The Vengeance of the Tau (32 page)

“And this team?”

“Contact has been lost with it. I expected as much. I warned him to take this threat seriously. He wouldn’t listen.” Her voice trailed off. “Just as he didn’t want to listen all those years ago. …”

“About what?”

Tovah’s face became almost pleading. “You’ve got to understand that ours was, in truth, a holy mission. We were doing something that God Himself would have approved of.”

“But something made you stop, didn’t it? When the Tau came here to fight the battle of the founding of Israel, they didn’t bring the White Death along.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Thanks to you?”

She smiled slightly between trembling lips. “You are very perceptive, Mr. McCracken. Even my brother wouldn’t believe me at first, but the White Death brought with it too much power, the power of life and death itself. We started to believe ourselves invincible. We started to believe we were above the mission we were performing.” She took a deep breath. “Mistakes were made, terrible mistakes. Innocent people died senselessly, horribly. The White Death did not discriminate between good and evil, and eventually neither did we. We were driven. We were obsessed.”

“And eventually you went back to Ephesus and sealed the entrance to the storage chamber.”

She nodded. “Or so we thought. The original nineteen of us had miraculously survived through the entire duration of our mission. We drew marbles out of a box for the task of destroying the White Death and sealing the remnants in the tomb forever.”

Melissa and Blaine looked at each other. “The corpses!” she said before he had a chance to.

Tovah sighed. “When they never returned, we knew something had gone wrong.”

“Something big,” McCracken told her. “They were murdered.”

The old woman’s mouth dropped, the surprise on her face replaced quickly by resignation.

“There must have been a fourth person down there with them,” Blaine continued. “They got the entrance sealed all right, but the White Death was never destroyed.”

Tovah raked a withered hand across the iron tabletop. “I suppose I have always known it would come back. I always feared that someday someone else would revive what we had sought to hide from the world forever. I
felt
it. I read newspapers from all over the world every day, waiting, keeping my vigil.” She paused. “The items first began to appear not even a week ago. They had come back, bringing with them the same thirst for vengeance.

“The vengeance of the Tau,” Tovah said, almost too hushed to hear.

“You called your brother.”

“And implored him to take action. Now he lies near death, a victim of the very force he helped to create.”

“A victim of another member of the Tau, Tovah.”

“No,” she protested. “No! That can’t be. It just can’t!”

“Who else could have preserved your legacy for all these years? Who else could have known about the intricate details of your methods, the training procedures? Who else could have known the exact location of the chamber where the White Death could be found?” Blaine stopped and stared deeply into her eyes. “The fourth person who ventured down into that cavern and killed the other three, Tovah. That’s who’s responsible for reviving the vengeance of the Tau.”

The old woman’s face became eerily calm. “But they can be stopped.
You
can stop them.”

“How did you find me?” McCracken asked her.

“The manner was rather indirect.” Tovah eyed first Blaine, then Melissa. “The trails the two of you followed led to individuals we have been watching for some time. When my brother was nearly killed, I knew the time had come to intensify our surveillance. Women of Nineteen were dispatched to watch over our subjects. The woman at the toymaker’s alerted us of your presence. I ordered her to assist you, if it became necessary.”

“Lucky for me,” said Blaine.

“But why watch Gunthar Brandt?” raised Melissa. “He was simply a soldier at Altaloon. I found him through his journal. Why would you bother watching him?”

“Shouldn’t you be asking instead why he wanted to kill you? The answer to both questions is the same. Gunthar Brandt did not write that journal; he merely supplied the notebook that already bore his name to a young soldier.”

Melissa recalled that the name “Gunthar Brandt” and his hometown had been penned on the inside page of the journal. A name at the end she had assumed to be Brandt’s must have been that of the journal’s true author.

“Gunthar Brandt was the board of science’s representative at Altaloon to oversee the operation and report on it,” Tovah continued. “Until his purported stroke, he remained militantly active in the rising neo-Nazi movement within Germany today.”

“But why would he try to kill me?” Melissa raised.

“He must have thought you were getting close to the truth. When he had learned what you knew and who you had seen, killing you was the soundest strategy to keep himself safe.”

“From you?”

“Very perceptive, young lady. I would imagine that he initially feared that we had sent you. He spoke only after being satisfied there was no connection, at least not yet.”

“And in spite of all this you let Brandt and the toymaker live,” Blaine challenged.

“Because it was equally important for us to know who our true enemies were. I preferred to watch who might come for an audience with either one of them.”

“Quite a risk.”

“The stakes were worth the risk. I don’t have to tell you about the dangerous state the world lies in today.” The old woman’s stare grew distant. “In Germany, the marches and parades have begun again. The persecution of foreigners has begun again. Outlawed Nazi anthems are sung in public with the police standing passively by; sympathizing, even supporting the madness.” Her eyes sharpened again. “You see, the Tau is not the only thing that has returned. Imagine for a moment the White Death in the hands of a new generation of madmen!”

“Something that never could have happened if not for the return of one of the Tau’s original members to Ephesus to remove the rest of the crates containing it. We’ve got to track down the surviving members, Tovah. It’s the only way to—”

McCracken broke off speaking and stiffened, as a pair of armed women rushed into the area and headed straight for the table. One of them leaned over and whispered a message into the old woman’s ear. She nodded and sent the two of them on their way.

“It seems,” she told McCracken, “that we have company.”

Chapter 30

“
WHO?
”
BLAINE ASKED
, rising deliberately to his feet.

“Terrorists, or some pretending to be terrorists.”

“The Tau,” Melissa said, eyes meeting McCracken’s.

“Whoever they are, how’d they get through the IDF security lines?”

“Such things have been known to happen before,” Tovah explained. “There is no need to worry. We are prepared for this. Our early warning system makes use of its own security lines.”

McCracken was suddenly fidgety, agitated, like a Doberman straining at its leash. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to check that out for myself.”

“I have no problem with that, Mr. McCracken, so long as you take me with you.”

They came in a single wave attack from the west: eight gunmen dressed in camouflage gear with Arab headdresses and masks covering their faces. Judging by the figures they saw at the kibbutz, bent to their accustomed tasks, the gunmen’s presence had gone undetected. Once within range, they would kill everyone they came across en route to their primary target.

The men fanned out as planned and easily bypassed the trip wires in entering the grounds of the kibbutz. Each one headed toward his assigned sector. In the fields and within the kibbutz itself, the figures they had glimpsed continued to go about their business, unknowing, unseeing. Thirty seconds later, the leader gave the signal.

The men lunged into the open, their bullets slicing the air in constant fire. The victims who had the misfortune to be exposed took the brunt of the initial barrages, slammed again and again by bullets.

The leader screamed hoarsely as he opened fire on another victim from in close. At once his mouth dropped. The victim’s guts had been spilled into the air. There was no blood, though, just raggedy straw stuffing.

“What …”

“Take them!”
a voice screamed in Hebrew.

The leader had barely had a chance to move before the bullets found him. He crumpled to the ground, just managing to press the single red button on his communicator.

“Take them!”

The order had been given just after McCracken had stowed Tovah’s wheelchair in a position that afforded a clear view of the kibbutz’s western side. He had begun to advance himself when the next wave of gunfire froze him.

“As I said,” Tovah reminded, “everything is under control.”

“Dummies,” Blaine realized.

“Inevitably effective against the overanxious attacker.”

“So it seems.”

With the signal given, the aimed commandos of Nineteen had appeared from dozens of concealed positions. Before the terrorists could respond, they were cut down in incessant hails of fire that spared nothing. Not a single one was left standing after mere seconds.

“A pity we didn’t have a chance to witness your skills,” Tovah called forward to McCracken.

Blaine had remained rigid, immobile. “When was the last time you faced an attack?”

“Two years ago. But why—”

The sound of revving engines stopped Tovah in midsentence. Her face crinkled with fear, mouth trembling and gaze swinging in search of the sound’s origin.

“Because I don’t believe in coincidence,” Blaine said.

Heavy-caliber automatic fire begin to ring out. Before them the armed women of Nineteen had begun rushing toward the front of the kibbutz. In the narrowing distance, Blaine could see eight six-wheeled, armored enemy jeeps storming the area, each heavily armed.

“Help me!” Tovah implored, starting to wheel herself forward over the uneven ground.

Melissa grasped the handles of her wheelchair to hold her in place. McCracken took up position directly in front of the old woman.

“I think you’d better sit this one out.”

“This is my
home
!”

“Then let me save it for you,” McCracken said. He had been studying the flower-encased tank at the entrance to the kibbutz and now turned to face Melissa. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

He shielded her with his body, as they drew closer to the center of the battle.

“What are we going to—”

“Just stay close to me! Move when I move!”

“For the
tank
?”

“For the tank.”

First glance when he came within view of the kibbutz’s open front showed the eight large jeeps tearing forward onto the grounds in spread fashion. Each boasted either a 50 caliber machine gun or a 7.62mm Vulcan minigun pedestaled in its rear hold. The machine gunners fired on the run, while the Vulcan-equipped vehicles needed to come to a halt or at least slow considerably before firing with reasonable accuracy.

A trio of the buildings closest to Nineteen’s entrance were torn apart by minigun bursts. Those scampering away from the cover the buildings had provided were traced by machine-gun fire and hopelessly pinned down. More of the kibbutz’s female commandos charged forward with rifles blasting, but they were no match for the enemy’s superior weaponry.

But who was the enemy? McCracken could accept a small team of terrorists sliding through the Israeli Defense Forces beyond, but eight heavily armed vehicles? It was unthinkable!

The vehicles streamed farther into Nineteen, crisscrossing each other as they fired. The unarmed residents of the kibbutz were fleeing toward the rear with the aged and children in tow. Vulcan fire blocked their path on several occasions and had many hugging the ground, the adults shielding the bodies of the youngsters.

Blaine and Melissa darted behind the cover provided by the huge dirt-encrusted structure of the tank.

“What do you need me for?” she asked him, heaving for breath.

“One person can’t operate a tank like this alone, never mind fire it.”

“Operate?
Fire?
”

“On the money, Melly.”

McCracken lunged atop the tank ahead of Melissa and yanked open the top. He beckoned her to follow and eased her down into the M-60’s innards ahead of him. His eyes began studying the interior layout of its cab, even as he was closing the hatch behind him.

“I haven’t had much experience with tanks,” Melly reminded.

“That’s okay; I have.”

In truth, he only had experience with the M-60A1 and A2, more complex generations of this version. But the control panel on this one was virtually identical—an easy transition, so long as his memory cooperated. Blaine flipped a switch, and the tank’s interior filled with a dull glow. The weapons rack was a full five feet behind him, a dozen shells accounted for in its slots. With the gunfire continuing to rage outside, he moved to the tank’s control console and pressed its starter button.

The engine grumbled, growled, then shook to life as it did every Sabbath evening. McCracken slid to his right toward the gun sight, then turned fast toward Melissa.

“Back against the wall, do you see that stack of shells?”

“Yes.”

“Bring me one.”

After a momentary twinge of fear that the shells might be dummies, he was reassured by the weight of the first one Melissa handed him. He chambered it and sighted forward again.

“Take the chair in front of the control console on my left,” Blaine instructed. “Red control arm there controls the turret. Take it in both hands and move it the way I tell you.”

Through his sights, Blaine could see that one of the vehicles bearing a minigun had come to a halt twenty degrees to the right.

“Move the control lever clockwise. Slowly, Melly, that’s it.”

The turret rotated with a rough grinding sound.

“Stop!” Blaine ordered when the Vulcan-wielding jeep was dead center in his crosshairs.

At the very last, he thought he could see the occupants of the vehicle turn his way.

Then he fired.

The old tank kicked backward slightly as the shell burst outward. Melissa was jostled out of her chair.