The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,60

he knew the answer. He glanced over to Maria, remembering there had been a crew already in the lake, searching for Kowalski’s body. Seichan must have eventually escaped the aqueduct and reached the open lake, where she hailed the search crew and recruited them for this rescue.

Seichan spat out her mouthpiece and shifted her mask up. “Ready to get out of here?” she called to him.

Hell, yeah.

Over the next half hour, the search-and-rescue team ferried everyone through the aqueduct and out to the banks of Lake Albano. While their group should have been jubilant at surviving, no one celebrated.

Sirens echoed all around. Helicopters chased across the sky as the morning sun crested the caldera’s edge. Gray stood beside the lake with his satellite phone pressed to his ear. He stared up at the smoking ruins of the Pontifical Palace. A thick black pall churned skyward, while fires smoldered at its heart. From what could be seen, that entire section of the volcanic rim had been blasted into a cratered pile of rubble.

Gray barely heard Painter on the phone. “The jets had proper military clearance and call signs,” the director explained. “They might even have been Italian Air Force jets. We don’t know yet. Reports are that the pilots ditched the two aircraft into the Mediterranean after jettisoning from the planes. Search crews are scouring the seas.”

Gray tore his gaze from the destruction above to the reason behind it. Monsignor Roe and Major Bossard, both wrapped in blankets, stood guard over a tarp-wrapped treasure, the Da Vinci map.

How many had died over that damned thing?

He remembered the monsignor’s story of a summer school under way on the papal grounds. The new observatory was a mile from the palace, but was it far enough away? His grip tightened on the phone. He intended to make sure the deaths here were not in vain and that those responsible were held accountable.

Gray spoke sternly: “We may not know who orchestrated this attack, but from their tactics and hardware—the jets, the submarine up in the Arctic—these are not lone-wolf terrorists.”

Painter agreed. “Whoever they are, they must be state-sponsored. Some hostile country or countries is backing them. Kat also believes it’s why they seem to know our every move. Too many intelligence agencies are involved. We don’t know where our intel is leaking, but until we plug it—”

“We need to go dark over here.”

“I suggest pitch black.”

Gray stared at the small group huddled on the shore. They needed to get moving, get out of sight ASAP. But what then? Two questions were the most pressing.

Where do we go next?

And more important . . .

Who is our enemy?

17

June 23, 11:22 A.M. TRT

Çanakkale Province, Turkey

At last, the world will soon burn.

With glory shining bright in her breast, Nehir Saat descended into the depths of the buried city. She had been summoned from the neighboring village of Kumkale, where in a small tea shop she had borne witness to the first harbinger of Armageddon. On a television there, she and other Sons and Daughters had watched the cacophony of news coming from Italy, the footage of a palace burning, of bodies in the streets.

Only the sheeted forms of children finally made her look away.

Innocents turned into martyrs, she had to remind herself, but it failed to quell the grief, even guilt over their deaths. She prayed they had not suffered and had found their way to paradise—where they would not have long to wait. She took solace in the fact that when the gates of Hell fell, paradise would eventually return to earth.

Bringing with it all those children.

Including her own.

Both of them.

She paused on a stair and closed her eyes, momentarily overwhelmed by grief. When she was a child, her father had sold her and her brother into prostitution. She was eight, Kadir ten. She had been raped repeatedly and carried scars both physical and emotional.

Eventually, when they were not earning enough for their father, he sold them to a monster in Istanbul. She was forced into a temporary marriage—known as a mut’a—which contracts the union for a set period of time, from one hour to ninety-nine years. During that contract, she bore two children, a boy and a girl, both unwanted by her provisional husband. The babies were slaughtered after their births. She had tried to protect the last child, the girl whom Nehir had silently named Huri, which meant angel. As punishment, her husband cut the ragged line down Nehir’s chin and throat. Kadir, only fourteen at