The Revelation Code (Wilde/Chase 11) (3 page)

A flash – and for a split-second the Hind was fully illuminated as the LAW struck home.

It exploded against the helicopter’s tail boom. The Mil’s heaviest armour was concentrated around the cockpit and engines, but even if it had covered the entire fuselage it would not have been enough to stop a dedicated anti-tank round. The warhead ripped a jagged hole through the chopper’s flank, severing the mechanical linkage to the tail rotor.

The result was instantaneous.

Without the smaller rotor to counteract the enormous torque of the main blades, the Hind was hurled into an uncontrollable spin. Engines screaming, the helicopter cartwheeled overhead, Cross and Rosemont both ducking as it hurtled past. It smashed into the ground barely fifty metres beyond them, the mangled remains tumbling through the sand in a searing ball of flaming aviation fuel.

Rosemont lifted his head, heart pounding at the close call – only to freeze in fear as the yellow cloud rolled over the two men.

Everything went dark. He didn’t dare move, or even breathe, terrified that doing so would open up a gap in his hastily donned protective gear and let in the poisonous fog . . .

Seconds passed. No pain. He risked a breath. The mysterious chemical agent had not found a way to his lungs. ‘Cross!’ he gasped. ‘Are you okay?’

No reply. Worry rose at the thought of being trapped far behind enemy lines, alone – then he heard a voice. ‘Yeah. I’m fine.’

Another gasp, this time of relief. ‘That was a hell of a shot.’

‘I was a championship hunter before I joined the Marines. I hit what I aim at.’

‘Good to know. Your suit’s holding?’

‘So far.’

‘Whatever this stuff is, MOPP-1 can resist it.’ He carefully moved in the direction of the other man’s voice until his fingertips made contact with Cross’s suit. ‘I guess we’ve got our smoking gun. Saddam
has
got chemical weapons, and is willing to use them. We have to call this in.’ He reached for his radio before remembering that it had been attached to his discarded webbing.

‘I don’t think this was anything to do with Saddam,’ said Cross thoughtfully.

‘What do you mean? You saw it – one of that ’copter’s rockets blew up and released it.’

‘No, it blew up, but the gas came from something else.’ Cross suddenly gripped his wrist. ‘It came from the angel! We’ve got to find it.’

‘If it got hit by a rocket, there won’t be anything left bigger than your pinky,’ Rosemont pointed out. He made out the other man’s shape as visibility started to return. ‘Help me find the radio.’

‘This is more important. Don’t you see? Revelation chapter nine, verse two – “And there arose a smoke out of the pit—”’

‘I don’t give a damn what the Book of Revelations says!’ Rosemont barked. ‘This isn’t Sunday school; this is a Special Activities Division operation. You’re an agent, not a preacher; now shut the hell up and carry out the mission!’

Cross regarded him for a moment, his face unreadable behind the mask, then he turned away. ‘Don’t you walk away from – son of a bitch!’ Rosemont yelled after him. ‘You’re finished, you hear me?’

Cross ignored Rosemont’s angry shouts as he jogged back towards the ruins. The wind had shifted, wafting the yellow mass off the shore and out over the lake. The fires from the crashed helicopter and the burning reed beds cast a hellish glow across the landscape.

Appropriate, he thought. From the moment he first saw the angel inside the temple, he was absolutely sure, more than he had ever been about anything, that he knew what he had found – and what it meant.

But there had been only one angel. According to the Book of Revelation, there were three more. So where were they?

He approached the spot where the broken pillar had stood. The only thing there now was a rubble-strewn crater.

From which the gas was still rising.

He reached the edge of the gouge in the earth. A shallow pool of dark water was at the bottom. Amongst the debris around it, his light picked out a shape that was clearly not natural. Part of the statue. One of its wings was still attached, but the embossed metal that had been wrapped around the angel’s body was now twisted and torn where the figure had been smashed by the explosion, exposing a darker core hidden inside.

The strange gas was belching from this black stone. The wind was enough to blow it clear, though he resisted the temptation to remove his mask for a better look. The sight put him in mind of a smoke grenade, but . . .

‘Where’s it all coming from?’ he whispered. Smoke grenades contained enough chemicals to produce a screen for ninety seconds at most, but this was pumping out a colossal volume, and showed no signs of stopping.

He stepped down cautiously into the pit. A sound became audible even through his hood’s charcoal-impregnated lining, a sizzling like fatty bacon on a grill. The dark material at the statue’s heart almost appeared to be boiling, blistering with countless tiny bubbles, each releasing more gas as it burst.

Another wisp of the gas to one side caught his eye. A chunk of the broken statue, smaller than his little finger, had landed at the very edge of the pool. He crouched to examine it. There was a sliver of the dark material embedded in the cracked ceramic shell, partially beneath the water’s surface. The exposed section was burning away just like its larger counterpart, consuming itself in some reaction with the air. As he watched, the top of the splinter spat and bubbled to nothingness . . . and the thin line of yellow smoke died away.

Intrigued, Cross gently lifted the fragment from the water. It was warm, even through his glove. After a moment, the strange substance fizzed and puffed a new strand of yellow fumes into the wind. He dipped it back into the puddle. The reaction stopped.

A light swept over him. ‘Cross!’ called Rosemont from the crater’s lip. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I found the angel,’ Cross replied, climbing out to meet him and indicating the larger hunk of the statue. ‘That’s where the smoke’s coming from. It wasn’t a chemical weapon; it was here all along, hidden in the temple. Waiting for us to find it. Waiting for
me
to find it.’

Rosemont shone his flashlight over the broken figure. It was still belching out its seemingly endless plume of oily yellow gas. ‘Damn. What the hell
is
that?’

‘It’s a messenger from God. Look.’ Cross illuminated the little pool. The dark water was revealed as a bloody red, the discoloration spreading outwards from the fragment like ink across damp paper. ‘“And the third part of the sea became blood . . .”’

The lead agent snapped his light at Cross’s face. ‘I don’t want to hear one more goddamn Bible quote out of you, okay? This whole situation has gotten way out of control.’

‘I know what we have to do. We have to take the angel out of here.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Rosemont protested. ‘It killed Gabe, it killed Kerim and all his men! We’re not taking it anywhere.’

‘Putting it in water stops the smoke. If we find a container, we can transport it—’

‘Water, huh?’ Rosemont jumped into the crater. Before Cross could intervene, he had hauled the remains of the angel from the ground. The toxic gas swirled around him as he stomped back out of the pit, heading to the lake’s edge.

‘What are you doing?’ Cross demanded as he followed.

‘Making this safe.’ He drew back his arm – and hurled the statue out into the water.

‘No!’ yelled Cross, but it was too late. The broken figure spun through the air, a poisonous vortex spiralling in its wake, before it splashed down some sixty feet from the shoreline. Both men stared at the water until the ripples subsided.

Rosemont turned back to Cross. ‘Right. Now we radio in and—’

He froze. Cross had raised his gun and was pointing it at his chest. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said the Virginian in a voice that, while level, was straining with anger. ‘You’ve just interfered with God’s plan.’

‘God’s plan?’ said Rosemont, trying to control his fear. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The Day of Judgement. It’s coming. The first angel bound at the Euphrates has been released. The seals will be broken, the seven trumpets will sound, and . . .’ He paused, new realisation filling him with greedy wonder. ‘And the mystery of God should be finished . . .’

Rosemont shook his head. ‘You’re crazy. Lower your weapon, right now, or—’

Cross pulled the trigger.

A single bullet ripped through Rosemont’s heart and exploded out from his back. Eyes wide in shock behind his mask, he crumpled to the ground.

Cross stared at the dead man, his face unreadable, then bent to take his radio. He set it to an emergency frequency. ‘Wintergreen, Wintergreen, this is Maven,’ he said, using the operation’s code names. ‘Wintergreen, this is Maven. Come in.’

A female voice responded. ‘This is Wintergreen. We read you, Maven. Sitrep.’

‘Mission failure, I repeat, mission failure. We were ambushed – the Iraqis had a gunship on patrol. Rosemont and Arnold are dead. So are our contacts.’

A pause. When the woman replied, it was with clear concern even through the fuzz of the scrambled transmission. ‘Everyone’s dead?’

‘Yes, everyone but me. Our transport was destroyed. I need immediate evac.’

‘We can’t give you evac with a gunship in the air.’

‘It’s been shot down. I need to get out of here before they come to see what happened to it.’

A long silence as the controller conferred with a superior. Finally, she responded: ‘Okay, Maven, can you reach Point Charlie?’ A backup rendezvous point some miles to the south. ‘If you hole up there, we’ll get an extraction team to you asap.’

‘I’ll make it,’ Cross answered. ‘I’ll contact you when I arrive.’

‘Roger that, Maven. Good luck.’ She paused again, then added in a softer voice: ‘I’m sorry about Mike and Gabe.’

‘So am I,’ said Cross, giving Rosemont’s corpse an emotionless glance. ‘Maven out.’

He switched off the radio, then surveyed the area. The cloud had now mostly dispersed, but he didn’t risk removing his MOPP gear; there were still drifting patches of haze in the air. Instead he returned to where he had donned the suit to retrieve his equipment webbing. There was a water flask attached; he took it, then went back to the crater.

The small sliver of the angel was still submerged in the blood-red water. He removed the flask’s cap, then carefully picked up the shard and dropped it inside before it started to smoke again. The thought occurred that he should find one of the dead agents’ canteens, as there was no way of knowing how long it would be before he was rescued, but he dismissed it. He knew he would find what he needed to survive. ‘“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them unto living fountains of waters . . .”’ he said quietly as he firmly secured the cap.

His cargo secured, he set out into the wilderness.

1

New York City

Twelve Years Later

‘H
as everything I’ve done in my life been worth it?’

Nina Wilde sat facing Dr Elaine Senzer, but her eyes were lowered, avoiding the psychiatrist’s gaze. Instead she fixated on small, irrelevant details – a scuff on the other woman’s shoe, indentations on the carpet where her chair had been moved – as she tried to put her fears into words. ‘That’s the question I’ve been asking myself recently,’ she went on. ‘And the thing that’s worrying me is . . . is that I’m not sure it has.’

Elaine leaned forward, adjusting her glasses. ‘I’m curious why you’d say that. You’ve already achieved more in your life than most people – I mean, it’s fair to say that you’re the most famous archaeologist in the world. You found Atlantis, you discovered the lost city of El Dorado and a hidden Egyptian pyramid, and all those other amazing things. That’s something to be proud of, surely?’

‘Is it?’ Nina caught herself leaning back in her seat, as if subconsciously trying to maintain the distance between them. ‘Yeah, I found all those things – and I got a lot of people killed in the process. Too many people.’

‘You didn’t kill them personally.’

‘Some of them I did.’ Even without looking directly at Elaine, she could sense the psychiatrist’s shock at the revelation. ‘They were trying to kill
me
, it was always in self-defence . . . but yeah, I’ve killed people. And you know what’s really scary? I’ve lost count of how many.’

Elaine hurriedly scribbled a note. ‘I see.’

Nina gave her a grim smile. ‘You’re not going to have me committed to Bellevue, are you?’

‘No, no,’ the dark-haired woman hastily assured her. ‘I actually think it’s good that you feel able to tell me about it at this relatively early stage. If you remember, when we started these sessions last month, it was quite a challenge for you to open up about anything at all. The very nature of post-traumatic stress causes sufferers to try to internalise it – there’s a great deal of anger, guilt—’

‘Tell me about it,’ Nina muttered.

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,’ said Elaine, with sympathy. ‘You have to tell me.’

‘You want me to tell you about my guilt?’ Nina snapped. ‘Okay – about four months ago, one of my friends was murdered right in front of me. And it was all my fault! Macy wouldn’t have been there if not for me . . .’ Her voice faded to inaudibility.

A long silence was eventually broken by the psychiatrist. ‘Nina . . . are you okay?’

‘If I was okay, I wouldn’t be seeing a shrink, would I?’ the redhead replied, wiping her eyes. ‘What kind of a stupid question is that?’

Elaine shrugged off the insult with professional calm. ‘Tell me about Macy. I know you’re reluctant, but I really think it would help. Please,’ she added, seeing her patient clench her fists. ‘In your own time; you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’

‘For a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, I’m not going to sit here in silence. I could do that for free at Starbucks, and the coffee would be better.’ Nina took a deep breath, then a second, before continuing. ‘Macy . . . she was an archaeology student when I first met her. She had a case of’ – a brief smile at the memory – ‘hero worship.’ Her expression darkened once more. ‘Spending time with me soon cured her of that.’

‘But she
was
your friend,’ Elaine said.

‘Yes. She could be annoying – God, she could be annoying! – but yeah, she was. She was young, that was all. And she thought life was there to be enjoyed, so she went all out to enjoy it.’

‘Whereas you . . . ?’

A wry shake of the head, her shoulder-length hair swinging. ‘I’m not exactly a party animal. Never have been. But Macy threw herself head-first into everything. And that . . .’ Her voice broke. ‘That got her killed.’

‘How so?’

‘She invited herself along on my last job for the International Heritage Agency. I could have said no, sent her home. But I didn’t. I don’t know why, maybe because . . . maybe because I was afraid it might be the last chance I had to spend time with her.’

Elaine flicked back through her notebook. ‘Your illness – you thought it was terminal at that point?’

Nina nodded. She had been under a slow death sentence, poisoned by a toxin from deep within the earth. ‘Yeah. There was a treatment, but I didn’t know about it then.’ She kept the full truth to herself: that the ‘treatment’ was nothing less than the legendary fountain of immortality sought by Alexander the Great. After the horrors she had been through to find it, she had vowed to keep its location a secret, to prevent the inevitable further bloodshed if others fought to control it. ‘So I let Macy come with us, and . . .’ She choked up.

‘Are you all right?’ Elaine asked. ‘Do you need a Kleenex or something?’

Nina rubbed away a tear. ‘No, no. I’m okay. It’s just, talking about it . . .’

‘I understand.’

‘It’s . . .’ Nina sat sharply upright, looking Elaine straight in the eye for the first time. ‘It’s not
fair
! She was so young, she was practically still a kid! And this man, this
bastard
, killed her like she was nothing – just to get to me. If I hadn’t gotten involved, or if I’d done what I should have done and told Macy to go home, she’d still be alive! I got her
killed
!’

She slumped forward, head in her hands, trying to hold in her sobs. Elaine looked on with concern. ‘Nina, I’m so, so sorry. But you must know deep down that’s not true. You didn’t kill your friend. Someone else did.’

Nina forced out a reply. ‘If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be alive. The same goes for Rowan Sharpe, and Jim McCrimmon, and Ismail Assad and Hector Amoros and Chloe Lamb and – and so many others I can’t even remember all their names!’ She looked up in despair. ‘This is what I mean, Elaine. Yes, I made all those discoveries – but this was the cost. Hundreds of people have died because of me.’

‘It can’t be that many,’ Elaine said, though with uncertainty.

‘Trust me, I was there. My whole career, everything I’ve accomplished, has been surrounded by death and destruction. Even when I was still a kid, my parents died – were murdered – while they were hunting for Atlantis. Which is why I’ve been asking: was it all worth it?’ She looked down at her abdomen, where a small but distinct swelling revealed the presence of her unborn child. ‘Do I want to bring a kid into my world? What right have I got to put a baby at that kind of risk?’

‘But you’re not working for the IHA any more,’ Elaine pointed out.

‘Maybe, but you know what?’ Nina said with another flare of anger. ‘Last month, a Nazi tried to kill me, right here in New York!’

The psychiatrist’s eyes widened. ‘A . . . Nazi?’

‘Yeah, an actual goddamn Nazi. You see? I can’t get away from this shit! I tried to, I just wanted to stay out of trouble and write my book, but it keeps finding me!’

‘Your book,’ said Elaine, relieved at a chance to change the subject. ‘How’s that going? You told me last time that you’d been having difficulty maintaining focus . . .’

Nina huffed sarcastically. ‘Oh, it’s going super fine, better than ever. No, I’m now almost completely blocked. My publishers are gonna be thrilled that they’ve paid over half a million dollars for three and a quarter chapters. Some people I know in Hollywood want to buy the screen rights.’ Macy’s boyfriend, the film star Grant Thorn, had unsurprisingly withdrawn from the idea after the young woman’s funeral, but his business partner had since made tentative enquiries about reopening negotiations. ‘Right now, though, it’d make a really short movie.’

‘Why are you blocked?’

‘Why? Because every time I start trying to write about what I’ve discovered, it makes me think of the people who died in the process. It’s . . .’ She sagged, feeling emotionally drained. ‘I can’t move forward.’

‘In what way?’

‘In every way. With my life. All I keep thinking about is whether it’s all been worth it, and I don’t know the answer, and . . . and I’m stuck. Going nowhere.’

‘But you are going somewhere,’ said Elaine. ‘You’ve made progress over just the last month – you realised you were in denial over Macy’s death, and the fact that you sought help from a therapist shows that you’re able to start moving on.’

‘I might be
able
to start, but that doesn’t mean I
have
started. On that, or anything else. The book’s stalled, I can’t even do something as simple as come up with baby names . . .’

‘Do you know the sex?’

‘Yeah. I had an ultrasound last week, and they could tell what it was. My husband, Eddie, told them not to say anything – he wants it to be a surprise – but I snuck back in and asked. It’s a—’

Elaine held up her hands. ‘No, no. I’m like your husband, I like surprises too. I didn’t know what either of my kids was going to be until they were born.’

‘I guess I prefer to plan everything in advance. He’s more the make-it-up-as-you-go type.’

‘So how have things been between you since you learned you were pregnant? Has he been showing any tension, or . . .’

‘No, no.’ Nina shook her head. ‘
He’s
been great – he’s absolutely thrilled at the prospect of having a kid, and he’s been doing everything he can to help me. No, it’s . . . it’s me.’ She sighed. ‘I’m angry, I’m depressed, I’m confused – I’m a hundred and one negative things, and I’m taking all of them out on him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there isn’t anyone else. Since I left the IHA, it’s just been me and him. I’ve been horrible, and I know it, but . . . but I can’t help it.’

A sympathetic nod. ‘Pregnancy hormones can really affect your mood. It’s often a lot harder with a first pregnancy, because you don’t know what to expect. It’s good that he’s been so supportive.’

‘Maybe, but . . .’ A lengthy pause as she struggled to make a terrible admission. ‘I can’t help thinking that he’s putting up with it for the baby rather than for me.’

‘But do you really believe that, Nina? Deep down, I mean?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I believe about
anything
right now.’ She stared back at the marks on the carpet.

The psychiatrist made more notes before speaking again. ‘I don’t know your husband, but from what you’ve told me, it certainly seems that he loves you. He wants to help you, but you’re reluctant to allow it. That’s understandable – you’ve been through a traumatic experience, and you’ve put up barriers to protect yourself from further harm. The problem is that you’re not letting anyone through them, even the person who cares about you the most.’

Nina managed a sarcastic grin. ‘Well, duh. I didn’t need a psychiatrist to figure that out. I need one to tell me how to
deal
with it.’

‘I can’t tell you to do anything, Nina. I can suggest, and advise, but in the end only you can come up with the answer. Although one thing I would suggest is couples therapy. If you both came in together, we could address some of these issues.’

Another mocking little smile. ‘Eddie seeing a shrink? I can’t imagine that ever happening. He has his own ways of dealing with things . . .’

The helicopter dived towards the Statue of Liberty. Eddie Chase gripped the controls, trying to regain height—

‘Little advice, Eddie? Remember that thing I showed you called the stick? You might wanna pull it back.’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ Grimacing, Eddie brought the cyclic control joystick towards him. The Bell 206L LongRanger’s nose came up, and the aircraft unsteadily levelled out. ‘That okay?’

‘You didn’t crash into Lady Liberty’s face, so yeah. But we oughta go back out over open water. I’m havin’ some bad flashbacks to when I first met you!’ Harvey Zampelli took the controls, bringing the red, white and blue helicopter around across the great expanse of New York Bay. The spires of Manhattan rolled into view as he notified air traffic control of his course.

‘Well, it’s only my second lesson,’ said the stocky, balding Yorkshireman once the exchange in his headphones had concluded. ‘And I haven’t crashed it yet, so I’m not doing too bad.’

Harvey quickly touched the cross hanging from his neck on a chunky gold chain. ‘Jeez, don’t say things like that! It’s bad luck.’

Eddie decided not to tell him how many plane crashes he’d been involved in. ‘Thanks again for letting me do this,’ he said instead. ‘I’ve been meaning to learn to fly for ages.’

‘Hey, no problem,’ the black-haired pilot replied. ‘I mean, jeez, you saved my life! That’s gotta be worth the price of some avgas. I sure as hell hope so, anyway! Right? Right?’ He laughed, then added, with a hint of insecurity: ‘Right?’

‘Right,’ Eddie told him with a grin that revealed the gap between his front teeth. ‘But it’s not a problem for you, is it? Doing this in the middle of the day, I mean.’

‘Nah, I had an empty slot, and if there ain’t any paying customers, I gotta leave her sitting on the pad with the engine running anyway.’ The LongRanger’s flight had begun from the heliport at Manhattan’s southern tip; Harvey’s aircraft was one of the many offering tourist tours around New York.

‘Isn’t that expensive?’

‘Not as expensive as having to do a full check every time I shut down and restart the engine. Quicker, too. Besides, I’m a pilot. Any chance to fly, I’m gonna take it!’ He laughed again, then surveyed the surrounding airspace. ‘Okay, take the controls. Remember what I told you – keep the cyclic tipped forward to maintain airspeed, but don’t push it too far or we’ll lose height. We wanna stay between a thousand and fifteen hundred feet. Got it?’

Eddie checked the altimeter, then closed his hands around the two control sticks. ‘Yeah.’

Harvey raised his own hands. ‘Okay, all yours.’

The Englishman gingerly edged the cyclic forward. He had flown as a passenger in numerous helicopters during his military career with the elite Special Air Service, and in many more since, but his only attempts to fly an aircraft himself had been when the pilot was incapacitated, or dead. Which, he mused, had happened alarmingly often.

Today, though, nobody was trying to kill him. Operating a chopper even in peaceful conditions was still tricky, however. The Bell twitched and squirmed with every shift in the wind, and the fuselage felt as if it were swinging from the rotor hub like a hanging basket. But he held it steady, making slight adjustments to balance the airspeed indicator and altimeter.