Chapter 25
Al-Taj Complex
Hassan ibn Aziz nervously knocked at the door of the Commandant's office. He
was not a man easily intimidated. He had millions in gold, diamonds, and dollars at his
fingertips. He was a man who regularly bought and sold lives and the devices with
which to take them. And yet....
"Enter," said a voice from within. It was a cold voice with a cruel edge to it.
Hassan pushed open the door and stepped into the cool darkness. Even in the
desert's dryness, the room smelled of mold and dank concrete... and, of something
vaguely fetid. As his eyes adjusted, the arms dealer began to make out shapes, but
nothing more.
"Does the plan progress?"
To conceal the tremor in his hands, Ibn Aziz stepped toward the desk and
gripped the back of a heavy metal office chair. "Yes," he replied. "He will arrive in the
morning, by helicopter... accompanied by the pilot, who is also his bodyguard."
"Excellent, my friend... you may go."
< < + > >
Legacy Base Camp, Southwestern Egypt
"Derek!" shouted Sloan. "If you don't get out of this damned sun, you're not
going to be worth squat later on. We have to unload and set up camp... or was that
what you had in mind?" William walked over to his friend, who proceeded to take
another shot at one of several cans pressed into the sandy slope. The bang shattered
the desert's burning silence... the can flew up the hillside as the slug tore into it. The
elder precept cocked an eyebrow. "Not bad," he conceded from the corner of his
mouth.
Derek smiled. Never a particularly good pistol shot, the romantic, and the killer,
in him preferred weapons with points... swords, daggers, crossbows... but, still, he had
about a eighty percent accuracy rate with sidearms.
"Now get out of the sun before you get sun stroke," William ordered. "You
never did take the heat well... and you're out here without even a hat." He glanced
back to see both Johnny and Kym watching the target practice from the small shade
of the truck.
"I'm OK," said Derek, "...and I handle the heat just fine."
"I don't believe it," Sloan continued without a breath. "You two are encouraging
him."
"It hasn't been that long," said the major, glancing at Kym as if to say, Here we
go again... recreational squabbling. "He needs to get the feel of the thing... it's longer
and heavier than what he's used to. How is it?" he asked Derek.
With a familiar tilt of his head, the young man sauntered over to join the others
in the shade. He held the foot-long, stainless steel handgun in both hands. "It has an
odd feel, but for a magnum there's very little recoil... I just wish the barrel wasn't quite
so long. I'm afraid that if I need it fast, I'll get it caught."
"It's gas operated," the soldier explained, "...that lessens the recoil... same as
automatic rifles and machine guns."
Kym took the weapon from her husband's hands. The gun looked twice as large
in her own small fingers. She had never realized what large hands Derek had. "Why
does he need something like this, anyway?" she asked as she ejected the empty clip.
"Wouldn't it be better to have more shots? This only has seven." She held it at arm's
length in shooting position... left hand supporting right wrist... and pretended to fire.
Her mind flashed back to the bandit attack two days before. Kym shuddered. She had
never shot a man before, and she knew that the image would be forever emblazoned
in her mind. She shook her head to bring herself back to the present and asked, "What
is it... five pounds?"
"More shots would be nice," the soldier admitted. "He'll have the smoke bomb
and flash-bang grenade rigged into the case... but, if there's trouble, you'll have to
make every shot count. Since we don't know what you might be up against, I'd rather
have the power. This Wildey .475 was designed for hunters who prefer a handgun to
a rifle. Though it doesn't have the range of a rifle, it can bring down large game."
Johnny paused and turned his head as if to listen. "Our chopper'll be here in
about five minutes," he said.
< < + > >
Temple of Fire
"One more spin of the earth, my beloved," said the whisper as it flowed around
the gilded walls. "One more day, and you shall be reborn... you shall become unto
flesh and spirit as you once were... and so it shall be unto all eternity."
Already Tanit could feel the breath in her lungs, the blood coursing through her
veins, the omnipotence of her god surging through her fingertips. Soon the gifts of the
flesh would meld with the powers of her own undying essence and she would be free
to drink of mankind's passions wherever she would.
< < + > >
Base Camp, night
"I don't know, Derek," said William Sloan as he paced about the small tent with
Kincaid's files in his hands. "Your short-term memory is somewhat lacking these
days... must be that bump on the head... or too much sun today."
The younger man lay stretched out on the low camp bed with his long legs
crossed and his hands clasped behind his head. "My short-term memory's fine," he
retorted. "You just need to put on your glasses."
Sloan stopped to look down at his friend. "You just make sure you don't mess
up and tell them who you really are... and get your filthy boots off my bed," he said,
slapping at Derek's feet with the folders. He didn't really mind the young precept's
feet on his bed, but, somehow, yelling at Derek helped him relieve some of his own
tension. "What's your name?" William demanded.
Ignoring Sloan's "request," Derek smothered a yawn and stayed where he was.
"OK," he signed. "Just to make you happy. My name is Piers Myndertsen. I was born
in Amsterdam on July seventh... 1951. My father's name was Hans... and my mother's
name was Rahel Jurcksen."
"No, Derek!" William cried, flinging the files down on the weapons crate that
sat at the end of his bed. "It was Jurckse... see... you can't even remember that! It was
Rahel Jurckse."
"OK... it's Jurckse... Rahel Jurckse," the young precept repeated. "Good Got,
William.... they're not a credit card company... they're not going to ask me my
mother's maiden name as a password." Derek swung his legs off the cot and sat up.
"Look, William... I'm there to sell them weapons, some of which are pretty hard to
come by. I doubt they are going to look a gift horse in the mouth, do you?"
"Yes, I do... you must learn this," the older man insisted. Although he would
never in a million years admit it to Derek, Sloan was more than a little concerned for
his friend's welfare. More than half of this game... the masquerade, the weapons, the
opposition... was in Kincaid's league... not the Legacy's... demons and vampires he
knew about... plastique and international terrorism were in a different ballpark entirely.
"I already know it," Derek argued, "...slip of the tongue... a Dutch tongue." He
paused to collect his thoughts, then rose to face his friend. "William... Hassan is
vouching for me... that counts for more than all the mothers' maiden names or twelfth
cousins. What I need to be perfect on is the merchandise, which I have nailed cold. I
may not understand it, but I know it," he assured Sloan.
William sighed as he sank down onto Johnny's bed and ran his hand through his
thinning hair. The mystic was gone... replaced by the Derek Rayne for whom the
phrase "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" was coined. At this moment, the elder
precept wasn't sure which one gave him a harder push toward the brink of insanity. He
removed his glasses, then rubbed his eyes, which were tired from the dim light, and
pinched the bridge of his nose.
Derek stepped over to select a file. As he picked them up to sort through, he
dropped them all. Pages floated in every direction. "Dammit!" he swore as he stooped
to retrieve the one he wanted. "Here... quiz me on this one," he said, handing the
stapled papers to William.
"OK," said Sloan as he slowly put his glasses back on. God... he was beyond
tired... and if he was... what kind of shape was Derek going to be in for tomorrow? He
was the one walking into the lion's den. "Tell me about the Strela."
"The Strela is the Soviet made SAM 7. It's a surface-to-air missile with an
infrared heat-seeking guidance system." He paused to reach under Sloan's cot for
some of the wayward pages. "It has a three stage, solid fuel motor and has a range of
over 3,400 meters, with a maximum altitude of 1,968 meters."
"What are it's dimensions and how many can you provide?"
"It's 128 centimeters long, with a 132.5 centimeter portable launcher... and it
weighs 9.1 kilos. I can provide them with six, plus the extra rocket or two, for a quarter
of a million." Derek almost had the folders in order when some stray sheets again
fluttered off. He bent to pick them up. "See... I do know it... admit it."
William had been watching his friend's paper problems. It bothered him that
Derek was being so unusually clumsy. He could overlook the encounter with the
truck's tailgate, which could have happened to anyone of them, considering the
circumstances, but, to his experienced eye, this was a case of the nerves. Derek
Rayne... with the jitters?
"Yes," he said, "perfect. Is something wrong... or are you just doing your
calisthenics?"
"No, of course not," the younger precept replied, fidgeting with the pages. "Just
tired." Finally, having sorted and resorted the files to his satisfaction, as William
watched with apprehension, Derek turned. "William," he said seriously, "you'll look
after Kym, won't you?"
Sloan felt those eyes, green with intensity, bore into him. "What?" The question
had taken him off guard.
"In some ways she's strong, but she's still so young... and vulnerable," he
explained. "She's never gotten over Bernardo Fuentes's death.... I wish she hadn't
come," Derek confessed, more to himself than to his friend.
"Do you love her?" William asked flatly.
Derek, surprised by the question, was slow to answer. "Of course, I love her,"
he said at last. "But it's not like other times... she makes me happy," he explained. He
chuckled in a way his mentor had never heard before... it was a relaxed, contented
gurgle... as if recalling some warm memory. "But, I sense this is all very hard for her,"
he continued quietly. "If anything were to happen." He hesitated. "She's very fragile...
I'm not sure she'd recover."
William set the pages on the SAM 7 aside and rose to stand beside his friend.
"I think she's stronger than you give her credit for," he said, knowing that he didn't
believe it any more than Derek did. "Besides," he added, placing a hand on the
younger man's shoulder, "nothing is going to happen... it's all going to go just fine...
as planned... in... size up the situation... out... within three hours or so... right?"
Derek looked down as he twisted his wedding band. "It's all going to be fine,"
he said. "But... will you promise me that if she ever needs your strength... which we
both know is considerable," he added with a flash of a half-grin, "you'll be there
for her?"
He had felt the increasing tension between his friends and his wife, and knew
that he was the fulcrum, but he had chosen, perhaps wrongly this time, to ignore it. It
was a favored technique... to let the emotional storms rage around his raised barriers,
seemingly unbeknownst, then watch them blow themselves out and dissipate to
nothing. It let him save his own psyche from the wear and tear of confrontation, and
allowed him to preserve his focus. Besides... it was amusing to see others assume he
had been so much in his own world that he had failed to notice the tempests... much
could be learned.
Sloan dipped his head to try to see the young precept's face. "I promise," he
replied. "You know... I don't understand these mood swings of yours lately... and
don't say 'it's the desert.' Have you 'seen' something?"
Derek raised his head to look William squarely in the eye. "No," was the firm
answer.
"Would you lie to me, Derek?"
The Dutchman's left eyebrow rose perceptibly, followed by an impish smile.
"But, of course, William... that's half the fun."
"Goddammit, Derek! Just shoot me now!"
"Can't you two give it a rest for just one night?" asked Kym in exasperation.
She pushed aside the tent's flap to enter, without having to duck. "He's mine tonight,
William," she said as she grasped her husband's hand and began to pull him from the
tent without waiting to see if the older man would object. "Duck... Jethro," she added
with a giggle, when he looked back toward his friend to give a quick shrug just as they
reached the door.
"Good night, William," he said as he dipped his head.
"Enjoy yourself," the precept responded with a crooked smile. It disturbed him
deeply that Derek had asked him for a promise. Asking him to be executor of his estate
or to oversee Luna, should the need arise, was one thing... business. But this promise
regarding Kym was so out of character that it made his stomach churn like a sulphur
pit. Through all their years together, he could count on one hand the times that Derek
Rayne had begged a personal favor... it was the trust factor, he supposed... plus that
damned stubborn pride and determined self-reliance.
With a tired sigh, Sloan turned to the camp table beside his bed and picked up
a small, silver case with an intertwining W & P engraved on the exterior... a gift from
Barbara Rayne. He pressed the tiny button to pop it open. Inside was his favorite
picture of Patricia and his daughters. He smiled wistfully as he placed it upright on the
table. In his war-weary moments he sometimes wondered if it was all worth it, but, in
his heart, when it came to the Legacy, and especially to Derek, he knew that it was
always worth it.
| CHAPTER 26 |
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