Reformation (34 page)

While sitting on
the couch listening to the depressing conclusion of Hastelloy’s story, Mark released a breath he did not even realize he was holding.  Tomal’s fate aside, hearing the Alpha threats on Earth and Mars were neutralized was definitely good news.  An added bonus to Mark’s mission was that one of Hastelloy’s crewmen gave his life to accomplish that final victory; one down and four to go.

Just then Mark felt a vibration on his right hip.  He retrieved his phone and brought the display up to eye level between him and Hastelloy.  The
man politely stopped talking and waited.

Mark saw i
t was Colonel Azire calling him and immediately snapped up an index finger to pause the discussion permanently and got to his feet.  “I need to take this,” Mark said on his way to opening the office door and exiting the room.

Outside
, he gestured for the two NSA agents standing near the door to step in and watch the target.  Mark shut the inner office door behind him and simultaneously felt the phone start vibrating in his hands for the third time.  One more and it would go to voice mail so he quickly folded the phone open, “This is Mark.”

“For a man who went to such lengths to stay informed about events in my country
, you certainly took your time answering,” responded a soft voice with an Egyptian accent that sounded like it was coming through a tin can.

Mark looke
d around the outer office to find the only other occupant was Tara sitting at her desk filing her nails down to almost nothing.  He contemplated stepping out into the hallway, but the risk of a random nurse, orderly or even patient hearing something they shouldn’t was too great.

“I’m afraid privacy is at a premium
, give me a moment,” Mark responded and then locked eyes with Tara.  He tossed his head toward the exit door with the phone still held to his ear.

The young woman opened her arms out wide and feigned a look of surprise.  “Seriously, I’m being kicked out of my own office?  I
suppose I may as well go since it’s time to bring their lunches in anyway.”

Tara put down her
nail file and stepped around her desk heading for the door, but turned to look toward Mark over her shoulder and playfully added, “I’m going to be back soon though.”

“I look forward to it,” Mark said softly, which drew a smile
as he closed the door behind her.

“I believe you had something important to report, Colonel,” Mark said into his phone once he had his privacy.

“This man who replaced you here is out of control.  I thought you were bad with your implied threats to my safety to get what you wanted.  This man has actually held me at gunpoint ever since you left.”

“And what about now?”
Mark asked.  “Are they letting you call me?”

“No,” Colonel
Azire snapped.  “They are presently focused on bringing high explosives and code breaking equipment I never knew existed into the structure hiding the tunnel entrance.  For the moment I am alone in this vehicle with guards standing nearby.  You are on speaker to keep the phone out of sight so please do not talk too loudly or they will hear you.”

“What about your extra men, are they nearby?” Mark asked while looking at the door leading to the inner office where Hastelloy, his brother, and two agents were.  He knew time was running
short to let Hastelloy just ramble on.

“Yes.  All it would take is my stepping out and shouting an order to fire and our two countries would be at war.  I do not want to give that order, but the time is quickly approaching where I will no longer have a choice.  I must protect my country.”

A loud clatter from behind him caused Mark to whirl around and face the door leading out to the hallway.  He saw Tara’s well sculpted backside scooting toward him through the door as she pulled along a lunch cart carrying two trays of food featuring what looked like meatloaf and a couple of drinks.  Facing Tara, and helping push the cart along, was the orderly named Terry.

Mark evaluated Tara with disappointment which she
batted away by shining a bright smile.  “Sorry, I only ordered for them since I didn’t know you and your companions would be joining the doctor and his patient.”

“I don’t care about the food;
I needed privacy,” Mark hissed through gritted teeth while holding his hand over the phone’s microphone.

“It’s my office,” Tara jabbed back with a wink while opening the inner office door and pro
ceeding through.  “Besides, more of your friends arrived and I thought you might want to talk with them.”

Mark looked back to find six men wearing dark suits standing in front of the hallway exit door; a welcome sight.  Briefly Mark turned his attention back to the phone conversation.
  “Bear with me, Colonel, things are moving right along here.  There is no need for rash action just yet.”

“Hurry,”
came a curt reply followed by a dial tone.

Mark pointed to a set of
agents standing on the far left.  “You two come with me.  The rest of you get ready, we’ll be moving the target immediately.”

The two agents fell in line behind Mark as he turned to reen
ter his brother’s inner office, but he found Tara obstructing his path.  The two performed a silent dance from side to side as they both attempted unsuccessfully to get out of the other’s way.  Finally Mark grasped Tara by both shoulders and moved her to the side in order to finally get by.

“Sorry, I forgot something
in the kitchen,” Tara said innocently as the three men walked past with pistols drawn.

Mark entered the office to see Hastelloy carrying an amused smile across his lips. 
He casually took a tray from Terry and placed it on his lap as if five men in the room did not have guns trained on him.  The orderly glanced up to the sight and stepped back from the scene with his arms raised high in surrender.

“Are we
back to this now?” Hastelloy asked while looking at Dr. Holmes. 

Mark watched his brother rise to his feet and stand between him and Hastelloy.  “You know his terms for talking.”

“Damn it, Jeff, things are moving too quickly for us to continue sitting here listening to campfire stories,” Mark explained.  “This is the real world with real things happening in real time.”

“I can’t let you take my patient,” Jeff declared, which caused Mark to step in to force his brother out of the way. 
He pressed the shoulder of his gun wielding hand into Jeff’s chest and received a solid right to the jaw from his brother in return.

Before Mark could stop them, two of his men grabbed Jeff by the collar and planted him face first i
nto the floor.  Hastelloy couldn’t have hoped for a better distraction to unleash his attack. 

Time slowed to a crawl as Mark watched Hastelloy fling his lunch tray at one agent while delivering a sideways elbo
w to the face of another, and wrenching away the agent’s gun.  Mark’s mind sent the signal for his arms to raise his gun and train his aim on Hastelloy.  Time once again sped up and seemed to flash forward as Hastelloy simultaneously blocked the progress of Mark’s gun arm and inserted the barrel of his pistol into Mark’s open mouth.

“I am not going anywhere with you,” Hastelloy declared.

Mark calmly stood his ground with the rod of lethal metal protruding from his mouth and watched a dark shadow fall across Hastelloy from behind.  An instant later Mark felt his attacker’s body go rigid, and the gun barrel fell away from his jaw.  Hastelloy’s body crumpled unconscious to the side to reveal Terry standing there with the butt of a pistol in his hands.

“Ter
ry, what the hell are you doing?” Jeffrey yelled from under a pile of two agents pinning him to the floor.

“Relax,” Mark said dismissively.  “He’s just
earning the salary the NSA pays him each month to protect you in case someone from my life attempts to disrupt yours.”

Frank had seen
numerous pictures of the famous Terracotta soldiers.  He had even heard several firsthand accounts of how impressive they were.  As with most things though, the grand spectacle could only truly be appreciated in person.

The exterior of
the museum complex was surprisingly modern.  Two castle-like buildings stood among the marble paved walkways and well-kept garden.  Rather than garish medieval structures, these buildings were constructed with a fusion of light concrete and stone with large blue tinted windows, giving them a very contemporary appearance.

On the left side of the complex
a long, narrow building utilizing the same modern construction theme sported an arched metal roof.  The shape instantly made Frank think of an old World War II airplane hangar.  Instead of sheltering aircraft though, this rounded roofline covered the entire two hundred foot wide, eight hundred foot long expanse of the first Terracotta soldier pit discovered by peasants attempting to drill a water well in 1974.

Contrasting with the modern exterior,
the arched building’s interior housed a magnificent window to see into the past.  The museum had long since closed to tourists for the evening, making Frank’s job of sneaking in a simple matter. 

A pair of security guards manned the front entrance
, which forced Frank to jimmy a side door and neutralize the security alarm with little effort.  He made his way onto the observation deck beyond the security desk without being seen or heard.  The cavernous chamber was still dimly lit with every fifth light fixture overhead remaining on at all times.  This gave Frank a murky, shadowy view of the entire Terracotta Army standing ready for battle twenty feet below.  The army included over six thousand individual figures that were in various stages of being unearthed by archeologists.  They stood arranged into eleven latitudinal corridors separated by earthen walls.

The center of the force was dominated by mounted horse and chariot units
.  Near the very back lay a rectangular slab that sat conspicuously empty.  There was a heavily gated doorway leading west back toward the burial mound.  This was his objective, but a set of locked gates at the top and bottom of a staircase blocked his path.

While Frank mulled over his options to get through the gates
, he saw numerous beams of light moving across the vast expanse.  He turned around expecting to see a security guard sweeping his flashlight about, but realized the source was actually headlights from three sets of vehicles pulling up to the front entrance.  Chin and his men had arrived, which meant Frank needed to move quickly.

Rather than take the conventional route, Frank threw his leg over the hand rail
and followed with the other.  He climbed his way down to the bottom pipe hand rail to dangle his legs down as far as possible and then let go.

Frank absorbed the force of impact from the twelve foot drop by bending his knees and engaging his quads.  He still collapsed all the way down to a squatting position until his rear end bounced off his calf muscles to propel him back to an upright position.

He took a quick glance around to choose his path, but was distracted by the haunting clay faces staring back at him from the darkened corridors before him.  Frank forcibly shoved the eerie feeling of being watched aside and made his way down the far left column of soldiers.  Initially he slipped around the individual statues with great care, but found very quickly these priceless artifacts were none too fragile.  They were solid and extremely heavy and withstood the occasional bump from his hips as he slid past.

When Frank reached a third of the way to the back wall all of the overhead lights came alive.  Accompanying the lighting he heard voices from the observation deck.  Next
, he heard the groan of the metal gates obstructing the steps leading down into the soldier pits being opened.  Confident that his movements would not be spotted from up above unless one of Chin’s men happened to look directly down his chosen column, Frank continued progressing toward the back wall.  It was now a race to reach the back gate first.

“The last time these gates were opened to a foreign visitor to walk among these treasures was for the queen of England,” Frank overheard Chin say in English from six corridors over.  “Even then the decision to let her walk among this great treasure was highly controversial.  You should feel quite privileged to have this opportunity.”

“Why are we going down her
e, where are you taking us?” he heard a feminine voice that could only belong to Alex ask.

“
You are correct.  The two of you do not need to be down here,” Chin answered offhandedly.  He then addressed his men in Chinese.  “
You two take them back to the observation deck and hold them there until we return.
”

“
You do not need to be so careful around the statues
,” Chin said to his men with some annoyance in his voice.  “
Despite being made of clay, they are actually quite solid and difficult to break
.”

From the direction of the voices Frank could tell that they were making better time than him.  Chin’s group had already pulled even with Frank’s progress
, and he was now encountering uneven sections of ground that were still being unearthed by archeologists.  He realized he was going to lose the race.

When he finally reached the end of his soldier column
, Frank peeked around the tall earthen wall and saw Chin hard at work opening a gate that looked like it had not budged in at least thirty years.  Behind him stood six men carrying hand guns in one hand and flood lamps in the other.

All around the rectangular clearing
Frank spotted the shattered remnants of several clay soldiers on the ground.  Far off to the right of the doorway, a statue was knocked completely on its side.  Apparently the heavy statues could be knocked over if one treated the priceless treasures with blatant disregard.

A few minutes later
Frank watched a rusted out padlock drop to the ground and endured the mind scrambling screech of rusted metal being forced to move.  Two of the armed escorts added their muscle to Chin’s effort and managed to pry the door loose and open the barred metal gate completely.

Two of the escorts lit the beams of their flood lamps and fearlessly stepped into the darkness beyond.  The rest followed them in with light
s of their own leading the way.  Frank slipped in behind the group and silently trailed their lead about thirty feet behind.

Less than a hun
dred feet in they came across an area where a significant section of the ceiling had collapsed.  The group was able to slide past the twenty foot long piece of stone single file along the corridor sidewall. 

Frank counted his blessings that he was
not your typical overweight American and managed to squeeze past with plenty of room to spare.  A few times he felt his foot land on something sharp that did not quite crunch beneath his weight.  Frank wished he had time and a light of his own to investigate the shards, but the stoic men holding the lights and handguns pressed on.

Ten minutes later the group reached a set of copper doors
sealed down the middle with hardened bronze. 

“Open it,” Chin ordered one of his men carrying a burdensome backpack.  The object rang with a heavy clank when the ow
ner set it on the ground.  The man bent down and retrieved the nozzle of an acetylene torch, lit the business end with a spark and went to work cutting through the bronze seal.

After five minutes of sparks flying, the torch bearer announced he had finished. 
Four men, two to a door, grabbed hold of the looped hand holds and pried the doors apart to allow light into the chamber for the first time in centuries.

The flashlight beams reached into the darkness but failed to find anything to illuminate besides the floor.
  After a more careful look, Frank did manage to spot glistening objects in the slightly domed ceiling twenty feet above.  Before he could inspect the reflective objects further, one in particular held his attention.  It was a silver sphere the size of a basketball hanging down in the center of the gigantic chamber that had to span at least a thousand feet away from the door.

Frank was not the only one mesmerized by the grand spectacle.  Chin and his entire team were enchanted by the sight.  Apparently the magnitude of standing in a place no one had laid eyes on for thousands of years was not lost on them.  Frank could relate.  He remembered a week earlier the thrill of seeing the inside of the Sphinx. 

Fortunately for Frank, the sensation was old hat which left him with an opportunity he could not pass up.  He drew his pistol, took aim at the acetylene torch’s fuel tank and fired.  He managed to shield his eyes with his left arm to protect them from the flash, but he certainly felt the concussion wave and heat from the resulting fireball.

A moment later Frank dropped his arm to find four men rolling about on the ground to extinguish the flames licking at their clothing.
  The other two and Chin were leaning against the copper doors attempting to regain their senses.  Frank was not one to let such a distracting opportunity go to waste, so he stepped forward from the darkness and unloaded his weapon.

The first two shots took the men leaning against the door in the side of the
ir heads; dropping them to the ground.  Another pair of rounds put two of the burn victims out of their misery.

Chin, out of instinct or exceptional training, did not hesitate amid the surprise attack.  He immediately drew his gun and opened fire in Frank’s direction.  The shots were all over the place
, indicating the man still had not regained his vision.  Still, even a blind man with enough shots could hit a target, especially in a narrow corridor.  Frank dropped onto his stomach and kept count of the number of shots that passed overhead. 

He heard eight go off
, but then silence followed.  Chin was no fool.  He was not about to waste all of his shots firing blindly.  Frank took the opportunity to take two more shots and dropped the remaining men who recently managed to put out the flames on their clothing.  Frank rolled twice to his left until he ran into the side wall and then rose to one knee.  His movements were just in time; four more rounds came from Chin’s gun and struck Frank’s original firing position.  The Chinese agent was now alone, but his vision was on the mend.

Chin was now inside the chamber using the doorway as cover.  Frank
quickly dashed up along the side of the corridor until he stood just outside the chamber with his leading shoulder resting against the opened copper door.  He was close enough to Chin now to hear the man’s labored breathing and the soft, slippery sound of a wet palm massaging an eye socket to rub out the temporary blindness. 

At his feet Frank found a flood lamp still lit.  He picked it up and tossed it through the doorway.  The sudden flash of motion drew the gun barrel’s aim
and allowed Frank to step around the corner, grab Chin’s gun with his free hand and deliver a blow to the side of his head with the butt of his pistol.  The strike had the double impact of smashing Chin’s head against the door frame.

Frank slapped
Chin’s weapon away, grabbed the groggy man by the shirt and threw him into the corridor leading back to the Terracotta army museum.

“My god I’m good,” Frank boasted as he shoved Chin farther down the corridor.  “In Cairo it took what, thirty
of your men to try and take out me and three SEALs.  You sure botched that one.”

“
Now, all by myself I brought down six of your men and managed to capture you alive.  Payback is a biiitch,” Frank went on, drawing out the last word for added effect.

“Frank Graves
, I presume,” Chin said while rubbing both sides of his head.

“The man, the legend,” Frank responded.  “Did you ever con
sider you just suck at your job?  Maybe that’s why we always manage to stay three steps ahead of you.”

Chin glanced back with a menacing glare nearly as intense as the explosion a few minutes earlier
, but then turned back around and paced down the rest of the corridor in silence.

Just before stepping out into the Terracotta Army pit
, Frank saw a flash of electric blue light flash past.  Then another and another, until a constant stream was rushing past into the open and flooding the soldier pits with a soft haze of blue.

“What
in the world is that?” Chin asked of Frank while stepping out into the open and headed toward a row of statues.

“You tell me,” Frank countered while holding his aim level at Chin’s back
as they zigzagged their way between soldier statues.  “This is your country and those were your men who opened the burial chamber.”

“Yes this is my country, and I am curious how you intend to leave my country
?  The nearest US embassy is five hundred miles away in Beijing.  I have many more men just outside waiting to help me.  How about you, super agent Frank Graves?” Chin mocked.

“I figure I’ll just wait for the proper authorities to show up,” Frank answered casually.

“And you will be shot on sight.”