Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Sasha blinked, not fully comprehending the question. The man might be able to help her translate the document, but there were other ways to accomplish that. What she really needed was a computer; her computer. “I don’t think so.”


That was answer enough for the Chinese man. He adjusted the barrel of the pistol so it was trained between the captive’s eyes…

And then he abruptly pitched backward onto the ground. Before any of his cohorts could react, they too went down, pistols and flashlights clattering to the floor, the latter describing wild and random arcs of illumination before coming to rest.

Sasha stood motionless, unable to fathom what had just happened. She picked up the flashlight she had been using to inspect the document and swept it around the library. Her beam found a large figure, dressed in desert camouflage and heavily laden with military gear, emerging from behind one of the shelves. His face was partially obscured by a night vision device, and at the touch of her flashlight beam, he raised a hand to shade his eyes. Sasha saw that he held a gun in the other hand; wisps of smoke were issuing from its long barrel.

“Miss Therion!” The voice, a man’s voice, came from another direction, and she turned to see two more similarly dressed figures moving toward her from a different part of the room. “It’s Jack Sigler. Are you all right?”

Sigler?

She remembered him. One of the Delta commandos who had accompanied her in Iraq, and had tried to rescue her in Myanmar.

Her head started to pound with the effort of processing what had just happened. More variables. More chaos.

But this time, she was able to resist the pull of the vortex. She now had the key to unlocking the manuscript, and with it, the secret of the Elixir.

The solution was within her grasp. Soon, she would have the means to balance the equation, and at last, wipe away all the uncertainty.





THIRTY-NINE


King heard a voice, a low whisper. It was the Iranian man, the hostage they had saved from a triad bullet, cowering on the floor, mumbling incoherently… No, not mumbling…talking into a cellular phone.

“Bishop!”

Bishop darted forward and smacked the phone from the man’s hand, sending it flying across the room to shatter against a wall. He brandished the barrel of his carbine, thrusting it toward the man’s face. “Who did you call?” he barked, and then he repeated the question in Farsi.

The fearful hostage muttered something in the same tongue and then continued pleading.

“What did he say, Bish?” asked Queen.

“He called the police. They’re probably on their way.”

“Damn.” King continued forward until he was standing in front of Sasha. His gaze fell on the unrolled parchment. “It that it? Is that what you were looking for?”

She nodded.

King let his carbine hang from its sling and took out his digital camera. He snapped several photographs of the document before rolling it up and stuffing it into a pocket. “We need to get out of here, now.” He keyed his mic. “Rook, Knight, sitrep.”

Both men succinctly reported that everything was clear outside the dome.

“Deep Blue, this is King. It looks like we’re going to be needing that extraction soon.”

The electronic voice responded immediately as if anticipating the request. “Understood. The bird left the ground five minutes ago. ETA to the rendezvous point is twenty mikes.”

“Roger, out.” He turned to the Sasha again. “Where’s Rainer?”

She gave him a blank stare, as if unaware that he was addressing her, but then she snapped out of it. “He didn’t come. He thought the Iranians would be suspicious of a Westerner.”

King felt only a flicker of disappointment. Taking down Rainer would have been the icing on the cake, but rescuing Sasha and recovering the information to decode the Voynich manuscript was nothing to sneeze at. He gestured to the bodies on the floor. “Who are they?”

“Triad foot soldiers,” muttered Queen.

Sasha nodded. “Posing as a Chinese cultural delegation.”

That made sense. Iran and China had a cozy relationship, with the latter buying most of the former’s oil exports, keeping the regime flush with cash in spite of the sanctions imposed by Western nations. King hoped Queen’s assessment was correct and that they hadn’t just killed actual Chinese diplomats; one international incident was more than enough.

“Queen, stay with her. Bishop, check these guys for a set of keys. We’re gonna borrow their ride.”

Bishop jerked a thumb at the Iranian hostage. “What about him?”

King regarded the frightened man. “Let’s hope that when the police get here, he remembers to tell them that we’re the good guys.”