The forbidden temple, p.20
The Forbidden Temple, page 20
part #16 of Sean Wyatt Series
“Looks like it,” Sean said. He handed the disc to her.
Priya took it gently in both hands, cradling it like it was the only child she’d ever have in this life. She scanned the surface, reading the ancient text as easily as she would a magazine.
Sean pursed his lips and glanced over at Adriana, clearly impressed by her ability to so easily read a language that had been dead for thousands of years.
“Incredible,” Priya whispered. Her voice was barely audible over the constant whir of the air conditioning.
“What is?” Adriana asked. She leaned forward to get a better view.
Priya caught herself holding her breath, unintentionally. She continued to stare at the disc, eyes glazed over as if in a trance.
“What is it?” Adriana pressed.
Priya snapped out of the daze, shaking her head to one side. “It’s another riddle. At least, I think it is. I’m not sure. It reads almost like a poem.”
“And what does it say?” Tommy asked.
She swallowed hard, the lump rolling down the front of her throat until it disappeared at the base of her neck. “It talks of a love greater than any in the universe, a new beginning, and a place where love will reign for all time, where only the purest of hearts may walk.”
“Okay…same as on that marker stone we found in the ruins.”
“It also says that to find this dwelling and the bloom of life, one must first find victory by the sweat of Shiva’s brow, an ancient home where the sun brings life once more.”
Tommy stared ahead with a blank expression on his face. “I’m sorry, I’m not up on my ancient Indian history and culture. Any idea what all that means?”
She raised her head and looked out the windshield, then turned and stared him in the eyes. “I haven’t got a clue.”
Sean had been listening, but something caught his eye on the road behind them. He’d been intermittently taking a look back through the rear window, never fully settled on the notion that they weren’t being followed. Then again, he was never really settled in situations like this, especially minutes after a gunfight.
Each mile they put between themselves and the ancient settlement gave him a little hope that they were in the clear, that there wouldn’t be any issues. On the road behind them, however, countervailing evidence was rolling their way, closing the gap fast.
They’d only seen a few cars here and there on the desert highway. Most of them were vehicles going the other direction, possibly on their way to the ancient site to take a tour of the ruins or perhaps set up camp for a night of ghost hunting.
It was a desolate place, which made the white SUV in the lane behind them stand out like a gold coin in a pile of pennies.
He’d noted the vehicle a minute before, hoping that it was just another traveler out on the road to the middle of nowhere. It didn’t take long for Sean to realize that wasn’t the case. They were being followed, and whoever was on their tail didn’t appear to be in the mood to simply lag behind and watch. The white SUV was coming for them, and from the looks of it, they were in a hurry.
“Um, guys?” Sean said, interrupting the momentary silence of the cabin.
The others looked at him, even the driver, who tilted his head sideways to get a quick glimpse before returning his eyes to the road.
“I don’t mean to be clichéd when I say this, but it looks like we have company.”
The others turned around and stared out the tinted back window.
The white SUV was closing fast, less than a quarter of a mile away.
“Can we outrun them?” Priya asked.
Sean took another look back, assessing the oncoming vehicle, and then shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. That SUV is faster than this one. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. I’d step on it if I were you.”
The driver’s foot mashed the gas pedal, and the cabin’s occupants lurched back from the momentum.
“What good will it do to try to outrun them if we can’t outrun them?” Priya demanded.
Sean was already in action. He had twisted his torso around and pulled himself over the top of the seat, into the back where half of the third row was open, the other half folded down to accommodate the case of weapons the Americans had brought with them.
“It’ll buy us a little time,” Sean said. He flipped open the clasps on the case and then pried open the lid. The AR-15s with black canisters on the barrels lay across the length of the box atop gray foam cushions.
“Time for what?” Priya wondered.
Sean removed one of the weapons and pulled back on the charging handle, sliding a round into the chamber.
“For this.”
25
Los Angeles
Brock sipped his matcha green tea as he stared out over the city of Los Angeles. The hot liquid ran over his tongue then splashed into his throat, soothing the flesh as he swallowed.
He had his tea at least once a day, preferring to drink it instead of coffee from time to time. He found it helped keep him centered, focused, and energized. It was a routine that made the chaotic world around him seem to fall into balance.
Heather sat on the sofa behind him, reading a magazine and paying little attention to what her employer was doing. It had been two hours since they’d visited the downstairs lab, and she, along with Brock, figured it was going to take their little science team many hours, perhaps days, of work to figure out a way to charge the mystical weapon.
Thoughts of revenge simmered in his mind as he took another sip and slowly lowered the cup to his waist. A few birds flew by outside his window, one chasing another as they dipped and dove through the treetops and hills, disappearing over the ridge to the east. He considered the creatures for a moment and then returned to his previous line of thinking.
Brock never wanted to let go of the anger, the rage that burned inside him. What happened to his family was beyond unfair, though he hated to think of it in those terms. Unfair. What did that even mean? Life wasn’t fair. People were thrown into myriad trials and tribulations over the course of their lifetimes. Sometimes, the troubles came in the form of natural disasters. Other events were man-made, either deliberately or accidental. What had happened to his family had been human negligence, an intentional decision to go ahead with an unsafe operating procedure that resulted in the destruction of coastline, the deaths of millions of sea creatures, and a loss of livelihood for thousands.
His parents were one such group, a part of the many whose lives were torn apart in a moment of greedy recklessness.
Brock looked down at his tea with silent contemplation. How long had it been since that terrible night? Four years? Six? Eight?
It seemed like yesterday when he received the news. He’d come home from class in his beat-up old Honda Accord hatchback, not the fanciest of vehicles, but it got him where he needed to go. When he arrived at the family home in the suburbs of Mobile, he saw the police cars parked on the street, the yellow tape wrapped around the big oak tree in the western corner of the front yard, and cops milling around. There was an ambulance, too, parked along the curb directly in front of the main entrance.
At first, Brock wasn’t sure what was going on, if it had been a crime where someone broke into the house, or if something worse had happened.
He looked up toward the front porch and saw two EMTs wheeling out a stretcher with a body on it covered in white sheets.
Brock had frowned at the sight, still uncertain what was going on. A sickening feeling gathered in his gut, wrenching it with a burning, twisting grip.
Standing there in his lavish Los Angeles home, he could still smell the flowers in the garden and around the mailbox, still get a whiff of the freshly cut grass, the asphalt on the street, and the aroma of his car’s old upholstery.
He had watched in horror, hoping against all things evil, that the person the emergency responders were wheeling out was a home invader, a burglar who’d been caught by his father and shot to death.
The two paramedics rolled the stretcher down the shallow sloping yard to the sidewalk. When they were within reach, Brock stuck his arm out to grab hold of the white sheets and pull them back so he could see.
“Brock?” his mother had called from the porch, wearing jeans and a button-up plaid shirt. “Come here, Son.”
Her eyes were red from tears that must have been pouring for more than an hour. Her face, too, was flushed. She’d been through more emotional drama than anyone deserved. Now, this had happened, whatever this was.
He’d gone inside at her calling, ignoring the body on the stretcher for a moment, though his curiosity was piqued.
It was after he entered the house that his mother closed the door and gave him the tightest hug he’d ever received in his life. She began sobbing again, letting the tears drench his shoulders. It took her nearly three minutes before she could collect herself enough to tell Brock what had happened.
“Your father,” she’d said amid a flood of tears. Her voice trembled, caught in waves of choking coughs.
That’s when Brock learned what happened.
Out of work and unable to find employment elsewhere, Brock’s father had drifted further and further into the seas of depression. He’d grown distant over the months following the oil rig disaster, his demeanor growing more despondent by the day.
After months of heavy drinking, draining all of his accounts until they were empty, Brock’s father had taken the final, ultimate step.
When his mother uttered the words into his ear, he already knew what happened. He’d figured it out. All there was left to know was the details about how he’d done it.
At the funeral, Brock had remained stoic, intensely focused as the minister’s eulogy droned in his ears like distant, unintelligible noise. He’d stared at the casket in the front of the church the entire time, his gaze never wavering. A tear escaped his eyes now and then, dribbling down the side of his face.
The graveside service had been especially hard on his mother. She’d choked and wailed for most of it. Occasionally, a relative or friend would put their hand on her shoulder as if that would somehow magically comfort her and bring an end to her pain.
Her eyes carried dark circles under them from the crying and lack of sleep over the last few days.
Brock had already cried his last tears as he watched his father lowered into the ground. The day had been surprisingly clear and sunny. Infernal heat pounded those who stood around the outside of the funeral tent’s shade. The humidity of lower Alabama wrapped everyone in a moist heat. Brock had barely noticed. His mind had turned to one thing, the only place in his mind where he could find solace, consolation against the pain of what had happened to him and his family.
Revenge.
His interest in acting had grown from a time when he was young. He’d taken every drama class he could, every private acting session he could afford on his meager income from working at fast food restaurants and mowing lawns in the summer.
When his father ended his own life, his mother swirled the drain, herself sinking into an irreversible depression.
Brock knew that he could stay there and watch his mom go down the same path as his father, or he could do something that could both make their lives better and repay those who’d destroyed everything they had.
The acting jobs had been slow in coming until he got his break. Once that happened, he began funneling money back to his mom in Alabama, though he was fairly certain where those funds went.
She’d picked up an addiction to pills during the period of mourning after his father’s death. A couple of oxycodones a day kept the doctors away, as did the sadness that seemed permanently rooted in her heart. Brock was glad to be away from it. While he loved his mother, he’d always been closer to his dad. Maybe that stemmed from the fact that he knew his mom had cheated on his father at one point, the affair fraying the delicate balance of their nuclear family.
He didn’t outwardly hold it against his mother, but Brock always felt like his dad would still be around if that hadn’t happened.
Maybe he was wrong.
He took another sip of the tea and noted a cloud in the sky over Downtown LA. Funny, he thought. He’d come from another LA, one that gave him nothing but grief and emptiness, to one that gave him a new hope. Lower Alabama wasn’t a place where people made it big in the world, but it crafted a person’s mind and resolve, steeled them against the elements of both nature and civilization.
Brock heard footsteps on the stairs, though he didn’t turn around to see who was coming. He knew.
“Sir?” Adam’s voice echoed through the living room, off the cathedral ceilings and glass, and into Brock’s ears. “I think we have a solution.”
Brock took another sip of his tea and then turned around slowly. “I’m all ears.”
26
Kuldhara
Sean stared out the back window at the approaching SUV. The desert around them flew by in a blur to his right and left.
“Maybe they’re just tourists in a hurry to get back to civilization,” Priya offered from the front seat.
Sean shook his head, keeping his eyes on the vehicle. “I’d say that’s a distinct possibility.” Something in his tone made her think he wasn’t entirely agreeing. “Except for the fact that I can see them getting ready to shoot at us.”
“What?” Priya turned her head and looked into the side mirror.
Sean handed the rifle in his hands to Adriana. Then he grabbed one for Tommy and passed it forward, taking the last one for himself.
“Seriously, are you three really going to use those things?”
Her answer didn’t come from the three in the back. Rather, it came in the form of a loud plunk against the tailgate door.
She started to ask what that was, but another look in the mirror told her what she needed to know. On cue, the mirror exploded into a thousand shimmering pieces of glass that splashed on the road as a bullet smashed into it.
The driver swerved to the right and then left, already taking evasive maneuvers as he’d likely been trained.
“Lower this window!” Sean shouted.
The driver eased his aggressive dodging moves for a moment and reached for the window button in the middle. Priya got to it first, apparently now convinced they were in trouble.
The rear window went down, and Sean raised his weapon. Tommy and Adriana rolled their windows down and poked their heads out, both leaning through the opening at a safe enough distance that they wouldn’t fall onto the road below.
A gunman was leaning out of the front passenger side of the trailing vehicle, and a second was hanging out of the back driver’s side. Both men had short black hair, sunglasses, and matching pale, almost tanned skin. Their weapons, like their hair, were black—albeit with a matte finish to the gunmetal. The submachine guns popped in the distance, sounding like nothing more than popcorn popping in an iron skillet when muted by the road and engine noise.
At that distance, their weapons were inaccurate, though still extremely dangerous. Even a gun with a short barrel could get lucky now and then from a distance. Then again, the enemy vehicle was rapidly closing the gap, and that “safe” distance wasn’t going to last much longer.
Sean pressed the stock into his shoulder and raised the weapon. He’d outfitted each rifle with a red-dot holosight system for quicker reflex aiming and better accuracy. He’d always preferred the red dots for tactical situations, and scopes when he knew there would be more wide-open spaces during a potential firefight. The red-dot system was the one he considered the best solution for general use.
The dot inside the lens lined up with the driver of the SUV. Sean’s thumb flipped the safety to the fire position without so much as the lightest tremble, keeping the dot squarely on the driver’s chest, just below the neck.
His finger tensed on the trigger, and he squeezed.
The moment he fired the weapon, the SUV jolted up then down. The muzzle popped and sent the round sailing over the target by a good fifty feet.
“Sorry,” the driver said. “Pothole.”
Sean reset himself, ready to take another shot when the gunmen behind the driver opened fire in earnest. Their guns blazed, pushing hard against the men’s shoulders as the braces dug in to keep the barrels from riding up over the target. Most of the rounds missed wildly. Some struck the asphalt. Many flew by Priya’s SUV and into the sandy desert soil.
A few, however, pounded the back of the vehicle. Sean heard the familiar cracking noise of a bullet zipping over his head, the velocity of the round creating a breach in the sound barrier.
He stole a glance back and saw the round had harmlessly exited through the windshield right under the rearview mirror.
Relieved, but not at ease about the situation, Sean aimed again. This time, he didn’t care if he hit the driver or not. He just had to send a message.
“Aim for the tires if you can!” Sean shouted at his companions in the middle seat.
Tommy and Adriana squeezed their triggers, their fingers twitching in quick succession as they fired the powerful 5.56-mm NATO rounds at the enemy vehicle.
Sean aimed at the hood of the car. One well-placed shot would puncture the radiator. He squeezed the trigger, and his suppressor can puffed with a muted pop. The round missed, a few inches high as far as he could tell, glancing off the slope of the hood.
The driver jerked his wheel to the right, and the enemy SUV lurched to the other lane. In the moment before the man brought it back into the proper lane, Sean saw there wasn’t just one vehicle after them. There were two. From what he could tell, there were no more behind the second SUV, but that certainly changed the game.
The gunmen hanging out the windows clutched the edge of the rooftop to brace themselves as their driver swerved repeatedly to avoid the onslaught from Tommy’s and Adriana’s weapons.
The hood of the target SUV dipped down as the driver slammed on the brakes. The gap suddenly increased between the enemy convoy and the vehicle carrying Sean and the others.
