Oracle (16 page)

“
You believe all that?” she whispered to Professor.

“
The Norfolk Group? A bunch of rich men trying to protect their wealth by destroying anything that might upset the apple cart? Sounds pretty plausible to me. The thing is, a lot of regular people probably feel the same way; people like Brian who lost loved ones in the attacks. They’d do anything to keep it from happening again.”

“
That’s insane. The truth doesn’t go away just because you cover it up.”

Professor simply inclined his head in agreement.
“You ready?”

“
What are our chances of making it through this?”

He regarded her with a sardonic grin.
“You want the truth?”

“
I see what you mean.”

“
Ok. Get ready.” He aimed the pistol down the slope in the general direction of the mercenaries and fired two shots into the trees. The noise seemed deafening after the brief lull in the fight. It would have taken a miracle for him to score a hit, but Jade knew that wasn’t his intention. “Wait for it.”

There were shouts and then Jade saw movement as the mercenaries started advancing in quick bursts, moving from one tree to the next. The terrain forced them to move almost single file, which was one of the reasons Professor had chosen the top of the hill for their first fighting position.

The first man in the line pulled up short when he spied the covering of leaves Jade had laid.
“¡Ten cuidado!”
he shouted
. “¡Creo que es una trampa!”
Be careful. I think there’s a trap.
Then, heeding his own advice, he cautiously started up the slope.

“
Now?” whispered Dorion.

“
Not yet.”

A second man emerged, sweeping the barrel of his rifle toward the hilltop, but keeping one eye on the leafy camouflage, clearly wary of a concealed pitfall or some other snare.

“They fell for it,” she whispered back. “Two coming up.”

“
Let’s try for a triple-play,” Professor answered back.

A third man stepped out from cover. It was Hodges, and like the others, he was dividing his attention between the hilltop and the narrow strip of ground where it was, presumably, safe to walk.

“Now,” Professor whispered.

Dorion pushed on the handle of the entrenching tool they had wedged under the stone sphere, levering it into motion. It smashed through the screen of fig leaves, and started rolling down the slope, gathering momentum as it went.

The first man spotted it and froze in place. His eyes darted to the side, perhaps weighing the threat of whatever lay beneath the leaf cover against the small boulder rolling toward him. His hesitancy cost him the opportunity to make the choice. The sphere may have looked like an over-sized beach ball, but it hit the man’s legs like a pile driver, knocking him back and continuing over him like he was nothing but a speed bump. The second man, his view blocked by his comrade, never saw it coming.

Hodges, forewarned by the cries of the two men and the crunch of the stone ball breaking their bones, reflexively threw himself to the side, right into the leaf cover. The sphere clipped his foot as it rolled past and then crashed into the trees where it continued to carom noisily down the hillside. Hodges lay motionless for a moment atop the leaf
cover, as if hardly able to believe that he was alive.

There was no trap, at least not of the sort the attackers were expecting. There hadn
’t been time to dig a pit or create spring-tension spear traps with tree branches. “It would take us a couple days to set up all that Rambo stuff,” Professor had said. “That’s time we don’t have. But they won’t know that.”

Instead, he and Dorion had undertaken the tricky and somewhat Sisyphusian task of rolling the stone sphere they had discover
ed out of its hole and up to the perch on the hilltop, while Jade had gathered leaves to create the illusion of a concealed pit trap. And it had worked beautifully. Mostly.

Well, two out of three ain
’t bad,
Jade thought.

Professor however, wasn
’t ready to call it a failure. He rose up from cover and started firing down at Hodges, but right away, the mercenaries spread out below started firing back. The tree line erupted with muzzle flashes and veritable wave of lead rolled up the slope. Jade caught a glimpse of Hodges scrambling for cover and then was herself driven back as tree branches began splintering all around her.

“
Go!” Professor shouted.

They had known, even as they labored to set up their hilltop defense, that it would be only a temporary position. They had hoped for nothing more than to slow their attackers down a little, break their spirit, and if they were lucky, thin the ranks a little. They had succeeded in the last at least, but the odds were still stacked high against them. Their plan then had been to accomplish what they could at the hilltop, and then make a desperate retreat for the east side of the island. They had not discussed what would happen then; Jade knew they would have to make a last stand, go out in a blaze of a glory, but saying it aloud would have been too much to bear.

They ran and slid down the back slope, plowing headlong into the jungle thicket. When possible, Jade tried to duck under or sidestep around branches and vines, but more often than not, they appeared so suddenly, there wasn’t time for evasive maneuvers. Their escape sounded like a stampede of elephants trampling through the forest.

Much sooner than Jade would have thought possible, the jungle ended at a precipice, and she found herself staring out at the blue-gray water of the Pacific Ocean. She lowered her gaze and saw the whitecaps of surf breaking against the face of the cliff, at least forty feet below. There was a boat out on the water, a big motor yacht, maybe two hundred yards out to sea; it might as well have been two hundred miles.

Dorion broke out of the trees behind her and would have charged right off the edge if Jade had not tackled him.

Professor called out to them.
“This way!”

He was waving frantically, about twenty yards to the south. Jade got up and, half-dragged Dorion along behind her. She got about halfway to him when the sound of a helicopter filled her ears.

There wasn’t even time to hide. The aircraft appeared suddenly, moving out from behind the rocky promontory that had muted its approach, pouncing on them like lion leaping out of the tall grass.

The rhythmic beat of rotor blades was abruptly punctuated by the staccato roar of a machine gun. Jade threw herself flat as the hillside all around her exploded in a cloud of brown and green. She thought she could feel the heat of the rounds sizzling through the air, striking the ground mere inches from where she lay.

The gunner was firing in bursts, three to five seconds of fire, and maybe as many seconds of letting the gun cool while he assessed the results. She didn’t know if the others had been hit, didn’t dare raise her head to look, and yet she couldn’t stay where she was. She bit her lip, playing possum, and waited for the next burst. If it didn’t kill her, she would make a run for the tree line.

The helicopter continued to beat the air, hovering about fifty feet above and perhaps twice that far beyond the edge of the cliff directly, but the gun was silent. Jade counted the seconds—ten, twenty… an excruciating half minute, before she realized why. The helicopter wasn
’t hunting them any longer; it was keeping them pinned down. She lifted her head up, and scanned the trees.

Professor must have realized it too, because even as Jade was drawing her pistol, she heard the report of his, and then the roar of answering fire—not just one
, but a dozen guns—from out of the jungle.

Damn it! There
’s no way out of this.

Jade could not recall ever feeling so helpless, so hopeless. It was not just that she would probably be dead in a minute or two; it w
as the sense of absolute futility, of seeing the danger coming, but having no way at all to avoid it.

Fine.
But I won’t go alone.

She listened, cocking her head this way and that until she thought she knew where the nearest mercenary was, and then curled her finger around the trigger.

“Blaze of glory time.”

Isla del Caño, Costa Rica

Suddenly a deep
boom, like close thunder, sounded behind her, from just out past the cliff.

What now?

And then half a second later, another, but this one was in the sky.

Jade felt heat against her back, and a wave of energy—like a punch to the gut—passed through her body.

That was an explosion.

She rolled over and saw a black smudge in the sky where the helicopter had been just a moment before.

What the hell?

The destruction of the helicopter stunned the mercenaries into paralysis. The withering fusillade ceased as abruptly as if someone had slammed a door on the attackers.

“Jade? Paul?”

Professor?
Still alive. Thank God.
“I’m here.”

Dorion
’s weak voice shouted a moment later. “Yes?”

“
Get to the cliff. We have to jump.”

Jump?

But he was right. The ceasefire wasn’t going to last. Maybe the leap would kill them. Maybe it was just postponing the inevitable.

I
’ll take ‘maybe’ over a bullet any day.

She stuffed the gun
back into its holster and sprang to her feet.

The cliff was just a few steps away, but despite the dire urgency of the situation, she couldn
’t bring herself to make a blind running leap. She stopped at the edge, just for a heartbeat, and looked down.

There weren
’t any rocks, at least none that she could see, but there was no way of knowing what lay just below the turbulent surface. And it seemed a lot further away than she remembered from that first glimpse.

Then she saw the boat.

It was a lot closer than she remembered; close enough for her to see a man standing on the aft deck with something that looked like a very long rifle with a strange conical attachment at one end.

An RPG launcher.
So that’s what happened to the helicopter.
Jade felt an ember of hope flare bright within her.

The man shouldered the grenade launcher and began scanning the skies for another target. He wasn
’t alone. Another figure stood on the deck, waving frantically, waving up to the trio on the cliff.

Only then did Jade realize that the others were still with her. Dorion stood half a step behind her, as if afraid to get any closer to the edge. Professor just stared at the boat, an incredulous look on his face.

What are they waiting for?

“
What are you waiting for?” she snapped. And when neither man reacted, Jade did what she knew she had to do. “Do I always have to go first?” she muttered.

Then with a whoop, she jumped.

“
Jade, wait!”

Professor
’s shout came a millisecond too late. Jade had already leaped from the precipice and arced out over the crashing surf. She vanished into the turbulence, and then after an interminable moment, bobbed up and started swimming toward the boat.

“
Damn it.” Jade hadn’t seen what he had, but maybe it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they had much choice.

“
Time to go!” He grabbed Dorion’s arm and unceremoniously hurled him out into space. Then he jumped too.

It wasn
’t the height of the fall that worried him; he had made jumps into open water before, from greater elevations and packing a hundred pounds of gear. The water was littered with pieces of the destroyed helicopter but most of it was further out than he could jump anyway. The fuselage had sunk completely, which probably meant the water was deep enough. If there were rocks hidden below the surf…well, it wasn’t as if there was anything he could do about it.

No, he was worried about what would happen if he survived.

He kept his arms close to his body, knees slightly bent. The impact with the water definitely felt like hitting solid ground, but he knew better. Pain shot through his legs as the surf enveloped him, and then he felt another jolt as he slammed into the submerged sea floor, but he was still conscious and pretty sure that nothing was broken. He thrust out with his legs and rocketed to the surface.

He bobbed up a moment later and turned a slow circle until he spotted Dorion, splashing frantically a few yards away. He swam over to the struggling man and gripped him by the collar, dragging him up so he could take a breath.

Within minutes of their leap, a launch deployed from the yacht. It motored toward them, fishing Jade out first, and then came to collect Professor and Dorion. As he was helped up and over the transom, he heard Jade laughing.

“
You still have that damned hat.”

He reached up and touched the sodden felt, verifying that it was true.

“It must be your lucky talisman,” said a voice from the front of the small boat.

Professor glanced at the speaker, who
sat next to a thoroughly bedraggled Dorion. “I knew there was something I liked about it,” he said, and then turned to Jade. “We may have just jumped out the frying pan and into the fire.” He said in a low voice. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but…”

He gestured to the blonde woman sitting with Dorion.
“These are the people that were following us in San Jose.”

Jade just smiled.
“Yeah, I know all about that.”

“
Dr. Chapman,” Dorion said, “May I introduce my benefactor, Ms. Ophelia Doerner.”

The blonde woman
, who had complimented him on his hat, flashed a radiant smile and then extended a hand.

Jade just smirked.
“Try to keep up, okay?”

Although they had
left Isla del Caño behind, safety was not a foregone conclusion. There was still a second helicopter and more than a dozen mercenaries with enough firepower to turn the yacht into Swiss cheese if they so desired. Of course, the rescuers were not defenseless; they had shown as much with the RPG strike that had knocked one of the helicopters from the sky.

It was that threat, Jade surmised
, that kept Hodges from chasing after them. As for Professor’s assertion that they had left one bad situation for another…well, the jury was still out on that. As the yacht powered back toward the mainland, Dorion brought them up to speed on his relationship with Ophelia Doerner.

Although Jade had never heard of her, Ophelia was one of the richest women in the world. She might actually have topped that list but because her wealth was shared with her twin brother, Laertes, her personal net worth was only part of a much larger family fortune.

“Ophelia and Laertes,” Professor mumbled. “Dad must have had a sick sense of humor.”

Not surprisingly, Professor knew quite a bit about the Doerner family and their wealth, and surreptitiously supplied this background information while they dried off and drank hot beverages in the main salon.

Despite the German surname, the Doerner twins were the scions of a Gilded Age Pennsylvania coal baron. Over the years, the family empire had grown larger and stronger through careful diversification and, perhaps more importantly, influence peddling. Even as America plied the uncertain seas of an oil-based economy, lobbyists in the employ of the Doerner patriarch had seen to it that coal remained an integral part of the nation’s energy infrastructure, and that tiresome labor and environmental issues were never much of a problem. Papa Doerner had also been a rabid anti-communist and an opponent of the United Nations, though it was impossible to say whether his motives were political or personal. For the last twenty years or so, following the death of Laertes’ and Ophelia’s father, the family had made a concerted effort to reduce their public profile; even Professor, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the world, had never heard of Ophelia or her brother. Their political influence however, remained considerable.

Jade turned to Dorion.
“So how did she get involved with your search for dark matter?”

“
Quite simple, really,” said Ophelia as she swept into the salon and took a seat at the table with them. “Dr. Dorion made me into a believer.”

Jade did not fail to notice the subtle shift in the posture of her two male companions. Even Professor, who had verbalized some reservations about their hostess, sat up a little straighter.

Jade was grateful of course for the rescue, but she wasn’t so easily seduced by Ophelia’s charms. The woman was about as fake as an airbrushed Vogue magazine cover, and unfortunately, just as beautiful. The blonde hair appeared natural, or perhaps expertly bleached within the last couple of days, but everything else—the smooth forehead, the complete absence of laugh lines, the full lips, the gravity defying C-cups and svelte physique—was not. Jade guessed she was probably older than she appeared, maybe even in her fifties, but there wasn’t a shred of visual evidence to support that guess.

Ophelia
’s appearance was not the only thing about her that was impeccably manufactured. Her bearing, her speech, everything about her, was refined, practiced. In a word, fake.

Oh, who cares
? She saved us. Maybe that’s all that matters.
“A believer?”

“
Following the incident at CERN,” Dorion explained. “I wrote a paper addressing the potential for space-time effects near a dark matter event horizon. It was, ah, not very well received.”

“
Not by the academic world, at any rate,” Ophelia said. “I, however, thought it was a fascinating article. I do not have the technical background to judge the science, but the premise is compelling and, well, I just had to know more.  I approached Paul and he told me of his experiences. He’s been working for me ever since, traveling the world, investigating ancient oracles to see if the effect he witnessed at CERN might be present.”

“
How did you find us?” asked Professor.

Ophelia appeared surprised by the question.
“Paul contacted me from Mexico. He told me about what happened at Teotihuacan, and said that you were in danger. I came immediately.”

“
Now we know how Hodges was able to track us,” Professor muttered.

Jade shot an accusing look at the physicist.
“You think maybe you should have checked with us first?”

Dorion hung his head, but Ophelia quickly interceded.
“Please, do not blame Paul. What’s done is done. I do not believe that your enemies learned of your whereabouts through me, but regardless, my arrival here could not have been more fortuitous.”

Jade glanced questioningly at Professor and got a shrug in return.
“Well, as you say, what’s done is done. At least we don’t have to hide anymore.”

“
You most certainly do not,” replied Ophelia. “If you are willing to continue your search, I can guarantee protection and whatever else you may require.”

“
What’s in it for you?”

“
I should think that’s obvious.” Ophelia leaned forward, her face showing something almost like hunger. “I want to know the future.”

“
I’ve told you that it doesn’t work that way,” Dorion said quickly. “The space-time effects created in a dark matter field do not show the literal future. Instead we are able to look through a window to other universes that may or may not be similar to our own.”

“A window,” Jade murmured, thinking back to the closing words of Gil Perez’s confession.

Ophelia made a dismissive gesture.
“That is merely a matter of semantics. We all make predictions about what will happen, yet our grasp of the future is limited by the scope of our prior knowledge. This window you speak of will allow us to see possible outcomes influenced by factors of which we are unaware.

“
I am, as Dr. Chapman has pointed out, a very wealthy woman, but my ability to remain that way is dependent on the decisions I make—where to invest, when to sell—but it is guesswork. All it takes is a natural disaster, an unexpected political upheaval, another 9/11, and millions of dollars vanish in the blink of an eye.”

“
Right,” snorted Jade. “So if you know that thousands of people are about to get killed, you can invest accordingly and cash in.”

Ophelia tilted her head indulgently.
“I am not as callous as you think, Dr. Ihara. While it is true that there are unscrupulous people who might seek to ‘cash in’ as you say, from such tragedies, I can assure you that I am not one of them. If I had foreknowledge of such an event, I would of course do everything in my power to prevent or mitigate the outcome. Long term stability—economic, political, social—is the surest path to success.”

“
Where have I heard that before?” Professor said.

Jade knew he was referring to what Hodges had revealed about the goals of the Norfolk Group. Ophelia just looked at him, uncomprehending.
“I think you would be distrustful if I told you my motives were purely altruistic, but I assure you, I’m not the devil you seem to think I am. It is quite natural for people to want to know the future. That is the very reason why there have been countless oracles and prophets throughout history. It is why people read their horoscope every day. I mean to continue with this search, and I hope that you will join me. My jet is waiting at the Drake’s Bay airport and can take us wherever we need to go. If you do not wish to accompany me, I will take you back to the United States. But I will keep looking.”