“Quit screwing around,” Nina quipped. “We’re almost out of time. And reinforcements are coming.”
More bullets. More chunks of debris exploding around them. Caleb cringed and rushed to her side, where her back was up against a large section of concrete piping. “Do you have another option?”
She grinned as she leaned across him and squeezed off two shots. “Honey, you must know better than to ask that. Don’t forget, Montross obsessed about this facility for half his life. He and I went through a hundred different scenarios of how we could get in here. Studied every diagram, blueprint and schematic of this place. Someone takes a shit on level two, I can tell you which pipe flushes it out.”
Caleb made a face. “I’ll keep that in mind. So, anything that will actually help us?”
She fired again, then turned back around and shot straight ahead, seemingly at the wall. Sparks flew as the bullet impacted metal; then she grabbed Caleb’s arm. “Come on. Air duct, ventilation shaft 24B. It’ll take us right through to the central weaponry lab.”
She hauled him forward toward the broken grate that was now swinging open.
Caleb had to shake his head. “I’m suitably impressed.”
Just inside the grate, after closing it behind them and retreating into the shadows, Nina turned him around and planted a firm kiss on his lips.
This time he didn’t fight it, except a quick pullback to ask, “Now what? I have nothing else to show you.”
She locked her eyes on his. “No, but there’s something I’ve held back that you need to see.”
“Really, we don’t have the time.”
“Just take a sec.” And she pulled him close, closed her eyes and as soon as their lips touched, he saw it.
A jungle in Mexico, a touristy hacienda at the edge of a cliff overlooking a jungle of trees and vines. Inside: a young girl, auburn hair, green eyes, maybe nine years old. Sitting on a floor of blood amidst two decapitated bodies: a man and a woman. Staring, numb and unable to cry, as the two drug hitmen sling her parents’ heads into the bag and prepare the ransom letter.
A flash: and she’s escaping, darting out a window while one of the hitmen chokes on his own blood, a dinner knife stuck through his trachea. She runs…
…arriving at the American embassy the next morning, where she promptly draws them a map, and includes sketches not only of the remaining killer, but his boss. And the location of the drug kingpin’s hideout.
The DEA agents brought in to interview her ask how she got her information, if she ever left the hacienda, but she merely replies: “I just saw it.”
And then, after the operation concludes and the kingpin and his henchmen are dead, their supply confiscated, the agent makes a call. When he hangs up, he sees what the little girl has drawn now.
It’s the symbol of the CIA: the Eagle and the Star. Only, she wrote the word ‘Stargate’ underneath.
Smiling for the first time in a week, she asks when they’ll be flying back to Washington.
Caleb rocked out of the vision to find that the kiss had ended, and Nina, with but a somber nod back to him, was crawling ahead. “Now you know,” she whispered. “We’ve always had a lot more in common than you’d figured.”
Wordlessly, he followed.
11.
Alexander, crouching over Montross, trying to protect him from the two goons with guns pointed at his body, had few options left.
Calderon, kneeling on the floor, seemed to have gone into a trance; and for a moment it looked like something wispy, spectral and green passed out of his body, hurtling toward the chair where Alexander had seen that brief outline of Montross at the controls.
Then, he had to keep an eye on his ‘brothers’. Jacob and Isaac had taken up flanking positions on either side of Calderon, defending him. The sword-cane, previously at the senator’s knees, had been snapped up again by Isaac, who was glaring back at Alexander now, almost urging him to try something.
Helpless, Alexander turned toward the chair again, wishing he could see what was happening. Whatever it was, it had to happen soon. Calderon had been told he only had thirty seconds, or else their plan was finished.
At least knowing what question to ask, Alexander was poised to try to see if remote-viewing could see into the astral dimension; but his regular vision first snagged on an air vent at ground level twenty feet away. And his heart leapt in surprise.
Two faces inside, an unlikely pair. But definitely his father, a finger to his lips.
“Take out the guards,” Caleb whispered, pointing to the two over Montross.
“I could,” Nina said, “but there are six more at the back. In the shadows.”
Caleb looked. “Damn. Good eyes.” He sighed, watching his son, sizing up Jacob and Isaac, Montross bleeding and lying still; and then Calderon. And finally, the chair and the power unit.
The Emerald Tablet!
He closed his eyes and projected outward, willing to see…
Calderon was there, a blur like a green-tinged ghost. Arms out, reaching for Montross, sitting like a statue in the chair, like a man possessed or in a deep slumber. Xavier’s eyelids flickered and his lips moved as if voicing commands in an alien tongue.
Calderon launched himself and wrapped his hands around Montross’ throat. Sparks flew, the machine shuddered.
And Xavier’s mortal body rocked with convulsions just as his astral body thrashed under Calderon’s vicious assault.
“No time to wait,” Caleb shouted, kicking out the grate. “We’re going now!”
“Damn it!” Nina hissed, and her Beretta spat fire twice, knocking back both guards over Montross.
Staying in the grate was suicide, so she launched herself out, somersaulting and firing back toward the wall, even as shots came back at her.
But Caleb was there, holding the Spear aloft in both hands. Bullets slammed into something and for a moment a nearly invisible curved aperture appeared. The bullets struck and then evaporated like water droplets on a hot pan.
Caleb moved ahead and reached out for Alexander, to encase him in the shield as well. Nina’s shots apparently still went through from this side, as another grunt of pain sounded and another guard fell.
The machine continued to spark and rumble. The conduits shook, wires exploded. More guards appeared, now from above on the landing.
Caleb shouted out a warning, but too late. Nina had rolled to the side and from behind, a shot found its mark. She spun around, blood spurting from her thigh. On the ground, she aimed up, squeezed off two shots and then rolled around to fire two more at those at the bottom level. Behind her, two bodies slumped over the rail and hit the floor.
“Mom!” Jacob ran to her side, and for a moment, the gunfire stopped as the soldiers couldn’t get a clear shot. And in the respite, Caleb turned to the machine. Saw the slot on the right arm holding the Tablet.
Now or never.
He raised the spear. Briefly considered stabbing Calderon in the back, but apart from the moral disgust at the thought of attacking a defenseless human, no matter how evil, he knew the target was straight ahead. And he only had one shot at it.
Stepping around Calderon, he brought his arm back. Three steps, that was all, and strike!
But a chilling voice made him freeze.
“Stop or Alexander dies!”
Caleb turned, and saw the boy, Isaac, standing behind Alexander. Just like his vision. Isaac had him gripped by the hair, the sword tip of the cane pointed right at his son’s skull.