Gates of Hades (23 page)

Jason had never imagined he would be indebted to ecological terrorists.

“Ah, wait!” Adrian exclaimed. “I'll take a wee second to turn off the ginny motor.”

“Ginny motor?” Maria asked.

“Aye, lass, the generator that provides the 'lectricity for the house. We dinna have a local power company out here.”

The house went dark, and Adrian returned seconds later holding a flashlight. “It's on our way we are then.”

The Volvo cranked on the first try. They drove less
than a hundred yards into a deep ravine carved into the hillside that would make the automobile impossible to see unless someone knew where to look or was very lucky. From the car, Adrian led them uphill to a scattering of large stones Jason had seen earlier and dismissed as just one more of the island's rock formations. Only when Adrian played a flashlight across the surface did Jason see a horizontal opening leading under an overhanging boulder.

“One of the early Bronze Age dwellings,” Adrian said, ducking to get into the space beneath. “Phoenicians and Romans invaded the Nuragic settlements along the coast, forced the indigenous population to retreat here into the ridges. They built homes that were difficult to find, easy to defend.”

Jason followed Adrian's light. They stepped down into a cave—no, a room perhaps thirty by thirty. The walls still showed marks of the ancient chisels that had pried away the stone. At the back, the cool night air entered through a hole in the roof, a primitive fireplace, recognizable by smudges of soot still visible on the wall. The closer he looked, the more Jason realized the habitation was not as primitive as he had thought. The streaked wall behind the fire pit would have been heated by the flames, radiating warmth throughout the small room.

Adrian switched off his flashlight. “Make y'sel' comfortable, but cut off the torches. Don' wan' th' light givin' us away.”

As his world went dark, Jason heard, rather than saw, Adrian stretch out on his stomach at the slit that was the cave's entrance. He could see the outline of the Scot studying his house with the nightscope. “Dinna take 'em long.”

Jason felt the glass pushed into his hand. At first he saw little other than the disconcerting hues of green and black produced by concentration of ambient light. As he watched, the colors assumed the recognizable shapes of
the house, trees, and rocks. He saw nothing that did not belong.

“Over by the far corner of the house,” Adrian whispered.

There was a blur of monochromatic green as Jason shifted to his right. At first he observed nothing that wasn't part of the landscape.

Then something moved, a ghostly flicker edging toward the front of the house. Then another. Jason made a minute adjustment to the scope, and several images jumped out of the background with starling clarity.

“Six of them, by my count,” he whispered to Adrian, although the distance would have prevented the intruders from hearing anything less than a shout. “The usual AK-47s. Looks like they're deploying to cover all windows and doors. How'd they get here, anyway? I didn't hear a car.”

“You wouldn't. These hills can block sound sometimes, amplify it at others.”

Adrian was reaching for the return of the scope.

Jason took one last look. “One of 'em has the right part of his face bandaged, all right. Can't be sure, but I think he's the one we ran into in Sicily.”

“Th' one w' th' bandage, he's the leader,” Adrian observed. “Tellin' 'em to search th' house.”

It took the new arrivals only a few minutes to ascertain that no one was home.

A few minutes later, Jason caught a snatch of a voice, although he couldn't make out the words. “What's happening now?”

“They dinna find us in th' house, an' now the man with th' bandage, he's pointin' in different directions, tellin' 'em to search for us, I'll wager.”

From behind him, Jason heard an intake of breath, a gasp. He could not tell if it was Maria or Clare. It was more for their benefit than Adrian's that he said, “They'll have a tough time finding us here.”

“Aye, laddie, a tough time indeed, long's we keep quiet and our heads down.”

“And even if they do, this is as perfect a shelter as we could want. It'll take a high-explosive device to get to us here.”

“Don' be too sure o' that. A few shots through the slit here in front an' the ricochet'd be like grenade fragments off these stone walls. Best we lie low like a fox in his den till th' hounds have tired.”

Jason checked the luminescent face of his watch, surprised to note that only fifteen minutes had passed since they'd fled the house. He watched that fifteen stretch into twenty, then thirty. Waiting for action was one of the most difficult things in Jason's line of work. There was nothing to do but think, and thinking frequently complicated the problem.

Jason slid his sleeve over the watch's face and stared into darkness.

Minutes, an hour later, he heard footsteps crunching on the rocky soil outside. One, no, two men were following a course that would lead them straight to the cave.

Jason thumbed the SIG Sauer's safety.

Adrian backed farther inside, making sure that no errant source of light gave them away by reflecting from the nightscope.

Jason felt someone beside him, Maria. He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and she would not let go, her grip tense and damp. Even so, Jason took pleasure from her touch.

Looking up toward the entrance, he could see them now, or at least, he thought he could make out two sets of legs from the waist down. Two ill-defined masses of darkness against a slightly less dark night. One moved slightly, the activity quite clear against the pinpricks of stars in the dome of the ink black sky. One said something, low, guttural words Jason could not hear clearly, and the two sets of legs moved off to his left, the sounds of grinding rocks and gravel growing gradually dimmer.

A hand, not Maria's, tugged at his sleeve.

“May as well get some sleep, laddie,” Adrian whispered into his ear. “I'd bet a month's pay they'll not be leavin' us till they're sure we're gone. I'll stand a three-hour watch, then wake you.”

Like any seasoned combat soldier, Jason took an opportunity to sleep whenever it presented itself. Head on his hands, he was breathing deeply in less than a minute. His sleep was light, the sort that gave rest but was not so deep he could not come instantly awake. He pretended not to be awakened when Maria lifted his head and placed it in her lap.

 

 

Silanus, Sardinia

Dawn, the next day

The morning did not begin with a slow grayness. Instead, the red of a cardinal's robe streaked the eastern sky momentarily before buttery light began to chase the night from the far ridge. In an instant of dèjà vu, Jason was with Laurin, watching the sun climb to the lip of the bowl that was Aspen, Colorado. He had been so absorbed in the colors, he had forgone the ski slopes that morning for an opportunity to capture the scene on canvas.

Laurin. The places they had shared.

As always, the emptiness was filled with a sense of rage, a fury illogicaly directed at the men from whom he was hiding.

In minutes the cave would be in full daylight. Slipping out of the entrance, Jason used the last of the shadows to tend to bodily functions before returning to a refuge without comfort facilities.

Maria had much the same needs, and he met her as he entered. He pointed to the valley below that was quickly filling with daylight. “Hurry.”

She started to reply, a sharp remark, he guessed, thought better of it, and disappeared behind a nearby boulder.

Not far below, somewhere near Adrian's chicken coop, a rooster belatedly proclaimed what was already fact.

Carefully holding his weapon behind him rather than risk an errant reflection of the early sun, Jason stretched. Muscles, including some he had temporarily forgotten, ached from sleeping on the rocky floor. He winced as he rotated his neck in a vain hope of working out the soreness. He gave up on the stiffness going away anytime soon and he surveyed the farm below.

Two men in military fatigues were poorly concealed beside the house's door. Two more were covering the approach up the driveway. Assuming he and Adrian had seen them all last night, that left two unaccounted for. Jason guessed they would be concealed somewhere along the turnoff from the road to the house. Or on the ridge behind the cave. Or both.

Or neither.

“No tellin' where th' sods might be.” Adrian had come up behind him, one military mind reading another. “Could be that we dinna know exactly how many of them there are.”

“I thought of that,” Jason said, not taking his eyes from the view in front. “Question is, how long do they plan to stay?”

Adrian shook his head. “Long as they want, I'd think, waitin' for us to come back home. Folks 'round here pretty much mind their own affairs rather than constantly botherin' their neighbors. Could be a month or so 'fore anyone comes 'round.”

“You've got your cell phone, right? You could call the cops,” Jason suggested.

“Not in here. These rocks shield us from satellite contact. We might try calling the nearest carabiniere, about a hundred kilometers away, if we can get outside tonight and risk being overheard.”

Jason had a better idea. “I'd as soon not have to answer the questions they'd ask, and I'm not sure how much scrutiny my papers will take. Tell you what—if they're still down there by dark, I have another way to handle it.”

If Adrian had doubts about that, he didn't show them.

The rest of the morning was spent alternating watches from the cave's mouth.

Shortly after noon, Maria observed, “They are still searching for us, looking behind every rock, checking out every building. Except one.”

Jason snorted derisively. “And that one is the pigsty.”

Maria didn't take her eyes from the men below. “And that would be because . . . ?”

Jason shrugged. “They may well know those pigs would go for them. Plus, how eager would you be to wade through pig slop up to your knees?”

Surprisingly, Maria smiled, the first time since leaving Sicily. “I thought these people were nature lovers. Pig shit is part of nature, is it not?”

 

 

Silanus, Sardinia

That night

The day seemed interminable, as long as those days Jason had lain in hiding before a night operation. Only this time he had little equipment to check and recheck to pass the endless hours. Jason and Adrian had decided that only one person at a time should keep watch, the other three remaining invisible in the cavern's recesses. Whether caused by darkness or apprehension, anxiety in the cave had reduced conversation to monosyllabic whispers and grunts. Even so, Jason feared they might be overheard by an unseen prowler.

When evening's shadows finally flowed across the small valley, they brought relief to the tension like flotsam on an incoming tide.

Twenty minutes after the first star winked on, Adrian surveyed the area with the nightscope. “Sodding rotters still surrounding the house, far as I can see. Now's as good a time as any for whatever you plan to lay on.”

Jason retreated to the far reach of the cave, a flashlight in one hand, his BlackBerry in the other.

“You canna get satellite reception back there,” Adrian reminded him.

“Don't have to. I'm inputing a text message. Once I'm done, I'll step outside and send it.”

Adrian cocked his head. “An' jus' to whom would you be sendin' such a message, the U.S. Marines?”

Jason's grin was visible in the flashlight reflecting from the stone. “Close guess.”

“An' those blokes down there.” Adrian jerked his head toward the cave's entrance. “You're betting they have no way of intercepting or tracing . . . ?”

“Omnidirectional. If they had such equipment, it would tell them the message came from all three hundred sixty degrees. Second, transmission time to the satellite is in the nanoseconds, less time than it takes a lightbulb to go dark when you turn off the switch. Someone staring at a direction finder wouldn't even have time to see the indicator move. Finally, it's encrypted. Anyone listening in would hear only a single beep.”

Adrian's eyebrows arched. “All this in a simple Black-Berry?”

“It only looks like one.”

Finished, Jason moved to the front of the cave.

“Be careful,” Maria whispered as he crept by.

“I'm not even going all the way out,” Jason said, extending an arm through the opening. “There, done.”

“That quick?” she asked.

 

 

Aboard the USS Carney (DDG 67)
Eastern Mediterranean
Ninety minutes later

PO 2d Class Shawana Davis had a tough choice to make: her enlistment would be up in three months, and the navy would provide a substantial sum for tuition to any of the three colleges to which she had been accepted. Conversely, she had come to like her life in the military. It was something very different from the endless flat fields of dusty clay where soybean field met soybean field, where being able to buy something you wanted depended on the harvests and excitement was defined by whatever movie was on HBO. The job offered a genuine chance of advancement, too, not some bogus showcase job where the occupant's chief value was to demonstrate the company's commitment to equal opportunity for women and minorities. Any promotion she got in the navy would be one she earned.

She liked that, relying on ability rather than her sex or race, to get ahead.

She also liked the prospect of being not only the first
person in her family to graduate from high school, but the first from college, too.