The Mongol Objective [Oct 2011] Read online

  Montross returned, pressed his face against the thick glass porthole, let his lips pull away into a smile; and before heading back for the tablet, he said, loud enough for Alexander to hear:

  “Oh, I’m not trapped.”

  6.

  The air transport left within the hour, Caleb, Phoebe and Orlando sitting in the back with fifteen empty seats, painfully aware of the loss of two of their members, including one traitor. Wiped out again, Caleb thought, holding his head as if he could still hear their screams.

  “I was responsible,” he said somberly, staring out the window at the dawn rising over the vast horizon of blue ahead of them. “We need to bring them back, their bodies. Notify Ben’s family, tell them . . . I don’t know.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Phoebe said as Orlando worked on his iPad.

  “I feel as callous as Waxman,” Caleb said as he crossed his arms over his bruised ribs, “and as selfish. But we need to get back.”

  “We’ve called the police; they’re on their way to our house.”

  “It’s probably already too late.”

  “Hopefully you were seeing the future,” offered Orlando.

  Caleb shook his head. “My visions are usually firmly rooted in the past. Can we connect with the police?”

  “Trying,” said Orlando, using the VOIP voice connection on the laptop. “But they keep putting me on hold.” He looked up, and his voice trembled. “I think they’ve got a problem.”

  #

  The first officer barely got out of the cruiser before he was shot through the heart. The round had punched through the driver’s side window as he was opening the door, and he’d only had a moment to guess where the gunshot had come from before he fell back, sliding along the car and down. His partner, instead of ducking and radioing for backup, pushed his way out the passenger side, and drew his weapon.

  He turned, stood up and opened fire at the front of the house, having seen movement in that direction. His bullets strafed the door, shattered four windows and exploded an outdoor light. For a brief second he allowed himself a measure of satisfaction. That got those bastards.

  But then the door kicked open and a man in a ski mask, limping on his right leg, swung an HK MP5 submachine gun in his direction and let loose a hail of metallic death.

  #

  Lydia hit the deck as soon as the first man aimed out the window. “Robert, down!” she yelled as a barrage of gunfire burst through the house. Glass shattered, wood screamed, and one of the masked guards spun around, half his face a bloody mess.

  Cavalry’s here, she thought, as Robert dropped beside her. Then she saw the other guard kick open the door and return fire.

  “Robert.” She shook her brother. “Come on, now’s our chance. We can turn them in, and I promise, I’ll confront Caleb, get him to release the tablet, we’ll—”

  Robert turned with her touch, rolled onto his back. Mouth open, blood bubbling up from his lips. A red stain spreading on his right breast.

  “No . . .” Lydia grabbed his tie, and not knowing what else to do, fit the edge in the bullet hole, trying to stop the blood flow. “No, no, no.”

  “Cops are dead,” came the voice at the door. “But we have to move, we—”

  Lydia looked up and saw the man staring at his dead partner. The MP5 wavered. And then Lydia saw the outline of the gun holstered against her brother’s side. Before she knew what she was doing, she had the gun free and was standing, pointing it at the masked man.

  He looked up from his partner, saw her and raised the gun, but she shot him first—a direct hit despite the recoil that knocked her back a yard. The man went down. His legs twitched once, twice, then lay still.

  And Lydia gave her brother a parting glance before breaking her paralysis and rushing for the door. She had to get to Alexander.

  #

  It had been quiet for the better part of ten minutes, with Alexander waiting at the foot of the stairs. Keeping an eye on the vault door, ready to run if Montross had some explosives or something. But what could he have? He didn’t use anything to get in, and the only thing in there is the tablet!

  Alexander knew it had power, but thought it was merely something along the lines of knowledge, advanced stuff like the scrolls his mom and dad had found in the old Pharos vault. And surely it was nothing that a novice, someone who might not even know how to read that ancient language, could use to free himself.

  A low mumbling sound came from behind him, on the stairs, and Alexander spun, expecting—hoping—to see his mom, or better yet, his father, triumphantly returning to save him and take care of this intruder, but instead he saw what at first he thought must be a ghost, a shimmering, flickering image of him, the man trapped in the vault. But then the vision descended the stairs, into the glimmering light. The shadows peeled from his face, the fierce eyes almost glowing, making Alexander think of a movie he once saw part of on the Sci-Fi Channel, something about giant worms and desert nomads who all had spice-enhanced bright blue eyes.

  Montross pointed to him and opened his mouth in a mock laugh.

  “Impossible,” Alexander whispered, and when he saw Montross reaching inside his coat pocket for a gun, he turned and raced back to the vault door, the only sanctuary. He cranked the knob, turned it and tugged back the door on its hydraulically fueled hinges. Behind him, Montross shuffled forward across the basement floor, eerily. Alexander paused for a moment, wondering why the effect seemed unreal, but then he saw that gun coming out, aiming at him, and he pushed forward through and under the bars, which were now rising. He had a glance only of the tablet, still in its resting place on the pedestal. That was enough and he ran for it.

  He lunged for the pedestal, planning to slam his palm against it, knowing that would bring the bars crashing down again, stopping Montross before he could get in.

  But an instant before his hand touched the surface it was caught, grabbed by Montross himself, who had been crouching behind the pedestal all along.

  What!

  Alexander jerked his head around to look back at the door, where no one stood. The bars were up, the door swung open, and the chamber beyond was empty.

  #

  “How . . .?”

  Montross smiled as he gripped Alexander’s wrists, and then casually tossed him toward the corner farthest from the door. “A little trick I knew the Emerald Tablet could teach me. Ask your dad about it, about what your grandpa had learned to do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Montross grabbed the tablet, hefted it as he lifted it off the pedestal. “Gotta run, sport. Thanks for your help, and hey, tell your dad if he makes it back—well, he’ll know where to find me.”

  He took two steps, and suddenly, without the tablet’s weight on it anymore, the pedestal began to drop.

  #

  “Uh oh,” Alexander said, and Montross snapped his head around.

  “Damn.”

  #

  Lydia raced through the backyard, her bare feet pounding on the cold ground, then she burst through the lighthouse cellar toward the open door and the stairs. Damn it, Caleb! Why couldn’t he have trusted her? And to present such a thing, a riddle for their son to solve? She had known about the vault door, but had never been inside because Caleb had told her it was just an old root cellar. It was the Keeper way, she thought grudgingly, but to leave her in the dark about what was really there, after all they’d been through, after what she’d proven to him?

  Granted, things had never been the same after their reunion, after he’d learned she had faked her own death under the Pharos—partly to trigger Caleb’s psychic powers, which often emerged only through psychological trauma, but also because she had become pregnant and couldn’t let the impending birth of his son derail his mission. But even afterward, they had spent long months apart, raising Alexander like separated parents, and the rare times they were together, well, it was never like it had been before Alexandria.

  She burst down the stairs, gun in
hand, sure she would find the worst. And when she heard the tiny shrieks and felt the rumbling in the tower’s foundation, she threw herself down five stairs at a time, stumbling finally upon the chamber floor, where she saw the vault door closing on Montross and her son.

  “No!”

  #

  The chamber began to rumble, dust falling from the constellation-covered ceiling. The sconces flickered. And through two side vents on the ground, a light oily substance poured into the chamber.

  Cursing the continued surprises, Montross lunged for the door, knowing it would be pointless. At least the gate’s not falling. But the hydraulic door whirred and pulled shut as if some monstrous titan pushed on it from the other side. He was close enough to slide through, but hesitated, seeing the door accelerate and not wanting to be caught—and cut—in half. So he did the only thing he could think to do, the only thing that might save him.

  Since he was closer to the door hinge than the aperture, he shoved the Emerald Tablet into the slot where the hinge was closing flush with the wall. The tablet’s width fit perfectly, just sliding into place as the door ground into it.

  Montross let go and backed up, almost slipping on the slick floor and the flood of oil. The door was still open a crack, large enough for the boy to get through, and maybe himself if he really sucked in his stomach, but he was hoping for something else.

  Alexander whistled. He was at his side now, staring. “It’s stopping the door.”

  “Unbreakable,” Montross said, “whatever that substance is. I suggest we back up.”

  The hydraulics ground and hissed, the door sputtered and ground against the tablet. Then the upper hinges popped and the edge tore away from the frame. Steam burst from the twisted metal, then another series of bolts gave way and the whole wall shook.

  The tablet, unsecured now, fell to the floor and plopped into the rising pool of oil.

  Alexander lunged for it, but Montross was quicker and scooped it up with one hand. And then, watching his step, he trudged through the now knee-high flood. Out of the vault, he dragged Alexander behind him, both slipping as they stepped over pieces of the broken door.

  Then, sensing movement outside, Montross stopped short.

  Lydia was there, crouching, aiming a gun at him.

  But from behind him, something sizzled and cracked. The sconces broke apart, and the flames dropped like leaves into the waiting pool of flammable oil.

  #

  Lydia was about to shout for Alexander to duck so she could get a clear shot at Montross, but she saw a river of some kind of liquid pooling out from behind the shattered door, rolling all the way to her feet. She saw the tablet in Montross’s free hand, saw it shimmering hypnotically in that green-hued aura.

  At last, I’ve seen it, actually seen it.

  Then she smelled oil and saw flames spreading from the vault.

  “Run!” she shouted as the next chamber exploded into a blinding fireball, which then burst out into the next, where Lydia stood. She had a glimpse of Montross scooping up her son and dodging to the side before the inferno roared straight into her.

  She had a sudden flashback to another vault, standing before a far more ancient door ten years ago and deliberately setting off a trap that had turned the room into a storm of fire. A trap she had prepared for, a trap she had been able to avoid.

  Then, she was ready.

  Today, she was not.

  “Mom!” she heard, and turned toward the sound before the fiery tsunami fell upon her. She tried to cry out to him, tried to say something meaningful in that moment. What could she possibly say in her final seconds to the son who would grow up, grow into a man and live his entire life without her?

  Instead, she just clasped her burning hands together, lowered her head, and met her fate.

  Caleb, now it’s up to you.

  #

  Halfway across South America, cruising at top speed, Caleb woke with a scream that ripped Phoebe and Orlando from their trances. They stared at him wordlessly.

  His mouth was dry as a desert, his lips cracked, splitting. “Did you see it?”

  Phoebe reached for him. “No, I didn’t get a clear view. The vault room, a fire . . .”

  “Yeah,” Orlando said, “and some crazy red-haired dude, his clothes smoking, dragging a boy up the stairs.”

  “Lydia. I saw her consumed in the explosion. My trap.” Caleb held his head. “What have I done?”

  Phoebe was there, holding his hands. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Remember, this could be anything. A future glimpse, or maybe you were just seeing the past again. The Pharos trap and—”

  Caleb met her gaze with pained and desperate eyes as he shook his head. “No, she’s gone. I felt her reaching out to me. Begging for me to save Alexander.”

  “He’s got him,” Orlando said. “I was pretty sure about that.”

  “Alive?”

  “I think so. But I had the sense that he was protected somehow, and maybe holding your boy, it saved him too?”

  Caleb nodded slowly, and closed his eyes.

  “He’s got the tablet.”

  7.

  Alexander watched from the prow of Old Rusty as Xavier Montross piloted the boat out into Sodus Bay and around the bend into Lake Ontario before the legion of police and fire engines descended upon his house. He watched as the dawn lifted out of the mist, the clouds swallowed up the roiling black smoke, and his lighthouse burned like a biblical pillar of flame.

  Mom. He wanted to dive overboard, to brave the icy currents, to swim back to her, or to run over the water itself, back home, to join her in the cleansing fire. But then he thought of his father and his Aunt Phoebe.

  They needed him.

  He sensed footsteps behind him, a shadow over his shoulder. Silent, the winds stealing even his breath, Alexander wiped away tears that wouldn’t stop flowing. He turned and tried to sound strong as he faced Montross. “What are you going to do with the tablet?”

  A silhouette before the rising sun, Montross stood quietly a long time considering him. “The better question, I think, is what am I going to do with you?”

  “Let me go?”

  “That was my original plan, but now, I think you may be useful.”

  “Why? You gonna ransom me?”

  “Not at all. I have plenty of money. But since I’m fairly certain your father survived, and since the regrettable incident in your lighthouse basement, I fear he will be after me with a vengeance now. So, it would be prudent to have some leverage.”

  “They’re going to look for the boat,” Alexander said. “My dad knows I know where the key is hidden, that you made me tell you how to start it. They’ll come after us with helicopters, jets, satellite stuff. And of course they’re psychic. There’s nowhere to hide.”

  Montross walked back toward the cabin. “I’m not worried about that. I avoided their detection for years.”

  “How?”

  He smiled to himself. “I’ve got something. Something I found after the Pharos incident. It’s old. And it has the side benefit of blocking the user from certain prying eyes.”

  “I don’t understand,” Alexander said. “But—how old?”

  “Never mind. In any case, we’re not going to be on your precious boat much longer. Maybe this was my escape route all the time.”

  Montross cut the engines and they drifted into a choppy area of the lake. A moment of calm, and then suddenly Alexander had to hold on tight, feeling his stomach lurch. Just then, a big wave caught them and they rose higher than he could have imagined, then slammed back down.

  Wiping spray from his face, Alexander looked over the side at the sleek black thing rising from the lake, the thing at first he took to be some fanciful lake monster. But then he saw the hump wasn’t a hump at all, especially when a door in its base opened.

  “Come on,” Montross said. “Our sub is here.”

  #

  Five hours after the rogue submarine and its small crew made its way into the At
lantic Ocean, Caleb, Phoebe and Orlando arrived at Sodus Point, jumped out of the car and passed through the crowd of neighbors, firemen and police. They walked to the edge of the caution tape, where they stared in silence at the smoldering wreckage of the house that had been in the Crowe family for four generations.

  The lighthouse alone stood above the ruins, just its brick and concrete façade remaining, up to the scorched glass cupola. The intense heat had turned it black, and now it stood lording above the smoking ruins, like one of Sauron’s towers.

  “All gone,” Caleb whispered, with Phoebe at his side as the police approached.

  “Your books . . .”

  He held out his hand, seeing black body bags lying in one section of the lawn. “Wait, we need to be sure Alexander wasn’t inside.”

  “He wasn’t,” she voiced hopefully.

  “Mr. Crowe?” The first officer took off his hat. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your wife . . .”

  #

  The FBI agent arrived an hour later.

  She found Caleb with a blackened book in his hands, the pages crumbling, the cover brittle. He held the book, and without a word remaining on its cover, he knew it was the first book he had written, The Life and Times of the Alexandrian Library. Not only that, it was the one he had signed for Lydia. The day they met, at his first book signing.

  He trembled as the images rolled through his mind like a tender wave, picking up the shells and stones and sand with the flotsam of his memories. Not psychic visions, just clear, pure memories. Their memories, together. Like a kaleidoscopic light show, Lydia and her jade eyes, her scent of cinnamon perfume, cascaded through this vision.

  “Caleb?”

  At first, the word mingled with Lydia’s voice, speaking close to his ear. Caleb, goodbye.

  “Caleb Crowe?”

  A tremor shook him and he let the book drop. He blinked, then glanced up into a woman’s face. Short auburn hair, brown, not-unsympathetic eyes that were darting around a little too fast for him to follow. Grey suit. She held out a hand, helped him up, then pulled away. “Renée Wagner, FBI.”