Babel Found (10 page)

KNOWLEDGE

Safe House

Blairsville, Georgia

“Have you been able to locate him yet, Todd?” I ask, pacing the front office. I still get a weird vibe from this place, but it’s as secure and off the radar as it’ll get right now. We need to find Ben and the network in place here is only rivaled by the one in D.C.

“Nothing yet, Hank, but his glasses were still transmitting after he went silent. I’m attempting to pull up the feed now. It’d be faster if we were back at the Castle, though.”

“You know that’s not possible right now,” Nicole says, calmly leaning against one of the walls. She has a foot propped up, standing on one leg, looking like Sharon Stone from
The Quick and the Dead
. The fact that’s she checking over her new weapons lends to the description.

Nicole ditched her twin Rugers and upgraded to something a little more formidable. Her new Glock 25 .380 AUTO is specially made for law enforcement only and features a nice low-recoil option too. It even holds an impressive fifteen rounds, without making it overly bulky. While it’s still classified as a ‘compact’ handgun—perfect for someone with smaller hands—the G25 is anything but compact in stopping power.

Not that Nicole couldn’t handle something bigger,
I think watching her look over her
pair
of G25’s. She has twin holsters around the small of her back, perfectly concealed by her jacket.

“I don’t like being here,” she says, looking up at me. “I can still sense him.”

I nod in agreement. John Frost was a bad dude for sure. He orchestrated countless hits on our lives and personally put a bullet in my father’s back. Now, his vacated abode is our secondary location—our
safe house
. Kane had the homeowner records changed to a dummy corporation out of God-knows-where. The transfer would be next to impossible for anyone to figure out and if someone did…the CIA would see to the matter.

We left everything as it was, not wanting to alert the neighbors. Moving trucks would have sent up a huge red flag and with the remaining members of Zero in hiding, we all agreed it would be better to leave things as is for now. At least until things simmered down more.

Once we were in place, we upgraded the software to his already impressive PC and installed Todd’s custom-made security features. The rooms were also cleaned and redone, allowing us a more comfortable sleep at night. His master bedroom was turned into a lab for Olivia though. No one wanted to stay in there after we found blood in the shower drain. It’s once the body of Sara “Raven” Carter was discovered beneath a bed of roses out back that we put two and two together. She was a tough adversary, one Nicole personally bested in our battle atop Kukulkan’s pyramid. We never knew what happened to the mercenary for hire until recently. Apparently, she came here to seek refuge, but instead only found death.

There are three bedrooms upstairs and a pull-out in the living room across from where we are now. So far only Kane and Olivia have bunked here, wanting to scope out the town and do a little recon. Kane’s superstition won over my revolt and we
acquired
the suburban home as well as all of Frost’s assets and, more importantly, his intel.

Like the possible location of the Tower of Babel.

“You sure we need to go to Iraq?” Kane asked from the doorway. He was in a white tank top undershirt and a pair of black cargo pants, showering and changing upon arrival. Olivia was still upstairs getting some shuteye.

“Very sure,” Todd said, not looking away from his wall-mounted monitors. “Frost’s research that Coaxoch gave him tells of its location near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in ancient Mesopotamia.”

Kane raises an eyebrow.

“That’s in Iraq,” I add, helping the big guy out. “Until recently, and as far as the public knows, the tower was a myth. Where exactly it was said to exist, no one knows. There hasn’t been any definite proof.”

“Unless you believe the accounts from the various religious texts,” Nicole says.

“True enough,” I agree with a nod.

“Why hasn’t it been found then?” Todd asks. “People have been living in the region for thousands of years.”

“Because it’s Iraq,” Kane says, getting everyone’s attention. “Do you really think the people controlling those territories give a damn about historical relics? No, the only thing they care about is killing.”

Kane speaks from experience. I can tell by the venom in his voice that he’s personally seen it unfold up close and personal.

“Regardless,” I say, taking back control of the conversation, “I think if a structure that big did, in fact, exist when it fell it would have smashed and destroyed everything in its wake. It would have driven itself deep into the sands of the area and once the dust settled it would have vanished.”

“Which means?” Kane asks.

“I think the remains of the towers are right there for everyone to see, but they were obliterated when they fell, turning to dust and rock.”

Silence tells me they’re intrigued.

“What makes you think that?” Nicole asks.

“It’s just a theory, but I think that’s the reason it’s never been discovered. The people that settled there afterwards, unknowingly built their cities right on top of it.”

“Sounds a little farfetched,” Olivia says, stepping into the room. She then casually stretches up and kisses Kane on the cheek.

“We excel in the farfetched,” I say.

“One thing we can all agree on,” Nicole says, ending the potential argument “is just because it’s never been recorded in history doesn’t mean it never existed.”

She means Atlantis of course. The Tower of Babel could be this area’s version. A prolific kingdom’s dirty little secret buried with the fall of its beacon to God. The tower wasn’t the real secret, however. It had to be something else. I can feel it.

I turn and sit on the large office’s love seat, patting the spot next to me. Nicole looks up and smiles, crossing the room and joining me. She checks the safeties, holsters her weapons, and sits. I wrap my arm around her and squeeze, needing her resolute form near me.

“Have you been able to find anything out about our four friends?” I ask Kane, but he quickly shakes his head.

“No, once the firestarter disappeared I called it in. They said they’d look for anything and everything linked to them and would keep us in the loop if their faces popped up anywhere in the world with surveillance. Even the damn street corner traffic cams will be looking.”

“I still can’t believe she just let you go,” Nicole says, still in disbelief.

“We got lucky,” Kane agrees. “We were about to turn into a pair of boiled lobsters but made it out of the water in time. Once we did we hightailed it to our lockers, never looking back, and grabbed our gear. Then it got quiet and we went back to look for her, but she was gone—just like that.”

“Just as we lost comms with Ben,” I say, laying my head back and looking at the ceiling above.

“Can’t be a coincidence,” Kane adds. “She had to have been ordered to stand down once they grabbed him.”

“What about you, Todd,” I say, still looking up. “You said the woman—”

“Terra,” he says quickly. I look away from the popcorn ceiling and back to him, watching him blush.

“Right…” I say, glancing to Nicole, flicking my eyebrows. “Terra… You said she didn’t seem threatening, just interested in the Castle.”

Todd nods. “She seemed very pleasant. Especially when she saved my life.”

Everyone just stares.

“Excuse me?” Olivia asks.

Todd nods again, but with less fervency. He turns and speaks, “ENVY, playback attack on D.C.” He sits back. “My uplink only please.”

The monitor blinks to life and shows us the battle between Abe and Aegis-One. A massive stone leg is thrown into the sky and we watch as Todd’s point-of-view changes and looks up. The appendage then drops like a missile, right at him.

His eyes then drop back down and we see Terra, zoomed in on Todd’s glasses. “Holy hell,” I say, seeing her face. She has a classic look of regret plastered all over it. She quickly reaches out towards Todd and he’s thrown to the right. The view suddenly looks down and we see the asphalt pivot and open like it’s on a hinge, flinging him to safety.

“She actually saved your life,” Kane says, his face looking as shocked as mine feels.

He just nods again, his shaggy head bobbing in rhythm.

What on Earth did the two of them talk about?
I think.

“Download complete,”
a seductive female voice says from Todd’s computer.

“Ben’s video is up,” Todd says, leaning back again. “ENVY just finished.”

We quiet down and turn our attention to the second of the large monitors. It comes to life a moment later showing us the chaotic scene. Sand is swirling everywhere, following the wind that’s driving it. Ben looks up and sees a funnel cloud drop down on top of him. Whether he actually saw it is up for debate, but the glasses sure as hell did. Then, he’s flung. We continue to watch, seeing a rock face quickly approach. Nicole flinches when he hits.

“Hang on,” Todd says, tapping furiously, “it cuts out for a second, but—” The picture flickers, but reappears. “Ah, there we are.”

We watch as Ben’s line of sight changes. He’s now looking straight down, probably laying on his stomach.

Unconscious perhaps,
I deduce, intently looking for a clue that he’s alive. Seeing nothing through the grainy, swirling vortex, I sit back, deflated.

“Look!” Todd says, pointing.

We do and are all equally perplexed.

“Is he floating?”

I was about to ask the same question as Olivia.

“Sure looks like it,” I say, leaning forward, elbows on knees.

The ground quickly starts to disappear as Ben’s body is lifted higher and higher. Then, the feed blinks out.

“What happened?” Kane asks, clenching his jaw.

“Not sure,” Todd says. “His specs were probably damaged during the attack before he was taken.”

“To where?” Olivia asks.

“Babel,” I say, staring off into space. “It has to be.”

A chorus of groans gets me moving. “We need to get there and look for the ruins of the tower. Frost’s files don’t give us an exact location, but I have a theory we’ll find what we need when we get there.”

“How?” Todd asks.

“I have a feeling there’s going to be another honey pot of orichalcum there. I should be able to sense it once we’re on location.” I breathe in deep and release it, settling my nerves. “Or…”

“Or what?” Kane asks.

“Or…” I say, “They’ll just let us in.”

“A trap,” Kane says, rubbing his moistening forehead. “I was afraid of that.”

“And what of Ben?” Todd asks, unsure.

I shrug. “No guarantee he’ll be there, but we need to try.”

“Hank…” Kane says, thinking carefully before he speaks. “Iraq isn’t exactly easy to get into. We are going to have to go in an old-fashioned way.”

“Airdrop?” I ask.

He nods. “You guys,” he points to everyone. “Have less than zero training. This isn’t something that we can literally jump right into.”

“How long?” Nicole asks, standing.

“At least a few days,” Kane says, unhappy with his own answer. “The closest installation that has people on the ground that I trust is in Kuwait. It’ll take some time getting there and getting set up.”

“We’ll do what we can from here,” Olivia says, taking her spot next to Todd. He’d recently started showing her how to man the computers when he wasn’t around. She was a whiz with the basic software and was a quick learner. She’d be able to make up for the lack of computing power available if they worked together.

Kane nods and brushes a loose strand of Olivia’s hair away.

“We’ll be back in no time,” he says, leaning down and kissing her. “I promise.”

She glances to Nicole and me and gets two strong nods from us. We plan on keeping that promise.

“I’m going to shower,” I say. I could use a good soak. It’s been a rough couple of days and I haven’t been able to clear my head.

As I tiredly shamble towards the rear stairs of the home, a smaller, lighter set of feet follow me. I turn and meet Nicole’s gaze. She all but falls into my arms and breathes out a heavy sigh.

“Are we ever going to be able to go back to our lives before this?” she asks, her voice weary and shaky.

I tilt her chin up and kiss her long and hard, feeling some of her fire re-ignite. We separate and just look at each other. She gives me a small smile.

“Once we finish this, I promise. We’re done. Back to the Castle and digging up the deadest of dead. No more gun fights and evil sorcerers. No more monsters and even worse people.” I grab her shoulders. “Just us and a pair of shovels.”

“I’d like that,” she replies.

Then she smiles even wider and takes my hand, leading me up the stairs. The look in her eyes tells me she’s feeling a little frisky, but I can tell she’s also just as worried as I am for Ben.

Once we finish this…