The Oracle Code

22



39 Miles Southwest of Herat

Herat Province

Afghanistan

February 14, 2013

A roaring avalanche of flaming stone and dead Taliban rained down over the cave mouth, almost drowning out the rifle shot. Lourds heard the gun’s discharge, though, and expected to feel the pain of the bullet tearing through his body at any second. He did not, however, wait to feel that bullet.

He turned and raced back to the generator, which was his nearest cover. Putting his back to it, he ran his hands over his chest and stomach, pulled them away, and was grateful to see no blood. The bullet must have gotten caught in the avalanche.

Glancing back at the cave, Lourds struggled to see through the smoky haze covering the area. Flames leaped among the rubble of broken stone and corpses, and detonations popped from the pile as ammunition and explosives cooked off.

Incredibly, the Russia Today man ran through the destruction with the rifle held in both hands. On the other side of the flaming barrier, he searched the terrain, and Lourds knew who the man was looking for.

Pushing off the generator, Lourds ran, dodging among the tents and military vehicles the ANP had brought to the site. A bullet tore away a mirror on a truck ahead of him, and as the shiny fragments glinted and fell to the ground, Lourds knew the hunter had found him. He ducked and continued running.

***



Incredulously, Anna watched the destruction of the cave. The initial blast from the Army Airborne helicopters had to have weakened the infrastructure of the underground passageways, because when the second wave hit the Taliban warriors’ positions on the mountainside, the entire front sheared away and collapsed.

She stared at the devastation, knowing she would never see what Glukov had found within the cave. Only rubble remained where it had been. She thought of Boris Glukov and knew the man would be distraught over the loss. Then she hoped that the professor had gotten clear of the mountain before it had come down.

Her phone vibrated within her coat pocket. Reflexively, she reached for the device. She was surprised to see her father’s name and face in the viewscreen. The image was one she had taken a few years ago during a Defender of the Motherland Day after a ceremony where General Anton Cherkshan had been honored for his years of devoted service.

She put the phone to her ear, wanting nothing more than to hear her father’s voice at that moment. And she wanted him to tell her she would be all right.

“Father?”

“Anna? You are all right?”

He didn’t sound panicked. In all her twenty-six years, the general had never sounded panicked. She did hear the strain in his words though.

“Yes, yes. I am all right. How did you know?”

“CNN has a live feed coming from there. Are you in a safe place? You must see to your own safety.”

Anna looked around the cargo truck. Several wounded people lay on the ground. ANP corpsmen moved among them, trying to keep them alive.

“I am safe.”

“Good. I see the American Army has arrived.”

Anna glanced at the helicopters swirling through the air. She was close enough to see the soldiers manning machine guns at the cargo doors. Rockets shot out from the pods under the stubby wings again and again, pulverizing the mountainside. The Taliban ran from the area, but Anna felt certain few of the terrorists would escape.

“They have arrived, Father.”

The general fell silent, and Anna knew he didn’t know what else to say. Neither did she. They both still cared about each other, but they agreed on so few things these days that small talk did not come easily.

Seventy yards away, Thomas Lourds sprinted into view. He glanced over his shoulder, and Anna tracked the direction back to the Russia Today man as he raised a rifle to his shoulder, pointing it at Lourds.

“Father, I have to go.” Anna closed the phone and returned it to her pocket. She ran toward the American. “Professor Lourds, look out!”

***



Warned by the woman’s voice calling his name, Lourds threw himself to the ground and rolled behind a wrecked Jeep lying on its side. The front right tire had been blown off, probably from one of the Taliban rocket launchers, and the front end was a mess of twisted, blackened metal.

Lourds’s heart hammered inside his chest. He didn’t know why the man had killed Boris, or why he was now trying to kill Lourds himself. Especially after saving him only a short time ago. It didn’t make sense.

“Professor Lourds!”

Lourds turned at the sound of the young woman’s voice and spotted Anna twenty yards away and closing. She ran along a ditch enhanced by a snowdrift. For the moment, she was out of view of the Russia Today man.

“Anna! Stay back!”

She stopped and looked fearfully in the direction of the pursuer. “What is going on?”

“That man killed Boris.”

A stricken look filled Anna’s face. “Boris is dead?”

“Yes. In the cave.” Lourds thought she was going to cry.

“But why would he do this?”

Lourds shook his head. “I don’t know.” He peered around the Jeep and saw the Russia Today man break off his pursuit and go to the ground. A spray of bullets chopped into the snow where he’d disappeared. Lourds hoped that one of the ANP officers had seen what was going on and come to their rescue, but that wasn’t the case.

Evidently, some of the Taliban warriors had come down from the mountains and arrived at the dig site. Four of them lay spread out over the countryside, all of them firing at the Russia Today man, the ANP officers, and the wounded indiscriminately.

Unfortunately, the Taliban now lay between Lourds and Anna and the group of ANP officers clustered around the cargo truck with the wounded. Some of the ANP officers had spotted the Taliban and fired on them. If their aim improved, they would free up the Russia Today man to finish up his killing spree.

Anna evidently realized the same thing and dashed over to join Lourds. “Who is he?”

Lourds shook his head and looked around for his rental truck. He’d parked somewhere close by but couldn’t spot it in all the chaos. “I don’t know.”

“He told me his name was Yakov Fursin.”

“Probably an alias.” Lourds spotted the top of the white four-wheel-drive pickup fifty yards away. He had missed it among the snowdrifts. “Can you run?”

She frowned at him. “As fast as I have to.”

Lourds nodded at the truck. “I have a vehicle over there. If we can get to it, maybe we can elude this Fursin, or whatever his real name is.”

Grabbing Anna’s hand, he pulled her to his feet and raced toward the truck.

***



Frustrated, Linko lay pinned against the earth. He shifted the rifle and locked on to a Taliban who stuck his head up thirty yards away. Smoothly, Linko squeezed the trigger and felt the rifle butt kick into his shoulder.

The bullet caught the Taliban in the face but didn’t kill him. Panicked and in pain, the man dropped his weapon and clapped his hands to his shattered jaw to try and stem the blood. Linko shot him twice more, placing both shots in the man’s throat in case he was wearing body armor taken from the body of a dead soldier. The man’s bulky coat made that hard to tell.

Another Taliban went down under the guns of the ANP officers defending their position at a cargo truck.

That left two.

Movement to the left caught Linko’s eye, and he saw Lourds and Anna Cherkshan running away from the Taliban, the ANP, and him. Beyond them, over a rise, Linko knew there were vehicles. He’d left one there himself.

Linko pushed himself up and ran, sweeping around the area where the last two Taliban were. He had twice as much ground to cover as the American professor and Anna Cherkshan but felt he could manage it.

However, Lourds and the woman were faster than he’d thought, and the snow deeper in spots than he’d figured. Twice he fell headlong into a snowdrift and had to fight his way back out.

He arrived at the rise just in time to see Lourds and Anna Cherkshan climb into a four-wheel-drive pickup at the front of at least thirty vehicles. The media had flooded the area with rental cars. Pulling the rifle to his shoulder, Linko fired a burst of rounds that caught the truck’s left rear fender as the vehicle shot forward. Lourds swerved around a van, cutting it too close and sliding into the parked vehicle. The truck’s tires spun uselessly for a moment, then Lourds must have engaged the four-wheel-drive, because it powered through.

Taking aim at the retreating truck, Linko fired again, punching holes in the truck’s rear window. The borrowed rifle cycled dry, and he had no more magazines. He threw the useless weapon aside and ran for his rental car.

Breath coming easily but clouding the air with gray clouds, Linko used the electronic key to open the sedan’s locks as he approached it. Throwing open the door, he slid behind the seat. He twisted the key in the ignition, and the motor caught immediately.

As he watched the truck racing around the parking area, Linko smiled to himself. Lourds had made a mistake—he hadn’t checked his exit path. There was only one way out of the impromptu parking area, and Linko commanded it.

He waited patiently as Lourds figured out the maze of parked vehicles and corrected his flight, finding a wide space that allowed him a straight shot at escape.

Linko planned to ram the truck and drive the vehicle into the others on the opposite side of the path, and then to beat Lourds to death with his bare hands if he had to. Then he would take the scrolls.

Suddenly, across the path, a Taliban warrior stepped through the swirling smoke coming from the battlefield. As Linko watched, he lifted an RPG-7 rocket launcher to his shoulder, aiming straight at the sedan.

Cursing, Linko grabbed for the door.

***



Praising God for delivering his enemy into his hands even though the rest of his brethren had been routed and left dead and dying on the mountain by the cursed Army helicopters, Mafouz Abu Walid aimed his rocket launcher at the sedan fifty yards away.

He and three of his men had run down from the mountain when the Army aircraft had appeared. He’d known the mountainside would become a fire zone and that his life was probably forfeit, but he had wanted to take down as many of the dirt diggers, media, and ANP as he could. His rewards in heaven would be great. He could almost taste the wine and smell the virgins.

He pulled the trigger and heard the whoosh of the rocket leaving the launcher. For just a moment, he saw it in flight, then it gained speed and disappeared. A heartbeat later, the front of the sedan exploded. The engine cover blew off and sailed through the air as flames enveloped the destroyed vehicle.

Reaching into his munitions pack, Mafouz took out another rocket and loaded the launcher. There was at least one more target to be had. He’d seen the truck racing around before he’d spotted the Russia Today journalist climbing into his car. He listened for the roar of the truck’s engine, but the noise echoed within the hollow, distorted by the sounds of battle and the aftereffects of the RPG launch.

For the moment, though, he wanted to gloat over his kill. The journalist had to be fried to a cinder if he hadn’t been blown to pieces. Wiping blood from his injured left eye, Mafouz darted across the path.

Then he realized the truck engine sounded like it was almost on top of him. He turned to his left, only noticing then how much of his vision had been obscured by the swelling and the blood. Horrified, he watched the white truck bearing down on him.

He swung the rocket launcher around and fired.

***



“Look out!”

Lourds had been staring out across the parked cars. He knew the Russia Today man had probably had time to reach the parking area. Anna had thought she’d spotted him. But her startled cry drew his attention back to his driving. He expected to see the killer standing before them on the other side of the bullet-riddled windshield.

Instead, it was one of the Taliban warriors with a rocket launcher over his shoulder. The man was directly in Lourds’s path, and there was no room to miss him. Lourds yanked his foot from the accelerator and stepped on the brake.

The Taliban warrior swung around.

“What are you doing? Don’t stop!” Anna grabbed her seat belt strap and braced her feet against the floor. “He’s going to shoot us! Run him down!”

Lourds pulled his foot from the brake, which wasn’t doing anything more than causing the truck to slide on the slick snow and ice mix, and applied a steady pressure on the accelerator. All four wheels grabbed traction immediately.

The Taliban fired the rocket.

Lourds threw up a hand and immediately felt foolish. His arm wasn’t going to offer much of a shield against the rocket.

Miraculously, the shot passed overhead, missing them by a hand’s span or less. The Taliban tried to run, but the truck ran right over him.

Anna peered through the back window, which had several bullet holes in it. “He’s alive.”

Lourds checked the side mirror as he powered out of the hollow. “The Taliban?” He didn’t see how that was probable, but he had to admit that it could happen if the truck had crushed him into the snow.

“No. Yakov Fursin.”

In the mirror, Lourds spotted the man in the green coat getting up beside a flaming car. “I thought we agreed that’s probably not his name.”

“We did. But that is what I will call him until I find out who he is.”

Lourds looked at her with grim seriousness. “That’s probably not the best course you could pursue.”

“How could I not follow this man? I am a journalist. I write for The Moscow Times. This could be a big story. He has killed Boris Glukov for some mysterious reason, and he would have killed you if not for me.”

Lourds nodded. “You’re right.” There was no question she had helped him tremendously.

“I will gladly accept this story in exchange for that.”

“I don’t even know what this story is.”

“Then we will find out together.”