Reign of Evil - 03 (26 page)

The colonel paused a moment, then shrugged. “You’ll know soon enough. Sir MacDonald swore out a warrant for your arrest.”

“Oh, he did, did he? On what grounds?”

“I’m not privy. All I know is he asked a few trusted men of Sheffield to assist him and he decided to call on me.”

“Us,” Bill added.

The colonel frowned at Bill’s addition but nonetheless concurred. “Us.”

Ian couldn’t help himself. He started to chuckle.

The colonel didn’t like being laughed at. “What’s so damned funny?”

“You’ve been played.” Ian pointed to the four men in black. “Those four are part of a group planning the overthrow of the British government. Sir MacDonald is part of it. A man of Sheffield or not, he’s hitched his tail to a kite being flown by men from an organization called the Red Grove who have brought back King Arthur and the Wild Hunt.”

Everyone was silent for a moment as the words sunk in.

Then they started laughing.

Ian waited for the laughter to die down. “As funny as it sounds, it’s true. I’d like to offer you and your men a chance to surrender to me now.”

Everyone began to laugh once more. Ian and Magerts joined in.

“You ever play poker?” Ian asked when they were done. The colonel responded, “Yeah. Sometimes.”

“Good, then I’ll see your squad and raise a platoon.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

A squad of Royal Marines appeared out of the darkness behind the four men. A corporal called out, “Put down your weapons and lay flat on the ground. You so much as twitch I’ll have my men go full auto on your asses.”

The look on the big Irishman’s face was priceless.

But not as priceless as Ian wanted. He took one step forward and delivered a right hook to Colonel Picket’s jaw, delivered with all the outrage of a man trying to save his country only to be delayed by the grossly incompetent. The man fell hard to the ground and landed on his ass. “It means you lose and I win, you pompous ass.”

CHAPTER 40

POINT BRAVO, WARWICK, ENGLAND. 0700 HOURS.

Preeti was beyond exhausted. But there was no way she could sleep. Now that she’d assisted SEAL Team 666 and Section 9, it could be argued that she deserved some rest. But she just couldn’t bring herself to stop. The feeling of helplessness only served to accentuate her fear for Trevor. She’d loved him from the dizzying moment when he’d waded into the group of hooligans and saved her and her brother. Perhaps she loved Trevor too much. She was constantly pulling back, trying to mete out her love, fearful that if he ever knew the true breadth of it he’d run away. Was that a missed opportunity? Had she denied herself and him some true joy because of her fear? She made a promise that when this was all over and he was returned to her she’d confess to him, profess to him, trusting that their love was strong enough.

She’d been organizing files on her server for half an hour before she ran into an audio file she’d recorded. She listened for a moment; then it came to her. She’d heard the Tuatha Dé Dannan speaking once when Van Dyke was asleep. It had sounded like a song. She’d only gotten thirty seconds of it, but she’d wanted to capture it in the event it was something they might need.

First she ran it through a filter to remove the graininess of it. The question was what language was it. Was it Welsh? It had the tonal structure. Or was it Middle or Old English? In her mind the words lacked some of the hard notes of those languages, so she searched for translation engines. She found several, three of which were commercially available and two from universities. The university engines required a log-in, so she pushed them to the side and concentrated on the commercial engines. Two of them were text-to-text translations and would do her no good, but the third looked promising.

She dropped the file into the search engine and watched the hourglass spin. After thirty seconds, the screen flashed and text spit out beneath the drop box. Sheer gibberish. Or almost gibberish. She recognized a few words like “men” and “sword” and “head.” Farther down she saw the word “Arthur.” Was it the same as King Arthur?

She felt a rush of excitement. If this was about King Arthur, perhaps it could help the teams. Maybe this was more than an effort to keep awake after all. She copied the text into a Word document and saved it.

She checked out the two university links. One was for Wales and the other for Oxford. It would take some time to hack into the membership directories and find a suitable name and password to use. So which one? Although Oxford held prestige, it seemed obvious that any serious study into the Welsh language would be occurring at the University of Wales.

She spent the next hour hacking into the system. Genie came over and asked what she was doing. She told him and he went away uninterested. But then he returned sometime later with some hot tea and an orange scone. She devoured the pastry and sipped the tea. Then half an hour later she was in. It wasn’t long before she found the internal links to the language engines. To her surprise, there were four of them: Primitive Welsh, Old Welsh, Early Welsh, and Modern Welsh. A quick check online told her that “Primitive Welsh” referred to the language spoken from roughly AD 300 to 800. “Old Welsh” referred to the language spoken from roughly AD 800 to 1200. “Early Welsh” referred to the language spoken from AD 1200 to 1800. Modern Welsh was the current incarnation of the lyrical language.

All this was good, but it did nothing to help her, especially since these were text-based search engines. She searched the directory trees but could find no place to drop an audio file. Which only made sense, especially since there was probably no one except for a few eccentric literature professors who could speak Primitive or Old Welsh.

What to do?

She opened the Word document and stared once more at the gibberish. What if it wasn’t all gibberish? What if it was some version of Welsh the engine couldn’t translate, but it still recognized it as Welsh and rendered it in the language?

She selected the oldest engine first—Primitive Welsh—thinking that if there was a King Arthur link then it would be here. She copied the text, then dropped it into the translation engine drop box, then clicked on the TRANSLATE button.

After a few moments, it spit out the text, revealing a more succinct translation, but still with words she didn’t understand. There were several whole phrases that appeared:

In Llongborth I saw the rage of slaughter

     and

In Llongborth, I saw the clash of swords

     and

In Llongborth I saw spurs

     and

In Llongborth I saw the weapons

     and

In Llongborth I saw Arthur’s

Heroes who cut with steel.

The Emperor, ruler of our labour.

She sat back, pleased with herself. She knew she was close. The remaining question was what was Llongborth. Since it didn’t translate, it was definitely a place. She decided to Google “Llongborth.” She had immediate hits. She selected the first one from Brittania.com, which explained that “Llongborth” was present in an Old Welsh epic poem and is believed to be the modern location for Portsmouth. She read the passage again.

In Llongborth I saw Arthur’s

Heroes who cut with steel.

The Emperor, ruler of our labour.

This poem referred specifically to Arthur and identified him as Emperor. Conducting an additional search for the Battle of Llongborth, she learned it was believed to have occurred circa AD 510 and was reputed to have involved King Gerren of Dumnonia, who was killed in the battle, and Prince Rivod of Brittany, who murdered his brother King Maelew and usurped the Briton throne. She could find no mention of Arthur.

She returned to the Britannia site and scrolled through and discovered the poem in full, which began:

Before Geraint, the enemy’s scourge,

I saw white horses, tensed, red,

After the war cry, bitter the grave

Then she ran through to the last lines:

When Geraint was born, Heaven’s gate stood open;

Christ granted all our prayer;

Lovely to behold, the glory of Prydain.

She soon found that “Prydian” was the Primitive Welsh word for Britain. She decided to search other sources and soon found that the location of Portsmouth as the site of the battle was in academic dispute, as was the year in which it took place. A scholarly text from a King Arthur site, citing earlier documents, believed that Llongborth was actually Langport in Somerset and that the year the battle occurred was actually AD 710. It also went on to say that King Arthur probably wasn’t present at the battle but that his men were, hence the sentence
In Llongborth I saw Arthur’s Heroes / Who cut with steel.
The poem never once mentions that the narrator saw King Arthur.

Which made sense later when she saw that the birth of Arthur was believed to have been circa AD 465. She continued searching and learned that Arthur was believed to have ruled the region known at present as Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. His castle was located in Cadbury and was presently known as Cadbury Castle. Bones and artifacts from the area date back to 3300 BC, but it is argued that the fortification on the giant mound was created circa 70 BC.

An interesting excerpt tied Arthur into the poem:
If Arthur was conceived at Tintagel, then as a prince of Dumnonia, Cadbury Castle would have been within his dominion
. Dumnonia had been mentioned before as being the seat of King Gerren, the Geraint referred to in the poem.

Another detail caught her eye. Several sources said that Merlyn was purported to have written the poem but then explained that as he was a right-hand man to Arthur it would have been impossible for this to be true because of the time difference.

Unless Merlyn happened to be a Tuatha,
she thought.

She blinked hard. What had she stumbled on?

She remembered that Cadbury Castle had been built upon a mound. What kind of mound? And what sort of artifacts had been found there?

Half an hour later she’d discovered enough to make her worry. She checked the time. It was 0912 hours. She put in a call to Ian. She got no response. She put in a call to Holmes, then Walker, and received no response from either. If she was right, then everything they were about to do might be wrong. In fact, it might be the very worst thing they could do.

CHAPTER 41

REDLANDS AIRFIELD, SWINDON. 0715 HOURS.

Paul Legerski lay in bed with the sweet smell of sex still welling from his body. He’d seen Megan at the pub three times before and had always wanted to talk to her, but she was just too bloody beautiful to approach. But last night was Christmas Eve and he told himself this was the night. Completely lubricated with courage juice, he’d gone over, only to find her crying.

This he was good at.

Her aunt had passed away that morning and Megan was at the pub drowning her sorrows. He spent time asking about her aunt, what was it she loved about her, what had she learned from her. In the back of his mind, he knew this was unfair, but he really wanted her to work as quickly through the stages of grief as possible.

And it had paid off. An hour before closing, they went out for some crisps, then found themselves back at his place. He had the best closing lines around.

What is it you do?
they’d ask.

I’m a pilot.

As in a plane?

Then he’d shrug and add,
I teach people to parachute too.
Then he’d look at the girl and say,
Do you want to learn how to jump out of airplanes? Do you want to fly?

Once he got his courage up, those were the magic words and rarely did they miss. Just as they hadn’t last night.

He pulled the covers up to his neck and imagined the mole she wore just below her left breast. He was reliving the moment when a pounding came at the door.

Bollocks! Don’t they know it’s Christmas?
He closed his eyes and was determined to ignore it.

But the banging came again along with someone yelling, “Open the damn door!”

First of all, he’d never open the door if someone yelled that. Second of all, the voice sounded American.

He slid out of bed and wrapped a sheet around his midsection.

The man hammered at the door again.

Paul was getting brassed off. He didn’t know who it was. It could be someone on drugs or—he thought quickly. Did Megan have a husband? He hadn’t seen a wedding band and she sure didn’t mention it.

The door suddenly exploded inward. Splinters from the doorjamb flew past him as the door landed on the floor. An immense black man in black fatigues was putting his foot back on the ground.

“Knock knock, Avon calling.” The man strode into the room. “Are you the pilot?”

All Paul could do was nod dumbly. Although he never took his eyes off the man’s face, Paul knew he wore some sort of body armor, had a pistol, a knife and a machete, and a rifle slung across his back. If Megan had an African-American soldier husband and she never told him about it, then he was as good as dead.

The man poked him in the chest. It was a simple move, but it hurt tremendously and woke him from his stupor. “Chop-chop. Get some clothes on. We need to get the plane in the air.”

Paul stood there, waiting for the man to leave, but the man merely crossed his arms. His eyes narrowed and it looked like he might have been getting ready for a growl. Paul sprang into motion. He grabbed pants and a shirt and ran into the bathroom. After doing what he needed, he exited and grabbed some socks and boots and a jacket.

“You have the whitest skin of any white guy I have ever seen,” the man said. “Do you get out much?”

Paul didn’t dare answer. He grabbed a set of keys and headed for the door. The man fell in behind Paul. They marched across the tarmac from his trailer to his own private hangar on the south end of Redfield Airport. He was fumbling with his keys when he noticed that the lock on the door had been wrenched away. He entered the hangar to find utter chaos. His cabinets had all been broken open and their contents removed. Odds and ends were in one pile while another pile held nothing but packed parachutes and a group of people dressed in black were sifting through them.