The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (153 page)

They had given their tickets to Morocco to a young Portuguese couple in exchange for this private compartment headed to the coast. Once again, they were totally off the grid.

“Everyone’s got their orders straight?” Brandt asked.

The men nodded in unison.

“Lopez, get us something fast, and by fast, I mean
fast
.”

The corporal’s eyes dilated. “Commercial fast or
experimental
fast?”

“I mean fast
fast
.”

This was one of the reasons Brandt had chosen Barcelona. He’d explained that the city had one of the few aviation research facilities in Europe.

Lopez raised his hand to Levont. “It is
on
.”

The point man slapped Lopez’s palm. “You know it.”

Brandt turned to her. “You are sure about Jerusalem?”

“I only got a brief glance at the second half of the map,” Rebecca explained “but yeah, it did look like Jerusalem.”

As the train pulled to a full stop, the men stowed the rest of the gear. When finished, Brandt took Rebecca’s hand. “Remember, until we rendezvous at the airport, we’re just a vacationing couple. Keep your head down, though, to avoid the cameras.”

Yeah, Rebecca wasn’t going to have any trouble with that. Not with worry for Vakasa so heavy on her heart, but stepping out into the train’s aisleway with Brandt, Rebecca smiled brightly. Whatever it took to get to Jerusalem as quickly as possible.

* * *

Another alarm went off. If Bunny hadn’t lost count, that was number five. Stark’s ten firewalls weren’t looking all that many now a day.

“Why aren’t they on the train in Lourdes?” Prenner demanded. He then turned to Emily. “And where the hell did Vanderwalt take the girl?” When neither of them had adequate answers, the lieutenant turned on Bunny. “Well?”

Bunny threw her hands up in exasperation. “You tell me.” First the Brit’s betrayal. Then Brandt going radio silent again. Why could nothing ever go linear with those men?

“If someone would shut up for a second,” Stark said, then had to break off as he worked on the latest breach, “I think I know where the girl is.”

“What?” the three said in unison, leaning over the tech.

“Back it up,” Stark complained. “Except, of course, for you, Bunny.”

The kid did like the occasional side boob action. And if he’d found Vakasa, Bunny would give it to him. “The girl?”

“Yeah,” Stark said, bringing up a map of Europe and Africa. There were a bunch of dots. Like, a
bunch
of dots. None of which seemed to make any sense.

“Not seeing it, Stark,” Prenner complained.

The tech then highlighted the area of the Congo. “Let’s look back seven years…” Most of the dots vanished, leaving a large square marker over the Congo. “That is the Kalemie earthquake. A six-point-eight.”

“So?” Emily pressed. Vanderwalt’s actions had hit her the hardest. Whatever casual elegance the woman had retained over the past days had vanished. The CIA operative was cranky and not afraid to show it.

“So?” Stark said. “I think that is the moment of Vakasa’s birth.”

Bunny sank into the seat next to Stark. Prenner and Emily still seemed confused.

“You might as well tell them,” Stark prompted Bunny.

She looked to him with a new appreciation. “How did you know?”

“Please, Cuellar?” the tech chided. “A Congonese girl going to the heart of Black Madonna country? Come on. I’m a Googling god.”

Bunny turned to Emily and Prenner. It was time to come clean. She would need their help, and to help, they needed to know the full truth. “Stark is right. We—Rebecca and I, and apparently the Disciples—believe Vakasa is the female Messiah prophesized by the tablets of the Ten Commandments.”

Emily, then Prenner, sat down.

“Whether you believe it or not, Frellan and now apparently Vanderwalt do.”

“What’s this got to do with earthquakes?” Emily asked, seeming slightly less shaken than the lieutenant.

Stark picked up the strand of logic. “Philosophically, who cares? Geologically? That girl tends to make the ground shake—a lot.” Bunny watched as Stark brought back up the hundreds of dots. “These are all of the three-point-zero earthquakes in the Congo region over the last seven years. Anybody see a pattern?”

Bunny shook her head. She hadn’t realized Africa experienced so many earthquakes. It was like LA out there.

Stark pealed away dot after dot to reveal a set of quakes that seemed to unfold in a linear pattern. “If, for theoretical purposes, we mark the six-point-eight as Vakasa’s birth, we have got this set of quakes that occur well off the major fault lines and continental rifts.”

“You can’t be saying that earthquakes follow the girl?” Prenned asked.

The tech looked to Bunny, who answered for him. “No. He is saying that Vakasa
creates
them.”

“Whoa,” Emily said, “I’m a little used to how you guys roll, but this—”

“This is only the tip of iceberg,” Stark said. “Let’s fast-forward to last week.” He pointed out a 3.3 quake. “That one is within minutes of Brandt getting shot.” Without waiting for anyone’s response, Stark went to another point. “That one is approximately the time Rebecca and Vakasa were captured by Frellan’s men.” He whisked to screen to the next point. “And that one is when the crocs attacked.”

“The Congo is a very geologically active area,” Prenner tried to explain. “Those could all just be aftershocks.”

Stark shrugged. “Okay, then how about Egypt? You are seriously going to tell me that an aftershock reached several thousand miles away?”

“This is all speculation and—”

“Then speculate about this…”

The tech brought up a new screen. It showed small quakes across the Mediterranean. In a
line
across the Mediterranean. “These microquakes are exactly in line with his plane’s flight path. Stark then overlaid this map with that of a plane’s trajectory. They were a direct match.

“I think Vakasa is leaving us bread crumbs,” Stark finished.

Bunny was glad she was already sitting down.

* * *

Davidson trotted up to the private hangar, his new gear in tow. It looked like the rest were already loaded onto the plane, with the exception of Levont, who was packing their gear into the hold. Davidson tossed him a bag.

“Got a couple more for you.”

“Don’t know how much more it can hold,” Levont said. “This plane is lean.”

Lopez came out of nowhere and took the bag from Levont. “No, this ‘plane,’ this Marchetti SF Five Hundred, is not just the fastest, most sophisticated plane to ever grace the world, it is the Porsche of planes, it is a true work of art, and I won’t have you scratching her.”

Levont put his hands up in defeat. “Sorry, man. I’ll take care of your girl.”

“That’s better,” Lopez said, then headed to the steps that led up to the plane.

Davidson helped Levont load the rest of the gear, then joined Brandt and Rebecca in the tight cockpit. The thing was built for four, but they were going to have to make do for six. Make that five. Talli wasn’t with them. Not that Davidson was grieving all that much over the loss of their “sniper.” The other men seemed to have barely blinked at the loss, either. Was this how they had felt after his betrayal? Had they just moved on like this?

Brandt rose and went to get into a jury-rigged jump seat. Apparently, the sergeant thought he was going to cram his large frame into that tiny chair.

“Sarge, I got it,” he said, shaking off his concern. They had a mission to complete.

Brandt looked to argue, but Davidson held up the video camera. “Lopez has already asked me to tape his beating the airspeed record for a four-seater.”

“No way we can beat that,” Levont said, settling into his copilot seat. “We’ve got five people, plus all the gear.”

“You doubt me?” Lopez asked.

The point man laughed. “Hell no.”

“All right. Let’s go make history.”

Brandt shook his head but rose, taking the seat next to Rebecca.

As they rolled out of the hangar and onto the tarmac, Davidson pointed the camera toward the front window. “
Guinness Book
, here we come.”

* * *

Frellan walked down the gangway. The spices of Morocco filled his nostrils. Despite the late hour, the airport was still filled with gamblers trying their hand at slot machines, desperate to win back some of what Morocco had taken.

Benedicto stopped mid-stride, though, looking to his phone. “The child is not with Brandt.” Frelland waited as the priest read the rest of the text. “She was taken by a British agent.”

Another turn of luck. Brandt was the bane of the Disciples. This British agent did not know what hurt he had invited upon himself. “Then they head north?”

Shaking his head, Benedicto reread the text. “They head
east
. Their flight path appears to be directed straight at Jerusalem.”

The Holy Land? Could God truly smile down upon them?

Then a man trotted up to Frellan and handed him a slip of paper. His joy dashed by the note. “Brandt is not on the train to Lourdes.”

Monnie’s smooth skin creased at the brows. “They must have found something in Cuellar that indicated where the British would take her.”

“We must hurry,” Benedicto stated, heading back to the plane.

Frellan, though, simply sat down in one of the chairs, opening his phone.

“What are you doing?” the priest asked. “We are hours behind.”

“You are not the only one with contacts,” Frellan reported, dialing his Russian brethren.

* * *

Bunny had given up trying to keep track of the alarms. A cacophony rang around them. Some were breaches, others were earthquake alerts, while still others were based off facial-recognition programs at every major airport, train station, or port in Europe. Hence the variety of buzzes.

“Can we turn some of these down?” Prenner asked.

Stark just waved him away. “This high-speed plane must be Brandt’s team,” the tech said, showing a flight path nearly identical to Vanderwalt’s British jet. Better yet, they were catching up with Vakasa.

“Where are the Disciples?” Emily asked.

“I picked them up in Morocco, but they fell off the map after that.”

Another alarm rang.

Bunny tensed. “Is that another breach?”

“Nah,” Stark answered. “The eighth wall is holding strong.” He flicked through several different screens until he finally found the one sounding the alarm. “It is the earthquakes…”

“What’s wrong?” Prenner asked.

Stark shook his head. “They’ve diverted from a straight path to Jerusalem, heading ten degrees north.”

“Why?” Bunny asked.

The tech shrugged, sorting through a variety of screens, finally settling on an air traffic control feed. “Yep, the plane is heading north. They informed Atarot Airport that they are not landing there but haven’t registered a new flight plane.”

Bunny picked up the sat phone. “We’ve got to warn Brandt.” Even as she dialed, she knew it was futile. Davidson must have removed the small crystalline battery from the sat phone. It rang and rang with no answer.

“We’ve got to figure out another way,” Bunny said, slamming down the phone.

Before Stark could answer, the room filled with the sound of klaxons as the lights blinked out and red flashing strobes replaced them.

“That,” Stark stated, “was the eighth firewall coming down…” He fussed for a few more moments, then threw up his hands. “All right. That’s it.” He turned to Bunny. “Go get Mom.”

“I’m sorry?” Bunny said.

“Oatmeal-and-raisin cookies,” Prenner stated, “no matter how good, are not going to get you out of this mess. We need to move on.”

Emily nodded. “Agreed.”

Stark ignored the other two and addressed Bunny directly. “Get. My. Mom.”

Not knowing exactly what else to do, Bunny obeyed.

* * *

Rebecca held on to the armrest as her seat shook from the airspeed that Lopez was attempting to achieve.

“Sorry, dude,” Levont reported. “Only two hundred and fifteen knots.”

Only 215 knots? That meant they were traveling around four hundred miles per hour. No wonder the seat was shaking. Rebecca would put up with the annoyance. They were less than an hour out of Israel. They would start descending as they passed the coast and head inland. At that point, Lopez would have to cut speed, but clearly he was not willing to give up the record just yet.

“The wind is against you,” Davidson stated beside her. “With our weight and that headwind, you just aren’t going to be able to overcome the air resistance.”

While Lopez didn’t argue, he certainly did frown.

Rebecca let the men’s discussion flow over her. She knew that they really didn’t care about their airspeed—well, Lopez might. No, the others, even Brandt, had taken part in this race to keep their minds off of Vakasa. Rebecca wished she were as adept at blocking out the fear and pain.

She’d replayed the scene in the Cuellar cloister over and over again. Should she have let Vanderwalt take the girl? Should she have let Brandt try to shoot it out? Or would they have had a high body count and still no Vakasa?

“Whoa!” Levont yelled, pointing ahead.

Lopez squinted. “What the…?”

Rebecca looked out the window, to find the Mediterranean water roiling, bubbling, churning. It was pretty far down there, but something massive was happening to the usually calm Mediterranean waters. Then a plume shot up from the sea, creating a wall of water in front of them. An undersea volcano.

“Crap!” Lopez yelled, diving them nose down.

They streaked away from the plume, the plane shaking violently. Rebecca looked over her shoulder. The water turned to steam as ash sailed high above them. Volcanoes could shoot debris twenty-five kilometers into the air. They weren’t safe until they were outside of the plume radius.

“Another one!” Levont shouted, pointing ahead.

Only, this one wasn’t just shooting water and ash. Lava burst from the cone, nearly taking out their wing.

“Turn south!” Rebecca yelled. “Due south.”

Lopez banked the plane hard as wind screamed around them.

“We aren’t going to make it,” Rebecca moaned. Lopez was good, but he wasn’t that good.