Chapter 46
Derek left the three Afghans alone to tend the horses. He sensed their need for privacy... to grieve for their companion without the intrusive presence of outsiders from a world so unlike their own. He wearily trudged back to the facility's control room, where he found Nick and Ginge pecking away at the computer keyboards. They had been lucky. While many of the files had been in Arabic, an equal number were in English and French.
"We got sound," the Brit proudly announced, pulling off his earphones. "It took a few hits.... Voice will take a little work, but I'll get it. We might need a little scavenger hunt for bits and pieces."
"Goot," said Derek, patting him on the shoulder. As he shed his heavy layers of clothing, the precept glanced at the computer screens.
"Weren't the files password protected?" he asked.
"Sure were." Nick looked up with his good eye and offered the wickedest grin his swollen jaw would allow. "These guys remind me of you.... The passwords were written on the last page of this notebook," he said, holding up a tattered, spiral bound pad.... "Seems they didn�t want to forget them."
Derek's eyebrow rose. "Indeed," he replied drily with a mischievous twinkle lighting his eye. "And how difficult was it to crack their code?"
"No code... just Arabic," Ginge piped up. He gave Nick a playful shove. "You didn't tell me his passwords were in code.... So... Indy... how long did it take to crack 'em?"
"Two weeks," Nick confessed. "It was all a transposition of letters... but it was English letters through Hebrew to Dutch... then back to English. He'd be in real trouble if he ever lost his own key."
"So...," said the precept, turning to the corporal, "now that we've thoroughly dissected my method of securing my passwords, have you picked up anything on the radio?"
"Nah.... The only traffic has been some chatter about a Coalition air strike around Khandahar," Ginge informed him. "So far no one's missed our friends."
"Ummm...," Derek considered, rubbing his neck... unconvinced that the SAS man was right. Still, there was little they could do but wait and hope... and try to recover their strength.
"Check out this stuff," Nick said, trying to push himself to his feet. "Shit!" he cussed as he lost his balance and fell against the table, which slid beneath his weight. Derek grabbed his friend's arm to keep him from falling and with his foot pulled Nick's chair back beneath him.
"Let me take a look at your leg," the precept demanded, as he eased the SEAL back down onto the wooden seat.
"It's OK, Boss," Nick reassured him through teeth clamped against the pain. He hadn't missed Derek's sly, persistant massaging of his neck and lower back. "Ginge and I checked ourselves out.... You got enough to do."
"Yeah," the Brit agreed. "Your friend here's been gadding about a bit too much on that foot."
"Nothing to worry about," Nick insisted. "Everything hurts like hell, but your antibiotics are doing the trick.... Pretty damned good stuff... even cleared up my chest.... Plus... we had all those friggin' shots the Brits gave us. Did you get yours?" he asked, trying to divert Derek's anxiety. "Tetanus and all those other god-awful things?... And have you eaten?"
Smiling at the re-emergence of Nick's mother-hen syndrome, Derek replied in a mollifying tone, "Yes... Ian saw to it that I got pricked in every available place," but he left the second question unanswered. He was hungry, but that could wait.... They had other priorities. "What did you want me to 'check out'? I was studying the old blueprints for this place... but I... didn�t finish."
"You didn�t answer my other question," the SEAL stated. He'd awakened in the night... in need of a "pit stop"... and had seen Derek lying across the desk in an exhausted sleep. On his way to the head, he'd placed Derek's sheepskin round his shoulders.
"I�m fine," the older man firmly responded, having recognized an attempt to turn the table. "Let's concentrate on the task at hand... shall we?"
With Yusuf dozing beside him, Nick lay stretched out on one of the mattresses. Slowly, he worked his way through a stack photos that he'd found tucked away in the bottom of the file cabinet, at the very back. "Wish I had a magnifying glass," he complained, holding the black-and-white, aerial photo towards the room's bare light bulb.
"You and me both," seconded Derek, who stood hunched over the maps and plans that lay, spread wide open, across the desk. So far, all he had discovered was that there were Soviet topographical maps here that covered nearly every square kilometer of Afghanistan, but they were all pre-invasion... dating to the 1950s and 1960s. The map for this valley, which he'd rolled up and set aside, showed no buildings, no pipeline. The only thing of interest was a scrawling, pen sketch on the back.
"Shit!" Ginge hissed under his breath. He sat engrossed at the computer, typing slowly with two fingers, but his concentration had once more been broken by the wobble of the table and the flicker of the monitor.
"You OK?" Nick asked. "Why don't you take a break?"
"I'm fine," the SAS man growled. "The monitor cable's loose and the bloody table keeps moving. It's hard enough to concentrate on this Arabic, without the damned screen flicking off and on."
Derek laid aside his map and walked over to tighten the cables. As he did so, he leaned against the table and noticed its uneven tilt. He stepped around to the other side and discovered that the folded up scrap of paper, which had been propping up a short leg, had been dislodged... probably when Nick had fallen against it. The precept stooped to slide the thick square back into place, but he hesitated. Slowly rising, he clutched the still folded paper. His body stiffened; his eyes glazed.
"What the fuck?... You OK?"� Ginge asked anxiously.
"He's OK." Recognizing that Derek was in the grip of a vision, Nick pushed himself to his knees. "No!" He pulled Yusuf back, when the boy made a move to grab the precept. "Wait!" he said, as the young Afghan helped him to his feet.
At last, Derek's eyelids fluttered. Swaying, he dropped the paper and gripped the edge of the table to hold on against the vertigo that swept over him.
"Now!" said Nick, as he tried to bear some of the taller man's weight. He was relieved when Yusuf took charge and steered the precept into a chair.
"Derek?... Boss?" Nick leaned over to look into his friend's face.
"Yes?... I'm fine." He absently replied as his slowly focusing gaze met the concerned eyes. "There�s something there... Nick... something...." He shook his head, wishing his "Sight" had been more definite. It had teased him with bright flames and shadowy glimpses of things... that might have been... or were yet to be... or might never be. "Yusuf... please," he said, pointing to the paper on the floor.
The youngster scooped it up and handed it to the precept, who slowly unfolded the tattered pages.
"It's in Russian," he said, "some sort of list with numbers.... Ginge... what do you make of it?"
"Russian's not my strong point," the redhead cautioned, taking the three sheets of paper from Derek's still trembling hand. "Scouse was our Tzar."
* * *
Except for the hum of the computers and the muffled roar of the turbines outside, the room remained silent for several long minutes. At last Ginge whistled, softly. "Bugger me.... This is real interesting."
"What is it?" Nick and Derek asked simultaneously.
"It looks like a quartermaster's inventory... or maybe bill of lading." Ginge smiled a gap-toothed smile. "The date's back in 1988.... Stuff coming in from Tashkent... probably by way of the Salang Tunnel to Mazar-i-Sharif, then through Kabul to Jalalabad... then up this way.... This storeman guy's a real tight ass.... Every little thing tracked down... accounted for... and noted in little, tiny print... right down to the bog paper.
"On page two... there's references to hazardous materials.... Laboratory supplies... a centrifuge... decontamination gear... an incubator... no... a containment chamber.... I guess, it could be stuff for a hospital... or... something else...." As he considered, Ginge shook his head and sucked at the sore places in his mouth. "Like I said... my Russian's crap... but I think these supplies were 'for use... in the... experimental branch... or wing... annex... maybe." He traced the words with his finger, then slowly looked over at his companions. "Could this be what we came for?... The missing convoy carrying 'nasties'?... There's a reference to a plan... 189B."
"Good work, Corporal," Derek said with a smile as he glanced around at the pile of charts. "If we can find that plan...."
Nick hobbled over to the desk. "Already on it." Derek pulled a chair over for the SEAL and forced him to sit, as he began to eagerly sort through the charts, quickly discarding those that didn't fit the reference. "Got it... I think." The younger man drew out a large sheet from the bottom of the pile.
Derek looked at the printing in the corner. "Keep going," he said. "The Russian letter that looks like our "B" is a "V" to them. Just haul out anything that has one-eighty-nine on it." He stood by, watching, as Nick once more thumbed through the frayed corners.
"It looks like our small "B" with flat roof," Ginge suggested, rolling his chair across to the desk.
"There!... That one!" Derek exclaimed as Nick pulled out another large plan. He spread it out on the desk beside the blueprint for the building they were in and all four men gathered round to study the brittle pages.
"Did you find a map for this valley?" Nick asked the precept.
Derek reached across the desk for the rolled up chart. "I found this, but it predates these buildings," he explained, handing it to his friend. "Look on the back.... There's an ink sketch of something that makes no sense. It's definitely a partial map of something.... It's got a distance gauge and, I think, the arrow might indicate north."
"OK...," said Nick. "This blueprint is the plan for this building.... We're here... in this room." He tapped the paper with his finger. "The pipes feeding the complex come in this way... from the northeast... down from the cliffs at the upper end of the valley." Nick's eyes focused on the scale. "That's about three miles up there," he added.
Confused, Yusuf peered closely at the topographical map.
"Each little line means a rise in altitude," Ginge explained in Pashtun. "See where the squiggles are really close together?"
The boy nodded his head.
"That's a really steep, high incline. Then that clear area at the top where there are no lines... means it's a fairly wide, flat place, but that one there...." He paused to point to another spot where the lines were tight and parallel. "That's a sharp ridge that runs southwest for several miles."
Yusuf again looked closely at the map, then spoke quickly to Ginge, who handed the boy a pencil and told him to draw.
"He says, 'We're here... and this is the trail we took'," Ginge translated, tracing the curving line that the youngster had sketched. "That's the escarpment that you watched from...." He turned to Derek. "...when you left him, Ali, Hasmit, and Masruq alone. Here's where Ali waited with the horses... so this building is here." He quickly drew a square and extended a straight line out towards the northeast to represent the pipes.
Derek scowled and rubbed his tired eyes. "What about this 'experimental annex'.... Where�s that?"
"Here!" Ginge couldn't hide the excitement in his voice. "Look.... Here's the 'annex' plan... this 189B thing... the interior.... Look at the pipes.... Four enter this building... four exit that building... at the same angle as those coming down the valley to us.... Fuck me!... They built it inside the mountain."
"So...," Nick considered. "We were getting our asses dropped in here to try to find biological weapons and other nasties... that were supposed to be missing."
"Ibn Sikander gave me his word of honor that they haven't got them," Derek confirmed. "They heard rumors about such things a long time ago, but never knew anything else."
Ginge nodded, then grinned.... They were on his wave length now. "Maybe our 'nasties' never got lost... exactly.... Just delivered... and the rest was all just a mixed up rumor... or maybe the convoy was attacked by the Mujahideen after it delivered its goodies... to a secret lab... or maybe a storage facility.... Maybe the Ruskies knew their days were numbered, but didn't want to transport the stuff back through the Salang Tunnel... too far... too vulnerable... too dangerous.... So they made a nice little vault here... figuring maybe to come back for it some day?... Figuring they might have another go at the Afghans?"
"Perhaps so," said Derek, turning the topographical map over to study the sketch on the other side. "Yusuf?..." He looked at the boy over the edge of the chart. The youngster's dark eyes shifted towards the soldier. "Ginge?... Ask him if he's ever heard of caves in this area?"
Ginge nodded and spoke slowly to the young tribesman, then listened to the reply and translated, "He says these mountains have many caves, but he knows none in this valley, but then he knew nothing of these buildings, either... so he's no expert. He says he will ask Masruq and Ali.... Ali is better traveled, since he rides often with his brothers to trade... and their clan only comes to the valley in winter.... The rest of the year they move their flocks to the outer edges of R'om territory."
"Wait!" Nick pulled the map from Derek's hand. "What's that spot?... It looks like a drop of ink bled through the paper... but is it?... Where does it fall on the other side?"
The precept turned the paper back over and located the black dot. "It's right about where the pipeline would enter the mountain." He turned the page over again and stared at the ink sketch. "Could this be the map of a cave system... or a cavern?" he mused. "Perhaps our 'annex' is inside... and this dot represents the entrance."
Derek spoke briskly now... decisively. "Nick... you go through all these maps and charts again. There's some I've not gotten to, but I'm going blind from them and might miss something. I'll take over your stack of photos and your files. We're looking for anything that might pertain to a cavern... or that structure... any map later than the topographical map of this valley... or earlier... surely the locals knew about any caves in the area. Before we were looking for information on our terrorists... but now you and I are onto your original mission."
Nick felt the suppressed energy. It nearly tickled the hairs on his arms. This was the Derek Rayne he'd discovered long ago, to his surprise, beneath the staid philanthropist-scholar. This was the Derek Rayne, God's mystic warrior, who wouldn't shirk from battle with Satan himself on the Plains of Meggiddo.
Derek then turned to Ginge and Yusuf. "Corporal," he said. "Tell Yusuf to help Nick... and explain what we are looking for. These are his mountains... he might spot something Nick could miss. Then you keep working on the computer. It has a CD-read-write, doesn't it?"
Again, the Brit nodded. "One does."
"Goot.... We've still got these bastards to deal with," the precept said with venom. "Download all the e-mail accounts, passwords, server information, account information... anything that can be transmitted in a brief, outgoing message... anything that will help a hacker break into this system and any network that might be involved.... We need anything that can help identify contacts... ISP numbers, temp caches, website hits, address books...."
"Cookies?" Ginge asked and received a blank stare.
"Anything," Derek repeated.
An hour later, everyone in the small room was still occupied in their tasks. Derek had been through every single photo and had separated them into stacks... those of no consequence, those that were definitely of this valley and complex, and those that could not be identified with any certainty. He paused to rub his eyes, then glanced at his watch. He realized that Masruq and Ali had not reappeared.
"Ginge," he said, "tell Yusuf to go check on the horses and see if Ali and Masruq are still there."
At the mention of his name, the youngster turned from his study of the maps. He nodded, grinned, and hurried off without waiting for the translation.
"Guess he understood," said Nick.
* * *
A few minutes later the young man returned and told the Brit, who translated, "Masruq's uncomfortable in here. He said it's too small... not enough air, so he's staying with the horses. Ali's keeping him company. Neither one knows any caves here.... Neither one has ever been to this valley. It is not on the easy route south."
Interrupting, Nick spoke quietly to his precept, "Derek... check this out for me."
The older man sensed something in Nick's tone, rather than his words.... He had found something significant. He bent over the small chart and noted the brittleness of age. "I missed this one," he confessed.
"Easy to do," said the SEAL. "Some of the big maps have cheesecloth glued to the back.... This one was stuck to the back of one that had something spilled on it a long time ago. It got the glue damp and sticky."
"It's an older map.... Of the caverns?" Derek suggested. "But at a later date someone drew in the pipelines with a ballpoint pen. I can feel the indentation in the paper."
"Follow the pipes.... Go back farther... and look closely," the SEAL said quietly.
A puzzled look crossed the precept's face. He frowned, traced the pipes leading into caverns, then he glanced towards Nick, then looked again at the plan.
"What is it?... What's so interesting?" Ginge asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"Nothing important... just another ink spot," Derek lied, unconvincingly. He could quite clearly see a symbol marking a place deep within the maze of caverns... a dim, penciled note in Russian was scrawled next to it, along with a circled Greek inscription, written in fading ink.
"Yeah... right," Ginge muttered. "Yusuf... how 'bout you and me checking on Ali and Masruq again?"
"OK," the Afghan replied in English. "Lean on me, Englishman," he said in Pashtun, as he offered his arm.
Derek waited a moment, while they collected the tea kettle and cups, then he and Nick watched the SAS man hobble out. "He's a good man... discreet," he commented, with approval apparent in his voice.
The SEAL nodded and pushed his chair over to join the precept. Together they both studied the plan. "It's a Legacy mark, isn't it?... I've seen it somewhere before," Nick said, examining the tiny imprint of a sword laid across a crescent moon. "What the hell's a Legacy symbol doing here?... Too bad there's no way to determine distances on this map, but I'll bet it's a long ways in there. See where the lines end, leave a gap, then start again. There could be miles left out.... Can you make out the inscription? I wish we had that magnifying glass... or a way to enhance it. It's so faded and rubbed out."
"Verdomme!" Derek swore. He snatched his pack from the floor and searched one of the outside pockets. "I do have a magnifying glass... a tiny one.... Kincaid's contribution." He found the Swiss Army knife and pulled open a small magnifying lens of about three-quarters inch in diameter.
Nick laughed. "The fire-starter!"
Leaning over, Derek swept his hair back from his eyes and peered through the small circle, which could enlarge only one letter at a time. "It's ancient Greek," he said, "written with a quill pen.... All I can make out is that it's something about Ahura Mazda.... That's the god the Zoroastrians worship.... But the mark isn't Legacy... not this Legacy. It's one used by the ancient Legacy.... The note is Russian.... It's initialed." He laid his hand flat on the writing, shut his eyes, and tried absorb the essence of either of the writers. Nothing came. The precept straightened and took a deep breath. "I've seen those initials before. Think, Rayne," he admonished himself, as he looked again at the Cyrillic letters. He dry washed his face, closed his eyes, and concentrated. "I think that backwards "L" is a "D"... and that upside down "L" is a "G".... It could be Gregor Didenko.... He was the precept of Moscow House back in the mid-eighties."
"Shit, Boss!... What�ve walked into now!"
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