Gods and Men- The Hank Boyd Omnibus, page 32
part #1 of Gods and Men Series
“This is it?” I ask.
Olivia nods, staring at the ground in front of the entryway.
“What is it?” Nicole asks.
“This is where it happened,” Olivia explains. “This is where Jason came out of the tunnel screaming, exposing everyone to the agent.”
“How do you know it was him?” Nicole asks.
“Just a hunch. Dr. Weaver wouldn’t have acted so rashly. He knew what would happen if he was infected and brought it out here,” she shook her head. “Jason was self-centered and would never have sacrificed himself to save everyone else. It fits his profile perfectly for him to do this, not that it was intentional. Honestly, I never understood why he was here, to begin with?”
“Ahem,” comes a voice over our network.
“Oh, sorry Dr. Boyd, I forgot you were there. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“It’s fine, Ms. Dubois,” he replies, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Carry on.”
Olivia shoots me an “oh shit” look and grimaces. Questioning your boss live over the airways isn’t a good way to get ahead in any kind of business in my opinion, especially when he’s on the other line.
“What makes you think it’s a biological agent?” Kane asks getting back on topic.
“What else could it be?” Olivia asks, thankful to be moving on from the prior faux pas. “This place hasn’t been touched in over a thousand years. I figure it’s got to be something natural. I mean it’s not like someone could just sneak a weapon or some other device into here and cover it up. You would be able to see evidence of a dig of that magnitude.”
“What is it then?” Kane asks.
“Salt acid,” I say, interrupting the two.
“Wait—what? Salt acid?” Kane asks, confused by my outburst.
I continue, putting my new found knowledge on the subject matter to good use. I was a little unprepared in Algeria for this sort of thing, but not anymore. “The ancient Egyptians were known to booby-trap their valuable relics with a variety of nasty things, pressurized salt acid being one of them.”
“So you think it’s a booby-trap?” Nicole asks.
“Maybe, but there is no way to know for sure without going in there,” I say motioning with a nod to the three-by-three hole.
“In there?” Kane asks, thumbing towards the entrance. “You expect this,” he motions with his hands to his own large body, “to fit in that hole?” I laugh, “No man, you stay out here and comb the grounds for clues or better yet…get a snack and stay put and wait for us.”
Kane’s about to argue, but thinks better of it and heads back towards the row of tents, mumbling under his breath. He says something about getting more Chex-Mix but is then too far away for me to hear anything else.
I look back out over the quiet expanse of land that used to be a bustling expedition lead by a veteran of thirty years in the field. It should have been a relatively quick and standard operation, but instead turned into even more of a mass grave than before.
Kane called in and delayed any sort of response so we could have time to investigate before the general public eventually caught wind of what happened. It’s not like we can sweep this under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen. Families and friends will need to be notified and arrangements planned. We will need to organize the eventual burial of every single person involved in this disaster. That is, all except one.
“Olivia,” I say, looking at the resilient woman. “Where are the Haz-Mat suits?”
17
Isla de Jaina, Campeche, Mexico
Crawling through the tomb’s tunnel entrance in our bulky Haz-Mat suits proved as difficult as we expected. The already tight squeeze became even worse with the added girth our protective cocoons provided. Thankfully, Kane did, indeed, stay behind. He would have definitely gotten stuck, I thought. The man’s shoulders are as broad as a powerlifter’s. His build, while useful in a fight, is a hindrance in narrow places, like where the three of us are now. Pushing him out would have been a literal pain in our backs.
Before we entered, Kane wanted to contact his superiors in the States and update them on what we found so far. He also wanted to scour the area for anything else that could possibly identify the culprit who had planted the jamming device, an answer that still eluded him.
“Why would someone need to cut off communications?” He asked rhetorically. He wanted to find out immediately.
As we shuffle through the opening, I notice the rows of feet. They are unnerving for sure, but expected, considering the island is known as a vast burial ground anyway. Leading Nicole and Olivia through the confining space barely takes a couple of minutes, but when you’re surrounded by so much death, it seems like a hell of a lot longer.
The passage opens up slightly, relieving some of the built-up anxiety I had started to feel. I’m not claustrophobic by any means, but knowing I’m surrounded by the dead, both past and present, can make anyone feel uncomfortable.
Lost in thought, I unknowingly exit the tunnel and enter a chamber, my gloved hand striking something hard and round. I lift it, and in the glow of my NVS2 night-vision, I see that what I felt was a coin, gold by the looks of it. It has what appears like a man’s head adorned with a headdress on its surface.
I place my hand back down and hit another one and then try to lift my head to see further into the room, but I can’t, the Haz-Mat’s hood won’t let me bend my neck that way.
“There’s a chamber up here,” I announce to the women following me. “Possibly a treasure room.”
I finally pop out of the hole in the wall and stand. Now free of the tunnel and having a full range of motion, I look up, deeper into the room. Lit up in various shades of green are mounds of gold, some reaching the six-foot ceiling. I can tell its height since I have to hunch a little being six-two myself.
“Oh,” I say, taken a little off guard with what I see. There are piles of gold mixed with an assortment of valuable gems. They line the walls and cover the floors, not a single shred of the dirt floor can be seen, at least, not what I’ve seen so far anyway.
I continue to scan the room as Nicole emerges from the tunnel exit. I look back down to her as she effortlessly slides out and kneels, about to stand and join me. She lifts her eyes to the room for the first time, “Oh…”
Her exclamation, while being the same as mine when seeing the room for the first time, is in an entirely different tone. It’s one of gloom.
It’s then I notice that her line of sight is lower than mine and that she is apparently looking at something I’ve missed. I look to the ground, not twenty feet in front of me, and see what she has discovered. Lying in the middle of the room is the bloodied remains of Dr. Xander Weaver.
I groan a curse under my breath and—
“Oh, God!”
My thought is cut off by another voice, this one, full of despair. I glance back to see Olivia standing next to Nicole, hands raised to her suited mouth. I hadn’t noticed she exited the tunnel as well.
Consoling the distraught woman, the best way she can, Nicole just silently places a hand on Olivia’s shoulder, squeezing it. Her mentor is dead.
“It was Keen,” Olivia says a-matter-of-factly.
“How do you know?” I ask.
“He and Dr. Weaver were the only ones authorized to enter the tomb until everything was accounted for and cataloged, just in case any of the locals got a little greedy.”
Makes sense.
“But why?” I ask, turning back to the body.
“Isn’t it obvious,” Olivia says, motioning to the vast wealth surrounding us. “Jason was always an ambitious little troll. I wouldn’t put something like grand theft past him—”
“And murder?” I add.
She just shrugs.
I let out a long breath, “Dad, you getting all this?”
A moment of silence goes by before he answers, “Yes…but barely…any deeper and I’ll be…cut off.”
Through the short cutouts, I can hear his somber tone. “Sorry, Dad,” I say apologetically. “Xander was a good man.”
“Nothing you could have done, Harrison. Let’s just try to figure out what happened here.” Dad’s voice comes in grainy, making it hard to hear any emotion from him. But I know he is genuinely upset. He and Xander were close and long-time colleagues. Next to Xander, Dad is the longest tenured employee in their department.
Well, I guess ‘now’ it’s Dad.
I carefully step forward, past the prone body, trying not to slip in the mix of blood and spilled loot. My foot lands awkwardly, and I stumble on the uneven ground, but luckily stay upright.
The lack of accounting and precision of this place bothers me too, knowing that the Maya were advanced in mathematics. They should have been a little more clear-cut when bringing in all of this wealth. They were a very organized people, for sure. Ancient OCD, I think to myself.
“What’s that?” Nicole asks, pointing towards the back of the room. “Is that a coffin?”
I take another cautious step forward, closer to the crypt, if that is in fact what it is, and stop. I look down at my feet and see what looks like a sword’s hilt sticking out of a mound of gold, its blade buried beneath. If it had been stone, it would have looked like Excalibur. That is, except for the blood surrounding it.
My eyes refocus on the potential burial spot, and I’m about to take another step forward, but am stopped.
“Hank.”
I turn to see Nicole standing over the murder scene, eyes wide, but not looking at the body. I’m about to ask Nicole, “what?” But she supplies the answer for me, no question needed.
“The hilt,” she says now kneeling next to the sword.
I turn my attention to the protruding hilt and gasp. How did I miss that? I step back towards the scene again, this time, my focus is totally on the artifact. I kneel next to Nicole doing my best not to look into the dead man’s open, lifeless eyes, which is hard since at this angle he’s staring straight at me. Three months ago this would have traumatized me, but after the death and destruction I’ve witnessed, my nerves have hardened. I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, though.
The hilt’s pommel, the decorative end that also supplies proper balance, shines like a beacon in my night-vision now that I’ve seen it for what it is.
“Lights,” I say. We all then switch over to our headlamps, extinguishing the NVS glasses.
“It’s an ankh...” I say in shock, trailing off into thought.
Up until our excursion under the Sahara, I would have only associated the ankh symbol with that of ancient Egypt, but now…I know better. The ankh is and has always been the emblem of Thoth: The Last King of Atlantis.
18
Blairsville, Georgia, USA
He paced around his office, awaiting a phone call he was notified he would be getting shortly. He wasn’t generally a nervous man, but he knew when to be scared of someone.
This was that time.
Bzzz.
His phone vibrated on his desk, and he quickly answered it, “This is Frost.”
“Mr. Frost, it’s a pleasure to finally speak with you,” the caller said.
Up until now, Frost was under the assumption that he was in contact with the number two in the Zero hierarchy. The previous caller, while authoritative, was most definitely not the person in charge. They were always having to, “get back to him,” as they would usually say. The fact that the group’s leader wanted to speak with him directly was either a good thing…or a terrible thing.
“It’s a pleasure to speak with you too…”
The digitized voice made it impossible for Frost to learn the gender of the speaker, masking their emotions as well. He doubted that the software his phone was attached to could break through the defenses either, but it was worth a try. He also doubted the tracking system would find anything either. These people, as he knew first hand, were pros.
“You may call me, Coaxoch,” the robotic voice said, pronouncing the name, Coe-uh-zok.
“Okay, Coaxoch. What can I do for you?” Frost asked, skipping the pleasantries and getting right to it.
“I have been told that your mission in the Yucatan was half-successful, but the people I want dead are still alive.”
Coaxoch was, of course, referring to the successful theft of the pot containing the biologic, of which he kept in a safe in his basement. The unsuccessful part would be the failed assassination of Hank Boyd’s team.
“Mr. Boyd and his team have proved…elusive,” Frost replied, gritting his teeth as he spoke. He did it so often in fact that he wore a grind guard while he slept. I may need to start wearing it during the day. “Boyd has had help from various sources around the world like—”
“Like your former Captain?” Coaxoch interrupted.
Frost scowled at the mention of Jeremy Kane. He personally knew the man to be incredibly resilient and very resourceful, especially since his hiring into the CIA. Kane was truly a man to fear, the only person he did fear…until now. Even though he didn’t know the caller’s identity, man or woman, he knew they were not to be trifled with. Asking for more money was one thing, but their honor was another. If he dishonored these people, he’d be a dead man.
“Mr. Frost?” His employer asked, noticing his extended silence.
“Yes?” He said. “Sorry, go on.”
“We will not accept another failure this time around. Your team’s ineptness has been noted, both in Algeria and again at Chichen Itza. We do not tolerate a third strike. Is that clear?”
Being a former soldier and now a killer for hire, Frost didn’t take well to threats. “Is that a threat, Coaxoch?” He asked, but immediately wished he hadn’t.
“Take it as you want, Mr. Frost,” Coaxoch coolly replied, unafraid. “We have existed for as long as mankind has, we have eyes everywhere.”
An uncomfortable pause followed the bluntly stated threat, causing Frost to become irritated. “Is there anything else I can do for you Coaxoch?”
“The target,” Coaxoch replied.
“The target?”
“Yes, Mr. Frost. We have chosen Washington D.C. as our delivery point.”
“Washington?” Frost asked, a little thrown back. He had assumed they would use this stuff on some foreign government or group of people, not the United States. “You want to set off a weaponized version of this stuff in the nation’s capital?”
“Yes,” Coaxoch answered in the emotionless digital voice. “The reason is for us to know and for you to follow. Is there a problem with the target?”
Frost thought about the ramifications of this move. The agent would spread over the capital in hours, killing everything and then move along the coast, spreading like a tsunami. All of North America—Canada included—would be wiped out in a matter of days with as fast as this stuff worked.
It would then cross the border into Mexico and push through Central America until it crossed into South America, where it would keep going until there was nothing left to kill.
There would be survivors for sure, anyone lucky enough to stay out of its way, but the majority of people would die. And he would be the one to sentence them. He would be responsible for the deaths of millions—maybe billions. But what could he do? If he said no, he’d be dead by tomorrow.
His cold logic and selfish motives took over, back-seating his emotions for the time being, “Very good, but my fee has now doubled with this added task.”
Another long silence commenced, and Frost prayed he didn’t just put a price on his own head.
He swallowed hard and continued. “Also, if you truly want me to succeed, I’m going to need everything.”
“Everything?” Coaxoch asked.
“Yes, everything,” Frost replied. “I’m going to need as much information as you have on what Boyd is looking for and the history of it all. I need to know where he is going before he gets there. If you have pertinent information regarding this, I need it all.”
He then heard the audible clicking of someone typing at a keyboard no doubt searching for files and whatnot.
“Very well, Mr. Frost. Goodbye.”
The line went dead, and Frost plopped down into his chair, sweating. Shit. As of this moment, he would now carry the contract of every living thing between the Arctic Circle and the Strait of Magellan.
Needing to clear his head, he woke his computer and Googled the name Coaxoch. The search came up with nothing except its meaning in Nahuatl-Aztec, Flower Serpent. Aztec? Flower serpent? Okay, he thought. Probably a fake name, or something.
There wasn’t a single shred of evidence of the name anywhere in the modern world. The only entry found was the mention of an Aztecan queen back around the time of Teotihuacan’s fall. Frost knew the Aztec empire fell under mysterious circumstances—
His eyes widened, as he turned them to the floor. Directly below his feet was the safe where the pot was sealed and locked away.
Could it be? Frost thought, his sweat now turning cold.
Shaking his head, clearing his thoughts, he went back to the task at hand. He knew the next time a situation came up where Boyd and company needed to be taken care of, he’d do it personally, either with the bio-weapon in his safe or with a bullet. But before he could kill them, he needed to find them. They had all but disappeared after his team’s failed hit at Chichen Itza.
BING.
His phone chimed, telling him he had a new message. Glancing down, he saw it was, in fact, an email, sent to him by an unknown username…and it was big.
Switching from his phone to his computer, he reopened the email and clicked on the file, unzipping the contents, saving it to his supercomputer's hard drive. Frost opened it, scanning the contents half-heartedly until he found a section labeled with half a dozen distinct ancient cultures.
“What the…” He said to himself.
