The Four Corners of the Earth

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Another flight, another struggle on the horizon. Drake settled into the comfortable seat and listened as Lauren voiced DC’s judgments and findings on the case of Attila the Hun. The team sat around in varying poses, taking in what they could and trying to shrug off the hurt after the newly named ‘Olga incident.’

“Attila’s grave lost to history,” Lauren recapped. “Never found, although there have been a few bogus discoveries. Now—” she paused, listening “—have you heard of a gravitational anomaly?”

Dahl looked over. “There is more than one meaning to that term.”

“Well, this is our meaning. Quite recently, scientists discovered a huge and mysterious anomaly buried beneath the polar icecap. Did you know that? It has vast dimensions—151 miles across and a depth of almost a thousand meters. Spotted by NASA satellites it presented a gravitational anomaly because changes in its vicinity indicated the presence of an enormous object sitting in a crater. Now, discounting the wild theories, this object represents a gravitational anomaly. It doesn’t sit right, doesn’t move like all else around it, and can thus be detected by high-powered radar.”

“You’re talking GPR,” Dahl said. “My old specialty.”

Drake made his eyes widen. “Are you sure? I thought that was male stripping at hen parties. The Dancing Viking, they called you.”

Dahl gave him weary. “Cut it out.”

Alicia leaned over. “He seems grumpy,” she stage-whispered.

“Rebounding off an unsuspecting old lady will do that to you.”

Amazingly, Smyth had tears in his eyes. “I gotta say,” he choked, “I’ve never seen anyone bounce off someone so hard without a trampoline involved.” He hid his face, trying to compose himself.

Kinimaka patted his shoulder. “You okay, brah? I never seen you laugh before, man. It’s weird.”

Lauren cut in, saving the Swede from more ribbing. “GPR, but on an intense scale. I mean, Google Maps have the strange Antarctica object. You can see it from your laptop. But to find something as small as Attila’s tomb? Well, that involves using machines and software that NASA haven’t even admitted to owning yet.”

“They use a satellite?” Yorgi asked.

“Oh yeah, all the cool nations have it.”

“Including China, Britain and France.” Drake pointed out their list of rivals.

“Of course. From space the Chinese could identify a man sitting in his car, check the Internet sites he’s browsing through, and categorize the contents of the sandwich he’s eating. Any man. Almost anywhere.”

“Just men?” Kenzie asked. “Or women too?”

Lauren grinned and whispered, “I have a man in my ear, relaying this. Sounds a tad young, like he hasn’t discovered women yet.”

Drake listened as the chopper split the skies between America and Europe, the third and fourth corners of the earth.

“Right, well, anyway…” Lauren winked. “Piecing together the obscure geography of Piscarus, it is said in one text that Attila’s famous palace was seated between the Danube and the Tisza, in the Carpathian Hills, on the plains of upper Hungary and neighboring Jazberin. In a far more obscure passage it states that Attila’s grave was across from his palace.”

“But buried beneath a river,” Mai stated.

“Yes, the Tisza traverses Hungary from north to south, a huge tributary of the Danube itself. The path of the river will help our scientists. Hopefully, their investigations with geophysical technique will combine satellite, magnetics, MAG and GPR. Magnetic surveys are supplemented by GPR profiles across selected anomalies. They also say they can see if and when a river was ever diverted.” She shrugged. “We’re talking thousands and thousands of images for a computer to crunch, then make a determination.”

“All right, all right, so we’re heading for Hungary.” Alicia faked a headache. “Just say that.”

The team settled back, wondering how their aggressive counterparts were doing.

Hungary, the Danube and the Tisza looked just as black as the rest of Europe at night, but Drake knew right now it was far more volatile. The most powerful of the Four Horsemen lay down there — Death — and those that found it might well shape the future of the world.

The team landed, took off again, landed once more and then jumped in a huge, non-reflective van to complete the last leg of their journey. The number crunchers hadn’t concluded anything yet, the areas were still large and the target small, not to mention old and potentially degraded. It would have been nice to find the Order’s own workings out, but their sudden killings all those decades ago put paid to any backtracking.

They set up a camp on the plains, put a guard around the outside, and settled in. The winds were high, ruffling the tents; the surreal reality of all they had done during the last few days still trying to sink in.

Are we really here now, camping halfway up the side of a Hungarian hill? Drake wondered. Or are we still being pummeled by Olga?

The blooming tent canvas spoke the truth, and so did the wriggling shape at his side. Alicia, wrapped in her sleeping bag so that only her eyes peered out.

“Cold, love?”

“Yeah, get in here and warm me up.”

“Please,” Dahl said, from somewhere south of Drake’s feet, “not tonight.”

“Agreed,” Kenzie stated from the east. “Tell the bitch you have a headache or something. Who knows where she’s been? Number of diseases etcetera, etcetera.”

“A foursome’s out of the question then?”

“It is,” Mai added from near the tent opening. “Especially since there are five us.”

“Nuts, I forgot you were here, Sprite. I still can’t believe they stuck us all in one bloody tent.”

“I for one fancy sleeping out on the plains,” Dahl said, rising. “Then, perhaps I’ll sleep.”

Drake watched the Swede head out, assuming he’d take the chance to call Johanna. Their relationship remained up in the air, but the day would come, and soon, when somebody made an unalterable decision.

The day dawned, and the DC boffins came up with half a dozen sites. The team separated and started to dig, putting the great scenery out of the minds and hearts: the flashing blue snake of the Tisza, wide and then oddly narrow in places, the grassy rolling Carpathian hills, the endless clear skies. The cool breeze, blowing across the wide spaces, was welcome, easing weariness and soothing bruises. Drake and the others constantly wondered where their enemies were. The British, the Chinese and the French. Where? Over the closest hill? Nobody ever saw the faintest hint of surveillance. It was as if the other teams had given up.

“Not your most conventional relic hunt,” Drake said once. “I hardly know where I’m at next.”

“Agreed,” Dahl said. “One moment we’re all at loggerheads and the next it’s plain sailing. Still, it could be worse.”

The first day passed quickly, then a second. They found nothing. The rain came and then the blinding sun. The team took turns resting and then let some hired hands take over for a while. Men and women that spoke no English were appointed from a nearby village. Once, Alicia found a void in the earth, an old tunnel perhaps, but the elation was quickly quashed when her scrabbling came to a dead end.

“Useless,” she said. “We could be a meter away and still not find it.”

“How do you think it’s stayed undetected all these years?”

Dahl continued to scratch his head, sure there was something they were missing. “It’s right on the tip of my tongue,” he repeated more than once.

Drake couldn’t help it. “You mean Olga, don’t you? It was a very brief experience, mate.”

Dahl growled, still perusing.

Another night and another few hours in the tent. The most intense of these nights was when Drake brought the conversation around to Webb’s statement, his legacy and his secret stash of information.

“We have to concentrate on that next. The secrets he gathered could be destructive. Overwhelming.”

“For who?” Dahl said. “The ones directed at us weren’t so bad.”

“Except for the one we don’t know yet,” Mai said.

“Shit, really? I forgot. Which one is that?”

The Japanese woman lowered her voice and spoke softly. “One of you is dying.”

Silence reigned for a long, distressing moment.

Alicia broke it. “Gotta agree with Drake. It’s not just us. Webb was a specialist stalker and mega-rich asshole. He must have had dirt on everybody.”

A false alarm sent them scrambling out of the tent, into the soil and mud and down among the rubble and grit of an ancient burial site. To their deep annoyance, it turned out not to belong to Attila. At least, not as far as they could tell.

Later, in the tent, they returned to their thoughts.

“So much to confront,” Hayden said. “Perhaps this search for Webb’s stash, and what we subsequently discover, might protect us from what may be coming.”

“Joshua’s death in Peru? Our insubordination? Questionable judgment and indefinable leash? We have to answer to someone. One tarnishing you can get away with. But three? Four? Our accounts are in the red, people, and I don’t mean overdrawn.”

“Hence SEAL Team 7?” Dahl asked.

“Maybe,” Hayden muttered. “Who knows? But if they come at us with prejudice, by God I will strike back with comparative force. And so will all of you. That’s an order.”

Another day dawned and the hunt continued. Rainfall hampered their efforts. The DC think tank came back with seven more sites, making a total of twenty three. Most had yielded nothing but voids or old foundations, buildings long gone, skeletons that were in tatters. The majority of another day passed, and the morale of the SPEAR team went into decline.

“Are we even in the right place?” Kenzie asked. “I mean Hungary. Across from Attila’s palace. How long ago was the man born? Sixteen hundred years ago, right? That’s, what? Fourteen hundred years before Geronimo. Maybe Attila’s the wrong ‘scourge’. I assume the Catholic Church have labelled many.”

“We’re detecting a great variety of anomalies,” Kinimaka said. “Just so many, and none of them correct.”

Dahl stared at him. “We need a way to narrow it down.”

Lauren, always connected to the think tank, looked across. “Yeah, they say. Yeah.”

The winds blew softly through the Swede’s hair, but his face remained impassive. “I got nothing.”

“Maybe another look at Attila?” Mai suggested. “Something in his history?”

Lauren told the DC gang to get on it. The team rested, slept, looked out for trouble and found none, and attended two more false alarms.

At last, Drake rounded the team up. “I think we’re gonna have to call this one a failure, people. The Order say they found it, maybe¸ but if we can’t then the other countries can’t. Perhaps the fourth Horseman is best left where he was buried. If he’s even still there.”

“It is possible the grave was ransacked—” Hayden spread her arms “—soon after interment. But then surely the relics would have shown up. Clothing. The sword. Gems. Other bodies.”

“Hard to leave a weapon so potent out there,” Kenzie said with a faraway look on her face. “I know my government would not. They would never stop searching.”

Drake nodded in agreement. “True, but we surely have other crises on the boil. We can’t stay here forever.”

“Same thing they said in Peru,” Smyth said.

Drake nodded at Lauren. “Do they have anything for us?”

“Not yet, except for eight more potential sites. Readings all the same. Nothing firm.”

“But couldn’t that be just what we’re looking for?” Dahl said ever so softly.

Hayden sighed. “I think I may have to call this one, and contact the Secretary. We’re better—”

“Be careful,” Alicia warned. “That may be the signal the SEALs are waiting for.”

Hayden clammed up, eyes now unsure.

Dahl finally caught their attention. “Ground Penetrating Radar,” he said. “Searches for anomalies, gravitational or magnetic or whatever. It finds an awful lot, naturally, since this is a very old planet. But we can narrow it down. We can. Oh hell, how could we be such fools?”

Drake shared a worried frown with Alicia. “You okay, pal? Not still feeling the after effects of that Olga you tried to take, are you?”

“I’m fine. I’m perfect, as always. Listen — remember those bozos that found the tombs of the gods?”

Now Drake’s face grew serious. “That was us, Torsten. Well, most of us.”

“I know that. We found the bones of Odin, and Thor, Zeus and Loki.” He paused. “Aphrodite, Mars and more. Well, what were their weapons and armor made out of? Some of their gems?”

“An unknown substance that later helped us on another mission,” Drake said.

“Yeah.” Dahl couldn’t stop grinning. “And whose sword was buried with Attila?”

Lauren jumped on it. “Mars!” she cried. “The Roman god of war gave Attila his sword through the Scythians. It was called the Holy War Sword. But if it did originate from Mars’ own hand…”

“You can recalibrate the GPR to look for just that element,” Dahl said. “And that incredibly rare element only.”

“And boom!” Drake nodded at him. “Just like that. The Mad Swede returns.”

Alicia still looked pained. “You couldn’t have thought of that friggin’ days ago?”