Threshold

“You’re welcome,” Queen said.

The man stopped working at the sound of Queen’s voice. He turned around and with widening eyes looked Queen up and down. Dressed as a tourist in cargo shorts, green poncho, and blue bandanna, much of her finer qualities were disguised. But that didn’t seem to matter as the man beamed at her. When he saw Bishop and Knight all signs of pleasant surprise faded. Whether she was available or not he would never know. The two men with her were too intimidating to even risk asking the question.

“Tourists?” he asked.

“Of a sort,” Queen answered.

“Are you Jon Hudson?” Knight asked, reaching under his poncho.

Fear crept into Hudson’s eyes. “You’re not looters?”

Knight removed his hand from under his poncho. He held a photo of Richard Ridley. “Hardly,” he said. “We’re looking for a friend.”

Hudson took the offered photo and looked at it. He showed no reaction, so little reaction in fact, that it was clear he did recognize Ridley. “A lot of people come and go here. Tourists, interns, too many faces to remember. And I spend most of my days looking at faces carved into stone. Speaking of which, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I really do have a lot of work to do and thanks to the weather, no one brave enough to help out.”

Queen flashed a phony grin. “We’ll let you get back to it, then. If the weather improves, would it be possible to get another look at the site? A tour perhaps?”

“Of course, of course.” He turned and went back to work.

Queen stood there long enough for the moment to become uncomfortable. She turned and rolled her eyes at Bishop and Knight, who grinned in reply. All three left the hut, worked their way back out of the camp, and entered the jungle. Hidden from view, they climbed a short hill, lay down on top, and waited for the inevitable.

* * *

HUDSON CONTINUED BRUSHING away at the piece, its visage both beautiful and haunting, but his thoughts were not on work. They were on the three strangers looking for the man who had become his friend over the past few months, Marc Kaufman. He was also keenly aware that they had made the journey to El Mirador in the midst of one of the worst storms the rainy season had brought that year. He had no idea what Kaufman’s relationship to the three visitors was, but they oozed bad intentions.

I’m a good judge of character, Hudson thought, and those three are up to no good. I need to warn Kaufman.

After waiting long enough for the strangers to leave camp, he left his workspace and stood in the doorway. A loud static hiss, created by rain beating down on the black tarps, filled the air. But visibility was good and he couldn’t see anyone in camp or in the jungle surrounding the site. Crouching, he skulked through the camp. As his booted feet squished through mud, water rose up over them, soaking his feet.

He arrived at Kaufman’s tent and squatted by the entrance. “Kaufman,” he whispered. “Are you in there?”

After getting no reply, he whispered again. “Are you asleep, man? Wake up!”

Impatience got the better of him and he unzipped the tent. He flung open the blue flap and looked inside. Kaufman wasn’t there.

Hudson stood up, scratching his head. He turned to head back to the science hut and came face-to-face with Queen. With a shout, he fell back into Kaufman’s tent. As Queen, Bishop, and Knight crouched down around him, he moved deeper into the tent.

“Who’s Kaufman?” Bishop asked, his statement punctuated by a boom of thunder that shook the forest floor.

“I don’t—”

Queen cleared her throat. She had a handgun leveled at Hudson.

Hudson’s face twisted in fear. “The man in the photo. He’s a … a journalist. He’s doing a piece on El Mirador for National Geographic. What … what do you want with him?”

“Where does he spend his time?” Knight asked.

Hudson looked at him dumbly.

“Is there a specific location he’s shown interest in?”

Hudson thought for a moment. “He toured the whole site, but has spent most of his time at the biggest pyramid.”

“La Danta?” Queen asked.

“Yes. In fact, that’s probably where he is now.” He nodded. “I’m certain of it. Since discovering the entrance he’s been—”

“Where’s the entrance?” Queen asked forcefully.

“On top. A tree had put its roots down in it. A storm knocked it over a few days ago. You … you don’t need me to take you there … do you?”

“No, boss,” Queen said, tightening her grip on her weapon. “We don’t.” She pulled the trigger, firing a dart into his neck. Thanks to a powerful sedative, he lost consciousness immediately. After shoving his feet inside and zipping up the entrance, Queen stood and joined Bishop and Knight, who were looking at a map of the site.

“Which way, boys?”

“East,” Bishop said. “Mile and a half.”

Anyone who saw them running out of the camp, dressed in dark green ponchos, concealed by sheets of rain, and accompanied by earthshaking thunder might have mistaken them for one of Alexander’s Forgotten. As a result their exit from the camp went unhindered.

FORTY-SEVEN

Wiltshire, England

THE SHAKING SUBSIDED as quickly as it had begun, leaving King and Alexander on edge. It felt like a simple tremor, but they knew the source was much more likely to be Ridley.

Lauren flashed a nervous smile. “Now that doesn’t happen much round here.”

Eager to get a better view of Stonehenge, King headed for the tunnel, but was stopped by Lauren’s next words. “Now what do you suppose that is?”

King looked to where she was pointing. A black plume rose into the sky in the distance. It spread, dissipated, and was carried off by the wind. “What’s over there?”

Lauren glanced around and looked up at the sun, getting her bearings. The dark cloud had risen from the northeast. Her eyebrows arched. “Durrington Walls and Woodhenge.”

“I’ve never heard of them,” King said.

“Not surprising for a Scotsman.”

“Woodhenge is a circle of timber,” Alexander said. “Similar to Stonehenge, but built of wood, which rotted long ago. The postholes have recently been filled in with modern beams.”

Lauren looked at Alexander, impressed with his knowledge. “You’d be surprised how many of our kinsmen don’t even know that much about the site. Durrington Walls is only five hundred meters beyond Woodhenge, but is more significant because it not only held a wooden henge, but a village as well. Several homes have been uncovered. The sites might have been used for burials, with cremated bodies being carried from one site to the other before being discarded in the river. But that would’ve just been the peasants. Some think that religious leaders or cultural champions, like the designer of the circles, would have been buried beneath Stonehenge. It’s one of the reasons a planned highway tunnel project, which would have burrowed through the earth under the henge, was scrapped. Seems like no one will see what’s buried under there at this rate—archaeologists or contractors.”

The ground shook again.

They all looked northeast, expecting to see a second dark cloud rise up. But nothing happened. Still, King thought they were connected. Whatever was causing the ground to shake had begun at the Durrington Walls.

“How far is it?” he asked.

“Two miles straight shot from here to there, but a little more if you don’t have wings.” Her face brightened. “I can get you there in three minutes if you don’t mind getting your hair mussed.” She looked at King, his hair slightly askew as usual. “Which I can see won’t be a problem for you.”

She cheerfully walked to the bus, though her walk was now closer to a skip. She hopped in the big red double-decker, turned on the engine, and gunned the gas twice. A thick cloud of gray coughed from the muffler. She leaned out the window. “C’mon, mates. I have forty-five minutes before I have to take these Yanks to the next stop.”

Alexander motioned to the bus. “After you.”

They entered and took seats behind Lauren. Then they were off, speeding back onto the road. She glanced at them in the large rearview mirror. “It’s always boggled my mind why people are so much more interested in Stonehenge than the Durrington settlement. Granted, the stones are something to look at, but when it comes to history, the village is far more informative. What they ate, how they cooked, what they slept on, what weapons they had. It’s all boring details to some, but it reveals who lived there. Who knows, maybe Merlin’s magic wand is buried in that field’s dirt?”

King thought her statement might not be far from the truth, then held on tight as she made a hard left turn.

“What’s really interesting is that both sites were constructed at the same time as the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.”

“That is interesting,” King said.

“The sites are thousands of miles away from each other and somehow, around 2500 B.C., people simultaneously developed the technology to move giant stones over long distances? Bollocks, I say. And we still can’t figure out how they did it.”

Alexander pointed beyond her. “We’re here.”

Lauren hit the brakes hard, bringing them to a stop across the street from a green field, which was now scarred by a dark hole at its center.

They left the bus and entered the field. The hole opened up before them, thirty feet across, burrowing into the soil at a forty-five-degree angle. Darkness filled the void, but echoing from deep within was a constant droning rumble.

King took a step in and turned to Lauren. “Best if you notify the authorities. Get the Stonehenge parking lot cleared out.”

“What? Why?”

“Because this tunnel heads southeast and we’re not feeling the rumbling here like we did there. Whoever made this hole is beneath Stonehenge by now.”

Lauren’s eyes widened and then squinted. “Hey, what happened to your accent? You sound like a Yankee.”

Alexander entered the tunnel. “He is a Yankee.”

King took her by the shoulders and glared into her eyes. “Never mind who I am or where I’m from. You go do what you need to do to clear out that parking lot.”

“But I don’t understand. Why?”

“Because if you don’t it’s likely they’ll all die.”

A look of horror came over Lauren as she realized that King and Alexander knew a lot more about what was happening then they let on. She broke out in a run back to the bus, hoping that King and Alexander were crackpots, but somehow knowing they weren’t. And that terrified her. Because it meant there was something big, something evil, beneath Stonehenge that wanted to kill people.

And she was heading straight for it.

FORTY-EIGHT

Location Unknown

FIONA AWOKE, HER head throbbing. Though the dizziness that accompanied her last wake-up was missing, the pain she felt more than made up for the lack of disorientation. In fact, after a cursory glance around her new cell, she wished for some way to escape reality.

The cell was an eight-foot cube hollowed out of wet gray stone. There were no seams where floor met wall or wall met ceiling, though there were a few cracks. There was no entrance to speak of, only a four-foot-long, six-inch-tall horizontal slit that allowed fresh air and a small amount of light into the otherwise sealed space.

She lay on her back, the stone floor cold beneath her. They air itself was chilly, but bearable, even in her black pajamas, which were now covered in layers of dirt.

As she focused beyond the pulsing headache she became aware of the pain filling the rest of her body—stretched limbs and tight pressure. She looked down at her body and found her hands bound and tied to her feet. She’d been hog-tied and left.

As pain flooded her head again she lay back on the stone floor. Staring up at the vacant stone ceiling, she recalled the horrors she’d seen before being knocked unconscious. The walls came to life. With no place to go, the prisoners couldn’t hide. She saw some trampled underfoot, some crushed by stone fists, and others, like poor Elma, torn apart.

But for some reason, she’d been spared. One of the golems even moved to avoid her. Tears broke free and rolled down the sides of her face, dripping into her ears. The tickling of liquid striking earlobe annoyed her and turned her sadness to rage. She let out a scream, pulling on her bonds. Her scream ended quickly as a rush of pain struck. She was bound physically and emotionally.

Why, she thought. Why spare me? What made me different from all the people that were killed?

King.

I’m either bait, or insurance. A hostage.

Before losing consciousness she thought she had seen King in the cell’s entrance. He had come for her. He would again. And that was the only reason she still lived. Though she wasn’t sure how much longer she would remain alive.

The headache meant she either had a serious injury she couldn’t yet inspect or was seriously dehydrated. Or both.

She tensed again in frustration, this time just pulling with her arms. Her hands came up almost all the way to her face, pulling her bound feet with them. She could clearly see the old rope that had been used to bind her. It was thin and flexible, but frayed. Pushing with her hands and pulling with her legs, she rocked herself forward into a sitting position, legs open, hands bound to feet.

She groaned as the blood draining from her head caused a new throb of pain. With eyes squeezed shut, she rode out the pain. With each beat of her heart, the headache dissipated. When she could finally think straight she looked down at her bonds. Had she not been kidnapped twice, drugged, knocked unconscious, and left for dead, she might have smiled. Her bonds could have held an adult, but she was a thirteen-year-old girl. She lowered her knees nearly to the floor and leaned forward. With her face at her hands she began gnawing at the rope, putting her flexibility and sharp teeth to good work.

Desperate for freedom, she ignored the oily flavor of the rope, chewing it like a rat. She spat out some fibers, allowing herself to feel a measure of hope. Hope isn’t just something given, King told her once, when they spoke about why it was important for people the team helped to sometimes continue the fight after they’d left, it’s something you have to believe in. The words rang clear in her thoughts.

She would break free of her bonds.

And then what? She didn’t know. But she was hopeful. Not for her escape, but for her rescue. Her hope was in her father. He’d come for her once. He would come again.

Her hope was shattered by a grinding of rock. She looked up and saw the stone wall parting. A man stood on the other side, silhouetted by a light source behind him. He wasn’t looking at her, so she quickly laid down and closed her eyes, pretending to be unconscious. A prick in her arm popped her eyes back open, but only for a moment. As the drug took effect, her eyes closed again, this time against her will. She heard a man’s voice as consciousness faded.

“Time to go, child. Babel awaits.”

FORTY-NINE

El Mirador, Guatemala

THE BACK SIDE OF the la Danta pyramid looked like it could crumble apart and bury them in an avalanche. The latticework of wooden planks, platforms, and ladders rising up the massive slope looked wholly inadequate for containing the structure’s bulk. Queen, Bishop, and Knight stood at the base, looking up. Several thin, pale trees still clung to the pyramid, most likely left in place because the roots helped hold the wall together.

As they neared the temple, the three fell silent. Finding no footprints in the mud at the base of the pyramid, they circled around slowly, using the jungle for cover.

The continuing thunderstorm made hearing anything impossible, but the rising sun had brightened the cloud cover, improving visibility. As they reached the front of the pyramid and found no one present, they hid and observed the site.

The front side of the pyramid was much more impressive than the back. Its slate gray stone surface was covered in several levels of staircases that led all the way to the top. Trees covered much of the building, but the most impressive and well-preserved staircases were clear. Climbing to the top would be easy for all but the out-of-shape.

As Bishop looked at the top of the pyramid he imagined what the site would have looked like two thousand years previous. A high priest adorned with bright-colored feathers and paints. Slaves and animals lined up for sacrifice, ready to appease Chac, the god of rain. Given the raging storm overhead, it seemed Chac was in a very bad mood; perhaps from being denied a sacrifice for two thousand years, perhaps because his temple had been recently violated. Bishop didn’t really care. Chac would not help him catch Richard Ridley, no matter how many lives were sacrificed. If that were true, Ridley would have been caught long ago.

“No one’s here,” Bishop said.

“Let’s do it,” Queen said, drawing her hidden UMP submachine gun from beneath her poncho.

They moved as one, crossing the clearing between jungle and pyramid quickly. Scouring the steep grade for movement as they climbed, they ascended the ancient temple. They reached the summit without incident. Above the jungle, they could see the Guatemalan countryside in all its glory. Trees shifted in waves as great gusts of wind rolled past. Lightning split in fractals across the sky. It was an untamed landscape.

A green tarp, torn free by strong winds flapped madly from the tree it was still tied to. Beneath it was a rectangular opening. A stone staircase, covered in pools of water, descended into the pyramid.

After donning night vision goggles, Queen led the team inside. The tunnel, lit in shades of green, was unremarkable at first. The occasional spider was their only company. The staircase turned one hundred eighty degrees, like a mountain trail switchback. The walls on the next flight down bore huge relief murals carved into massive stones. Fluid scenes of human sacrifice, executioners, and angry gods covered the walls.

As the stairs continued deeper, the images became more violent, taking the viewer through a story line that involved ritual preparation, ceremony, bloodletting, and death. Several different acts of killing were displayed—decapitation, organ removal, burning.

As her nerves tensed Queen realized that those being led down this staircase would understand the images as the horrors they would soon endure. It must have been enough to paralyze them with fear. Queen, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction. Anger filled her veins, pumping adrenaline into her system and boosting her senses.

The staircase ended at a gently sloping, curved tunnel that Queen guessed lined up with the base of the pyramid. Everything from here on would take them underground.

As she took a step forward into the curved tunnel she felt the stone beneath her foot drop almost imperceptibly. She froze.

She held her hand up, stopping the others. She pointed at her foot and they understood at once.

A trap.

She listened for the telltale signs of a trap, shifting weights, grinding gears, but heard nothing. She chanced a whisper. “Maybe it’s too old? Rotted?”

A clunk overhead proved her wrong.

Queen looked up in time to see a shower of long, sharp darts fall from the ceiling, falling at her like a hundred miniature spears.

FIFTY

Wiltshire, England

THE SMALL FLASHLIGHTS they carried did little to light the deep craggy tunnel, but King and Alexander moved quickly despite the low light. If Richard Ridley was at the end of the tunnel, they wanted to catch him by surprise. If they didn’t it might mean battling one of his golems or oversized sandfish.

Or several.

Their best bet was to knock him unconscious and shut his mouth before he knew they were there. Not knowing what waited for them at the end of the tunnel made King apprehensive, but he fought against the feeling with the knowledge that he had beat Ridley before, and the man beside him had killed the legendary Hydra on his own—a creature that took the entire Chess Team and Alexander’s aid to defeat in the present day. Having his handgun at the ready eased his nerves, too. Upon seeing Ridley, who could not die, he didn’t need to sneak up and knock the man unconscious; shooting him in the head until his mouth was bound would work just as well and provide some catharsis.

The tunnel walls were rough at first, loose soil had been dug away and pushed out through the entrance. Stone had been crushed. It was a giant burrow. But just fifty feet in the scene changed. The tunnel became square and gray. Man-made. Old.

“Merlin was a busy man,” Alexander said.

“You buy that story?” King asked.

Alexander paused and gave King a lopsided smile that said: Remember who you’re talking to.

“Right,” King said. “If it’s possible Stonehenge was created by Merlin, what would he have buried beneath it?”

“Given Ridley’s interest, I would assume some form of ancient knowledge regarding the mother tongue. In what form, I can only guess.”

King didn’t like guessing, or the perpetual feeling of being two steps behind, which he felt in regard to Ridley and Alexander. He lacked a complete picture of both men’s motivations, and that disturbed him.

They paused at the change in tunnel structure.

King moved his light over the wall, which was made from lines of giant rectangular blue-tinged stones. “Its bluestone,” King said. “Same as many of the henge stones. You think this runs all the way to Stonehenge? Two miles?”

“It seems likely. Perhaps a symbolic journey to the underworld.”

“Or literal,” King said as he started moving forward.

“Let’s hope not,” Alexander replied, breaking out into a quick jog.

King wasn’t sure if Alexander’s reply was serious or an attempt at humor, but followed without a word. He wasn’t about to look like a fool by asking. The two ran in the near darkness, dimming their flashlights with their hands as much as possible to conceal their approach.

They ran blindly, unable to see or hear anything ahead. When King judged they’d run almost the entire two miles, he slowed. “Were almost under Stonehenge,” he whispered.

They walked a short distance more with their flashlights off and then stopped to listen. All was quiet. They continued forward in darkness, hands on the tunnel walls for balance and direction. Then the walls fell away on both sides.

After what felt like a lifetime of quiet breathing and listening, King flicked on his flashlight. He scanned it back and forth, handgun in hand, looking for a target. He found nothing to shoot. The circular space was devoid of living or animated targets, but it held plenty of fascinating finds. The floor was covered in two-foot-tall vertical stone poles that looked like the stumps of a petrified forest. They were arranged in a classic glyph pattern with some rings of pillars being larger than others. The room was constructed entirely of bluestone. A large sarcophagus sat at the middle of the room, encircled by rings of stone.

King and Alexander slowly made their way through the circles, panning their lights around the room. Closer to the sarcophagus, King could see that the lid had been slid away. It sat shattered on the floor on the far side. Their flashlights revealed a body within.

The body was wrapped in tight linens from head to toe. Gathered around it were gold objects and sealed vessels. Its face, partially exposed by time’s rot still held remnants of a white beard.

King shook his head. “It looks—”

“Egyptian,” Alexander finished.

“Is that possible?”

“Anything is possible. It’s likely this man fled Egypt with knowledge of the mother tongue. Seeking to start his own empire, he used golems to create this monument, just as the people he left behind in Eygpt were doing to create the pyramids.”

King looked closely at the man’s face, the bone structure and hair. “He doesn’t look Egyptian. Or Arabian for that matter.”

“That’s because he’s not.”

King looked at Alexander, who looked extremely unhappy.

“He’s Jewish.”

“You don’t think this is…”

“Moses? No. But possibly a member of the exodus. Someone close enough to Moses to pick up some of the mother tongue. And someone who would have heard about the pyramids, but never saw them.”

“Why’s that?” King asked.

“The original generation that fled into the desert is said to have all died out during their forty-year migration. Even Moses didn’t enter the Promised Land. He only saw it from a distance before dying. Whoever this man was, he knew about the great monuments constructed by the golems, but knew nothing of their architecture.” Alexander took the man’s hands, which were bent open, as though in prayer, and turned them inward. They moved with ease until one overlapped the other.

“And though I cannot tell you who this man was, I can tell you who he likely became.”

King came to the same conclusion before Alexander could voice it. “Merlin.”

“Which is a shame,” Alexander said. He saw King’s confusion and explained. “There will be no way to hide this discovery. Within hours, the site will be swarming with British authorities. Within months, everything that can be carted away will be. And the body of this man, buried in peace for thousands of years, will be carted off to a museum. He will be tested, dissected, and eventually put on display. Millions will flock to see the body of the great Merlin, whose dying wish had been to be buried in the tomb he created, with his most cherished possessions … including the one that was stolen.”

“Stolen?” King said. “Something is missing.”

Alexander removed his hands from the body’s hands. They hovered in the air, clutching an invisible object. “His hands were pried open. Whatever he was holding is gone. And the thieves with it.”

“Damnit,” King said. Ridley seemed to be one step ahead of them at all times, like he knew where they were. King’s eyes widened at the revelation. “He knows we’re here.”

A series of rumbles from above shook the chamber. Dust fell through the cracks of the bluestone ceiling. If it collapsed they would be crushed to paste. But it wasn’t the ceiling of the chamber that collapsed. It was the tunnel. King turned toward the tunnel, aiming his flashlight down its throat. In the distance he saw a wave of debris falling from the roof and filling the void beneath. The tunnel was being packed tight from above.

Tons of bluestone, bedrock, and soil filled the tunnel and spilled into the burial chamber, stopping at their feet as though held at bay by the ancient powers of Merlin. King scanned the tunnel entrance. It was packed tight. He turned around the room, searching the walls for some sign of an exit. He found none.

They were trapped. Buried alive one hundred feet beneath Stonehenge.

FIFTY-ONE

El Mirador, Guatemala

A CRUSHING WEIGHT fell on top of Queen, knocking her to her knees. But there were no pinpricks of pain that she’d expected to feel from the shower of trap-triggered needles falling from the ceiling. She rolled away and stood. When she turned around she saw Bishop, hunched over in pain. Close to a hundred needles stuck out of his back like porcupine quills.

Bishop grunted and fell to one knee. “Poison,” he said through gritted teeth. With the number they were doing to Bishop’s body, Queen had no doubt she’d already be dead on the floor. He’d saved her life.

Quickly and carefully, Knight and Queen plucked the darts from Bishop’s back. As the last dart came out, Bishop stood tall and shook his head; other than a poncho full of pencil eraser–sized holes, he was no worse for wear.

“I don’t understand why this trap hadn’t been marked,” Knight said, looking over one of the poison-tipped needles that now held a thin coat of Bishop’s blood on its black tip. “Hudson doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to wait on exploring a find like this.”

Queen saw the answer lying on the floor in an alcove obscured by loose stones—a bright orange “danger” sign featuring a decal of a man bending forward, arms up, and a shower of needles falling from above. She pointed to it. “I think someone down here was covering their back.”

She knelt down by the stone that triggered the trap and turned on a small pocket flashlight. A faint yellow residue, invisible to anyone wearing night vision goggles rimmed the stone. “A chalk outline was wiped away. We’re going to have to be more careful.”

“Or I can go first,” Bishop said, stepping over the marked stone.

“Or that,” Queen said, extinguishing her flashlight and following a few steps behind.

They successfully passed another trap without incident, descending the downward spiraling tunnel for another two minutes. Bishop stopped when his view of the tunnel brightened. There was an artificial light source ahead.

After removing their goggles, the team inched forward silently. The tunnel exit ahead was bright with light. They would be exposed if they got too close. Being the stealthiest, Knight went first, sliding forward on his stomach. With his eyes scouring the floor for signs of wiped away chalk it took him a few minutes to cover the distance in silence, but when he reached the tunnel exit his patience and gentle movements were rewarded.

The tunnel exited to a large circular chamber, fifty feet in diameter. The space was lit by a bright electric lantern, which rested atop a flat, stone altar top. Vertical stripes of black char rose up along the walls above a circle of small holes that would have held torches. A stone staircase decorated with the carved faces of the damned descended to a stone platform that encircled a pit at the center of the chamber. Four sections of the light gray stone surrounding the pit were stained dark brown with ancient blood. Funnels carved into the stone would have directed the flow into the pit, which looked like an ancient throat.

Here, like the tunnels above, the walls were covered in carvings, but between several murals was what looked like writing. In some ways it was similar to Sumerian cuneiform, but more stylized.

Seeing nobody present in the chamber, Knight waved the others to join him. When they arrived he pointed to the one thing that revealed where their quarry had gone—a rope. Tied to the five-foot-tall altar that held the lantern, a rope hung over the edge of the pit. Glowing from deep within the pit was a second light source, and a voice.

The words were hard to make out, but the deep, bass-filled voice was unmistakable. Ridley was at the bottom of the pit.

Queen grinned. He was right where they wanted him. Trapped, helpless, and at their mercy. One cut of the rope would leave him stranded for an eternity, like the Hydra from whom he stole his regenerative abilities.

They descended the steps and peeked over the edge. Were it lit solely from above it would have appeared bottomless, but Ridley’s light below revealed the bottom some two hundred feet down. Despite the distance, the sea of bones at the bottom was easy to make out. Ridley stood nearly waist deep in them, searching through them like a kid with an overfull toybox. In one hand he held a small digital recorder.

They watched as he picked up a small chunk of tablet and read off the words, which sounded strangely foreign, but felt familiar. When he was done he smashed the tablet against the stone wall.

Knight remembered that along with human and animal victims sacrificed to the gods, the Mayan also sacrificed their prized possessions including gold, silver, jewels, and codices. He’s collecting the ancient language written on the codices and then destroying them, Knight thought. He drew his knife, held it against the rope, and nodded to the others.

“Ridley!” Queen shouted, standing in clear view.

The man’s head snapped up in surprise. Then a smile crept onto his face. “The Chess Team arrives. I must admit I’m surprised to see you here. How did you find me?”

“You’ve got thirty seconds to tell us where Fiona is before we cut the line and leave you to rot,” Queen said.

“You seem to be missing a member,” Ridley said. “I know King was in Rome, but where is Rook? Did something go wrong?” His smile grew wider.

Queen’s UMP came up fast. She took aim and fired a three-round burst. Two of the rounds missed, shattering ancient bones, but one struck Ridley square in the forehead. He flinched as it struck, turning his head down. When he looked back up there was no injury, just his perpetually smiling face and gleaming bald head. There wasn’t even a splotch of blood.

“Afraid I’m not intimidated,” he said.

“He’s not going to talk,” Bishop whispered.

Queen looked at Knight. “Do it. He might be immortal, but we’ll see how cooperative he is after starving for a few weeks.”

Knight cut through the rope and let it fall.

Expecting some sort of protest or angry retort, the team flinched when Ridley began laughing. They looked down at him.

“All you’ve done is leave me with an army,” Ridley said, and then began speaking in hushed tones. The sea of bones around him began to rattle and shake.

Knight realized what was happening and said, “He’s about to go Ray Harryhausen on our asses.”

“What?” Queen asked.

Knight pointed down at the shifting bones. “Golems are the inanimate made animate. And he’s got a whole lot of inanimate buddies down there. An army of skeletons.”

“But they’re at the bottom of a—” Queen’s words were cut short by a deep rumbling from below. The pit floor was rising as a horde of living Mayan skeletons fused together and turned their empty eye sockets up at the stunned team.

FIFTY-TWO

Wiltshire, England

DUST CHOKED THE air, making it hard to breathe and nearly impossible to see. And with tons of earth between them and the surface, a rescue would not soon be coming.

King couldn’t see Alexander through the soupy brown air, but he saw his light move to the far wall of the chamber. He moved the light up and down on the wall, slowly making his way around the space. “What are you looking for?” After speaking, King took a breath and coughed hard. If the air didn’t clear soon he might lose consciousness.

Alexander didn’t pause his search as he replied. “The man in that tomb might not have had knowledge of pyramid architecture, but he was certainly familiar with the burial rites of the Pharaohs, which he must have fancied himself as. He’s mummified his body, been buried with sacred possessions, and encased in an elaborately grand tomb. Maybe his father aided in the construction of the Cheops tomb itself, I don’t know.”

“You’re looking for a hidden exit,” King said, making his way to the wall opposite Alexander so he could start his own search.

“It was a common practice by ancient Egyptian tomb builders, who sealed the tombs from the inside, and then exited via a secret shaft. It was also convenient for builders turned grave robbers.”

They quickly finished searching the tomb walls and found nothing. The ceiling came next, but its massive stones looked immovable. In fact, there was nothing in the room that looked small enough to move but big enough to hide a tunnel.

Then King’s attention locked on the sarcophagus. That would work, he thought. Coughing as he moved, King rushed through the maze of bluestone pillars and crouched by the sarcophagus. It stood on a raised circular platform, which was covered in dust. King blew the dust away, further fouling the air. He covered his mouth with one arm and wiped the surface of the floor with the other.

Alexander joined him. “What are you looking for?”

King stopped wiping. “That.” He pointed to the corner of the sarcophagus where an ancient scratch still marred the floor. “The sarcophagus swivels.”

Alexander immediately moved to the other side of the sarcophagus and pushed. It didn’t budge. King joined him and they pushed together. But it was no use. The stone wouldn’t move.

“Can we destroy it?” King asked.

Alexander grew angry. “We will not desecrate this tomb any further. I would sooner die.”

“Says the guy who can’t die.” King shook his head in frustration. It might be an offense to history, but if any other member of the Chess Team had been by his side, rather than Alexander, they would find a way to tear down the sarcophagus and escape. Of course, brains often achieved the same results as brawn. King smiled as an idea came to him. He stood and climbed atop one of the nearby pillars. When nothing happened he moved to the next.

“What are you doing?” Alexander asked, his voice still tinged with annoyance.

“Just be ready to push,” King said, continuing his circuit around the room, hopping on one pillar after another. His hope was that one of the pillars would trigger some kind of release for the sarcophagus. His fear was that it was one of the pillars buried beneath the stone and dirt that filled half the room.

He hopped up on the last of the large pillars and felt it give a little beneath his weight. A loud clunk sounded beneath the stone floor. “Push!”

Alexander pushed hard. Stone scraped against stone. A hiss of escaping air filled the chamber. The ancient seal was broken. The sarcophagus slid open revealing a smooth tunnel that spiraled out of view. But it wasn’t tall enough for a man to walk or even crawl into—it had to be slid into.

When the sarcophagus had shifted ninety degrees, it could no longer move. A second clunk sounded immediately and Alexander grunted. “It’s moving back! It may not reopen!”

King hoped off the pillar and rushed to his side. He looked at the small, downward sloped tunnel and shook his head. Time to find out if I’m claustrophobic, he thought.

“Hurry!” Alexander urged. “It’s going to move faster when I let go.”

King put his flashlight in his mouth and dove into the tunnel headfirst. Contrary to how it looked, he didn’t slide down. The rough stone clung to his body like Velcro. Dragging himself forward, he moved down and around into the tunnel. A moment later, he felt Alexander’s hands on his feet, pushing him forward. He scrambled as fast as he could, feeling his elbows and knees already becoming raw.

“Despite being able to grow back limbs,” Alexander shouted as the sarcophagus began squeezing his feet, “I don’t enjoy the experience of losing them.”

King felt Alexander lunge forward, bringing his body up on top of King’s legs, pinning them to the floor.

With a thud, the sarcophagus sealed over them. They were in a downward spiraling tunnel barely tall enough for King to raise his head. And with Alexander’s weight crushing his legs to the sharply rough floor, he could no longer move forward.

King took a deep breath, steadying himself before claustrophobic panic could set in. He pictured the situation behind him and quickly came up with the solution. “Exhale as much as you can and press yourself against the ceiling.”

The pressure on King’s legs lessened as Alexander complied, but not by much. They were packed tighter than he thought. Gritting his teeth against the flashlight, King reached out and pulled as hard as he could. Pain stabbed his knees as the rough floor tore into them. He grunted and stopped. “One more time.”

As the pressure lessened again, King gave a mighty pull. He slid forward, but his knees were torn apart. He shouted in pain. The flashlight fell from his mouth and rolled free, following the spiral around and down. King watched the light fade.

But then it stopped with a thunk.

That’s either good news, or bad news, King thought. His torn-up knees ached with every slide forward, but with more room to move, he was able to position his legs so his wounds were off the floor. He moved steadily downward, following the spiral. As he descended, the light from his lost flashlight grew brighter.

“You’re bleeding,” Alexander said. He couldn’t see King’s wounds, but the smell of blood was filling the tight tunnel.

“I’ll be fine,” King replied. “We’re almost at the bottom.”

“What do you see?”

King stopped as he saw the flashlight ahead. The tunnel leveled out and continued in a straight line. He pushed forward, not knowing how far the tunnel stretched. When it grew smaller he could no longer lift his head up. Still he pushed forward, not knowing what lay ahead. It could be an exit, a trap, or a squeeze too tight to fit through. As it was he could feel his back scraping against the ceiling with each pull forward. Pulling with his arms and pushing with his toes, he continued forward for ten minutes. Then his flashlight, aimed toward the side wall, showed an open space. He picked up his head and found a small chamber. He quickly pulled himself free of the small tunnel and checked out the space, which was about the size of an economy car interior. While the extra space was nice, the light gray wall blocking his path crushed his hopes. Crouching, King moved to the wall. As Alexander exited the tunnel behind him he placed his hand on the smooth surfaced wall. Modern concrete.

They were trapped.

Again.

FIFTY-THREE

Washington, D.C.

“YOU WANT TO what!” Boucher said, as he stomped back and forth in the Oval Office.

Duncan had spent every waking minute working through his options. The world needed defending. The Chess Team lacked a handler. His skill set—brilliant strategist, resistant to pressure, extreme determination—fit his role as president. But it was all for nothing when political chest thumping and loud-mouth pundits could tie his hands. He had come to a decision and just dropped the bomb on Boucher, who would be one of few people to ever know the truth.

“I can’t do it, Tom,” Boucher said.

Duncan could see Boucher working through the proposal despite his vocal opposition. He waited, leaning back on the couch. Boucher’s pacing slowed, which meant he was coming to his final decision; everything said before then was just blown-off steam.

Boucher stopped pacing.

He sat down on the couch across from Duncan.

His mustache twitched a few times. “Damnit, Tom.”

The irritated CIA chief looked at the folder in Duncan’s hands. “You have this all worked out, don’t you?”

Duncan handed him the folder. “Every detail.”

“Of course,” Boucher said, laying the folder open on the coffee table between the two men. He sifted through the pages. Each page represented a separate step in the president’s plan. E-mails to be faked. Documents to be forged. Databases to be altered. CIA stuff. All of it damning evidence that Duncan had knowingly ignored credible threats against the Siletz Reservation and Fort Bragg, that he had grossly underestimated the reach of their enemies, and that he had purposely provoked their wrath with the hopes of expanding the war on terror via the invasion of the countries responsible. Essentially, everything Marrs claimed to be true but wasn’t. The documents would reveal that Duncan did all of it despite strong opposition from Boucher, who had saved e-mails, recorded phone calls, and kept tabs on the president’s poor choices. The world would blame Duncan for more than three thousand five hundred American lives lost.

Boucher was integral to this plan. Duncan couldn’t do it without him.

The last few pages interested Boucher the most. He picked them up, reading each page in detail. Duncan saw him nod a few times. He was beginning to see the big picture.

Boucher finished reading and put the pages back into the folder. He sat back, crossing his legs. “This might work.”

“It will work.”

“It’s a huge sacrifice.”

Duncan nodded.

“Everyone will believe the things Marrs has been saying.”

Duncan shrugged. “It wouldn’t be possible without Marrs.”

“It could land him in this office in the next election.”

“We’ll worry about that later. What’s important is that we bury the truth deeper than any future president would think to dig.”

Boucher smiled. “I’ll break out my shovel.”

FIFTY-FOUR

El Mirador, Guatemala

BEFORE THE BASE of the sacrificial pit reached the top, two things happened. The mismatched living skeletons began scaling the rough walls, eager to attack. And Ridley disappeared within the writhing mass of white spindly limbs. While many climbed the walls, scores more were still forming below.

Not wanting any of the undead golems to reach the top of the pit, Queen, Bishop, and Knight opened fire. Sparks filled the air as bullets pierced brittle bones and struck stone. As limbs shattered and fell away, several of the skeletons toppled down, but whatever remained intact merged with loose bones below and rejoined the fight. All the while, the stone floor brought the horde closer.

“We can’t stop them,” Knight said as he reloaded.

“If we can subdue Ridley, maybe we can—”

A rattling wave filled the air as the platform neared the top, allowing the bone golems access to it. In clear view, their patchwork bodies became more evident. Limbs of children mixed with adult heads. Mismatched arms and legs. Missing parts. They packed a lot of power when it came to inducing fear, but their physical prowess—hindered by age and handicap—dulled their effectiveness in combat. What they lacked in speed and toughness they made up for in numbers and an inability to feel pain.

They arrived as a wave of death, flowing out of the pit and heading straight for Bishop, Knight, and Queen. The first to arrive were shredded by bursts of bullets, but with only thirty rounds per magazine, ammo ran dry quickly.

Three skeletons dove at Queen, knocking her back. She tore the head from one, but its body continued to fight. They stabbed at her eyes with bony fingers, used their limbs like clubs, and congested the air with the foul-smelling dust of their long since decayed flesh. She struck back with balled fists, sweeping kicks, and bone-crushing head butts.

She remembered the last time she’d delivered a head butt. It was to the man who had branded her forehead. Now it seemed he had returned from the dead with an army to exact his revenge. As she fell back under a surge of weight, it seemed like it might happen.

Bishop, with his large size and resistance to injury and tiring, had more luck against the bone golems. Swinging his massive arms, the bodies before him simply fell apart. As a result he had a clear view of Queen going down and Richard Ridley making his escape.

He looked for Knight and found him climbing up a large wall relief. Once on top he was free to move quickly, which was one of the things Knight did best. “Help Queen, I’ll go after Ridley!” he shouted, then ran above the skeletons, leaping for the exit. He ascended the stairs and disappeared into the dark hallway a moment later, leaving a slew of confused bone golems in his wake.

Bishop waded his way through the golems, trying to reduce them to powder. But the ancient bodies crowded over him. He stumbled on a broken limb and fell to his hands. While his back was pummeled he felt a rumble beneath his palms. Something was shaking. The pit, he realized; without Ridley it was returning to its original state!

“Queen don’t move!” he shouted. One false move could send them falling two hundred feet. The drop would kill Queen and leave him trapped at the bottom.

Bishop pushed up hard and felt the bone golems clinging to his back fall away. He struck out to his right, sweeping his thick arm in a wide arc. The impact drove the skeletons back, tripping them up. Then a group of them fell away, disappearing into the pit. With his fear confirmed he shouted, “The pit is open again!”

Making no effort to fight the reanimated dead, Bishop chose to simply charge through them. He hunched his shoulder forward and ran to where he’d last seen Queen. Like an NFL linebacker playing against a Pee Wee League team, he barreled through the mass of bodies and dove forward. The effect was immediate. Bodies fell away or fell to pieces under his weight. He stopped above Queen, tossed aside the golem on top of her, and pulled her to her feet.

In a blur of movement Queen lobbed something over his head. He tried to track and identify it, but it disappeared into the sea of golems on the other side of the chamber. Her next words told him exactly what it was.

“Fire in the hole!” she shouted.

A grenade.

Bishop turned away and saw Queen laying on the floor, curled into a ball, her back toward the impending blast. She had her hands over her ears, her eyes clenched shut, and her mouth open, ready for the contained blast. But with all the stone and bones filling the room, shrapnel could tear her apart. He moved to cover her with his body, but was too slow.

A deafening explosion filled the ceremonial chamber before Bishop could take cover. He was thrown into the air and smashed against the stone wall. He growled in pain, but before the dust had even begun to settle, the ringing and pain in his ears faded. The shrapnel in his flesh popped out and the wounds healed. He looked for Queen.

She was on her knees, shaking her head with a stunned look on her face, but she appeared to be unharmed. Still, she could have been shredded to bits.

“You should have let me cover you,” he said.

Queen stood, looking slightly offended. “You might be Superman, Bish, but I sure as shit am not Lois Lane.”

Bishop grinned and said, “Copy that.” Queen might not be able to heal, but she knew her limits, and how to survive. She did not want, or need, a protector.

She coughed from the foul air, removed her bandanna, and tied it around her mouth. “Where’s Knight?”

“Went after Ridley.”

That’s when the chamber ceiling, buried beneath hundreds of feet of jungle and the world’s largest pyramid, shook. Something massive had struck the surface above. Queen and Bishop charged up the stairs and into the tunnel, knowing that Ridley had most likely conjured something much stronger than golem skeletons. And whatever it was, Knight would be facing it alone.

FIFTY-FIVE

Wiltshire, England

“WELL, THIS IS unfortunate,” Alexander said as he exited the tiny spiraling tunnel and looked at the dead end.

“Unfortunate is an understatement,” King said.

Alexander squatted next to King, cramped in the small space. “I suppose it is.”

King leaned back against the exposed concrete wall, hiding it with his body. Time was short, but he wanted some answers. “Now that we have some time to kill, why don’t you answer a few questions.”

“I don’t think that—”

“Who were you talking to on the phone?”

“An associate.”

“A member of the Herculean Society?”

Alexander turned his palms up with a shrug. “They would not have my number otherwise. But this—”

“Who were you talking about? The two people, who are they?”

The combination of King’s questions and his constant interruptions were causing Alexander’s face to turn red with anger. He was pushing it, he knew, but answers flowed more easily from angry lips. “Why are you really here?”

But Alexander was either too smart or too experienced to fall for King’s bait. Just as he was about to shout something, he stopped, grinned, and leaned back. With a calm voice, he said, “I could ask the same question of you, King. The death of your sister made you a fighting man. And now a little girl, who you’ve taken as your own—which was never my intention, by the way—has replaced that missing relationship and you’re desperate to get her back. You’re doing this just as much for yourself as you are for the ‘greater good.’”

King felt his own anger rising. Alexander knew too much about him and had turned the conversation around. The problem was, King’s personal motivations didn’t conflict with the mission. He had no idea what Alexander’s endgame was, and it was clear he would get no closer to finding out.

“You would do well to remember that you are here because I allowed it.”

King was about to argue, but it was true. Alexander had led King to the Siletz Reservation and Fiona. And since being found beneath the Roman Forum, Alexander probably could have left King behind at any point. The question was, why? Why did Alexander, a man with extraordinary resources, intelligence, physical power, and a clandestine organization, allow King to tag along. So he asked, “Why?”

Alexander grinned. “I’ve always enjoyed a good game of chess.”

The implication of the statement was obvious. To Alexander, King was a pawn. We’ll see about that, King thought, but simply forced a grin. He’d pushed the subject enough. Trapped in a tiny cave with a man who could tear him apart started to make him feel like a frog in a blender. It was time to leave. He pointed to a trickle of water behind Alexander’s head. “With a steady supply of water, how long would you be able to regenerate your body?”

“Indefinitely,” Alexander answered. “Why?”

“If we’re stuck in here for a long time, or forever, I can eat you to stay alive for as long as it takes.”

Alexander sneered at the thought, looking at King like he was a madman. “You would—” Then he paused, seeing the slight smile on King’s face. “You’re joking? You— What do you know?”

King moved to the side, giving Alexander space to approach the concrete wall. “Put your ear against it.”

Alexander leaned down and placed his ear against the cold, rough wall. Being close to the wall he could see a subtle curve to its shape. And within, he heard something … water!

“It’s a drainage pipe,” King said. “Not built by Merlin, which means—”

“I have no qualms about destroying it,” Alexander finished. “Move aside.”

Alexander reached into his pocket and took out a small vial of black liquid. Before he drank it, King asked, “Would that work on me?”

“The adrenaline rush alone might be enough to destroy your heart,” Alexander said. “And if you survived that and managed to employ your newfound strength, it’s likely you would break most of the bones in your body, which get no added strength from this brew. It’s only my ability to heal that allows me to use it.”

Alexander poured a few drops of the liquid under his tongue. “You may envy my strength, but you shouldn’t. I don’t enjoy it. The pain is”—Alexander’s body shook as the adrenaline took hold—“excruciating.”

King stepped aside as Alexander’s eyes went wide, his pupils dilating. Leaning back on his hands and one leg, Alexander struck out with his right leg, smashing the concrete. He grunted in pain, paused, then struck again. His fourth strike resulted in a loud crack. On the fifth, his foot shot through the wall into the void beyond. With the hole begun, it wasn’t long before he had kicked away an opening big enough for them to fit through.

When he was done, he moved aside, his face twisted in pain. “The adrenaline is wearing off. I’ll just need a moment to heal.”

Being eager to leave the tight confines of what was almost their tomb, King nodded and slid through the hole. After his waist passed through, he fell and landed in a stream of water. The drainage pipe was large enough to crouch in and the air fresher than the tomb’s, though tinged with mold. A ring of sunlight from a vertical tunnel farther down the pipe provided enough refracted light to see by. “I see an exit,” he said.

But the joy of their impending escape was short-lived as he heard what sounded like a sporting event—loud shouts merging with the excited ebb and flow of a game. But there was no excitement in this cacophony of voices. Only terror. He suspected they were underneath the Stonehenge parking lot, which meant …

King turned toward the tomb from which he’d just escaped. “Alexander! The car park is under attack!”

Alexander quickly joined King in the tunnel and they rushed toward the circle of sunlight. When they reached it they found a metal rung ladder leading up to a drainage grate. King moved to the side.

“You go first,” he said. “In case it needs persuading.”

Alexander climbed the ladder and after two swift strikes pushed the grate aside with a scrape of metal on pavement. He poked his head outside and paused. After grunting with displeasure, he pulled himself out of the exit. King launched up the ladder and climbed topside.

His first breath of fresh air was welcome. His second was out of a nightmare.

FIFTY-SIX

El Mirador, Guatemala

THE CLOUDS OVERHEAD had thickened, blocking out more of the rising sun’s light. Combined with the thick jungle canopy, it was like a permanent twilight. Lightning occasionally lit the scene, allowing Knight a clearer view of his fleeing target. But his eyes were keen. Dim light or not, he could see Ridley ahead, weaving in and out of the tall, thin trees that filled the jungle. Ridley was a bigger man and a slower runner, but he also didn’t tire. Catching him would have to be done quickly, especially given the direction in which he was headed—straight back to the campsite where he would have plenty of hostages.

Though the jungle canopy was thick with giant leaves, the ground was virtually vegetation free. Knight poured on the speed. While Ridley still ran in a haphazard line, most likely fearing a bullet shot, Knight only shifted if a tree or some other immovable object crossed his path.

He closed to within twenty feet and drew his sidearm. He couldn’t kill Ridley, but a few shots to the head should put him down long enough to subdue. He took aim and saw something disturbing.

Ridley was smiling.

Why would he be—

The forest floor exploded as something massive struck with the force of a bomb.

Knight slid to a stop, landing on his backside in a puddle of mud. In front of him, a long stone lay half buried in the dirt. A loud slurping sound came from the object as it began rising out of the muck. Knight followed the movement and saw a large silhouette standing above him.

The stone is an arm!

With a flash of lightning he saw the golem. It was a twenty-foot-tall statue of Chac, the Mayan god of rain. His eyes, carved thousands of years ago, were angry. His mouth was down-turned. Its body was covered in the horrified faces of those sacrificed to him. The frightening Mayan style only accentuated the menace emanating from the now-living stone.

As though sensing Knight’s rising fear, the golem raised its giant hand to strike again.

Knight scrambled in the mud, his feet slipping out from under him. Grasping a thin tree, he yanked his body out of reach just as the golem struck. The force of the impact knocked him forward. Rather than fall into the mud again he leaped, curled his body, and landed in a roll that flung him back to his feet. He continued the pursuit without pause.

Though now he wasn’t just chasing Ridley, he was also running for his life. Lightning flashed again and he caught a glimpse of Ridley in the distance, still making for the camp. He gave chase. When the ground began to shake, he knew the golem had done likewise.

Ridley rounded a mound that hid a smaller, not yet excavated temple inside, and disappeared from view. Rather than take the circuitous route around, Knight headed straight for it. He tore up the side and quickly realized his mistake. The ground was saturated and slippery. Each step slid out from under him, cutting his speed in half and giving the golem time to catch up.

He looked back and saw a huge, perpetually clenched fist flying toward his body. With the mud working against an ascending escape, he allowed gravity and the slick ground to save his life. He slid down the slope as the golem’s fist punched into the mound, impaling several feet of dirt and buried temple. Knight came to a stop at the golem’s feet.

He looked up and saw it looking down at him. It tried to yank free, but its arm was held tight.

Trapped.

But not immobile. The golem picked its foot off the ground and tried to step on Knight. But he saw it coming and ran between its legs, stopping safely behind it.

Just as he was feeling the fight was over, the golem put its whole body into pulling the arm free. But it didn’t come free of the temple mound. Stonelike sinews stretched out where the shoulder met torso. With a grinding crunch the arm tore free.

Showing no signs of pain, the golem turned on him, its ghastly expression still frozen on its face. But all it saw of Knight was his back, quickly shrinking as he ran around the temple, hoping to make up the distance between him and Ridley before he reached the camp.

With a healthy head start on the golem, Knight couldn’t feel its thunderous footfalls, but he could hear the trees in its path snapping. He gave a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the one-armed golem fifty feet back, running straight for him. Trees shattered and fell as the giant cleared a path.

Knight had no such luxury. As the jungle grew dense, he had to weave his way through trees and over large root systems that spread out like Medusa’s mane of snakes.

But he could see Ridley ahead once more.

And the camp beyond, glowing with artificial light.

Suddenly he was through the trees and in a clearing. Willing his body to move faster despite the burning in his lungs and the ache in his legs, Knight closed to within shooting distance once again.

A grove of trees separated the clearing from the camp where an unknown number of researchers hid from the weather. He needed to stop Ridley now.

Taking aim, Knight ignored the loud crack of trees behind him as the golem entered the clearing. He ignored Ridley’s phony shouts for help. The rain. The lightning. The thunder. All his attention was on his aim. In the fraction of a second when his running body reached the top of a step he pulled the trigger. The bullet spun out of the gun barrel, cut through the rain, and covered the distance to Ridley.

A large chunk of flesh exploded from Ridley’s kneecap. He stumbled, lurching forward. It was the pause Knight was hoping for. He stopped running and took careful aim.

The golem charged across the clearing. Geysers of mud burst into the air around its heavy, stumplike feet. It reached out.

Knight unloaded a full clip of ammo into Ridley, striking his legs and head several times.

Ridley fell in a heap, landing in a patch of grass.

The golem fell with him.

It landed facedown with a boom that rivaled the thunder. Carried forward by its momentum, it slid through the grass and mud, pushing up a mound in front of it. It stopped only feet from Knight’s position with a pile of earth half covering its head.

Knight looked back at the golem, letting out the breath he’d been holding.

Lightning lit the scene.

The golem was immobile and in pieces.

And Ridley was …

Knight ran to the flattened grass that marked Ridley’s fall. Something was there, but it wasn’t Ridley’s body. He knelt down, turning on his flashlight. A gray mass in the shape of a man’s body rest atop the grass.

“What the…”

Knight put his fingers in the material. It was cold and wet. He scooped some up and rubbed it between his fingers. Then he smelled it. The scent brought back memories of digging the stuff out of river bottoms as a child. He knew what it was, and what it meant.

Hearing Bishop and Queen arrive behind him, he turned to them.

“Did you get him?” Queen asked, catching her breath.

Knight stepped aside, showing them the mass of wet, gray material. “It’s clay,” he said. “This wasn’t Ridley. It was a golem.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

Wiltshire, England

THE STINK HIT King first—a mixture of copper, feces, and something unidentifiable but equally grotesque. Before he saw the disemboweled corpse, he knew it was there. A man wearing a baseball hat and a camera around his neck lay ten feet away. His body had been folded backward—head resting on heels—and his gut had split open. King drew his weapon and surveyed the parking lot.

Bodies were everywhere, torn apart and crushed. King had seen a similar scene before and recognized the work of a merciless golem. Several cars burned. Screams rolled over the hills from the distance. People were still alive, but given the high pitch of their screams they were either being killed or expected to be at any moment. “Let’s go!” King said, running into the lot and heading for their car.

Before reaching the vehicle he could see something was wrong. The driver’s side tire was bent at an odd angle. When he reached it, he found the whole front end imploded. Something huge had crushed the car.

The ground shook.

Something was still out there.

King closed his eyes in dread. “He wouldn’t…”

“What is it?”

King didn’t answer, he just ran for the tunnel that led beneath the road. He entered the tunnel at full speed, made his way through, and rounded the ramp on the far side. At the top he saw his fears realized.

Stonehenge was missing.

Circles of large pits were all that remained of the ancient monument. Knowing a golem constructed from the bluestones of Stonehenge wouldn’t be hard to find, King spun around and found the giant much closer than he expected. Standing thirty feet tall, the gray giant was as large as it was featureless. But even without a face of any kind, it glowed with malice. And right then, the target of its rage was a ruby red, double-decker tour bus.

Lauren.

Not only was the bus in mortal danger, but it was also their best chance of escape. Realizing this at the same time, both men hopped the chain-link fence and waved down the bus. It screeched to a halt next to them and the doors opened.

“Get in!” Lauren shouted.

As Alexander leaped up the steps into the bus, King said, “Let me drive.”

Lauren complied immediately, closing the doors as King took the driver’s seat, threw the bus into drive, and gunned the gas. Looking in the rearview he could see the golem nearly upon them and gaining. His only chance of escape was to outmaneuver the behemoth.

Right, King thought, I’m going to outmaneuver this thing in a double-decker bus.

The bus gained speed quickly as they headed downhill, and maintained it at the bottom, but King saw a new problem ahead. The tunnel they had followed from the Durrington Walls to the tomb hidden beneath Stonehenge had collapsed, creating an impassable sinkhole that stretched the distance.

“Hang on!” King shouted, yanking the wheel and sending them into a sharp left turn. The driver’s side tires lifted off the ground for a moment, but King turned the wheel the other way and righted them. The bus crashed through the fence that lined the road.

King saw the large golem pass by behind them, unable to turn as quickly. But it reached out with its long arm and struck the back of the bus. The back half of the upper deck was torn away with a shriek of metal.

Lauren screamed, ducking with her hands over her head. “What the hell is that thing!”

King looked back, his view clear thanks to the missing back half of the bus. They had gained ground on the golem, but it hadn’t given up the chase. “You know the story about Merlin using giants to carry the stones to Stonehenge?”

Lauren looked incredulous. “Yeah?”

“It’s not a story.” He looked back again. The golem was gaining as the bus fought against the slick soil of the field they were speeding through. “Though I suppose no one needed to carry the stones if they could carry themselves.”

Lauren let out a nervous laugh. “Please just drive.”

King steered the bus through a second fence and onto a straight dirt road that was part of a large grid crisscrossing through the fields. With a road beneath them, they began distancing themselves from the golem again, taking the large vehicle up to eighty miles per hour. The copious amount of potholes made the drive rough, but it wouldn’t be catching them any time—

“Incoming!” Alexander shouted.

King whipped around and saw a large rectangular stone hurtling through the air toward them.

“It’s throwing parts of itself!” Lauren shouted.

King watched the stone sail overhead. It crashed into the road, twenty feet ahead. He turned away, plowing into the field. A second stone slammed into the field to their right. King veered back on the road and shouted at the bus as he pushed the gas pedal all the way down. “C’mon you piece of shit! Move!”

A loud crash rang out as the bus shook violently. King looked back and found one of the small Stonehenge stones hanging impaled in the ceiling. Had it been one of the larger stones, they would all be dead.

“Something’s happening,” Lauren shouted.

Looking back, King saw the golem fall to its knees, still reaching out for them but unable to move. Then it fell to pieces, reducing Stonehenge to an unceremonious pile of giant stones. King had no doubt the stones could be returned to their proper place, but the destruction of a national treasure such as this would draw unwanted attention. “We need to get out of the country,” he said to Alexander.

Alexander opened his cell phone and dialed a number. “Ready the plane,” he said, and then hung up.

Lauren looked back and forth at the two men. “Who the bloody hell are you two?”

King drove the bus onto a main road and pulled over. “It’s better if you don’t know who we are,” King said. “And it’s better if you never remember seeing us … for your sake.”

Lauren gave a quick nod. “Just be glad I’m insured or I would have killed you both myself.”

As a car drove up and stopped, King and Alexander both exited the bus. King drew his weapon. “Out of the car!”

The man inside went wide-eyed. He turned the car off and exited, the keys held in a raised shaking hand. King took the man’s keys and said, “I’ll make sure you get the car back.”

The man bobbed his head to acknowledge that King had addressed him and stepped away.

King slid into the driver’s seat as Alexander climbed into the passenger’s side.

Inside the car, King asked, “Where to?”

Alexander held up a chunk of the Stonehenge bluestone that had impaled the bus. “Back to Israel.”

“You think Davidson can figure out how to resurrect a golem?”

“If he can, we might learn how to kill it.”

The plan made sense to King. When it came to the unknown, research and understanding usually won over brute force. Though he doubted Davidson would be happy to see them again. He steered the car around the bus and gave Lauren a subtle nod of thanks as he passed.

The stunned driver of the car approached Lauren and looked over her ruined bus. “Who the hell were they?”

Lauren shrugged. “I have no idea.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

Siberia, Russia

ROOK’S EYES BLINKED open to the sound of a creaking door. Disoriented from the cold, lack of sleep, and loss of blood, Rook almost called out to the visitor, but came to his senses in time. He drew his .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun and inched toward the door. He would defend this refuge if need be, but prayed the visitor wasn’t aggressive. He barely had the energy to pull the trigger, let alone find a new place to hide.

He had run north for days. And the farther north Rook ran, the colder it got. The patrols searching for him had dropped away along with the temperature, but the chill threatened to drain what was left of his strength. After fleeing through woods, across rivers, and over mountains, he had finally evaded the Russian military. Not that the Russians needed to put a bullet into him to kill him. His failing health would do him in on its own. His body shook from cold and fever. His mind spun with each step. If not for the cabin he had found, deep in the pine forest, he would have died from exposure the previous night.

The cabin, which consisted of three rooms—a living room that also served as a kitchen and dining room, a bathroom, and a small bedroom—was quaint and casually decorated with quilts, a few cracking landscape paintings, and a reindeer head mounted on the wall. White lace curtains hung in the windows. Dried wildflowers sat in a small vase atop a table big enough for two. It smelled of pine, mildew, and animal furs, which covered two chairs in the corner next to a small bookcase.

He paused at the bedroom door, leaning one hand against the wall for support. With several shotgun pellets still lodged in his side he had to fight to not grunt in pain. He focused on the sounds coming from the living room. He heard the thumping footfalls of a single person walking over the cabin’s wood floor. Then came a dragging noise.

A body, Rook thought.

He tensed, sensing the person’s approach. He took a step back from the door, raising his weapon. A floorboard creaked beneath his foot.

Holding his breath, Rook waited for some sign that he’d been heard. When it came, it wasn’t what he expected.

“Hello?” said a feminine voice speaking Russian. Given the tone and pitch of the woman’s voice, Rook thought she sounded like his mother, who was sixty-two. Harmless. He quickly tucked his weapon into the back of his pants and speaking Russian, said, “I thought the cabin was abandoned.”

The door opened slowly. A woman with gray hair tied back in a braid stood on the other side. She held a hunting rifle in her hands, aimed at Rook’s chest. A dead reindeer, drained of blood, lay on the floor behind her.

Not so harmless, Rook thought. But not yet a threat.

She looked him up and down, her eyes freezing on his torn-up sweater and the deep, blood-red stains surrounding the wound.

“You’ve been shot?”

“Hunting accident.”

“You did this to yourself?”

Rook wondered what the best story would be. He needed this woman’s cooperation, but she was clearly a self-sufficient old hermit who might not take kindly to visitors, especially visitors stupid enough to shoot themselves. “No,” he said. “I was hiking in the woods. They must have mistaken me for a deer. After they shot me, I was unconscious. I woke in the back of their truck and overheard them talking about killing me.”

Rook paused, searching her eyes for some sign that she was buying his story. He saw that her anger had softened and continued. “I jumped from the truck and fled. I came across your cabin last night and took shelter from the cold.”

She squinted at him and then glanced at the fireplace. “You didn’t make a fire.”

“I thought they might be looking for me.”

She pondered this for a moment and then lowered the rifle. “You still have some buckshot in you?”

Rook nodded, and then lifted up the front of his shirt. His skin was covered in small red wounds that were surrounded by deep purple bruises.

She inspected the wounds, counting ten. “Could have been worse. Had the shooter been closer or a better shot, you might be dead.”

Though he hated to admit it, the woman was right. Not only had the Russian military got the jump on him, killing his entire team, but a simple farmer had as well. For him, it was an unforgivable failure.

As the woman moved to the kitchen area and rummaged through some drawers, she said, “I’m Galya, by the way.”

Rook came out of his thoughts and replied, “Stanislav. You can call me Stan.”

Galya returned with a tray, which held a sharp knife, a pair of tweezers, needle and thread, vodka, and a glass. “Now then, Stan, lets take those pellets out of you before they get infected.”

FIFTY-NINE

Location Unknown

THOUGH HE WAS never truly alone, Alpha longed for contact from the outside world. He had spent so much time underground that he was beginning to feel like a creature of the underworld. More to the point, he still looked like one. And Adam, who was always present, was just as eager to be freed from their subterranean existence. They both awaited the arrival of the others with great anticipation—for their company, but also for the new puzzle pieces they had uncovered.

Cainan was the first to arrive. He walked into the stone chamber, eyes wide and a smile on his face. Though his head was as bald as both Alpha’s and Adam’s, it held a tan the other two envied. He looked with awe at the circle of glowing, golf ball–sized orbs that floated around the room like miniature suns. They revealed the ancient circular space that stretched two hundred feet in diameter around them. Like their other dens, Alpha had filled the center of the chamber with lab equipment, ancient resources he’d collected over the years, and specimens of every sort. But this space also contained all the communication equipment they needed to reach the ears of every man, woman, and child on the planet.

A laptop on the tabletop in the middle of the space, networked to a row of computers hidden on the side of the chamber, would manage the feed, processing the audio and relaying it to every media outlet on earth—from the largest networks to the smallest podcast. Cables snaked out of the room, some descending into the earth where they stretched for miles before connecting with phone and cable landlines. Others rose up into the ceiling, attached to an array of hidden satellite dishes that would only be revealed when the transmission had begun. Once the audio playback was complete they would no longer need to fear discovery. They would emerge from the darkness, reborn into a remade world.

The room was split into a central atrium. The ceiling looked like a hollowed-out step pyramid, rising one hundred feet at its core. This was surrounded by a ring of ten decorative columns where the ceiling was lowest, though to call them columns was a disservice. They were statues, each with hands raised to the ceiling, as though in supplication; a posture that didn’t quite fit their hulking, grim forms. The outer wall beyond the statues was covered in a combination of hieroglyphs and carvings.

Cainan’s attention remained on the bright orbs. He pointed to one. “Are these…?”

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light,” Alpha said.

“God saw that the light was good,” Adam, whose voice was similar to Alpha’s but distorted, as though gargled, continued, “and He separated the light from the darkness.”

“Soon, Adam,” Alpha said. “Soon.”

Cainan held out a dirty white sheet laden with the weight of a small body. He placed it on the floor before Alpha and Adam. As he let go of one side it fell open revealing the sleeping face of a thirteen-year-old girl.

Alpha knelt down to Fiona and brushed her hair off her face. “She is the last?”

Cainan gave a slight nod. “And probably not cause for concern on her own. In fact, the danger she poses now is in bringing our enemies to us. Perhaps it would have been wise to kill her with the others?”

“I find live bait works best,” Alpha said. “And having one more test subject on hand never hurts.”

“You really want King to find us?”

“I want to take everything away from him. I want him to see it slip away.” Alpha rolled his neck to one side. “I am simply returning the favor he extended me.”

“There is nothing to fear from King,” Adam said. “With her here, he will approach with caution rather than overwhelming brute force.”

“She gives us the advantage,” Alpha finished. “Bring her.”

Alpha led Cainan down a short tunnel, stopping in front of a small, carved-out alcove that had once been used to store building supplies. “Put her in.”

With Fiona placed inside the space, Alpha crouched next to her.

Cainan leaned against the wall. “Even if King can find us, how do you know he’ll get here in time? If he’s out there”—he motioned to the cave ceiling but referred to the world beyond—“when the time comes he’ll change with the rest of them.”

“He’ll make it on time,” Alpha said before tugging something loose from Fiona. “He’s the kind of man who doesn’t miss a deadline, and the clock is ticking.”

Alpha held up Fiona’s insulin pump, stood, and smashed it against the wall. He picked up the ruined device and handed it to Cainan. “Put this someplace King will find it.”

Cainan smiled. “Tick tock.”

Alpha matched the smile. “He’ll waste no time tracking her down.”

After the pair left the cell, Alpha whispered to the walls. The stone shook and stretched out. Soon, all but a small slit merged into solid stone. A noise from the central chamber caught their attention. They hurried back to find Mahaleel studying the inscriptions on the walls.

“This is fascinating,” Mahaleel said as the others entered.

“Do you have it?” Alpha asked, his impatience oozing from every syllable.

Mahaleel was unfazed. He waggled his finger toward one of the research tables. “There.”

Alpha found a padded satchel on the table, opened it, and began unwrapping the object contained within.

“Have you deciphered all of this?” Mahaleel asked.

“Of course,” Adam said, also sounding annoyed, but not being preoccupied with opening the package, he turned and faced Mahaleel, who had been joined by Cainan in his inspection of the walls. “But there was nothing to be learned. It is a warning, carved into the stones after the language fracture.” Adam waved his small arm in the air dramatically quoting: “‘The language of the ancients has been diluted. May each tongue carry its knowledge with wisdom lest the wrath of the Originator’—capital O—‘whose will can protect or destroy all things, return to this world. Do not be corrupted by temptation. For if his words are used for evil again, the guardians shall descend from on high and lay waste to the tainted.’ It carries on like that all around the room. Fire and brimstone.”

“Who is the Originator?” Mahaleel asked.

“God,” Adam replied.

Cainan turned away from his close inspection of the hieroglyphs. “Have we considered that the Originator spoken of on these walls might not be God?” The others, even Alpha, looked at him. “What if the Originator was a man? After all, what we’re attempting is nothing less.”

Alpha nodded and held out the stone tablet that Mahaleel had brought. It contained an inscription readable only to those whose understanding of the ancient language was comprehensive. And right now, only Alpha and Adam could claim such understanding. The key to unlock the human mind was in their grasp. “Thanks to Merlin, we are one step closer.” He turned his head to Adam’s. “Our time is near.”

FOUND

SIXTY

Haifa, Israel

STANDING NEAR THE top of Mount Carmel, the Crown Plaza Hotel looked like a stark white modern-art waffle. At road level it stood five stories tall, much of it used up by the lobby. Five more floors were hidden in the rear as the building descended the mountain’s slope.

King and Alexander had parked several blocks away and walked to the hotel, winding their way through a confusing maze of streets and alleys surrounding the hotel, just in case they had a tail. As they walked the final block, the hotel clearly in view, King decided to broach yet another topic he’d been wondering about.

He ran a hand through his hair and asked, “You’ve been alive for what, twenty-five hundred years?”

“Give or take a few decades,” Alexander replied with a grin, a lit cigar clenched between his teeth.

“And in that time, you’ve done what? Other than the myths you’re known for, have you been anyone else in history?” A straight answer might not help him figure out exactly what Alexander was up to now, but it might give him some indication about the kind of man he was, or had been.

“You mean, have I been anyone important? A king. A general.”

King just waited for an answer.

“George Washington.”

As King whipped his head toward Alexander the man burst out laughing.

“I was being serious,” King said, realizing a straight answer out of Alexander might be more impossible than cracking the secret of immortality, which to his knowledge had been accomplished twice already. He stepped ahead of Alexander and opened the hotel’s front door. “After you, Mr. President.” Alexander snubbed out the cigar in the hotel’s outdoor ashtray and entered the hotel. King gave the street and parking lot a quick glance. No one had followed them. Not that he could see, anyway.

The hotel lobby was four stories tall capped by a grand arched ceiling. Tall windows and an array of sconces flooded the gaping space with light. Four palm trees, covered in white lights, stood in the center. It looked one part Hollywood at Christmas and one part opulent Arabian palace. King was fond of neither look, but still could not take his eyes off the surreal lobby. He had waited outside when they dropped Davidson off and had yet to see the hotel’s interior.

“You haven’t answered my question,” King said. But Alexander just kept on walking, heading straight for the elevator.

Alexander entered the elevator and hit the button for the fifth floor, which was directly over the lobby. He didn’t even acknowledge that King had spoken.

Growing impatient, King said, “Have you done anything meaningful with your life? Cured a disease? Freed an oppressed people? Anything at all?”

Alexander remained stoic.

“You haven’t, have you?” King grew angry at the thought. Alexander had infinite resources, a devout following of Herculean Society members, immortality, and a genius intellect; nothing should have been out of reach for him. “In twenty-five hundred years you haven’t done a damn thing.”

Alexander looked at him with a smile. “I can tell you one thing I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve learned to not let angry men with no concept of time ruffle my feathers. One hundred years from now, I will have all but forgotten this conversation. I live outside your understanding of time. Like a chess player, I can set things in motion and not see the resulting goal until several moves later, which for me could be hundreds of years. Sometimes longer.”

“Then why do you give a damn about what’s happening now?”

“Because my opponent is cheating.”

At least it was an answer, King thought, though he knew it was only a half-truth, if that.

A digital chime rang out and the doors opened. Alexander exited the elevator and headed down the hall. King followed behind him, thinking about what he’d said. Could his endgame be hundreds of years off? If so, did it really even matter? King would be long dead and the human race was likely to nuke itself into oblivion by then. Or was it all a smoke screen? Was the endgame just around the corner and Ridley’s actions putting it in jeopardy? Alexander might be working toward something begun during the time of Jesus. King shook his head. Ignorance was bliss, which was why he was starting to feel so unhappy.

Alexander knocked on the door of suite 907. They could hear movement behind the door. Davidson was no doubt peering at them through the peephole. The deadbolt slid away and the door opened a crack. The chain lock kept it from opening all the way.

Davidson peeked out at them, his eyes nervous.

“It’s us,” King assured him.

“Right. Sorry.” The door shut and the chain was pulled away. Davidson opened the door again and let them in.

It was a large hotel room, standard in most every way—queen-sized bed, a TV, a single lounge chair, and a small desk. What made it different from other hotel rooms was the glossy hardwood floor, the large window split into large waffle squares, and the amazing view of the Mediterranean it provided. The desk was covered in hotel stationery. Notes in Hebrew and mathematical equations covered the pages. Several room service trays holding half-eaten food sat on the still-made checkered bedspread.

Davidson closed the door behind them, locked both locks, and headed to the desk. He sat down, looking disheveled. His face, which had been smooth the previous day, was rough with stubble, and his yellow dress shirt was wrinkled and covered in a big red stain. King took note of the stain.

“You okay?”

Davidson looked down at his shirt. “Oh, yes. It’s marinara.”

Alexander glanced at the large number of room service trays. “I see you’ve been taking advantage of my hospitality.”

“I, well, yes.” Davidson looked to the floor. “But I was up all night and have some new thoughts on the golem.”

Alexander sat down in the room’s lounge chair and opened his arms as though to say, “Let’s hear it.”

King sat down on the bed beside the trays. He eyed a plate of french fries. He hadn’t eaten anything substantial in days. Not that french fries would provide much in the way of nourishment, but they would fill his belly.

Davidson noted his attention. “They’re only an hour old.”

Alexander cleared his throat as King dug into the food.

“Sorry. Ahh. What’s important to realize about a golem is that they are not actually living. I suppose you could say they were quasi-living, but they don’t possess true life. Now, somehow, which I have yet to fully understand, inanimate objects are being animated in a way that mimics life, but these golems lack intelligence. I suspect they have a very primitive knowledge imbued into the atomic structure by their creator—the ability to walk, the desire to kill a certain target—but they can’t communicate. They can’t reproduce. They don’t consume or digest. Based on the files Alexander faxed over—”

“What files?” King asked. He had no idea Alexander had been in touch with the professor. He shot Alexander an annoyed glance as Davidson handed him a folder. He opened it and found several newspaper clippings about the attacks on Fort Bragg, a handwritten detailed account about their experience at Stonehenge. But what really held King’s attention were the several classified documents from the U.S. military, including surveillance-camera still shots from Bragg. He wanted to ask Alexander where he got the documents, but already knew the answer. The Herculean Society was in every nation and in every government.

That’s what Alexander had done in twenty-five hundred years. He might very well control the whole world without a single person knowing. And his direct involvement now might only be because Ridley threatened to upset the balance.

The thought filled King with anger and he wondered if Alexander was so deeply entrenched that he could feed missions to the Chess Team? Just how far did the man’s influence reach? Questions for later, he decided. “Go on,” he said, placing the files on the bed beside him.

“Based on the reports in those files, the golems seem to contain enough energy for a short duration. In every case, the golems simply return to their inanimate state after about fifteen minutes. Without a continued utterance from its creator a golem cannot continue living, err, existing.”

“Like someone chanting?” King asked.

“No, more like a recharge. Something that keeps it energized and on task. It could be as simple as repeating the phrase that animated it in the first place. I’m not really sure. But this is an apparent weakness, time. And brains, or lack thereof. I would compare them to ancient missiles. Their force can be spurred into action and directed, but they cannot be sustained indefinitely and then can be outsmarted.”

King had to admit the professor’s assessment seemed accurate, and useful to a point. But he had hoped for more. Given the anxious glances Davidson shot Alexander, he had, too.

“You mentioned a sample,” Davidson said to Alexander.

Alexander reached into his suit coat and pulled out a small chunk of bluestone. King’s distrust of Alexander continued to grow as his role in the mission became secondary to Alexander’s whims. And that threatened King’s personal goal of finding Fiona. If Alexander’s objective shifted, King might be left high and dry. He would continue, of course, but with time short for Fiona, the delay could be deadly.

Davidson took the stone and looked it over. “This is actually a piece of a golem animated from the stones of Stonehenge?”

“It is,” Alexander said.

Holding it up close to his eyes, Davidson stared at the stone as the bright sunlight glimmered off the blue specks. “We need a lab.”

Alexander stood. “I have one waiting.” He stood, leading the way out of the room.

Davidson eagerly followed.

King hesitated for a moment. Could he trust Alexander? If he turned bad, could he be stopped? Deciding the answer to both questions was an unquestionable “no,” King took a handful of fries and followed after them.

* * *

THE LAB WAS both impressive and sketchy. The equipment looked new, or at least rarely used, and the small warehouse that held it was in a seedy part of town. In fact, everything looked like it had been brought in and rigged to be used specifically for this occasion and would likely disappear when they were done.

King didn’t like that everything he had done since heading to Rome was outside the reach of U.S. resources, but he couldn’t deny the results. Though those results were slow in coming this afternoon. The hot Mediterranean sun beat down on the metal building, heating its insides like an oven. Even the mighty Hercules had shed his suit coat and unbuttoned the first few buttons on his shirt.

“It’s too bad your people didn’t think to bring in an air conditioner,” King said.

“I’ll be sure to have them take care of it next time,” Alexander replied.

As King wondered whether or not Alexander was joking he realized that the man had just confirmed his suspicions. This was a temporary lab.

Tension had King’s body in a tight grip. Unless they found some kind of lead soon, their investigation will have run dry. King checked the date and time on his watch. Day four was well under way and Fiona was now out of insulin. He gripped the edge of the lab table he was leaning on, feeling his anger rise.

“I’ve got something,” Davidson said, backing away from a microscope he’d been standing over for the past ten minutes.

King stood straight and headed for Davidson, eager for news.

“At first glance, the sample looks like any other stone, and to the human eye acts the way we all expect a stone to act—like nothing at all. But at the microscopic level, well, take a look.” Davidson switched out the slides. “This is a normal stone.”

King arrived before Alexander and took a look. He saw a patchwork of stone crystals mashed together.

“Stones are composed of varying sizes of mineral grains. Differing amounts of minerals give us limestone, granite, basalt, et cetera. In this case we have Preseli spotted dolerite containing chunks of plagioclase feldspar, which adds to its bluish tint, especially when wet. The point is, the minerals contained in stone are compressed in a random formation that does not shift unless the stone is broken.” Davidson switched out the slide when King stood back. “This is a sample of the bluestone.”

King looked again. The stone crystals were now an orderly formation of overlapping minerals. Their placement throughout was still random, but it was as though they had been snapped into an organized grid. “It looks like chain mail,” he said.

“Exactly, which would give the stone flexibility, and the ability to merge, at least temporarily with similarly affected stones. Like Velcro. Or a zipper.”

Alexander quickly looked at both slides. “Anything else?”

“It has no traces of DNA, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Davidson said. “As I mentioned before, they’re not living. Simply animated by some kind of energy.”

The statement struck a chord in King’s memory. His family had taken a southwestern summer trip in an RV. The strange site had been one of their stops, at the insistence of his father. “This isn’t totally unheard of in the natural world. The sailing stones in Death Valley move on their own. Some are as heavy as eighty pounds but travel across the flat desert appearing to move under their own power. They leave grooves in the ground hundreds of feet long, make ninety-degree turns, and sometimes travel in pairs before breaking off in different directions.”

“Amazing,” Davidson said. “Are there theories about how they move?”

“Heavy rain coupled with high winds is the best I’ve heard of,” King said.

“Perhaps wind alone is enough?” Davidson said. “If stone can be affected by sound, such as with a golem, perhaps there is a rock formation that produces a certain tone at the right frequency, something that sends a simple command: move! Has anyone looked at the stone’s microscopic structure?”

“They didn’t talk about that on our family vacation,” King said.

Alexander began switching off the lab equipment. “If there’s nothing else, I think we should be go—”

“We’re not going anywhere yet,” King said, wondering how much more Alexander had planned without his knowledge. “You may think the world is your playground, that you have the right to go anywhere, do anything, and treat the human race like game pieces, but you don’t. I, on the other hand, represent the wishes of the president of the United States, a man with real power and authority in this world. And I am in charge of this mission. Not you.”

A darkness consumed Alexander’s face. He turned to King, staring him down with eyes that showed a desire to kill. King had no doubt it had been a long time since someone spoke down to him, and he did not take it well. But King didn’t falter. Instead, he turned his eyes away from Alexander’s glare and looked at Davidson. “Is there anything more to glean from these stones?”

“I … I would need more samples. Different samples.”

“Like this?” came a deep voice from the darkness at the end of the warehouse. A figure emerged holding a glass jar. Inside it was a lump of gray material. The man holding it was Bishop. Queen and Knight followed him.

King greeted the others with a nod. He had made a call to Deep Blue shortly after leaving the hotel, requesting the team’s deployment to Israel. He knew they would arrive quickly thanks to the Crescent and had left his cell phone on so they could track his location. With the majority of his team present, he felt a renewed calm and measure of control return to the situation. This King was a pawn to no man, even one who couldn’t be killed.

Alexander glared at King and with a raised voice said, “You had no right to bring them here without my knowledge.”

“You seemed to have access to privileged U.S. intelligence. I thought you would know.”

Alexander lost his patience and stomped toward King. Davidson ducked out of the way.

King didn’t flinch as Alexander stopped inches from his face. “Do I detect a hint of megalomania?” King poked him in the chest, purposely instigating a reaction. He had a point to make. “Don’t like not being in control, do you … little man.” He punctuated the statement with one last poke to the chest.

When the punch came, King was expecting it. He ducked to the side, feeling the breeze of Alexander’s fist pass his face. The fist smashed into a metal support beam behind King. A loud clang accompanied by the crack of breaking fingers rang in King’s ear. The missed blow would have normally been enough for King to take the upper hand in any fight, but Alexander didn’t react. Nor did he react to the perfectly placed punch King delivered to his side. Instead he took King’s arm, spun him around and pinned him against the support beam. The impact split King’s lip and the pressure on his arm would soon snap it. He fought against the pain.

“Don’t be stupid. You can’t win this fight alone,” King said.

The pressure increased.

“And your secrecy is compromising my mission.”

“Your mission? You’re a fool to think yourself my equal,” Alexander said between clenched teeth.

“I don’t consider myself your equal,” King said. “But unlike you, I’m not alone.”

The barrel of a handgun tapped against the back of Alexander’s skull. “Hey,” Queen said. “Remember me? We met a few years ago. I never did get a chance to thank you for the help, but if you mess with my boy here, I’m going to thank you by putting a bullet in the back of your skull. And please don’t fool yourself into thinking I’m incapable of hacking off that handsome head of yours and burying it in the sand.”

Alexander tensed for a moment before releasing King. He stepped back and eyed Queen. “I do remember you. You’re as charming as Rook.”

King saw Queen tense. The confrontation between him and Alexander had been brewing and needed to be worked out. But Alexander would regret lighting this fuse with Queen. “Any word on him?” King asked, stepping in.

Queen looked at him. “Not a peep.”

King turned back to Alexander. “You’re welcome to stay on with us, but you need to toe the line. If I sense you working another angle from this point on, I’ll drop you from the team.”

Alexander stared at King for several seconds before smiling. “You’re lucky I like you, King. I agree to your terms.”

The look in the man’s eyes revealed the agreement would last only as long as it continued to serve his needs, but King was okay with that. The reverse was true as well. He needed Alexander’s knowledge and resources to track down and stop Ridley, but when they’d accomplished that, he would leave the man behind.

Seeing the confrontation ebb, Davidson stepped forward. “Um, excuse me, but did you say you had a new sample?”

Bishop handed him the jar full of gray material.

“Is this from a golem?” Davidson asked.

“Formerly known as Richard Ridley,” Knight said. “Now known as Richard Hunk-of-clay.”

Davidson’s eyes grew wide. “This had a name? It was a … a human golem? Made of clay?”

Knight gave a nod.

“Fully human?”

“Until he turned to clay,” Bishop said. “Before that he seemed to have all the intellect, memories, and personality of the actual Richard Ridley. He lived among people who had no idea he wasn’t fully human.”

“Lived with people?” Davidson asked with wide eyes. “For how long?”

Knight shrugged. “Days, maybe weeks. We’re not sure yet.”

“There goes your fifteen-minute continued-utterance theory,” King said.

With a nodding head, Davidson said, “I should say so.” He turned to King. “But this was a clay golem in the form of a man. What applies to the crude stone giants may not apply to something this … sophisticated.”

Davidson untwisted the cover from the sample and smelled the clay. His face was pale, but excited.

“What is it?” King asked.

Davidson held the sample aloft like it was some kind of ancient treasure. “We shouldn’t call this man Richard.” He looked King in the eyes. “We should call him Adam.”

SIXTY-ONE

Location Unknown

FIONA WOKE IN a new cell, similar in size and shape to the last, but the stone was now brown and flat. A small slit on one side was the only feature. It allowed air and a small amount of light into the space. But where she was didn’t matter. She still needed to free herself from her bonds and set to work upon waking up.

Fiona spit a bloody clump of rope fibers onto the floor next to her. She had been working on the rope for what felt like several hours, chewing feverishly and taking breaks. Her gums had become raw and bloody, but the injury was minor and fairly painless in comparison to the pain she felt in her body. Bound tight and struggling for so long, her muscles had begun to cramp. Waves of dizziness struck. Her headache persisted and accompanied a dire thirst. She tried to ignore her discomfort and focused on her bindings, which were now held together by only a few strands of twine.

Fiona’s arms shook as she pulled them apart. The fibers grew taut and tore slowly as one strand after another snapped. When the chewed rope reached its breaking point, it broke in two. Her arms flew out to her sides and then fell limp.

She was exhausted from her efforts, but her hands were free. Fighting against the tiredness gripping her body, she reached down to her feet and began untying the rope binding her ankles. What normally would have been a quick job took ten minutes as the severe tingle of full blood flow returning to her fingers made every movement agonizing.

With her feet free, Fiona stood slowly, using the wall for support. As she did, a wave of nausea struck and threatened to return her to the floor. She placed her face against the cold stone wall. She took a moment to breathe and let her body figure itself out. Once she felt a measure of balance return, she slowly bent down and touched her fingers to her toes. The stretch felt good. She stood tall again and breathed deeply. She felt better, but still quite dizzy and the headache and thirst had yet to diminish.

Moving as quietly as she could, she walked to the cell’s only light source, the long slit in the stone wall. She peered through the slit, expecting to see a guard. But there was no one there.

Why would they guard a cell with no doors? Fiona thought.

The space directly outside the cell was just another stone wall. She moved to the left, angling her view so she could see down the hallway. It opened up ten feet beyond. The light was brightest there.

And there were shadows.

Moving.

And a voice. She listened, but couldn’t understand the quiet words being spoken like a chant. A moment later she heard something she did understand.

“Damnit!” The shout was masculine, deep, and held a supernatural menace—as though the word hadn’t just been spoken by a single man, but by two, out of sync by a fraction of a second.

The chanting started up again. The language was again unknown to her, but bits and pieces struck a chord. Portions of words sounded familiar. Tones. Inflections. Not enough to figure out what was being said, but some part of what the man said was familiar to her. She realized she was hearing fragments of Siletz, a dead language to all but her.

The chant ended in frustration once again with the pound of a fist. She jumped at the sharp noise, but remained quiet. She was intent on hearing anything and everything going on outside her cell.

What she heard next, shook her to the core. “Please, sir,” a man said in a weak, heavily accented voice. “No more. I know nothing. I do not know what you are asking.”

“I’m not asking anything,” the deep voice said. This was followed by an angry shout and the smack of flesh on flesh.

Without seeing what was happening, Fiona could imagine what was going on. There was a man, bound, maybe sitting in a chair. He thought he was being interrogated, but the other man, the one with the deep voice, wasn’t asking questions. Then what was he doing?

She heard one of them spit. She wasn’t sure which one until the captive said, “If I knew what you wanted I would tell you nothing! American pig!” And then he spat again.

There were two shouts. One of anger. One of fear. The smack of wood striking stone came next. The chair had hit the floor. Hard breathing. Wet clicks. A shifting scuff of feet on the floor.

Her eyes widened as her imagination created the most likely image. The captive had been knocked over and was being strangled. The killer stood, cleared his throat, and then spoke the strange language again, this time with practiced ease. “Versatu elid vas re’eish clom, emet.”

She repeated the words in her head, not knowing the meaning, but determined to remember them if they turned out to be important. King had always stressed the importance of collecting intelligence before taking action. And she had nothing better to do in her featureless cell.

A new shadow shifted in the room, this one mobile. Each step the figure took was marked by a loud grinding of stone.

“Get me some water,” the deep voice said.

The rough footsteps faded into the distance, then returned a moment later. She heard the man sip some water. Her mouth salivated. She wondered if she should ask for some, but decided against it. If the man knew she was awake and free of her bonds she would never learn anything.

“Tisioh fesh met,” the man said.

The second shadow stopped shifting.

As she realized she had just heard the creation and undoing of one of the stone monsters she had seen at Fort Bragg and her previous prison, fear consumed her, chasing the words from her memory. The fear was then replaced by chills. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she felt more ill.

Oh no, she thought as the reality of her situation finally sank in.

She lifted up her shirt, looking for her insulin pump. It was gone. Nausea surged with her emotions, threatening to send her to the floor. She breathed deeply, willing it to pass, and cleared her mind.

It must have fallen off when they took me, she thought.

And now she understood why she felt so awful. The dizziness. The headache. The dehydration.

Hyperglycemia.

That normally meant she’d have a week or two before things got bad, before she slipped into a coma, or worse, died. But those numbers were for people with a regular diet and food. Drinking a lot of water would help keep her system clean, but she had none. Some people lived five to six days without water, but most died in three. Already dehydrated and feeling the first effects of hyperglycemia, she doubted she’d last another day.

She tried once again to focus on the man’s words. To her frustration, she no longer remembered precisely what he’d said. Nausea coursed through her again. She fought against the urge to vomit. The effort caused her body to shake.

She moved back to her post at the slit in the wall, praying the man would say something important, hoping her father would arrive in time to put her intelligence gathering to good use. As a new voice rolled down the tunnel, rescue seemed less likely.

“We have only one more test subject,” the new, gargled voice said. “Should we send for more?”

“Not yet,” the deep voice replied. “We don’t want to draw unnecessary attention. Not until we’re ready.” There was a shifting of feet and then, “If the next one doesn’t survive we’ll use the girl.”

Fiona prayed they weren’t talking about her, but knew in her core she would soon be sitting in the dead man’s chair. What the men said next, solidified her fear.

“How will we know if she’s truly changed?”

The man fell silent for a moment and then let out a quick laugh. “This … this is perfection. What better way to punctuate King’s failure than to have his little girl put a knife through his heart. That’s our final test. She’s going to kill King.”

SIXTY-TWO

Siberia, Russia

THE FUR-COVERED CORNER seat held Rook’s weight without any trouble. And the fire burning in the nearby fireplace warmed the outside of his body as much as the vodka warmed him from within. But the creature comforts and alcohol did little to stifle the pain in his gut.

Galya was a ruthless surgeon. She had dug and cut into him without mercy, plucking the shotgun pellets from his flesh one at a time. After a grueling hour without anesthetic, she had finished and sewed him up. In the day since, he had tried to move as little as possible, lying in bed or sitting still while sipping vodka and watching Galya hustle around the cabin.

Despite her age, which she would not disclose, she was fit and energetic. She moved with efficiency and assuredness, tidying up the cabin and putting on a stew of potatoes, carrots, and meat from the reindeer she had shot and butchered.

She entered the cabin with fresh firewood, blowing on her hands to warm them. “Going to be another cold night.”

Feeling a little tipsy from all the vodka, Rook flashed her a lopsided grin and, still speaking Russian, said, “I bet I can find a way to keep you warm.”

She paused and looked at him. Her face serious and crossed with wrinkles from years of hard work. A smile spread on her face, revealing a mouth with several teeth missing. She laughed hard and sat down by the fire. “I’m more woman than you could handle, boy.”

Rook chuckled. “A real Russian bear, eh?”

Galya pulled a stool, which was nothing more than a chunk of a tree, over to the fireplace and sat down. She stretched her hands out, warming them. She grew solemn. “There was a time, when this cabin wasn’t occupied by myself alone, that that might have been true. But this bear is beyond her wild years. Now I’m just trying to live.” She looked at Rook, forcing a grin. “Not that you can really call this living. It’s closer to surviving.”

“You don’t like it here?”

“This is my home. It has been for twenty years.” She returned her gaze to the fire. “But it has been tainted since Kolya’s death two years ago. In the time since, I have kept up my duties and taken on his, simply waiting for death to rejoin us. Unfortunately for me, my mother and grandmother each lived to nearly one hundred.”

“That gives you what, another fifty years left to live?” Rook said.

She gave him a wry smile. “Still trying to get me in bed?”

Rook laughed and then winced. Even a subtle flexing of his stomach sent waves of pain through his body.

Seeing his pain, Galya stood. “We best get you back into bed.” She offered her hand to Rook and helped him stand.

Towering more than a foot over the old woman, Rook looked down at her with a wide grin. “I knew you couldn’t resist getting me in your bed.”

She swatted his chest. “Do you ever stop?”

“Not with people I like,” Rook said, though he knew the truth was far more complicated. The good company, humor, and alcohol were dulling more than just a physical pain. The memories of his teammates’ deaths were still fresh in his mind and he hoped to forget them, if only for a night.

With one arm around Rook’s back she helped him toward the bedroom. But before they reached the door, she paused. Rook noticed her attention turn swiftly toward the front windows. “Someone’s here,” she said.

The rumble of an engine grew louder and slowed with a squeak of brakes.

Adrenaline spiked inside Rook. They were here for him. “I’ll go out the back window.”

“You think it’s the men who shot you?” she asked.

“Do you get any visitors out here? Ever?”

Her frown answered the question. No.

Leaving Rook by the bedroom door, she moved to the front window and peeked out. Two men in camouflage uniforms stepped out of a black SUV. At first glance they appeared to be the very hunters Rook had spoken of, but the weapons they held—AK-74M assault rifles—identified them as Russian military. She swung around toward Rook. “You were shot by the military?”

Rook wasn’t sure if Galya would turn him in, but there was no sense in lying to her. “Yes.”

“Will they kill you now?”

Rook reached behind his back and drew his handgun. “They’ll try.”

Galya froze as indecision gripped her. The two men outside approached the cabin, weapons raised. “Don’t leave the cabin,” she told him, then reached for her rifle.

“Wait, what are you—”

“Stanislav, I’m tired of waiting.” She approached the door and stopped. Rook winced as he tried to cross the room to her. But the pain was too great. “I have a brother, Maksim Dashkov. He’s on the northern coast, in Severodvinsk. He can get you out of the country.”

Rook’s concern over Galya’s intentions diminished as it appeared she intended for him to flee out the back, as he had suggested. “You’re sure he’ll help?”

“Tell him it was my dying wish.”

As the statement sunk in, Galya opened the door, stepped outside with a friendly greeting, then raised her rifle and fired. Rook saw a puff of pink outside the window as the single shot found its mark in one of the soldier’s heads. But Galya never got off another shot. The second soldier unleashed a barrage. Many of his rounds missed and tore into the cabin, forcing Rook to duck. But five found Galya’s body. As she fell, her rifle dropped inside the cabin.

The remaining soldier, unaware of Rook’s presence, approached Galya’s body. He kept his weapon aimed at her, pushing her body with his foot. She was clearly dead, but the soldier, angered by the death of his comrade, raised his rifle and took aim at Galya’s head.

“Hey, buddy,” Rook said.

The soldier whipped toward Rook, but didn’t get a chance to fire. Rook pulled the trigger of Galya’s rifle and shot the man in the chest. He dropped his weapon and fell to his knees. He looked at Rook with a mixture of surprise and loathing before tipping forward and crashing to the pine needle–laden ground.

Rook checked Galya for signs of life despite knowing he’d find none. He placed her rifle back in her hand, closed her eyes, and kissed her cheek. “You were a bear. Thanks.”

He hated doing what followed, but Galya was a survivor. She would understand. He took what supplies he could from the cabin, including a map, a little money, food, matches and candles, and then headed out on foot. The only way his presence could remain undetected was to leave the scene of death as it was, which meant he couldn’t bury Galya’s body. The authorities had to be convinced this was a tragic misunderstanding between two soldiers and an old hermit with a rifle. Otherwise they would be fresh on his trail.

It also meant he couldn’t take the SUV. Feeling a little bit like David Banner at the end of every Incredible Hulk episode, Rook struck out walking. He headed north, toward colder weather and the possibility of freedom. He knew he could call for help and get an expedited route out of the country, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to that life. Like Galya, he needed to be alone, to search his soul, and if necessary, find a meaningful way to join the dead he’d sent to Valhalla ahead of him.

SIXTY-THREE

Washington, D.C.

BOUCHER SAT BEHIND a large antique desk, leaning back in a brown leather chair that had conformed to its owner’s thick body over time. As a result, the chair was uncomfortable. It didn’t belong to him.

Nor did the office.

And no one knew he was there. Not the secretary sitting at the desk outside the closed doors. Not a single subordinate at the CIA. Not a single security guard. He was a ghost. But that was easy to do when your security clearance granted you access to most of Washington, including security feeds, keys, and schedules.

He’d waited for fifteen minutes now, but expected company soon. If Marrs stuck to his regular morning schedule, he’d swing through these doors, no doubt feeling light on his feet, in about thirty seconds.

Boucher passed the time by scanning the office and gleaning what he could about the man. There was a painting of Arches National Park. It was decent, but plain. There were photos of family on the desk, all smiling. All posed. A map of Utah hung opposite the painting. Diplomas. Awards. Certificates. An American flag stood behind the chair. Several framed photos with world leaders and former presidents hung between the windows.

Everything in the room screamed, I care about Utah and the United States.

But it was all for show. No one who really cared about public service and the good of the people worked so hard to show it. Marrs put on a convincing show and ran his mouth like a good politician, but when it came to actions, to really doing what had to be done for the good of the people, the man was impotent.

Boucher almost got up and left. Helping Marrs in any way, even if it was the right thing to do, made him queasy. But before he could think on it, the door opened. Marrs’s silhouette filled the door.

“Maggie, why in the hell are the shades drawn?” he said.

Boucher heard an “I dunno” from the outer office. Marrs shook his head, entered, and closed the door behind him.

With a quick tug, Boucher sent the shade shooting up. It struck the top of the window frame and spun with a force that nearly launched it free. Marrs shrieked and jumped back, dropping his briefcase.

Marrs was squinting in the fresh light. “Who’s there?”

Boucher didn’t answer. He enjoyed the terrified expression on Marrs’s face. But his eyes must have adjusted to the light because he suddenly recognized his visitor. “Boucher?” Marrs circled the desk. “Don’t you have grunts to bug offices?”

“I do.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Deciding.”

Marrs picked up the phone and dialed a three-digit extension that Boucher recognized as the number for security. But he didn’t react. Didn’t need to. The phone was unplugged.

“Deciding what?” Marrs asked before putting the phone to his ear. When he heard no ringing or dial tone he knew the phone had been disconnected.

“If you’re the right person.”

Marrs had taken a step back toward the door. A bit of fear had crept back into his face.

“How about this,” Marrs said. “You can tell me what you decided from the inside of a cell. CIA chief or not, this is illegal.”

When he took another step toward the door, Boucher launched up, slid over the desk, and reached Marrs just as he was turning around to run. He took hold of the senator’s pinky and twisted it back. The man yelped as the digit neared the breaking point. Boucher pulled him back, leading him by the finger, and sat him down in a chair opposite the desk.

“Did Duncan send you to bully me? Is that it?” Marrs rubbed his finger. “I’m not going to back down.”

“I don’t want you to back down,” Boucher said, turning to the window so Marrs couldn’t see how hard these words were to say. “There’s a folder on your desk. Open it.”

Marrs looked at the desk. A folder sat at its center. He stared at it for a moment. Distrustful. But curiosity got the better of him. He leaned forward, snagged the folder, and opened it.

He froze on the first page, reading every word. When he finished, he asked, “Is this real?”

“All of it, yes.”

Marrs quickly scanned the rest of the documents.

“As you can see, I’ve been keeping a record of all the poor choices President Duncan has made. I can’t sit and watch things continue to unfold like this. I’ve … admired your passion and thought you might be the right man to take it to. The man who can do what needs to be done.”

Marrs slowly closed the folder. He looked horrified. For a moment, Boucher thought Marrs might back down. Was this too much? Did he lack the guts to really put his words into action?

“This will destroy him,” Marrs said. He wasn’t gloating. Just stunned.

But then a smile began to show. He was up to it all right. “You’ll testify in support of this?”

Boucher knelt down, picked up the phone line, and reconnected it to the wall jack. “I will.”

Marrs picked up the phone and dialed a three-digit number. A phone on the other side of the office door rang once before being answered. “Call a press conference,” Marrs said. “Get me everyone. Tell them I have proof.”

Boucher heard the secretary’s voice through the door. “About what?”

“About everything.”

SIXTY-FOUR

Haifa, Israel

“WE DON’T HAVE time for this,” King said in frustration. His concern for Fiona coupled with the soaring temperature in the makeshift warehouse lab made him impatient.

“We’ll find her,” Queen assured him, her confidence unwavering, but her own thoughts half a world away with Rook.

“Tell me again what we have,” King said.

Knight looked over several photos that had been spread out on the table. He had taken them before leaving El Mirador. They showed the cuneiform scrawled on the walls beneath la Danta pyramid. “Cuneiform. We can’t read it, but we know its origin is in Sumer. That coupled with the oversized sandfish you bagged points to Iraq.”

“Which is a big country with plenty of places to hide,” King said.

“And with all the troops still stationed there, one of the last places we would think to find someone hiding from us,” Bishop added.

King looked at Davidson, who was waiting for test results at a laptop. “How long, Professor?”

“A few more minutes.” He turned to King. “I’ve been thinking. The level of violence you have described is beyond anything attributed to golems before. They’ve been killers, to be sure, but the wholesale killing of thousands is unheard of.”

“What’s your point?” Alexander said. His voice had been tinged with impatience since the confrontation with King.

“A warning I suppose. Back in my office—which no longer exists, thank you—I mentioned the cycle of, what’s the right word? Evil. The cycle of evil is said to be transferred from master to golem upon creation and from the golem to master after it has killed.”

“Black hearts,” Alexander said. “I remember.”

“From what I’ve heard, this Ridley character was dark to begin with.”

“The darkest,” Knight said. “He’s willing to kill anyone and do anything to achieve his goals.”

King eyed Alexander. Was he any different? Had he committed unforgivable crimes in the past? There was no way to know. The man had spent a lifetime covering his tracks and erasing himself from history.

“Then the first golems made would have contained that lack of regard for human life. And they’ve killed thousands over the past year?”

King nodded. He could see where Davidson’s line of thought led. “And all of that death, all of that evil, has been transferred back to Ridley.”

“Exactly,” Davidson said. “However evil your man started out, I assure you he is now much worse.”

“He is nothing,” Alexander mumbled.

King wasn’t sure what to make of the statement, but Queen had already shifted gears.

“When you said we should call Ridley Adam,” Queen said to Davidson. “Were you referring to the biblical Adam?”

“Who was molded from clay and given life through the breath, some would say the words, of God. To breathe something into being is to speak it into being. Yes, that Adam.” Davidson adjusted his glasses. “Which I find quite disturbing. Animating a golem is one thing. It’s simply animating a nonliving thing. We do it all the time with vehicles, robotics. Along with artificial intelligence we can create animated creations that are far more lifelike than an actual golem, though they are far less durable and coordinated.

“But what you described with this Richard Ridley fellow goes beyond that. Using clay, his creator imbued him with what appeared to be genuine life. He was intelligent. He could speak. He emoted and coexisted with a population of people for days without raising suspicions. As amazing as this is, it is also an abomination. That Ridley is using the protolanguage to create nearly human copies of himself is narcissistic in the extreme.”

“We already knew he had a god complex,” Knight said.

“No,” King said. “A man who can give and take life, who can cure nations or destroy them, who can perform the very act of creation, doesn’t have a god complex. He wants to be God.”

“I don’t understand how clay can become human,” Knight said. “It doesn’t sound possible.”

“Even the science world acknowledges that clay had a likely hand in the creation of life,” Davidson said. “Though I disagree with the concept of accidental, random creation, there are many who believe clay catalyzed the formation of organic molecules. Take hydrothermal vents for example, life is supported there, not just by the heat provided by the vents but also the vast amount of clay surrounding them and expelled by them. I agree it’s a stretch, but clay seems to be at the center of both religious and scientific theories on the creation of life.”

“And so we end up with golems that can create golems?” Queen asked.

“I think you might need to consider a new term for the Ridley duplicates. While they return to clay after being … killed, they are not simply inanimate objects given the illusion of life. They are alive. And capable of speech. Thus capable of using the same protolanguage to create more golems.”

King’s phone rang. He answered it quickly and listened to the voice on the other end. “So we’ll know if he enters any other countries?” King asked. “Good. Thanks for letting me know.”

He hung up the phone and looked at the others. “That was Boucher. Ridley—both of them—were traveling under aliases using fake passports.” He looked at Knight. “Your man at El Mirador was Enoch Richardson.” He turned to Alexander. “Our man from Stonhenge was Mahaleel Richardson.”

“They used the same last name?” Knight asked.

“Richardson,” Bishop said. “Son of Richard.”

“He’s naming them after himself,” Queen said. “Like they’re his children.”

Davidson stepped closer to the group, his expression grim. “I’m afraid their names reveal much more than the paternal feelings Ridley may have for his creations. Enoch and Mahaleel are both descendants of Adam—the biblical Adam—in a very specific genealogy leading up to Abraham and eventually to King David.”

“And if you believe in it,” Alexander said, “to Jesus Christ.”

Davidson conceded the point with a nod. “But what is important to note is that he is naming these golems using a very specific bloodline that leads back to the creator.” He turned to King. “Your earlier assessment was correct, he believes himself a god. And if he is naming them using this genealogy, you can assume there are at least six more of these Ridley golems.”

“Six more?” King asked.

“Enoch is the seventh in line,” Davidson said. “Before him are Jared, Mahaleel, Cainan, Enos, Seth, and Adam.”

Something nagged at King. Ridley wouldn’t put in so much time and effort, and risk exposing himself, without something significant to be gained. He could already live forever. Like Alexander, with time he could do anything and become anyone. The world was his eternal playground. There had to be more, something missing, something bigger. Something Alexander said during their confrontation finally clicked.

You have yet to fully realize what is at stake.

He turned to Alexander. “What do you know?”

Alexander looked indifferent.

“Tell me or you’re out.”

Alexander chuckled, but acquiesced. “You need to think bigger, King. Imagine the world laid out before you. You can mold it. It can be anything you want—a chessboard, a simulation, an escape. Given time and intelligence, it can be anything you want it to be.”

King felt his back tense up. For the first time he was hearing exactly how Alexander viewed the world.

“Now imagine you’re an impatient man not accustomed to the concept of eternity. A thousand years to remake the world is nine hundred ninety-nine years too many.”

“You’re saying he wants to remake the world?” Knight asked, sounding doubtful. “The whole world?”

Alexander met him with a hard stare. “Were I a less patient man, I would do the same.”

The room fell silent as everyone in it reconsidered their alliances.

“But how?” Davidson asked, not understanding what Alexander implied. “Replace political figures with copies? Maybe just change the personalities of key people? How could he change the world?”

“You’re still thinking small,” Alexander said. “Up until twenty years ago it wouldn’t have been possible. There is no fixed rule with the mother tongue. It is the unique sounds of the language that affects the changes to reality. Not the speaker.”

“He’s right,” Davidson said. “A recording of the language would work just as well.”

“Or a broadcast,” King said, the full picture slamming home. With modern technology and the ancient tongue the world really could be remade, and in far less time than seven days. “He’s going to remake the world.”

The beep that came from the computer was quiet, but grabbed everyone’s attention like it was an atom bomb. Davidson spun toward the computer screen. Alexander stood over his shoulder, looking at the results.

“Amazing,” Davidson whispered.

“What is it?” King asked.

“There are traces of human DNA in the clay,” Alexander replied.

“Have you compared it to Ridley’s profile?” Knight asked.

“Hold on,” Davidson said, fingers working the keys. “If it’s a match, it shouldn’t take lo—”

The results appeared on the screen, showing two sets of DNA markers. They were identical. “They’re the same,” Davidson said, stunned. “I was right. This clay wasn’t just an animated form resembling Richard Ridley, it was Richard Ridley.”

He turned to Alexander, and then to King. “He was alive.”

The silence that filled the room was broken by the ring of King’s cell phone. The ID read Lewis Aleman. King answered the phone. “What have you got, Lew?”

“Last piece of the puzzle I hope,” Aleman replied, his response delayed by a second. “I’ve been running the chemical composition of the clay recovered from El Mirador through our system. And, well, I found a match.” He quickly followed with, “But it doesn’t make sense.”

“Just tell me where it’s from,” King said.

“Camp Alpha.”

The name’s familiarity struck King instantly. It was the title of the U.S. military base established in the ruins of Babylon that had been rebuilt by Saddam Hussein. A large number of servicemen were stationed there, including a regiment of marines. Babylon made sense, being the origin of the Tower of Babel story, but it was also the last place anyone would think to look. “You’re sure?”

“Yup. It’s straight from the Euphrates River, and I can peg it to Camp Alpha because of the unique contaminants it contains, courtesy of the U.S. of A.”

Queen saw the bewildered look on King’s face. “What did he find?”

“The clay is from Camp Alpha.”

“Babylon,” Davidson said.

Knight shook his head. “But how is he—”

“The tower,” Alexander said. “He’s found the Tower of Babel. He’s not at Camp Alpha. He’s under it.”

A sudden boom of metal coupled with the implosion of the warehouse’s metal roof made them forget all about the discovery. Large sheets of steel broke free and fell at them like giant playing cards. Honed by years of action, the instincts of the people in the room saved their lives. All but one of them managed to leap away as the giant blades fell from above.

A slender sheet of metal fluttered high above Davidson for a moment, held aloft by its surface area. But Davidson, whose reaction was to flinch away and raise his hands, remained in the same position as the metal sheet tilted to one side and slid down like a guillotine. It sliced off his hand at the forearm. He opened his mouth to scream, but the sheet then struck between his shoulder and neck, shaving off a side of ribs and penetrating down to his gut. The weight of the giant metal playing card pulled him over. King saw the man, nearly cleaved in half. Davidson was dead.

“This way!” Alexander shouted, leading the team out the back as a very large, unseen attacker pounded through the roof and made short work of the lab beneath.

They exited through the back door into an alleyway where a very out of place black Mercedes waited for them. A moment later, the back wall of the warehouse fell in. King looked back to see a golem, constructed from a mishmash of metal from the warehouse, a car, and chunks of pavement, rise up, ready to strike the building once more. “In!” he shouted, opening the Mercedes’s back door. The team piled in and Alexander had them screeching down the alley in moments. The golem, as big as it was, would never catch them.

Alexander stopped the car at the end of the alley and looked back. The golem was trying to force its way through the tangled ruins of the warehouse. He took a phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. He looked back again. A moment later the golem disappeared in a ball of fire that consumed the entire warehouse, destroying everything inside—the samples, lab equipment, and Davidson.

As they drove away, King took a moment to mourn the death of Davidson, who had lost his life for something that wasn’t his problem. Then he focused on the nagging question that entered his mind the moment the attack had begun: How did he find us?

The answer came quickly. He turned to Alexander. “Check your pockets. Your phone. Everything. One of us is being tracked.”

Alexander pulled the car over. Despite the strange scene of two men patting themselves down by the side of the road, no one paid them any attention. All eyes were on the rising column of smoke.

King had searched most of his body when he realized that the only article of clothing he had yet to change since his search for Fiona had begun was his cargo pants. He’d checked the pockets first, but neglected the cargo pockets lower on his leg. He could feel the aberration as he reached for it. He took hold of the small object and pulled it from his pocket. It was the size and shape of a Tylenol capsule.

Alexander saw him holding it. “Destroy it.”

King took it in both hands and snapped it in half. The fragile electronics within fell to the road.

They entered the car again without a word shared. King sat with his arms crossed. He now knew how Ridley managed to stay one step ahead of him and Alexander while the others were able to catch him with his guard down. He knew why they’d been attacked so quickly at the university and in the warehouse. But there was one question nagging at him: Who had put the tracking device in his pocket, and when?

SIXTY-FIVE

Babylon, Iraq

AS THE HUMMER door closed with a metallic clunk, King shook a storm of sand from his hair. Upon exiting the aircraft they had been greeted by a wall of airborn sand. It coated their clothing, filled their hair, and crunched between their teeth. Had the Republican Guard been as numerous and relentless, an invasion of Iraq would never have been possible. Luckily for the team, which now consisted of King, Queen, Knight, Bishop, and Alexander, the sand was only an annoyance.

The heat was the real enemy. Though dry, the temperature was unbearable in the afternoon sun. Moisture was wicked away from the body as soon as it was sweat. The team carried water bottles with them, drinking constantly to keep dehydration at bay. They felt their journey was nearing an end, which meant a confrontation loomed on the horizon, and each one of them would need their strength.

The trip to Iraq had been quick and comfortable aboard Alexander’s Gulfstream jet. Getting clearance to land had been easy, thanks to Deep Blue, and the Hummer waiting for them was fully gassed and holding their requested supplies. Energy bars and water were consumed en route. Desert camouflage uniforms were provided so they could move about Babylon without raising too much attention. And a cache of weapons, including five XM25 assault rifles. The XM25s weren’t scheduled for active-duty usage until 2012, but they’d been tested successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2009. They were the future in handheld warfare, able to shoot both standard rounds and 25mm rounds that could explode after a specific distance determined by the weapon’s laser site. Hiding in a ditch or behind a wall offered no protection when up against the XM25’s smart rounds, which King hoped would also provide the punch necessary for fending off any stone golems.

Two hours after touching down, King pulled onto the road leading toward Camp Alpha’s checkpoint gate. He’d waited long enough to broach this topic, but it could no longer be avoided. If Alexander tagged along with the team, he needed a call sign so anonymity could be retained. “You’re call sign will be Pawn for the duration of this mission,” King said to Alexander, who immediately burst out laughing.

“It’s the call sign every temporary team member gets,” Bishop said.

“It’s the irony I find amusing,” Alexander said. “I’m not opposed to the title. Pawn it is.”

They passed a local bazaar full of brightly colored trinkets perfect for U.S. soldiers wanting to send home exotic gifts. The man behind the table gave them a smile and salute as they passed. Palm trees lined the road on both sides, obscuring the view of ancient ruins off to the right.

Ignoring the sites, King pulled up to the Camp Alpha checkpoint. He flashed the ID that had been provided for him.

Corporal Tyler, a young, crew-cut soldier with a southern drawl and matching cowboy swagger, approached from the gatehouse. He looked at the ID then at the passengers in the car, noting the odd mix of Korean, Arab, Caucasian, and Greek passengers. “Mind if I check this out?” he asked, taking King’s ID

“Go right ahead,” King said.

Tyler walked back into the gatehouse and closed the door behind him. His skinny partner, Corporal Stevens, waited for him inside. He took the ID and looked at it.

“USGS, my ass,” Stevens said. “We’re supposed to believe those guys are geologists?”

Tyler worked a laptop, typing in King’s phony information. “You don’t buy it?”

“No way, man. Look at them.”

Both soldiers looked out the brown-tinged windows and saw King and Queen watching them from the Hummer. Tyler’s stomach tensed with intimidation.

“Geez,” Tyler whispered.

“You see, they’re way too badass,” Stevens said. “Twenty bucks says they’re Rangers or Delta.”

The results of Tyler’s search appeared on screen. “Well, according to the database, they’re from the USGS. They check out and have clearance.”

“You gonna ask them?” Stevens said. “Twenty bucks, man.”

After activating the gate, Tyler grunted, took the ID, and headed back out to the Hummer. “You’re all set, sir.” As he handed the ID back to King, Tyler noticed Queen’s window was now rolled down.

“You have twenty bucks?” she asked, holding out her hand.

Tyler looked dumbfounded, but still being intimidated, reached into his pants pocket and took out a twenty-dollar bill. Queen snagged it and handed the money to King. “He bet me you wouldn’t have the guts to ask if we were Delta. And since I have no money on me and you lost me that bet, you’re paying.”

Tyler was stunned and it showed on his face.

“We can read lips,” Queen said as King began to pull through the open gate. She flashed a smile. “Everyone at the USGS can. Now go pay your friend.”

Tyler walked back to the gatehouse and sat down on the single step. Stevens stood next to him, equally dumbfounded. “That was awesome.”

Tyler gave a nod. “Yup.”

* * *

KING PULLED THE Hummer through and slowed as he approached a bend in the road. The Ishtar Gate stood before them. The original Ishtar Gate had been one of the seven ancient wonders of the world before being replaced by the Great Lighthouse at Alexandria. The original gate stood forty-seven feet tall, was constructed of blue bricks, and held over sixty yellow and white mosaic lions and dragons. Its central arch was the eighth gate into Babylon’s inner city.

As King looked at Saddam’s smaller replica and pondered its history, he realized they had been driving over the buried ruins of Babylon for some time. The area they had to search was expansive, but hopefully not without some clues. Past the Ishtar Gate, King pulled the Hummer into a dirt parking lot full of military vehicles. He parked in front of the amphitheater where the U.S. military had first set up shop.

They were quickly greeted by General Raymond Fowler, who had been briefed by General Keasling. They were to have free access to the ruins in and around the base, access to any equipment they requested, and, should they ask for it, the help of every enlisted man on base. The general had protested the orders until he found out they came directly from President Duncan.

King exited the Hummer and squinted as the hot sandy Iraqi air assaulted him again. He gave Fowler a quick salute and shook his hand. Seeing the man’s skepticism, King said, “Sorry for the intrusion, General. We’ll try to be out of your hair as soon as possible.”

The general forced a smile, which turned a scar on his cheek into an upside-down question mark, and hung on to King’s hand. “That’s kind of you, son. But I’d like to know if you all are going to stir up a hornet’s nest in my base.”

“Sir?”

“I know who you are. I know that you were a part of what happened back at Bragg. I need to know if I should expect something similar here.”

King took no offense at the general’s forceful tone and the strong grip he maintained. “We hope not, sir. But … it might be best to keep your men on alert. We’re not sure what we’re going to find”—King looked at the sandy ruins—“out there.”

Fowler let go of King’s hand. “Appreciate the candor. Will you need armed escorts?”

King shook his head, no. “We need to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible. Best if no one gives us any special attention.”

“Understood,” Fowler said. “What can I do for you?”

“Just keep the ruins clear while we’re out there.”

“Are you looking for something in particular? We’ve been stationed here since 2003 and know every nook and cranny of the ruins.”

“What we’re after is most likely beneath the ruins.”

Fowler looked out at the ruins with suspicion in his eyes. Then he recalled something. “An archaeological team had been studying the ruins before we arrived. They were part of Saddam’s effort to rebuild Babylon and were searching for the more famous monuments, like the Hanging Gardens.”

King tried to show no reaction. If they had been searching for the Hanging Gardens it’s possible they had also been searching for Babel. “That may be helpful. Knight, Bishop, why don’t you check it out? We’ll start in the ruins. General, do you know if the archaeologists working here are still around?”

“Two of the lead archaeologists are dead,” Fowler said. “One is missing. But much of the support staff is still here in Baghdad. I’ll see who I can track down.”

King gave a nod of thanks. He headed for the back of the Hummer, opened the trunk, and handed XM25s to Bishop and Knight. “Keep your ears and eyes open. If you find something that points us in a direction, let me know.”

“You got it, boss,” Knight said before turning to the general. “After you.”

Fowler gave the weapons a long look before he turned and walked away. “This way.”

As Fowler led Knight and Bishop away, King turned back to the open Hummer and took out the most important piece of equipment they had with them. With the war in Afghanistan requiring better cave detecting equipment, the military had been borrowing technology from NASA’s Mars program. The result were handheld Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors (QWIPs), which could see through the desert sand and collect thermal data. The resulting images were called thermograms. They showed the difference in temperature between desert sand or bedrock and the open space of a cave, or in this case, the open chamber of a buried tower. Since the user wore the device on the left hand—sensor in the palm facedown, images displayed on the forearm-mounted LCD display—King and his team could also carry their weapons without a problem.

Armed with the most high-tech handheld weapons and technology the military had, King, Queen, and Alexander set off for the ruins of Babylon.

SIXTY-SIX

Babylon, Iraq

KING TOOK A drink from the twenty-ounce bottle he’d been nursing for the past two hours. He knew he needed to get more liquid soon, but with Fiona’s insulin deadline long since up, he had to stretch the water as far as possible. And right now, that meant walking a grid over a very large area of desert. He had a second bottle with him meant for Fiona if he managed to find her. But if the day went long, he’d have no choice but to start on the second bottle.

To anyone watching he would look like a delirious soldier with a penchant for checking the time as he kept his eyes on the LCD display on his arm. He had come across several air pockets but no actual caves, and certainly no ziggurat remains. While Queen and Alexander searched the maze of ruins in Babylon proper, King had pursued a different path. Between the bank of the Euphrates River and the exposed Babylonian ruins stood one of many palaces built by Saddam Hussein. A spiraling road rounded the tall mound it stood on. Built from brown stone, it was utilitarian save for the thick arches that surrounded the building and gave it a genuine Babylonian feel. Much of the symmetrical hill was clearly man-made, but Saddam was known for building atop Babylonian ruins with no regard for what lay beneath. And when it came to his palaces, he had no trouble burying the past. What King wanted to know was how much of the hill existed before Saddam added to it. To find out, he’d push the QWIP to its limits.

As he walked up the side of the hill, he activated his throat mic. “Find anything yet, Bishop?”

Bishop’s voice returned. “Not a thing, but that’s not because there isn’t anything here, it’s because there’s too much.”

“We’re drowning in old maps and notebooks,” Knight said.

King had hoped intel would expedite the search, but it seemed finding anything useful in the archaeological archives was as much a needle in a haystack as finding a temple underground with thermal imaging. As he crossed the spiraling road and headed up the hillside, King watched the thermal imager. It showed solid earth all the way through.

As the monotony of the image continued, he looked ahead. Brush and the occasional palm tree covered the hillside. He adjusted his path to avoid a tree and then looked to the west, over the Euphrates. From this high vantage point he could see the desert stretching out in all directions. It was massive—like a tan ocean speckled with floating ruins and carved by modern roads. Fiona was somewhere out there.

As his patience began to fade, King noticed a hill on the other side of the river. Small ruins sat at its base. He toggled his mic again. “Bishop, did Babylon expand to the other side of the Euphrates?”

“Hold on…” King could hear rustling paper and Knight’s voice in the background. “Yeah. Looks like a good portion of it did.”

“That’s all I needed to know.” King broke contact and gave up on his current search. He turned and made for the bottom of the hill, where a U.S. military boat launch had been built. Three black patrol boats were tied to the docks, each with a mounted machine gun.

As King approached the dock, a lone soldier stomped out a cigarette and blew the smoke from the side of his mouth. “You one of them USGS fellas I’m supposed to assist if asked?”

“How’d you know?” King said.

“Been watching you walk back and forth with your head turned toward the ground for an hour now. Only two types of people do that. The clinically depressed and people in love with dirt. You ain’t depressed are you?”

King grinned. “Not yet.”

“You spend too much time out here and I promise you will be.” He gave a smile that revealed a set of nicotine-stained teeth. “Name’s Bowers. What can I do you for?”

“I need a ferryman,” King said.

“Going to the other side of the Euphrat is like crossing the River Styx,” Bowers said.

“How’s that?”

“Ain’t nobody over there to save you. You’ll be on your own.”

“Not quite,” King said with a grin. “You’re going to wait for me.”

Bowers stepped aboard the nearest boat. “Well shit, this will be the most I’ve done in weeks.”

King boarded the boat and they cast off. They crossed the river quickly, beaching the craft on the sandy bank. As King stepped out of the boat and onto shore, Bowers took note of the XM25. His mouth opened a little. “Geologist, my ass. What the hell are you looking for?”

“Just be ready for anything,” King said with a glance at the machine gun. “Anything.”

“You got it,” Bowers said and began loading the machine gun. “How will I know what to shoot?”

King looked back as he hiked up the sand toward the ruins and the small hill beyond. “Odds are it won’t be human.”

* * *

THE DIM LIGHT in the barracks-turned-storage shed was hardly enough to see by, so Bishop had propped open the door allowing the sun to light the room. Unfortunately, it also allowed gritty sand to swirl inside with every gust of hot wind. They did their best to ignore the air quality and focus on combing through boxes of archaeological data.

And there was enough to keep them occupied for days. Knight spent his time going over maps. Though he couldn’t read a word of Arabic, he could clearly see that there were no ancient ziggurats drawn on any maps. Bishop combed through the notebooks, skimming each entry for keywords. Thus far he’d found nothing.

Bishop and Knight were so intent on their work that neither noticed the men who entered the barracks until they closed the door. Knight turned as their light was cut in half. With his hand now on his rifle, Knight focused on the door where an Iraqi man dressed in brown pants and a white button-down shirt stood. General Fowler stood behind him.

“We tracked down one of the men involved in the pre-2003 excavations. He might be able to help make sense of all this,” Fowler said, motioning to the stacks of boxes. “Let me know when you’re finished with him and we’ll send an escort. Now if you’ll excuse me, my attention is needed elsewhere.”

Fowler left quickly, leaving a nervous-looking Iraqi standing in the middle of the room.

“What’s your name?” Knight asked.

“Rahim, sir. My English not so good.”

Without standing or turning around to greet the newcomer, Bishop said, in perfect Arabic, “You were a part of the Babylonian excavations, Rahim?”

Rahim replied in Arabic. “I was an assistant to one of the archaeologists. I was here for three years.”

“Do you know of the Tower of Babel?” Bishop asked.

“We searched for it for years,” the man said, growing excited.

“And?”

“It’s not here.”

Bishop stopped paging through the journal in his hands. He closed it, stood, and turned around. Rahim stumbled back away from Bishop, his eyes fearful. The military hardness of Bishop combined with his muscles and shaved head no doubt brought back memories of times when men like Bishop were to be feared.

“You’re Iraqi?” Rahim asked.

“I was born in Iran,” Bishop said.

This only deepened Rahim’s fear.

Bishop showed a relaxed smile. “But I was raised in America. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Rahim’s fear eased a little, but he didn’t take his eyes off Bishop for very long.

The conversation was interrupted by King’s voice in their ears. Rahim looked at them like they were insane as Bishop and Knight stopped everything and listened. Then Bishop turned to him. “You said the tower isn’t here?”

Rahim nodded. “We scoured the whole site with ground-penetrating radar. We found many exciting sites, but no ziggurats large enough to fit the profile of the Tower of Babel. But some of the team believed the tower lay elsewhere, outside of Babylon.”

“What is beneath the mound on the opposite side of the river?” Bishop asked.

The man’s head snapped up, his face excited. “We never got a chance to dig, but the archaeologists suspected it was the Hanging Gardens.”

“The Hanging Gardens,” Bishop said to Knight in English.

Knight relayed the information. “King, a man from the original dig is here. He’s saying that the Tower of Babel isn’t here, and that the site you’re checking out might be—”

A burst of static cut him off.

“King. King? Do you copy?” Knight looked at Bishop. The only reason King wouldn’t reply was if he couldn’t.

“Rahim, we need you to show us where this mound is,” Bishop said.

* * *

A HALF MILE away on the opposite side of the Euphrates River, atop a mound of sand, the only trace of King’s presence was a divot in the earth. With each passing moment, the wind filled the hole with fresh sand. Less than a minute after King was sucked into the earth, no trace of him remained—except for his XM25 assault rifle.

SIXTY-SEVEN

Severodvinsk, Russia

THE CITY OF Severodvinsk was not what Rook expected, not this far north. In some ways it reminded him of Portsmouth, New Hampshire—built on the coast, home to a submarine yard, featuring an old fishing culture still eking out a living—but Portsmouth’s population was closer to thirty thousand. Severodvinsk supported a population of nearly two hundred thousand.

Not that he minded the crowded streets. It made hiding in the open that much easier. Being a major naval hub, the city was full of military men, some in uniform, more in plainclothes. Despite wanting a stiff drink, Rook avoided the pubs and stuck to coffee shops, all the while searching for the one man who might be able to help him: Maksim Dashkov.

After leaving Galya’s cabin, he had hiked five miles before making it to a main route. Heading north, he caught a ride with a truck driver with a shipment destined for the sub yard. He’d been dropped off in the center of town an hour ago.

The coffee shop bell jangled as Rook entered. He smiled at the heavyset woman behind the counter and ordered a coffee. Black. He paid with money taken from Galya’s cabin and headed for a table. Halfway to the table, as though an afterthought, he asked, “Do you have a phone directory I could borrow?”

The woman nodded, bent down behind the counter, and reemerged with a directory.

Rook reached for it with a smile. “Thanks.”

But when he tried to take it from the woman, she held on tight. “One hundred fifty.”

One hundred fifty rubles was just a little over five dollars U.S., but it was still a lot for using the phone book. When Rook gave her a questioning look, she added, “Times are hard. People drink more vodka than coffee.”

Rook paid her and smiled. “I should have got cream and sugar.”

“Those are extra, too,” the woman said as he sat down with the phone directory. Thirty seconds later he had a phone number and address for Maksim Dashkov.

Rook stood to leave, but saw three men in uniform standing outside the shop. It was doubtful he’d be recognized, but on the off chance he was, he was in no condition to fight his way past two hundred thousand Russians.

He gave the woman at the counter his most winning smile and said, “How much for a phone call?”

The woman picked up the phone and placed it on the counter. “Five more.”

Rook gave her the last of his money, picked up the phone, and dialed. It was answered on the third ring by a man with a rough voice.

“Maksim Dashkov?” Rook said.

Suspicion filled the man’s voice. “Yes, who is this?”

“A friend of Galya’s.”

“Galya,” the man said in a whisper. “I haven’t heard from her in two years. How is she?”

Rook wasn’t sure how the man would respond, but he deserved the truth. “She’s dead.”

“Dead? How?”

“I can’t tell you that now,” Rook said, looking out the window at the three sailors. “But her dying wish was for you to help me.”

There was a pause on the other end. Then the man spoke. “Where are you?”

SIXTY-EIGHT

Babylon, Iraq

THE LAST THING King remembered was looking down at his feet and seeing them disappear beneath the sand. He dropped his weapon as he reached out for some nearby brush, but was unable to reach it. Then he was in the earth, swallowed down and shat out. After falling ten feet, he struck his head on something solid and lost consciousness.

He awoke with a throbbing pain on the side of his head and a scratching thirst in his throat. Other than the colors dancing in his vision, he could see nothing. The pain grew worse when he remembered the last words he’d heard from Knight.

The Tower of Babel isn’t here.

If this isn’t the tower, King thought, then where am I?

In the darkness he found his small Maglite flashlight and turned it on, keeping its beam close to the stone floor. In the dim light he touched his hand to the raw spot of his head. He felt a sharp sting as the salt from his hand made contact with the wound. But there was very little blood on his hand, which meant the wound wasn’t bad.

He turned the flashlight on the wall and found a solid brown surface. Columns built into the stone rose from floor to ceiling every few feet, but appeared more decorative than supportive as they were hewn from the stone that made the wall. King aimed his flashlight up at the ceiling. It, too, was solid brown stone, but there was a sand- and stone-filled gap above him. More sand surrounded his body on the floor.

Standing over the weak spot, King had provided just enough pressure to loosen the sand. He’d been sucked down into the tunnel before it sealed above him again.

He stood with the flashlight in hand and looked for his rifle. Not seeing it, he remembered its fate. Damnit, he thought, and then drew his Sig Sauer handgun.

Leading with the light and gun, King walked down the tunnel. He wanted, more than anything, to find a way out and continue the search for Fiona, but what if Knight had been wrong? What if this was the Tower of Babel? He had to be sure.

He slowed as his flashlight revealed a large opening on the left side of the tunnel. He stopped at the corner and listened. He heard nothing, but the air smelled of stone, and something else.

Something fresh.

Something dead.

He chanced a glance with his flashlight and found a large open chamber. A clamshell staircase descended into a large atrium. A dried up tile pool sat at the center of the space. Large stone boxes descended on both sides of the staircase, filled with ancient soil. It was clear to King that they once held large plants or trees, and as he looked around the space, he tried to imagine it in its former glory. Flowers and trees surrounded the atrium. Water flowed from the lion’s head, into the pool. Sun shown down from above, warming the stone.

He looked up at the stone ceiling. It was smooth and unnatural. Then he realized this whole space should be full of sand. The desert had claimed the structure long ago, but someone had hollowed out the insides and fortified the ceiling somehow.

Not someone, King thought, Ridley.

He took the stairs to the atrium floor, which held a mural of a naked, bearded man; his arms wrapped around two bulls standing on their hind legs, whose faces and beards matched the man’s. Several marble statues stood around the outer perimeter of the space. They were tall and straight, hands clasped together beneath rigid beards. Their oversized eyes were inlaid with deep blue lapis lazuli.

Staring into those blue eyes, King felt a chill. Someone was in the room with him. Watching him. He could feel it. He scanned every corner, lit every shadow, but saw no one. His senses told him he was alone, but something else, perhaps a sixth sense, shouted otherwise.

Three arched doorways led out of the atrium, one to the left, one to the right, and one straight ahead. Each was girded by ancient carvings depicting goats, lions, giant eagles with outstretched wings, and large lizards. After a quick check of the three exits, King hurried through the center tunnel, eager to leave the atrium and its sinister feel behind. The central branch led to a second staircase that descended deeper into the buried structure.

As he reached the bottom of the long staircase, King came to a large mural. It was faded horribly, but he could make out a glowing building covered with arches, staircases, and hanging plants and trees. Then he recognized the central atrium as the one he’d passed through. He took a deep breath through his nose as he realized he was standing inside the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

That same sniff also detected a foul odor. It smelled similarly to what he’d caught traces of in the atrium, but was much stronger. King rounded the corner in the next chamber slowly. The room was circular, surrounded by columns and tall statues similar to those in the atrium.

Detecting no movement or sound within the room, King moved inside. At the center of the room were several wooden tables. They looked old, but far from ancient. The dirty floor was covered in scuff marks. A glint of something shiny caught his attention. He squatted down and picked the object up.

Broken glass.

Modern glass.

Then he saw more. Food wrappers. Discarded water bottles. A pile of discarded tea. Definitely Ridley. The man loved fresh tea. King knelt by the tea. It looked wet, but a quick touch revealed it was a dry and flaky mass. King kicked the tea, breaking it open and felt the core. Bone dry. Ridley had been gone for some time.

“Damnit,” King whispered.

A larger piece of paper caught his attention. It looked like it had fallen out of a notebook and slid beneath one of the tables, perhaps forgotten in a rush to leave. He picked it up and turned it over. The page had handwritten notes. King recognized Ridley’s handwriting. At the top of the page was written, WHO IS HE???

Below that was a series of quick chicken scratch notes. He was able to pick out a word here and there: ancient, god, historical figures, human (?), lost, the bell, dimension, Hercules(?).

King paused. Ridley was trying to identify Alexander. With the name Hercules on this page, he seemed to be doing a fairly good job. Part of King wished more was revealed on the page, and another part didn’t want the answers. King folded the piece of paper and placed it in his pocket. After someone deciphered Ridley’s handwriting he might glean more from the page.

He stood and looked down at the tabletop. What he saw twisted his stomach and locked his feet to the ground. Part of him was thrilled because it meant he was on the right track. But the shattered remains of Fiona’s insulin pump also filled him with dread. When did it break? If it happened days ago she could already be close to death. How did it break? The thing looked smashed. If she had been wearing it when this happened, she could be seriously injured and hyperglycemic. King picked up the fractured device and squeezed it, turning his knuckles white. He was so close.

An echoed sound rolled into the chamber. Distant and organic. A high-pitched whine. Had something heard him? And if so, what was it? The sound came again. King strained to hear it clearly.

It sounded like a girl.

Hoping Fiona had been left behind, or had escaped, King pocketed the ruined pump and headed for the tunnel at the opposite side of the chamber. The hallway sloped downward. The walls held murals and carvings, but none captured his attention. He kept his light and weapon aimed forward and moved as quickly as he could without making noise.

As he reached the bottom of the tunnel where it opened up into a larger space, a second cry sounded. This one was very close and decidedly not human. King tensed and covered his flashlight with his fingers to dim the beam. He peeked around the corner.

It took all his strength to not react.

A body lay on the floor, bloody and torn apart.

Standing around it were several large sandfish. Their tails snapped back and forth as they fought for position around the body. Intent on their meal, none of them noticed him. He rolled back into the tunnel. Ridley had gone, but he’d left behind some pets.

And a snack for them.

Needing to know if the body was Fiona’s, King rolled out again and peered toward the scene, trying his best to make out features in the low light. He got his answer when one of the large sandfish nipped at the smallest. It leaped away, revealing the victim’s head.

It was another sandfish.

With no other food around, they were cannibalizing each other.

But King’s relief was quickly replaced by dread. When the small lizard jumped away, it gave the sandfish on the other side a clear view of King. It stared at him indifferently, chewing on a chunk of flesh. Then, without any show of emotion, it charged.

As it tore over its brothers and sisters, the sandfish took their attention away from their meal. They turned and saw King as well. Seeing a fresh source of food, the pack discarded their slain brother and joined the charge. Nine eight-foot-long sandfish, each with razor-sharp teeth, the ability to taste the air and swim through sand, were now hunting King. Only the smallest of the group remained behind, enjoying an unusually easy meal.

As the wall of running lizards approached, King’s mind rifled through his choices. With three grenades on hand, he could drop a few and run. But without knowing how well supported these ruins were he risked bringing them all down on his head. He could try shooting each of the monsters in the head—he had enough rounds—but had no idea if a bullet to the brain could stop them. In the end, his instincts formed a simple three-word plan for him.

Run, run, run!

The upward sloping tunnel made King’s acceleration much slower than he would have preferred. If the sandfish pack hadn’t snapped and fought for position as they gave chase, King wouldn’t have made it ten feet.

They entered the tunnel behind him like a wave of flesh, roiling up onto the wall before settling back to the tunnel floor. As they ran, their clawed feet arched wide, occasionally slashing their neighbor’s side or limbs. But the pain and smell of blood in the air only added to their frenzy.

King glanced back and again considered using a grenade. He might be buried alive with them. As they gained, he decided that being crushed to death was preferable to being devoured. Once he was out of the tight confines of the tunnel, he would toss one of his three grenades. That is, if he made it out of the tunnel.

With the nearest sandfish nearly upon him, King took aim with his pistol and fired four shots. Three out of four struck the beast. It collapsed in a heap, stumbling those behind it and allowing King to gain some much needed distance. As he neared the tunnel exit, King pulled the pin on his grenade and dropped it, letting it roll down the tunnel floor.

King exited the tunnel, stepped to the side, and covered his ears. The explosion blasted from the mouth of the tunnel like a cannon. Grenade, stone, and flesh confetti shot out.

As the dust settled, King turned his light down the tunnel and saw that the ceiling had caved in, filling the void with sand. Before he turned away, King saw the sand move. It shook from within. A small avalanche rolled down the side. And then, as though squeezed out of a pore, one of the sandfish slid out of the wall of sand and continued its pursuit undeterred. Three more quickly followed.

King overturned tables as he ran toward the next set of steps, hoping they would slow the monsters. He eyed the circle of statues, expecting them to reach out for him as well. But they remained immobile. As he started up the stairs he heard the tables shatter beneath the weight of his pursuers.

With his light and eyes forward, King couldn’t see the sandfish behind him, but he could hear their claws clacking against the stone steps.

The stairwell opened up to the atrium and he realized he had no plan of escape, only a one-way chase. As he entered the atrium, movement to his right caught his attention. He dove forward and crouched into a roll.

A moment later the nearest sandfish leaped from the tunnel, its jaws open, ready to engulf King’s head. But the beast never made it. What looked like a long serrated spear stabbed the lizard through its head and pinned it to the floor. The sandfish twitched madly for a moment and then lay still.

What the fuck? King thought. He followed the spear up expecting to see someone standing above him, but the weapon’s source blended into the stone wall. A second lizard, fueled by bloodlust exited the tunnel. With a quickness King didn’t think possible, a second spear shot through the sandfish’s skull. Again, the spear appeared to have come from a living wall. For a moment King thought he might be witnessing some kind of golem.

Then it moved and he saw the awful truth. The creature was speckled brown, perfectly camouflaged for the brown stone found throughout the region. Standing still, it had been all but invisible against the wall.

This was the presence he had detected before: a ten-foot-long, nearly eight-foot-tall praying mantis—a desert mantis to be exact.

It turned its triangle head toward him. The tilt of the head looked freakish, rotating almost a full three hundred degrees. Its two oval eyes, impossible to escape, honed in on him. He could feel the thing analyzing him. Its head twitched to alternating angles. Then its gaze rolled back toward the tunnel. The remaining two sandfish had arrived, and they were still hungry.

As the mantis flung one of the impaled sandfish away, a second oversized lizard clamped down on its leg. But the giant insect showed no reaction. It simply shook off the impaled lizard, took aim, and pierced the skull of the newcomer while it was still clamped down on its foreleg.

The fourth sandfish had eyes only for King. It charged beneath the praying mantis, intent on capturing its prize even while the massive insect turned its brethren into shish kabob. But it wasn’t the only one with eyes on King. It was swatted to the side by a second mantis. The sandfish toppled and rolled, smashing into a far wall. The impact seemed to knock some sense into the lizard. It righted itself and took off running down one of the side tunnels.

The mantis swiveled its head toward King. He could see the tension in its dangerous forelimbs building for a strike. The strike of a mantis was one of the quickest, most violent acts in the natural world. Quicker than the human eye could perceive, the limbs could snap out and ensnare pray between its femur and tibia, both of which were lined with needle-sharp spikes. To a human, those small spikes are normally an insignificant threat. Right now, the smallest were three-inch-long blades. The longest matched King’s seven-inch KA-BAR knife. If just one of those arms caught him, he’d be pierced upward of twenty times, perhaps even lopped in two. He had no intention of letting that happen.

Not wanting to miss, King took aim at the creature’s chest and fired a single round. It made no sound, but took a step back. Its limbs twitched for a moment. Its head spun around, back and forth, as though looking for the source of its pain. Not finding anything and having fully regained its composure, it turned its head back to King.

But he was already up and running.

Its head snapped up and quickly caught sight of him.

He jumped into the central pool and ran across to the other side. He snuck a glance over his shoulder and saw the mantis giving a kind of slow-motion pursuit. The giant insect rocked back and forth with each step, as though tentative. He also noticed the second mantis had left the dead lizards and had joined in the dancelike pursuit.

King wondered if this was really the fastest an oversized mantis could move. Then decided against it. What they were doing couldn’t even be considered pursuit. They knew something he didn’t. He found out exactly what that was when he turned around. Standing above him on the staircase was a third mantis, its forelimbs hunched up high as though in prayer.

King made a preemptive dive to the side. Had he waited for the mantis to attack, he wouldn’t have even registered its strike until his body had been turned into a pincushion. Even with his fast action he didn’t fully escape the attack. The strike hit the rubber of his boot and nearly snapped his leg from the impact. It threw off his jump as well. He landed in a heap on the stairs, striking an elbow and knee hard.

But he didn’t let the pain slow him. The mantis was already retracting its forelimbs for a second strike. King took aim, this time for the head, and fired off three rounds. Each found its mark, entering the insect’s bulbous right eye and passing through the head. But the first two missed the tiny brain. Even with one eye destroyed and two holes in its head, all its vital functions remained intact. If not for the third round, which pierced the small brain, the creature would have continued happily. With its control center destroyed, the mantis twitched madly, falling down the stairs.

Once the danger of being struck by one of the shaking limbs passed, King wasted no time launching himself back up the stairs. This time, the two remaining mantises gave chase in earnest. He could hear the rapid-fire clicking of their limbs on the stone floor, and a barely perceivable squeaking, like mice.

Are they communicating? King wondered, but pushed the thought from his mind and focused on escape. The only spot he knew was close to the surface was where he fell in. But climbing back into the sand and out of the ruins would be impossible.

Unless I open it up. As his plan began to come together, he looked down and saw two snapping sets of beaklike mandibles rising up behind him. Both mantises had quickly closed the distance and were poised to strike. He jumped up, narrowly avoiding a dual amputation. The loud crack of mantis forelimbs on stone stairs sounded like gunshots. When he came down he wasted no time and jumped again, this time out and away from the insects.

King entered the long tunnel and broke into a sprint, keeping his eyes on the ceiling, looking for the crack that sucked him in and deposited him in this hellhole.

He saw it ahead.

After holstering his weapon, he took out a second grenade and prepared to pull the pin. His timing would have to be precise, and his luck monumental.

Twenty feet from the fissure, he pulled the pin.

As he passed beneath the crack, he leaped up as high as he could, shoved his fist into a sandy hole in the rock filled gap and deposited the grenade inside. After landing he ran for another thirty feet and then stopped.

He turned around and raised his light. The tunnel behind him was alive with movement. The mantises were still giving chase, though more slowly as they had to actually duck to fit into this tunnel. If the two mantises passed the fissure before the grenade detonated …

But they didn’t.

The grenade exploded with a deafening boom. King fell to one knee, dropping his flashlight and clasping his hands to his ears. He opened his eyes to see a cloud of dust and sand swirling in the tunnel. But it was the brightness that held his attention. It was like looking through a blizzard, but he could see a portion of the far ceiling had fallen in at an angle, spilling its sand into the tunnel. It formed a convenient exit ramp.

Then sand began to fall from his side of the tunnel. The ceiling shifted. The roof over his head was coming down as well and if it didn’t crush him outright, it would trap him on this side of the tunnel.

He ran for the exit.

The tunnel ceiling tilted under the weight of the earth it held, dumping a curtain of sand that blocked out the sun. King dove through the wall of falling sand and landed in sunlight.

The tunnel ceiling collapsed behind him, dropping down at an angle and spilling its sand around his legs. After kicking free from the sand, King crawled up the rise and caught his breath at the top. Sitting atop the hill he could see the base across the river. There were no running troops. No action at all. His battle beneath the sands had gone undetected.

Then the sand within the newly form pit shifted. A mound rose up and shifted toward him. A second followed.

The mantises had found a way through.

King stood and ran, headed downhill toward the river.

“Bowers! Start the engine!”

He saw Bowers stand up, his head appearing over the sand like a groundhog. He gaped at what he saw: King running down the hill with two giant insects emerging from the sand behind him. The cigarette in the man’s mouth fell free as one of the mantises swiveled its head in his direction, locking its hungry eyes on him.

SIXTY-NINE

Location Unknown

FIONA’S JOINTS THROBBED as she pulled herself off the floor. In fact, her whole body had begun to ache. But she heard voices again and needed to know what was happening. She was the next guinea pig in line and wanted to be prepared for whatever might come.

The deep voice returned. As did the wet voice. And a whimpering. Whoever they were experimenting on this time was not as strong-willed as the last. She could hear belt buckles being cinched tight, which brought the occasional high-pitched squeal, but not a word or protest.

“Cainan, are we recording?” the deep voice asked.

“Not yet, Alpha,” replied a new voice that sounded nearly identical to the first. Was he talking to himself? Or were there really two people? Alpha, the man with the deep voice who had been there all along, and Cainan, whose voice was so similar. Then there was the one with the wet voice. He had yet to speak, but always seemed to be at Alpha’s side.

“Recording,” Cainan said.

There was a shifting of light in front of the tunnel as someone walked past. Fiona strained to see, but her view was blocked by the narrow hallway.

There was no warning from Alpha, he simply launched into the strange language, speaking slowly, carefully enunciating. “Arzu Turan. Vish tracidor vim calee. Filash vor der wash. Vilad forsh.”

No one spoke or moved for ten seconds. During that time, Fiona repeated the words in her head, over and over, committing them to memory.

Then someone asked, “Did it work?”

“Remove the tape,” Alpha said.

The woman’s mouth was taped shut, Fiona thought. That’s why she hadn’t complained.

There was a sharp tear, but still no complaint from the woman.

“How are you feeling?” Alpha asked.

“Blessed,” the woman replied, her voice as heavily accented as the man killed earlier. If they were capturing locals, then she was being held someplace in the Middle East.

“Blessed?” Alpha said, his voice tinged with humor “How so?”

“To be in your presence.”

“And who am I?”

“The Lord God.”

Fiona couldn’t see the man, but she knew he must be smiling.

“I am.”

“My God, it worked,” said a farther-off voice that didn’t belong to Alpha or Cainan. How many of them were there?

“Was there ever any doubt?” Alpha replied. “Play back the recording.”

After a moment, a tinny version of Alpha’s voice repeated the phrase. “Arzu Turan. Vish tracidor vim calee. Filash vor der wash. Vilad forsh.”

Fiona followed along, making sure she had the phrase memorized correctly, but her train of thought was interrupted by a shrill scream, followed by a stream of curses in a language she couldn’t understand. Whatever had been done to the woman had been undone when the phrase was repeated.

The woman’s screams became frantic and high-pitched, her voice angry and then desperate. A gunshot blasted, echoing in the tunnels.

Fiona fell back, clutching her ears.

The woman was dead. Silence followed.

Fiona fought against her tears, picked up a stone, and crawled to the side wall of her cell. As her emotions sapped the last of her energy, she began scratching at the wall with the stone.

SEVENTY

Babylon, Iraq

BACK IN THE open air, King was more in his element, but the oversized mantises showed no signs of being slowed by the sand. They not only skittered quickly over it, but they now moved in silence.

The loose sand of the desert shifted beneath King with every step, slowing him. But his course was straight and his legs fast. The river lay ahead, and the small black boat that would carry him across—if Bowers got his shit together and started it.

As though he’d seen the annoyance on King’s face, Bowers turned the key on the boat and it started with a roar. But he’d failed to notice that half the craft was still beached.

“Throw it in reverse,” King shouted. “Get it off the beach!”

Bowers responded quickly, putting the boat in reverse and slowly giving it gas. As the propeller blades dug into the river water faster and faster it became clear that it wasn’t going to be enough to get the craft in the water.

As Bowers stood to get out of the boat, King leaped over a mound of sand separating river from desert. He landed behind Bowers.

“I’ll push!” he shouted before throwing his weight into the front of the boat. King’s shove and the still churning propeller launched the boat into the river. King jumped onto the front of the boat, swung himself around the mounted machine gun, and stood behind it. Already looking for targets, he wrapped his finger around the trigger of the belt-fed M240 machine gun.

“Just keep it in reverse,” King said. They would reach the far side of the river a little slower, but moving in reverse would allow him to use the mantises for target practice.

As the insects emerged over the rise at the river’s edge, King opened fire. The rounds fired like bursts of thunder, perking up the ears of soldiers all around Camp Alpha. While gunfire wasn’t uncommon in the surrounding territories, it was relatively unheard of on base.

When the first round struck, a burst of guts shot out of the mantis’s side, but it moved quickly, darting backward and down. King strafed to the side, striking the insect only once more before it and its partner disappeared from sight.

They reached the base-side dock a moment later. But Bowers didn’t stop. He plowed the boat into the shoreline. The engine grinded as it chewed up sand. Neither man felt concern for the craft. They left it beached, jumping onto the shore and pounding up the incline that led to the base.

They paused ten feet from the water, looking back at the far shore.

“What the fuck were those things?” Bowers asked, his chest heaving more from adrenaline than actual physical exertion.

“Exactly what they looked like,” King said. “Giant mantises.”

“Okay. Seriously. Giant mantises?” Bowers shook his head, confused and excited.

King nodded as he scanned the far shore. “I think we’re in the clear.”

Bowers laughed. King turned to find him running up the hill toward base despite no sign of the mantises. “Bad news, buddy,” he said. “Mantises can fly.”

A string of curses filled King’s mind as a buzzing sound rolled over the river. The mantises shot up over the Euphrates and honed in on his position, barreling toward him like kamikaze pilots.

King’s mind raced for solutions. To their right were the main facilities of the base. Lots of buildings to get lost in. Lots of guns to fight back. And Bishop and Knight were somewhere in that direction. But the soldiers there had no experience dealing with this kind of freakish problem and there would likely be a lot of casualties, from the mandibles of the mantises and from panicked friendly fire. No good, King thought.

He needed Chess Team support, minus the regular soldiers.

The ruins.

Queen and Alexander were there, both armed with XM25s. The mazelike ruins would provide ample hiding spots and bottlenecks to make a stand. Of course, the brown stone would also make perfect camouflage for the mantises. But there was no choice. And no time.

“Stay with me,” King said.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Bowers said, his voice shaking. “I’m sticking to you like a tick on a collie’s dick.”