“Certain?” the blonde raised an eyebrow. “Nothing is certain in this life, Comrade. Let’s just say it puts us one step ahead of the others.”
“So you believe the other countries are looking for the same thing?” The man’s flat forehead wrinkled slightly.
“I believe that if the stories are true, whoever uncovers this secret first will be able to rule the world.”
Chapter 1
The first thing Sean Wyatt noticed when he regained consciousness was the intense ringing in his right ear. He couldn’t remember what happened, but his eyes were closed. The dark haze began to give way to blurry light as he slowly opened them. The high-pitched whine in his ear was accompanied by a throbbing in the back of his head, like a jackhammer pounding the concrete. The warmth of the street against his face and body came next, followed by little points of stinging pain on various spots of his body. The rest of his senses began to return one by one. His nostrils filled with the smell of smoke, a distinct odor of burning rubber and petroleum. The blonde hair on his head was matted down with dirt and a little blood. He blinked his eyes and the chaos around him started to come into focus.
Sean was lying on the ground in the middle of a city street, though for a moment he couldn’t remember which one. People were scattered everywhere, panicking in every direction. He squinted hard at the light and tried to push himself off the ground. His head spun and he had to stop momentarily.
Thirty feet away, a woman dressed in black was screaming something in Arabic, tears streaming down her face into the lower part of her burka. She seemed to be frantically saying something, maybe calling for help, but Sean couldn’t make out the words.
Slowly, he pushed himself up into a sitting position while the chaos around him continued to spin out of control. He noticed several places where his khaki pants had burn holes, a few of them stained with blood. His white button-up shirt was dirty, and torn in multiple places. It, too, had several blood spots.
Across the street, only a few dozen feet away, he saw the source of the smoke and his memory started to piece the events together. He and Adriana Villa were meeting Tommy outside the hotel. They were going to investigate something at the Museum of Antiquities. There’d been an explosion. Then everything had gone black.
He was hit by a terrible thought. Adriana. It was quickly followed by concern for his friend, Tommy Schultz. He began to scan the area of devastation. Black smoke swirled around, blown by the desert winds that rolled through the city. There were people everywhere, running in every possible direction.
Sean felt the chill of fear creep inside of his mind as he struggled to regain his balance. His head still spun as he braced himself on the post of a streetlight nearby. Suddenly, someone grabbed him from behind. He started to react defensively, but stopped himself when he realized the person was trying to help.
It was Adriana.
“We have to get out of here,” she said as she hooked his arm over her shoulders, supporting his weight.
“Where’s Tommy?” he asked, not wanting to leave his friend behind.
The whining sirens of emergency vehicles were drawing closer. Adriana urged him to move. “Sean, we have to go.” Her Spanish accent was thicker than usual. He’d noticed it got that way when she was very serious about something.
Sean’s icy gray eyes peered through the mayhem. Then he saw something across the street, about fifty feet away, laying in a huddled mass on the ground.
It was Tommy.
He let go of Adriana and staggered through the onslaught of rushing people. She followed close behind, as they made their way across the crowded road. He had to push and pull a few of the crazed citizens out of his way until he finally reached his friend.
Tommy’s gray cotton pants were torn and tattered with singed holes and spots of blood all over. His white shirt was in similar condition. A small gash on the side of his head was bleeding, slightly. Sean knelt down next to the wounded man and checked his pulse and breathing. Sean let out a sigh of relief. He was still alive.
“We have to get him out of here,” Sean looked back to Adriana, hovering over the two.
She nodded sharply then reached down and hefted up Schultz, swinging one arm over her shoulders, with Sean doing from the other side. Tommy’s head hung down to his chest, unconscious from the blast. Sean and Adriana carried him quickly down the street, away from the scene, dragging his feet as they moved. They ducked around a corner just before the Cairo police arrived at the anarchic area.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Sean said.
The two laid Tommy down on the ground, leaning his torso up against a building. More sirens could be heard in the distance.
“I’ll take him,” Adriana volunteered. “Whoever did this may not know who I am. But they are definitely going to be looking for you.” The Spaniard’s conviction was sincere. But he knew they’d be looking for her too.
Sean shook his head and paused to take a breath. “I can’t let you do that. You know they will be looking for you too.” He looked down at his friend. “We need to get him out of the country, somewhere he will be safe.”
Adriana looked puzzled. “How?”
He removed the black phone from his pocket and checked the touch screen. He was relieved to find it wasn’t cracked. After a few seconds, the phone was ringing on the other end.
“Sean?” A familiar woman’s voice answered on the other line.
“Emily, I need your help,” he cut to the chase. “Do you have anyone in Cairo right now? I need an evac two minutes ago.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment before she spoke up again. “Sean, what happened? Are you okay?”
“Emily, do you or don’t you. There was a bombing outside our hotel in Cairo. Tommy is unconscious. Someone tried to kill us, Em. We need to get Tommy out of here now, somewhere safe.”
“Give me one second, Sean,” she answered. The other line was silent for nearly a minute before she came back on. “I have someone in the area. I’m tracking your exact location.”
Another twenty seconds went by while he waited. Two more police cars passed by, but their progress was slowed by the throngs of people running through the street.
“I’ll have someone there in less than three minutes, Sean,” Emily’s voice came back on, stealing his thoughts away from the police and back to his current objective.
“Thanks, Em. He’ll need a flight out of the country.” He looked down at his friend again. Tommy still wasn’t moving, but his chest was heaving up and down. That was a good sign.
“Do you need one of our planes?” she asked.
Sean shook his head. “No, he can take the IAA jet. You’ll have to scramble the pilot. He should be nearby. What’s the closest city to Cairo where we have friendlies?” he asked.
On the other end, Sean imagined Emily Starks typing furiously on her computer, somewhere in Atlanta. She’d always been good at directing. In the field, she’d been an effective agent, and a good partner, but her true calling was administration. When she’d been made director of Axis, her true talents blossomed. In recent months, she’d pushed for Axis headquarters to be moved from its tight little space in Washington, D.C. to a more upscale area of Atlanta, Georgia.
“I have an asset in Athens right now. That close enough? Flight time is about an hour from Cairo.”
“That will have to do,” Sean answered. “Have your person notified when our plane will be landing, and have them take Tommy to the hospital immediately.”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t just take him to get treatment there?”
“Not an option,” he replied determinedly. “I think he’s going to be fine. Probably has a concussion, but he’ll live. Though, we still need to get him looked at and kept safe. Whoever did this won’t just take one shot.”