Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) (15 page)

“So, tell me, Andrea,” I say, “how
long have you been a double agent … a mole?”

“Who says I’m a double agent?” she smirks.
“Maybe my allegiance has always been to the present company riding in this
vehicle.”

“Because I’ve known women like you
all my life,” I say. “You go where the money is. You seek it, smell it, taste
it, feel it in your sex like you would Putin’s tiny little appendage.” He
thrusts his fist into the seat back, jolting me forward. “Sorry about that
Boris, or whatever your name is. No disrespect.”

“You would do very well to keep the
mouth closed, da?” he says in his heavy Russian accent. “After we find cave, we
must make decision to let you live or make you die slow painful death. Right
now, I am voting for very slow, very painful death. Very, very slow, very, very
painful, excruciating death. The death of a thousand little knife wounds. You
like?”

“Spoken like a true Soviet,” I say.
Then, shifting my partial gaze back to Andrea. “You know, the way you made love
to me, baby. Made love all night long. The way you climaxed like that. How many
times was it? Four, five times in a single night? Screaming from the top of
your lungs. I really thought for sure, you’d fallen for me. Hard.”

Soleimani snickers, his face now
wearing a broad smile.

“Enough!” Putin barks, once more
punching the seat back so that I feel his fist against my spine. “She is doing
the fake out with you, Chase Baker, for business sake.” He turns to Andrea. “Is
that not right, my love? You do the fake out with the Chase Baker for the
business. You, what do you call it,
Fake one for the team
, da?”

I laugh. “It’s
take
one for
the team, asshole. Take, with a T. If you’re gonna say it, say it right.”

Soleimani backhands me yet again.
More blood in the mouth.

“Mahaz, gag the prisoner,” he says.

Jolly Green Giant/Mahaz tears a
piece of duct tape from the roll in his lap, leans forward, wraps it around my
mouth. So much for conversation.

We come to the stream and drive
into it. We’re only about fifty or so feet away from a tree-covered hill that
might double as a small mountain. Soleimani shoves the shift into neutral,
takes hold of the map, holds it up to the windshield so that it gets the
daylight. I’m struggling against the tape that binds me, methodically thrusting
one shoulder out, then the other, repeating the process over and over again,
stretching the tape by just a fraction of a millimeter with each movement.
Trying to do this without catching the attention of Mahaz … or Putin … or
even Andrea … is a bit of a trick in itself. But this isn’t the first time
I’ve been bound with duct tape. I’m hoping it won’t be the last.

In the side-view mirror, I spot the
two trucks filled with Soleimani’s and Putin’s soldiers-for-hire close on our
tail. Soleimani studies the map within the map to decide which direction to
take next in search of the cave. He whispers to himself while he stares at it
intently. Listening closely, I discover he’s spelling the mirrored letters
written on the old parchment over the indicated location of the cave.

“A, T, I…”

Eventually, he takes on a smile,
having discovered the word Divinità. He taps the location on the map with his
index finger. Then, a honk from the horn on the pickup behind us. Then another
honk from the one behind that.

“Why are we not moving?” Putin
says.

“Yes,” Andrea follows up, “while we’re
young.”

I fight the duct tape as best I
can. Out the corner of my left eye, I catch Mahaz’s stone face, his eyes glued to
me, not like he wishes to guard me, but to eat me, bones, blood and all.

Another honk of the horn.

Soleimani slaps the map back down
onto the center console.

“That is enough,” he insists. Then,
turning to eye Putin. “Your men go no further. It is what we agreed upon. The
fewer eyes on the location of the cave, the more secure it will be. That was
our agreement.”

I’m able to make out the Russian’s
face in the side-view mirror. He presses his thin lips together.

“They are my support staff,” he
says, in his understated, low-toned voice. “My protection, da? I am very rich
and powerful man who requires the constant protection. Like the Donald Trump,
da?”

The Iranian General runs a hand
through his neatly groomed gray beard.

“They also have eyes and they will
not see the location of the cave,” he says. “It is forbidden.” Reaching, he
draws his sidearm, points it at Putin’s face, thumbs back the hammer. “Do you
understand me, Russian Donald Trump loving prick?”

In the mirror, I see the blood rush
to Putin’s face.

“Please,” Andrea says, “let’s not
argue, okay? We agree, General. The support staff stays behind, waits for us
here.”

Putin nods.

“Da,” he agrees. But I sense he can’t
wait for the chance to do away with his Iranian partner to claim the cave for
himself and mother Russia. That is, if the cave exists at all.

I might not be able to free myself
from the tape that binds me to the seat, but I am generating enough saliva to
compromise the glue on the tape that covers my mouth. Already, I can feel one
end of the tape separating from my skin.

Soleimani turns, opens the door,
steps out. In the rear view, I watch him wade through the stream, the water covering
his shin-high combat booted feet. He stops at the first pickup truck, where he speaks
something to the driver. The driver nods. I glance down at the map, my left
hand pressed against my side, entirely immobile and useless because of the tape
that binds my torso to the seatback. No matter how much I struggle, I just can’t
get free.

The general returns, hops back in.

“We go now,” he says, throwing the
shift into drive. “Up that hill, down the other side into a small valley. That
is where we will find the cave.”

In my head, I can’t help but think
that no cave will be there. Regardless of the map within the map. These woods
have been walked by thousands of men and women since the death of da Vinci. Surely,
someone would have found it by now. But then, if nothing else, da Vinci was a master
of deception. If a cave is indeed there, it will not be readily visible. It will
either be hidden or, perhaps, not there at all. Maybe only a clue to the
location of the true cave will be found at the site. Not that I have a choice
but to go along for the ride and observe.

The hillside directly before us is
heavily wooded with tall pines and scrub brush. It’s also steep, the angle close
to forty-five degrees. Soleimani makes sure the Defender is shifted into
four-wheel drive as he begins the climb, the engine stressing and straining
against the severe upward angle. I keep licking the tape, biting at it,
diluting the glue, the opposite side now peeling away.

Coming from the backseat, Andrea
makes a kind of moan. She grabs hold of Putin’s arm. She doesn’t like the feel
of being pressed back against her seat, the truck feeling as though at any
second the front end is going to lift off the surface of the hillside and
tumble end over end, all the way back down.

“It’s too damned steep!” she finally
barks.

“You shut your mouth, woman,” Soleimani
insists, leaning forward. “In my country, a woman with as big a mouth as yours,
is stoned to death … in public.” He’s trying to defy gravity while downshifting
the gears, attempting almost desperately to maintain traction even as the hillside
grows steeper, the earth beneath the big tires moist and loose.

“We are going to tip, da?” Putin
points out, voice agitated, fear-filled. “We tip, we die. Our bodies crushed.
Da? Da?”

“Shut up, the both of you!” the
general insists, while the engine stresses, strains, the rpms revving. He’s
depressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor, the tires now slipping and
spitting gravel, losing their connection with the severely angled hillside. The
front end, that also bears the weight of the big engine block, begins to buck
out and away from the hill, like it wants to go over.

“Allah, help us,” he begins to pray
under his breath. “Allah have mercy.”

I spit the tape away from my mouth.

“Allah wants you dead, asshole!” I
shout.

He turns to me, spits at me. I pull
my head back at the right moment, so that the wad misses me, slaps the window.
If the general wasn’t desperately clutching the wheel and the gear shift, he’d
no doubt turn, grab hold of my throat.

“You will die for that remark!” he
screams.

“We’re already dead, jerk,” I say,
not without a laugh. “Big bad Allah wants it that way. You’re a sinner,
General. Just like your buddy, Putin, back there. You’re both murderers in
search of something so powerful you can’t possibly comprehend it, even if it
were to stare you in the face.”

“Shut up!” he screams. “I demand
you to shut the fuck up. Now!”

The truck is bucking, tires
spinning, the feeling of losing all control filling the vehicle. It’s like
riding in an airplane that’s about to stall. Andrea screams. Mahaz thrusts his
arms forward, grabs hold of Soleimani’s head, like he’s using it to keep
himself from falling. Putin grabs my seat-back for the very same reason. And
then, directly before us, having emerged from the wooded hillside, is a man.

He’s dressed in the long brown robe
of the ascetic Monk, the hood covering his entire head so that his face is
hidden by shadow. It looks like we’re about to plow right into him.

Soleimani panics, screams, lets go
of the wheel while the gear shift pulls out from its floor mount. The steering wheel
spins sharply to the right. That’s when the front end of the Defender lifts off
the face of the hillside, and we fall engine over ass, head over heels.

Initially, we tumble front end over back end. But then, its
weight having quickly shifted, the Defender enters into a side over side roll,
the non-seat-belted bodies in the 4X4 slapping and punching the metal walls and
roof of the vehicle like rag dolls. I’m strapped securely against the seatback
with my duct tape restraint—protected against the violent collision of vehicle
against rock and hard ground. But that doesn’t mean my skull won’t be crushed
like an egg should we land on the roof. The crunch of metal is only outweighed
by the screams and groans and cries. Blood spatters as we roll and so does the
spit and vomit.

Then, just like that, we stop
falling.

We’re right side up, having landed
on all four wheels, the roof smashed in so severely I can’t lift my head all
the way. But, at least, my head is intact. Glancing to my left, I can’t say the
same for Soleimani. The bones in the general’s face are crushed. It resembles a
plastic doll head that someone has punched in with their fist, his jaw is now
concave and pressed against the back of his skull. He tries mouthing words to
me, but I can tell he no longer possesses a working voice box. One of his
eyeballs has been poked out entirely, and the other one is filled with blood
red where the whites should be. He stares at me with the one eye while
attempting to lift his arms. But the crushed and snapped bones in his forearms
are poking out of the skin. He can’t lift them no matter how much he tries.
After a few seconds, his mouth stops moving, a heavy breath is exhaled from his
lungs and I know he’s on his way to meet Allah … or the devil … or both.

I gaze over my shoulder into the
back.

Mahaz is no longer there. Or, if he
is there, he is nowhere to be seen … but Andrea is She’s lying on top of
Putin, a jagged gash from her forehead down across her cheek and over her lips.
Her two front teeth are missing and her once perfect nose is now collapsed and
pressed onto her face like a lump of soft clay. It looks like she isn’t
breathing. Like she’s dead.

Putin doesn’t appear to be
breathing either. Remarkably, he is seated in the same upright position he was in
prior to the accident, as if he wasn’t affected by the fall at all. But my
guess is that his back, or his neck, or all of the above, are broken.

I smell smoke. And where there’s
smoke, there’s a big bad burning problem.

I have to get the hell out of here.
I shove and push myself against the tape. It’s now budging, the accident having
torn some of it. The smoke is getting thicker, blacker, the interior of the
vehicle getting hot. I make out flames down by my feet—flames that are
spreading to the driver’s side, lighting up the general’s clothing.

Using all my strength, I try
lifting with my left arm. It tears through the tape. Reaching, I grab Soleimani’s
military issue fighting knife from his belt, cut away the rest of the tape. I
then pull his semi-automatic from its holster, grab hold of the da Vinci map
and the sketch book beneath it. Thrusting my shoulder into the door, it not
only opens, but falls away from its broken hinges. I jump out just as the
flames spread to the passenger side seat.