‘What … like a surveillance camera?’ Meat said, coming over for a better look.
‘Yeah,’ Jason said.
Meat stated the obvious: ‘That’s not good.’
Clearing his throat, Crawford finally spoke up. ‘First the metal door. Now this? It has to be a bunker.’
‘Could be.’ Jason studied him. For the first time, Crawford’s unwavering confidence showed signs of cracking. Oddly, Crawford seemed to be feigning surprise. Why?
‘Let’s kill the light and keep moving,’ Crawford suggested.
Jason concurred.
The engineer adjusted the camera and flipped back to night vision. Before she got the bot moving again, she warned, ‘We’re about thirty-five metres in, and we only have a fifty-metre cable.’
For another five minutes, they all watched in silence as the robot wound through the mountain’s stark bowels. Twice, the engineer needed to swivel the camera sideways to study openings in the wall. But both times, the floodlight revealed dead ends. Along the way, they’d spotted two more surveillance cameras.
Deeper the bot went, until the fibre-optic cable spool nearly emptied.
Then the passage’s repetitive structure changed abruptly. The jagged walls, glowing emerald in night vision, widened before falling away. Only the ground was discernible at the bottom of the screen.
‘What do we have here?’ Jason said, squaring his shoulders.
‘Looks like … a cave?’ The engineer paused the bot and its audio feed went eerily silent. Pushing another button, she said, ‘Let’s try sonar.’
Crawford was locked in constipated silence.
A small panel popped up in the monitor’s lower right corner. Within seconds, the sonar data-capture was complete and a three-dimensional image representing the interior space flashed on the screen.
‘Wow. It’s pretty big,’ the engineer said, interpreting the data.
To Jason, the sonar image resembled a translucent blob. ‘How big?’
It took her a second to put it to scale. ‘Like the inside of a movie theatre.’ She studied the sonar image five seconds longer. ‘It’s not picking up any exit tunnels. Looks like a dead end. Nothing throwing off a heat signature in there either.’
‘So no one’s in there?’
‘Nothing living.’ Her eyes narrowed as she studied the image more. ‘There’s some strange formations along the outer edges of the cave. See here?’ She pointed to the anomalies for Crawford and Jason and they each had a long look at them.
‘Probably just stones,’ Crawford said dismissively.
‘No,’ Jason disagreed. Atop the strange mounds structured like beaver dams, he could make out plenty of orb-like shapes. ‘Those aren’t stones,’ he gloomily replied. ‘If no one is in there, let’s turn on some lights.’
This time, Crawford was hard pressed to protest. He reluctantly nodded. ‘Fine. Do it.’
The engineer clicked off the infrared, turned on the floodlight.
Onscreen, the immense space came to life.
‘My God …’ she gasped.
Jason cringed. The space was indeed a cavernous hollow deep within the mountain. And heaped like firewood all along its perimeter were countless human skeletons.
Stokes noted the time again and felt his adrenaline bubble up. Over an hour ago, the assassin Crawford had dispatched to Boston was supposed to have provided a kill confirmation on Professor Brooke Thompson. Twenty minutes earlier, he’d tried to take matters into his own hands by calling the assassin directly. The call had immediately gone to voicemail. That meant the pesky professor could still be alive - a
very
sloppy loose end.
Looking over at the photo wall, Stokes glared at a framed shot of himself and Crawford, barely men, dressed in full combat gear. Their hands were clasped in a victory handshake. We were so glad to be alive, he thought. The photo was taken the same day US peacekeeping forces had withdrawn from Beirut following the 1982 Lebanon War - one in a long line of Arab-Israeli turf wars.
It was in Beirut that he and Crawford had engaged in their first covert operation together. The CIA had planted them in Lebanon at the onset of hostilities, long before the peacekeeping operation had formally begun. They’d assisted Israeli Mossad agents to take down unsuspecting senior members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. He’d learned immeasurably from the Mossad agents - men unparalleled in their drive and focus, with a centuries-old bloodlust imprinted in their DNA. They were the most cunning killing machines Stokes had ever met.
This same snapshot, however, also reminded Stokes of Osama bin Laden’s 2004 videotape, in which the coward specifically mentioned Beirut as his inspiration for bringing down the World Trade Center. Another example of how winning the battle did little to win the war. That got his adrenaline pumping even harder. Fucking terrorist scum, Stokes thought. I’ve got inspiration too, you Muslim freak. You wait and see. I’m gonna make your little jihad look like child’s play. You’ll all pay. Every single one of you.
He scratched nervously at his raw palms again before turning his attention to the computer monitor, where the cave’s camera feeds were showing plenty of activity. As Crawford had indicated during their last phone conversation, the PackBot was being sent into the cave to explore the passages and pinpoint the Arabs’ location.
To buy some time, Crawford had cleverly diverted the robot down the passage leading away from the Arabs. Stokes had watched the machine rove through the winding tunnels, on three occasions pointing its robotic eye up at the cave’s surveillance cameras. But Stokes wasn’t concerned, because not one component of the security system could be traced back to him.
The bot was now parked in the cave’s voluminous burial chamber, panning its camera left to right. For those viewing the bot’s video transmission, the macabre sight would be nothing less than terrifying - like glimpsing Hell itself.
All those skeletons, he thought.
He remembered the first time he’d seen the massive bone piles. He’d tried to imagine how gruesome it must have been when the festering bodies had first been interred in that cave, so many millennia ago. Pools of rancid blood. The stench of decaying flesh. Insects and vermin feasting on the rotting corpses.
He vividly recalled the skin-crawling sensation he’d felt upon entering that chamber - an unsettling energy which could only come from another realm where the souls didn’t rest. It was the first time he’d come to terms with the idea that true evil - a malevolent force - had been trapped beneath that mountain.
Not just evil:
a weapon
.
This subterranean mass grave was even more shocking than the excavated pits unearthed in Iraq’s southern deserts. Stokes had no doubt that the marines, and particularly the Kurdish interpreter who Crawford had said was assisting the mercenaries, would attribute the atrocity to Saddam’s secret police. But they’d be sadly mistaken.
On another panel, Stokes honed in on the distraught Arabs, slowly making their way deeper into the tunnel and still determined to find a way out. He shook his head in amusement.
The Arabs were very close to the cave’s most secret chamber now. Too close. And Stokes was concerned that if they were to stumble upon the installation that was the heart of the operation, they might try to destroy his precious handiwork.
‘It is time,’ a voice suddenly called out to him.
Startled, Stokes sat bolt upright and scanned the room.
‘Let loose the fury,’ the voice calmly commanded.
‘Yes …’ Stokes said, still hoping the Lord would reveal His countenance. The voice was all around him. It even seemed to permeate his skull. How would God eventually manifest Himself? ‘I understand.’
Composing himself, Stokes brought up a new window on his monitor to access the cave’s command interface module.
‘Let loose the fury,’ he said to himself.
He stared at the seven icons blinking ‘SEALED’. It was time to slay the Hydra. Time to eliminate the Middle East threat. For too long, humankind had interfered with the natural order of things. The balance God intended needed to be restored - the checks and balances that truly determined history’s winners and losers.
With trembling fingers, he clicked each icon in turn, and the flashing indicators flipped from red to green; ‘SEALED’ now changed to read ‘OPEN’. When the password box came up to confirm the changes, he paused.
Finally the appointed hour had arrived. The culmination of years of research and sweat. After taking a few seconds to savour the moment, he whispered, ‘When the lamb had opened the first of the seven seals, I heard the first of the four beasts say with a thundering voice, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a white horse; and he that sat on him had a bow: and there was given unto him a crown, and he departed as conqueror and to conquest.’
Pastor Randall Stokes slowly typed in the password - A-R-M-A-G-E-D-D-O-N - then entered it again to authorize the command.
The black GMC Yukon zipped through the Callahan Tunnel, making Brooke Thompson’s pulse accelerate. Her mind was flashing a fireworks display of images from the earlier car chase. Tunnels had never bothered her before. But they did now. She imagined the SUV careering into the tight walls - envisioned a ceiling collapse that brought the harbour flooding in around her. Crossing her arms over her stomach and squeezing tight, she glanced over at Flaherty, seated to her left in the rear passenger seat. He was staring through the SUV’s bulletproof glass, entranced by the streaming lights high up on the tunnel wall.
Agent Flaherty had enough on his mind to ignore irrational fears, Brooke thought. In fact, it had to be
rational
fears that plagued his thoughts. Prior to leaving the office, he’d spent twenty minutes in a closed-door session with his firecracker of a boss. He’d been highly contemplative ever since.
Feeling her anxiety ballooning into panic, Brooke couldn’t help but reach over and grab his right hand. He turned, unsure of her intention, but quickly realized by her clammy complexion that she needed some consoling. ‘Sorry, but I’m kind of freaking out,’ she said, her fingers clamping tight around his palm.
‘It’s all right,’ he said with a reassuring smile. ‘I’m feeling it too. Don’t know if I’ll ever look at a tunnel the same way again either.’ He placed his other hand on top of hers.
She nodded and released a long breath to calm her nerves. Focusing on the back of the driver’s huge, shaved head somehow calmed her. The guy was like a caricature - a mountain of muscle. Even his ears seemed pumped up. The handgun strapped under the man’s arm, however, implied that his duties involved more than simply playing chauffeur.
‘I still don’t think you should be coming with me,’ Flaherty said. ‘I can’t guarantee your safety. I don’t want to be responsible for—’
‘Tommy, if you have a waiver form, I’ll sign it,’ Brooke said. ‘Otherwise, let it go. You need me and you know it. And your boss seems to be okay with it too.’
Lillian had indeed given him the green light to bring Brooke along. Logically, it made sense, since Brooke was the only person who’d actually met the conspirators face to face, and her visual confirmation could certainly expedite matters. ‘With the high stakes involved, we need to be certain about this, Tommy. Any slip-ups could cost us dearly,’ Lillian had said.
‘Are you always this stubborn?’
Brooke thought about it for a moment. ‘Pretty much.’ She leaned to the middle, looked forward out the windshield. ‘Could this tunnel be any longer?’ she pleaded, squeezing Flaherty’s hand even tighter.
Flaherty chuckled.
They sat there holding hands for a few seconds until Flaherty asked, ‘You ever been to Vegas?’
‘Once … two years ago. The Archaeological Institute of America had its convention at Caesar’s Palace. Hard to forget, because they didn’t realize that there was a swingers’ convention going on in the adjacent ballroom.’
‘So you got to kill two birds with one stone?’
‘Very funny,’ she said, scrunching her face. ‘I’m not that kind of girl. How about you? Are you a Las Vegas guy? “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”, and all that?’
‘Nah,’ he said, with no elaboration, and shifted his eyes to the floor.
She gave him an incredulous look. ‘I’m not buying it. Remember, I’ve seen the way you drive. You’re a guy who likes to take chances.’
He sighed. ‘Not to be a downer, but my dad’s a wicked gambler. When I was a kid, he lost a year’s salary in one night at a poker table. Caused a lot of heartache for my ma. Didn’t stop with him, either. My oldest brother Jimmy lives by the ponies. And Chris, the middle child … he’d wager the weather if he could. Seems the Flahertys are genetically predisposed to bad bets. Seen enough to know that I shouldn’t even buy a lottery ticket.’
‘Then you should be happy I’m coming with you,’ she replied delicately. ‘I’ll keep you away from the casinos.’
He smiled. ‘I doubt there’ll be any slot machines where we’re going.’
Up ahead Brooke spotted an emerging circle of dull daylight at the end of the tunnel. She relinquished her grip on Tommy and pulled her hand back. Their destination returned to the forefront of her thoughts. ‘What kind of evangelical preacher builds a humongous church in Las Vegas, anyway?’