The 13 th tribe if-1 Page 12

  The man on the other end of the line said, “You told me you’d help. You said anytime. Are you still willing?”

  “That depends,” Owen said. “You’ve… reconsidered?” He knew what the man was: just a man, cursed to be one forever. Several times Owen had tried to convince him to use his extraordinary lifespan and the wealth and knowledge that accompanied it for good instead of for the atrocities he’d been committing. He’d told him that when he changed his mind, Owen would help-whatever that entailed.

  Creed explained his situation and why he needed Owen’s help.

  “Are you all right?” Owen said.

  “I took morphine for the pain. Knocked me out flat on the plane. Used to be like popping a couple aspirins, you know? I must be getting old.” He laughed, but it was cold and hard, like ice cubes dropped in an empty glass.

  “Where are you now?”

  “Sinai… St. Catherine’s monestary.”

  Owen wasn’t surprised. He’d been tracking the Tribe for years, trying to convince all of them, not just Creed, to amend their ways. The Tribe maintained relationships with people, organizations, places around the globe, and Owen had gone to all of them-the ones he knew about-to appeal for their help in stopping the Tribe’s activities. None of them-including the old man at St. Cath’s-wanted anything to do with him. Apparently they felt it was a sacred calling to protect the Tribe any way they could; what the immortals did was between them and God.

  Creed continued: “Owen, either they’ll get me and the microchip or find a way to replace it-only Ben knows if that’s possible. I need you now. Promise me you’ll come now.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Roos stripped off the gloves and retrieved the phone.

  “I have to go,” he told her.

  She looked stunned. “When?”

  “Now, this second.”

  “But, Doctor…” She indicated the girl in his arms.

  “I’m taking her. You too. I’ll drop both of you off in Betou.” It was in neighboring Republic of Congo, where many refugees were now located. He started for the clinic. “We need to ABORh her.”

  The ABORh card, designed for battlefield use, would type her blood in two minutes.

  “And take blood with us. Pack a bag for yourself and one with everything we’ll need to stabilize her until we get to Betou. We should be there in fifty minutes on the outside.”

  “Doctor, I really don’t think-”

  He stopped her with a look. “I don’t have a choice, and I’m not leaving you here.” As if to punctuate his point, a fresh burst of sustained gunfire rang out from the town. He looked back at a thick column of black smoke rising from the other side of the hill, then sidestepped through the open door of the clinic. He laid the girl down on a table and stepped back. The gauze was already soaked through, but the flow out of the wound had diminished substantially. When he pressed his fingers to her neck, he felt a pulse in her carotid artery. It was weak, but any measurable pulse meant a blood pressure of at least sixty; he suspected that most of her blood loss was exiting from the wound and not leaking into her body cavity, a good sign.

  He sighed and pushed his fingers into the rat’s nest that was his hair. Two days of walking through smoke, rolling in dirt, and being spattered by blood had taken their toll on his already shaggy and perpetually mussed hair. He took the phone from Roos and dropped it into a backpack, which he carried to the door.

  “I’ll be back in ten.” He left and jogged around the building toward the jungle behind it. The stench of animal carcasses, fish entrails, and other refuse assailed him forty yards before he reached the offal-filled trench. The Dongo men he’d enlisted to help him keep visitors out of the forest had suggested it, and not a month had passed before it proved worthwhile: a group of soldiers from the Republic’s army looking for God-knew-what had ventured that way, caught a whiff, and turned around.

  Owen arced around it and entered the forest. He pushed through a fencelike line of foliage and into the shadow of a dilapidated barn. One side angled in, and the crumbling roof drooped toward the ground, a collapse waiting to happen. In truth, Owen had forced the look and stabilized both the wall and roof in that precarious-looking position.

  The clearing in front was hemmed in by tall trees. At one of these trees, he used a pocket knife to saw through a thick rope, which sprang away, pulled by a falling tree. The dead sapele tree in turn yanked away a wide rectangle of chain-link fence that had been foliated with vines and branches. The new gap was directly in front of the barn doors and opened onto a grassy field.

  Moving to the side of the barn, he located the end of a square wooden beam eight inches from the front wall. Gripping it, he hefted back and tugged it out slowly. When ten feet of beam jutted from the barn, he stopped. The huge front doors were now effectively unlocked. When he pulled them open, sunlight fell on a monstrous pile of dried straw, leaves, and tree limbs. He reached into this mess and pulled. A section of shrimp netting and all the agriculture glued to it flowed toward him and fell to the ground. He did this five more times and stepped back.

  Resting in the center of the barn, gleaming despite the dirt and dust, the bits of straw and leaves clinging to it, was a sleek white Cessna 501 corporate jet.

  [31]

  Toby held the satellite phone to his face and waited for it to connect. He stood outside a shallow cave on a flat area of ground, which if it were not so far off the beaten path would make a perfect rest stop for trekkers on their way to the peak. Spires of stone rose all around, giving him the impression of standing at the bottom of an ice-cream cone. There were three gaps in the spires: one leading down the mountain, another up, and the third heading in a slightly upward but more lateral direction.

  He stared straight up and hoped the oval of bleached sky was enough for the phone to find an up-linkable satellite. The Iridium service the Tribe subscribed to kept sixty-six satellites in low earth orbit, constantly zipping around 600 miles overhead-supposedly covering every inch of land.

  Except here, he thought, listening to dead air. Just my luck.

  He had just lowered the phone to looked at its screen when it beeped and displayed a single word: Connected. Ben’s voice came through the small speaker.

  “Toby, is that you?”

  He raised the phone and said excitedly, “He’s here. I just saw him.”

  “At the monastery?”

  “Yeah. He’s got bandages around his head. He must’ve got medical help before leaving, ’cause I got here a few hours before him.”

  “He only now arrived?” Nevaeh said, and Toby realized Ben had put him on speakerphone.

  “A helicopter brought him about forty minutes ago. I watched for a while to make sure he was staying.”

  “Don’t tip them off that you’re there,” Nevaeh said.

  “Uh…” As soon as he said it, Toby knew he should have said Sure or No problem — anything but Uh.

  “What?” Nevaeh said. “They saw you?”

  “Like they wouldn’t have guessed we’d be coming for him after they find out he stole our stuff.”

  “Great…,” Nevaeh said, and she and Ben began arguing about the consequences of losing the element of surprise. Toby crouched in front of the cave-more of a finger-poke, really, but large enough to keep his backpack and sleeping bag out of the weather and out of sight.

  “It’s a Haven, Nev,” Ben said, as if explaining manners to a child. His voice, even over the satphone, was deep and soothing. “They’ll expect us to respect that. If they anticipate we won’t, they’ll have no idea of our timing. That’ll be our advantage.”

  Toby said, “I thought you liked challenges, Nevaeh?”

  “Shut up, Toby. Okay, here’s what we’ll do-”

  “Wait, wait,” Toby interrupted. He listened, and the sound reached him again: rocks, tumbling down the mountain, scree sliding with them. “I gotta check on something.”

  “Toby…,” Ben started, but Toby set down the phone and didn�
�t hear the rest. He stood and turned toward the closest opening in the ice-cream-cone cliffs, the one that led down the mountain. More tumbling rocks… and the crunching of footsteps. He edged up to the opening and peered around. A man was hiking up the gravelly slope. He was leaning forward and scanning the ground for decent footing, giving Toby a clear view of the top of his hat. Despite the angle, Toby could tell he was muscular and fit. No one he wanted to tangle with. The sun sparkled on something in the man’s hand, then he realized it was the man’s hand: a black hook poking out from a long shirtsleeve. He wondered what kind of damage it could do in a fight. It seemed like an unfair advantage. Behind the guy, where the mountain leveled off for a few feet, a camel was tethered to a rock. The hat tilted back, and as the man’s face began to appear, Toby ducked behind the slab of rock.

  He crept back to the satphone. “I have to go,” he said quietly.

  “What’s happening?” Nevaeh said.

  “A man’s coming,” he said. “He’s wearing a security guard’s uniform.”

  “Get out of there, son,” Ben said. “Do not kill-”

  “I have to!” A firm whisper. He could hear the man’s heavy breathing now.

  “No, Toby, listen-”

  Toby disconnected.

  Jordan had been kicking the ball around the courtyard in front of Temple Church with three other boys, fresh out of school, when two bobbies shooed them away. It had taken him less than a minute to circle the buildings. When he returned, the cops were gone. So now he stood on the east end of the court, where he could see the front of the Master’s house-only the front, but he’d decided that’s where Creed would show up-and juggled the soccer ball with his knees. His stomach growled. He was out of candy and energy bars, and he wondered if it would be so terrible for him to slip away for twenty minutes to grab some food. Just the thought of a basket of fish and chips made his stomach noisy again.

  No, no, I can’t. The Tribe’s depending on me.

  Maybe he could pay a kid to get something for him, tell him his mum said he couldn’t leave the courtyard. But no local lads were there now, just a few tourists and businesspeople hurrying past.

  Okay, think of something else, take your mind off your stomach.

  He started counting the number of times the ball shot up from his knee without going astray. But he’d practiced so long he could do it in his sleep. It was instinctive, thoughtless, no distraction at all.

  He kicked the ball as high as the church’s window tops, and a tingling shot up his spine. He froze, wondering what crazy thing his body was up to. Then he remembered that he’d taken the satellite phone out of his shirt and shoved it into his waistband at the small of his back so he could kick the ball around. It’d been there so long, he’d forgotten about its bulk and how it pulled his belt too tight in front. The ball hit the stone ground and bounced away as he struggled to get the phone out.

  “Hello?”

  “Creed’s in Egypt,” Ben said. “Toby spotted him.”

  “Awwww.”

  “He could have gone anywhere, Jordan. We needed the Temple covered. Good job.”

  It would have been a better job if he’ d gotten Creed. “Okay.”

  “Sebastian’s already booked your charter,” Ben said. “A car will pick you up in fifteen minutes.”

  “Can I get some food?”

  “Sure. We won’t be here when you get home.”

  “I want to go with you.” He almost whined it and mentally kicked himself for doing so.

  “We can’t wait for you.”

  “Can I go straight to Egypt? Hello?”

  Ben had hung up.

  Elias rages through the streets, following the other men, all of them roaring. Their fury has less to do with their enemy’s ageless enmity than with its being the only way they can get through what they have to do. Each of them is allowing the high emotion of war to swallow him, dulling all other feelings, severing all other thought. Countless men sweep over these perimeter dwellings like wildfire, spreading, growing, consuming. The soldier directly ahead swings toward a wooden door and, without pausing, kicks it open and rushes in.

  In the street ahead of him, one of their own-Bale-grabs a woman by the throat and raises his blade. He turns a wicked grin toward Elias and laughs. He enjoys this, Elias thinks, his already sour stomach roiling with new distaste.

  Elias runs past as screams rise up behind him. The next door is his. He arcs toward the center of the dirt street, then swoops into the door. His shoulder blasts it open, and he’s in. A man bellows obscenities and charges him, swinging a blade. Elias raises his forearm, and the blade sparks against the metal strapped to it. He decapitates the man with a single swing of his sword. He spins toward the sound of crying. A family cowers in the corner-a woman, two children, eyes huge and streaming. He hikes his sword over his shoulder and rushes toward them. The children first, he thinks, end it for them. His sword slices through the air.

  Elias startled awake so violently, his foot struck the table, sending the Bible and lighter into the airplane cabin’s center aisle. A chirp sounded, but it hit his ears without sparking a thought. He hunched over and buried his face in his palms, pressing his fingers into his eyes. The chirp again, and this time he recognized it. He groaned and leaned across the aisle to grab his duffel bag. He shifted it to the table, pulled out the satellite phone, pushed a button. He took a deep breath before raising it to his ear.

  Ben was already talking: “-my first call?”

  “What?” Elias’s voice was gravelly and slurred by the remnants of sleep. “Say that again.”

  “I asked why you didn’t answer my first call.”

  “I was asleep.” Sunlight filled the cabin, and he leaned his face toward the window, blinking against the brightness. Clouds stretched out below him like the snowy plains of Antarctica.

  “Where are you?” Ben said.

  “Hold on.” Elias placed the phone on the table. A burled walnut ledge ran the length of each side wall of the cabin, into which the designers had crafted glass holders, ashtrays, and various controls. He poked a finger into one of the ashtrays, found two inches of a burnt cigarette, and put it into his mouth. He stood, then stooped to retrieve the Bible and lighter. Once he got the cig smoking, he sat again and examined a panel of buttons set into the ledge. He jabbed one, and a large plasma television at the front of the cabin came to life, showing a map and a little airplane icon. He grabbed the phone. “Almost there. We just passed New Delhi.”

  “Toby located Creed,” Ben said.

  “So, Horeb?”

  “He’s at the monastery. Nevaeh, Phin, and I are heading there now.” In the background Elias heard Hannah or whatever she was calling herself these days. Ben said, “We’re taking Alexa. Sebastian will keep making arrangements for us from here.”

  Jutting from the duffel, the handle of the falcata caught his eye. It was the same sword Elias had used in the dream. He turned his gaze to the dwindling cig, watched it burn for a moment. “I’ll meet you in Egypt.”

  “No, we’ve got it covered.”

  “Ben…” Elias pinched the bridge of his nose. “What about the Haven? If Creed’s holed up there-”

  “We have to do this, Elias. We’ll make amends later.”

  No, we won’t, Elias thought. Once they breached the sanctity of a Haven, there was no going back. No place would ever offer any of them sanctuary again.

  When he didn’t say anything, Ben said, “Creed brought this on himself. This is the end for somebody, us or him.”

  Maybe it should be us this time, Elias thought. Just let it happen. But that went against everything they believed in. Go down fighting: it wasn’t just machismo or stubbornness; it was a mandate that bore eternal consequences.

  “You’re the boss,” he said. “Happy hunting.” He disconnected and pushed another button on the console.

  “Yes, sir?” the pilot said through a speaker over Elias’s head.

  “Turn this bird around. We’re
going home.”

  [32]

  Jagger worked his tired legs, cursing the loose gravel under his feet. Away from the two paths that led from St. Catherine’s to the peak, Mount Sinai’s rocky, steep incline was grueling in the best of places. The gravel made it a Sisyphean challenge: every step forward resulted in a backward slide that reclaimed at least half his progress. He stopped and squinted up at the outcropping ahead of him, atop of which the teen had surveilled the excavation and St. Cath’s. From the front there was no obvious way to reach the spot without climbing equipment. He assumed the backside offered easier access.

  He started up again, heading for a fissure between the target outcropping and another to its left. When he reached it, he took a minute to catch his breath, then stepped through the fissure and onto a flat area. In special ops fashion, his mind instantly analyzed it: the ground here was hard, granite with a dusting of sand-not enough to capture footprints. It was protected partly by mountain cliffs and partly by the large, jutting outcroppings. These cliff walls were pocked and serrated, as though God had raked his fingers down them.

  Even grassless, the area would have made a decent picnic area; at least he knew Beth would think so. He pictured Tyler falling off one of the rocks and not stopping until he tumbled into the excavation site 1,500 feet below, and decided he wouldn’t tell her about it.

  Back to operative mode. He stood in the clearing’s seven o’clock position; at eleven o’clock another fissure or opening-apparently leading uphill, judging by the ground’s steep incline there and the scree that spilled out into the clearing-and at two o’clock a third way out, leading to the right. At five o’clock, almost directly to his right, was the waist-high mouth of a cave. It couldn’t have been deep, given that it penetrated the outcropping on which the teen had stood, which was no more than ten feet thick at its base.

  Still, it was a hiding place, and a good one at that: shaded, out of the way, near the boy’s stakeout location. Jagger pulled the baton from its scabbard and flicked his wrist to snap it into its full twenty-six inches. It was simply a precaution; he didn’t expect any real danger. Jagger would be fierce and demanding and he’d let the intruder know he was serious about protecting the excavation and monastery. Maybe it would be enough to dissuade whatever plans the boy or his cohorts had in mind. In law enforcement and security, the appearance of readiness and efficiency was as important as being ready and efficient.