yelled at Phoe, smiling broadly.
When everyone and their luggage was comfortably ensconced in the opulent embrace of the Kessler Industries jet, Captain Sampras’ voice came over the intercom.
“Welcome back, Miss Phoenix, Mr. Kellerman. It’s nice to have you with us again. At this moment, we have immediate clearance for takeoff. Mr. Kessler, has our final destination remained unchanged?”
Jonathan pressed the intercom button on his armrest and spoke.
“Indeed, Captain. We are headed for Lhasa Airport, Tibet. We’ll need SUVs from there to get to Yumbulagang.”
“Did Simon confirm that as the last known location of Friar Batista and the others?” Thalia asked when he finished talking to the pilot.
“He did. Apparently, it was confirmed by a monk called Kamala, who also claimed to have sent them off when they departed the palace temple for their next destination. They were never seen again, but I’m hoping he can give us a clue where they were headed.”
