The Watchers (33 page)

“Is it a kernel of some kind?” asked Dylan.

“Maybe,” conceded Okoye. “There's definitely more to this shape than at first glance.”

“Think of it according to the first principle,” Dylan said. “Marcus Aurelius—‘Of each particular thing, ask what is it in itself?' ”

“Well, if I take the bottom of the eight by itself, it looks . . .”

“It looks like a flame.” Sister Okoye had said it, staring ever harder at the image. “A flame whose uppermost tip curls into some kind of a ring around itself.”

“Fire,” said Dylan. “We have a flame, or a fire.”

“A fire that's crowned by—”

“That's it!” he interrupted. “A fire with a crown.”

“A royal fire. A fire of the kings.”

“No,” Sister Okoye said, “not a crown. Look how perfectly rounded it is. No points, no indents. That's no crown I've ever seen. But look how it's centered right over the top of the flame in a circle.”

“It's a halo,” said Abby.

“A holy fire,” said Dylan.

Abby chuckled, thinking he was joking. Then, seeing his serious expression, she grew serious again.

“This is the next clue we've been searching for,” said Okoye. “I can sense it. We're close. So close.”

“A holy fire?”

“Yes, but look how close it is to the seeing-eye symbol. There are eyes all over this site, but all of them are alone. Nowhere near another carving. This is special. It's referring to one of our Sisterhood who is near a holy fire. She must be someone special. An ordained member.”

“Maybe it's that matriarch you told me about,” said Abby. “The one everyone thinks is ailing.”

Sister Okoye looked up at Abby with a sharp, affirmative glance. “I think you're right. That could be it. God led us to the right clue.”

“Really,” Dylan said, sounding doubtful.

“Please don't let yourself fall into the skeptical Western mindset, Dylan,” chided Okoye. “This is one of the biggest breaches between believers in the West and the rest of the world. And one of the Western church's biggest limitations. I told you that many Western Christians put the reality of the spiritual realm out of their minds. But here in Africa, we can hardly avoid it. It's always been right there on the surface, a part of everyday life. We've had witch doctors and shamanic occult and evil manifestations as long as we've had people. As a result, we've never been tempted to water down or explain away the powerful encounters between the armies of God and those of the devil.”

“Maybe this is one of the reasons why, when our sisters were kidnapped to America,” Abby interjected, “their impact never influenced American culture beyond the African-American community itself. Even to this day. Our Western mindset just wasn't ready to accept it.”

“So where does all this leave us?” asked Dylan.

“Find a Holy Fire, and you'll find the source you seek,” Okoye replied.

“You mean this woman you all think is the leader?”

“Yes, Dylan, and more. She will have the answers to all this mystery.”

“So we're going to Ethiopia.”

“
You're
going to Ethiopia. But yes, that is where the trail ends.”

“We can't go there straightaway,” added Dylan. “First we'll have to get to London where I have my European cache.”

“Cache?” said Abby.

“All operatives like me have places around the globe where they can access money from a secret account and resources like new identity papers. I have one in L.A., one in Caracas, and one in London.”

“Yes, but how do we get there? We don't even have papers to get out of Nigeria.”

“I have no idea,” he grunted. “One miracle at a time, princess.”

“And He will give you one,” said Okoye. “Do you see, Dylan, how just now He led us to both an answer to our mystery and a solution for your defenses?”

“I do,” he said. “Pretty amazing.”

“So you see, I wasn't trying to keep you from making earthly preparations. I just wanted for God to guide you into the ones He had for us. They tend to be far more powerful.”

“Well, now that we've gotten that out of the way,” said Dylan with an uncomfortable grin, “let's work on staying alive until we can get there. We're a long way from Ethiopia. And a long way from
safe
.” He stood, holding the candle in his hand. “Besides, I have an idea. But we have to move fast.”

CHAPTER
_
45

Over the miles, the initial embers of Shadow Leader's resolve had stoked themselves into a virtual bonfire of revenge. Deprived of its true target, his hatred had fed, feasted actually, on his most primal companions—the solitude of the jungle, the thumping of his heart, the glide along a liquid highway, the silent flow of time.

Anything. Any stimulus at all.

When he finally arrived at the landing—which was no longer a shore but a mere left turn into deeper swamps—he felt himself rejuvenated into the deliciously unstoppable killing machine of his younger days. An unthinking force of nature.

Rejuvenated?
he said to himself.
Forget that. I'm reborn
.

Nothing would stop him but nature itself—he could sense it within him. He hadn't felt this exhilarated in years.

He saw the rampart from the satellite photographs loom above a razor-thin layer of mist. Adrenaline seethed through every muscle in his body. He vowed to himself to line those three freaks' decapitated heads on top of that very ridge, then snap a photo of the sight and uplink it to the screen of every old fossil sitting in a rocking chair somewhere, deliberating his fate.

That would show 'em.

He pulled out his map, scrutinized its tracing of the rampart's path through the rain forest, and looked up at the real thing. There'd be a lot of ground to cover, and he wasn't going to wait for nightfall to start. He ripped an armful of reeds and vines from the jungle around him and spent twenty minutes fitting an intricate camouflage across the far lip of the Kodiak.
Perfect
. Now he was not only exquisitely disguised by color, but transformed into little more than a drifting clump of jungle flora. One of millions in the area, from the look of things.

Even his infrared goggles were painted camouflage, he noted as he strapped them on. He willed himself into invisibility. Resuming his stomach-down pose in the boat, he untied his tether and started the motor. He steered the disguised craft between his outstretched feet behind him and began to slide ever so slowly through the jungle's edge, just inside the canopy and the overfilled moats.

His nose crinkled under the assault of a foul smell. But just as quickly, recognizing its source, Shadow Leader broke into a savage grin. The flood had just offered him its first gift.

Swamp gas.
Methane
.

The sun fell, the moon rose, and an unlikely hush fell over the brooding heights of the Eredo Rampart. At the opening of their chamber, Dylan knelt, poised to set in place the last of his countermeasures. The half-guttered candle taken from the wall shrine now sat below him, ready to be lit and become their perfect lure: a self-perpetuating heat and light source. Just enough to seemingly betray a low level of human activity.

After fighting with a buried wick in the dim light, he managed to light the flame, then turned to the two women.

“I've put off saying this until the very end,” he said, “but I think one of you will need to stay here with the candle. Not only to make sure it keeps burning, but to set the trap. He'll acquire a thermal signature from a long ways off. But once he gets within any kind of sight line, he'll want to see an actual person or he may sniff a trap and bolt.”

“I'll do it,” said Sister Okoye. “I am not as mobile as you two. It is the perfect task for me.”

“Yes, but it's the most dangerous,” Abby protested.

“Exactly, my dear. After all, I am fairly old, even if you cannot guess exactly how old I am. I have led a full life.”

Abby winced at the implications of Okoye's statement, but then let it go.

Dylan resumed his briefing. “If he's following special ops strategy, he'll strike fast and hard. The idea is to wrap everything up within thirty seconds. Granted, that's usually when you attack with a full squad. But I still expect things to happen quickly. Sister, just in case he considers sniping, stay just inside the entrance but no farther. Don't give him a target. If he climbs up, which I think he will, duck out of the way or you could get hit. I'll be just above you with the gun. If you see me wave, then slide away and get out of there fast, because it means I completely misread him and he decided to open up with explosives. But if he's on a personal vendetta to take me down, then he'll come up in person. Besides, he wants to kill Abby with his own hands.”

Abby's face blanched.

“Sorry, Abby,” he mumbled. “Now we should get into positions. If nothing happens by dawn, we just regroup here. Do so carefully in case it's a trap. But if your Sight was correct, he'll use the night. Oh, and one more thing.”

“What's that?” asked Abby nervously, as if she could hardly bear one more of these nerve-racking disclosures.

“I suppose we should pray?”

They were holding hands above the rampart, each of them moving their lips in silence, when a loud but breathy
thump
filled their ears. Dylan's head shot up, his eyes sharp as knives, but out of deference to the others, he waited one second.

Two.

Three. He groaned inwardly.
Please, Sister, finish the prayer. . . .

Finally out of patience, he dropped both hands and scrambled to the far edge.

The moat's waterline was on fire with an eerie blue flame. A foul smoke curled up toward them on a light breeze.

“Swamp gas,” whispered Sister Okoye behind him. “He's using every advantage.”

“He's good,” agreed Dylan, nodding. “He'll use the smoke as his cover when he scales the wall. Let's get into position.”

Shadow Leader had identified the distant heat signature over an hour before, then spent the bulk of that time approaching carefully for a better look. Surely, they wouldn't make it that simple, he warned himself. Then he remembered that the fools probably considered themselves undetected and had no notion of his coming.

Sure enough, as he approached in the twilight he'd seen the tops of one or two heads moving around, seemingly unconcerned. He had smiled, feeling a slight twinge of disappointment at the ease of it all. No matter, he had consoled himself, for he'd indulge himself in a full tactical approach anyhow.

Which was exactly what he was doing.

CHAPTER
_
46

At the sight of the smoke—an unexpected tactic—Dylan felt the full weight of his old operational mindset come crashing back into his thoughts.

This is crazy,
he heard the voice of his experience hiss at him. He'd finally cracked. Here he was, practically defenseless, facing a coordinated assault from a foe presumably armed to the teeth, defending a totally exposed shooting-ducks gallery overlooking a hundred miles of perfect cover. Worse yet came the hard-nosed voice from his past; he was heeding a couple of loony women so overdosed on religion that they wanted him to push aside the best military training in the world in favor of mumbled prayers and half-baked warm fuzzies.

Another voice broke in as correction, reminding him that Abby's and Sister Okoye's faith wasn't asking him to throw out his training but merely place it under the authority of someone other than himself, then add to it a whole new level of strategy he'd never known before.

Still, it felt—

Hatfield!
—roared the voice of every drill instructor and field officer he'd ever worked with, barking at him in tandem—
Pull it together. . . !

The smoke, now curling heavily about their position, embodied the rising urgency of his dilemma. He tried to analyze the situation with the same ease and calm he once had been famous for, but now the lateness of the hour made everything spin into a frantic, dizzy blur. A surge of panic rushed through him. His heart began to race like that of a rank amateur in his first simulation op. His lungs began to heave wildly in his chest.

And swirling around the core of this internal tempest was a maelstrom of old combat rules, warnings, war slogans and axioms, each one drilled into his subconscious many years before, each one now adrift and chaotic, crashing into the others and threatening to churn his brain into senselessness.

Should he stand his ground? Shock his enemy with a bold, random countermove? Abandon the position altogether? Wrack his brain for wily, out-of-the-box trickery?

After all, the latter had been his own choice, just today.

From somewhere in the mental carousel arose the calming, unlikely notion of praying. His soldier's mind told him
no
—that the time for praying was later, when all the action was over and the dust had settled.

Another consciousness, deeper and steadier, seemed to be whispering that
now
was exactly the right moment.

So Dylan started the prayer like an impatient teenager eager for his parents to leave.
God, seems clear that right now might be a good time to hear from you. It's just that you didn't wire me to stop and check out of reality right in the middle of a fight. So maybe, if you could make yourself really, really clear—and incredibly persuasive—and all in very short order, that would be great! Thank you. Amen
.

Another idea came to him from out of nowhere.

The lighting of the methane—it was too quick. Too easy. It was a diversion. Some kind of trap.

But what? What was he being diverted from?

The thought came hurtling through his brain like a stray bullet.

The other side of the rampart!