The Mongol Objective (26 page)

“Hang on,” Montross said. He backed up, closed his eyes and hugged the Emerald Tablet close. “Alexander, let’s see how your father handled this from his side.”

“Masks,” the boy said at once. He was rubbing his eyes, also breathing through his shirt. “I saw them. All the soldiers had them, and they left three behind. For us.”

“Three?” Harris said, choking on the word. “Come on!”

“Easy,” said Montross. “Nina, go fetch them, and—”

“Be careful, I know.” She smiled wolfishly. “Your concern for me is touching.”

“I just want my mask.”

As she left, Montross pulled Alexander back to the tunnel leading from the room with the trap ceiling. “We’ll wait for her here where the air’s clearer.”

“What about us?” Harris asked.

Montross shrugged. “Tear your shirts, or jackets. Make yourselves something to cover your faces.”

Hiltmeyer grumbled, “You’ll poison us.”

“Either that, or I’ll shoot you.” Montross waved the Ruger. “Your choice.” He cleared his throat, then turned to the boy. “And you, Alexander, I need you to use this time to scout out the area ahead while I keep an eye on these clowns.”

Alexander shook his head. “But I don’t want to. Anytime I try, I know I’ll just see Dad, and I can’t, don’t want to see . . .”

“See what?”

“Can’t bear it.” He shook his head, covering his eyes. “What if I see him die, too?”

Montross knelt down and switched his gun to his other hand, still keeping an eye on their prisoners. “Just focus your mind, ask yourself a question, and only think about that question when you let your visions come.”

“What question?”

“Jeez, didn’t your father teach you anything? Never mind. I already know: ‘Learn by doing, learn from experience.’ Still, you must have sat in and listened to the Morpheus Initiative sessions.”

“A few times,” Alexander admitted.

“Well then, you know how it is. The question frames your visionary experience. You remote view what you’ve asked your mind to show you. In this case,”—he waved beyond, to the darkness along the river—“we need to know what’s waiting for us. Ask to be shown any traps on this river, anything that could stop us from reaching the great underground cavern and the city of Genghis Khan.”

“Too vague,” Alexander said.

“What?”

“The question. I know enough about it, as you said. I sat in on a lot of sessions with my dad, with Aunt Phoebe. I know you can’t have those multiple-part questions. Or you get crappy visions, something that just might get us killed.”

Montross grinned. “All right, smarty-pants. Just remote view the next section of this river. Period.”

Alexander nodded. “I’ll try. And I’ll try not to see my dad.”

“Try hard,” Montross said. “I know it’s not easy to pull away from your feelings, or your fears, but it’s the only way. If you want to see him again, trust that he knows what he’s doing, and trust that for this part, we need your skills. Go to it.”

“Can I touch the tablet first?”

Montross held it out, balancing it in the palm of his right hand, watching as it reflected in the boy’s deep brown eyes, mixing with his irises, turning them a swirling shade of green.

Alexander reached for it slowly, his fingers trembling.

#

Nina found the masks, as predicted, on the shore beside the two posts and empty chains that had tethered two boats. She waved her flashlight ahead, scoping out the area, but couldn’t see a thing. She held her breath, sucking in a whiff of the foul, toxic air and holding it just to listen.

From somewhere, far, far off, something loud, a report followed by another muffled thump echoing along the stretch of the dark underground waterway, reached her ear. A tiny ripple stirred along the shore.

She didn’t need to be psychic to know that the other team faced something deadly at the end of the waterway. But all the same, she felt a twinge, a sudden connection with someone.

And it wasn’t Montross.

Caleb.

She felt him, saw through his eyes just for a brief instant . . .

. . .
a flickering field of immobile warriors, thousands-strong, weapons ready, facing them, barring their advance.

Why?
Nina thought.
Why did I glimpse that? Why Caleb? Why now?

She took the masks and slowly backed away, shaking her head, clearing that nagging sight, when something else, something that suddenly blossomed like an exploding fireworks display in her mind. . . .

Two sets of small hands, gripped by larger ones, held in a grandfatherly grasp.

Two hands . . . belonging to two boys.

Two scared boys, looking out over a harbor from a great height, gazing out at hundreds of boats while a raspy voice whispered of destiny.

Nina trembled.

She coughed, fell to her knees, heaving. Gasping.

What . . . the hell . . . was that?

She closed her eyes, but the visions were gone, leaving behind nothing but wispy shadows.

She gathered up the masks and stumbled back to Montross.

#

They pushed off as Nina stood behind the rowers, Hiltmeyer and Harris. She had a gun in each hand, the Beretta in her left, the muzzles at the back of their heads, and she couldn’t help but feel like a slave master on the old Roman galleons, ready to execute whoever dropped out of pace first.

Harris complained through his makeshift face mask of his torn sleeve tied around his neck and across his mouth. Colonel Hiltmeyer only rowed in silence, his eyes burning as each stroke released fumes that stung at his eyes.

“What next?” Montross asked.

Alexander sat in the front, gas mask wrapped extra tight around his head. He held up a hand. Then pointed. “Hug the right wall.”

Nina nudged the gun against Harris’s head, prodding him to row harder, pushing the boat in that direction.

“Farther,” Alexander said, scanning the rooftop as nervousness crept into his voice. “Otherwise we’re bowling pins.”

Montross directed his flashlight along the ceiling, locating a huge round ball tucked into a niche in the center, to their left now as they steered around it. “Good catch, kid. What else?”

Alexander closed his eyes and focused his breathing.
Don’t do it, don’t view Dad, or Phoebe.

Instead, he saw his . . .

. . . mom, engulfed in the flames.

Except she wasn’t hurting. Wasn’t even singed. She walked through the fire calmly, arms out to him, a sweet smile on her face.

“
You’re not alone,” she whispered, smoke puffing from her mouth.

“
Not . . . alone . . .”

He snapped out of it, blinked and then saw—

“Spikes!” he shouted. “At both sides.
Stop!”

Harris pulled back, oaring fast the other way, and Hiltmeyer slipped, a second later, turning and jamming the oar. He coughed, hacking into his mask and cursing. Something black and shiny roared straight up from the river a yard from where Alexander had been sitting in the prow. It pierced the tunnel’s roof, dislodging stones and dirt, and then withdrew with a silent splash.

“What the hell!” Harris said. His oar was out of the water now, and he was bent over, almost hugging his knees. “What do we do?”

“Remain calm,” Montross said. “Alexander’s got it.”

“Cutting it a little close, don’t you think?” Hiltmeyer said.

“Turn now,” Alexander said with a shaking voice. “Straighten it out. And stay straight if you can. There’s just a narrow channel where we’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” said Nina, jabbing the soldiers with her guns. “We get it. You heard the kid. Straighten out and row.”

They moved ahead, cutting through the luminescent water. Moving slower, carefully.

“What else?” Montross asked.

Alexander shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything else, except . . .”

“What?”

He slumped forward, then straightened his back. He turned his head and Montross could see the pained eyes filling with tears.

“I saw you again,” he said. “Your mom and dad—”

“What?”

“Alexander!” Nina started.

“—dying. The car crash. Except, he wasn’t your dad.”

“I know that,” Montross snapped. “But why? Why are you seeing this? What question are you asking?”

“Nothing. I didn’t ask a thing. I just keep seeing it.”

Montross stared, open-mouthed, and Nina glanced at him, taking her attention away from the soldiers. “Xavier, it’s nothing.”

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing. He’s young, and his power is being augmented by the tablet in ways we can’t imagine. It must be showing him something important. Or at least something his mind feels he needs to know. So, I need to know it too.”

Damn,
Nina thought.
It’s too early for this.

“Not your father,” Alexander said again. “But I think . . . I think your dad might be . . .” He held his head, rubbing the back. He coughed. A little sob escaped.

“What?” Montross asked, almost a shriek. “What? Who?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Alexander shook his head. “I see it, but I don’t know what it means.”

The oars continued paddling, the boat skimming faster and faster ahead. All flashlights were pointed inside at Alexander, almost blinding him.

“Well,” said Montross gripping the tablet even tighter, “now that I know that something about my heritage is important, I’ll just have my own look-see.”

“No,” Nina whispered.

“What?”

“Don’t. Not yet.”

Montross faced her as the tablet’s aura sprinkled them both in a sheen of fairy dust. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I—”

“Uh oh,” Harris said, dropping his oar. He stood, just as the nose of the boat struck something and they all lurched forward.

#

“We hit the shore,” Hiltmeyer yelled. He collected himself, leapt to his feet and spun around, hoping Nina had dropped her guns, but in an instant she was there, tripping up his legs and pushing him back down into the belly of the boat.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Montross grunted, fumbled for the tablet and retrieved it, then held it up to illuminate the boat. “Alexander?”

He was outside, picking himself up on the shore, right behind Harris who was scrambling to his knees. Suddenly both were caught in flashlight beams probing wildly ahead. They were on a small inlet, a pathway sparkling with gold bending in a thirty-foot S-shaped pattern to the gate.

Alexander took out his flashlight. “Wow.” His beam stretched out and searched, then struck a wall of immense marble blocks around a huge sealed archway. Above the arch, between two turrets, stood four immense statues.

Giant terra cotta warriors, each manning huge crossbows.

“Oh no,” Harris whispered.

Just as something whistled through the air.

He grunted, making a surprised choking sound as he clutched at the end of a six-foot iron bolt protruding from his chest. And with the point erupting out his back he looked like game piece on a foosball table. He stumbled backwards, past Alexander. His mouth opened as he fell, arching backwards until the silver point stabbed into the soft earth and his head flopped backwards.

Alexander opened his mouth, tried to cry out, tried to insist that he hadn’t seen this, knowing that the reason was because he hadn’t asked the right questions.
I only asked about the river!

Desperately, he looked back to the ramparts, to the silent, impassive guardians, three of which had yet to fire.

8.

Caleb hadn’t even stepped off the boat before the first scream ripped through the cavern, and suddenly there were gunshots, flashlight beams probing desperately. Men yelling.

More gunshots, and Phoebe, Orlando and Qara ducked low on the boat just as a sudden volley of arrows whistled past, sailing behind them and plunking into the water.

“Back!” Chang shouted. “Stop firing!”

The soldiers formed a semi-circle around Renée, Chang and the boats. Their flashlights swept back and forth, revealing the first rows of terra cotta warriors, many of them now shredded with 7.62mm rounds. No more arrows flew, and the army rested in silence and apparent innocence.

“What happened?” Renée asked.

“Someone went scouting ahead.”

“Who told him to do that?”

“Procedure.” Chang said. “Sorry.”

Renée shoved aside two soldiers and looked at what their lights had settled on. One of the soldiers lay face-down about five feet beyond the first row of warriors. His left leg was severed above the knee, lying by itself a short distance away. His back was punctured by three arrows.

Another soldier came limping back, shrieking for a medic, an arrow in his hip and a gouge cut through his left arm.

Renée shined her light in the direction he had come from, and saw a statue with a sword held up before his face. The blade was wet. The statue wobbled slightly as it returned to its dormant position.

“Ballistic vests,” Chang said, pointing to the fallen man. “Help little against arrows. Or swords.”

Renée lowered her gun. She scanned the shot-up faces of the nearest terra cotta soldiers. “Okay, lesson learned. No one’s going in there until we know what this is. Apparently Temujin has this field rigged as well, with pressure-sensitive plates that trigger the statues into attacking.”

After testing the air and believing themselves safe for the moment, the soldiers removed their gas masks and started checking their gear. They tightened their flak jackets, still hoping they’d provide some protection, donned their helmets and prepared their weapons, reloading and checking their lights.

Caleb walked carefully out of the boat, then helped Qara disembark as Phoebe and Orlando got out on the other side.

Renée scouted ahead with night-vision binoculars. “I see something. Looks to be about four hundred yards, past this field and the army. There’s a gate. That’s the entrance into the city, and where we need to go.”

Chang nodded, surveying the field. “But direct path is most fortified. See? Largest concentration of soldiers appear to guard way.”