The Oracle Code

39

Lourds sat quiet and tense in his seat as the SUV sped through the crowded streets. The driver applied his horn liberally, causing slower traffic to pull over. Occasionally, when there was room enough and no one was in the oncoming lane, he wound through traffic, following the lead of the other two vehicles.

Calmly, as if carved from stone, Captain Fitrat sat in the other seat. He watched the traffic intensely. “Keep your eyes on the side streets as well. Look at the intersections. See if you notice any speeding cars matching our direction. We are moving very fast. They will have to reveal themselves if they are there. They cannot hide.”

“I suppose you do this kind of thing all the time.”

Fitrat ran his hands over his rifle without looking. He had already changed the partially spent magazine for a fresh one. “Many times.”

“No wonder you enjoy cooking.”

“Cooking is relaxing. This…not so much.” He turned briefly and looked at Lourds. “But it is exciting.”

“I’m not sure that’s the word I would use, Captain.”

Fitrat grinned. “I think it is, Professor. After all, you could end this at any time. Simply leave the scrolls and walk away, and your part in this would be over.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Exactly, Professor.”

“Whoever did this killed my friend. I can’t just walk away.” Lourds looked at Fitrat and nodded at the assault rifle in his lap. “You have your tools. I have mine. When I decipher this final scroll, everything these people have been working for — whatever it is — will be beyond their reach.”

“Good.” Fitrat nodded approvingly. “I am glad Layla chose you to be her friend. She needs a strong man in her life. With all the work she does, I did not ever think she would allow herself the distraction of someone in her life.”

“I’m very fortunate.”

“I have learned that is a very good thing to remember when you’re dealing with any woman.”

Linko sped through the city with both hands on the wheel. An Uzi machine pistol rested between his thighs. He stared hard at the streets, picking his openings carefully then blazing through. Bicyclists didn’t count. Those he didn’t avoid. He went straight at them, giving the hapless riders the choice of getting out of the way or getting run over. Most chose to move, but Linko had left a lot of ruined bicycles, and more than a few dead and dying people, in his wake.

Achmed spoke in Linko’s ear over the headset. “I can see our target.”

“Where is he?”

“Over on the next street.”

Linko pinned the accelerator to the floor and sped through the next intersection, momentarily crossing bumpers with a delivery van, then dodging past a car just emerging from an alley.

Once on the next street, he reached for the tablet PC on the passenger seat. All of the pursuit vehicles he’d hired were equipped with trackers. The GPS software kept him up to date on where everyone was.

Achmed’s car was designated 3. It was currently three blocks ahead of him. The SUVs were staying on a straight course.

Linko looked up just in time to drive up onto the sidewalk, avoiding a collision with a car that was stopped ahead of him with mechanical problems. With a curse, he yanked the wheel hard left. The sedan skidded for a moment, then he muscled his way back onto the street by shoving over another decrepit sedan that promptly went out of control and plowed into a storefront.

“I am almost there. Everyone converge on Achmed. We will get ahead of the convoy and cut them off. We need to take out the lead vehicle.” Most of the mercenaries working with him already knew that. Their experience was why he had hired them in the first place.

He flew through the next intersection and spotted Achmed’s sedan ahead of him. At the same time, though, he spotted the first of the Afghan National Army attack helicopters swooping in from the west, from out of the afternoon sun. Two others followed.

“Achmed.” Linko stepped on the brakes, knowing the pilots would be looking for vehicles driving much too fast for the circumstances, because that’s what he would have ordered. He and his men had just gone from pursuers to the pursued.

Before Achmed could respond, the lead helicopter opened fire with a heavy-caliber machine gun. The bullets punched through metal and glass, causing Achmed’s sedan to shiver and shake under the impacts, and Linko knew every man in the vehicle was dead.

Freed from the hand of the driver, the car careened out of control, hit the corner of a building, then flipped several times before ending upside down and spinning like a turtle in the middle of the street.

Cursing, Linko watched another helicopter coming straight for him. A line of bullets dug craters in the old street as they zipped toward his vehicle. Hand over hand, Linko pulled the steering wheel hard right. The tires flirted with losing traction but somehow held on enough to help him guide the car into the nearest alley. Bullets thumped into the rear of Linko’s vehicle, and he hoped the gas tank wouldn’t explode.

The helicopter blurred by overhead, but he knew it would be back for him. The men aboard it had his scent now, and they wouldn’t be satisfied till they had him.

He brought the car to a halt in the alley and discovered it was too narrow for him to open the door. He was lucky to have gotten inside such a tight fit.

Desperate, he grabbed the tablet PC from where it had fallen in the floorboard and stuffed it into the carryall he’d brought his weapons in. He picked up the Uzi and fired several rounds through the windshield, shattering it. Kicking out the glass, he scrambled outside onto the hood.

The helicopter rotor wash sounded almost overhead. Linko jumped from the car and ran toward the end of the alley. When the chopper floated into view, he was still ten meters from the corner. He lifted the Uzi and fired on the fly, trusting instinct and experience to at least aid his aim.

His good luck continued though. One or more of the bullets struck the door gunner, and he slumped in his safety harness. The helicopter pilot, concerned for his teammate, pulled up again.

By that time, Linko rounded the corner and found himself standing in front of a small shop. He ran inside, brandishing the machine pistol and making threats. The restaurant patrons flooded out onto the street.

In the back of the shop, heart still beating wildly, Linko replaced the empty Uzi magazine with another, then dropped the weapon into the carryall. He found the bathroom, took off his jacket, reversed it from black to gray, and turned on the tap water. He cupped water in his hand, then splashed it into his face and used it to slick his hair back. When he looked into the age-spotted mirror again, he no longer looked wild-eyed and frantic.

He dumped the earpiece and the cell phone he’d been using to communicate with Achmed and his cohorts into the trash, picked up his carryall, and headed back out of the shop.

Out on the street, he kept walking. Black smoke plumed up from two places a couple streets over, and Linko guessed that the rest of his team hadn’t fared well. The ANA helicopters hovered protectively over the area.

His personal cell phone buzzed for his attention. When he checked the viewscreen, he saw that the caller ID hadn’t identified the caller. He was certain he knew who it was.

“Hello.”

“Good afternoon, Colonel Linko.”

Linko had expected the Russian president to sound irritated, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if Nevsky knew about his latest failure regarding the apprehension of the American linguist.

“I have news for you, comrade. I know you have been tracking your target there.”

“Yes. I found him, but he got away.” Briefly, Linko detailed the attempted interception and the subsequent failure. “He is leaving, but I do not know where he is going.”

“The woman, Layla Teneen, has requested that tickets be held for your target and his protectors at the airport.”

“The airport has too much security. I will not be able to reach him there.”

“This I also know. I can also tell you that he is going to Athens.”

“Athens?”

“Yes, so I am to assume that he has managed to learn more from whatever he has taken from that tomb.”

An ANA military vehicle drove quickly by through the street. Linko only caught sight of it from the corner of his eye. “Then I will go there and ask him what he has discovered.”

“In time. But first, there is another mission I would ask of you.”

“Anything.”

“All that I have hoped for in the Ukraine has gone according to plan, but now we need to move again and strike quickly. Your mission to Athens can provide a two-fold strike.”

Linko kept walking and waited for his orders.

“Use the assets in Athens to find Lourds. I don’t think it will be too hard. He will be in visible places. Museums. Records halls. He is going there for access to documents that will help him in his search. So let him do that job for us. I want what it is he finds.”

“Do we know what that is?”

“Not yet, but soon. It will have something to do with Alexander the Great’s weapons.”

Old weapons? Linko couldn’t believe his talents were being wasted on such a thing. He had nearly gotten killed for museum pieces?

Perhaps Nevsky had gotten a sense of some of his thinking from his lack of response. “These weapons are not a simple matter, Colonel. They are more powerful than any nuclear weapon. Trust me on this.”

Linko shrugged, knowing Nevsky wouldn’t see it. Trust was irrelevant. It didn’t matter to Linko whether or not Nevsky knew what he was talking about. All that mattered was getting the job done.

“I have arranged a flight to Athens for you. Unfortunately, I was not able to secure the same flight as your target.”

“That is fine. I will be able to find him soon enough.”

“Give him some time to finish his task. I have another mission for you. We have made some inroads with an old ally in Greece. You have worked with 17N before?”

That surprised Linko. Revolutionary Organization 17 November, better known by the sobriquet 17N, was a leftist terrorist group that had spawned in Greece as a Marxist urban guerilla movement in 1975. The inciting incident that had sown the seeds for the group had been the 1973 Athens Polytechnic University student protest against the military regime under Georgios Papadopoulos, the leader of the Regime of Colonels, as it became known. Their primary goal was to get the Americans, especially the CIA and military bases, out of Greece. And they wanted to embrace the Marxist teachings that had drawn them together.

The very first target 17N had taken down had been a CIA station chief, the first ever to be killed in a terrorist attack. It was an impressive achievement.

At first, though, none of the American or Greek military officials had taken seriously 17N’s claims for the execution. They started paying attention shortly after that, though, when 17N killed Evangelos Maillios, the former intelligence chief of the Greek security police.

They were taken seriously after that.

For the past forty years, the terrorist group had remained active but had gone deep underground. Still, some splinter groups had remained in existence under the old name. Terrorists never completely disappeared.

With the economy as bad as it was now in that country, Linko knew that Greece was as ripe for “reunification” as the Ukraine.

“This will be a bold move.”

“I know, comrade, and that is why I am asking you to take this meeting with these people. I want you to be my liaison and to break ground between 17N and the other groups in that country that will be sympathetic to becoming part of this greater dream we are building.”

“I understand. What am I to tell them?”

“In the 1970s, the Russian government under Yuri Andropov funded 17N. Your contact there will be Nicolas Aigle, the current head of 17N. I want you to tell him that I stand ready, willing, and able to give him funding the like of which his organization has never before seen if he can pull the various troops together.”

“And if he is not amenable?”

Nevsky hesitated. “Then there is a younger man. Loukas Pappas. If need be, we will open negotiations with him.”

“I understand.”

“First the 17N, comrade. Then the professor. But do not lose sight of the professor.”

“It will be done.”

“Be safe, comrade. We are building a brand new world, and this must be done at a reasonable pace. But soon.”