The Nemesis Origin

XXII

Aaron Devlin ducked his head to look out of the Bombadier Challenger 300’s oval windows as the aircraft taxied in towards the airport terminals, and fought off waves of exhaustion that washed over him. All was blackness outside, twinkling lights marking the terminals and taxiways and the city beyond. Behind distant mountains the first pale tint of dawn was touching the horizon, and despite sleeping for much of the journey Aaron felt lethargic as he heard the engines whine down and he unbuckled himself from his seat.

A cabin attendant unlocked the aircraft’s boarding doors, the door folding down to present a series of steps that led up into the aircraft. Aaron had not even got out of his seat when two men boarded the aircraft and walked towards him.

‘Well?’ Aaron demanded.

Both men were dressed in combat fatigues and bore the insignia of the CIA’s paramilitary Specialist Tactics Squadron. The senior of the two, Lieutenant Greg Veer, a shaven-headed veteran of the US Military, handed Aaron a slim folder of transparent plastic within which was contained a map.

Aaron took the map and looked at it. Two lines were drawn from two separate locations, one in the South China Sea and the other in Cambodia. They intersected at a location on South America’s western coast.

‘Lucy Morgan?’

‘The target invaded capture,’ Lieutenant Veer replied.

‘What of the man with her, Ethan Warner?’

‘Also in the wind, and there was somebody else there too. A woman whom we have not yet identified.’

Aaron looked at the map, evidently recovered from Lucy Morgan by the STS team. The soldiers had intercepted Morgan in Cambodia, north of Angkor Wat, and that explained the line drawn from that location towards South America. The other line, drawn from Yonaguni Island, was clearly related to the work done in Cambodia. The problem was that Aaron had no idea what the lines represented: it could be some kind of directions, but he had no intention of flying halfway across the globe without being sure that there was something waiting for him at his destination.

‘You had eight men, you were chasing two unarmed civilians, and yet they evaded capture and are still at large?’

‘Like I said, they had help,’ Veer growled. ‘The third unidentified woman was armed, not to mention the fact that she had allied herself to large number of armed villagers. We lost two men during the firefight, with a third injured.’

‘And then you lost a helicopter and the three crew aboard,’ Aaron noted as he recalled the report he had read on the flight out.

‘We did not witness the loss of the helicopter,’ Veer snapped, clearly irritated at Aaron’s accusation. ‘But yes, the individuals escaped and we have no idea where they have gone. Judging by the map, it would appear that South America is the next target.’

Aaron glanced at the map for a moment and then tossed it onto the seat he had occupied for the past twelve hours.

‘We cannot be sure of that. What were they doing when you found them?’

‘They had climbed up some kind of temple in the jungle,’ Veer replied without interest. ‘We don’t know what they were doing up there, but we do know that the unidentified woman intercepted them and took the map. I then took the map from her, but it may be that Lucy Morgan had further information on her person that we did not recover.’

‘A temple,’ Aaron murmured thoughtfully. ‘Send the team back out to the temple and scour every inch of it. I want to know what Lucy Morgan knows, then we can figure out what she intends to do next.’

‘What about South America?’ Veer asked. ‘If they are headed there then they have a good head start. I recommend we prepare a team to be on standby in case they show up somewhere out there.’

Aaron nodded. ‘Do it.’

The two soldiers turned away and marched from the jet as Aaron turned and picked up another folder, one that he had been reading on the long journey across the Pacific. He opened the file and flicked to a series of photographs taken several years ago by the DIA. One of them was of a Latino woman, long dark hair and exotic eyes staring out with a barely concealed contempt for the camera.

‘Nicola Lopez,’ Aaron murmured. ‘What are you up to?’

Aaron reached for his cell phone and held it in his hand for a moment as he turned the pages of the file and observed a series of images taken at Yonaguni airport. Shot through a long-range lens, the images showed an elderly man exiting a private jet and boarding a glossy black limousine before being whisked away toward the airport exits. The details identified the man as Yuri Polkov, a Russian black-market dealer who had made his money stealing antiquities and fossils for sale on the black market to collectors and, in some cases, less scrupulous museums.

Aaron knew that Polkov was considered to be a violent criminal. He had built an impressive fortune through acquiring and selling stolen artefacts and then had that fortune laundered through various legitimate businesses located around the globe, many of them involved in the legitimate trade of fossils and rare antiquities. The Russian was known to the FBI, but nobody had ever made any attempt to arrest him simply because his crimes were committed in countries that had no direct relationship with the United States. The US government knew that the antiquities that Polkov acquired were not his by right and that fact alone effectively made him a modern day grave robber, but with many of the items he and others acquired ending up in American museums, nobody had felt it worthwhile pursuing such a powerful man.

Now, Aaron had that reason. He dialled a number and waited for the line to connect, determined to get ahead of Lucy Morgan and secure the artefacts she sought before she ever laid eyes on them.

‘It’s not my fault!’

Arnie was enshrouded in a deep cloud of irritability as he sat at the controls of the Catalina, his wife alongside him as the aircraft descended toward the vast, deep blue waters of the Mediterranean. The engines clattered outside as the aircraft bobbed up and down on the rapidly warming thermals rising up from the ocean below.

‘They have resources,’ Ethan replied, ‘and they can track flight plans. As soon as they figure out where we’ve gone they’ll be on to us.’

‘And if we hadn’t filed a flight plan we would have been shot down by the Egyptian Air Force, not to mention the military of various other countries we’ve had to fly over,’ Arnie snapped back. ‘I don’t give a damn if you’re being followed or not, my main concern is not being arrested or getting into an argument with a heat-seeking missile!’

Ethan scowled as the Catalina bounced violently on a gust of wind and he thumped his head on the cockpit ceiling. He turned and walked out of the cockpit down into the Catalina’s fuselage, grabbing hand holds wherever he could to steady himself, and saw Lucy packing her gear while studying the images she had taken in Cambodia.

‘Okay, you want to tell me why the hell we’re heading for Cairo?’

‘Because I think I may know the answer to what these images mean,’ Lucy replied as she fastened her rucksack and threw it onto her shoulders.

‘They’re directions,’ Ethan replied. ‘I thought we had that sorted?’

‘They are,’ she agreed, ‘but they’re also…’

Lucy hesitated and looked to one side. On the other side of the aircraft, her boots propped up on the seat in front of her and her hands behind her head, sat Lopez. She regarded them with interest.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she purred.

‘I don’t like her tagging along for the ride,’ Lucy said to Ethan with obvious distaste.

‘We wouldn’t have got out of Cambodia without Lopez,’ Ethan replied. ‘We owed her at least a ride out of the country.’

Lucy looked back and forth between them. ‘Does trouble always follow you two around like this?’

‘Pretty much,’ Ethan and Lopez replied in perfect chorus.

‘Those soldiers, they were American,’ Lucy reminded him. ‘That means that the people who have been shooting at us are not Russians.’

‘That means that the people shooting at us are not just Russians,’ Lopez corrected her. ‘It seems that whatever you’re pursuing is on the shopping list of a lot of dangerous dudes.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me, but the fact that we don’t even know if it exists makes me wonder why on earth so many people are in on the chase?’

Ethan and Lopez exchanged a glance before he finally spoke. ‘The remains that you found in Israel all those years ago were confiscated by the Defense Intelligence Agency, who have probably been studying them ever since. Lopez and I know that there are small units within the government’s intelligence agencies that operate autonomously and who may well be able to send troops after us in an attempt to confiscate whatever information we are carrying at any one time. They are also be unaccountable to Congress, as they were operating in Cambodia without the knowledge of that country’s government.’

‘So we’re not just being chased by Russians, but by our own country.’

‘Pretty much,’ Lopez agreed.

Ethan heard the Catalina’s flaps wind down, the aircraft experiencing increased turbulence as it descended towards the shallow seas off the coast of Egypt. Ethan knew full well that as soon as they landed and passed through customs at Cairo International Airport they would be flagged up by the DIA, and anybody else who had an interest in them would know exactly where they were.

‘Arnie isn’t going to like it,’ Ethan said, ‘but we’re getting off before customs.’

‘Just like that?’ Lucy raised an eyebrow. ‘Egypt borders Israel, so they’re pretty good on ensuring that people don’t get into the country through anything but the proper channels.’

‘Believe me,’ Ethan replied, ‘I know the territory.’

Ethan made his way to the side of the aircraft and looked out of the bulbous viewing port to see the broad blue Mediterranean drifting by beneath them. Arnie was bringing the aircraft in over the water, the distant hustle and bustle of Cairo just visible shimmering with a metallic glitter in the haze far to the south.

Ethan figured that the Catalina probably landed at somewhere around seventy knots. At this distance from Cairo they would be well inside air traffic control radar range, but not yet close enough for Arnie to be talking to approach. In addition, radar was an unusual beast and not as absolute in its performance as many people believed. Heat inversions frequently caused aircraft traces to disappear before reappearing moments later, and Ethan knew that as long as Arnie was maintaining radio contact with local air traffic then if he disappeared from their radars they would not alert the rescue services to a possible downed aircraft provided the aircraft reappeared on their scopes before too long and radio contact was maintained.

‘Get ready to get wet again,’ Ethan said to Lucy.

Lucy looked out of the window in exasperation. ‘You’re not serious?’

Ethan hurried up to the cockpit where Arnie and his wife were preparing the aircraft for landing. ‘You can drop us off here at Lake Bardawil, we’ll find our own way into the city.’

Arnie looked over his shoulder at Ethan as though he’d gone insane. ‘Er, we haven’t landed yet.’

‘Yeah, about that. Do you think you could just drop down for a bit and touch down as slowly as possible. We’ll be gone before you know it.’

‘You’re going to jump?’

‘Get her under twenty knots once we’re down,’ Ethan instructed. ‘As soon as we’re all off, power up and take off again. You’ll only be off their scopes from maybe a minute or so.’

Arnie stared at Ethan incredulously and then looked at his wife.

‘You said you couldn’t wait to be rid of him,’ Yin pointed out.

Ethan grinned. ‘Now’s your chance. Your transponder is set to altitude,’ he said as he observed the cockpit instruments, ‘but this far out and in the early morning, chances are they won’t spot the descent if it’s quick.’

‘This is the last time Warner,’ Arnie grumbled. ‘If I ever see your sorry ass aboard my plane ever again I’ll shoot you myself!’

‘Always a pleasure,’ Ethan replied, ‘twenty knots, remember?’

Arnie scowled and turned concentrate on his instruments. Ethan hurried back down through the aircraft and gestured with a thumb over his shoulder towards the cockpit. ‘The Catalina has a hatch on the cockpit canopy that we can climb out of. We can’t use the main hatch in case the fuselage floods, so we’ll have to jump.’

‘I take it you know that there are great white sharks in the Mediterranean,’ Lucy pointed out.

‘Arnie’s going to take us in close to the shore. We’ll easily be able to swim to the beach and shouldn’t be exposed for too long.’

‘That’s not the kind of reassurance I was hoping for!’ Lucy shot back. ‘How about: maybe this is a really bad idea and we’ll just land on a runway like normal people?’

Ethan smiled as he glanced at Lopez. ‘Sorry, we’re not normal people.’

The Catalina was descending and Ethan could see the ocean rushing up towards them, a thin beach just a few hundred yards away across the water. Ahead, Ethan could see a spit of land that jutted out a fair way into the water and encircled Lake Bardawil.

‘Come on, let’s go.’

Ethan led the way to the cockpit and reached up as he saw Arnie and Yin gently lowering the Catalina towards the water. Ethan reached up and popped the catches on the canopy hatch before pushing it up and over. A rush of warm air touched with sea salt and the unmistakable scent of the African coast wafted into the cockpit just as the aircraft thumped down onto the water. Ethan held on carefully as Arnie guided the aircraft in a straight line as the friction of the water bought its airspeed down.

‘Welcome to Africa and thank you for flying Air Arnie,’ Arnie called over his shoulder. ‘Now get out before I throw you out myself!’

Ethan pulled himself up and out of the hatch, the roar of the two piston engines deafening as he manoeuvred himself carefully to one side of the fuselage and then jumped into the water now flowing sedately past the hull. The Catalina passed him by, her wake bobbing Ethan up and down the water as he saw Lucy jump into the waves, closely followed by Lopez.

The Catalina continued on its way for several seconds, and then Ethan saw Arnie poke his head out of the hatch and with one hand direct an obscene gesture in Ethan’s direction before the hatch slammed shut. Moments later, the Catalina’s engines roared as she thundered away across the waves and took to the air once more.

The clattering engines died away into the distance as the Catalina turned towards the city and Ethan was left in silence on the bobbing waves. Lucy and Lopez swam to join him, Lucy looking increasingly distraught.

‘If I’d known this was how you did business, I would never have come to you for help,’ she uttered.

‘You’re welcome,’ Ethan replied. ‘We’re now in your hands. Wherever it was you intended to go, you have the lead.’

Lucy rolled her eyes and kicked off towards the narrow spit of land encircling the bay.