The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (14 page)

The Flow
. It was the term used to
illustrate the physical sensations that the State usually brought on. Kathlyn’s
head came up and she looked over her right shoulder. Rising to stand, she began
to walk across the ancient riverbed. Marcus and Lynn followed closely. About
twenty feet away from the skeleton, she came to a halt.

"I feel it here, too,"
she said. "A whirlpool, dragging me down. But I also... it's
also...."

She began wandering again. Twice
more she felt the whirlpools, as she called them, directional energy that
flowed through her body.  There were four areas in all and Marcus immediately
set the GPR on them. It wasn't ten minutes before they had a second skeleton.
And then a third, and a fourth. It was a gold mine. While the others whooped
with excitement, Kathlyn just stood there and quivered. She was so very cold in
a land of triple digit temperatures.

"Come on, sweetheart,"
Marcus said gently. "Let's get you under the shade. You don't look very
good."

She didn't move. Her gaze was on
the workers marking off the three additional sites. "'Release the four
angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. And the four angels who had
been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to
kill a third of mankind'."

Marcus gravely listened to her.
"From Revelation again?"

She didn't respond for a moment.
Then, she nodded faintly. "Revelation 9:14-15. It talks about the end of
the world."

Marcus didn't have a reply. He
watched Fayd as the man got excited over the third skeleton, reading the mobile
computer screen that Otis was working on. As a Biblical Archaeologist like his
wife, the man apparently wasn't recalling his scripture. But Kathlyn was. She
was visibly shaken, and Marcus didn't like it one bit.

He put his arm around her
shoulders. "Come on," he turned her around, pulling her to where the
team had set up a few tents. The old Honda generator was cranked on and a swamp
cooler blew damp air into the larger of the tents.

 It was several degrees cooler
inside the light canvas shelter. Marcus set Kathlyn down on a collapsible chair
and poured her a cup of cool water from the gallon jugs they had in the ice
chest.  Her hand was shaking as she lifted the cup to her lips.

"Hey," he put his hand
on her knee. "Calm down, sweetheart. It's okay."

She was beginning to get a bit of
color back to her cheeks and she rolled her eyes at him. "No, it's
definitely not okay, Marcus. I don't like this at all."

"What don't you like?"

She looked at him as if he was an
idiot. "After that scripture I just recited, you have to ask?" she
shook her head. "For the first time in my life, I'm afraid of what I do.
I'm afraid of this. We shouldn't be here."

Marcus didn't give into
superstition or the supernatural under normal conditions. But Kathlyn had
changed his mind in many ways about that. "Is that just an opinion or is
it something your guts are telling you?"

A powerful quiver ran through her
and her entire body shook. "Both. I've never had such a feeling of dread,
not ever. It's like it suddenly all adds up and I've got this prophesy staring
me right in the face."

Marcus held her other hand while
she drank. Being the more logical of the two, it was easy for him to be
rational. "I don't mean to offend you, but you know that there are a lot
of people who believe the Bible is nothing more than Jewish folklore. And they
think that books like Revelation were written to frighten ignorant people into
submission."

She wasn't offended. "I
realize that. But that doesn't change the fact that I believe in it as the
history and future of Mankind. Why do you think I do what I do? The bottom line
is that I've always had a yearning desire to prove these fairy tales true. 
It's something no one else in history has been able to accomplish. Maybe I'm an
idiot, but I don't think so. I think those four skeletons out there are some
sort of test."

"What kind of test?"

"I don't know. Maybe to see
just how far I'll go."

"And who's testing
you?" Before she could answer, he held up a finger to silence her.
"Think about it; would God really test you this way? If so, for what
purpose? Or is Satan, if you believe in him, using your faith in God to release
his angels to destroy one third of Mankind?"

She stared at him. Then, she
smiled. "Marcus, I'm impressed. You're a Biblical philosopher and I didn't
even know it."

"I've been hanging around
with you long enough. I would have hoped something wore off on me."

She laughed softly and he kissed
her hand. "Feeling better now?"

"Yes. Just creepy, but the
tingling is gone."

"Want to go back out
there?"

She set the cup down and stood
up. "Yes. Better see what Fayd is up to. I've left him alone too long.
He's probably using dynamite to unload those relics."

"Christ, let's hope
not," Marcus took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. "After
you, Mrs. Burton."

It was blistering back in the
sun. Down in the fossil river, they could see that everyone had a busy task.
The GPR, or 'deadhead' as the team called it because they drug it along behind
them like a dead body, was busily working the fourth angel site. Larry and Andy
were very careful about how they positioned it because Otis, reading the data
feed, was very particular. Over near the original site, Dennis and Mark were
set up with the GDT as Lynn put the final touches on the computer that would
read back the shockwaves. Juliana came to meet them as they walked back onto the
site.

"Back so soon?" she
quipped. Whenever Marcus and Kathlyn vanished, it was usually for quite a
length of time. "Marcus, Lynn needs your help for the GDT. He says you're
the best one to shoot the thing."

Marcus squeezed Kathlyn's hand
and left to go help out the needy. Kathlyn and Juliana stood in silence for a
moment, watching the activity.

"Fayd's loving this,"
Juliana said, her olive-green eyes focused on the distant figure. "He's in
his glory."

Kathlyn was feeling the beginning
of a headache coming on and rubbed her forehead. "Let him. He felt cheated
when I excavated the Calvary Escarpment last year. If he's happy to excavate
these relics, I'm happy to let him."

Juliana wriggled her eyebrows.
"Four of 'em. That's good, even for you. We really hit the jackpot."

Kathlyn shrugged. "Maybe.
But the jackpot for what, I'm wondering."

"What do you mean?"

Kathlyn wasn't sure she wanted to
spread her paranoia on to Juliana, but if anyone would understand, she would.
"Lynn found something on the first angel."

"Found what?"

Kathlyn looked pointedly at her.
"A protrusion over the right eye socket, about two inches in length."

Juliana didn't comprehend was she
was saying until Kathlyn held up her two index fingers and positioned them on
her forehead like horns. Then, Juliana's eyes widened. "You've got to be
kidding."

"I wish I was."

"Jesus," she breathed,
looking out over the site as if viewing it in an entirely new light. "What
the hell does it mean?"

"Very good question. Got any
guesses?"

"Well," Juliana said slowly.
"Since my science is Biblical Archaeology, I refer back to the obvious.
Maybe these aren't angels at all, but...."

"Remember your Book of
Revelation?"

"Sure."

"Remember Chapter 9, verses
14 and 15?"

Juliana thought a moment.
"The part where they talk about the Apocalypse."

Kathlyn nodded. "And I
quote, 'It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four
angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates...'"

Juliana didn't even let her
finish. "'...And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very
hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of
mankind.'"

"You got it."

Juliana stared at her. "Are
you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

"It's in print. I didn't
make it up."

"Are you telling me we're
about to bring about Armageddon or something? That we're digging up these four
demons to kill a third of mankind and bring about the end of the world?"

"I'm not suggesting
anything, Juli.  But it seems like a logical train of thought."

Juliana looked as if she might
become sick at any moment. "I don't like this at all. God, I need a
drink."

"I've got a fifth of Jack
Daniels in my pack."

"The soldiers didn't search
it?"

"It was on me the whole
time."

"Let's go. I've had enough
of this crap."

Marcus found them an hour later,
passed out in a smaller tent like a couple of hard-core drunks with an empty
bottle between them.  He could only guess what had driven them to drink so
much; in fact, it wasn't much of a guess at all.

CHAPTER
SEVE
N

The pneumatic jackhammers kicked
up clouds of dust, lifting like a brown fog into the warm fall sky.  Marcus was
covered in a peppering of dirt from his head to his toes. He wore a white
surgical mask and goggles which, when periodically removed, revealed perfectly
outlined stencils of tan healthy skin. In spite of filthiness of the work, he
had removed his shirt because of the heat and beneath the dusty coating he was
turning a deep shade of bronze. His hands, however, remained an odd pale shade
because of the heavy gloves he wore. The drill would have otherwise torn his
palms to pieces.

The readings from the GDT on
Skeleton Number One had come back favorable enough that Marcus and Lynn had
been able to leap into the excavation within a couple of hours of their arrival
to Zubayr. Kathlyn and Juliana were conspicuously absent, sleeping off their
nine round knock-out bout with Jack “Rocky” Daniels in a smaller tent that had
been pitched near the weak shade of some scrub trees. Marcus didn't wait for
his wife to come to her senses before tearing into the fragile earth. Fayd had
taken control and he was eager to remove what he could within the time frame
they had allotted themselves.

De Tormo sat as close as he could
get to the work without actually being involved in it. His small brown eyes
watched every move Marcus and Lynn made. A-1, as they were now calling the
first skeleton, was the most completely exposed by far and they were
concentrating most of their efforts on freeing it completely. Dennis was
working on A-2, Mark had A-3, and the doctoral students were working on A-4. 
There was enough work to go around, but it was apparent the other skeletons
weren't nearly as exposed and therefore probably would not be removed on this
particular trip. Still, the archaeologists were working furiously at excavating
what they could and recording the results.  Otis fed data into the computer to
come up with a complete diagram of the bodies and their position to each other.

It was slow, hard work and they
could have used Kathlyn and Juliana tremendously. No one asked what had become
of them, and Lynn and Marcus didn't mention it. Kathlyn had already worked her
tail off early in simply locating the additional relics so no one blamed her
for taking a well-deserved rest. Juliana was always a work-horse, never one to
slack off, and they simply assumed she was helping Kathlyn in some way. Even
without two of their star players, work continued.

The Iraqi soldiers had backed off
and set up make-shift camps.  Tony and Marcus were glad they had moved away,
but Tony maintained constant vigil. He didn't tell Marcus that he had an
Iridium cellular phone with a speed dial number to the American Air Base in
Riyadh. One call and in fifteen minutes he'd have enough air support to start a
third Gulf War. It was a contingency that Tony and the Major hoped they would
never need, but the stakes were high with Kathlyn Trent and a host of American
citizens in enemy territory.

Even with all of the commotion,
the village remained strangely silent. Barely a soul was seen. Marcus had
stopped wondering about it and concentrated on his work. He was sure that Tony
was right about the people being afraid with the military around. Still, it was
odd, especially when they had been so protective over their site. He almost
didn't want to know the truth for their silence. But in his ignorance there was
guilt.

Fayd's equipment was brought in
close to sundown. Big mercury vapor lamps were set up so the work could
continue in the dark. Marcus and Lynn struggled with the angel well into the
night. From the ground scans, they had determined the block needed to be cut at
six feet one inch in width by seven feet three inches in length. Marcus
calculated the weight at around twelve hundred pounds due to the density of the
earth. It was like cement. Dennis eventually left Fayd's brothers excavating
A-2 and joined his colleagues with the larger prize in the interest of
expediency.