The Vengeance of the Tau (12 page)

She swallowed hard. “Make sure all the men are at their posts. I’m coming up.”

Two of the men, though, had run off following the death of her father, leaving only seven in Kamir’s replacement team.

Melissa had spent much of last night and all of Wednesday perched on a stool set behind the nine-inch video monitor. The recording made by the camera in her father’s headpiece would have been considered brilliant under ordinary circumstances given the available light. But these were hardly ordinary circumstances, and Melissa found it little better than useless.

Running it over and over again. Different speeds, different filters … Always the same.

So often throughout the day she had wanted to give up and break down. Have the equipment packed up by the workers and flee this place. But she couldn’t, not yet.

Because something down there had killed her father. And Melissa could not leave, could not run, until she knew what it was. But maybe she already did.

The Dream Dragons …

They had been waiting for him down there. They had been waiting for the men who had killed Winchester, as well. Perhaps they were always waiting, left there by the true builders of what lay beneath the surface to deny entry to those who did not belong. We are, after all, trespassing on the past, Melissa recalled from another lesson of archaeology. But no one else would ever be trespassing here again, because tomorrow she was going to seal the chamber her father had uncovered. What might be the greatest find in the history of mankind would be buried once more, hidden before more damage was done.

Melissa reached the ladder and stretched before beginning her climb. Her legs were asleep from her being seated for too long. Her neck and shoulders ached with stiffness. She tried to rub the blood back into them and then began to pull herself upward.

Kamir reached down to help her over the rim, just as the jeep drew to within a hundred yards of the site. Her father had been clear about the possibility that rumors of the dig would draw hordes to it. And there was also the possibility that the jeep’s driver was connected to Winchester’s killers. Melissa looked on neither option favorably and made sure that the jeep’s driver would be able to see she had rifle in hand when he approached.

The man parked his jeep behind Kamir’s truck and stepped out with his hands in the air.

“Say, anybody know where I can find a cash machine around here?”

The long flight from Kennedy Airport to Istanbul had left McCracken little time to catch the next fifty-five-minute commuter flight to Izmir. He had landed barely an hour ago, rented the jeep, and pieced together the most direct route here possible, following the map obtained in San Francisco as best he could.

The armed woman standing before him was obviously not impressed or soothed by his sense of humor. She stood her ground silently.

“Okay, let’s try it this way,” he said to her, eyes trained on her rifle. “I’m Blaine McCracken and you’re fucking up royally.”

“Excuse me?”

“Every man and every gun you’ve got is in sight. You can’t do that. You can never do that. Never let the enemy see everything you’ve got.”

“Then you’re the enemy.”

“Lady, if I was the enemy, you and your boys here would already be waiting to become some future archaeologist’s find.”

Melissa felt uncertainty sweep through her. The man before her who called himself McCracken was tall and very broad. Even through his baggy, sweat-soaked white shirt she could see his upper body was sculpted into a muscular V exaggerated all the more by the stance of having his hands clasped over his head. He had a close-trimmed beard and a pair of dark eyes that never seemed to blink.

“If you’re a fortune hunter, you’ve come to the wrong place,” Melissa said, the words sounding incredibly lame even to her.

“You’re British.”

“Very observant.”

“Spent some time there myself. Didn’t make a lot of friends.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised. Who
are
you?”

“We’ve moved beyond the name stage. Excellent. The truth is, I’m not even sure I’m in the right place; at least, I wasn’t until I encountered your hospitality.”

“Where did you come from? How did you find out about this place?”

“There’s a map in my right-hand pants pocket. I’ll take it out and—”

“Stay as you are! Kamir will relieve you of this map.” She looked toward the foreman. “Kamir.”

“Yes,
Sayin
Hazelhurst.”

Kamir had started forward when McCracken spoke again.

“No, no, no! You don’t send an armed man to retrieve something from an unarmed man, especially when the armed man is carrying one of the best weapons in your arsenal,” Blaine said, his eyes gesturing toward Kamir’s M-16 rifle. “Quickest way to have the tables turned on you in a hurry. But you told him to do it, because he’s the only other one here who speaks English. ’Nother bad move on your part.”

“What should I do, then?”

“Have me pull the map from my pocket with two fingers and toss it away from my feet. Then send an
unarmed
man over to pick it up.”

“Are you that good, Mr. McCracken?”

“You don’t have to be that good, given this opposition.”

Melissa smirked. “Then let’s handle it just the way you suggested. …”

Blaine followed his own advice precisely and watched a workman who had temporarily discarded his rifle approach to retrieve the map. The workman delivered it in tentative fashion to the British woman. She unfolded it and McCracken watched her eyes bulge.

Melissa realized instantly that it was a copy of the same map her father had entrusted to Winchester, one of the seven different ones that had sent his dig teams scouring the Mideast; maps that had once belonged to the Nazis.

She stormed forward toward McCracken, thrusting the map outward, rifle slung from her shoulder and totally forgotten.

“How did you get this?” she demanded.

“You’re breaking the rules again, miss. Approaching with a loaded gun. …”

“Shut up or I’ll empty it into you! Now tell me how you got possession of this map!”

“I gather I’ve come to the right place.”

“Talk!”

“Long story. Better told in the shade over a glass of mineral water.”

Melissa backed away from him, shaking her head. “You really don’t know what this is, do you?”

Blaine gazed over her shoulder to the crater that had been dug in the ground. “I assume whatever it might be is over there, Ms. Hazelhurst.”

“Don’t call me that! Don’t call me
anything
!
I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you!”

Again Blaine aimed his gaze over her shoulder. “What’s down there?”

“Leave! Get out of here!”

“Maybe I can help.”

“I doubt it.”

“Let me try.”

Melissa felt herself weakening, although she never could have said why. “Why should I?”

“Because it’s what I do.”

“Archaeology?”

Blaine shook his head. “Helping.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I think you do. You’re no match for whatever it is you’re up against.”

“How could you know that?”

“Because I left a trail of bodies between the shop where I picked up this map and the Pacific Ocean, before I headed to Turkey.”

McCracken watched her stiffen.

“Judging by your reaction, Ms. Hazelhurst, I’d say that trail has extended all the way here.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” she told him.

“Won’t know that till I try.”

“You don’t understand. You could never understand.”

Blaine slid a little closer to her. “Won’t know that till you tell me.”

Melissa Hazelhurst was sitting before the tiny video screen beneath the canopy when Blaine climbed down the rope ladder into the excavation. He got his first look at the raised rectangular opening and knew that he was face-to-face with what the map obtained in Ghirardelli Square had directed him to—what Al-Akir had sought and what Billy Griggs was determined to keep from being uncovered. Back on the surface he had inspected the remains of both Winchester and Benson Hazelhurst. Hazelhurst’s corpse caught him totally off guard. He had been expecting anything, but not this.

There was barely enough left of Hazelhurst to identify him as a human being. …

What could have done this to him?

“If you’re not an archaeologist, Mr. McCracken,” Melissa said without turning from the screen as he approached, “just what is it that has brought you out here?”

“It’s a little difficult to explain.”

She swung toward him. “It seems everything about you is a little difficult to explain. Let me hazard a guess, though. The way you’re built, the way you move, you must be some sort of soldier or mercenary.”

“Was. Not anymore.”

“But I’m close. Your hands are callused and that climb down the ladder didn’t even get you red in the face.”

“I guess I’m still a soldier, just not in anyone’s army except my own. I choose my own wars or—”

“Like this one?”

“You didn’t let me finish. Or sometimes they choose me. Like this one.”

Melissa Hazelhurst looked up into the big man’s black eyes and noticed the scar running through his left eyebrow for the first time. Though she couldn’t have said why, he frightened her at the same time as she found his presence comforting.

“Let me give this to you in a nutshell, Ms. Hazelhurst—”

“Call me Melissa, please.”

“Melissa. I took the place of a certain Arab agent at a shop in San Francisco. That’s where I came into possession of the map. After fending off a rather concerted attempt to remove it from my person, I flew over here and followed it to this dig.”

“A concerted attempt … That’s what you call that trail of bodies you said you left behind?”

“Everything’s relative.”

“What about this Arab agent? What’s his role in all this?”

“He thought the map would lead him to the ultimate weapon, something that would help his people settle their scores once and for all.”

Melissa’s face instantly paled. “Oh my God …”

Blaine fixed his stare briefly on the opening in the ground ten feet away.

“Was he right, Melissa?”

She swung back toward the screen, fleeing from the answer. Blaine watched her back arch as he continued to speak.

“Keep something in mind. There’s another party extremely interested in that map: the ones represented by those who tried to kill me as soon as I came into possession of it. Makes me think they’ve already got one of their own. Makes me think they don’t want anyone else joining the party.”

Melissa looked at him again. “Do you think they were the ones who killed Winchester?”

“Could be.” He hesitated. “What is this place, Melissa?”

“I … can’t tell you.”

His eyes went to the monitor screen. “Show me, then. Let me see for myself.”

“What’s it like spending your life helping people, Mr. McCracken?”

“Blaine.”

“Blaine.”

McCracken had sat down on the stool with the monitor’s remote control in his hand. He shrugged noncommittally.

“I think sometimes I do them more harm by trying.”

Melissa tried for a smile. “Not possible this time.” She eased the headphones over his ears. “We’ll run the whole thing in regular motion. It’s not very long.”

Blaine pressed
PLAY
and glued his eyes to the small screen. With dusk approaching, the contrast was better, but there still wasn’t much that could be made out clearly. A few times he stopped the tape and watched the portions again in slow motion. The last stretch, though, he watched frozen without expression, turning the machine off as soon as the screams were finished.

Behind him, Melissa was cringing as she lived the sights and sounds yet again.

“You saw this as it happened?” he posed.

“Yes.”

“He went on even after he saw the remains of Winchester’s killers at the bottom of those stairs.”

“My father thought he was beyond such a thing happening to him, especially inside a dig. It was like, well, it was like his home down there.”

“In the U.S. more people die at home than are murdered every year.”

Melissa swallowed hard. “My father was always cautious, almost plodding. As soon as he saw the bodies, he should have come back up. I told him to, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“I heard.”

Melissa stood at his side rigidly, staring straight ahead. McCracken angled his head to watch her.

“I’m going down there tomorrow morning,” she insisted flatly. “I’m going to seal the chamber where he was killed.”

“Before you know what lies beyond it?”

“That’s the thing, Blaine. I
do
know what lies behind it. I didn’t believe it before, but now I—”

“
Sayin
Hazelhurst!” Kamir’s shout from the rim above threw a shudder through both of them. “
Sayin
Hazelhurst!”

She moved out from the canopy and looked up at him. “Yes, Kamir.”

“You must come up here. Come quickly. Please!”

“Why? What is it?”

“Hurry,
Sayin
Hazelhurst. You must see for yourself.”

Chapter 12

THE TIRES ON
all three vehicles, including McCracken’s jeep, had been slashed.

“Two more of the men are missing,
Sayin
Hazelhurst,” Kamir reported. “It must have been them.”

Melissa looked at Blaine. “Somebody wants to keep us from leaving.”

“Because they think you’ve seen too much,” he confirmed, “and they don’t want you spreading the word.”

“Me? What about you?” Melissa gazed down at the shredded tires. “They could have done this because of you, then. They could have followed you here and—”

“Nope,” Blaine interrupted. “Whoever did this was planted in the replacement work team your foreman hired in Izmir long before I showed up. Your father’s death and my appearance on the scene just speeded things along a bit. But relax, Melissa. The plant doesn’t necessarily know who I am.”

“And that’s supposed to help?”

“Oh yeah.”

Blaine knew the enemy would come at night, when the mounded dirt and debris pulled from the nearby excavation would make for decent camouflage, and he spent the last hour until dusk preparing for it. They had seven rifles left for six men, not including himself and Melissa. McCracken let Kamir keep the only fully automatic one and watched Melissa grab the semiautomatic A-2 for herself, handling it nimbly.