Legacy (20 page)

As they moved further into the darkness, Jack could see that the excavation was getting smaller, and the walls rougher. He could also feel a much cooler draft on his face. Finally, they could see the end of the small shaft and the drop-off ahead. Jack kept his calm. He allowed his eyes to roam across the walls and the men that were watching them. He saw one advantage; most of the guards were aware of their surroundings and were uneasy in the semidarkness. Their eyes moved from place to place as they drew closer to the edge. Jack could smell water and hear the rush of a river somewhere far below. He closed his eyes as a plan formed. It was a long shot at the least and an expedient way to meet their death at the most.

The guards stopped and started pushing them toward the edge of a large rock outcropping—first Mendenhall, then Ryan, then Everett and Collins. They were being lined up.

“Gentlemen, it isn’t much, but I suggest we keep walking forward,” Jack said beneath his breath.

Before any of the eight guards could react, instead of stopping at the dark edge of the chasm before them all four men kept going and walked right off into the black void.

Falling side by side, Mendenhall cursed and Ryan prayed as the automatic weapons opened up above them. Tracers started filling the darkened shaft as they fell. One round hit Jack in the shoulder, barely grazing his shirt and taking an inch of skin with it into the blackness. Another three rounds struck the wall in front of them and ricocheted in all directions. It was like falling into an abyss with angry hornets buzzing around their heads. As they braced for a crushing impact, the four men were amazed as they kept falling, gaining speed as they fell feet-first into the great unknown death that awaited them.

Mendenhall was the first to strike the water, followed by Ryan. The latter had lost the battle with keeping his body straight and fell face-first into the rush of the river, the impact breaking his nose and shocking him into near unconsciousness. Everett managed to stay upright and hit the underground river with an impact that sent him straight to the river’s bottom, where he jammed both knees on the coarse rock that made up the riverbed. Jack landed right beside him and veered off sharply after going under. The extreme angle allowed his feet to strike the left bank of the river. Collins thought he had broken his ankle as it came into contact with a large boulder, but he was aware enough to see red hot tracers stitch the water around him. He pushed with his legs and pulled with his arms, all the while assisted by the flow of the river. He finally managed to surface to the sound of rushing white water and the pings of bullets bouncing off rocks. In the darkness he bumped into someone who reached out and grabbed his right arm. Then he felt another man’s hands and another’s. Will and Jason were shaken as they coughed and spit out the freezing water.

“Damn,” Everett shouted. “Are we all here?” The words were almost lost in the din.

There was no answer as they picked up speed and the current pulled them around a bend in the river. They struck a rock wall and then spun back into the center of the current. Then there was nothing, the sound disappearing as the walls and ceiling vanished above them. They were completely submerged.

Jack tried to hang on desperately to the man he was holding, but the twisting and rolling water separated them. He knew they had followed the river underground and figured that was it. He thought they could travel for at least three of four miles without the benefit of drawing air into their lungs. As he twirled underwater, he was sorry about leading his men into such a simple trap as the excavation, but knew his people well enough that they would rather die like this than be shot in the back and dumped into the blackness.

As the four men were battered by the twisting river, Jack was amazed to see the clean, cold water brighten. As he registered this in his oxygen-deprived brain, he was suddenly free of the river. He felt a free-falling sensation as he was ejected from the underground river and into thin air. The fall was from a height he would never have volunteered for. The waterfall noise covered the screams coming from all four of the men as they finally struck the white water below the falls. Jack struggled to the surface and realized then that through the entire length of his free fall he hadn’t taken a breath. Finally reaching the surface of the roiling water, Jack took in the most wonderful breath of his entire life.

“Colonel, are you all right?”

As Jack gained his senses he felt hands lifting him up. When he looked to his right he saw it was Will Mendenhall who had taken his shoulder. In his other arm Will held Ryan by the back of his neck, keeping him afloat. There was a lot of blood clouding the water around Jason and that brought Collins back to complete consciousness as he reached out to see how badly hurt Ryan was.

“Mr. Everett?” Jack called out.

“Right here,” came the answer. The Navy SEAL had taken both the fall and the water in stride, great swimmer that he was.

“Is Ryan all right?” Carl asked as he joined the three men holding each other up.

“He’s breathing. I think his nose is broken.” Will looked around to get his bearings.

At that moment they became aware of eyes upon them. Jack looked to his left and that was when he saw a man and two small boys. They were staring at the strange scene before them with fishing poles in their hands. Their eyes were wide and they didn’t notice that the smallest child was getting a large strike on his pole.

Jack waved his hand at the three fishermen, and then out of the corner of his mouth said, “I think now may be a good time to get the hell out of here.”

FAITH MINISTRIES, INC., LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Rev. Samuel Rawlins paced the floor with the cordless phone held tightly in his hand. He was irritated at the two-second delay in the voice signal caused by the scrambled transmission. That was just another thing James McCabe, or Mr. Smith as he was called, had installed that had become an incredible waste of time.

“And what do your people say? Who is this man?” he asked the person at the other end of the line. He waited in frustration for the scrambled reply.

“We don’t really know. We have a background check running right now and so far all we’ve come up with is that he was the highest-ranking student ever to come out of Harvard and MIT. After graduation in 1985, this Compton just fell off the map. That fact makes me suspect he’s CIA.”

“Mr. Vice President, you of all people should know that top MIT graduates do not go to work for low-paying intelligence agencies.” Rawlins wondered why he dealt with men who had to have the smallest things explained to them. “Now, what did their visit consist of?”

The silence on the other end of the line was far longer than the scrambling could account for. Rawlins squeezed the handset even tighter.

“They were asking questions about how fast the United States could get to the Moon.”

With the vice president’s answer, the whiteness of Rawlins’s hand on the phone increased and blood was forced out of it with the pressure he brought to bear.

“And?” he said, gritting his teeth.

“I don’t know. All of this information was passed to me as the head of the space program, but I’m being kept at arm’s length as far as the president is concerned. He’s not taking me into his confidence.”

“If that is the case, Harry, why the hell am I paying you so much money?”

“Look, this Compton can’t get any information that won’t eventually get back to me. Obviously the president has chosen this man to formulate a plan of some kind, possibly as a contingency only, so all we have to do is watch him.”

“No, we can’t take that chance. I want this man eliminated.”

“What? He works directly for the president of the United States, Reverend. I think that would cause some very serious consequences.”

Rawlins moved out from behind his desk and strode to a large couch fronted by an ornate coffee table. On the couch was a woman reading a magazine with her legs tucked underneath her. Rawlins placed his hands on her blond hair. The softness seemed to calm him considerably. He looked down at the family portrait sitting on the coffee table. It was a photo of Rawlins and his two daughters. The elder of which was sitting right in front of him.

“Use your imagination. If he is indeed on his way to Houston, as you say, any number of things can go wrong in flight. Am I correct?”

The young, beautiful woman on the couch, his daughter Laurel, lowered the
Esquire
and turned her head toward her father. She had a questioning look on her face. He smiled down at her.

“I wouldn’t even know how to go about ordering something like that. I can’t be caught committing what amounts to an assassination. That’s tantamount to treason, no matter what you—”

“Do you really think I would put such an assignment into your lap, Harold? I’m not a fool. Just keep me informed about what this Niles Compton learns on his trip to NASA. That will give me time to make the arrangements. With luck, NASA and DARPA will tell him the same thing you’ve told me for years, that our space program is tits up in the water.”

“Look, Reverend, we need to think this out. We need—”

Rawlins pushed the disconnect button on the phone and lowered it to his side. His hand continued toying with his daughter’s blond hair until she finally became irritated enough to push him away.

“Are you going to keep me in the dark forever, Daddy?”

Rawlins looked down at his eldest daughter and smiled. “Just the usual incompetence with employees. You know the drill. They just can’t see the things I do.” Rawlins leaned over the back of the couch. “God’s will can be an angry and ugly thing.”

“I love your euphemisms for murder, Daddy, I always have.”

“I will assume you mean that in the most respectful way, daughter.” Rawlins straightened and walked back to his desk, tossing the phone into its cradle.

Laurel Rawlins stood and walked to her father’s desk, perching on the edge. Her shapely right leg swung back and forth as she tilted her head low so that her father could see her eyes.

“I told you, you need more dependable people on your payroll. Now, give me your wish list and I’ll get things done. I have the people, and I have the contacts. You said it yourself. Mr. McCabe will have his hands full in the coming days and weeks and can’t be every place he needs to be. And we don’t need the Mechanic getting himself killed before his usefulness is at an end, do we?”

Rawlins looked up at his older daughter. Her blue eyes were as blue as his own. Unlike his younger daughter, Laurel was all him. She was a woman who even as a child knew what made her world go around and that was the money her father could provide her. She had so much of it that her nighttime activities were a mere hobby to her. That fact alone should have concerned him, but he knew she had to have excitement in her life.

“I do things for the love of my God, daughter, but never for myself. Of course, the money is always nice, but it never seems to be enough.”

“The money is good. And I have no doubt that you do what you do for the love of God,” Laurel said, reaching out and touching his cheek. “And I do what I do for the love of you.” She smiled broadly and batted her eyes. “And the money too, of course.”

“I suspect that is not all you do it for. I believe I should be worried about your wicked ways, Laurel—for instance, your little affair with Mr. McCabe.”

The young woman slid off the desk, hopping gently to the carpeted floor and straightening her skirt. “Believe me, Daddy, when I say that my relationship with our former Army friend had its little perks. I’ve met people who will be a benefit to us, even if our dear Mr. McCabe has to, well, even if he suddenly has to leave our employ.”

“For now, I need him like no other. He devised a brilliant plan that will shift blame away from our actions to where it belongs. It’s ingenious really. And he chose the perfect man in the Mechanic, a man who will set us on the road to everlasting glory.”

Laurel raised her eyebrows, knowing that her father was as crazy as they come, but she still loved him in her own special way. She returned to his desk and became serious.

“Now, if I heard you right, you spoke of a Niles Compton?”

“Yes.”

“And he’ll be in Houston this afternoon?”

Rawlins saw the gleam in his daughter’s eyes as she demurely took a notepad from his desk and wrote down the pertinent information.

“Yes, the Johnson Space Center.”

“Now,” she said, lowering the writing pad, “I take it you want him to cease his activities, whatever they are?”

Rawlins looked through the large window. His eyes fell on the smoggy afternoon outside his offices.

“Fine, if you want to know about the ugly side of God’s work, I may have something even more thrilling for you when you finish with this. If what is happening is truly going to happen, we will not only be out many valuable patents on the technology in the mines, but the world could turn against the word of God for those damnable petrified bodies. The nonbelievers of the world are going to try to make my people, and others of our kind, turn from their faith. If it comes to that, we may have to commit ourselves to the salvation of our very souls, and that of the people who allow us into their homes three times a week.”

“Sounds like we may be busy then,” she said, moving her head to get her long blond hair behind her shoulders. She tore the page from the pad and tossed it onto the desk. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a flight to catch.”