The Goddess Legacy (34 page)

“We’ve got infrared. All hostiles are neutralized,” the man snapped.

An explosion boomed from the distant camp, followed by the sound of a pitched battle, the gunfire steady and furious. Drake and Spencer exchanged a glance, and Spencer nodded.

“Sounds like the black hats are getting the crap kicked out of them,” Spencer said.

“But the slaves…” Allie said, looking up at the soldier who’d done all the talking. “There’s a cave – a big one, with nearly a thousand slave laborers. They’re unarmed,” she warned.

The man ignored her and leveled a hard stare at Spencer. “Lead the way to Reynolds.” He turned to his men and indicated Drake and Allie. “Search them, and then get them into the bird. I want to be gone seconds after we return. Have the medics follow us over with a stretcher,” he instructed, and addressed Spencer. “Move.”

Spencer obliged, leaving Drake and Allie to their armed escorts, who directed them to the helicopter after patting them down. Two medics bolted past them at a dead run, and Drake and Allie ducked as they neared the helicopter cargo door, the big aircraft’s blades turning slowly over their heads as the turbine idled. A soldier helped them aboard and motioned to a bench seat at the back. They sat and peered through the open doorway, and three minutes later the medics had returned with Reynolds on their stretcher. They hoisted him aboard and Spencer followed, and the first medic started an IV line in the dim red light of the cabin as the second removed a plasma bag from a first aid kit. Spencer joined Drake at the rear of the hold, and three more commandos climbed into the helicopter, followed by the officer who’d directed the operation.

“I gave him a morphine stick about forty-five minutes ago,” Spencer said as the officer pulled the cabin door closed and took a seat facing them.

“You told us already,” the officer said.

“Right,” Spencer said. “Is there any point in asking where we’re going?”

The officer checked his watch, ignoring the question.

The helicopter lifted slowly into the air, and the officer turned away and muttered into his comm line, listened, and spoke again. The aircraft leveled off no more than five hundred feet above the terrain below and began moving forward, turning in a slow bank before accelerating away from the clearing, rising and dropping with the landscape, the only sound the throbbing pulse of the motor as the medics fought to save Reynolds’s life.

Mehta’s face blanched as he listened to the frenzied reports on the communications channel. When Suri warned that helicopters were over the camp, he sprang into action, snatching the dagger from his desk and taking off through the passage that led to the processing area, where the uranium ore was milled and chemically synthesized into yellowcake before being shipped off for refinement.

He slid the dagger into his belt as he ran past the milling cave and made a left turn into an unlit recession. He stopped at an iron door mounted into the stone and fumbled for a key that hung from the gold chain around his neck. The lock opened with a pop, and he stepped into the darkness and felt for a flashlight in a holder mounted on the wall. His fingers found the cylinder, and he spun a small crank on the end, creating sufficient charge to power the LED bulb. Once he could see, he locked the bolt in place and knelt by a green canvas sack with a timer on top.

Mehta set the device for three minutes, and the blinking red clock began a reverse countdown. He nodded to himself and then ran to the end of the tunnel, where rungs leading up into gloom were sunk into the stone. Holding the light in one hand, he used the other to pull himself up, two stories, where the shaft intersected with another passage. He heaved himself onto the passageway floor and leaned over to close a steel hatch. Mehta latched it into place and got to his feet, cranked the flashlight again, and crept cautiously along the tunnel.

He was well away from the hatch when the charge by the door below blew. Part of the floor behind him collapsed, sending a cloud of dust billowing toward him. He held his breath and pushed himself to greater speed as he was enveloped by grit, and pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth as he felt his way along the stone walls.

Five minutes later he was in clear air, in a large cavern with a shimmering pool in its center. His light played along the walls, and he made for a gap at chest level on the far side – a natural chute through which water entered from the mountain above during cloudbursts. When he reached the opening, he dragged his ample frame into the narrow space and crawled thirty yards, where he could feel a slight draft of cool air from beyond the vegetation that covered the opening of his emergency escape outlet.

Once in the night air, he made his way down a steep ravine to a creek and hurried away from the camp on the other side of the mountain, toward one of the nearby hill villages, where he could arrange for transportation to a main road. He had no doubt that he’d been double-crossed, but there was little he could do about it at this point, other than to make it known to his supporters in the Indian government.

That the camp was finished didn’t trouble him greatly – its usefulness had long since faded as his fortune from other ventures had swelled. The revenues from providing the government with undocumented yellowcake paled in comparison to his legitimate income since the country had undergone a construction boom, and maintaining the camp was now more a nuisance than anything, one which he’d toyed with shutting down of his own accord.

He would send a trusted team to recover the euros that were hidden under the floor of the mobile building he used as his quarters when at the camp, assuming the attackers had missed the stash in the excitement of battle, and then move on to other things, his career as a slaver at an end.

Far below, on the approach to the dam, he saw lights twinkling in a tiny hamlet inhabited by dirt-poor farmers who would be overjoyed to have a prosperous stranger appear in their midst and bestow riches upon them in exchange for a ride. Even at the late hour, his pocket money would be a month’s earnings for the farmers, and he had no doubt that by daybreak he would be on his way to Delhi, no worse for wear, the entire unpleasant mess behind him except necessary cleanup he could count on both governments to assist him with – everyone had much to lose in creating an international incident, and their self-interests would bind them together with the strongest glue.

Lahore, Pakistan

The helicopter landed in the center of a barren field located in the center of a military base. They were met by a security detail, and Reynolds was off-loaded into a waiting ambulance, which roared away toward a row of buildings, their lights blazing at the edge of the expanse. The detail directed Drake, Allie, and Spencer to a personnel carrier, and after they’d climbed aboard with the heavily armed soldiers, the big vehicle lurched along a rutted strip of pavement toward a metal Quonset hut near the lit buildings.

When the conveyance had rolled to a halt, the grim-faced men instructed them to disembark, and more soldiers – these in U.S. Army uniforms with insignia rather than the black, anonymous garb of their escorts – led them into the structure, where an older man in fatigues was standing by a bank of monitors, studying the images with hawk-like concentration.

The officer on their right saluted the older man and spoke. “Sir. They’re here.”

The man looked up from the screen, obviously annoyed. “Put them in the conference room. I’ll be in shortly,” he said, his voice gruff.

The soldiers showed them to a Sheetrock enclosure on the opposite end of the hut and opened a door. Inside were a conference table and six chairs. “Have a seat,” the officer said. “There’s bottled water in the credenza.” He eyed them a final time and then closed and locked the door, leaving them alone.

“What’s going on, Spencer?” Allie whispered.

“We’re on a U.S. base. Probably in Pakistan. I know we have some here, and we weren’t flying all that long, so…”

“The DOD,” Drake spat. “I knew it. I told you Reynolds was going to screw us.”

The lock on the door clanked, and then the metal slab opened and the older man entered carrying a file folder. He sat down at the head of the table, opened the folder, and tossed a cheap ballpoint pen toward Drake. He appraised them all with cold gray eyes and then his frigid glare settled on Drake.

“Reynolds didn’t screw you, other than by being a damned fool,” he said, and removed three documents and slid them across the table. “These are security clearances. Everything you’ve seen falls under national security – top secret. Sign and date them.”

“And if we don’t?” Spencer snapped.

The man scowled. “Son, you’re testing my patience.”

“I’m not your son.”

“You want to go to jail for murder? Keep doubling down on a bad hand, and it’ll happen,” the man warned.

“So this is blackmail,” Drake said.

“This is national security. If I want to, I can hold you indefinitely with no trial, no charges, because you’re materially involved in a terrorist event. You want to play hardball with me? You’ll wish you’d never been born.”

Allie read the document and signed. “I’m not sure this is even legal if signed under duress.”

The man shrugged. “Take me to court.”

Spencer gave Drake a dark stare and scrawled his name across the bottom. “Fine. Now what?”

Drake did the same, and the man collected the documents, stood, and moved to the door. “I’ll be right back.”

He stepped out of the room and Drake leaned toward Allie and Spencer. “This is scary weird, isn’t it?”

Spencer pointed at the air-conditioning duct and held a finger to his lips. Drake’s eyes flitted to the grill and back to Spencer’s, and they sat in silence, awaiting the man’s return.

Five minutes later, their patience was rewarded. The man reentered, walked unhurriedly to the head of the table, and sat. “All right. My name’s Monroe. General Monroe. Among other things, I’m responsible for coordinating things for the military in this neck of the woods. Reynolds got you involved in something that we’ve been working on for several years – a counterterrorism operation. You almost blew it for us and narrowly avoided getting killed in the process. You can never breathe a word about anything you’ve seen or heard, or you’ll be arrested and prosecuted for treason. Is that clear?”

Spencer’s frown deepened. “Just like that? You redact everything, and we have to stay silent? Not on your life, General. You owe us an explanation. Reynolds told us we were working on behalf of the DOD. It’s going to take more than some national security mumbo jumbo, and I think you know that.”

“I can answer a few questions, but there’s a limit. Remember, anything I say is covered under that security document.”

“What does the DOD have to do with a slave labor camp, for starters?” Allie demanded.

“Nothing. That’s not our affair.”

“You said we were involved in a terrorist action. What does that mean, and how?” Drake asked.

“We learned of a particularly nasty sect of extremists operating out of Pakistan who were trying to source nuclear material a few years back. This place is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism because of the Saudi-funded schools here – they exported their brand of intolerance and extremism via these institutions, and it found fertile ground in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, twisted into Jihad by clerics who are preaching a litany of hate.”

“Nuclear material?” Spencer asked.

“Yes. After Bin Laden, we take these threats as seriously as a heart attack, so we came up with an operation where a credible third-party source would supply them with what they were after, so we could confirm the money trail, identify the ringleader, and neutralize the whole bunch in one fell swoop. That was coming to fruition, and then your buddy Carson started showing an unhealthy interest in the very area where that third party’s uranium mine is located. That’s how Reynolds and military intelligence got into the picture. By the time I put together that he was nosing around in a hot zone, it was too late – I tried squashing the inquiry and warning Reynolds off, but he went renegade on me, along with one of his agents, and then your man Carson lost his head, and the next thing I know I’ve got real problems while in the final stages of an operation that’s of the utmost importance…”

“Then you knew about the slave camp. You knew what they’re doing there – all those people condemned to a life of suffering and death,” Allie said, barely containing her disgust.

“Look, little lady, we just went in there and blew the place to kingdom come, all right? The bad guys got what was coming to them, and you got a big win: those imprisoned there are now no longer slaves. We’ll work with the locals to dismantle the place, provide some foreign aid to relocate them, the works. But there’s a limit to how things work in the real world, and it’s all about compromises. We did what we had to do. Believe me, there was no joy in dealing with any of these animals.”

“What about the treasure?” Drake asked, his voice low. “We located it. At least we think so.”

The general shook his head. “Can’t go near it. Covered under national security. That’s not negotiable.”

“Where do you get off making that call?” Spencer demanded.

“Simple. There can be no trace of anything that went on in that valley. You locate a treasure a quarter mile from where the camp was and pretty soon half the country is digging around the area, looking for more. Then there’s a lot of explaining to do when thousands of skeletons are discovered, as well as a vein of uranium in an area where none’s believed to exist. Too many questions arise – messy questions neither we nor the Indians want to have to answer.”

“So you’re going to pretend nothing happened there? That’s your solution? What about prosecuting the monsters responsible? That’s a concentration camp, plain and simple. Since when do the good guys cover those up?” Allie said, outrage tingeing every word.

“Little lady, things are never black and white. I’m sorry. That’s all I can say about it. We’ll do what we can for the survivors, and the world will keep turning. You did good, they’re free, and now it’s time to move on.”