The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 23

Hawker and Sonia took cover in the audiovisual control room while a wave of panic swept through the outside. Sporadic gunfire was interspersed with screaming, and then they heard nothing but silence.

“What’s going on?” Sonia asked.

He was pretty damn sure that she knew what was going on.

“My guess?” he said. “These are the people your father was working for.”

Another burst of gunfire echoed.

“They’re killing those people,” she said.

That was a distinct possibility, Hawker thought, but he didn’t want Sonia to feel that.

“I doubt it,” he said. “They’re looking for you.”

“Me?”

“After they took your father, they went after a lab he’d been working out of. There can be only one reason for that: he didn’t give them everything they wanted.”

“And they think I’ll have it?” she asked. Fear filled her eyes. The type of fear he’d seen once before, years ago, when it seemed they might all die before they got the chance to leave the Republic of the Congo.

He didn’t completely trust Sonia — there were too many red flags for that — but he was certain of one thing: No way on earth would he let this cult get their hands on her and do what they’d done to Ranga.

A small boom echoed from the main room. It sounded like an explosion.

“We have to do something,” Sonia said. “We can’t just hide here.”

Hawker intended to do just that. Sooner or later it would turn into a standoff. Hotel security would rush in and Dubai’s antiterrorist forces would appear. If he guessed right the attackers did not want that. They had to find Sonia quick and get her out of there, probably by using the helicopter they’d flown in on.

The problem was, it wouldn’t take them long to go through the attendees, and then they’d start checking the rooms off the main hall, like the one he and Sonia were in now.

He glanced around, looking for a weapon. As he did he noticed light coming from a long flat panel near the wall. It looked like a mixing room of a recording studio. The controls for the audiovisual displays were still lit from within: The power was still on.

Right off the bat he’d assumed the attackers had cut the line, but that was easier said than done in a big hotel like the Burj. Somehow they’d taken out the lights, but that was it. For all he knew they’d just turned off the damn switch.

“I’m not going to let those people die for me,” she said.

“A lot more people will die if they get their hands on you. Trust me.”

She looked at him as if the statement confused her, but for reasons he couldn’t quite put a finger on, it seemed like a performance. He hoped he was wrong, but once again he heard Keegan’s words in his head. The man was right. He couldn’t tell a friend from a foe.

He crawled to the panel, conscious of more shouting outside in the hall. After a second of looking it over — and realizing he knew nothing about how to work it — he began throwing switches, pressing buttons that seemed to represent Play and pushing levers that he guessed would control speakers or lighting effects.

The sound of the spa music rose up again. He could hear it from the main room. He pushed the lever to full, and then pressed Play on what looked like a giant DVD player.

The music grew louder and the voice of the spokesman cut in, but at a hundred decibels or more.

“You are here in the city of the future,” it boomed.

He threw a bunch of other levers and then grabbed Sonia.

“Come on.”

Out in the ballroom the guests lay flat on the floor. Three of them were dead, blood pooling around beneath them on the marble floor. Several others had suffered beatings.

A group of thugs in black fatigues and ski masks had fanned out around the perimeter. They’d gotten control quickly and now pointed automatic weapons at the men and women corralled between them.

At the center of that group, two others stood. One held his weapon at the ready; the other, without a mask and displaying a long blond ponytail, walked among the prone hostages like a wolf on the prowl.

He stopped.

“You.”

He pointed toward one of the Paradox personnel.

“Get up.”

As the man stood, Ponytail grabbed him by the throat.

“You’re a spokesman?”

The man from Paradox nodded fearfully.

“Then speak. Tell me where she is.”

“Who?”

“Sonia Milan.”

The spokesman choked at a lump in his throat. “She went down the east hall,” he said finally. “With Hendricks.”

“Hendricks? The old man?”

The spokesman nodded.

Ponytail shook his head. “We killed Hendricks. She wasn’t with him.”

“I swear they went together, right before you got here,” the poor guy said.

Ponytail brought a pistol up, placed the barrel against the man’s forehead, and cocked the hammer.

“I swear it! It’s the last I saw of her! I don’t know anything else!”

“Then I don’t need you anymore,” Ponytail said.

He pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded and he fell backward, dead. Screams rose and were quickly stifled.

“Anyone else have any better information?” Ponytail shouted. “You know, the kind that might keep you alive?”

Before anyone spoke, the huge plasma screens lit up and began dropping slowly on their hydraulic slides. The music came up seconds later, blaring at a painfully loud volume, making it hard to hear. And then the voice-over began. A calm, soothing voice, played so loud it blocked out the music and distorted the speakers.

“Welcome to the city of the future.”

In the center of this madness the men with guns looked suddenly nervous. The ones on the perimeter stepped back a few paces, their hands tightening on their weapons.

“You have come here to see your future.”

The flickering of the screens was disorienting in the darkness.

“What the hell is this?” one of the thugs asked.

Their leader remained calm.

He grabbed one of the hotel staff and shoved the pistol in the man’s face. “Where’s the control room?”

The man pointed to the east hall.

The east hall again.

Ponytail shoved him back to the floor, waved two of his people over, and stormed off the dance floor, heading for the darkened recess of the east hall.

Hawker held Sonia’s hand as the two of them slipped out the back door of the control room and entered the west hallway. The setup was simple: a big horseshoe with the ballroom in the middle, the east hallway coming out of one edge and the west hallway on the other side.

With the sound system raging and the plasma screens bathing the main room in an ever-changing flicker of light, it would be hard to notice two people sneaking around. Though that cut both ways.

Hawker stared down the hall. “All we need is a little fog and we could make a rock video,” he mumbled.

As the light brightened he caught sight of something more useful: a janitors’ closet. He pulled Sonia toward it and opened the door. Buckets and mops, tarps, and all kinds of supplies filled the small space. Perfect.

“Get in the back,” he said, pushing her inside. “Lie on the floor behind all that crap and make it look like this room is empty in case they look for you. Whatever happens, wait here. Don’t make a sound, no matter what. Just like in Africa. Understand?”

She nodded tearfully.

“Relax,” he said, smiling. “I’ll be right back.”

He shut the door, wondering if he would indeed be back. First he needed a weapon.

As Ponytail and his two men moved down the east hall, the cacophony of sound and voice diminished slightly but the flickering screens lit them up like a strobe. It gave him a sense of danger he’d not expected to feel.

“Go slow, boys,” he said, ghosting the left wall with his gun raised.

The others did likewise, but no one challenged them and they reached the AV room unhindered. One of them pushed on the door.

“Locked.”

Ponytail fired away at the handle until the doorjamb and the handle were blasted to splinters. One of his men kicked it in and the door swung open to darkness.

Stepping inside they saw nothing.

A rear door beckoned. He waved his men on.

“Find her!”

As the men went out the door, Ponytail looked around the room, checking the nooks and crannies. “Sonia!” he called.

No response and he found no one hiding. He stepped to the audiovisual controls, raised his rifle, and unloaded on it, shredding the entire panel.

“You’re going to piss me off, young lady,” he mumbled to himself.

When the echo of his shots died, the eighty-first floor went silent once again. Ponytail checked his watch. They were running out of time.

Hawker inched his way down the hall, hands up in case anyone saw him. The chaos seemed to be keeping everyone interested, at least until the sound of rifle fire overrode it and the speakers and plasma screens went dead.

So much for plan A.

He stared through the suddenly complete darkness for something, anything.

He found what he was looking for under a glowing sign: the fire alarm.

He elbowed the glass and yanked the handle down.

A piercing wail went out across the floor. A long blast, followed by four short blasts and accompanied by flashing strobes and emergency lights.

As the alarm shrieked, a figure appeared down the end of the hall. Hawker dove just as the man opened fire.

Booming gunfire and the sharp sound of ricochets mixed with the piercing tone of the alarm and the flashing lights.

Seconds later another man fired. But this time from the rear of the hall. In the madness and the dark, the gunmen were shooting at one another.

The man near the ballroom went down.

Hawker glanced back and then took off running. He launched himself toward the injured thug, hammering him with a forearm as he landed. More gunfire snapped; bullets tore holes in the walls and skipped off the marble floor. Hawker wrested the thug’s gun loose and fired back down the hall, lighting up the guy at the far end.

With confusion now reigning and gunfire all over the building, some of the hostages had panicked. Without waiting, they made a break for the stairwells; others remained where they were. One of the terrorists opened fire on the crowd and Hawker saw a couple of people fall.

He aimed and pulled the trigger, dropping the man. But another one found Hawker and fired back.

Hawker dove away, hearing the bullets whiz by. All hell had broken loose and the remaining terrorists were fleeing, running toward the east hall and firing back into the crowd as they did.

Hawker knew they were heading for the stairwell and back to the helicopter on which they’d come. He let them go and raced back around the corner into the west hall, fighting his way through a crowd.

He reached the janitors’ closet where he’d hidden Sonia and pulled the door open.

“Sonia, it’s me,” he said.

Silence.

“Sonia?”

He stepped inside, but she was gone.