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  “Hi, honey,” she said with mock lust, her mouth inches away from April’s face. Long black hairs stuck out from the top of her shirt and crawled up the sides of her neck and throat. Acne pustules pockmarked her skin. The steroids made her breath stink. “Nice to see you again.”

  She squeezed hard. Stabbing pains shot through April’s guts. Lifting her left foot high, she tried to stomp on Jaz’s thigh to snap her femur, but Jaz just held her closer, pinning her fast, outweighing and outmuscling her.

  Above their heads the wounded Mi-25 swung around as slugs from the A109’s cannons spanged off its heavy fuselage armor. The air roared with sound.

  Dropping her chin as far as she could, April snapped her head back, the back of her skull connecting with Jaz’s forehead, making a sound like a mallet smacking on wood.

  But her captor just laughed. “Nice try, honey. You’re going to have to do better than that.” Then, with a savage grin, she drew her lips back in a savage grin and bared her teeth, thrusting her spiked head toward April’s jugular vein, her incisors gleaming.

  With a snarl, Skarda shoved himself to his full height, leaping at Jaz just as the Mi-25 launched two rockets at the oncoming A109, both targeting the engine compartment.

  The Italian chopper blew apart in a sheet of flame.

  The shockwave of the blast knocked him to the ground.

  Jaz jerked her head around. Her cat’s eyes widened. A storm of fiery debris was streaking toward them, followed by the smoke-shrouded hulk of the Italian chopper.

  Giving April a vicious shove, Jaz bolted away, sprinting for the barricade of parked cars.

  Skarda jumped to his feet, grabbing April before she fell.

  “Go! Go!” she shouted.

  They ran—

  A lethal rain of fiery metal fragments stormed all around them. Flaming aviation fuel spattered Skarda’s back, setting his shirt on fire. Something hot scoured the flesh on his right arm, then on his thighs and calves.

  He cried out in pain—

  The A109 hurtled toward the ground—

  As he and April dived for the protection of a parked Renault, he could feel the scorching wind rush of the falling helicopter as it plummeted toward the asphalt behind him. Out of the corner of his vision he saw Flinders, the Tablet clutched against her chest, running for her life in the opposite direction.

  With a monstrous crash the chopper’s fuselage slammed into the minivan, tearing it to pieces, the combined wreckage screeching over the street in a wall of white-hot flame, spraying burning fuel and sizzling metal. The tail boom snapped off and cartwheeled away, the three rotors whirling through the air to slice through parked cars. Aviation fuel ignited, mingling with the gasoline gushing from ruptured tanks. A twisting tongue of fire and smoke shot skyward, booming out a convulsion of compressed air that hit Skarda like a tidal wave of sound.

  Seconds later it was all over. His back to the asphalt, Skarda smothered out his burning shirt. But the stench of oily smoke and burning fuel still singed his nostrils. Helping April up, he scrambled to his feet. The A109 was a black, twisted hulk of metal, consumed by a towering holocaust of flames.

  The stricken Mi-25 had disappeared

  Flinders!

  Darting out from the protection of the Renault, he caught a glimpse of her about thirty feet away, lying face-down with her arms flung out in front of her. Patches of flaming fuel burned on the back of her shirt and her pants.

  Racing to her, he beat out the fires with his bare hands. A knot constricted the back of his throat. He thrust his ear next to her face, hearing her breathing coming in ragged gasps.

  Carefully he turned her over. Her sapphire eyes blinked, then focused on him with a start. She shrank back from his touch.

  “It’s just me,” he said, showing her a smile. Relief washed over him. Next to her mouth a bruised lump was burning an angry red..

  Blinking again, she stared at him as if she were seeing his face for the first time. Then tears broke and rolled down her cheeks. “She hit me!” Her fingers passed gingerly over the swelling bruise and looked at them as if she expected to see blood.

  Suddenly her face was heavy with fatigue. “She took it,” she said.

  “The Tablet?”

  She nodded, the tears springing up again.

  “Not good,” April said behind him. It was a flat statement, spoken with no emotion, no blame. Things were just the way they were.

  Hearing Flinders’ words, Skarda’s heart sank. They’d had the Tablet in their grasp, but now it was gone.

  Flinders turned her tear-streaked face up at him. “They’re going to do it, aren’t they? They’re going to blow up the Arctic Ocean.”

  With grim finality, he nodded.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Rome, Italy

  A lowering sun was casting long shadows across the Spanish Steps and the Via Veneto when Skarda, April, and Flinders sat on the terrace of their suite at the Hotel Eden, enjoying a meal of tagliatelle with walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, and olives in heavy cream, plus prosciutto di Parma and a big pizza rustica.From their table, past a dense grove of umbrella pines and the twin towers of the Trinità del Monti, they had a commanding view of St. Peter’s Square and the Basilica. By now the police had disappeared, but the recent destruction had attracted mobs of tourists and locals who were thronging the Piazza to gawk at the wreckage of the helicopter and the still-smoking hole in the Dome.

  At first a pall of depression at losing the Tablet had settled over all of them. But it had finally been Flinders who’d laughed and stated the obvious, remembering that Skarda had snapped photos of the artifact with his Stealth. So she’d spent the majority of the afternoon in her suite, working on the translation of the antediluvian language system.

  Now Skarda refilled her glass from the bottle of Giacomo Conterno Barolo in front of him, taking in her freshly-scrubbed skin, tight jeans, and red tunic blouse. Earlier, she and April had spent several hours shopping for much-needed new clothes on the Via dei Condotti and the Via del Corso.

  From his male perspective, he was glad that they had.

  Sipping her wine, Flinders opened her laptop. “Well,” she began. “The good news is, I’ve translated the text of the Tablet.”

  Skarda felt his pulse quicken, but he cocked an apprehensive eyebrow. “Uh-oh. And the bad news…?”

  A frustrated sigh blew past her lips. “The bad news is, it reads just as tradition says it should. Supposedly the earliest translation of the Tablet is in an Arabic book known as Kitab Balaniyus al-Hakim fi'l-`Ilal, meaning the ‘Book of Balinas the Wise on the Causes’, written about 650 CE. Balinas may or may not have been later known as Apollonius of Tyana, a first-century Palestinian healer and magician. Other sources are an eighth-century Arabic book called Kitab Sirr al Asar,and another text composed by the alchemist Jabir Hayyan around 800 CE. But the translation may have reached Europe in the twelfth century in the Secretum Secretorum, a pseudo-Aristotelian work which was itself a translation of the Kitab Sirr al Asar. There have been many translations of the text into English, but I’ll quote for you Sir Isaac Newton’s 1680 version:

  “‘Tis true without lying, certain and most true. That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing. And as all things have been & arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the Earth its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth. Seperate thou the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the earth to the heaven and again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force. For it vanquishes every subtile thing and penetrate
s every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations whereof the means (or process) is here in this. Hence I am called Thoth, having the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.’”

  Baffled, Skarda twirled his fork around a snake’s nest of pasta. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So what does it mean?” April asked.

  Flinders laughed out loud. “Beats me! I guess you have to be an alchemist!”

  He shook his head in frustration. “There’s nothing in there that sounds like a map or a specific location.”

  April made a low sound in her throat and said, “Great.”

  “Well, that was the bad news,” Flinders told them, smiling. “Now here’s some more good news. Maybe.” She tapped a key, then turned the laptop around so they could see the monitor. On the screen was Skarda’s photo of the Tablet. “Look at this.” She tapped one of the glyphs with her finger. “And this one.” Another tap.

  Skarda peered at the screen, mystified. He shook his head. “Explain.”

  “There are a number of glyphs here that are formed very oddly—not at all like they should be. It has to be deliberate.” Picking up a pencil, she began to draw on a sheet of paper. “Look at this series of strokes attached to this glyph. Those marks aren’t serifs and they aren’t diacritical. They shouldn’t be there. But doesn’t the whole form resemble the alchemical symbol for fire?”

  Both Skarda and April peered at the screen. “Yeah…it does!” he said.

  Flinders’ eyes lit up. “Now look here…here…here…and here.” She pointed out four more geometrical shapes attached to letters within the body of the text. “If you’ll look, these five symbols form a pentagram, starting at the top of the text and ending at the bottom. It’s an ancient symbol representing unity, wholeness, and protection.” She drew the shape of the pentagram on the paper. “Classically it’s a five-pointed star, with each tip showing the symbol that represents one of the four primal elements: air and water on the top arms, left to right, and earth and fire on the bottom arms. The fifth arm, the tip, symbolizes spirit.”

  April leaned forward, studying the monitor. Then she pointed at the top left and right arms on Flinders’ drawing. “But these two tips on the top half have the same symbol.”

  “Right!” Flinders said. “They’re both fire. And look—see the tip of the top triangle—the triangle with the line through it? That’s the symbol for air. I take it to mean the sky, or up.”

  “Or north?” Skarda asked.

  “Maybe!” Excitement animated her voice. “So we have air on top, fire on the two points under it. And then here, the lower tip on the left is earth and the one on the right is water.”

  Skarda traced a finger over the pentagram shape on the Tablet. “What are these?” He was pointing at faint letters, smaller than the rest of the text, below the bottom arms of the pentagram.

  She shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know. They’re not part of the main text. The words translate to ‘marching soldiers’. Whatever that means.”

  His face changed with a new thought. Getting up, he crossed to the railing of the terrace and stared out over the city. The sky was gilded green and gold, the horizon littered with purple stratus clouds, their edges flushed rosy-pink by the dying sun. Golden light glinted off the broken dome of St. Peter’s.

  Suddenly he laughed out loud. He snapped his fingers and swung around. “We’re looking for a map, right?”

  For a brief moment Flinders frowned, staring at him, then realization hit her like a blow. She stared at him as if she were reading his mind. “Yeah…a map!”

  Watching them, April suddenly grinned. “The symbols…” she said. “They’re points on a map!”

  “Right,” he acknowledged. “But it still leaves us in the dark. The world’s a big place. Where do we start?”

  “Well, here’s goes another long shot,” Flinders said, her voice quickening. “We know that Alexander took the Tablet with him on his conquests. What if he himself figured out the pentagram symbols, just like we did—only he knew where to look on the map? And what if he used the information to find the source of the isomer ore? There’s another story that a youth named Balinas found the Tablet hidden in a cave in Tyana, in Cappadocia—the same Balinas referred to in the Kitab Balaniyus al-Hakim fi'l-`Ilal translation. But what if it wasn’t the actual Tablet that he found, which we now know Alexander carried with him until he died, but instead was the place where the Atlanteans mined the isomer?”

  Skarda grinned, getting caught up in her enthusiasm. “Where is Cappadocia?”

  “In modern-day Turkey.”

  “Which borders the Black Sea,” April said.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” he said. “We need a map.”

  ___

  Ten minutes later Skarda spread out the map of Turkey he’d had brought up from a tourist shop in the hotel lobby. Beside him, Flinders studied the topography of the central Anatolian plateau.

  “Okay…” she said. “Here’s Nigde, and just to the south is Kemerhisar, where the ruins of Tyana are, about three miles south of town. The problem is, the entire area is riddled with caves and underground caverns. So how do we fit the pentagram to locate the right spot?”

  He frowned in concentration. “And what’s our scale? The size of the pentagram could be small or it could be huge.”

  April leaned forward, tapping a finger on two points on the map. “What are these?” She was looking at what were clearly mountains, at an equal distance east and west of an imaginary line running straight north of Tyana.

  “That’s Mt. Erciyes and Mt. Hasan. Mt. Erciyes is the highest mountain in central Anatolia. They’re extinct volcanoes.”

  Skarda straightened, exchanging a glance with April.

  Flinders looked up, catching their expressions. Then her jaw dropped. “Fire!”

  Laying a square of acetate over the map, Skarda sketched in the symbols for fire over the two volcanoes. “Okay. Now we have the scale,” he said. Quickly he sketched in the shape of a pentagram with thirty-six degree angles, then positioned the acetate again. “Okay…we have ‘Air’ at the top, meaning up or north. Then fire for the volcanoes. Then here at the bottom is ‘Earth’. What can that be?”

  “Maybe some kind of natural hill?” April suggested.

  “Could be. A commonly-known landmark maybe. And the last symbol is ‘water’. But there’s no water there.”

  “Maybe a well?” Flinders said. “Or a dried-up river?”

  Skarda nodded. “Okay...then where is the isomer?” He jabbed his finger at the map. “I’ll bet it’s right here. Right at the center of the pentagram.”

  Flinders peered. “It looks like it’s straight north of the ruins of Tyana.”

  “What about the ‘marching soldiers’?” April asked.

  He turned to her and grinned. “Maybe we’ll find out when we get there.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Cappadocia, Turkey

  IT was early in the morning when they took an Alitalia flight from Rome to Instanbul’s Ataturk Airport where Skarda haggled with a dealer to buy a used Land Rover for cash with no paperwork. Through one of OSR’s contacts, April tracked down an ex-pat Army sergeant in the city who was running a profitable business selling surplus weapons. She filled the trunk with a case containing a stripped-down Steyr AUG-CSL assault rifle, an RPG-76 Komar grenade launcher, a Glock 9mm pistol, and a dual-sheath chest rig for carrying twin Fusion Fulcrum throwing knives. Now, almost four hundred miles east of Istanbul and the dazzling blue waters of the Aegean they were driving through an ochre-colored, flat plateau of volcanic tufa scarred by the folds of deep valleys and vast ravines that from their far vantage point looked like waves frozen in time. In the distance, undulating folded mountains coruscated with the colors of amber, rose, and gold in the shifting light, backed by the serrated, snow-capped Ala Daglar range, its peaks
muted blue and hazy by atmospheric perspective.

  To Skarda, the landscape looked surreal, like driving across the surface of the moon. Millions of years of wind and rain had eroded the soft tufa into multi-colored, conelike shapes and phallic-looking obelisks capped with black basalt hoods. Some rose as high as one hundred feet above the plain.

  “They’re called peri bacalari,” Flinders said, pointing at a cluster of rock formations that looked like a grove of giant mushrooms. “Fairy chimneys. People have actually hollowed them out and lived in them in the past. Whole cities, even. They still use them as storerooms for grapes, lemons, and potatoes.”