The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (18 page)

"What the hell
happened?" she took over from Marcus; she'd had been pre-med in college
and was the team's medic. "Looks like you got bit."

"De Tormo grabbed her,"
Marcus said. "Those are from his finger nails."

Juliana made a face. "Yuck.
Dirty bastard."

Marcus looked at Kathlyn.
"See? What did I tell you?"

Kathlyn simply cocked a resigned
eyebrow and let Juliana and Marcus fuss over her. The hydrogen peroxide hurt,
the band-aid didn't.  When the three of them emerged from the tent some time
later, de Tormo was gone. Not caring whether he was dragged away or walked away
under his own power, they proceeded to the site.

A-1 was almost completely free.
Marcus and Lynn had done a tremendous amount of work in a short amount of time.
Kathlyn gazed down at the horned skull, twisted in a distorted scream, and felt
a chill run through her. It was difficult not to look at the thing and feel
some sort of apprehension. Juliana got down into the trench, next to Lynn, to
see if she could help. Marcus stood next to his wife.

"You okay?" he asked.

She didn't realize she had been
staring at it as if it was going to get up and attack her. "Yes," she
turned to him, oblivious to his dust and sweat, and pressed herself against
him. "Just... hold me for a second."

His response was to wrap her in a
crushing, all-protective embrace.  Being held by Marcus was the most comforting
thing in the world. It set everything right again and helped clear her head.

  "What's wrong?" he
murmured into the top of her head.

"Nothing more than the
usual," she looked up at him, kissed him, and unwound herself from his
limbs. "I just needed a hug."

"Glad to oblige," he
leered at her. “Anything else I can help you with?”

She struggled not to smile as she
sipped her coffee. “Not at the moment.”

“If you think of anything, you
let me know.”

“I’ll do that.”

Down in the trench, Juliana had
picked up the other pneumatic drill and began hammering away at a small ridge.
Marcus turned away from his blushing wife and put his hands on his hips in a
gesture exaggerated outrage. "Well, I guess I'm not needed here anymore.
That little girl took my job."

Kathlyn shifted her coffee to her
other hand and took her husband's fingers. "Poor baby. Come on. I know
where you're needed."

“Oh, yeah? Is this going to be an
elaboration on that hug thing back there?”

“Not a chance. I’m not into
public displays like that.”

“We’ve got a tent that just
screams of privacy.”

“We’ve got a tent that wouldn’t
do an adequate job of hiding your thrusting white butt from the world. Forget
about it.”

Marcus laughed softly as he
followed her over to Otis' tent. The blond architect was still working on the
diagram he had compiled. Briefly explaining it to Marcus, they quickly decided
to do a test dig at a large cluster of debris just to see what they would find.
On their way back to the site, Marcus collected a six-inch post-hole digger.
They would use it to breach the topsoil. He also collected a tape measure as
Otis gathered a variety of other things. It was rare that Otis got the chance
to dig; he was their computer man. But there was so much work to be done that
he was excited at the opportunity.

They worked until noon without
any real results. The sun grew unbearably hot, but they trudged on, knowing
their time was limited. Juliana and Lynn managed to free A-1 completely a
couple of hours after what should have been lunchtime. But no one was eating.
Breaking off the search for debris, Marcus helped Lynn and Dennis rig a couple of
heavy nylon rope slings under the slab and braced it up from the earth with a
series of wooden blocks. Otis, Mark and the doctoral students put together a
portable pulley that looked something like a large triangle with a lever on it.
One of Fayd’s brothers not only brought around an old stake bed truck, but also
a horde of Iraqi soldiers more than willing to help with the excavation.

 It made Marcus nervous to have
so many soldiers around, but Fayd seemed to have a good relationship with them.
Tony stood by, his hand never far away from the automatic weapons he had shoved
in the pockets of his baggy jeans.  But he jumped in to help when they began
moving the massively heavy relic, carefully, trying to guide it onto the bed of
the truck. Even with the ten of them and about twelve soldiers, it was very
difficult to move the block because the ancient fragile mud was flaking away
and Marcus and Fayd were afraid the entire thing would crumble to dust given an
even moderate jolt. It was slow, nerve-wracking going.

Watching the dust and the tempers
flare, mostly her husband’s, Kathlyn suddenly had an idea.  She called out to
Marcus, sweating like a workhorse under the fierce Iraqi sun.

“What if we wrap it with wet
material?”

Marcus put out his hand, calling
everyone to a halt. The relic, about four feet off the ground, swayed and
rained dust. Soldiers held onto nylon ropes to steady it.

“What for?” he asked her.

She demonstrated with her hands
as she spoke. “If we wet it down and wrap it like a mummy, the moisture will
saturate the mud enough so that it might stabilized, at least until we get this
thing into a plaster cast for transport. There might be less danger of it
cracking.”

Marcus thought it was a good
idea. At least, it was something better than what they had. “What do we have
enough of that we could wrap this with?”

“Towels, blankets,” Kathlyn said
helpfully. “Clothing.”

“Too bad the canvas of the tents
is waterproof,” Marcus said wistfully. “Find what you can and hurry up. We’ve
got to get this thing on board.”

Kathlyn and Juliana fled, taking
one of the doctoral students with them. Larry raced after the two of them,
unwinding his Arabian-like clothing.

“Here.” He held out the linen
yardage he had bought some time ago in Cairo. “We can use this. There’s three yards
of it.”

“Perfect. Go get Andy’s, too.”
Juliana took the material from him, watching him dash away. Then she looked at
Kathlyn. “Get what you can from our tent. I’ll raid the mess tent and see what
I can get off of Fayd’s area. I’ll meet you back at the mess tent.”

Kathlyn raced off to the area
where she and Marcus, Lynn and Juliana had slept for the night. It was off a
bit from the rest of the camp, just for privacy. Big scrub trees created a bit
of a shield.  It was hot and shaded inside as she began rummaging through hers
and Marcus’ duffle bags for tee shirts.

The last thing she expected was
for someone to grab her. Strong, swarthy arms suddenly grabbed her from behind.
Startled and frightened, Kathlyn threw an elbow into the body, listening to a
grunt of pain. She tried to get away but someone else grabbed her, this time
pinning her arms. With all her might, she stamped on a booted foot with little
reaction. Using her weight, she threw herself back and forth, furiously, until
she gained some momentum and part of the tent went toppling.  But it wasn't
enough to dislodge the grip on her.

  The man she had elbowed in the
gut shoved a wet cloth over her nose and mouth. Kathlyn struggled violently,
inhaling deeply in the process of getting off a good scream, but that was her
undoing. The wetness on the cloth wasn’t water; it smelled strange and made her
head swim. She never even uttered a sound. Before she could give up a truly
good struggle, the world faded abruptly to black.

***

It was ten minutes before Juliana
came back with a large ice chest. She and Larry carried it between them.
Inside, fabric and towels were soaking in melted ice and gray water.

 Marcus and Fayd began removing
the material and carefully swathing the relic in it. Marcus wondered if the
moisture was going to have any effect on the fragile bones, but he doubted it. 
They wrapped carefully until part of the relic was covered. It took them
another ten minutes. It was then that the realized Kathlyn hadn’t returned.

“Where’s my wife?” Marcus shaded
his eyes from the glare of the sun, looking off in the direction of their
tents.

 Juliana was wet to her elbows as
she smoothed over the fabric on the relic. “She went to our tent to get more
material.”

“That was twenty minutes ago.”

Juliana didn’t seem concerned.
“You know how she gets when she’s on a mission. Maybe she’s over at the mess
tent already, wetting it down.”

Marcus wasn’t particularly
concerned. He was just annoyed that she was dragging her feet when she knew how
important this was. “Go over there and get her, would you? We’ve got to get
this thing on the truck.”

Juliana made one last swipe.
“Yeah, okay.”

She jogged over the rocky terrain
toward the make-shift camp.  Marcus turned back to the relic, watching the
doctoral students try to keep the fabric damp in the blazing sun. His
impatience grew and he wondered what in the world could be keeping the women.
Kathlyn knew how important this was. He couldn’t imagine what she was messing
around with that was taking her so long. Just when he was about to blow his
top, Juliana came racing back over the fossil river in a panic.

“Marcus!” she shouted.

His fury turned to instant
concern. “What?”

Juliana was flushed and sweating
as she reached him. She stumbled and would have gone down had he not caught
her.

“She’s nowhere to be found,”
there was anguish in her voice. “I went to your tent. It was all collapsed and
messed up, like she had rolled around on it or something.”

Marcus didn’t even bother to ask
her any more questions; with the agility of a sprinter, he was racing across
the riverbed with Lynn, Dennis, Fayd, Tony and Juliana on his heels. Mark was
shouting for everyone else to stand down and wait, unsure of what was going on.
He and Otis watched the rest of them tear across the sand. Apprehensive, they
tried to keep the doctoral students and the soldiers busy while Kathlyn was
located. Already, neither one of them liked the feel of it. It wasn’t like her
to just disappear.

By the time Marcus reached their
tent, his shirt was sopping wet and his eyes stung from all of the perspiration
running down his forehead. But Juliana had been right; the tent was destroyed. 
He fumbled around in it as if to find Kathlyn lying somewhere in the folds.

“Look,” Fayd pointed to several
footprints in the sand. “These lead off toward the village.”

Tony took over; this was his
arena and these archaeologists were his responsibility. Observing the tent and
the footprints, he suspected something of a serious struggle had occurred.
Removing one weapon, he handed it to Marcus.

“Don’t blow anybody’s head off
without reasonable cause,” he said. “There may be a logical explanation for
this”

Marcus just looked at him. He was
afraid to express the terror welling within him, afraid he would lose control.
The race to the village was the longest quarter mile of his life. By the time
they reached the silence of Zubayr, the footprints had disappeared into the
soft dirt of the village’s well-traveled road. A light, hot wind had begun to
blow, further erasing what might have been a clue. Marcus looked at Tony.

“Which way?” he asked.

Tony was staring at the ground.
“You said that when you first came here, you were taken to a house. Do you
remember which one?”

Marcus was trying very hard not
to panic. He needed to think clearly now. “Down here to the left,” he said.
When they all began walking, very quickly, in the indicated direction, he
pointed off to the left. “That one down there, with the window over the
doorway. I’m sure that’s it.”

Tony didn’t hesitate. He ran
right over to the house and kicked the door in. It was empty.

In fact, it looked as if it
hadn’t been inhabited in some months.  Tony ran to the next house and kicked in
that door, too. A few pieces of broken furniture and nothing else met his
suspicious gaze. He looked at Marcus, who had run up behind him.

“I don’t like this,” Tony
growled. “I don’t like this one goddamn bit. This whole town seems to be
vacant.”

Marcus hopped a short stone wall,
into the yard of a neighboring house, and kicked that door in too. He smashed
into it so hard that he ripped it right off his hinges. The house was empty.
Fighting his swelling anxiety, he motioned to Lynn and Dennis.

“Kick down every goddamn door
until you find something,” he told them.

They obliged. Soon, they were
charging down every door in the village. Even Fayd and Juliana were getting
into the act, beating down doors and searching vacant homes. There were perhaps
forty homes in the entire village; they broke into every one last one of them
with no sign of Dr. Trent. The village had deserted, and so had Kathlyn. By the
time they reached the last home, Marcus’ fear was at a crescendo. He turned to
Tony, about to plead for another possibility, when suddenly a helicopter
sounded a short distance away. In a small ravine to the extreme went end of the
village, a black, unmarked jet ranger lifted up and sped away into the
brilliant sky like Icarus rising to the heavens.