The Solomon Key (16 page)

The charge proved to be the miracle Mayhew needed, the vehicles turning their attention away from him and concentrating their fire on the attacking guerrillas.

When Mayhew reached the two fallen men from the van, he turned over the one that interested him, setting Daniel’s face staring up into the sky. He was all chewed up, and blood was forming a lake around him, but he was still alive. Mayhew searched through his pockets, looking for the ring.

Daniel opened his eyes, oblivious to the battle raging around him, and tried to talk.

Mayhew looked him in the eye. “Did you think you would get away?”

Daniel coughed and spit up some blood. “The ring belongs to Israel, and so does all that it unlocks…” His voice was weak, defeat heavy in his eyes. “I failed. The future is lost.”

“You shouldn’t have lied to me about the ring,” Mayhew growled.

An explosion sent a piece of shrapnel across Mayhew’s forehead, drawing blood. Ignoring it, he continued looking for the ring. He found it in Daniel’s front pocket. Just as he pulled it out, two strong hands grabbed him from behind and lifted him into the air.

“Come on!”

It was Scott.

Mayhew nodded his consent and allowed Scott to move him away from the dying Israeli agent.

Daniel lifted his head out of the sticky puddle spreading around him and yelled, “It belongs to Israel! It belongs to the Jews! To Jerusalem!”

Scott led Mayhew back toward the van. The sound of the battle around them was deafening, and blasts of heat from explosions kept striking them in the back. Turning and looking back over his shoulder, Scott saw a Humvee break out of the chaos and steer after them. He cursed, started running faster. The van was their closest cover, and they were ten yards away from it.

Five yards.

Five feet.

The .50 cal. erupted, bullets flying past them and sinking into the van as they dove through the open rear doors, frantically making their way over the bench seat as bullets ricocheted through the van after them. As the Humvee roared past, the gunner pivoted and lined the side of the van with holes, sending a hundred streams of light beaming through the torn metal. The seat they were hiding behind was almost down to its frame, its insulation scattered all over the place, and it was a miracle they were still alive.

Looking out the front window, Scott saw that the Humvee was coming back. He threw the side door open on its track and hopped out, Mayhew right behind him. But a burst of fire from the Humvee chased them back to the rear corner of the van. As the Humvee drove past, Mayhew pulled on the trigger of his AK-47, sending two short bursts at the gunner — the second of which caught him in the face and rendered his gun silent.

The driver of the Humvee slammed on the brakes and brought the vehicle to a grinding halt as the gunner’s lifeless body was pushed out of the vehicle. Another soldier was climbing up behind the machine gun. But the driver hadn’t gotten out of Mayhew’s range before stopping, and Mayhew shot the new guy out of the turret too.

Scott started for the jeep and yelled, “Cover me!”

Mayhew stepped away from the van, trying to get the attention of anyone who might be left in the Humvee while firing a couple of harmless shots at its frame, careful not to strike the tires.

Beyond them, the Strykers’ rail guns were firing into the woods on the other side of the median, splintering huge evergreens and sending earth spraying like geysers high into the air. But the guerillas were escaping the vehicles’ fire with relative ease by swarming around them at close range. They had already taken out most of the Humvees’ gunners, and the Strykers were now hitting each other more than the enemy running between them. A few of the revolutionaries even managed to toss grenades into some of the vehicles, and flames were slithering out of broken windows. Rockets were screaming from somewhere beyond the tree line and slamming into one of the MGS Strykers. So to combat the elusive band of rebels, troops began pouring out of the remaining vehicles, and immediately, NAU soldiers and rebels alike began falling amidst the sudden roar of small arms fire.

But Scott didn’t see any of that. He was too focused on the Humvee in front of him, watching as another soldier tried to squirm up behind the .50 cal. But the soldier was distracted by Mayhew shooting the AK-47 at him and didn’t notice Scott aiming at him from behind. Scott shot him just before jumping up onto the bumper, the dead body falling back into the vehicle. Scott climbed up the back toward the gun turret and slipped down into the vehicle while firing a few well-placed shots that took care of the driver. Opening the side door, he pushed the two bodies out onto the road. Then he climbed out and went to the driver’s side, pulling the driver from the vehicle. After commandeering the NAU jacket from the corpse, he slid in behind the wheel. With adrenaline pounding through his veins, he slammed on the gas and sent the Humvee shooting forward. “Get in!” he yelled to Mayhew, stopping beside him.

Mayhew hopped into the empty passenger seat and looked out the back window to the fading battle as Scott floored the gas, taking the Humvee south down I-87.

“Who were those guys?” Scott asked, struggling to pull the army jacket on.

“Local militia. Guess they knew the convoy was coming.”

“It’s a good thing they did or you’d be dead right now.” He looked back over at Mayhew. “What the hell were you thinking?” He didn’t respond, and Scott didn’t press the issue. “How did you know that was Daniel?”

“I told you, I saw him talking on a satphone right before he took off on the quad. I knew he had the ring, that he was making a break for it. Didn’t seem likely that he was planning on four-wheeling it all the way down the interstate.”

“Daniel called in the Hawk?”

Mayhew shrugged, stared out the window. “I don’t know.”

Scott didn’t know either. Didn’t know how long they had before the kill switch went off on their stolen Humvee, didn’t know where they were going, didn’t know who Titus Mayhew was, didn’t know what the stupid ring was, didn’t know what the priest had tried to tell him…

All he knew was that the gas pedal would stay against the floorboard until the last drop of gas was spent.

17

N
orth would have taken them into Canada, which is exactly where Scott wanted to go — where he had planned to go, disappearing in the mountains forever if need be. But now he was stuck with Mayhew, and Mayhew wanted to regroup with his revolutionaries in Pennsylvania. And for a reason that Scott couldn’t quite determine, he felt a sense of responsibility to get him there. He guessed that deep down he was hoping it would be enough to get his conscious off his back, to make up for what he’d done. It wouldn’t be enough though, nothing would ever be enough. And so the only thing he knew for certain was that he was speeding south down I-87, and that the Canadian wilderness would have to wait.

“Does your Resistance group have a name?” Scott asked.

Mayhew answered wearily, “No. Not in the way you mean. It’s too easy to discredit a name.”

Scott squinted. “How do you differentiate between all the groups in the country?”

“We’re fine to simply be called the Resistance, but I guess we’re characterized by the name of our leader, though it’s not an official designation.”

Scott didn’t care what the name was. It wouldn’t mean anything to him anyway. Besides, he knew what they were called, he’d heard it every time he turned on the news — terrorists, right wing extremists, Nazis...

But Mayhew kept talking. “As with most of the Constitutional Resistance groups, our creed or ideology would probably parallel Orwell’s ‘Brotherhood.’ Though fighting to keep the country free
should
be the true mark of American patriotism. After all, we’re just following the founding fathers’ instructions, taking the Constitution literally.”

That might be all well and good, Scott thought, but he knew that the difference between a terrorist and a patriot would, as always, be determined by who won the war. Mayhew and his Resistance would go down in history as heroes or as hanged villains. “There is no Constitution anymore.”

“The Constitution will always be alive, living in the hearts and minds of men…”

Scott smiled. “Like the word of God.” It was a jab at Mayhew’s self-expressed faith, at the conflicting philosophies. But Mayhew didn’t take the bait, just looked out the window.

After checking the rear-view mirror and feeling satisfied that an army of tanks wasn’t yet bearing down on them, Scott asked, “Why’d you want me to talk to the priest?”

Mayhew looked over at him and thought for a moment before speaking. “Never really trusted Daniel, couldn’t get a feel for what side of things he was on. He told me about the ring, how important it is. But I sensed a tension between him and the priest, like they were working toward two opposite goals. I saw that Daniel had a satphone, and when I asked him about it, he lied, said he didn’t have one. I thought that maybe the priest might confirm some of my suspicion to you. He obviously wouldn’t trust me, since he thought I was in league with Daniel.”

“So you never talked to the priest yourself?”

“No.”

“How’d the priest even get in the picture?”

“They showed up at the same time, which is why I assumed they came together. They both wanted to help the Resistance.”

“The Mossad told you about the ring right away?”

Mayhew shook his head. “No, not right away. And then they only confided in a few of us, asked us not to spread it around. We didn’t really care what their true intentions were as long as they were willing to fight alongside us. They seemed to be pretty upset about how things were going in Israel and had no problems connecting the dots.”

“And you didn’t think there was anything peculiar about a priest showing up to join the Resistance?”

“Like I said, we thought he was with the Mossad. We didn’t really see him around that much anyway.”

Scott drove in silence for a little while, none of these answers helping him to make sense of the world around him. “The priest told me that Daniel only knew half of the story.” He wasn’t about to tell him what else he said.

Mayhew nodded. “Probably did.”

They drove another quiet mile. “So Daniel’s escape with the ring just happened to coordinate with the MAV and Hawk showing up?”

“Whoever bombed the house wasn’t interested in recovering the ring, and the MAVs were probably sent out from the prison camp. I know what you’re thinking, that Daniel set us up somehow, but I think it’s more likely that the van had already been waiting for him, that it was prepared to wait all day for him. He spotted the MAV, came in and shouted a warning to me before taking off on the quad. I went out to see what he was doing, and that’s when I noticed the Global Hawk. It’s a good thing the sky was clear this morning.”

“And that Daniel cared enough to warn you. What did he want with the ring?”

Mayhew closed his eyes and started from the beginning. “Daniel and his Jewish friends showed up a month ago, just like he said. They blended right in, raiding the concentration camp alongside us. We had no idea they were Mossad. Not until they came to some of us and told us about this ring, how important they thought it was. They told us it was actually nearby and that they had to go get it while they could. We didn’t argue, they could leave if they wanted to. We knew they weren’t Establishment imposters. Besides, Daniel and the priest stayed back. I heard them arguing, though it was in Hebrew so I didn’t know what they were saying. Anyway, the rest of the Mossad team took a helicopter — don’t ask me how they got one — over to your neck of the woods. When they came back, they had you and the ring with them. Naturally, I now had some questions for Daniel, but before I could ask, Apaches were attacking the camp and soldiers were coming from the woods. Myself, Daniel, and the priest were the only ones left standing once the fighting stopped.”

Scott thought back to the conversation he had with Daniel and the priest right before the prison was attacked. And then he wondered about that Roswell nonsense, trying now to take a fresh look at Daniel’s response to the priest’s mention of it. Maybe it was a response he had interpreted wrongly at the time.

Mayhew was still talking. “So all that talk back at the house was just me going along with his little act. Let him think he was in charge, like I had joined his cause. Besides, I didn’t know who you were. Still don’t.”

Scott had to go back and reevaluate everything through the lens of this new information. There was no glaring hole in Mayhew’s story, though perhaps “glaring” was the operative word, which should be a red flag in and of itself, but he let it go.

With still half a tank of gas left, they might be able to get far enough away from things to lay low for a while. If, of course, the GPS didn’t give them away first. Scott wished he still had his bags from the cave with him; one of them had a substantial amount of money in it. They could’ve used it to bribe silence from whomever needed silencing.

“What did Daniel tell you about the ring? What is it?” Scott asked.

“He said it had some sort of power that the globalists wanted to use against the world.”

“And you believed that?” he asked, surprised.

“No, but for the Mossad to show up here with a Catholic priest in tow, the thing had to be important.”

“So if you didn’t believe Daniel’s story, what did you think it was?”

Mayhew actually pulled the ring out of his pocket, stared at it. “I don’t know what it is.”

“You risked your life to get it.”

He seemed to think about that, like he was just realizing for the first time that it almost got him killed. “Stupid, I guess.” Then he added, “Just felt like the thing to do at the time.” He put it back into his pocket and fell asleep.

Scott wondered if Mayhew should be the one to have it, why he would even
want
to have it. It had been sent to Jack Cairns by Melisa Strauss, not to Mayhew. But he tried convincing himself that he didn’t really care, tried to ignore how the ring had made him feel. Back when Edward was still alive.