Paul Christopher - The Templar conspiracy

"All in good time, Colonel. We all have our parts to play in our little production." She dropped the short end of her cigarette onto the concrete floor and ground it under her heel. "The notebook," she said. "The Templar notebook. My notebook."

"It's not yours, and you know I'm not going to tell you anything about it."

"Of course you will," said the old woman. "Eventually. We have leverage, you see. Your cousin."

"What have you done with Peggy?"

"Don't worry, Colonel. She's as much a part of the story as you are. You'll be reunited later, I assure you."

"Your assurances don't impress me much, Mrs. Sinclair. You and Matoon and the rest of your crazy friends are all traitors."

"Patriots," answered Sinclair.

"Crap," snorted Holliday.

"We're taking this country back, Colonel Holliday."

"Back from who, exactly?"

"Back from the mongrel hordes that have been bringing our nation to its knees without us even knowing about it, much less caring. It's bread and circuses. People are watching reality shows about stupid women having eight or ten children at a time, parents are putting their children in balloons for publicity and meanwhile the country's going to hell. They watch pansy movies about trees that are alive or trees that can walk and talk. Half the country is Mexican, Jew or Arab. Our borders are leaking blood in one direction and drugs and illegal immigrants in the other, our money's been devalued and our foreign policy is all about appeasement. No one even speaks English anymore!"

Holliday saw something in her eyes then and he suddenly knew there was no point in trying to have a rational discussion or argument with this woman. Whether borne out of too much power or from something carried in the blood, Kate Sinclair was utterly and irrevocably mad, as mad as any fundamentalist Muslim putting out a fatwa on a cartoon show, as paranoid as Richard Nixon had been at his worst moments, as crazy as a loon.

"You're insane," he said quietly. "And you're an accessory to murder. You're no better than Charlie Manson."

"I am the avatar of destiny," said the Sinclair woman ponderously. "And history will absolve me."

Fidel Castro's final remark in his own defense at his first trial, and a sentiment expressed by Hitler, Stalin and Rasputin. Good company. All dictators, all with God complexes and all utterly insane.

"So what's the plan?" Holliday sighed.

"I intend to recover my birthright from you. To that end we are moving you to Pankrac Prison immediately." Sinclair smiled blandly and lit another cigarette. "You've heard of it?"

"A nineteenth-century hellhole on the outskirts of Prague," said Holliday. "The Nazis used it and later on it was a KGB interrogation center."

"It's now owned by Blackhawk Security."

"You, in other words," said Holliday. He smiled wanly. "Presumably I can expect a little in the way of advanced interrogation techniques-a little waterboarding, maybe?"

"Certainly." Sinclair smiled. "But you won't be the recipient. Miss Blackstock will." She called out a single harsh command in Czech. Three guards suddenly appeared, two carrying automatic rifles, one carrying shackles and chains.

"Your chariot has arrived, Colonel," said Kate Sinclair. "Time to load you onto the bus."

The windowless old prison bus took the road from the old Pr?ibram airport at Dlouha Lhota north through the old forests of the foothill country in central Bohemia. The bus was like something out of an old chain-gang movie: driver and guard segregated from the prisoners by a chain-link grating with apertures just big enough to poke the barrel of a shotgun through.

The prisoner entrance was through a heavily secured door in the rear of the bus with its own little caged enclosure for a second guard, who was also armed with a short-barreled riot gun and controlled the master lock that opened the threaded shackles and chains that secured the prisoners.

The prisoners themselves occupied long benches that were bolted to the floor on either side of the bus. The benches in turn were divided into narrow cubicles by sheets of gray steel etched with the handcuffed graffiti of a thousand previous occupants. It was, in effect, a jail on wheels, walls made of armor plate, the windshield made of bulletproof double-thickness glass and the heavy tires puncture proof.

Tonight there were seven people from the black-site bunker on the bus: Peggy, Holliday and five rumpled-looking young men with black cotton bags tied securely over their heads, babbling blindly together in Farsi, their voices strained with panic.

Holliday was shackled directly across from Peggy on the bus in the forward section.

"Are you sure about this Pankrac place?" Peggy asked.

"There's no reason for Sinclair to have lied."

"But what's the point?" Peggy asked. "Why doesn't she just get rid of us?"

Holliday shrugged. "She will, as soon as she gets the information she wants."

Peggy shuffled her feet, pulling slightly on the shiny steel shackles threaded through eyebolts along the length of the bus. Her movements pulled on the chain around one of the hooded men's ankles and his head jerked in her direction.

"Ann ru sar et, kiram tu kunet cos eh lash jende!"

"Torke char, arabe kassif!" Peggy yelled down the bus. The man who'd cursed at her turned his hooded head around and the other four laughed at her quick and unexpected comeback to the man's insult.

They could hear the ringing of a railway-crossing bell and the bus slowed to a stop. After several long minutes the guard and the driver began talking. Holliday leaned forward on the hard metal seat and peeked around the edge of the metal divider. He could vaguely make out the flashing red lights of the railroad crossing and the lowered red-and-white-striped barriers.

"What's up?" Peggy asked from the other side of the bus.

"Some glitch at a railway crossing," answered Holliday. "The lights are flashing and the barriers are down but there's no train."

"What are they arguing about?" Peggy asked.

"Whose responsibility getting off the bus and checking it out is, at least as far as I can tell," replied Holliday.

"Who's winning?" Peggy laughed,

"The driver, I think," said Holliday.

Sighing melodramatically the guard got up from his seat and the driver pushed a button on his control panel. The hydraulic double doors hissed open and the guard went down the three steps to the outside.

The high, explosive round came through the open door, vaporized the guard and kept going until it detonated against the far side of the driver's compartment, sending a long spray of blood, debris and yellowish bony shrapnel the length of the bus.

"Oh, crap," whispered Peggy, ducking back into her narrow little cubicle.

Holliday knew what she meant. Someone was trying to break the hooded men-probably Afghani Talibans or Al-Qaeda-out of custody, and to their rescuers he and Peggy would be useless baggage, and infidel baggage at that. Holliday pulled hard at the chains of his shackles but nothing budged. A second explosion rocked the bus on its heavy wheels. Holliday risked a peek. Someone had blasted open the rear prisoners' doors. The rear guard, protected in his cage, poked the barrel of his riot gun out through the grate and fired blindly. There was a brief moment of silence and then Holliday heard the familiar rasp and ping of a hand grenade pin being pulled. There was a faint knocking sound and then a flat, crumpling explosion. The chains shackling him to the floor went slack.

There was a final, smaller explosion from the front of the bus and then absolute silence. In a single, surrealistic moment Holliday could actually hear the sound of crickets outside in the forest. He stayed well back in his little metal enclosure and silently motioned Peggy to do the same thing.