Valley of the Templars (32 page)

“Están cambiando de dirección!”
Geraldo yelled, eyes wide and pointing in the direction of the patrol boat. The Cuban crossed himself. “
Madre de Dios
,” he whispered.

“He is changing course!” Eddie said as they topped another wave. It was true. As well as it could, the Zhuk was angling itself slightly across the breaking seas, her bows taking a terrible pounding, spray flying far above their bridge. It would take a while, but within no more than ten or fifteen minutes they would be on a collision course and that same steel bow would crush the Corazon de Leon into splinters.

“Bloody hell!” Will Black said.

“What can we do?” Holliday asked Eddie.

“Nothing,
mi compadre
. If we try to do the same thing away from them, we will capsize. We are wood. They are steel.”

“Then it’s over,” said Holliday, staring out at the terrible sunlit sea.

Following the establishing of the PINNACLE NUCFLASH ORLANDO message on the roof of the Corazon de Leon’s wheelhouse roof by Paul Smith and the further knowledge that a Zhuk-class patrol boat was following it led to a predictable chain of events that moved up and down the chain of command with remarkable efficiency.

When the first aerial NEST team flying over the Orlando area reported an anomalous and extremely large radiation signal originating in the Lake Buena Vista area and since the Zhuk was both of Cuban military origin and well outside both Cuban territorial waters and even beyond its economic fisheries zone, it was deemed both prudent and proactive to send up one of the new Predator C Avenger drones from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada for a look-see.

After a four-hour flight the Avenger, at an elevation of just under sixty thousand feet and using its highly sophisticated Advanced Low-observable
Embedded Reconnaissance Targeting, or ALERT, system, spotted what was deemed to be hostile intentions from the Zhuk, and this information went rapidly back up the line to the Pentagon and from there to the Situation Room, where the president and several other notables were gathered around the same monitors they’d watched Osama bin Laden ascend to Paradise on.

Based on the fact that one of the NEST ground teams had discovered two suitcase nuclear devices in a Disney hotel parking lot, the president of the United States had no compunction at all in his next order.

“Do it,” he said firmly, simultaneously wondering if he was guaranteeing his reelection or sending it around the toilet bowl.

And the Avenger did what it was told, releasing its single two-thousand-pound BLU-109 Penetrator laser-guided bomb normally referred to as a “Bunker Buster.” The needle-nosed bomb sliced down through the full sixty thousand feet at ten minutes before sunset, its perfectly calibrated systems guiding in toward the heat signal coming from the Zhuk’s engines.

The Penetrator bomb was traveling much too quickly for the human eye to follow, but the explosion that
followed was spectacular. Riding up to the crest of yet another wave, Holliday saw the Zhuk disintegrate in front of his eyes. He also knew exactly what was going to happen next. “Everybody, down!” Holliday bellowed, dragging Eddie down off the wheel.

There was a brain-rattling concussion and a split second later all the glass windows in the wheelhouse blew out. Suddenly the interior wheelhouse was being flooded by sheets of stinging rain and salt spray.

Eddie struggled to his feet and grabbed the wheel as they heaved down into a wave trough. When they rose to the crest of the next wave, the Cuban Zhuk had completely disappeared.

“What was that!” Carrie Pilkington asked, squinting her eyes.

Holliday grinned, relieved. “That, Miss Pilkington, was the U.S. cavalry.”

“Dios mio!”
whispered Geraldo.

Fidel Castro died right on schedule, shortly after his private celebration of St. Lazarus Day at his Punta Cero estate. By that time the president of the United States, the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada had agreed on a joint occupying force of Cuba based on the incontrovertible evidence of a planned nuclear attack by Cuba on the United States, an unprovoked act of war by any definition of the term.

The occupying force would be under U.N. observation until the first untainted and uncorrupted democratic elections in the country since 1933 and the Revolt of the Sergeants, which left Fulgencio Batista as the de facto leader of the country ruling through a series of puppet governments until he took over the presidency himself.

The uncovering of the suitcase bombs, and a day later the bomb in the Everglades, put the president’s numbers through the roof, virtually guaranteeing his
election despite the state of the economy. As predicted by Kate Sinclair, plans were immediately drawn up to increase governmental and police powers under the Patriot Act.

The deaths of Max Kingman and Joseph Patchin never made it onto the news cycle, and as the huge corporate conspiracy involved in the plot became known to the White House, that, too, was swept under the rug, at least for the time being, hanging people from meat hooks having become politically incorrect and not good for the incumbent president’s image.

Lieutenant Colonel John Holliday and Eddie Cabrera lay on identical lounge chairs under the shade of an umbrella on Cable Beach, sipping Kalik beer. They had been keeping under the radar at one of the smaller hotels, waiting for things to blow over. Holliday knew it couldn’t last forever; eventually there’d be a closed Senate investigation and he at least would be subpoenaed. Until then he’d rest as best he could.

“I’m sorry about your brother, Eddie,” Holliday murmured.

His friend shrugged. “I am sorry, too, but he is dead and I am alive. This is Cuba, my friend.”

Holliday’s new cell phone beeped at him. He knew who was calling because he’d only given the number
to one person. He took out the phone. Lines of text began to appear on the screen.

“Uh-oh,” said Holliday.

“What is this uh-oh?” Eddie asked.

“Where my cousin Peggy is involved, it usually means trouble.” Holliday shook his head, laughing. “Apparently she and Rafi found the secret diaries of Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett. They’re arriving in Nassau on the ten o’clock flight.”

“Faucet, this is the tap to get water, yes?” Eddie asked.

“The water part’s right, but don’t think of tap water. Think of the Amazon.” He switched off the phone. “I think we’re in for another wild ride, my friend.”

The two old men sat on the porch of the older man’s farm in the mountains of the Spanish Sierra Morena and looked out over the hills.

“It is pretty here, don’t you think, brother? Nice and hot, like home.”

“Pretty enough,” said the older of the two. Behind them in the house, he could hear the sound of the evening meal being cooked. “Pretty enough and hot enough for my old bones, but it is not home, is it?”

“No, but you can rest here. There was no peace at home—you know that.” The younger brother laughed. “And here you can watch your own state funeral on the television while your nation mourns you. This is an opportunity given to very few men,
compañero
.”

“Poor Benito. He was with me for many years. I pray he did not suffer too much.”

“It was very quick,” the younger brother lied. In fact, the man’s death had been excruciating and had taken hours.

“And that
mariquita pedófilo
, Ortega?”

“He had a heart attack shortly after your death. Between the eyes.”

“Bueno,”
sighed the older brother sleepily, his eyes closing. “
Muy bueno
.”

The younger brother waited for a few minutes, listening to his brother’s steady breathing, and then tiptoed back into the cool shadows of the porch.

And the old man slept and dreamed of the bright stars on a dark, cold night, a toboggan ride and making angels in the snow.

If you were looking for a word to describe Peggy Blackstock’s mood as she walked down the strand in the seaside English town of Torquay, “bored” would have sprung to your lips, immediately followed by “If I see one more ye olde English pub advertising the best fish and chips in Torquay, I’m going to hurl.”

She’d been in town for two days, and there were still three more to go until Rafi’s World Archaeology Congress convention was over. She was already at her wit’s end. Being in Torquay was like being in Coney Island without Nathan’s, the Cyclone or the bumper cars. There were just as many people, but the sand on the few beaches was muddy and dirty, the English Channel water was freezing cold and most of the food tasted like library paste.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in her husband’s work. In fact she was more than interested—
she was fascinated. Rafi specialized in the archaeology of the Crusades in Israel and it took them both to dozens of sites from Jerusalem and Jaffa to Turkey and Turin, from Bosnia to Berlin and just about everywhere else in Europe. The Crusades had covered a lot of ground from the tenth century to the fourteenth century, and they had reached as far as Sweden in their scope.

On her far-flung trips with Rafi, Peggy had become an accomplished archaeological photographer, and she had landed more than enough freelance assignments, contributing pictures to the
New York Times Travel Magazine
,
Bon Appétit
,
National Geographic
and half a dozen other periodicals.

But something was missing, and Peggy knew exactly what it was: she craved the adrenaline rush of the truly unknown. Since coming back from Africa and losing track of her cousin Doc, she’d missed the…excitement and adventure that seemed to follow the ex–U.S. Army Ranger. It had been like that even when she was a girl.

It was Doc who’d taught her not to be afraid of heights and had calmly and efficiently taught her the skills of rock climbing in the Adirondacks. It was Doc who’d also taught her to hunt and fish and use a gun.

It was their uncle Henry the professor who’d given Peggy her first camera and taught her how to use it, but it was Doc who’d given her the courage to reach
the places where’d she’d taken the first photographs that really mattered to her: the summit of Mount Skylight, the fourth-highest mountain in the Adirondacks; at sunset, a lone gray wolf in the winter at Yellowstone; and a hibernating twelve-hundred-pound Kodiak bear in Alaska. It was Doc who’d started her on a lifelong quest for adventure, and somehow she knew the quest wasn’t over yet.

One thing was sure: no one was going to find the adventure of a lifetime on the main street of Torquay. So, at the next corner, she turned left, away from the sea, and began climbing a narrow residential street of low attached bungalow-style dwellings that climbed up a seriously steep hill. It was not the most likely path to any kind of adventure at all, but the kids in the Narnia books had found it through a cupboard door, and Harry Potter had found it on platform 9¾ in King’s Cross Station, so you never really knew, then, did you? Anyway, the exercise would do her good; she’d had one too many orders of ye olde fish and chips in the past few days.

There were a few shops on her way up the street; the English version of a 7-Eleven, with ads for fruity-flavored vodka coolers in the window. There was a hairstylist called British Hairways, where the customers under their dryers looked as though they were all in their eighties. And a prosthetic store called Lend You a Hand had a single bright pink artificial leg in
an otherwise empty window. Peggy would probably find the Bates Motel around the next bend.

What she did find was Weatherby and Sons Auction House, a ragtag assembly of a plastered bungalow attached to something at the rear that might have been a two-story carriage house turned into a commercial garage and a third stumpy-looking building with a pair of firmly closed barn-sized doors.

Between the stumpy building and the garage lay a paved driveway that seemed to be doubling as a parking lot. At the end of the drive there was an overhead aluminum door, slid three-quarters open. The roll-up door had a sign over it that read A
UCTION
T
ODAY
. The car in the parking lot was a Jaguar XKR convertible, this year’s model. The auction business was doing well by somebody. Peggy turned down the drive and ducked under the aluminum door.

The interior of the auction house was like the biggest, most chaotic yard sale in the world: rowboats sat in the rafters; chandeliers and harpoons were hanging from the beams; a stack of twisted narwhal tusks lay in one corner along with an equal number of ancient-looking bamboo fly rods and an enormous stuffed Scottish stag with a rack of eighteen-point antlers. The stag looked dusty, the glass eyes cloudy. Probably not a lot of buyers for stuffed giant Scottish stags in these days of fiscal responsibility. There was a stage at the front of the hall, with perhaps a hundred
or so folding chairs in front of it, most of them filled with people waving numbered paddles around as they bid on one item after another. Easels were set up on the stage to display works of art. There were a movable display wall full of hanging musical instruments and several tables with smaller and medium-sized objects to be sold. The auctioneer stood at a podium in the center of the stage, and a crew of workers, male and female, carted things on and off the raised platform. An old man with grizzled stubble and thin hair slicked back with something that looked like Vaseline handed her a paddle and said, “There you go, dearie. Have fun.” Then he pointed her to an empty seat at the end of an aisle halfway to the auction stage. She took her seat and noticed that the number on her paddle was 666—not a particularly auspicious number for someone who’d shivered her way through all five of the
Omen
movies.

The items went by quickly: six Regency chairs for twenty-two hundred pounds, the lot; a Georgian silver porringer for a thousand; a Royal Winton circus jug for three hundred sixty pounds…. The list went on and on. Throughout every lot that went up, Peggy noticed that the paddle in the lap of the man beside her never twitched. He was in his fifties, with the high cheekbones and dark deep-set eyes of a Russian or a Slav. His hair was too long—well over his nape. But his salt-and-pepper beard was perfectly
groomed, and his suit looked very expensive. The man’s hands were strong, well-manicured, but with the raw knuckles and the calluses of someone who had spent a lot of time outdoors. He certainly didn’t give the impression of someone who’d be interested in silver porridge pots. After fifteen minutes, he made a frustrated grunting sound, stood up and left.