Dawn Minus Eleven Hours
Conrad zipped up aunacom weapons inspector’s uniform and grimly noted theCAPT. HASSEIN tag over his left breast pocket. Yeats had a couple of these uniforms, sans bodies. Conrad could only guess how he had obtained them. He looked around the chamber Yeats had brought them to. It was stockpiled with computer equipment, M-16s, and explosives.
Conrad asked, “What is this place?”
“A weapons cache I found.” Yeats was busy stashing bricks of C-4 plastique into a backpack. “I ended up down here after you flushed me down that shaft in P4 like a piece of shit. Crawled out, got my bearings, and got to work hauling whatever I could find.”
“And this cache wasn’t guarded by those goons outside?”
“No goons,” Yeats said. “Not anymore.”
Yeats’s survival instincts were astounding even to Conrad, who had already fought hard to stay alive himself in the last several hours. How in the world did he survive that fall? Conrad wondered. He didn’t know whether to give his father a medal or a kick in the groin. The man had yet to express relief at seeing his only son alive, nor had he uttered another word about his origins.
“How do you know all this won’t get flushed away again?”
“I don’t.” Yeats checked the timers for the C-4. “But this alcove is separated from the corridors below. Anyway, we won’t be sticking around much longer.”
“So I see.” Conrad eyed the bulging pack of C-4 that Yeats slung over his shoulder. “So you know who these guys are?”
“I trained their leader, Colonel Zawas.”
Conrad stared at Yeats. “You trained him?”
“At the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs under a U.S.-Egyptian military exchange program in the late eighties,” Yeats said. “Came in handy a few years later during the Allied bombing of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. An Arab pilot taking out two Iraqi jets proved to be priceless PR and legitimized the bombing campaign as a multinational effort.”
“So that’s what you taught him to do-kill other Arabs?”
“In my dreams,” Yeats said. “No, I trained him in the Decisive Force school of warfare. The idea is to use overwhelming force to either annihilate an enemy or intimidate him into surrender.”
“So the U.N. weapons inspection team was only a cover?” Conrad asked.
Yeats nodded. “Obviously, Zawas stacked the team with his own men. Probably offed the other internationals and plans to say we did it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he put the Russians on us back at P4 and was just waiting for us to do all the hard work.”
Conrad said, “So you’re saying Zawas came with friends.”
“And firepower,” Yeats said. “In the real world, a few terrorists are no match against the world’s lone superpower. But Antarctica is a different theater of war. It doesn’t take much to overwhelm a small team of Americans on an otherwise empty continent.”
“Well, his lieutenant killed your dog and abducted Serena.”
Conrad could see the veins in Yeats’s neck bulge. “So where’s the obelisk?”
Conrad said nothing.
Yeats shot him one of those rare, withering glares that used to make Conrad crumble as a boy. “Goddamn it. Are you telling me that Zawas not only shot my dog but also has the Scepter of Osiris?”
“No, I said he has Serena.”
“Same difference. Open your eyes. You heard Ms. Save-the-Earth back at P4. The Scepter of Osiris belongs in the Shrine of the First Sun. That’s where she’s going to lead Zawas.”
“You’re selling her short.”
“You’re thinking with the wrong head,” Yeats said. “Our mission is to deny Zawas any advanced weapon or alien technology that could shift the world’s balance of power. Asymmetrical force. Got that? Burn it into your brain.”
“Gee, and I thought we were going to settle who I am and where I really came from, Dad,” Conrad shot back.
Yeats paused, and Conrad could practically hear the whir of the hard drive behind Yeats’s eyes as his father searched for an appropriate response.
“We do that by beating Zawas to the Shrine of the First Sun and setting a trap for him if and when Serena finally leads him there.” Yeats patted his pack full of C-4 and moved on as if he had disclosed everything. “The problem, of course, is going to be finding it without them finding us first. Which is about the time between now and when Zawas discovers that several of his men are missing. They control the skies and everything on the surface. We’re going to have to stay underground until dark.”
“We’ll need the stars, anyway,” Conrad said, pulling out his handheld device with the images of the obelisk he had captured. “Because the scepter instructs the would-be sun king to put heaven and earth together. Only then will the ‘Shining One’ reveal the location of the Shrine of the First Sun.”
“Serena never said that.”
“I know,” Conrad said. “The scepter did.”
“I thought you couldn’t read the inscriptions.”
“Let’s just say some things are feeling a little more familiar.”
“So you believe me now?” Yeats asked. “About finding you in the capsule and everything?”
“I’ll never believe everything you tell me,” Conrad said. “And I reserve judgment on some things. But this inscription beneath the four constellations on one side of the obelisk is almost identical to the inscription Serena read for us.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The inscription Serena read to us warns against removing the scepter unless you’re the most worthy, according to the Shining Ones, or else you’ll tear Heaven and Earth apart,” Conrad said.
“Which seems to be happening right now,” Yeats said.
“So it seems,” Conrad said. “But this inscription under the four zodiac signs tells the would-be Sun King how to find the Shrine of the First Sun with the help of a Shining One and bring Heaven and Earth together again.”
“And what on earth is the Shining One?” Yeats asked.
“It’s not of this earth. It’s probably some kind of astronomical phenomenon. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Hot damn, Conrad, looks like you really are the Sun King.” Yeats slapped him on the back for the first time in years, and Conrad couldn’t deny it felt good. “But where exactly are we supposed to consult this Shining One? There are millions of stars out there.”
Conrad said, “We’ll follow the map on the scepter.”
“What map?”
“The four constellations.” Conrad showed Yeats the 360-degree digital scan he had taken of the obelisk. “See? The zodiac signs of Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius.”
Yeats looked at the image. “So?”
Conrad tapped his device. “So if this city is astronomically aligned, then maybe these celestial coordinates might have terrestrial counterparts.”
“Maybe?” Yeats said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“We already know P4 is aligned with the middle belt star of Orion, Al Nitak,” Conrad said, and Yeats nodded. “In the same way we might find strategically positioned shrines in the city that are aligned to Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius.”
Yeats furrowed his brow. “Meaning we follow the pavilions or temples that correspond to these signs like some kind of heavenly treasure trail?”
“Exactly.”
“So these celestial markers will lead us to Aquarius,” Yeats said. “And then we find its terrestrial double.”
“That’s right,” said Conrad. “It’s dusk outside now. Soon the stars will be out. They’ll serve as our map and lead us to some kind of monument dedicated to the Water Bearer. That’s where the Shining One will be, to lead us to the Shrine of the First Sun.”
Yeats nodded. “And everything we’ve spent our lives searching for.”