The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011] Read online

  “I’m looking forward to this,” Nina said, standing over the man, who looked up at them now, biting back his pain.

  “I die as my Lord,” he said. “Fallen from a horse.”

  “Nonsense,” said Nina. “You’ll die when I say you die. When you beg.”

  Something whistled through the air and Montross lunged, caught Nina and drove her to the ground just as an arrow thunked into the hard grassland at Alexander’s feet. He stood there alone, unprotected, and saw up the mountainside the flash of a white horse and the cloaked rider fitting another arrow.

  “She’s aiming again,” Alexander said, still unafraid. For a moment, he thought their eyes met, his and the Darkhad’s, but then she looked away, a little to his right. And she let loose another arrow—one that struck home.

  Nilak grunted and wheezed a satisfying gasp of air. Smiling, his hand settled on the shaft of the arrow stuck in his heart, and he met Alexander’s horrified stare. “Please, leave the dead to their rest.”

  Another flash of white, and the horse was bounding away, even as Nina let loose with her Beretta.

  “Damn,” she hissed. “Gone. And this one dead.” She nudged Nilak’s body with her foot. “So much for the easy way.”

  Montross sighed, thinking for a moment. “It doesn’t matter. Our visions were clear. I saw the coffin buried inside this mountain. The funeral procession was led up these very hills. We’re on the right track. It’s at one of two probable locations up near the southern side of the summit. Once the rest of the team joins us with all our gear, we’ll proceed and narrow down the search.”

  Nina kept her eyes on the hill, on the shadows within the forest. “I’ll go on ahead with the night-vision goggles.” She tapped her gun, caressing the newly installed LaserMax sighting device attached to the barrel. “I’ll find her.”

  “Ah yes, your precious Beretta. Sometimes I think you love that weapon more than me.”

  “It’s never let me down. And besides,” she said with a cold stare, “I know your heart belongs to another.”

  Montross was silent for a moment and his eyes lost focus before snapping back to her. “Yes, well then. You take care of our Darkhad antagonist up there, but capture her if possible. And while you’re busy, Alexander and I will try again to remote view our long-buried friend.”

  #

  Qara Lan-Naatun watched from behind an ancient pine tree, gnarled and drooping with age. Watched as the intruders stood over the body of her brother, Nilak.

  Her brother. She closed her eyes, praying that his soul now journeyed to the Blue Heaven, and would soon be at peace, rewarded for his lifetime of faithful service to the Master. But her heart ached for him, overwhelmed by the immensity of what she had done. What she had to do.

  They would have tortured him, and Nilak was not as strong as some. She couldn’t risk that pair tearing him open for the secret. It was up to her now. Especially after the news from Bodrum. Alexia Nomantu had been killed defending the Third Key. Whoever they were they were strong, prepared and ruthless. And yet, this man and his “son” seemed different. Not archaeologists, nor scholars. Not warriors either, although the woman displayed enough skill. Yet the man she had overheard talking to Nilak. He possessed certain knowledge. Dangerous knowledge.

  And that artifact . . . could it really be the sacred stone, the tablet itself? The one Chinggis sought all his life?

  Still, it didn’t matter. The traditions were clear. No one was to disturb the Khan. No one. It wasn’t a matter of gold, of treasure and plunder. The rules, passed on for more than sixty generations now, were clear. Temujin must be protected so that he might continue his service to heaven. Even in the afterlife, Temujin was still protecting what he had rightfully earned.

  And all Qara knew was that given the timing of this team’s arrival here, coming just hours after the news of Alexia’s death and the likely theft of Mausolus’s Key, Temujin’s secret was in jeopardy as never before. And if these invaders should succeed, she had no doubt the keys would be used to open something her Lord and Master—and sixty previous generations—had deemed too dreadful to allow anyone else to possess.

  But as she watched the team below, and even as she saw the distant trio of jeeps heading her way, likely bringing men as well as heavy equipment, she couldn’t help but smile.

  After all, despite the presence of the Emerald Tablet, despite what these invaders had said and believed they knew, the secret was still safe. The ruse still held.

  They were looking in the wrong place.

  2.

  Erdos City—China, 6 P.M.

  Caleb and Phoebe ascended the steps and, after catching their breaths, took a moment to gaze over the three grand halls of the Mausoleum, three structures shaped like Mongolian yurts. White walls with red doors and domed roofs painted with blue and yellow designs. Caleb looked back the way they had come, down the stairs and across the concrete pathway to the well-trodden parking area where their minibus and two jeeps idled. Orlando and Renée were inside the minibus, working on the route for the next leg of their journey. And behind them: the vast expanse of the Ordos Desert.

  They were 180 miles southwest of Beijing.

  And a hundred miles away from the Mongolian border.

  “So why are we here?” Phoebe asked, tugging Caleb’s shoulder. “It wasn’t really on the way.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said, contemplating the Main Hall, the largest of the yurts.

  “And we don’t really have the time. Montross has Alexander, and the longer we take . . .”

  Caleb started walking, heading inside, behind two older women, heads bowed, carrying beaded necklaces and small bottles of something that looked like milk. “Montross needs Alexander. Needs us, I think. Agent Wagner confirmed that someone matching his description was seen leaving the airport at Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia. So he’s got to be heading for the most likely location—Burkhan Khaldun, the Sacred Mountain in the northeast. Poor Xavier. He must have let the literature and history lead his thoughts, control his visions. He asked himself the wrong questions.”

  “But how sure are you that you’ve asked the right ones?”

  “I’m not. You had the visions, not me. That ability is still inaccessible.”

  Phoebe gave him a sympathetic look. “Well, you knew enough to pose the question to us. To ask to be shown what was inside funeral procession’s great white tent that marched across the Gobi in 1227.”

  “And you saw it.”

  “Well, Orlando mostly. We complemented each other, built on each other’s visions.” She blushed. “Sometimes we do that.”

  He opened his mouth, about to ask an awkward question, but then thought better of it. “In that huge funeral procession back into Mongolia, to the Sacred Mountain, you saw through the fabric of that tent, through the wooden box itself, the knock-off golden coffin, with nothing inside. You confirmed that they wanted it to look like he was going back there and did everything to ensure the myth, including the massacre of eyewitnesses and those who made the long march.”

  Still listening, half-seeing it again for herself, Phoebe bowed her head as she entered the faux mausoleum, mimicking what the other visitors had done. She stepped inside first, ahead of Caleb. “But we also know it’s not here. This is just ceremonial.”

  Ahead of them, in the center of the hall, stood a thirteen-foot-tall white marble statue of Genghis Khan in all his triumph. On the wall behind this statue was a map of the Yuan Dynasty and the vast territory he and his sons had conquered.

  “Yes,” Caleb agreed. “Ceremonial, but also spiritual. I believe it’s vital to honor the memory of Temujin.” He pointed past the statue, past the corridors leading in either direction, covered with frescoes of the Khan’s life, one passage leading to a hall filled with relics from his life, the other containing the coffins commemorating his three sons and his first wife.

  “Come on,” he said, moving forward. “His coffin’s down here. We’re going to pay our respects. Honor tr
adition. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get some hints about where his actual resting place is.”

  Phoebe nodded and then, afraid that the group of milling tourists and worshippers might overhear, she whispered, “And then apologize for what we’re going to do next?”

  He gave his sister a reproachful look at first, one that soon gave way to a smile when he saw the excitement bubbling in her eyes. “Most definitely. And pray his spirit forgives us.”

  #

  Back in the minibus, Orlando leaned forward in his seat from the second row and looked over Agent Wagner’s shoulder. Renée was in the driver’s seat, ticking away at her laptop, scrolling over field reports, maps and other intel.

  “How ya doin’?” he asked, causing her to jump.

  She turned, her eyes flashing. “Don’t you have something to do?”

  Orlando shrugged, sat back and took a swig from his water bottle—water, mixed with Red Bull. He glanced out the windows. “Not really. Just enjoying my first time in a damned desert. Could you turn up the AC?”

  “It’s fifty degrees outside.”

  “Really?” Orlando rolled the window down halfway and stuck his hand out. “How about that? Some desert. Hey, so I’m sorry you got stuck with us misfits. I bet you wish this was just a typical domestic abduction thing, something where you could just bring in the SWAT team and take out the perps.”

  “Seventy-five percent of all kidnappings end in the murder of the abducted person.” Renée looked back to her laptop screen. “And one hundred percent of the ten cases I’ve worked on.”

  “Oh.”

  “So no, I don’t wish I was back there. But I can’t say this one is making me feel any better. In fact—”

  “You feel like you’re out of control.”

  She blinked, stared at his reflection in her screen. “Again, don’t you have anything to do? Shouldn’t you be trying to remote view something?”

  “Oh, I already did. While you were driving.” He smiled. “I was in the zone. Saw some interesting things.”

  Renée shrugged. “So do another one. Or go in the mausoleum yourself, or out back and get some of that Mongolian beef I smell. I think they’re cooking it up in the field for some kind of re-enactment.”

  “Mmmm, sounds good, but no. I want to stay and bother you.”

  Renée turned. “I’m still wearing my gun, you realize. Annoy me again and I won’t be responsible if it happens to go off.”

  Orlando crossed his arms, considering her. He looked back toward the mausoleum, then to their right, to the jeeps which held the second team of three local agents, a guide and a field officer. Should I risk it?

  “Why not?” he said under his breath. “So, Agent Wagner, I’d like to ask you something.”

  “Make it quick, I’m busy.”

  “Okay, well, here it is. How did you get this case?”

  She stopped typing. Turned around. “What?”

  “I know a little something about FBI procedure. Studied up on it quite a bit before we left the States.”

  “You studied procedure?” Her eyes were dark, flat stones.

  “Seems all this was a little rushed. You guys coming onto the scene so fast.” Not backing down from her stare, Orlando continued. “A little unorthodox. And it also seems that your selection as lead agent came from much higher up.”

  Silence. Then, “How could you know that?”

  Orlando gave her a loopy grin. “You know how.”

  Her eyes darkened. “I see.”

  He took a deep breath, suddenly aware of the jeep beside them, the three faces pressed against the windows. He swallowed, noticing that the light on Renée’s cell phone, on the passenger seat, was on. Speakerphone? Walkie-talkie connection? It didn’t matter, he had already taken this past the point of no return and had to continue. “Does this—your interest in this case—have anything to do with that necklace you wear under your shirt?”

  The doors on the other vehicle popped opened all at once and the black-suited agents leapt out just as Renée shook her head and reached for her gun.

  “You should have gone out for the beef.”

  #

  Before leaving, Caleb decided to take Phoebe into the West Hall to see the relics.

  “These are all replicas, right?” she asked, pushing past the visitors, some of them kneeling before the glass-encased pieces. A curved sword, a milk-pot, headgear.

  Caleb walked up to the only item not protected by glass—a weathered-looking leather saddle. “Yes, except for possibly this one. There’s an account I read on the way up here, an interview with one of the Darkhad several years ago. Asked about the destruction of the relics during the Cultural Revolution, he inferred that the saddle alone might have escaped the zealots’ wrath.”

  He approached it, glanced around at everyone else involved with the other pieces, reading the descriptions or leaving offerings.

  “Want me to cop a feel?” Phoebe asked with a lopsided grin.

  “Well, since I still think I’m kind of . . .”

  “Impotent?”

  He looked down as she whispered, “Don’t worry, I’ve got it.” She reached for the saddle, brushed her fingers against it, closed her eyes and stepped back.

  And as Caleb watched with pained jealousy, her visions took her away.

  3.

  Burkhan Khaldun, Mongolia

  Nina Osseni darted around trees, dove through brush, ducked and ran from cover to cover as she ascended the mountain, following the trail of the white stallion and the fleeing Darkhad woman.

  But after about thirty minutes, the trail had gone cold. Too many rocks, boulders and paths overrun with horse prints for her to determine which were new. And the light was fading, the bright blue of the sky leeched out by hungry violets and grays.

  “Damn,” she whispered, stopping with her foot it mid-step. Catching her breath, she looked down. In the hazy twilight she had just seen the barest outline of a wire.

  She stepped back, following the wire with her eyes, seeing where it ended up a tree on a mechanism controlling a raft of sharp stakes, all pointed down at her. “Diabolically impressive.”

  Nina scanned the shadows on the mountainside, seeing all the nooks and crevasses. She put on her night-vision goggles and let the world jump into green and white, but it was still no use. No wonder the Darkhad have been so successful. She backed up slowly, expecting to hear the thwang of an arrow zipping toward her.

  She would wait for Colonel Hiltmeyer’s team, his men and his supplies. Flak jackets and automatic weapons. Floodlights and flares. Grenades. But they’d have to be careful, and even then . . . She glanced at the trap again and imagined what else lay in store on the way up.

  Best to send up the grunts first, one at a time. It was the only way they might make it to the top.

  Frustrated and growing angrier by the minute, she made her way back down toward the camp.

  On the descent, her thoughts turned to Caleb, imagining where he might be right now. Was he remote viewing her this very instant? For a moment she paused, feeling naked, exposed even more than being on this mountain at the mercy of an expert marksman. She narrowed her eyes, then quickened her pace.

  Best to get back to Montross, and to the tablet. It had some kind of psychic deterrent built up around it, a kind of cloud that made its presence, and those around it, invisible to scrying eyes. Part of the reason it had gone undetected for so many centuries. And of course, Montross had something else, something like it—a sphere he had stolen from the Smithsonian archives years ago. It had shielded him from any prying eyes while he prepared for this mission. Now, they were doubly protected.

  But as she got close to the camp and saw the men suiting up, preparing for the ascent, she found herself wishing their situations were reversed, that she was the one remote viewing Caleb. Seeing his every move, voyeuristically laughing, or cheering at his progress.

  #

  “We can make the Threshold before dark, if we move now,” Co
lonel Eric Hiltmeyer said. He was fitting on his vest over his camouflage threads and supervising his team of fifteen soldiers, all loaded with gear and weapons.

  Montross was eyeing the mountain in the distance, with its twenty or more square miles of available hiding space just begging him to try. He narrowed his eyes, then turned and headed for the first tent. “Hold on, we need a little more precision before we go blindly tramping up there.”

  “I agree,” said Nina, skidding and sliding down the last few yards to their camp. “And I think our friends up there have devised some rather nasty traps for the unwary. This might not be such a good idea in the dark.”

  Hiltmeyer coughed in his hand. “Bullshit. We can handle it.”

  Nina scoffed. “Doubtful, but you’re welcome to try. I’ll just hang back and watch the carnage from down here. I say we wait until morning.”

  “No waiting,” Montross said. “Get ready to move on my return.” And with that, he stormed into the first tent, tossed back the flap, and stepped inside where just a lone candle bathed the white felt material in a pale glow, mixing with the emerald haze from the tablet beside Alexander.

  #

  Alexander emerged from his trance slowly, grudgingly. He had been sitting cross-legged on a mat on the hard ground with the Emerald Tablet right in front of him. Its aura had tugged at his consciousness once he was left alone with it, and he had spent several minutes just staring deeply into its oddly angled surfaces, trying to force the images into some sort of cohesive shape. But the edges wouldn’t line up, and the letters appeared to vibrate with a frequency all its own. Pulsing into his mind, tweaking parts of his brain, nudging him down paths of sight that were alien, powerful and terrifying.

  But at last he gave in. He had to be brave, had to do this for his dad. For Aunt Phoebe. For Mom. It was up to him. He had to see. Maybe if he found what Xavier Montross was looking for, then all this could end. He could go home, be with Dad and forget all this.

  But his home was gone. Burnt. All his toys, his books. His treasured books.

  Anger swirled in his thoughts, but he pushed the emotion aside and trusted the waves of green, throbbing behind his eyelids, prying open his inner sight. And then he saw . . .