David Sakmyster - The Mongol Objective

“So, your boss,” Montross said, crossing his arms, “it’s Mr. Robert Gregory, is it? Made it out after all. And here we were, all mourning his incineration.”

“Robert?” Phoebe gasped. “He’s alive?”

Montross nodded. “Alive and apparently far more involved than I gave him credit for. Seems I didn’t investigate my earlier partner carefully enough.”

His shock wearing off, Caleb sighed. “Robert wanted that tablet all his life. He’d stop at nothing to get it. But he fooled me too. I thought he had no more resources than those of a Keeper.”

“Enough,” the commander said. “Let’s all-”

And then gunfire erupted behind them. Three screams in quick succession. Then more. One, two, three.

A soft chuckle escaped Montross’s lips. “She’s led them across the mosaic floor.”

“What?” The commander bristled, then barked into his comm-unit, “Hayes! What’s going on down there? Hayes!”

Nothing.

One more scream, agonized and desperate, as if someone not quite dead writhed on a skewer.

A woman’s voice over the speaker: “Hayes and your men are incapacitated. Who is this? And where is Xavier Montross?”

“Who is this?” the commander snapped back. But then he saw Montross smile. “Ah, Nina Osseni. Your reputation is well-deserved, it seems. Those were some of my best men.”

“ I had some help. Now, why don’t you let Montross go, get back in your choppers or tanks or whatever you brought, and get the hell out of here before I pick you off one by one.”

“Give me the artifacts,” said the commander, “and I’ll let your friends live. Best I can offer.”

“ No deal.”

The commander pressed the barrel of his gun against Alexander’s head and made him cry out. Caleb tried to lunge but couldn’t break free of the strong, restraining arms. Montross calmly held out a hand. “Let me talk to her. I’ll get you what you want.”

The commander looked him over. Then he shrugged and gave him the walkie-talkie. “Fine. But if you order her back inside the tomb, I’ll kill you all, then we’ll go in with every resource I have.”

“Agent Wagner lost almost twenty men down there,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Agent Wagner. Where is she?”

Montross lowered his voice, but couldn’t hide the satisfaction in it. “Alas, she didn’t make it.”

The commander thought for a moment, then shrugged. “You have five seconds.”

Montross took the transmitter. He spoke softly into it. “Nina. Now’s not the time to be a martyr. Come on out peacefully.”

“What?” Caleb pulled at his bonds again. “You can’t-”

“Just do it,” Montross repeated. “And turn over the artifacts.”

Nina’s voice. “But…”

“Do it.”

He handed the transmitter back to the commander, then turned his back on the others and started up the ramp. The commander pointed to Caleb. “Take that one too. In my chopper along with Montross. The others can go in the transport helicopter. Chain them to the chairs. And I don’t want a peep out of them.”

“No!” Alexander cried. “I can’t leave my dad.”

“Shut up, kid. Your Uncle Robert has plans for him. For both of them.”

“You know about that?” Alexander whispered. “The prophecy?”

The commander winked at him. “Mr. Gregory knows everything.”

“I doubt that,” Phoebe said as she walked by, head down. They dragged Orlando next. He seemed to be on the verge of passing out. “Can we get him some medical help?”

“In the chopper,” the commander said, waving them on as he stood in the center of a line of commandos waiting near the entrance.

In under a minute, Nina appeared, walking stoically up the center of the ramp.

She stopped in front of the commander. Her eyes were grim, full of resolve. She handed over the case.

He took it from her, then drove his fist into her gut, driving her to her knees. “When we’re done,” he whispered in her ear, “I’ll flay the skin off your bones for what you did to my men.”

He left her unable to speak, and as he turned and sprinted to the first chopper to join Montross and Caleb, his men restrained Nina and brought her aboard the other helicopter.

#

Inside, they had only handcuffed Alexander’s left wrist to the seat while the others were cuffed, both wrists and ankles, and belted in. As they rose, and as Alexander glanced at each of the faces beside him, seeing their complete desperation, the overwhelming sense of failure, he thought of something.

Digging into his pocket, he pulled out the sheet of paper Montross had given him. He opened it up, flattened it out.

The pilot and the guards in the front seat never turned around.

“What’s that?” Nina whispered. She looked pale, about to collapse from pain and exhaustion.

“Something Xavier gave me earlier,” Alexander said. “Told me I’d know the time to show it to you.” He studied the drawing, frowned, then held it up so Phoebe and Nina could see.

“It’s us,” Phoebe said after a glimpse.

“The same scene, at the tomb’s entrance. It’s what just happened down there,” Alexander said. “He saw it. But I don’t understand.”

“What does it mean?” Orlando asked weakly. His eyes were lolling back in his head, still trying to focus. They had a saline bag hooked to his arm, re-supplying electrolytes and pumping in antibiotics.

Nina’s lips broke into a smile. Her whole face suddenly brightened. “It means that he knew we’d be captured. And he still brought us out of the tomb. We could have waited it out down there, or lured them in to pick them off, but he led us out.”

“So?” Phoebe asked.

“So, Montross doesn’t do anything without thinking it through and seeing the consequences. He saw this, and must have seen something else. Probably that we’d have a better chance of ending this, of winning, if we let ourselves be captured.”

“But,” said Alexander, “that doesn’t make any sense.”

Nina leaned back in her chair. She closed her eyes and kept smiling. “I think it does. I think Montross knows where they’re taking us. And knows, or at least suspects, what’s going to happen. And that we have a good chance of surviving.”

Alexander frowned, rubbing at his handcuff. “Where are we going?”

“A place we probably couldn’t get into by ourselves. Someplace where we’d need the connections and resources of your other uncle to provide access.” She opened her eyes and met their stares.

“We’re going to Egypt. We’re going under the damn Sphinx.”

Cairo, 11 P.M.

Robert Gregory faced the smooth onyx door. With the electric torchlight at his back, his huge shadow stretched over the golden floor and was abruptly devoured by the implacable onyx barrier, the unyielding door that had denied Pharaoh Khufu forty-five hundred years earlier.

Taking a deep breath, Robert spread out his arms to embrace his destiny. In minutes, his brothers would be coming down the stairs behind him, coming to join him on this day of victory, joining him in the fulfillment of the great prophecy.

In 2560 BCE, Khufu had discovered this entrance and attempted to proceed beyond, naively believing himself worthy when he was not. And throughout history, many others have sought that right, believing themselves to be something greater than themselves.

The fools. Today they still believed the Great Pyramid was Khufu’s, when in fact he simply had the arrogance to claim the ancient monument and storehouse for his own tomb. He had expanded the area, building rough imitations for his sons and stamping his name on the whole complex here. But the more reliable sources such as Herodotus maintained that the Great Pyramid was built by “a shepherd named Philitis.” And in Robert’s studies of all the resources at the new library, as well as those recovered from the old, it was clear that what was meant here was a derogatory term for a prince from the land of shepherds-or wanderers. The land of the biblical Chosen Ones. The land of Palestine. And the man…