David Sakmyster - The Cydonia Objective

She held her breath.

Listened.

And heard only scrapes and scuffles sounding from each hallway.

She turned back around, but the way she thought she had come from was now blocked by a solid wall of sandstone. She desperately wished Temple had fitted them with radios like the other team members, but now there was nothing to do but stay here and wait. She couldn’t call out and risk alerting the enemy.

Maybe she could RV the way. And for a second, she thought first about her brother, wondering how Caleb and Alexander were faring.

A glimpse—a flash of light in the gloom, and she saw them: following a woman in a gray flowing sari across a stretch of desert, toward a waiting boat on the Nile.

Smiling, she turned her attention to the corridor on her left, and as she was about to project her thoughts in that direction, her light caught the flash of something white darting out of view. Her breath caught in her throat and she staggered forward, mouth open. Still not daring to call out, she rushed ahead then skidded to a stop, suddenly terrified of setting off fish wire traps or buried mines.

Was this a trick?

I saw a face , she thought. Someone all in white, there for a moment, gone the next. Still fearing a trick, she moved cautiously. A few more steps, then she stopped. Flicked off her headlamp. Don’t want to give anyone a target.

Then she tried to peer ahead in her mind.

And once again she winced, reeling immediately from a wall of blue.

A sound up ahead like a throaty chuckling.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

Laughter again. Cruel and mocking.

This time, behind her.

She backed up. Flattened against the wall and crouched. Again she reached out with her mind, trying to see, but there was nothing in either direction, nothing but that awful blue, closing in around her on all sides like a sphere. Shrinking.

And then the laughter again. And footfalls approaching.

“Come out, come out…”

Oh god, it’s the Eye.

“I’ve got you now, another bird for my cage.”

A light sprang on, just feet away, the beam extending—

“I’ve got—”

-then freezing. Dust motes suspended.

“…you…” The word slowed, stretched and faded with a series of echoes as the light dimmed.

And Phoebe realized she was falling backwards, through the wall that now wasn’t a wall. A veil of blackness sucked her in, then resealed where she had been crouching just as time seemed to hiccup, then snap back into place.

“…now!” She heard the Eye speaking, but it sounded like it came from a great distance.

The darkness around her trembled.

Fists pounded on the other side of the wall and a defiant grunting reached her ears.

Dazed, she turned around and saw that she stood on a great precipice overlooking an impossible sight.

A glimpse only, lasting maybe four or five seconds. A time in which she took in an incredible vista, a chasm stretching miles across and just as deep, jagged cliffs encircling and enshrining a valley in the shadowy depths. The gloom was punctuated only by an array of lights—some sort of oddly purple phosphorescence—clinging to unnatural towers of rock or crystal, shimmering domes and palatial hillside gardens. The sound of underground streams reached her ears, the plunking of rocks into a cool lake. A fresh breeze rushed across her hair, cooling her skin, blowing back her dusty hair.

But then the image faded, the darkness closed in around her, and all that remained was a man in a white robe, with a gray beard down to his waist.

He smiled at her and said, “We have watched you for a long time, Phoebe Crowe. Welcome to a place no outsider has ever seen, except in the embrace of dreams that never linger for long upon waking. Welcome…” He spread his arms wide and the darkness behind him unclouded for just a moment, revealing the subterranean city in all its glowing splendor.

“…to Shamballa.”

Orlando wanted torace back through the tunnels looking for her, calling her name, but Temple hauled him back. He waved to two of his men and sent them back, hissing at them that they should have watched her.

“Now kid, we have to move on. We’re losing the element of surprise here.”

“But—”

Temple pulled on his arm and then they were rounding another bend, and then—according to the map, there should be one more looping passage, a quick descent and then the approach to the chamber where the Hummingbird and her father were being kept. “Come on,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

But then a flash of red, a rush of heat, and six men leading their team up ahead disappeared in a blast of fire, rocks and collapsing sandstone. Screams and shouts. The others rushed ahead to help their buried comrades. Temple was yelling, pulling them back, barking that it was a trap, they’d been seen-

And then Orlando’s ears stopped ringing long enough to hear the mocking laughter at his back, accompanying the knife pressed against his throat.

The Eye draggedOrlando back, using his body as a shield as the Americans turned their weapons toward him, but the commander held up a hand to hold their fire.

“Let the mountain claim you!” the Eye yelled as he backed around a corner with his captive. He nodded to one his men, who paused long enough to ensure the forces were following—then pressed a button on a remote.

Orlando whimpered as another explosion rocked the tunnel, this time spitting out dust and rocky debris right past them.

The Eye nodded, satisfied, then continued hauling Orlando off, towards a passage they had skipped on the way down. “Your friends are dead. Or at the least, buried and running out of air. You’re alone now.”

Orlando grunted, choking for breath around the crushing grip of the big arm around his throat. But he managed to get a word out. “Phoebe?”

“Ah, the other bird has flown.” The Eye’s voice faltered. “Somewhere out of my reach, but only for the moment. Somewhere… never mind.” His eye blinked and lines of concern formed on his brow, then smoothed away. “But I have you now, and soon your song will join the Hummingbird’s.”

“I’m not helping you do anything.” Orlando forced his mouth to work. “You’ve got no leverage. Can’t threaten my elderly relatives to make me comply, so why don’t you just suck it, dickhead?”

In the flickering dark, the jeweled eye patch glinted and the lone eye narrowed into a feline slit that regarded him like a helpless, wounded mole. “I know you, Orlando Natch. I’ve spied you ever since your plane approached. Saw who you are, what you are.” His smile broadened and sickly yellow and brown teeth emerged from cracked lips. Orlando winced against the smell.

“Shouldn’t go snooping, you know.”

“Shut up and move, Mr. Natch. You’ll help, or when I find your precious girlfriend, and I will find her, I’ll make you wish you had.”

Orlando winced as something prodded his ribs, and then he stumbled forward, lurching to remain in balance. For a fleeting second he thought he could make a break for it, but then he was shoved ahead, flanked by four other foul-smelling soldiers, and marched toward the Hummingbird.

Her real namewas Aria. And her father—Brian Greenmeyer, formerly of St. Louis, except for the past fifteen years ostensibly trying to spread the Word of God to the impoverished Afghan villagers—was in fact a deep-cover CIA agent. So deep he even fell in love, married and fathered a girl of exceptional talents. And found himself devoted to a people whose peaceful and practical existence in the face of such harsh conditions had led him to be the perfect agent. He still gave out the occasional report on Taliban and Al Qaeda activities, and ran courier information and gathered what intelligence he could from unsavory types that nonetheless trusted him, but his foremost mission in the past seven years had been to protect his daughter. To protect Aria.