Solomon's Sieve (34 page)

“That’s my story. Your turn.”

Raif gave Glen a sideways look and smiled. “You’d be great at speed dating.” They heard a truck downshifting like it was struggling up the last part of the steep road. “I’m thinking that must be the professor’s enlightenment.”

Glen laughed. “Enlightenment. That’s a good one. Don’t think you’re off the hook. I gave you my story. Now you owe me yours.”

Raif stood up and raised his hand to rest for a second on the slope of Glen’s trapezius. “Some night when I’ve had enough tequila to loosen the shyness.”

“It’s a date,” Glen said.

They walked together toward the truck. The driver and his helper were heading toward the rear to open up the back doors. When they started unloading the lights and generators, they were joined by a couple of other men who had, apparently, been hanging around for the purpose of assisting with such a task, should the need arise.

When Glen and Raif began to help lift one of the generators, there was a rapid conversation in Bulgarian that resulted in an unmistakable impression that the help of the foreign visitors was not needed or welcome.

Raif lifted his palms and backed away. “Fine. Have it your way.”

When they rejoined the others, Glen said, “What about lunch? You think they have taco trucks here?”

Torn’s eyes danced with lively elfin amusement. “I do no’ believe they will be comin’ ‘round with tacos, but if such a vehicle did turn up, I must know, would you actually eat from it?”

Glen’s hand rubbed over his torso and looked around. “Depends on how much longer until food.”

Torn laughed and said to the others, “We forgot we have a team member with the special needs of a boyo still growin’.”

After another forty-five minutes, Yanov made his way across the gravel lot toward Dr. Renaux and company. “The lights are working. Are you ready to begin?”

“Yes, thank you.” Mercy stood up. With a glance in Glen’s direction, she turned to Yanov. “Do you think we might ask someone to go for takeout lunch? The Order will pay of course.” She looked to Torn for confirmation of that and he nodded.

Raif despised the fact that she’d come to the conclusion that Torn was the guy to ask. Officially, it was Gun who had been appointed leader by Storm, even though Black Swan teams had a tradition of not naming leaders.

“
Yes. The truck drivers will stop and place an order at an establishment that will deliver. We will let your, uh, party know when sustenance has arrived.”

“Sustenance!” Glen’s exclamation was so full of joy and enthusiasm it made the others chuckle. “Great word, Professor. And just what I had in mind. I’m needing some serious protein and I wouldn’t mind a few carbs to go with that.”

Yanov didn’t really understand Americans, but smiled and pretended comprehension. He spoke to the truck drivers who nodded ascent and started back down the mountain with a rumble and a grind of gears.

The four knights agreed that, since there was only one way into the cave, there was no need to have everyone hovering over Dr. Renaux at once. In fact, they reasoned that they might be more effective if they were in a position to see what was coming. So they agreed that they would rotate duties. Two would take up a position at the edge of the scaffolding, where the site was cordoned off from view. From that vantage point, they could see the parking lot, part of the road that ascended to the monastery ruins, with the catwalk and cave entrance behind them. One would remain at the cave entrance and another would stay with their charge while she carried out her mission.

In determining who would do what first, they used typical Z Team protocol – rock, paper, scissors. The winners of the first round would compete for who chose first until each knight had an initial assignment, as decided by Fate. Every two hours they would change places. The person in the cave would go to the catwalk entrance. The person at the mouth of the cave would guard Dr. Renaux.

The first round was decided. Torn and Gun would take up position at the catwalk with Raif at cave entrance, and Glen with the beautiful archeologist. They had barely gotten her equipment set up where and how she wanted it when, just an hour into the plan, lunch arrived in a car that gave the term “beater” a whole new meaning. In addition to sounding like it was dragging its muffler, the paint job it needed ten years before – and every one since then, had been skipped. At present it was simply past saving.

Torn announced the dinner bell to Raif who relayed the news to Glen and Mercy. She laughed when she saw that Glen was exercising a good deal of restraint to stop himself from running her down.

“Hungry?” she teased. His answer was a groan. “All right. All Right. Go on and eat.”

“I can’t leave you,” he pleaded.

“Oh? So you need me to go with you? What’s in it for me?”

Glen narrowed his eyes. “I can’t offer my body if that’s what you’re getting at. Rosie would kill me.”

Suppressing the smile that wanted to erupt in response to Glen’s refusal of sex that hadn’t been requested, a few images of the sort of guy who
was
her type flickered across the screen of her imagination.

“Rosie? Who’s Rosie?”

Another groan, louder this time. “Okay. Here’s what’s in it for you. If you’ll accompany me to lunch, like a good professor of archeology, I’ll tell you the whole story. And it’s a good one.”

Without further delay, she put her tools down and wiped her hands on the brown canvas apron she was wearing. “I can’t resist a good story. Especially if love is involved. There is love involved, right?”

He showed her a grin that made her think Rosie was a lucky girl. “Oh yeah.”

Lunch was served in a pan. Not a disposable takeout container, but an actual pan. It was a dish called
moussaka
, a casserole of
potatoes, ground meat, and tomatoes flavored with sea salt and bay leaves, topped with white sauce. Each one of them was given a pan big enough to feed a family of three.

The Minister, conspicuously absent from lunch, seemed to come and go according to an agenda known only to him.

By the time Mercy had eaten a third and was stuffed, Glen had finished his.

When she passed the rest of hers over, he grinned like it was Yule and said, “No sense in letting perfectly good Bulgarian pan lunch go to waste.”

Yanov said that, knowing how Americans love sweets, they had included pieces of Turkish baklava.

When Glen grabbed as many pieces as he could hold in his hand, Torn said, “Do no’ eat that. Sugar will make you soft.”

Glen sneered at Torn. “When I start getting soft, we’ll talk about modifying my eating habits. Until then, you mind your dessert and I’ll mind mine.”

“Very well. When the time comes that you can no’ keep up, do no’ say no one warned you about the pitfalls of indiscriminate eatin’.”

“Duly noted,” Glen said with his mouth full of baklava.

“Okay,” Mercy stood. “You guys can stay here, bask in the sun and have an after-lunch nap if you want, but I have work to do.”

“Does this mean lunch is officially over?”

“It is for me,” she said and started away.

Naturally they all got up and followed. Where she went, they went until she was safely back at Jefferson Unit. When Glen reached the edge of the catwalk he stopped.

“What are you doin’, rookie? You’re in the cave,” Torn said.

Glen held up his watch and turned the face toward Torn. “Nope. It’s been two hours. Raif’s in the cave. You’re at the entrance. Gunnar and I are here.”

“May be technically true, but ’tis no’ in the spirit of the arrangement. Lunch is no’ supposed to figure in.”

“I’m okay with truth that’s technical. No such stipulations were made.”

“And you’re a stickler for rules, are you?”

“When it works to my advantage, yeah.”

Raif watched Mercy walk away as if she had zero interest in juvenile squabbles between knights. She bent down when she reached the cave entrance to retrieve the helmet she’d left there, put it on, and disappeared inside.

“Let him have his fun,” Raif said. “I’ll go in the cave and you take the entrance. Or exit as the case may be.”

Torn gave Glen a pointed look, but followed Raif.

When they were out of earshot, Gun said, “You may want to rethink baiting your team mates, kid. Those guys have long memories and a well-developed sense of justice. It may seem like fun and games right now, but teams have a way of evening things up and out.”

Glen scowled a little. “So now you’re telling me I’ve thrown in with three bitter, vindictive, vengeful old trolls with no sense of humor?”

Gun laughed out loud. “Yep. That about covers it.”

Hearing someone’s approach, Mercy looked up right into Raif’s gaze which was so pale blue, so piercing, and so compelling she forgot to look away. Not wanting to be first to blink, Raif continued to stare until Mercy shook herself internally and averted her eyes wishing she’d remembered to glare at him.

Looking around, he moved to a spot that he apparently found suitable. He leaned his big body against the cave’s rock wall and crossed his arms over his chest. The spot he’d settled on just happened to be right in front of where Mercy was working so that she couldn’t help but be aware of his presence.

Between Yanov hovering and Raif loitering within peripheral vision, it was hard to concentrate. The knight was a major distraction, but she couldn’t give him the satisfaction of telling him that.

After a half hour or so, she looked up, “Dr. Yanov?”

“Madame?”

“I need to take another look at the reports you’d submitted prior to our arrival. Do you have them with you?”

“Of course. They are in the auto.” As he left to retrieve the satchel with the documents, they could hear the slight echo of his steps all the way to the entrance followed by a vocal exchange that must have been Yanov telling Torn where he was going and what he was going to do.

All the while Raif stared at Mercy as if he was studying a specimen on a lab slide. She could feel it. Her entire nervous system was reacting with an uncomfortable prickle. When she thought she couldn’t stand one more exasperating second, she looked up with wild eyes and said, “What ?!?”

On cue, as if the mountain objected to her tone or the timbre of her question, the ground began shaking. Raif’s gaze jerked to Mercy. He was feeling exactly the same thing he was reading on her face - shock. Even a veteran Black Swan knight, trained to react instantly to any foe or peril, is only human. And freezing in place is the way most humans react when the ground starts moving underneath them.

The last thing anyone expects is a betrayal by the earth beneath our feet. We take it for granted believing that, when faith in everything else has failed us, we can still rely on the floor of our shared habitat to remain stable and be our guaranteed constant. It’s a covenant with our environment that is unshakeable right up until the moment that it shakes right out from under us.

It probably only took three seconds for Raif’s mind to sort through the possibilities and fire back the word “earthquake”, but that three seconds represented a lot of waste from the perspective of how much reaction time was available. The rumble was growing so loud that he couldn’t hear Mercy’s panicked shriek, but he saw the heaving almost knock her off her feet.

A quick glance behind him told him all he needed to know about which way to go. There wasn’t much deciding. The tunnel was caving in between them and the entrance. With only one way to go, he grabbed Mercy and pulled her deeper into the cavern as they heard the grind and thud of thousands of pounds of rock and debris falling in behind them.

As they hurried further into the darkness, stumbling over uneven ground and tripping over loose rocks, the dust began to catch up with them so that they were coughing and trying to run at the same time. Then, just as it had begun – with no warning, the cavern grew silent as a tomb.

The instant that Mercy had that thought she regretted the use of the particular phrase ‘silent as a tomb’.

When they stopped, their lungs went through three stages of recovery – coughing, then panting, and finally normal breathing.

If not for the headlamps on their helmets, they would have been experiencing a darkness more complete than most people ever see. When Mercy turned her head toward Raif, the lamp on the front of her helmet lit his face. She then did the single thing most unexpected and most inappropriate, given their situation. She laughed.