Prime (34 page)

The breakers, I think, vaguely remembering Ted saying something about
them being shut off. I move to take a step into the cabin, and freeze before I
leave the doorframe.

The bean bag moved.

I reach for my gun, but find it missing. It's in the truck.
Haven't worn it in two years.
Imaginary creatures and
specters don't normally pose a threat.

Before I can think of what to do next, the screen door finally decides
to slam shut behind me. The bean bag explodes with motion, rearing up a round
head the size of a large pumpkin. Two large black eyes fix on me with
unwavering focus.

Moving with slow, measured movements, the bear stands. It's just about
the same height as me, but is probably upwards of seven hundred pounds. I raise
my hand in an "
its
okay" posture, like the
bear will understand it, and I back away, but I don't get far. My back smacks
into the closed screen door, which makes a loud snapping sound.

The spooked bear huffs angrily, throws itself forward and charges.

###

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DESCRIPTION:

The greatest
treasures from the ancient world have been brought together in one place—a
magnificent floating exhibition aboard a luxury cruise liner—and the wealthy,
powerful and famous have come to bask in the glow of ancient riches.
Unfortunately, someone is about to crash the party in a big way.

When Nick Kismet foils
an attempted pirate takeover of the cruise ship and rescues the lovely
Elisabeth
Neuell
—a former Hollywood starlet living
the fairy-tale dream of royalty—little does he suspect that he has been drawn
into a dangerous game controlled by diabolical occult scholar Dr. John Leeds…a
game where the prize is an ancient source of mystical power, and where the
stakes are the fate of the world.

Joined by Al
Higgins—the former
Gurkha
who once followed him into
Hell—and Higgins’ daughter Annie Crane, Kismet begins a desperate race to find
the source of immortality and keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

Surviving Leeds’
web of intrigue and betrayal will put Kismet’s courage and luck to the ultimate
test.

But fortune
favors the bold!

SAMPLE:

January, 1991

For a moment,
silence reigned supreme in the desert; an otherworldly stillness that seemed an
oddly appropriate punctuation
mark
for the violence
that had occurred only a few seconds before. Sergeant Alexander Higgins, of the
6
^th
Queen Elizabeth’s Own
Gurkha
Rifles,
listened intently, waiting for the one, insignificant sound that would herald
the end of that quasi-peaceful instant of time.

The world did not disappoint.

He spied a hubcap turned on end and spinning wildly like some toy from
his childhood, and almost smiled at the reminiscence. The hubcap was one of
only a few pieces of recognizable debris left over from the explosion that had
ripped a car apart right in front of him, and taken the life of his
comrade-in-arms Corporal Sanjay Singh.

Singh’s body lay between Higgins and the American army lieutenant Nick
Kismet. Kismet was the nominal leader of the team—what was left of it—that made
a covert insertion into southern Iraq. The mission called for them to
rendezvous with a high ranking government official who had expressed a desire
to flee what many believed was the sinking ship of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Higgins hadn’t understood why they had been saddled with an American
officer, or why
CENTCOM
had utilized his regiment for
the assignment;
Gurkhas
were tough soldiers to be
sure, but clandestine operations were not their forte. Nevertheless, orders
were orders. They had crossed the desert sands in a CH47 Chinook helicopter, an
aerial platform that looked to Higgins like a school bus with rotors at either
end, and made a flawless entry, arriving practically on top of their target
without raising a single alarm.

Then things had gone south.

The American officer had left with the defector, offering no explanation
for his decision. The two men climbed into a battered Mercedes sedan, leaving
Higgins and his platoon to trail along behind them on foot. Along with three of
his men, the
Gurkha
sergeant had set a murderous
pace, hiking through the sand alongside the paved roadway that connected the
river city of
Nasiryah
to the Bedouin communities of
the desert. Higgins had begun to wonder about the wisdom of trying to follow
Kismet; what if the defector was taking the lieutenant all the way into the
city?

Nevertheless, after an hour of hustling across the austere landscape,
they had spied the car, sitting abandoned on the roadside. Footprints led away,
down into a narrow ravine, to the partially buried remains of some ancient
Sumerian structure. Weapons at the ready, Higgins and his men had followed the
trail expecting almost anything but what they discovered in those ruins.

Lieutenant Kismet held audience with the dead.

The defector and a dozen or so others—young men, women and children—had
been lined up against the wall and massacred. A scattering of brass cartridges,
shell casings for the 5.56-millimeter NATO rounds, lay on the floor a short
distance away. Kismet was ministering to some of the mortally wounded victims,
offering final comfort rather than assistance—all were beyond saving. Higgins
had no idea what had happened, but one thing was glaringly obvious: the shots
that had murdered the defector and his family had come from Kismet’s weapon.
The American’s CAR15, a smaller version of the M16s Higgins and most of his men
carried, stank of recent discharge.

Kismet had denied shooting them, but his protestation of innocence was
wasted on Higgins. Civilians or not, the Iraqis were, after all, the enemy.
Kismet’s superiors would no doubt demand a more scrupulous accounting, but that
was their business, and no concern of the
Gurkhas
.

They had returned to the car, anticipating a short ride back to their
rendezvous site and an end to the mission. However, as Corporal Singh had
reached for the door handle Kismet had shouted for him to stop. Too late, the
Sikh had worked the lever and triggered the bomb. The blast ripped the car
apart, smashing Singh into an almost unrecognizable pulp.

Kismet had known.

Even now, as he stared at the American officer, Higgins wondered what
kind of trap
he
and his men had been sent into.

The burning car sent a towering column of smoke and fire into the sky,
a beacon that was almost certainly visible in the nearby city where members of
the Nebuchadnezzar Division of the Republican Guard had reportedly been
stationed in anticipation of war; a war that had begun that very night in the
skies over Baghdad. Those paramilitary soldiers would surely come out in force
to investigate the explosion, and would find the shattered remnants of the
Gurkha
squad hastening across the sands.

And yet, there was something about the American that Higgins found
strangely inspiring. He had seen young officers freeze up at the first sight of
blood, the first taste of combat. Kismet was different. He could almost see the
American reaching down into his deepest reserves of courage, tapping into an
inner fire. It might not be enough to get them through the dark night ahead,
but Higgins respected what he saw; he would willingly follow such a man into
Hell itself.

Still, there remained the matter of the defector’s death, the massacre
of his family, and the nagging question of who had set the explosive device in
the car.

He would follow this young lieutenant, he decided. But if they survived
the night, he would have some tough questions of his own for the American with
the strange name.

Private
Mutabe
, injured in the blast, was
walking unassisted, but he would be useless if they were engaged by the enemy.
The blood flowing from the long shrapnel wound in his left arm had been
stanched, and although he still had the use of his right arm, the morphine
injection administered by Sergeant
Armitraj
to dull
the pain would also deaden his reflexes in the heat of battle.
Armitraj
had already freed
Mutabe
of the
Minimi
machine gun he carried, shouldering the
burden of the weapon and its heavy ammunition bandoliers.

Higgins and Kismet shared the effort of bearing the slain Corporal
Singh on a hastily assembled litter. The American seemed to understand the
psychological importance of not leaving fallen comrades behind. At the same
time, both men knew in the event of an encounter with the enemy, they might
have to cut and run.

They stayed near the road as long as they dared. Though they were fully
exposed to the eyes of anyone who might pass by, they knew that once they
retreated to the desert dunes, their progress would slow to a snail’s pace. For
fifteen minutes they hastened along the roadside, until Higgins keen ears
picked out the sound of a vehicle. Before he could voice a warning, they all
heard it, and turned immediately into the open desert, seeking cover.

Higgins peered through his night vision goggles to get a better look at
the approaching automobiles. He had no trouble locating them; the headlamps of
two Land Cruisers burned brightly in the green monochrome display. He marked
their location relative to the column of smoke that continued to hover above
the bombed-out Mercedes. The Land Cruisers were on the move, following the
distinctive trail of footprints left by the
Gurkhas
.

“Shit,” he muttered. “That tears it.”

“We’ll dig in here,” declared Kismet, not questioning Higgins’
assessment. “If we can overwhelm them with an ambush, it might buy us a few
minutes.”

Higgins hefted his rifle and loaded a grenade into the M203 launcher affixed
to the lower receiver.
Armitraj
laid out the
Minimi
on a dune crest, and then likewise readied a
grenade. Kismet was left with only his CAR15, a weapon for close engagement if
the grenades failed to remove the threat.

The two
Gurkha
grenadiers aimed at a spot
roughly two hundred meters out, preparing send the bullet-shaped grenades in a
parabolic arc toward their destination. All that remained was to wait until the
targets entered the kill zone. As it turned out, they didn’t have to wait very
long.

Higgins’ grenade released with a popping sound followed an instant
later by
Armitraj’s
. Both men hastily ejected the
spent shell casings, reloading in the seconds it took for their ordnance to
sail into the sky and drop back onto the road. The task was completed before
the first 40-millimeter high explosive projectile detonated.

Higgins’ grenade hit directly in front of the lead vehicle, blasting
its windshield inward. The driver instinctively swerved, careening toward the
edge of the road even as the left front tire blew out. The Land Cruiser
abruptly pitched over on its side, sliding gracelessly into the sand, as the
other grenade found its mark.

The second Land Cruiser erupted in a pillar of fiery metal.

Armitraj
laid his rifle aside, dove for the machine gun, and lit up the first
vehicle. Without hesitation, Higgins and Kismet also opened fire on the wrecked
vehicle, even as the dazed occupants tried to get free. Rounds from the
Minimi
cut through the Land Cruiser like a chain saw,
killing anyone remaining inside. A lone figure—a soldier wearing the black
beret and triangular insignia of the Republican Guard—struggled through the
exposed driver’s side door only to fall into the crossfire of 5.56-millimeter
ammunition.

The ambush had been so quick, so decisive, that Higgins found himself
doubting the certainty of their victory. He kept waiting for the real battle to
begin, but the desert was plunged once more into silence.

“Sergeant!”

Higgins looked up at the American. Kismet was standing near Singh’s
litter, motioning for the
Gurkhas
to resume their
flight. Higgins nodded, hastening over to join the lieutenant, passing by the
glassy-eyed
Mutabe
. The engagement truly was over,
but how long until the next? He doubted their luck would hold, now that the
element of surprise was gone.

There were two more
Gurkhas
waiting for them
near the original drop zone. With them, all the supplies they had brought in
anticipation of a forty-eight hour long deployment. Those men also guarded the
radio equipment. With any luck, they had heard the sound of gunfire and already
called for a quick
evac
. It remained to be seen
whether or not the small group now fleeing across the desert could even find
the rally point, much less reach it.

Even before they started walking, a noise reached their ears: a convoy
of vehicles was racing toward them. Higgins looked to Kismet. “We won’t get
far.”

“And we won’t last long in a firefight. Maybe the sand will slow them
down, too.”