A deadly accurate one, unfortunately for the helicopter and its pilot.
Alexander led her out the tunnel, where they cautiously stepped through the smoke, avoiding the remnants of two soldiers and then gaping in horror as the chopper went down in pieces.
“Told you,” Jacob said from their left, but Aria’s scream cut off their reunion. He spun around and saw her on her knees, pointing the staff upwards and across her body like it was a shield. Rocks tumbled from the closest wall as a lone soldier in black scrambled up there, around a palm tree, trying for a clear shot. The destruction of the chopper and the sight of a projected boulder surely gave him momentary pause, but now…
Bullets flew.
— The wrong direction. Up, and wild, as Alexander saw the attacker no longer had his feet on the basalt top level. Upended, his legs flailed, and his arms swung wildly, even the one holding the gun and pulling the trigger.
Aria swung the staff laboriously, like in an exaggerated golf swing. Then pulled it back along the same path.
The man flew up and arced out short distance, and then as if on a bungee tether, his motion slowed, then stopped. Wildly flailing, he was hauled backward and crashed with a bone-shattering sound into the ancient coral-and-basalt wall. He tumbled down like a broken doll.
Aria gasped — and now dropped the staff.
Nina bounced up, cat-like, and ran to the body, keeping her 9mm trained on it. Alexander and Jacob joined her, but Alexander looked back to Aria, who now seemed shells-hocked. He understood.
She had, in the space of under a minute, just ended two lives with a power no one could have imagined. Granted, her actions saved their lives, but he of all people knew the toll such an act took on the soul. He had dealt with it in Mongolia, and the look on that man’s face he shot had never left his thoughts.
He moved fast and stopped her from coming closer. She didn’t need to see the after-effects of her handiwork. She accepted his embrace and buried her face in his shoulder as Nina talked to the dying soldier.
“Who the hell are you people? Aligned with Boris?”
A coughing sound, and the man’s voice cracked and made a watery, sputtering sound before it cleared up.
“Boris… gone. Just here to thin your team even more.”
Alexander felt his blood boil. He eased off from Aria, held up a finger, then went over to the others. “Why were you really here? There’s nothing to guard anymore.”
Nina and Jacob looked at him in shock. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “We came all this way…”
“For nothing. A false vision. Or…” He thought for a minute of the sight he had down there, touching Aria…
“An old one…”
The fleet of some twenty naval vessels, with the rising sun emblem blazing on their sides, stationed off Nan Madol on a clear summer day. Divers drop into the choppy bay. Some with tethers, others free diving. Locals forced at gunpoint to do the same, more familiar with the depths.
Another view: from deep below — what look like depth charges, men descending, dozens at a time, some coming up with boxes and artifacts, and one in particular…
A native, holding onto a huge turtle aiming for that crack in the coral reef, the opening that was really the entrance to the ancient city…
Through, releasing the shell, gliding to that first spire, dimly lit in phantom plant growth and dissipating sunlight, and the alcove at the top of the sacred tower. Almost breathless, he just grasps the platinum box and kicks away.
Some kind of spring trap attempted to close but was brittle and ineffective. The prize drifts away, back up to the crack and through before the diver holding it runs out of air and breathes in the salty embrace of death — while pushing the box upward and through the mantas, where a Japanese diver, nearby, catches the light glinting off its platinum surface, before it descends, and swims down to the investigate. His eyes widen as he closes in…
“They took it. Back before the war.”
“Iraq?” Aria asked, hopeful, and from personal experience.
“World War Two.” Alexander stepped closer, frowning at the intensity of the dying man’s gaze — upon each of them, as if he were sizing them up for weaknesses. “A diver brought it up along with everything else the Japanese could find while stationed here.”
That’s right,” the man spoke, and his voice took on an Asian accent. Thick and confident, supremely so. Almost arrogant despite his proximity to death.
“You found it.” Alexander said, just as he glimpsed the diver again, the one coming up with the platinum coffin, checking inside, and reaching for the sole green gem, shaped like a teardrop.
Not sure why I know that, but it’s him.
“What?” Nina was still pointing the gun at his face, but it wavered now with her confusion.
“It’s him,” Alexander said, cocking his head. “Our real enemy. But… not him.”
The man grinned through bloody teeth.
“Can’t be that guy who found it,” Jacob said. “He’d be like, a hundred years old.”
“Ninety-seven,” the man said. “But who’s counting. Congratulations on escaping the tomb, on using the ancient technology.”
“You’re welcome?” Aria had crept up behind them. “Who the hell is this?”
“I’m someone who had been, and will be, for a long, long time. I have ultimate memory, and am close to much, much more. I’m… sure I’ll be seeing you and your other psychic friends and family soon. I have the twins, and with them…”
Alexander dropped to his knees, reaching for the soldier’s throat. “You have who?”
The dying man smiled, gagged on blood, and his eyes blinked fast. He said something like, “…Antarctica.”
And was gone.
Nina stepped back, putting away her gun. “What the hell was that?”
Alexander shook his head. “I think someone remotely possessed that guy. Got into his mind. Saw through him, spoke through him, like a puppet. Maybe he could have done more, but the body was dying.”
Jacob coughed and looked around nervously, expecting more. “And he’s been pulling the strings here? This 97-year-old?”
“I don’t know,” Alexander said. “That gem — it’s like the Emerald Tablet. Maybe made from the same stuff.”
“Wasn’t it a meteorite?” Aria asked.
“Yeah, with special properties forged in a psychic bond by an early high priest.”
“Okay,” Nina said, “whatever it was, someone found it, took it from where we were supposed to find it, and now…”
“Now we’re screwed,” Jacob muttered.
“No, now we have a new objective.” Alexander felt the winds die as the clouds rolled away and sun emerged, clear and with a touch of much-needed heat. “Need to get the team to work on it. Get us focused.”
“After we dry up, warm up and get the hell out of here,” Aria said.
26
In the Cessna 680, Orlando and Phoebe sat in comfort that was anything but comfortable. Phoebe had just dozed off, but her hand was still in Orlando’s, their fingers interlocked, her head on his shoulder. He could hear her fitful breathing, and hoped her dreams weren’t wracked with guilt and fear.
He couldn’t sleep. Didn’t feel even the need for a momentary respite from the world. Maybe it was his time in the ‘other place’ as a custodian — a feeling already unworldly and detached, as if it never happened. But maybe, he thought, it changed me. Did I come back with any enhanced powers of sight, any telekinetic abilities perhaps? Something Jedi-like, please?