David Sakmyster - The Mongol Objective

Alexander blinked at her as if she were some kind of mirage. “Where are we?”

“Where we need to be. Now, move it.”

#

Alexander stepped out into the night and immediately felt the difference: the humidity and the glare of the city streets, the boats twinkling in the bay, the lit-up stucco and red-tiled houses on the hills, and the blaring, techno-beat music from a nearby disco. But the imposing sight straight over his shoulder that made him turn and gasp was something out of a fairy tale book.

A castle.

Huge reinforced walls were lit with multi-colored lights that made it look like a model on a movie set. Three square towers were visible, equally bright, presiding over the rocky shore and the small armada of boats tethered to the piers.

Impressed with the sight of the medieval castle, Alexander almost didn’t see Montross at the prow, a pack over his shoulder. He was dressed all in black, blending into the night, except for his exposed head of red hair.

“Ah,” he said, “Nina and our little guest. How did you sleep, kid?”

Alexander felt his attention wavering back to the castle. “Bad dreams.” Then he had a thought, a flicker of a memory that grew into something bigger. Something he remembered all of a sudden about his dreams. “A nightmare, about my mom dying. But you know all about what that’s like, don’t you?”

Montross flinched, and suddenly Nina’s hand shot out and spun Alexander around by the shoulder. She was kneeling now, her eyes swallowing his vision as if they were miniature black holes. “What did you see?”

Grimacing, trying to be strong and not cry out, Alexander wriggled in her grasp. Bad idea, he thought. Should have kept that to myself. “Just a wreck, a car crash.” His eyes glazed over and suddenly he was there. “A woman…”

… reaching for the man at the wheel, the man holding his chest and staring at her as if she had just wounded him.

“ How did you keep this from me? You bitch. You little lying bitch.”

And then he turns the wheel-hard-toward an oncoming truck, just as his eyes lose all emotion and the woman screams…

Alexander rocked back to the moment, and now Xavier loomed over him. Scooped him up by the front of his shirt so he was dangling in the air.

“What did you see?” he screamed.

“Nothing.” He cringed, biting his lip, withering under the intensity of Montross’s stare.

Alexander dropped, fell back into Nina’s grasp as Xavier lowered his hands, breathed deeply and continued staring. “Bring him.”

“Are we going inside the castle?” Alexander asked, with a dose of hope.

Montross ignored him, turning to Nina. “Is everything set inside? Did you find what we need?”

She nodded, a smile curling at her lips.

Montross turned back to Alexander. “We’ve left a present in there for your father-that is, if he’s heading here as I expect.”

“We aren’t going inside?” Alexander asked.

Montross straightened. “I’m sorry, we’ll be going somewhere else. Somewhere far less hospitable.”

Inside the government jet, Phoebe, Caleb and Orlando sat with Renee and two other agents, both working their laptops. Orlando eyed them occasionally, with more than a hint of interest. Earlier, he had probed Renee’s past and questioned her involvement here. The hits were vague, but the visions and impressions concrete enough. Definitely she was legit, but there was something else. Something murky at the corners of his sight. Something of interest and, perhaps, something she was hiding. He needed more time, and some peace and quiet.

Renee was analyzing the castle’s layout on her laptop screen. “We can post agents at all the exits, and we’ve got four snipers covering all the angles and any blind spots they can’t hit. Here, and on this chapel rooftop, on this hill, and at the minaret here.” She looked up, took a breath. “So what do you think this guy wants? Money?”

Caleb shook his head. “Despite our treasure-hunting exploits, we really don’t have that much in the way of money. No, the only true item of value I had Montross just stole. I can’t imagine what else he wants from me. What did you turn up?”

She clicked a few keys, then read aloud: “Xavier Montross, Born in New Orleans, 1978. Parents killed in a car accident when he was six. Raised by a succession of foster parents.” She looked up. “Seems he frequently wore out his welcome.”

“Maybe,” said Phoebe, “something he did, or drew, freaked them out.”

“We can find out. Interview some of the foster parents. But it might take some time. Anyway, he joined the Marines in 1997. Served with Special Ops, decorated in Iraq, then was discharged after refusing direct orders-orders which, ironically, got the rest of his unit killed in a helicopter training accident.”

Caleb scratched his head. “So, he dodged another bullet there. He might have had a premonition of his death.”

“Seems to be his specialty,” Phoebe said.

“Then,” continued Renee, “he was hand-picked to join The Morpheus Initiative in 2002 by-”

“George Waxman,” Caleb said. “Who must have been alerted to his talents by his unusual behavior in the Corps. And then we know the rest, up until he disappeared in Alexandria.”

Renee nodded. “That’s all we’ve got. Except for his travel visas. Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Mexico. Don’t know what he did or why he went to those places. And”-she shuffled some papers-“this is interesting. His image was just flagged as a possible match to an unresolved case of a break-in and murder at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington ten years ago.”

Caleb perked up. “What did he get?”

Renee shook her head. “No details of a theft. At least, nothing the officials cared to elaborate on. Can you use your remote viewing, clairvoyance or whatever to find out?”

“Possibly, but it works best if we focus our efforts. We need to know what to look for, and it helps to ask ourselves the right questions.”

“Then what are the right questions?”

“Well, let’s think like Montross, get inside his head. What do we know?”

“That he swiped our tablet,” Phoebe pointed out.

Killed my wife and kidnapped my son, Caleb thought. “Right, but why?”

“What is this tablet thing? What does it do?” Renee asked. Her voice cracked a little, and when Caleb’s eyes darted to her she glanced away. Hm. Again, he wondered whether she was hiding something.

He shook away the thought. Too much paranoia lately, after the elaborate trick in the Antarctic. He was leaping at shadows, certain they all contained monsters. But still, his impotence at being able to RV her past was frustrating.

The others waited for Caleb to decide whether or not to tell her. “You won’t believe it,” he said finally, “but you’ll have to trust me that mere rumors of its powers were enough to inspire great quests and conquests to seek it throughout the ages. And a dedicated brotherhood was created to hide it so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“What powers are we talking here?”

“Thoth, the Egyptian god, or enhanced man-the jury’s still out on that one-was believed to have created the tablet, and inscribed on it certain spells. Ancient knowledge. We’re not entirely sure what that knowledge was, but by simply reading it initiates could gain access to powers and abilities.”

Orlando looked up, grinning. “Abilities that would make what we’re doing here look like the difference between the Space Invaders and Halo 3.”

Phoebe rolled her eyes.

“There are all kinds of stories,” Caleb continued, “about how the early master magicians, people around the time of Noah and the great Pharaohs, had such powers. The ability to live for centuries, cure diseases, be in many places at once. And they could foretell the future, like the coming of the Great Flood.”