Vengeance (The Kurgan War Book 4) (12 page)

Sheridan shook his head. “Have you?”

“My ex and I spent a week at one off the coast of Brazil when we first got married. It was quite the place. Our room was below sea level so we got to see fish swimming by our windows. The place was entirely energy self-sufficient.”

“I guess that’s our next stop. We’ll have to arrange transport over to Atlantis. It’s probably too late in the day to book a flight.”

Cole checked the flight times on his watch. “There’s an airship leaving from Rome at six tomorrow morning.”

“Book us a couple of seats.”

“Already done.”

Sheridan picked up one of the wallets and emptied it on the table. There were several fake IDs, each with a different name and nationality on it, and a credit card that still had five hundred and ten credits on it. The other wallet contained the same items of identification and some money in it. There were no family pictures or personal items in either wallet that might have shed light on who their attackers really were.

Cole nudged Sheridan. “Our waitress is on her way back.”

With a swoop of his arm, he pushed everything down onto his lap.

The waitress, a woman more than twice Sheridan’s age, winked at him as she placed their food down on the table. He had ordered his favorite meal: spaghetti. Cole smiled when he saw his plate filled with chicken marsala.

“
Grazie
,” said Sheridan to their waitress.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” she replied, lingering by their table for a few seconds before walking away.

“Way to go,” said Cole, teasing his friend.

Sheridan scrunched up his face in disgust. “Please, she’s old enough to be my mother.”

“When in Rome.”

“I don’t think so. Besides she looks more like your type of woman.”

Cole placed his fork down. “And what might that be exactly?”

“Breathing.”

Cole chuckled. “Yeah, you called it correctly.”

Early the next morning they left their ramshackle hotel and made their way to the international airport on the outskirts of Rome. As before, they moved through all of the security screens without setting off any alarms and joined a line of people waiting to board the airship for the two-hour flight to Atlantis. Sheridan noticed that most of the people were excited tourists who were looking forward to what they hoped would be a relaxing holiday.

They handed their IDs and boarding passes to a ticket droid who took and scanned their documents before spitting them back out onto a tray on the counter.

“I miss the human touch,” grumbled Cole as he picked up his travel documents. “Everything, and I do mean everything, is being automated these days. If we’re not careful, we’ll soon be out of a job.”

They walked past a final security station where each person’s right eye was scanned and recorded one last time before being added to the ship’s flight manifest. Sheridan stopped for a second and looked out of the terminal’s large glass windows. He smiled when he saw their airship waiting for them on the tarmac. Although officially called a hybrid airship, most people just referred to it as an airship or a dirigible, if they liked the old historical name for it. At over three hundred meters in length, the craft combined the lift of a lighter-than-air ship with fixed-wing technology. The sleek-looking vessel’s top was covered with a solar energy film to help power the massive craft’s rear-mounted engines. There were long slender wings halfway down the ship that made it look like an enormous whale to Sheridan.

“Coming?” Cole asked.

“Yeah. Sorry, I’ve always loved riding in these things ever since I was a kid and flew in one during a school field trip to Ireland.”

Inside, they took their seats near the back of the passenger cabin built into the bottom of the ship. The closest people to them were a couple of businessmen who looked more interested in working on their tablets than engaging in idle chatter. A few young children ran to the nearest large oval windows that ran down the length of the passenger cabin and waved excitedly at relatives waving at them from the terminal. Within minutes, they were airborne. The airship climbed to its cruising altitude of five thousand meters before heading west out over the Tyrrhenian Sea.
 

Sheridan hadn’t slept well last night. His overactive mind wouldn’t let him rest. He had laid in bed trying to figure out just what it was that Harry was planning to do. An attack on government institutions such as military bases and government offices to shatter the civilian population’s faith in the current administration’s ability to protect them was the most likely option. Still, something buried deep in his subconscious kept telling him that something more disturbing was in the works. He turned his head to ask Cole a question and saw his friend was fast asleep.

“At least one of us will get some rest,” muttered Sheridan to himself.

Two hours later, Atlantis came into view. The circular all-white city was hard to miss as it stood out against the dark blue waters of the sea. Sheridan had read during the flight that the structure could hold fifty thousand inhabitants. As they flew over the city, he could see four marinas filled with ships of all sizes. There were several airstrips built on top of the taller buildings for a smaller, vertical take-off and landing. As their airship was far too large to put down, they would be docking with a retractable arm on the city’s tallest tower.

Sheridan nudged Cole. “Wake up. We’re almost here.”

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was just resting my eyes.”

“Tell that to the other passengers who had to listen to your snoring for the past two hours.”

Cole ignored the jibe, stretched his arms above his head and shook his head to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

They waited until the majority of the passengers had disembarked before exiting the airship. A smiling hostess greeted them in the bustling lobby and directed them to a nearby computer kiosk where all of their questions could be answered. Sheridan typed in the room key numbers and a map of Atlantis came up. The rooms belonging to the dead men were well below the water line at the bottom of the floating city.
 

“Let’s find the nearest elevator,” suggested Cole. “I’m not taking the stairs all the way down there.”

“Over there,” replied Sheridan, pointing over at a clear tubular elevator shaft about thirty meters away from where they were standing.
 

The ride down to the lower levels reminded Sheridan of descending down an old mine shaft. His ears popped just before the elevator door opened. Right away, they could see that they were in the less-traveled part of the city. Most of the people walking around were temporary workers from the poorer parts of the globe who had been lured there with the promise of credits only to find themselves stuck working in low-paying jobs. Signs abounded on the walls advertising rooms by the day, the week, and even the hour. Bars and pawn shops ran the length of the dingy and foul smelling corridor. As tourists never ventured this far down, very few people knew of the seedier part of the city dubbed in the press as the best family vacation spot in all of the Mediterranean.

The rough and tumble vibe in the air made Sheridan wary. A couple of the city’s police officers stood behind a bulletproof shield watching them carefully as they walked past their duty station. He had no doubt that their pictures had been taken and were being examined to see if there was an arrest warrant out on either of them.
 

A young black woman walked out from a bar looking as if she hadn’t slept or changed her clothes in a week. She waved at the two Marines as if they were a pair of long-lost relatives before staggering over to greet them. “Are you two handsome men looking for a good time?” She had a thick West African accent.

Cole smiled, took the tipsy woman by the arm, and gave her a gentle nudge toward the two police officers. “Ask them for some help, love. You look like you could use it.”

The woman pulled her arm free and shot Cole a disgusted look. She slurred her words as she spoke. “I don’t need theirs, yours, or anyone else’s help. I just need someone to buy me a drink.”

“The last thing you need is another drink.” Cole reached into a pocket, pulled out a fifty credit card, and handed it to the woman. “This has been coded to be used for food and food only. When you’re ready, there’s a restaurant just down the corridor which will accept the card.”

The young woman took the card and slipped it into her worn purse before lurching back into the bar.

“That’s not really a coded card, is it?” said Sheridan.

“No, but she doesn’t know that. Perhaps when she sobers up a bit, she’ll use it for something other than booze and drugs.”

“Then again she may just use it to keep on drinking.”

“She might. Who knows. Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

After wandering through the maze-like corridors for a good fifteen minutes, they finally found the rooms rented by the Chosen operatives. The carpeted floor was littered with garbage and discarded hypodermic containers.

“Designer friggin drugs,” said Cole as he kicked at one of the slender vials. The bitter look in his eyes told Sheridan how much he hated the illegal substances. “You’d think the police would be all over this place trying to keep it from being sold down here.”

“Wouldn’t look good in the travel brochure. Come to Atlantis for your holidays and watch the police crackdown on the drug trade.”

“I don’t like the look of this place. The sooner we’re out of here, the better. What do you want to do?”
 

Sheridan looked around. At the far end of the hallway was a janitor walking behind a large droid that was noisily sucking up all the refuse from the dirt-stained carpet. Sheridan walked to the man, holding out a one hundred credit card in his hand.

The slovenly dressed janitor switched off his machine and eyed Sheridan suspiciously. “What do you want, Mister?”

“My friend and I would like to look inside rooms four eleven and four thirteen.”

“Are you cops? Because if you are you have to tell me.”

Sheridan shook his head. “Trust me, we’re not cops.”

The man ran a hand over his stubble-covered chin while he looked at the card in Sheridan’s hand. Unable to resist, he reached over and took the card. “I don’t see why not. Them four fellas ain’t been seen for a few days now.”

“Did he say four?” called out Cole as he assembled his GR-99 and slapped home a full magazine.

“Yeah, there were four men renting the rooms on a weekly basis,” replied the man, not bothered by the sight of a weapon in Cole’s hands. “Their deposit for this week was gonna run out in a day. Once that happens, anything I find in there is mine.”

Hence the plethora of pawn shops
, thought Sheridan. “Well, for one hundred credits, let’s just say my associate and I get to look around first. When we’re done, you can take whatever you want.”

“Whatever you say, Mister.” The janitor dug out his pass card and inserted it into the first room’s lock. With a click the door popped open.
 

Cole brought up his pistol and stepped inside the darkened room. Behind him, Sheridan found the light switch and flipped it on. The air was dry and smelt of antiseptic. Both men were surprised to see that the room had been stripped bare. Nothing had been left behind, even the hotel bedding had been taken.

“Hey, where’s the sheets?” queried the janitor as he poked his head in the door.

“I bet you could sweep this room with a state-of-the-art police scanner and not find a single trace of DNA,” said Sheridan. “It’s as if they were never here.”

Cole turned and looked inside the room’s tiny bathroom. It was immaculate. “Same thing here. Not that I would suggest it, but I bet you could eat off the floor in there.”

“Next room,” said Sheridan.

It was a mirror copy of the other room. Clean and sterile.

Cole turned to face the janitor. “You said that there were four men staying here. We only met three of them in Rome. Do have any idea where the fourth man could have gone?”

The grubby janitor scratched his behind and shook his head. “I never speak with the guests. I just clean up after them.”

A door across the hall opened. “I know where the other man has gone,” said a fat man wearing a stained muscle shirt; his long, dirty black hair hung down the side of his corpulent face.

“Where did he go?” Sheridan asked.

“I don’t seem to be able to recall much right now. But if you were to help refresh my memory, I might be able to tell you.”

Cole held up a one hundred credit card. “This is as good as our generosity is going to get.”

The man reached for the card. “A few days back, I overheard the men talking in the hallway about a new job. Three of them were heading for Rome while the other guy . . . Bill, I think his name was, said he was going to do some work up on Tranquility Station.”

“Did you hear what Bill was going to be doing up there?” Sheridan asked.

“No. I just heard that he was needed up there and would be heading there right away.”

Cole let go of the card and watched the man smile as if he had just won the lottery while he placed it away in a pocket on his rumpled shorts.