The Mongol Objective (6 page)

He was here.

But then he froze, staring first at the beautiful zodiac images painted on the ceiling, and then at the lone pedestal basking in the glow of four lamps, and the single object resting at its apex:

The Emerald Tablet.

#

“There’s a note beside it,” Alexander said, his voice cracking.

“A note?” Montross took another step in, hesitantly still, as if expecting a rack of stainless steel, poisoned-tip spikes to come plunging down through the ceiling and skewer him at any moment. “I didn’t see a note.”

“Maybe,” said Alexander, picking up the loose-leaf piece of white paper with a jagged left edge, “Dad only left it for me recently.”

“What does it say?” He glanced at the paper, frowned, then checked out the ceiling. “Looks Greek to me.”

“It is Greek.” Alexander read the words and translated to himself:
Son, this is your legacy now, and that means it’s yours to protect. If you’ve been forced here against your will, and if you have the chance, tap the pedestal twice, and then . . .

He lowered the paper, dropped it, then inched his fingers toward the wooden outer frame. In another second, Montross had his back to him and Alexander seized the opportunity. He pressed the pedestal once, then again, and heard a
click
. And then he did just what the note told him to:

He ran.

Bolted straight for the door—

—just as another door, a door made of vertical steel bars, came grinding out of a slot in the ceiling, crashing down.

Alexander dropped and rolled under it into the sub-basement. The grate slammed onto the concrete floor with a force that echoed in his ears like a thunderclap.

He turned, about to try to push the outer vault door shut, when he saw Montross standing there, gripping the bars like a prisoner in a cell.

“Caught you,” Alexander said triumphantly.

Montross released the bars and stepped back as the vault door drifted nearly shut. Breathing deeply, calming himself, he turned and scrutinized the room, seeing now the grate opening in the ceiling, the notches he should have noticed in his visions.

The boy continued talking through the gap in the outer door. “Guess you didn’t see that coming, did you?”

Montross stopped, lowered his head and gave the kid a stare, considering all this. Then he pointed through the crack. “There’s my sketch book. Look at the last page.” He turned back and approached the Emerald Tablet, saw it shimmering, giving off a surprising bit of heat, its strange symbols appearing not only three-dimensional, but
multi-dimensional
. Layers upon layers, hundreds of levels deep.

His head spun and his stomach felt tingly, a little nauseous.

“Oh crap,” he heard the boy say, the words so distant. “You did draw it—this exact scene.” Then he looked through the window, gathered his courage and yelled, “But you’re still trapped in there!”

Montross returned, pressed his face against the thick glass porthole, let his lips pull away into a smile; and before heading back for the tablet, he said, loud enough for Alexander to hear:

“Oh, I’m not trapped.”

6.

The air transport left within the hour, Caleb, Phoebe and Orlando sitting in the back with fifteen empty seats, painfully aware of the loss of two of their members, including one traitor.
Wiped out again
, Caleb thought, holding his head as if he could still hear their screams.

“I was responsible,” he said somberly, staring out the window at the dawn rising over the vast horizon of blue ahead of them. “We need to bring them back, their bodies. Notify Ben’s family, tell them . . . I don’t know.”

“It’s not your fault,” Phoebe said as Orlando worked on his iPad.

“I feel as callous as Waxman,” Caleb said as he crossed his arms over his bruised ribs, “and as selfish. But we need to get back.”

“We’ve called the police; they’re on their way to our house.”

“It’s probably already too late.”

“Hopefully you were seeing the future,” offered Orlando.

Caleb shook his head. “My visions are usually firmly rooted in the past. Can we connect with the police?”

“Trying,” said Orlando, using the VOIP voice connection on the laptop. “But they keep putting me on hold.” He looked up, and his voice trembled. “I think they’ve got a problem.”

#

The first officer barely got out of the cruiser before he was shot through the heart. The round had punched through the driver’s side window as he was opening the door, and he’d only had a moment to guess where the gunshot had come from before he fell back, sliding along the car and down. His partner, instead of ducking and radioing for backup, pushed his way out the passenger side, and drew his weapon.

He turned, stood up and opened fire at the front of the house, having seen movement in that direction. His bullets strafed the door, shattered four windows and exploded an outdoor light. For a brief second he allowed himself a measure of satisfaction.
That got those bastards
.

But then the door kicked open and a man in a ski mask, limping on his right leg, swung an HK MP5 submachine gun in his direction and let loose a hail of metallic death.

#

Lydia hit the deck as soon as the first man aimed out the window. “Robert, down!” she yelled as a barrage of gunfire burst through the house. Glass shattered, wood screamed, and one of the masked guards spun around, half his face a bloody mess.

Cavalry’s
here
, she thought, as Robert dropped beside her. Then she saw the other guard kick open the door and return fire.

“Robert.” She shook her brother. “Come on, now’s our chance. We can turn them in, and I promise, I’ll confront Caleb, get him to release the tablet, we’ll—”

Robert turned with her touch, rolled onto his back. Mouth open, blood bubbling up from his lips. A red stain spreading on his right breast.

“No . . .” Lydia grabbed his tie, and not knowing what else to do, fit the edge in the bullet hole, trying to stop the blood flow. “No, no, no.”

“Cops are dead,” came the voice at the door. “But we have to move, we—”

Lydia looked up and saw the man staring at his dead partner. The MP5 wavered. And then Lydia saw the outline of the gun holstered against her brother’s side. Before she knew what she was doing, she had the gun free and was standing, pointing it at the masked man.

He looked up from his partner, saw her and raised the gun, but she shot him first—a direct hit despite the recoil that knocked her back a yard. The man went down. His legs twitched once, twice, then lay still.

And Lydia gave her brother a parting glance before breaking her paralysis and rushing for the door. She had to get to Alexander.

#

It had been quiet for the better part of ten minutes, with Alexander waiting at the foot of the stairs. Keeping an eye on the vault door, ready to run if Montross had some explosives or something.
But what could he have? He didn’t use anything to get in, and the only thing in there is the tablet!

Alexander knew it had power, but thought it was merely something along the lines of knowledge, advanced stuff like the scrolls his mom and dad had found in the old Pharos vault. And surely it was nothing that a novice, someone who might not even know how to read that ancient language, could use to free himself.

A low mumbling sound came from
behind him
, on the stairs, and Alexander spun, expecting—hoping—to see his mom, or better yet, his father, triumphantly returning to save him and take care of this intruder, but instead he saw what at first he thought must be a ghost, a shimmering, flickering image of
him
, the man trapped in the vault. But then the vision descended the stairs, into the glimmering light. The shadows peeled from his face, the fierce eyes almost glowing, making Alexander think of a movie he once saw part of on the Sci-Fi Channel, something about giant worms and desert nomads who all had spice-enhanced bright blue eyes.

Montross pointed to him and opened his mouth in a mock laugh.

“Impossible,” Alexander whispered, and when he saw Montross reaching inside his coat pocket for a gun, he turned and raced back to the vault door, the only sanctuary. He cranked the knob, turned it and tugged back the door on its hydraulically fueled hinges. Behind him, Montross shuffled forward across the basement floor, eerily. Alexander paused for a moment, wondering why the effect seemed unreal, but then he saw that gun coming out, aiming at him, and he pushed forward through and under the bars, which were now rising. He had a glance only of the tablet, still in its resting place on the pedestal. That was enough and he ran for it.

He lunged for the pedestal, planning to slam his palm against it, knowing that would bring the bars crashing down again, stopping Montross before he could get in.

But an instant before his hand touched the surface it was caught, grabbed by Montross himself, who had been crouching behind the pedestal all along.

What!

Alexander jerked his head around to look back at the door, where no one stood. The bars were up, the door swung open, and the chamber beyond was empty.

#

“How . . .?”

Montross smiled as he gripped Alexander’s wrists, and then casually tossed him toward the corner farthest from the door. “A little trick I knew the Emerald Tablet could teach me. Ask your dad about it, about what your grandpa had learned to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

Montross grabbed the tablet, hefted it as he lifted it off the pedestal. “Gotta run, sport. Thanks for your help, and hey, tell your dad if he makes it back—well, he’ll know where to find me.”

He took two steps, and suddenly, without the tablet’s weight on it anymore, the pedestal began to drop.

#

“Uh oh,” Alexander said, and Montross snapped his head around.

“Damn.”

#

Lydia raced through the backyard, her bare feet pounding on the cold ground, then she burst through the lighthouse cellar toward the open door and the stairs.
Damn it, Caleb!
Why couldn’t he have trusted her? And to present such a thing, a riddle for their son to solve? She had known about the vault door, but had never been inside because Caleb had told her it was just an old root cellar. It was the Keeper way, she thought grudgingly, but to leave her in the dark about what was really there, after all they’d been through, after what she’d proven to him?

Granted, things had never been the same after their reunion, after he’d learned she had faked her own death under the Pharos—partly to trigger Caleb’s psychic powers, which often emerged only through psychological trauma, but also because she had become pregnant and couldn’t let the impending birth of his son derail his mission. But even afterward, they had spent long months apart, raising Alexander like separated parents, and the rare times they were together, well, it was never like it had been before Alexandria.

She burst down the stairs, gun in hand, sure she would find the worst. And when she heard the tiny shrieks and felt the rumbling in the tower’s foundation, she threw herself down five stairs at a time, stumbling finally upon the chamber floor, where she saw the vault door closing on Montross and her son.

“No!”

#

The chamber began to rumble, dust falling from the constellation-covered ceiling. The sconces flickered. And through two side vents on the ground, a light oily substance poured into the chamber.

Cursing the continued surprises, Montross lunged for the door, knowing it would be pointless.
At least the gate’s not falling.
But the hydraulic door whirred and pulled shut as if some monstrous titan pushed on it from the other side. He was close enough to slide through, but hesitated, seeing the door accelerate and not wanting to be caught—and cut—in half. So he did the only thing he could think to do, the only thing that might save him.

Since he was closer to the door hinge than the aperture, he shoved the Emerald Tablet into the slot where the hinge was closing flush with the wall. The tablet’s width fit perfectly, just sliding into place as the door ground into it.

Montross let go and backed up, almost slipping on the slick floor and the flood of oil. The door was still open a crack, large enough for the boy to get through, and maybe himself if he really sucked in his stomach, but he was hoping for something else.

Alexander whistled. He was at his side now, staring. “It’s stopping the door.”

“Unbreakable,” Montross said, “whatever that substance is. I suggest we back up.”

The hydraulics ground and hissed, the door sputtered and ground against the tablet. Then the upper hinges popped and the edge tore away from the frame. Steam burst from the twisted metal, then another series of bolts gave way and the whole wall shook.

The tablet, unsecured now, fell to the floor and plopped into the rising pool of oil.

Alexander lunged for it, but Montross was quicker and scooped it up with one hand. And then, watching his step, he trudged through the now knee-high flood. Out of the vault, he dragged Alexander behind him, both slipping as they stepped over pieces of the broken door.

Then, sensing movement outside, Montross stopped short.

Lydia was there, crouching, aiming a gun at him.

But from behind him, something sizzled and cracked. The sconces broke apart, and the flames dropped like leaves into the waiting pool of flammable oil.

#

Lydia was about to shout for Alexander to duck so she could get a clear shot at Montross, but she saw a river of some kind of liquid pooling out from behind the shattered door, rolling all the way to her feet. She saw the tablet in Montross’s free hand, saw it shimmering hypnotically in that green-hued aura.

At last, I’ve seen it, actually seen it.

Then she smelled oil and saw flames spreading from the vault.

“Run!” she shouted as the next chamber exploded into a blinding fireball, which then burst out into the next, where Lydia stood. She had a glimpse of Montross scooping up her son and dodging to the side before the inferno roared straight into her.