Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (20 page)

Bryce described the symbol to Whittenfield even as the picture appeared on his monitor, the man-shaped object, arms outstretched, coming out of what appeared to be a body of water.
 

“I didn’t see any other instances of this symbol anywhere in the tunnel, nor in the chamber itself. However, as you’ll see from the pictures, that same symbol appears numerous times on the outside of that well shaft.”

“That’s right — I see that now. There are a few of them in each image; maybe seven or eight times around the whole shaft?”

“Yeah, that’s about right. That’s what I wanted you to look at — I don’t know where to begin with this, but it seems to me whoever put the symbols here used this one as an identifying mark — a sort of ‘x marks the spot,’ if you will.”

“Yes, yes, so these may indicate the
locations
of the creators of this room — or the locations of something else they’ve created!”

“Exactly — if we can figure out this map, I’ll bet we’ll discover who built this chamber — and I’ll bet that one of those locations is the final resting place of our lost crystal,” Bryce added.
 

“Bryce — outstanding work. I’ll send you an update once I make some headway.”

Whittenfield paused for a moment. “Bryce,” he said, “do
not
share anything with Vilocek that is not absolutely necessary to finding the crystal. I don’t want him gaining any more leverage than he already has. I’m not excited that you’re all currently under his thumb, but I also know that we’ll need to keep feeding him enough information to hold his interest — and reinforce your value to him.

“Do what you can to find the crystal, and by all means take it before Vilocek can. I’ll catch up with you when we find out where these symbols are pointing.”

“Sounds good. Let me know what you find.”
 

Bryce clicked off his phone and focused on the winding road ahead. The bullet wound in his shoulder was aching again. He looked out the window at the dunes and endless expanse of arid desert surrounding him. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought he was back in Iraq. He shook that off, trying to piece everything together.

He thought about the notebooks and the symbols inside the pyramid — and suddenly he realized something. The name Vilocek had mentioned, during the fight at Giza.
 

Madu Jabari.
 

M.J.

CHAPTER 32

1:34 AM - NORTH SUDAN

“Start talking, old man!” Beka shouted at Professor Andrews. Beka was standing in the corner of a cavernous room, dark and damp and mildewy with age. The aging professor was curled at his feet in the fetal position, whimpering softly.

“He doesn’t know anything!” Corinne shouted from across the room. “Let him go!” Karn had his arm looped behind Corinne’s elbows, easily resisting her attempts to break free.

They’d been interrogating the professor for almost half an hour, asking about what he knew about the strange symbols. Every time they got an “I don’t know” from him, they would drag Corinne back a few feet, causing the painful wound in the professor’s side to flare up. Every few moments he groaned in agony, cursing under his breath. Corinne would struggle briefly and then slump over, red-faced and defeated. Karn could feel her trying to wrap her bony arms and legs around his own, desperate to find any leverage she could use to wriggle away. He enjoyed her struggling––perhaps too much––and used his free arm and hand to pin her tight against his own body.

The radio on his belt suddenly crackled to life. “Agent Karn––Agent Beka; report back up here in five. Captain Bryce Reynolds may have some information for us––” Vilocek’s voice snapped Karn’s mind back from where it had been.

“You heard the man––let’s go,” Karn snarled. Vladimir Beka abruptly yanked the professor to his feet and dragged him out the door and up the stairs. Karn followed with Corinne, and the four made their way back to the rest of the teams.

After reaching Vilocek’s plane, they had flown to the Sudanese frontier. There they stole two vehicles and drove to the house they were in now, just north of the Sudanese city of Wadi Halfa. It was an abandoned Israeli safe house; the owner, another of Vilocek’s many “friends” had allowed them to use it, no questions asked. Vilocek’s plan was to regroup, get whatever information he could out of Whittenfield’s team, and head to the
real
location of the crystal by tomorrow morning — no later.
 

While Jensen and Corinne were led down to the basement, Bryce and his team gathered in the dining room, attempting to map out their own plan of action.
 
They had argued for quite some time — Bryce livid at Vilocek’s rash actions at the pyramid, and Vilocek’s fury over Whittenfield’s blatant attempt to intercept them and claim the crystal for his own. Each man believed he had a claim to the crystal, but Vilocek had the upper hand now — and he knew it.
 

He’d explained the small band around Corinne’s ankle and the wound in Professor Andrews’ side. The price of their resistance — even Whittenfield’s, who wasn’t physically with them — would be the death of the old man. Vilocek was no fool — he knew that Bryce would be in contact with Whittenfield, most likely with a cell phone. However, he also knew that Whittenfield could add valuable information — the man’s father, after all, had been the first known scientist in possession of the crystal. Whatever Whittenfield knew, Vilocek would coerce out of Bryce.
 

For the time being, Vilocek was putting on a cooperative front to ensure that Bryce’s team felt safe and at ease. He’d even allowed them to keep their weapons. On the flight from Giza, however, Vilocek had pulled Karn aside and warned him to “stay on his toes.” After they tracked downed the crystal, and it was safely in Vilocek’s possession, Karn was to “dispose” of the opposing team. The scientist and his pain in the neck niece would also no longer be needed.

Whittenfield, on the other hand, would need to be dealt with in a manner more
delicately
— both politically and physically. As he and Whittenfield were almost the same age, Vilocek would be delighted to continue his experimentation with the crystal on his nemesis. Cole Reed had already been tested with a new strain of the synthetic crystal. In the lab, no physical changes had been evident in the boy but his vital signs had been abnormal for the first few hours after the injections.
 

After testing for radiation, pupil dilation, and physical mutation, Vilocek’s physicists and doctors had declared the infusion a “complete success” — meaning no long-term effects should occur in Reed’s future. The crystal sliver would glow bright blue in Cole’s presence — as would his exposed skin — but other than that, he seemed to be the first subject Vilocorp had tested that showed no adverse side effects.
 

But then, Reed was not the only test subject.
 

Vilocek wasn’t sure what the current body count was — there were still a few patients locked away in New Mexico who were hanging on by a thread, expected to die any moment — but he knew they had brought in more than twenty human specimens, from all walks of life, and close to a hundred species of animals.
 

Cole was the only one lucky enough to survive without strange physical anomalies.
 

Vilocek hoped that he would be able to replicate the experiment — but next time with the original crystal. He believed the pure specimen would provide much more powerful effects.
 

He would be the first successful subject. He was not a man to waste time pondering after effects or waiting for focus groups, multiple human testing successes, and the worthless bureaucratic posturing of the United States Food and Drug Administration. He wanted nothing to do with publicizing the results to the world, anyway. Whatever he was able to accomplish with the crystal, he would keep to himself.
 

He even had plans in place for the removal of the doctors and scientists who would aid him in the experimentation.
 

Once all was said and done, he alone would be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor for the rest of his life.
 

The rest of his
long
life.
 

Thanks to his father’s secret memoirs, Vilocek knew that the crystal not only had miraculous healing powers and benefits when mixed with other pure substances — a fact he had proven inside his own laboratory — but it also held the secret to sustained life.
 

Dr. Enko Vilocek, after stealing the crystal from James Whittenfield, Sr., had discovered that not only could the crystal resurrect a healthy plant from a wilted shrub, but that the same plant had blossomed and grown to thirty percent larger than the control specimens,
and
had outlived the others by almost
fifty
percent.
 

When tested on small rodents, the same results were found. Screech, an aptly named guinea pig Tanning had actually grown quite fond of, had outlived his brothers and sisters by almost
four years
— an insanely long life for a common house pet.
 

Vilocek knew that by attaining a much larger — and more potent — sample of the crystal, he would be able to streamline and expedite his research tenfold. Maybe more, depending on the actual size of the stone. Either way, he would be able to enjoy an extremely long lifespan, his aging slowed to a crawl as the physical effects and healing properties worked their magic.
 

Now, as Beka and Karn marched the prisoners back into the room, Vilocek turned to Bryce. “Captain Reynolds. I know you’ve been in contact with Whittenfield — please share his thoughts on all of this.” It was an unmistakable command, yet Vilocek added a raised inflection at the end of the statement, making it seem as though he was asking a question.
 

“Look,” Bryce said, “I already told you. He doesn’t know any more than we do! I told him everything I told you, and sent him the images from the well shaft.”

“Well, you mentioned the well shaft had some markings on the outside that you recognized, correct?” Vilocek asked. “Let’s see if the good professor here can offer his input.” He glanced over at Andrews, gasping in the corner of the room.
 

“I didn’t recognize them from anywhere, but they were on both the door to our tunnel, and to the entrance stone blocking the hidden chamber,” Bryce said as he pulled up one of the images on a laptop. Vilocek again looked toward Professor Andrews.
 

“Well?”

Beka propped the older man up, keeping him from collapsing under his own weight. Clearly he was still in excruciating pain, but he spoke up in a firm, confident voice.
 

“I don’t know about those symbols — I’ve never seen anything like them in my life. But I can assure you, they are not hieroglyphics.”

“Well, Bryce has Whittenfield cross-referencing the symbol with other known glyph-based written languages, and since he will have a much better connection from where he is, I guess we’ll just have to be patient.” He motioned to Karn and Beka. “Clearly Professor Andrews is of no use to us any longer. I was mistaken to think that he would be some help to us here. Gentlemen, dismiss him from the expedition.”

Corinne’s and Jensen’s eyes widened simultaneously. The guards tightened their grips on their captives, and Beka’s characteristic smirk appeared.
 

Bryce stood, making eye contact with Sean Bartlinski in the corner of the room. Wayne and Jeff Thompson also exchanged glances, both gripping their pistols. Vilocek raised his hands in front of him, acting like a referee. “Gentlemen, please do not try anything rash. It makes no difference if we end this in a bloodbath or a calm, professional execution. Miss Banks and her uncle are no longer needed, and regardless of what you do, they will be eliminated.”

His eyes landed on each man individually for a moment, before settling on the band that around Corinne’s ankle. Bryce knew why. If anything was out-of-line with this man’s plan, he could instantly cause unbelievable pain to the professor — or worse. Bryce wasn’t about to test what “or worse” might be.
 

But before the guards could haul them off to wherever they would be murdered, Professor Jensen spoke up, almost yelling.
 

“Wait!” he cried. “I know — I mean, I think I know — “
 

Vilocek turned toward him. “Yes, Professor?”

“It’s just that, well it seems — “ Jensen gathered his thoughts for a moment, understanding finally beginning to hit him. “Well, I’ve been thinking about the relationships between the Golden Ratio — 1.618, as you know — how it appears numerous times both in the street layout of Washington D.C.,
and
the Pyramid of Giza.”

“I remember your paper,” Vilocek said, his voice indicating his diminishing patience.
 

“Right, well, I have been struggling to find the connection between the Golden Ratio and this new information. Either through the symbols themselves, or some other manifestation entirely, there should have been at least one more representation of the Golden Ratio in the pyramid. One that we haven’t already documented.”

“Why? Couldn’t it just be a coincidence that Phi shows up a few times on some old map and inside the Pyramid?” Karn asked.

“No. No, it’s not that simple. I thought of that, but the fact remains — the ‘Golden Ratio,’ ‘Golden Number,’ whatever you want to call it — has been known to man long before the layout of the capital city and even before the pyramids. Some even say that both were built according to the number — a claim that actually has scientific merit. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen men constructing buildings and designing architecture that incorporates the number Phi.

“So, the city was built in a specific way that not only pointed us to the Great Pyramid, but also maintained the angles that would mathematically support the Golden Ratio. Likewise, historians believe that the Egyptians, or whoever built the Pyramid at Giza originally, built it using those angles and, again, the Golden Ratio.”