BRAINRUSH 02 - The Enemy of My Enemy (25 page)

Their leader stepped forward and stopped one pace away. Jake needed him closer.

“You spoke of my family,” the man said. 

His English hinted at an education that most of the men around him probably lacked. Jake wondered if he could reason with him.

“Listen,
amigo
,” Jake said. He projected a calm air of sincerity. “I’m really sorry about what I said over the video screen. It was all an act, really. You and I, we’re on the same team. Those terrorists you encountered down at the airport? They’re the problem. I was just trying to—”

“Machete,” the man said. He reached his manicured hand out to his side. One of his men handed him a long blade. It had a single edge that appeared finely honed. There were bloodstains on it.

“Okay, pal,” Jake said. “Let’s not get carried away.”

 “If your family was here,” the drug lord said. “I would kill them first. Slowly.” The man’s tone indicated that the act was something he had conducted many times before.

A deadly calm came over Jake. He steadied himself for what he knew he must do. The culvert was directly behind him.

“I’m going to warn you only once,” Jake said, projecting his own menace. He spoke in Spanish, one of several languages he’d mastered in the past few months. “Unless you leave this place immediately, you and your men will all die.”

The leader’s eyes narrowed for a fraction. Then his face closed like a fist. He stepped forward. The machete rose.

Jake glanced up. The Mexican noticed. His gaze shifted over his shoulder. Jake gave the pronounced nod to signal the missile launch. He continued the motion and head-butted the man with the fury of his own pent-up anger and frustration. But the Mexican’s head was turned so the blow didn’t have the intended effect. He staggered backward but kept his balance.

Jake rebounded from the impact. He used his reverse momentum to heave himself—and the two guards—backward into the three-foot-deep culvert.

Just before the horizon disappeared from view, Jake saw the flash at the bottom of the drone that indicated a missile launch. He allowed his body to go limp, making no attempt to struggle with the startled Mexicans who tumbled beside him. They rose quickly. Their hands reached for holstered weapons.

Jake was huddled at their feet. He closed his eyes, cupped his hands to his ears, and opened his mouth to protect against the overpressure from the explosion.

The superheated blast shook the ground and knocked the wind out of him. Sound disappeared from shocked eardrums. Debris rained down on him. When Jake opened his eyes, the air was filled with smoke. The two men who’d stood above him had been killed instantly. Their scorched bodies bent over the far wall of the culvert as if a mighty wind had folded them at the waist.

He pushed to his feet and crawled out of the culvert. The ground was splattered with a scarlet porridge that smelled of offal and burnt meat. Flames danced from the charred remains of the narcos’ bodies. The smoke cleared and Jake saw the drone racing toward him, its wings wagging sharply from side to side.

There was a flash of movement in his peripheral vision. Jake spun to see the drug lord step from the culvert. A layer of dust coated him from head to toe. He held a chrome-plated pistol pointed at Jake’s chest.

“As I was saying,” the man said through clenched teeth. “You should never have spoken of my family.”

“And you,
signore
,” Francesca said, startling both men, “should not be pointing a gun at the father of my child.” She was ten paces away, walking toward them.

The man swiveled the pistol toward her.

Francesca stepped over a mangled body with the casual grace of a hiker traversing a log. She emanated a fierce sense of determination Jake had never witnessed in her before. But her presence made no sense, he thought. He wasn’t close enough to the man for her distraction to do any good.

The Mexican glanced between the two of them. He must have sensed Jake’s desperation because he swiveled the pistol back in his direction. The corners of his lips turned upward.

“What a pleasant sur—”

Twin gunshots blew him off his feet. He was dead before hitting the ground. Jake stared at Francesca in disbelief. Smoke trailed from the barrel of the pistol that had suddenly appeared in her hands. She’d taken a knee in a classic, two-grip shooter’s pose.

He moved toward her. She set the weapon on the ground and rose. She was steady on her feet. Jake wrapped her in his arms.

“I had to be close enough to be certain I wouldn’t miss,” she said softly. “My papa taught me that.”

Jake had trouble forming words around his astonishment. “W—what?”

She pressed her body close. “Isn’t it time I saved
you
for a change?”

Chapter 45

Above the Sonoran Desert

A
bbas confirmed with the pilot that all was well. He and his men were enroute to Los Angeles in the DC3. Fifteen minutes had passed since their narrow escape from the airfield.

He exited the cramped cockpit and made his way toward the rear of the plane. Several of the men gave him acknowledging nods as he passed by. They’d performed well, Abbas thought, in spite of the unexpected arrival of the Mexican drug gang. Iranian shock troops—a well-deserved moniker for the seasoned fighters. Two of their team had been killed at the airfield, and the four who had been tracking the American’s friends had failed to check in—also presumed dead.
Acceptable losses.
The dozen that remained were stoic. They were currently stationed in Venezuela near the
sheikh’s
new headquarters, on loan to him in support of their cause.

Abbas was proud to serve with them.
True warriors of Allah.

He turned his attention to the doctor who cowered in the last row of the compartment. A flush of anger swelled from within. They had some unfinished matters to discuss.

“You
gave
the American the antidote?” Abbas said. His hand shot out to grip the doctor’s scrawny neck and lift him to his feet.

“He was going to kill me!” the doctor squealed.

“Then you should have died,” Abbas growled. His thumb dug deeper against the man’s throat. Any further and the larynx would collapse.

The doctor gasped as he tried unsuccessfully to draw a breath under the pressure of Abbas’s grip. His eyes bulged.

Abbas marveled at the doctor’s unwillingness to fight back, even if doing so meant hastening the inevitable. The man’s lack of backbone disgusted him. His presence on board the aircraft was an insult to the other soldiers. Still, according to the
sheikh,
he was needed. Reluctantly, Abbas released him. The doctor slumped into his seat, gulping in lungfuls of air.

“There was barely enough of the antidote to treat the woman,” he said, his voice thin and raspy. He massaged his reddening neck. “Besides, he knows nothing of our plans.”

“And that is the only reason you are still alive!” Abbas said.

The copilot emerged from the cockpit. “Sir!” he said. “The
sheikh
is on the radio.”

**

Abbas sat in the copilot’s seat and adjusted the headset. The pilot and copilot had removed theirs in order to protect the privacy of his conversation with the
sheikh.
Abbas turned his back on the two men. The crack of a smile found his lips as he spoke into the mouthpiece.

“The American has escaped.”

“Excellent. Does he suspect anything?” Battista said on the other end of the line.

“Nothing,” Abbas said.

“Well done.”

“Thank you, my
sheikh
. But it is your plan that should be applauded. I am but your tool.”

“A sharp tool, to be sure.”

Abbas smiled at the rare compliment. “Fooling the American was no more difficult than training a camel to
koosh
.” 

The
sheikh
allowed himself a chuckle.
“And now, our camel shall lead us to the final oasis.”

Part III

Chapter 46

Area 52

D
oc Finnegan stood among the research scientists seated at the lower of the tiered rows of control consoles. The steel shroud remained locked around the centerpiece of the Obsidian Project. He flicked a switch on the console and the polarized viewing window transitioned from opaque to clear. The black pyramid within was flipped upside down on its axis, its tip supported in a specially constructed frame. The four-by-four top surface of the object shimmered under the shroud’s lights. It was covered in a series of pictograms and unusual symbols whose meaning remained a mystery.

“What have you got, Timmy?” Doc asked.

The junior researcher adjusted a remote control toggle on his console. Inside the chamber, a small robotic arm swiveled a camera over the top of the object. The image filled the large LED screen at Timmy’s station.

As many times as Doc had studied the etched surface of the artifact, he still felt the familiar rush of excitement he’d experienced when he first laid eyes on it.

A series of eight rectangular, grayscale images ran along the outside perimeter of the obelisk’s smooth square surface. They were amazingly realistic, finely etched and resembling a tooled printing plate. The detail was impressive, reminiscent of laser-etched photos. The images depicted early man—fur-clothed, bearded
Homo sapiens
in various stages of horrific battle against one another, using rudimentary weapons made of stone, bone, and wood. Each scene was more violent than the last, a haunting view of the savagery of man’s ancestors.

The final image in the sequence was different. It depicted three slender, hairless humanoid figures, their backs turned, standing on a rock ledge looking down on a tribe of early man. One of the humanoids had his hands held out before him, as though he were awaiting a gift from heaven. Hovering in the air in front of his hands was a small black pyramid. Spikes of black light shot from its peak and pierced the heads of the people below. Their hands pressed against their temples, their eyes wild and faces in agony.

The macabre images framed a twenty-four-inch square section in the center of the top surface. The outline of a smaller square—about three inches wide—appeared to be more deeply etched into the center of the object. The space between this small untouched square and the larger one that surrounded it was divided into eleven trapezoidal sections. Each contained irregular shapes and patterns.

Timmy zoomed the camera so that the obtuse symbols filled the screen. “I’ve discovered a pattern,” he said. 

Doc felt a jolt of adrenaline at his words, especially coming from this young man.

At twenty-three years old, Timmy Bretzel was the youngest of Doc’s scientific team. Wearing black jeans and a heavy-metal T-shirt, he had dark eyes that looked like he never got enough sleep. His black hair was short and spiky and one ear was riddled with piercings. Two empty cans of Monster energy drink rested beside his console. Doc had brought him along from his last assignment because he was one of the most brilliant up-and-comers Doc had ever met. The kid had a love for anything otherworldly and a genius-level IQ that gave him a knack for looking at problems from unique perspectives.

“A pattern?” Doc said.

“Yeah. We’ve been looking at these things all wrong.” 

Timmy waved his hand in a circular motion around the screen, indicating the string of symbols. Each was embossed or engraved with various textures and vivid colors. One of them looked like a puffy cloud with random dots embedded around it. Another resembled a splotch of thick paint, its rough edges surrounding a series of arcing lines. They all appeared nonsensical, like random scribbles in a child’s coloring book.

“They’re not spatial like we first thought,” Timmy continued. “Not intended to depict a place or a time.” He straightened in his chair. “They’re numerical.”

He entered a command on his keyboard and various numbers were superimposed over each of the symbols on the monitor. The numbers ranged from single digits to one that had eleven digits.

Doc studied the smaller numbers in the sequence: 2—3—5—7—23—719. His mind skipped through a series of calculations. He mumbled as he moved from one number to the next. “Prime…prime…prime…”

“Exactly!” Timmy said, his enthusiasm growing. “They’re all prime numbers. Even the larger ones. But there’s more to it than that. Out of the eleven numbers, only eight of them are factorial primes.”