BRAINRUSH, a Thriller (43 page)

Becker’s screaming voice broke over the radio, the chatter of his weapon echoing through his microphone. “Time to go, mates. Give ’em hellfire then cross-cover back to the cliff. Now!”

Tony knew that Papa, Snake, and Ripper each had 40mm fuel-air grenades loaded into launchers on the underside of their assault rifles. He didn’t hear the hollow whoop of their release, but he felt the heat on his back when the night behind him lit up like an instant sunrise as the thermobaric grenades ignited into an expanding high-pressure inferno that filled the near end of the clearing. 

Tony, Juice, and Francesca entered the narrow cliffside evac point to find Tark scanning the ridgelines for targets through the Raptor nightscope of his HK 416. Beside him, BASE jumping gear was spread out in ten neat piles along the edge of the cliff, ready for quick donning, one kit for each of them, including Jake
.

Tark looked at Tony. “Jake?”

Tony shook his head. He walked over and kicked the last set of gear off the edge, not wanting to leave it for their pursuers. He heard Francesca gasp as it disappeared into the darkness. 

Tony reached down and grabbed one of the chutes. He slipped it over his good arm but needed Juice’s help to get it over the other. As soon as it was cinched tight, Tony took a cover position behind a boulder. He rested the muzzle of his assault rifle on the boulder and aimed it at the pass using his one good hand.

Tark hurried over to Francesca. She sucked deep gulps of air into her mouth. Tears flowed down her cheeks and it looked like she was about to lose it. Tark helped her into a special tandem harness, talking fast to distract her. “Now don’t you worry about a thing, darling. I’ve done hundreds of tandem jumps with first-timers back home in Charleston, and every single one of them absolutely loved it.” He discarded her
keffiyeh
and strapped a pair of wind goggles over her eyes. Spinning her around so her back was to him, he clipped her harness to his, slipped on his own goggles, and before she had a chance to think about it, he slipped his right arm around her slender waist, lifted her off the ground, and ran headlong over the edge of the cliff.

Tony heard Francesca’s scream fade as she disappeared from sight. 

Staggered gunfire echoed through the pass from the clearing, getting louder. The team should have been here by now. Juice finished donning his gear and moved in beside Tony, his Grendel at the ready. Tony was torn between his desire to cover the rest of the team until they were safely out and the need to get Sarafina out of harm’s way. 

“Sarge, I got this,” Juice said. He gestured toward the quivering bulge under Tony’s clothes. “She’s gotta be gone.”

Tony nodded and rose to his feet. He saw Maria rush into the clearing and knew the rest of the team would be close behind. He turned to make his move toward the edge when gunfire exploded from the ridgeline above them. A stream of bullets tore into the ground around the Chechen woman. She went down hard. Tony scrambled for cover behind the boulder.

Juice returned fire. “They’re coming over the ridge to the southeast, at least a half dozen of them!”

Tony peppered the ridge with his assault rifle. He felt Sarafina twitch with each burst of the weapon, each flinch tearing at Tony’s heart. He wished he hadn’t been forced to use the less accurate AK as part of his disguise. With no scope, in the dark, the best he could hope for was to keep the enemies’ heads down and draw their fire away from Maria. 

It worked, at least the part about drawing their fire. The boulder in front of him and Juice was hammered with lead, a couple rounds whizzing inches from Tony’s head as he ducked down. Staying low while he struggled one-handedly to replace his clip, Tony glanced toward Maria. She was crawling toward cover, just as the rest of the team showed up. 

She needed another second or two. Juice opened up his Grendel on full auto, sending a stream of heavy rounds at the ridgeline. Tony followed suit with his AK. 

The radio squawked. “We got her,” Papa yelled, as intense gunfire reverberated over his microphone. “But the rest of the tangos are through the clearing behind us. We’re going to be overrun any second.”

Tony knew they were all about to die unless he could take out the squad pinning them down from the ridge above. He reached under his tunic to unclip Sarafina. Juice stayed his hand with a grip of steal that wouldn’t brook any argument. 

“I told you,
holmes
, I got this,” Juice said. He snapped in a new clip and cocked a grenade into his launcher. Taking a deep breath, he tensed like a sprinter at the starting blocks.

“Wait!” Tony shouted. He grabbed a strap from Juice’s combat vest and pulled him back down. “Listen.”

A faint whine behind them grew to a loud buzz as the NRI AutoCopter gunships popped up from over the cliff and spiraled above them like two angry hornets. The twin birds followed a twisting path toward the tangos on the ridge, mini-rockets flashing from their gun pods, ready to explode amidst the enemy soldiers. The muzzles of the full-auto shotguns on each of the birds unleashed a rain of BBs into the men on the ridge, shredding them to silence.

“Way to go, Kenny!” Ripper shouted over the radio. He and Papa grabbed Maria under either arm and ran her to the packs by the cliff. Becker, Snake, and Azim walked backward behind them, their guns firing into the pass. 

Juice stood up and took over for them, his Grendel spraying lead. Tony opened up with his AK from behind the rock, staying low to shield Sarafina. “Get your gear on now!” he ordered.

The gunships sped down the pass, the sound of their spitting guns opening up as soon as they rounded the first bend.

While Kenny’s toys covered their exit, the team members donned their packs and followed Tony over the edge into the blackness. Everyone except Azim.

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

A
s soon as Tony and Francesca disappeared from view down the tunnel, Jake rushed back to the obelisk and placed his hands on two of the three symbols that Sarafina said didn’t belong. Once again he felt the surge of energy and the return of his abilities. The vibrations from the symbols filled the cavern. 

Thanks to Sarafina’s insight, the combination of shapes made sense now. Through the sounds that only she heard, Sarafina had determined that eight of the numbers fit together while three of them did not. That had been the clue Jake needed to solve the mathematical mystery of the eleven numbers. He did a quick mental calculation to confirm his suspicions. 
Yes!
  They were all prime numbers, but only eight of them were
factorial
prime numbers, where the mathematical product of all the integers less than or equal to the number was a prime.

He focused his attention on the three symbols that didn’t belong, sliding his hands across them, skipping amongst different combinations, searching for the sequence that would unlock the obelisk’s secret. Although the vibrations from each of the three symbols were discordant with the remaining eight, they did resonate with each other. Jake tried to press all three symbols simultaneously, but his fingers couldn’t stretch far enough to encompass two of the symbols at once. He leaned forward, thinking he might be able to use his forehead to activate the third symbol. 

He jerked his head back up when Battista’s voice broke the silence behind him.

“You never cease to amaze me, Mr. Bronson,” Battista said. “Now you seem to be praying to our most sacred relic.”

Jake kept both his palms on the symbols, but didn’t turn around. He heard the rustle of feet and the adjustment of weapons as several more men shifted into position behind him. Someone patted him down from behind, finding Carlo’s knife, the comm unit, and the frag grenade that Tony had slipped in his pocket—
for luck. 

Battista’s detached voice was filled with malice. “You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble. That is now at an end. In some ways it is fitting that your life shall end here.”

Jake’s shoulders slumped. He glanced down at the luminescent dial of his wristwatch. Twelve minutes before Tony’s charges went off.
I’m not the only one whose life is going to end in these caverns tonight. If I can just buy enough time to allow Tony and girls to get out with the team…

Jake raised one hand in the air and turned around. He left one hand on the obelisk so he could draw on its energy to stay alert. Battista’s malignant eyes bored into him. Eight men stood in a semicircle around him, their weapons ready, their expressions lacking even a hint of humanity. Killing him would faze them no more than stepping on a spider.

Playing to Battista’s ego, Jake cast an admiring glance around the room. He spoke in Dari. “This is quite a place you’ve got here. Have you solved the riddle?”

 “There is no riddle here,” Battista said, but a brief shadow of doubt in his eyes belied his words. “This chamber has been the source of our tribe’s power, the well of our faith, for a thousand years. For centuries our tribal leaders have meditated in this sacred room, absorbing the wisdom of the ages to guide us in the dictates of our faith.”

Hoping to draw Battista into a debate, Jake pointed to the inscription on the wall, reading aloud the excerpt of a verse from the Koran: “He will grant you victory over them.” Jake gestured toward the ghastly murals beneath the inscription. “In other words, it’s payback time for the Crusades, is that it?”

Battista’s eyes flared. He took two quick steps toward Jake and backhanded him across the face. “Do not dare to speak the words of our faith! You are an infidel, a nonbeliever, a soldier of the Great Satan who for centuries has disguised his greed and moral transgressions beneath the banner of a twisted religious doctrine.” 

Battista was agitated. The frustration of the last few days, if not his life, spewed out like a deluge through a broken dike. He stormed over to the wall mural and pointed to several of the gruesome depictions. “These are not speculative images drawn by a modern-day artist based on the flight of his imagination. These images were painted centuries ago by men who bore witness to each of these events, each of them permanently recorded so that we would never forget.” 

He moved to one of the larger scenes, which depicted scores of contorted Muslim bodies lying in piles within the walls of a great city. His finger stopped on a fierce medieval knight sitting high on his black warhorse, his bloody sword held high in triumph, his shield bearing images of three stylized lions. There was a gold crown on his head. “Have you ever heard the real story of your famed hero, Richard the Lionheart? In 1191, after capturing the island of Cyprus from the Byzantines, he landed in the Holy Land and laid siege to the city of Acre. He took two thousand seven hundred Muslim prisoners and held them as hostages against the terms of the surrender. The battered and hungry defenders believed the words of this king from the West, who made a sacred oath of leniency before Allah, may peace be upon him, for all to bear witness, promising that the lives of the prisoners would be spared if they surrendered.” Battista’s nostrils flared with distaste as he continued, “So the Muslims laid down their arms. And Richard the First, King of England, and central Christian commander of the Third Crusade, had them all slaughtered. Every man, woman, and child.”

Battista spat on the ground and stormed along the wall beneath the mural, his hands gesturing wildly at some of the more gruesome images. “This is the legacy of the West, a legacy of greed, conquest, betrayal, and terror that continues even to this day.” He walked over and stood opposite Jake on the other side of the obelisk. He slapped both hands on the surface and leaned forward, his eyes menacing, his voice booming. “
We
aren’t the terrorists in this story. You are!  And the faithful will tolerate it no longer. We shall not rest until the one true religion reigns supreme. We fight in the name of Allah, and the war can only be won by striking at the very heart of the Great Satan!”

Jake stole a glance at his watch. Nine minutes to go. With luck, his friends were out by now. 

“Nice speech,” Jake said. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Have you solved the riddle?”

Another shadow danced across Battista’s eyes. They shifted to his men standing behind Jake. When he looked back at Jake, he lowered his voice and switched to English. “There is no riddle here.”

Sensing the lack of conviction in Battista’s words, Jake moved to English as well. “I saw the radiometric dating certificate. This object is over twenty-five thousand years old and you know it. Your forefathers may have thought it was a gift from God. And they would have passed the legend from generation to generation to fuel the faith of their followers. But you suspected it was much more than that, didn’t you? I’ll bet you’ve had any number of experts look this over, wondering at its true secret.” Jake paused, and Battista’s silence told him he was right on the mark.

Piercing Battista’s eyes with his own, Jake said, “It took me awhile, but I’ve figured it out.”

Battista’s eyes twitched.

“Shall I go on?” Jake asked.

Battista gave a slight nod.

Jake pointed to the eleven images that wound around the perimeter of the surface. “The message here is clear. Each image is a depiction of man’s violent nature.” He pointed to the final image that included the three humanoid figures with a small black pyramidal object suspended above them casting a dark light that brought anguish to the faces of the human warriors. “This image holds the first clue to the riddle. The apparent message is that violence shall beget more violence. But so what? What’s the link between all the images of violence and these colorful symbols here?” Jake pointed to the embossed figures in the center of the surface.