“You know this weapon?”
“Yes, Pistolet Yarygina. Why is this funny?”
“Also called a Grach. Or Rook. It’s Deep Blue’s way of making a joke about how we are on this wild goose chase for our parents and not out helping the team.” He started the engine of the gray Mercedes sedan. The car barely made a noise.
“Blue is…a complicated man.” Asya turned away from him slightly as she spoke, but King saw her cheeks flush. Realization dawned on him.
“Oh my God, you have the hots for him,” he laughed.
“I do not have hots,” she said, still facing the window.
King laughed harder as he brought the sedan out into traffic on the main road, passing a McDonald’s. They would need to drive about five miles to get across the main island of Malta, to reach the capital, Valletta. He opened the windows on both sides of the car, letting the warm Mediterranean air wash over them. He was looking forward to getting to the coast, so he could see the brilliant blue hues of the sea, which had looked so stunning from the air.
The traffic was thick, but they made it to Valletta in good time. After a twenty minute search, King found a place to park the car. They walked along Republic Street to the plaza in front of the library, which was packed with tourists having lunch at the many umbrella-shaded tables. King wore his signature outfit: jeans and a simple black t-shirt with the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, showing his back to the audience, and holding a microphone in his hand. King guessed he now had close to a hundred different Elvis t-shirts. It was the only thing he collected, besides scars. Tucked under the shirt, in the waistband of his jeans, he carried the Yarygin.
Asya walked next to him, her long dark hair up in a ponytail. She wore a light blue blouse and a tight black pair of jeans. King didn’t know where she carried her gun, but he knew she had it on her somewhere. Maybe in the small purse-like backpack she wore.
The white umbrellas over the tables all read Café Cordina on the flaps, and the chairs were a strange mix of plastic patio furniture and woven wicker backs. A long aisle had been left down the center of the plaza, leading to the statue of Queen Victoria in front of the library’s doors. Currently, the statue’s head was mobbed with about five white and gray pigeons, all jostling each other for the best perch on the Queen’s noggin. Above it all, high on the roof of the library building, the Maltese red and white flag flapped loudly against its flag pole.
Above the doorframe, the word BIBLIOTHECA was carved and inlaid with gold. King also noted a ridiculous number of CCTV cameras clustered over the arch, but most pointed outward toward the crowd in the plaza.
“Ten cameras is excessive,” Asya stated, and once again, King was startled to find how similar he was to this woman that had grown up on the other side of the world from him.
They passed through the stone columns and in through the library’s main entrance. King’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the lower light. The floor was a zigzagging pattern of green and white marble. He spotted what he was looking for as soon as he entered the room.
Asya looked at the long tables and the walls lined with wooden bookshelves. The main chamber was a huge rectangular room, running to their left and right, the length of the building. Although several windows allowed light to pour into the space, he and Asya both had pink spots in their vision from having been outside in the brighter sunshine.
“Where should we begin?” Asya asked.
King pointed down to the floor, just inside the door, where the green and white marble had been laid in the H symbol of the Herculean Society.
“I’m going to say we should look for stairs to a basement.”
SEVEN
Tom Duncan stood by the open hangar door, as he always did when the team returned from a mission. He would be present to greet them unless there was a dire situation somewhere that required him to be in operations, where his computers and a connection to the world waited for him. He knew that King and Asya would have only just touched down in Malta, so as the morning sun streamed in the massive hangar door, he smiled warmly for the returning field team.
They came roaring up in a black Land Rover, driven by the team’s new head of security, Quinton Saunders. Saunders was yet another steal from the 10th Mountain group at Fort Drum. Duncan had sent the man to collect the team from Laconia airport, where their transport plane would slip in and then be hidden away in a private hangar. Although the vehicle had VTOL capabilities, there was nowhere near the Endgame Headquarters, which was built in sections under several mountains, to keep the plane. The hangar in which Duncan stood normally housed two Black Hawk helicopters — both of which were being upgraded at Fort Devens, down in Massachusetts.
Rook was the first to emerge from the vehicle, and Duncan was surprised to see the month-long growth of blonde beard on the man’s face. Combined with Rook’s bulk, the overall effect made him look like a wild mountain man.
“Rook, good to see you. If that really is you past all that hair,” Duncan said.
“It’s coming off today. I’ll be glad to have a proper shave.”
Bishop, Queen, Knight and Saunders, the new callsign: White Zero, all stepped out of the vehicle, and onto the concrete floor of the wide hangar.
“You could have shaved in the field, like I did,” Bishop said.
“I’m just wondering how come we never saw Knight shave,” Rook replied.
“I’m Korean. Our hair is trained to grow only where we want it to.” Knight smiled, then headed off toward the far end of the hangar.
“Queen, anything you want to tell me?” Duncan asked.
“We were lucky. A small patrol stumbled up on us, just as Knight was moving in to take his look. He’ll tell you all about the interior from the look he got, but the intel was righteous. Bishop took it down, and we got the hell out of there. Better intel would have made a month-long stakeout an afternoon takedown.” She shook her blonde hair out of a ponytail, and a long swath of it fell across the branded scar she bore on her forehead, covering it.
“Sorry about that. Sometimes we have to go on what we have. I’m glad it turned out alright.” Duncan replied. He put his hand on her shoulder. “You were wounded?”
“A scratch,” Queen dismissed it. “How are the North Koreans taking it?”
They turned to walk toward the far end of the hangar as they talked. Bishop and Rook had gone on ahead, and Saunders had taken the Rover back out to handle another matter.
“As you might expect. Saber-rattling at both China and Russia, because they don’t know who did it. They’ll turn their venom on us by tomorrow, whether they have any inkling it was us or not. They always do. They’ll threaten to nuke us, and the UN will level more sanctions at them, and it’ll blow over. But there will be one less chemical plant in their hands.”
“And how long will it take them to build another one?”
Duncan sighed. “Estimates are one month.”
“That’s not a good ratio. One month to take them down and one month to build them?”
“I know. Some days I feel like we need ten Chess Teams.”
A shrill alarm rang out throughout the base, with a red light circulating on the hangar ceiling. The steel door to the hangar began to close on its hydraulic pumps. Five soldiers wearing woodland-camouflage battle dress uniforms (BDUs) raced past Duncan and Queen toward the guard shack on the side of the main hangar door.
“What’s this now?” Queen asked.
Duncan touched a Bluetooth earpiece. “White Zero, what’s going down?”