Eagle ascending, p.16
Eagle Ascending, page 16
Brandt was breathing heavily. She was still in pain from the tear gas, and sweat was streaking down her freckled face. But when Krueger asked if she was ready, her prompt and immediate reply was “yes.” Brandt had been taught to fight bullies ever since she sat at her grandfather’s knee, and that imperishable commitment was burning brightly in her eyes as Krueger opened the door.
The whoosh of the rotor blades filled Krueger’s ears, and he stepped forward gingerly with his pistol raised. With Brandt waiting expectantly by the door, he shuffled forward, emerging into the light and away from the citadel wall. The wind whipped in the courtyard as he did so, and moments later, the fat black belly of the chopper descended. The masked gunman was clutching his weapon, but he did not expect to see Joe Krueger less than forty feet away with his own weapon raised. Krueger opened fire just as Brandt flashed her laser pointer toward the cockpit.
Almost immediately, the chopper started to sway, and the gunner was flung from his perch. He was forced to grab the interior bulkhead to stop from falling onto the flagstones below.
Krueger took the opportunity to reload and spewed another half-dozen bullets at the helicopter. It rose higher into the air, as if meaning to retreat, but the gunner suddenly returned to his weapon and sent a burst of furious fire out onto the courtyard.
Krueger darted rightward, running away from the death-dealing gun in nimble, lifesaving leaps.
“Keep your nerve!” Krueger shouted back to Brandt, who was flashing the scorching red light from the office doorway. It had its effect, and the bird swayed again, a tremor which sent the machinegun fire uselessly into the ground. The flagstones cracked and jostled, but Krueger remained safe.
Her confidence began to swell, and Brandt took a step forward toward the menacing helicopter. She was joined by Krueger alongside her, who, realizing he had just a couple of shots remaining, raised his Glock and fired, aiming for the gunman’s chest. But the chopper barreled forward as he did so, much more violently than before, as the pilot tried vainly to keep Brandt’s hateful laser from burning his eyes anymore. As the bird pitched forward, looking like it was caught on the crest of a sudden wave, Krueger’s bullet struck the masked man in his face. He fell back into the belly of the chopper, the suddenness of his collapse proving that his wound was fatal.
But Krueger didn’t have time for elation. Without pausing, he raised his pistol and aimed at the cockpit, but before he could fire, the pilot wrenched his chopper backwards, and the long black tail boom struck the flagstones. The result was as instantaneous as it was terrifying. The rotor tore into the ground, dissolving into flecks of deadly shrapnel as the blades churned uselessly. The fuselage erupted into a sheet of flame, which hungrily devoured the bird and sent sizzling sparks into the air.
As the inferno swelled, Krueger sprung backward, dragging Brandt back toward the office and the meager protection its walls offered. He felt white-hot debris fly past him with deadly velocity, but reached the office door without injury. Breathless, Krueger turned to see the cockpit erupt into a spew of flame as the windows blew outwards. The door trembled as the chopper’s fuel was eaten up by the blaze. Soon, nothing remained of the black menace except the clattering debris skating across the courtyard.
“I didn’t get the radio,” Krueger said dryly.
“I don’t think we need it anymore” spoke an awestruck Grimm, who looked at Krueger as if he were one of the Grecian heroes he was so fond of studying. “That blast will bring the whole bloody Egyptian army down on top of us.”
-13-
IT WASN’T QUITE THE WHOLE army. But to Brandt it sure felt like it. Two regiments of the President’s personal bodyguard soon arrived at the Citadel as the smoldering ruin of the courtyard was buzzed by F-16s. Swarms of paramilitary police ran through the offices of the late Captain Sharif, as if they thought the mere act of looking busy would assuage the panic of a city that was soon flooded with violent rumor. Handling their guns nervously, they discovered Grimm’s driver dead in the parking lot, alongside the bodies of Sharif’s garrison of seven soldiers.
Krueger was bundled into an armored Land Rover with enough force to suggest that the authorities did not believe his story about being a humble associate of Dr. Grimm. His two friends were placed in different vehicles, and together, they formed a formidable motorcade, which raced toward an unknown destination on the outskirts of Cairo. It was approaching midnight, but the attack on the Citadel meant that neither Krueger, nor anybody in the panicked Egyptian government, would be sleeping that night.
Eventually, the clatter of metal gates signaled to Krueger that they had reached their destination. Sure enough, the truck pulled up amid the serried ranks of green canvas tents, and a mustachioed officer dragged him into the desert air with the business end of a revolver digging into his ribs. Muttering curses in a low Arabic growl, the officer led Krueger to an ugly one-story barracks.
Inside was nothing but greenish strip lighting, which carved dark lines on Krueger’s face. His friends looked equally haggard as the surly officer escorted the three companions to what he mockingly described as a lounge. But Krueger knew a holding cell when he saw one. The room was spartanly furnished with a single splintery table and too few chairs. The solitary sad and greasy window, set high above, was barred by rusty iron.
“Wait,” the officer thundered as he shut and locked the door, as if the three friends had any other choice.
In the silence that followed, Krueger silently pointed to the farthest corner from the door. As they huddled, Krueger brought his hand to his mouth.
“They’re scared,” he whispered. “They wouldn’t have made this rookie mistaken if they weren’t. You don’t put suspects in the same cell before interrogation. It gives them a chance to get their stories straight.”
“I’m not sure that our story needs much straightening,” Grimm replied. “We don’t have anything to hide from the authorities.”
“We told a few lies to reach a precious artifact and then tore it apart without asking,” Brandt said. “In this febrile atmosphere, that might be enough to keep us behind bars for a while.”
“I think you are right, Tessa,” Krueger replied. “I know this part of the world. It’s unstable, and when attacks like this happen, governments tend to react rather badly.”
As if to confirm Krueger’s claim, the door suddenly and violently swung open. An officer strode into the room, colder and more refined than the first, flanked by thuggish brutes on either side of his epauletted shoulders.
“Good evening,” he said in a cut-glass English accent, with just the right amount of condescension to suggest there was nothing good about it.
“Officer,” Grimm said in his smoothest and most ingratiating voice, “if I may—”
“No, you may not!” roared the officer, cutting him off. “How did you bring down the chopper? Tell me!”
“We just barely escaped with our lives,” Brandt protested, “and many others were not so lucky. If I were you, I’d be trying to identify those attackers and figuring out if more attacks are planned.”
The officer snorted and pointed to the door languidly. His thugs closed it. “Do not tell me how to do my job,” he said. “One of the great treasures of my country has just been attacked, and if you want me to believe that you had no part in that disgrace, you had better start providing answers.”
Tired of the pantomime, Krueger lunged at the officer, throwing Brandt’s laser pointer into his unsuspecting hands. “That’s how we saved ourselves!” he cried. The officer took a defensive step back, terrified as raw rage spread across the freakishly large face of his prisoner. “It’s a laser pointer!” the face yelled.
“How?” asked the officer, weakly. He was growing unsure of himself in the face of Krueger conviction.
“That is a 5-milliwatt laser, bud,” Krueger said. “It may not sound like much, but it can cause permanent retinal burns at fifty feet. And trust me, we were a Hell of a lot closer to the chopper than that.”
“I see,” said the officer, chewing his lip thoughtfully.
Suddenly, the door swung open, and the man who had originally hustled Krueger and his friends into the room reappeared. But the snarl of his face had been replaced by a simpering dread. He galloped toward his superior and whispered into his ear. Krueger saw drops of sweat drip from his hairy ears as he did so.
The officer finished his report and fled the cell without waiting to be dismissed. He left behind the senior man, who was fast losing his refined appearance. The color drained from his cheeks as he caught a bad case of the fidgets. He couldn’t decide where to put his hands; one moment they were resting on the table; the next they were massaging his temples.
“You!” he said finally, pointing to Grimm. “Come here!” The officer was trying to recapture his authority, but when he took Grimm’s arm, he did so with a respectful and soft touch. He led him toward the door as if he were the maître d' at a Chelsea eatery. The officer paused only once, to place the laser point on the table with an undue reverence.
Grimm, the officer, and the two thugs left, but they did not lock the door, leaving behind a bewildered Brandt and Krueger.
“Take a seat,” Krueger said, exhaling. “Looking at that guy’s face, I think we’ve caught a break.”
Krueger sat on the floor marveling as what a strange thing authority could be. It was invisible, and yet everyone knew when you had it…and when you didn’t.
Thirty minutes later, Dr. Grimm returned. One of the thugs followed behind him, carrying three large coffees. Brandt leapt forward and took one, sipping even though the drink was still scalding hot. “Just what the doctor ordered,” she said.
“Yes,” replied Grimm, “literally.”
The thug left silently and closed the door.
“So what kind of trouble we in?” Krueger asked as the closed.
“Very little,” he said with an insufferable smugness. “My father personally manages the Egyptian President’s investment portfolio over at Greystone, and some enterprising fellow must have made the connection between him and me. One quick phone call secured our release. I expect we’ll be out of this rat hole momentarily.”
And so it proved. Just as dawn was breaking beautifully over the tawny dunes, a man entered the cell with breakfast. He then took their formal statements with little fuss, using an old Dictaphone to record their nightmare in the Citadel.
The return to Cairo was an altogether more pleasant affair. The President had dispatched his personal Rolls Royce to drive the trio back to their hotel, where they found an armed guard and their belongings fastidiously packed. Three hours later, Grimm’s jet was back in the air with three tired, grateful passengers safely inside. Below was the golden vastness of the desert and beyond, the silent, sparkling majesty of the Mediterranean.
“It’s a good job you were with us,” Krueger said to Grimm as they sat together. “I don’t know how we would have gotten out of that fix if it weren’t for you.”
“Yes, you do,” Grimm shot back, staring into his empty hands. “You’d have found some way to escape, just like you did in the Citadel. All I could do was wail and make a fool of myself. It wasn’t me that got us out of the clink. It was my father’s money.”
Krueger placed a comforting arm around Grimm’s shoulder. “Your first time in a fight like that is always your worst. Trust me; I know.”
Krueger was not lying. Ten weeks in boot camp and two months in Army Ranger School hadn’t been worth a pail of goat’s spit the moment Krueger stepped onto the sun-scorched streets of Fallujah. The sound of your drill instructor is terrifying, but not so terrifying as the sound of an IED blowing up your best friend. And when that happens, everything that instructor told you just drains away, replaced by red panic seizing control of every synapse in your brain.
Grimm coughed, embarrassed. “Well, I’d like for us to resume our search for the Cross,” he said, “which would mean landing in Jerusalem. But I think we ought to confer with your allies in America first, don’t you think?”
Krueger nodded. “Why Jerusalem?” he asked.
“Because,” Brandt said, returned from the bathroom wearing a clean linen blouse and a refreshing smile, “the Fragment claims Saladin’s son returned the Cross to the Horns.”
“The Horns?” Krueger asked.
“The Horns of Hattin,” she answered. “The twin peaks of a dead volcano which overlook the Hattin plain. It was there that Saladin vanquished the Crusaders and took the True Cross. And where, if al-Qalqashandi is correct, it was buried.”
“It’s in Israel,” Grimm added.
Krueger thought hard, wondering what next step to take. Making a mental survey of his predicament, he realized the danger of continuing the pursuit. There was obviously some high intelligence directing the conspiracy, throwing its agents against Krueger and his friends without remorse.
“I need to speak to Hawtrey,” Krueger said, realizing that his brow was dripping with cold sweat.
THIS WAS FAR EASIER said than done, for at exactly the same moment Krueger boarded his jet in Cairo, Lucille Hawtrey was getting onboard a private plane heading to Washington. It was too damned early to be up, but she was, according to the White House Press Secretary, due to give a presentation to the President regarding the progress of the investigation. In truth, she was due to receive one almighty tirade from a Commander-in-Chief who was getting very bad press. The failure to name a single suspect, let alone make an arrest, was driving his poll numbers downward faster than any sex scandal.
But she was not going alone. Sam O’Brian and Colin Dubchek followed her onto the plane, functioning on little more than energy drinks and adrenalin. Hawtrey told them it was because they were key to the investigation, which was only half true. The real reason Hawtrey brought them along was because they both knew she had started to dabble in Krueger’s Nazi conspiracy, and as such could easily destroy her career. Hawtrey needed them to do their job, but she also needed to watch them.
But despite Hawtrey’s unwelcome trip at an ungodly hour, the indefatigable Ms. Dupree succeeded in connecting her group to Krueger and Brandt, and they were soon eyeballing one another through a video conferencing screen. It was the first time each person who’d helped investigate the mystery were all together.
“I thought you were returning to New York?” she asked waspishly as dawn broke slowly over the Eastern seaboard. It appeared even the sun was slow to move in the humidity.
“Something happened,” Krueger said.
“What something?”
Hawtrey’s plane had landed in the sweaty capital of the nation by the time Krueger had finished his incredible tale. A car was idling on the asphalt outside, waiting to take the senior agent to her jeremiad. But Hawtrey didn’t flinch. She was processing the tale, cataloging and filing the relevant facts with the same tenacity that had won her a scholarship to UVA in the first year that storied college started accepting female students.
“I am grateful that you survived the attack and escaped Cairo,” she said. “But I am nonetheless wondering how your alleged discovery aides us in our search for the bomber?” Hawtrey’s eyebrow rose like spider’s leg.
O’Brian, incredulous, threw his hands up in the air, while Dubchek coughed nervously.
“Ma’am,” Brandt said finally in a timid voice. “Whether we believe that General Krueger is responsible for the bombings or not, it is clear that a group of people is determined to halt our investigation into the whereabouts of his body.”
“I agree,” Hawtrey said, “but that is not an answer to my question. The world’s press, not to mention our angry President, are starting to suspect we are fools. We’ve had three weeks to find the terrorist, and all we have to show for our efforts is a handful of clues to an ancient mystery. So why should we be investigating this True Cross nonsense at all?”
The pilot cut the engine on Hawtrey’s jet, and the conference table was plunged into a deep and unwelcome silence.
“Because it’s the only lead we’ve got in this damned case,” Krueger spat finally, and nobody argued with him. “All of us here,” Krueger continued, “have no choice but to accept the fact that my grandfather, somehow, is bound up with these attacks. Maybe he was successfully revived from the cryogenic freezing. Maybe he was resurrected through the power of the True Cross. Or maybe this is all one big lie and he spent the last half-decade in South America with Elvis Pressley faking the moon landings. We don’t know. And until we know where he is, I’ve got a bad feeling that America won’t be safe.”
“He’s right,” came a firm, mahogany voice from beyond the screen. Dr. Grimm emerged and sat next to his friends, wearing a velvet robe and monogrammed slippers.
“Jesus,” O’Brian said, “are you guys heading to the Playboy Mansion?”
“Let’s stay on topic, please,” Hawtrey said, who nonetheless made a mental note to include this ridiculous tidbit in that evening’s Maker’s Mark-infused debrief to Mr. Hawtrey.
“The point,” Grimm continued, “is that while we cannot yet draw a clear line between the bombings and the disappearance of General Krueger, the overwhelming evidence is that they are linked.” Despite the hard edge of confidence in Grimm’s voice, his face was drawn and pale, and he moved slowly, as if his robe were made of glass.
Hawtrey sighed. “Show him the tape,” she said to Colin Dubchek, who ferreted away at his laptop in response to the order.
“We are sending you some footage to view,” Hawtrey said, “taken in Atlanta last night.”
