T A R G E T   E I G H T E E N

(THE SPY GAME—BOOK 18)

J A C K   M A R S

Jack Mars

USA Today and #1 bestselling author Jack Mars is the author of numerous thriller series, including Luke Stone, Troy Stark, Spy Game, and Jake Mercer series. Jack’s latest releases are the Lara King, Grant Valor, and Axel Strike series.

Please visit jackmarsauthor.com to learn more, join the email list, receive free books, and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2025 by Jack Mars. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Bruno Passigatti, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

SERIES BY JACK MARS

AXEL STRIKE

GRANT VALOR

LARA KING

TYLER WOLF

JAKE MERCER

THE SPY GAME

TROY STARK

LUKE STONE

THE FORGING OF LUKE STONE

AGENT ZERO

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Lance sat on the front steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. A few others loitered, waiting for the doors to open.

He checked his phone. A timer read seventy seconds left. Once that timer reached zero, a lot of things would happen very quickly. One more thing would need to happen almost as quickly, or the mission would be forfeit, and God only knew when they would get another chance.

Forty seconds. Lance sent a text to the driver of a 2009 Chevrolet Express van parked two miles away.

Twenty seconds. Lance got to his feet and faced the street. The direction of his gaze was mostly for safety. The charges had been shaped to minimize the risk of glass flying outward, but it never hurt to exercise an abundance of caution.

Three seconds. Two. One.

The doors exploded from the bottom upward. Glass and steel ballooned upward, then sprinkled downward, but very little landed farther than six feet from the door. The safety measures had worked.

More explosions radiated in both directions along the building, but Lance didn’t wait for them. While the small crowd of people outside of the building panicked and the staff inside of the building froze in shock, Lance entered the opening where the doors had once stood.

The Great Hall was filled with smoke and shouting. Lance walked calmly, trusting the smoke and the confusion to hide enough of his appearance to prevent anyone from realizing he wasn’t supposed to be here. He turned right and exited the Great Hall into the corridor that led through the ancient Near East exhibits to the Egyptian art gallery to the far right of the building.

A few more explosions went off as he walked. These were mostly hexachloroethane mixed with zinc oxide and aluminum and were intended to obscure the vision of any staff present in the building. Lance donned a pair of sunglasses that would protect his eyes from the smoke and provide some assistance to his vision.

He heard screaming and saw a silhouette of a woman run past to his left. She didn’t see him.

Alarms sounded, and sprinklers went off. Lance ignored them. He had a change of clothes in the van, and the water would do little to stop the smoke obscuring the air.

He reached the Egyptian art gallery and entered room 127, the room currently displaying the artifact his employer required. As soon as he entered the room, a series of explosions in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing ensured that the attention of any security officers or staff brave enough to investigate the emergency was pulled to the opposite side of the museum.

He pulled a handheld fan from a clip on his belt and approached a display case on the right side of the room. He pulled a penlight from a pocket on his left side and shone it through the case while using the fan to move enough of the smoke away to see what the light illuminated. The case was made of a glare-resistant polycarbonate compound that diffused the light rather than reflecting it, allowing him to illuminate the interior of the case just enough to see inside.

When he found what he was looking for, he replaced the fan and retrieved a glass cutting knife. He cut a circle through the polycarbonate below the artifact he wanted. He pushed the circle of glass through, retrieved the amulet, and quickly placed it in a padded envelope. He sealed the envelope, placed it in a pocket sewn into the inside of his jacket, then put the cutting knife and penlight back in their respective pockets.

He left the room and proceeded through the Temple of Dendur. The temple was empty, as was the room beyond. The series of explosions in the Rockefeller Wing had distracted security.

He left the Temple of Dendur and turned left. He walked for ten yards, then turned right into the American Wing. The smoke was starting to thin out here, but that was all right. He would be outside long before anyone returned to this area, and if the security cameras picked him up, they wouldn’t see him well enough to pick apart his features.

He entered the American Wing Café, then exited the Met through the hole in the wall left by the most powerful of the explosions to be set. He proceeded down the footpath toward East Drive. He glanced left and confirmed that the van was approaching.

Behind him, a final series of explosions created more smoke and more loud noises but very little in the way of actual damage. It was important to his employers that as few casualties as possible occur during the theft. There would be a time for casualties, but today was not that time.

He reached East Drive one minute after leaving the Met. The van reached his location twelve seconds later. It came to a stop just long enough for the side door to open and Lance to enter. The man in the back of the van closed the door behind Lance, and the van accelerated smoothly away.

The van continued on East Drive for one kilometer before exiting Central Park onto Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and continuing north. Lance sat on the bench seat and fastened his seatbelt, then removed the envelope. The other man in the back of the van extended an opened briefcase with a padded interior and a lead inner lining. Lance carefully placed the envelope into the briefcase. The other man closed the briefcase, and Lance locked it. The other man handed Lance the briefcase, then took his own seat across from Lance.

Lance took a deep breath and released it with a satisfactory sigh. Flashing lights shone through the windshield as emergency vehicles raced to the museum to address the ongoing—as far as they knew—terrorist attack.

The van turned left onto Harlem River Drive. A quarter mile later, it entered the I-95 South. It crossed the George Washington Bridge, and after traveling just over another mile, it took the I-80 east junction and left the New York Metropolitan Area.

CHAPTER ONE

Dr. Jana Peters scanned the document and frowned. There was far less here than she hoped there would be. There was enough to convince her, and probably enough to convince Jacob, her father, and possibly Tyler Wallace as well.

But there wasn’t enough to convince the world. There wasn’t so much that the Antiquities Division couldn’t easily explain their way out of it.

“That’s a lot more than I thought we’d find.”

Jana smiled slightly. Of course, Jacob would come to a completely different conclusion than she did. "It's enough to show us that the Division is altering historical records, but it's not enough to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt."

Her fiancé and partner, Jacob Snow—former CIA agent and now against his will Antiquities Division agent—frowned. “Whose doubt?”

“The public’s,” Jana replied. “It’s all related to ancient Greece during the time of the Peloponnesian wars, and not much of it is meaningful at face value.”

“Well, it’s enough to make me believe.”

“That’s wonderful, Jacob, but if the public doesn’t believe all of this, then what does it matter?”

“Were you planning to tell the public?”

Jana frowned. “Well, yeah. Weren’t you?”

Jacob didn’t reply right away. Jana turned to him to see a pensive frown on his face. “I mean… That’s not so simple a question.”

Jana sighed. She and Jacob didn’t quite see eye to eye on the Division’s manipulation of history. Jacob argued that in light of the threats the world faced from various terrorist organizations intending to use the secrets of the past to perpetrate terrorism, it was perfectly acceptable for the Division to decide to withhold certain pertinent information and artifacts in the interests of world peace and safety.

Jana argued that it was never acceptable for any reason to change the past or hide the truth. She believed that if the world was going to be truly safe, then people need to understand what it was really like. For the moment, they were in agreement that the Division’s power was too great and its actions gone too far, but Jana still had doubts that Jacob was as committed to putting a stop to the Division as he should be.

Still, considering the threat the Division posed, Jacob had a point. Maybe they needed to think carefully before they exposed the Division and, by extension, exposed themselves to the Division.

“I want them to stop being able to decide what history should look like,” Jana said, “But yes, maybe we need more information before we decide exactly how we’re going to put a stop to all of this.”

“I’m just worried that the Division might step in and erase this moment of history. If they feel that their very existence is threatened, they might be willing to go a lot farther than they have in the past.”

Jana frowned. That was a good point.

She sighed and closed the document. “Well, it’s a good start. We know now that the Division has been altering the historical record for at least a thousand years. We know they’ve altered events at least as far in the past as fifteen hundred years before that. We can safely assume that they’ve done a lot more than we can see and are still doing a lot more than we can see.”

"The question is, where do we go from here?" Jacob remarked.

The two of them fell silent for a while. “But… We do have to go public at some point, Jacob.”

Jacob sighed and started pacing the room. Jana lowered her eyes and pursed her lips.

“I get it, Jana,” he said. “I know how important history is to you.”

“History is important to everyone,” Jana said, not quite gently.

“I know,” he insisted. “But you and I both know how damaging certain aspects of history can be.”

“Those aspects of history are damaging precisely because they’re hidden. The people who are aware of the truth have an advantage over the rest of the world because the rest of the world lives in the dark.”

“Well, the world’s in the dark about the location of the United States’ nuclear arsenal too,” Jacob countered. “I would argue that they should remain unaware of that information.”

“That’s not a fair analogy,” Jana said, getting to her feet and facing him. “We’re not talking about the Division hiding the location of nuclear weapons. We’re talking about them hiding the fact that nuclear weapons exist in the first place. If the general public didn’t know about nuclear weapons, then you wouldn’t have things like a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and international watchdogs designed to make sure that nuclear weapons aren’t stockpiled in every nation on Earth and used in every conflict from border disputes to all-out wars.”

"So we should just go tell everyone about the pre-Ice Age culture? We should host an archaeological forum where we discuss the Mayan storm-making machine and the Turkic seismic bombs, the Sphere of Archimedes that can siphon energy from celestial events. Should we give everyone blueprints for the Staves of Ra and formulas for Apollo's Breath and the Medusa Agent?"

“Why does it have to be all or nothing?” Jana cried. “Why can’t people know that this technology existed, know the danger it represents and choose to study it for ways to apply it in a way that benefits humanity?”

“Because not everyone wants to benefit humanity!”

“And the Division does?”

Jacob sighed and looked away. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t think so for a long time, but… I don’t know, Jana. We’ve worked with the Division a lot, and they have yet to threaten the freedom of all humanity. They have, on the other hand, helped us secure the freedom of all humanity on numerous occasions. They’ve helped us defeat terrorists and stop megalomaniacs. They’ve prevented the use of a lot of the weapons they’ve hidden.”

“They’re not all weapons.”

“They are when a billionaire wants to use them to collapse the Western Seaboard.” Jacob sighed. “Look, I agree that the Division’s gone too far. Absolutely. But I think we need to consider the alternative before we decide we’re going to go to war with them.”

“What’s the alternative? They decide what we get to know and don’t know?”

Jacob frowned and looked down at his feet. He took a deep breath, then lifted his gaze. “Maybe I’m just more used to this kind of thing than you are.”

Jana’s eyes narrowed. “Used to what?”

“To the need to control information. That’s a lot of what the CIA does.”

“I thought the CIA fought to obtain information that other people tried to hide.”

Jacob rolled his eyes. “Well, yes, but they also have to decide who gets to know the information we obtain. Very little of what the CIA learns gets told to anyone outside of the Agency. Hell, most of it is only shared between a few people within the Agency. The fact is that most of the information we deal with is not appropriate for the wider public.”

“We’re not talking about military secrets, Jacob. We’re talking about archaeological records.”

“Well, some of those archaeological records can make hurricanes. I’d much rather that the general public not know that there’s a machine that can lob tornadoes at people or turn the Amazon into the Sahara.”

“You can’t paint it with a broad brush, though!” she protested. “This is our history, Jacob! This is human history! This is who we are!”

“It’s not who we are! Come on, Jana. Do you really think that the fact that the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun is an important part of who we are as a race?”

“You can’t treat everything like it’s separate. I’m not saying that we need to be animists and worship priest-kings, but knowing the myths that informed the creation of the first civilizations, understanding those myths, knowing how different cultures addressed different societal problems, made sense of the world around them and tried to build a way of life based on their best knowledge of themselves, their forebears and the world they lived in… that all matters. Humans are human because we have culture history, and a legacy. We need that to build on so we can inform the next generation."

“We need all of it? Every single piece of it? The Staves of Ra are necessary for us to build better computers?”

“Stop… reducing everything to its component parts!”

“Well, stop acting like everything is important just because it exists.”

“But…” She looked away without finishing. She was going to say, But it is. Damn it, it is.

That was the difference between them. She was a scientist, he was a spy. True, she had been a CIA agent too, but first and foremost, she was an archaeologist. She absolutely believed that all knowledge was sacred and crucial to the tapestry of humanity. He saw knowledge as a weapon. He was trained to look at information and think about what damage it could do in the wrong hands. She was trained to look at information as a chance to deepen humanity’s understanding of itself.

Maybe they couldn’t see eye to eye on this. Maybe learning that the Division was altering history exposed a fundamental difference in the way they each saw the world. Maybe they would never bridge that gap.

Jana’s phone rang. When she saw the number, her eyes narrowed. Jacob looked at the phone, then looked at her. “Should we answer that?”

She sighed. “You know we have to.”

“I know. I was just… I mean, it’s your phone.”

Jana sighed and answered her phone. “Hello?”

“Good morning, Jana,” the smooth, sinuously pleasant voice of the Curator replied. “Is Jacob with you?”

“He’s here,” Jana said curtly.

She set the phone on the table and pressed the speaker button. “I’m here,” Jacob said.

“Good. I need the two of you to fly to New York right away.”

Jana frowned. “What’s in New York?”

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Approximately thirty minutes ago, there was a series of explosions at the museum. The Antiquities Division believes that this attack could be related to archaeological terrorism.”

“What makes you say that?” Jana challenged.

“We don’t have concrete evidence yet,” the Curator admitted, “but the nature of the attack suggests parallels to previous museum assaults that have proven to be related to matters concerning the Division. You two will examine the scene and decide if that is the case this time or if this is a matter that is best left in the hands of civilian law enforcement.”

Jana and Jacob shared a look. “We’re usually the guys who come in after that decision has been made,” Jacob said. “Any reason why that’s changed in this case?”

“I trust your judgment,” the Curator replied simply.

Jacob lifted an eyebrow at Jana. She frowned and looked away. “We’ll take a look,” she told the Curator.

“Thank you. Please contact me as soon as you have an answer.”

He hung up, and Jana pointedly avoided Jacob’s stare as she dressed and packed a suitcase.

“That’s a good sign, right?” Jacob said. “Now we get to decide what to do about this.”

Jana pressed her lips firmly together. “If the Curator actually keeps his promise, then yes, this is a good thing.”

“Well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?”

Jana lifted her gaze to his. His expression gave her a flicker of encouragement. He smiled softly and reminded her, “We’re still on the same side, Jana.”

She returned his smile, then crossed the room and kissed him softly. “Yes. We are.”

She purchased two nonstop tickets to New York and ensured a rental car would be waiting for them when they landed. They had a lot to work through about how they should handle the Division, but for the moment, at least, she was reassured that they would figure it out together.

CHAPTER TWO

Jacob pulled the rental car to the curb just behind a police cruiser. A small crowd of people still stood around the police cordon despite the fact that the attack was now over six hours old. News vehicles were parked in a half-circle beyond the police vehicles. Jacob counted nine different reporters broadcasting as their cameras panned over the Met building.

"Doesn't look too bad," Jana said as they approached the cordon. "The front doors are gone, and the windows of the Rockefeller Wing are blown out, but I don't see any fire damage, at least on the outside."

A police officer lifted his hand and said firmly, “Sorry folks. You’ll have to cross the street. This side’s blocked off.”

Jacob pulled an FBI ID from his vest and showed it to the officer. “Special Agent Ryan Farrow. This is my partner, Special Agent Debra Smith.”

The officer’s eyes widened. “Ah. Figured you guys would show up eventually. Hold on. I’ll let my boss know you’re here.”

He said something into his radio, waited for the answering transmission to finish, then said, “Copy. All right, you two are good. Captain Kennedy’s running this for the moment, but it’s probably going to go all the way up to the chief.”

Jacob didn’t particularly care who in NYPD was running the show, but the FBI would, so he said, “Thank you, officer.”

They approached the entry to the building, keeping as far from the press as possible to avoid being accosted and asked to comment about the case. When they reached the door—or what used to be the door, Jacob saw no blood.

“Now that’s interesting.”

“No blood,” Jana remarked.

“Exactly. The doors were pulverized almost into dust, but there’s no blood despite the fact that the explosion was powerful and news reports say that there were almost thirty people waiting on the steps for the doors to open.”

“What does that tell you?”

“Shaped charges,” Jacob replied. “I’m guessing placed on the bottom and shaped so the energy was released directly vertical.”

He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shined it along the top of the door frame. Glass splinters sparkled in the light. “Yep. Check it out.”

Jana followed his light and nodded. "Okay. So they wanted the doors gone, but they wanted to avoid hurting anyone."

"Exactly. That's why they used such a powerful explosion, too. They wanted to make the glass as small as possible and embed most of it into the frame. Anything that fell back down would have transferred most of its kinetic energy upon impact with the door."

“Clever.”

“Indeed.”

They walked inside. A fine coat of dust covered everything. Jacob recognized the color and odor of the dust immediately.

“Zinc oxide and aluminum. Smoke bombs.”

Jana raised an eyebrow. “Could smoke bombs do this kind of damage?”

“No. I’m thinking thermite or something similar for the damage. The smoke bombs would serve a dual purpose of making the damage seem worse than it was and hiding the movement of whoever entered after the explosion occurred.”

“You’re sure someone entered?”

Jacob pointed at a set of footprints that led out of the Great Hall toward the former Sackler Wing to the right of the building. Jana nodded. “Got it. So we have a thief.”

“Looks that way. Let’s see what he stole.”

The two of them continued down the hallway. The first collection they came to was the ancient Near East gallery. The footprints moved through each room but didn’t stop at any of the displays. Jacob saw another pair of footprints moving in the opposite direction. Their erratic pattern suggested fear to Jacob, while those he and Jana were following suggested a controlled and calm march.

The footprints led to the Ancient Egyptian gallery, turning into Room 127. The dust here was much thicker than in the ancient Near East gallery, and the footprints were covered to the point that they were indeterminate.

There was no confusion about where their thief went, though. One of the display cases to the right of the room had a six-inch diameter sphere of glass cut away and pushed through the case.

Jana pulled her flashlight from her pocket as they approached the case. “Looks like Item 223 was taken.”

“What’s Item 223?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to look at the catalog and see.”

“You’re sure nothing else was taken?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Everything else is where it’s supposed to be. I suppose it’s possible that something else was taken and the items rearranged to obfuscate that fact. Take a picture of the case. I can look up all of these item numbers and figure out exactly which one is missing.”

Jacob took pictures with his cell phone while Jana looked around the rest of the room. “That’s the only case that was damaged. It looks like he only needed the one item.”

“This reminds me of the Lesser Key of Solomon,” Jacob said. “Do you remember that debacle?”

“How could I forget? We ended up stuck in a cave-in, and Robert had to come get us out.”

Jacob grinned, remembering how their friend had appeared like an angel and pulled them from the wreckage of an Israeli Defense Force truck. His smile faded when he remembered that they hadn’t seen Robert in almost a year, not since he’d helped them prevent eco-terrorists from using an ancient chemical weapon to kill millions of people. The Curator kept insisting that Robert Bledshaw was working on other assignments, but Jacob and Jana weren’t convinced. Robert was certain that the Division was going to use the ancient technology they’d stockpiled to conquer the world, and they were sure that the Division had eliminated him for that suspicion.

That brought a frown to Jacob’s face. Robert had changed his tune on the Division, eventually insisting that while the Division could be difficult to work with—particularly the Curator—they did far more good than harm and should be allowed to continue their role protecting the more powerful ancient artifacts from the world and vice versa.

Then he had disappeared. All of their attempts to contact him had failed, and when they asked the Curator, they only received the canned answer that he was away on other business.

“It looks like he left this way,” Jana called, pulling Jacob from his thoughts.

He left the room and saw Jana pointing at the footprints, which resumed through another doorway that led perpendicular to the thief’s original path. The two agents followed the prints, which led through a large room with a pool and a replica of an ancient Egyptian shrine.

“The Temple of Dendur,” Jana said, almost reverently. “I remember my father taking me here when I was thirteen years old.”

“Here specifically or the actual Temple of Dendur?”

“Here specifically. This is the Temple of Dendur. It was originally built in Nubia along the Nile River. Caesar Augustus commissioned it in the first century BCE to appease the Nubian people after a military campaign. It was built to honor the goddess Isis as well as two prominent local citizens.”

“Good ol’ propaganda,” Jacob said drily. “It never changes.”

The pair left the temple and followed the footprints to the left. They were barely visible here. The dust from the smoke bombs was much thinner. “Looks like he concentrated most of the smoke on the other side of the museum and in the room he stole from,” Jacob said.

“He wanted everyone’s attention away from him,” Jana replied. “So most of the noise occurred on the other side of the museum.”

“That explains why the Rockefeller Wing is torn to pieces while the former Sackler Wing is relatively undamaged.”

“Well, relatively,” Jana said.

He looked at her to find her staring through the American Wing. He followed her eyes and saw a portion of the museum’s back wall missing.

“Ah. I guess we found his exit.”

Sure enough, the footprints led through the American Wing and the café beyond before exiting onto a footpath. The footprints didn’t continue onto the footpath since there was no dust to leave footprints in. the footpath led across the lawn to East Drive, one of the popular road loops around Central Park.

“I wonder if the locals saw anything out of the ordinary,” Jacob said. “East Drive is technically accessible by automobile, but it’s usually closed to vehicle traffic except for park employees and emergency vehicles.”

“There you are.”

Jacob and Jana turned toward the voice to see a balding man of middle age and average height striding purposefully toward them. He wore the uniform of an NYPD captain and a frown that indicated he was unhappy at being made to chase down his two FBI agents.

He extended a hand when he approached them. “Captain Kennedy. This is my case.”

He looked at them as though daring them to challenge him. They didn’t.

“Looks like the thief made away with one item,” Jana said. “We don’t know what yet, but we’ll need the museum catalog from the curator.”

Kennedy blinked. “Thief?” He chuckled. “Look, I’m sure the museum really wants its stuff back, but we have bigger fish to fry than some thief.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what’s that?”

Kennedy stared at him as though he was insane. “The terrorist attack. You’re kidding, right? You thought this was all about some old piece of pottery?”

“Was it an old piece of pottery that was taken?” Jana asked.

“I have no idea. Nor do I care.” Kennedy was getting irritated now, and his next words made the reason clear. “What I care about is the fact that a terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for this attack and promised that there are more to follow.”

Jacob frowned. “Which terrorist organization?”

“They call themselves the Soldiers of Fortune,” the captain replied. “Here, I’ll play you what they sent us.”

He looked up an audio file on his cell phone and pressed play. A disguised voice said, “Welcome to the era of Fortune. What you’ve seen today is a warning. We were kind enough to deliver this warning without loss of life. We hope it’s clear that we could have chosen to deliver it with great loss of life. Rest assured that the next attack will occur with great loss of life if our demands aren’t met. We will contact you later with those demands. We are the Soldiers of Fortune. Dismiss this warning at your peril.”

The recording ended, and Kennedy stared at them. “So yeah. Couldn’t care less about Tutankhamen’s hairbrush or whatever it is they took from here.”

Jacob frowned and shared a look with Jana. It looked like the Curator was right. Jacob didn’t know who the Soldiers of Fortune were or how legitimate their terrorist threat was, but he knew one thing for sure. They had staged this attack as a coverup for their theft.

Captain Kennedy didn’t need to know that, though. In any case, it was probably better for NYPD to focus on the terrorist threat, just in case the Soldiers of Fortune actually did intend to escalate.

“Thank you, Captain,” Jacob said. “I think we’ve seen enough for the moment. We’ll be in touch.”

Kennedy blinked. “What? You’re joking, right? There’s a terrorist threat to my city, and you two just take a walk-through, then bail?”

“We’ll be contacting our superiors to determine the appropriate level of FBI involvement,” Jacob replied. “In the meantime, the NYPD has a proven track record of stopping terrorist attacks. Bring all of your resources to bear to stop that threat.”

Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. He clearly wasn’t sure if he should trust this development, but he just as clearly wanted this to be an NYPD operation, not a Bureau operation, so after a moment, he nodded. “All right. I’ll do that. How do I contact you?”

“We’ll be in touch,” Jacob promised.

They returned to their car, taking East drive around the Met and following footpaths back to the front of the building. Jana reserved a room at a nearby hotel as Jacob drove away. Enemy or not, it looked like they would be working for the Division for a little while longer.

CHAPTER THREE

Jana frowned and looked at Jacob. He didn't seem any happier than she was. The two of them were in their hotel room in New York, updating the Curator on what they'd learned so far.

“Sir, I understand that it’s best to avoid entanglement with NYPD, but I feel very strongly that we need to take the threat of terrorist action seriously.”

“I feel differently,” the Curator replied simply. “The theft is the more serious threat.”

“We don’t even know what they took yet,” Jana protested. “We know that they threatened to bomb the city.”

“So find out what they took. That should tell you what they intend to do.”

“It kind of feels like they told us what they intend to do,” Jacob pointed out.

"We've encountered situations like this in the past," Jana added. "Whatever they took, they may intend to use as a weapon."

“All the more reason that you should focus on that theft,” the Curator replied. “If this is a conventional terrorist threat, the NYPD is more than equipped to handle it. They’ll have the FBI—the actual FBI—to help them, along with Homeland Security, the National Guard, possibly the CIA… shall I go on?”

Jacob and Jana shared another frown. Jana hated to admit it, but the Curator had a point. The two of them were well-equipped to deal with an archaeological threat. There were others who could handle a conventional threat. “Understood, sir,” she said reluctantly.

“You know we both want the same things, right?” the Curator said, a little pettily. “You know that we both want for the innocents of the world to be safe.”

Jana’s lips thinned. “Of course, sir.”

“Good. I feel sometimes like you two see me as this avaricious ogre who doesn’t mind if the little people die so long as I get my pretty things.”

Jana wasn’t sure what kind of response he was hoping for, so she only said, “We’ll get an answer on the stolen item as soon as possible.”

“Thank you.”

He hung up, and Jana sighed. “Okay. I guess we have our marching orders.”

“I still think we should look at both,” Jacob said. “We need to know what they took, yes, but we also need to know who they are and what they stand for. Knowing about the Medusa agent was good, but we stopped Gaia’s Vengeance by figuring out who they were and determining their next target from their motives.”

“I agree with you, but maybe we need to approach that from the angle of whatever was important enough for them to smoke bomb the Met to steal.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Are you actually agreeing with the Curator?”

She chuckled. “Stranger things have happened. I’m not saying I like him, just that he might have accidentally happened to be right this time around.”

“And I’m not so sure,” Jacob replied. He smiled at her. “We just can’t seem to agree on anything, can we?”

“Well, if you’d stop being stupid.”

He shoved her playfully. “I’m going to pick us up some coneys. See what you can find out about the stolen item.”

“Can I convince you to just call them hot dogs?” she called after him.

“When in Rome,” he called back.

The door to their room closed behind him, and Jana turned back to her computer. She had looked up the Met’s catalog using her credentials as an archaeologist and was now trying to figure out what had been taken.

The problem was that the Met—like many museums and research organizations—had very poor organization when it came to their records. Among the symptoms of that poor organization was a tendency to reuse item numbers. As a museum, the Met generally only kept items it intended to display. Anything not intended for display was either in storage or shipped to a university or archaeological society.

The end result of this was that in the past seven years, there had been thirty-four different Item 223s, and it was difficult to know for sure which was the one currently missing. Jana had to cross-reference the other items in the display case with the different lists to try to determine which 223 was the most recent one.

She finally determined the answer to that question just before Jacob walked into the room. “I’ve been doing some thinking,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I realize now why you thought a coney was the same thing as a hot dog.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m so glad we can have this critically important discussion.”

“Me too. I would have hated to leave you thinking that the two were similar. I mean, they’re similar the way a skateboard and a sports car are similar in that both convey people places, but calling a coney a hot dog is very much like calling a Ferrari a skateboard. But here. I’ll just show you.”

He handed Jana a hot dog and grinned expectantly. She took a bite and nodded. “It’s very good.”

“Uh, yeah, I’m gonna need you to be a little more amazed right now,” Jacob said. “Is that not so good that calling it something so mundane as hot dog is offensive?”

She rolled her eyes again. “It’s a good hot dog, Jacob. Can we please focus?”

He lifted his hands and sighed heavily. “I tried. All right, what do you have for us?”

She showed him the image on her computer screen. “This is the item that was stolen from the Met.”

Jacob leaned forward. “A pendant?”

“The technical term is amulet since this pendant was likely believed to have spiritual significance,” Jana replied. “It would have been worn around the neck or around the wrist with a leather cord passed through the loop here.”

“So a pendant.”

She held up her hot dog. “If this is a coney, then this is an amulet.”

“Fair enough. So you’re admitting that you’re eating a coney?”

She rolled her eyes. “This particular amulet is an eye of Wadjet. It’s a fairly common Egyptian protection symbol, primarily for the upper class: pharaohs, nobles, wealthy merchants, and so forth. The god Bes was most commonly used for middle- and working-class households.”

“Got it. So tell me about Wadjet.”

“Wadjet was an Egyptian goddess, one of the earliest known Egyptian deities. She was a cobra goddess who was initially the protector of Lower Egypt. With the unification of the two kingdoms, she merged with the Upper Egyptian goddess Nekhbet and became protector of all of Egypt. Even prior to her merger with Nekhbet, the symbol of Wadjet with the sun disk—known as the uraeus—was a symbol of divine authority. It’s believed that the sun disk symbolizes Ra, meaning that the holder of the uraeus carried the authority of Ra, the chief God, and enjoyed the protection of Wadjet.”

“So this amulet is also a symbol of authority?”

“No. The eye itself was typically used as a symbol of protection. Wadjet had authority, of course, but she wasn't known for it. She was the protector and, in some later myths, a healer specifically for pharaohs. There's an interesting school of thought that believes the image of Wadjet and Nekhbet is an inspiration for the ouroboros, but that’s getting off on a tangent. The point is that this amulet is about as mundane as a St. Christopher. There are literally thousands of them.”

“Well, we thought Solomon’s Key was mundane too,” Jacob reminded her.

"Not really, though. There weren't thousands of keys floating around ancient Israel. You could probably throw a rock anywhere in Egypt in 1500 BCE, and it would fly over a dozen of these amulets."

“Okay, so it was common. The Soldiers of Fortune still took it. Why?”

Jana bit her lip softly and shook her head. “I don’t know. On the surface, it doesn’t make sense.”

Jacob took a bite of his coney. “Well, no one ever said this job would be easy.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Jacob chewed exaggeratedly, and Jana glared at him. “I swear to God, I will rip that coney out of your mouth and make you vomit the rest of it.”

He swallowed and lifted a hand placatingly. “Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood.”

“And I appreciate that. Maybe lighten it by not chewing in my ear.”

“You got it.”

Jana logged into the Division server and plugged in the information she had on the amulet. She had recently been given access to Division records, although her access was still very limited. It felt odd to be looking through Division records and not trying to use them to find evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the Division, but once again, they had a more pressing threat to deal with.

That frustrated Jana. She and Jacob had both pointed out in the past how it often felt like they were working with the Division only because it was a choice between the potential threat of the Division and the imminent threat of the terrorist-of-the-week. They had to deal with the bomb about to go off in front of them before they dealt with the bomb set to go off a year from now, but it still irritated her to know that every time it looked like they were making progress in addressing whatever threat the Division represented, they were forced to abandon that and put out another fire.

She forgot about her irritation for the moment when she actually received a hit on the amulet. “Hold on a second. What do we have here?”

“What do we have here?” Jacob asked.

“It looks like the Division was aware of this amulet after all.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “So it’s not just an ancient Egyptian dime store charm?”

“It seems not.”

“So what was it?”

Jana frowned. “I don’t know. These records look pretty thin. Here, see for yourself.”

She showed him her screen. The amulet was identified as a Nineteenth Dynasty protection charm believed to have been created sometime during the reign of Ramesses II, the most famous pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty. That meant it was in good condition, but not so exceptional that it was unheard of. Part of what made ancient Egypt such an important culture archaeologically was how well preserved its archaeological records were.

That was the only information she had, though. No owner’s name was given, and the records of its discovery only mentioned that it was found near the ruins of Pi-Ramesses.

Either the Division didn’t consider it important, or they didn’t want her to know why it was important.

“Maybe call the Curator and let him know what you found,” Jacob suggested. “Maybe he’ll let you have more information.”

Jana shook her head slowly. “I’d rather not do that yet. It could be that they’re not hiding anything from me, but I can’t know that for sure, and I don’t want to give them a reason to step in and muddy the waters any further. We have a place to start from. I say we keep digging and tell the Curator when and if we think it’s necessary or unavoidable.” She met his eyes. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Not at all,” he replied firmly. “I think you’re right. I think we should be careful how much we give the Curator right now.” He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Something smells fishy here.”

She smirked. “Maybe it’s your coney.”

He rolled his eyes, but he also smiled. She knew the reason for that smile. They were both in agreement on how to handle the Division in this case. Considering their earlier argument, it was encouraging to know that, at the end of the day, they were still of the same mind when it came to managing their employers.

“See what you can dig up on this amulet,” Jacob said. “I’m going to see what I can learn about the Soldiers of Fortune.”

“You got it, chief.”

He grinned. “Ooh, I like that. Can you call me that during—”

“Don’t push it,” she warned.

He lifted his hands. “All right. Got it. Just had to ask.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Jacob polished off the last of his coney as he waited for his laptop to boot. If he was being perfectly honest, his favorite hot dogs were Dodger Dogs he’d enjoyed at the stadium during a baseball game he’d attended seven years ago with Aaron Peters—Jana’s father and his mentor in the CIA—but he enjoyed calling hot dogs coneys when he was in New York. It was part of the mystique to him.

Speaking of mystique, what was this latest ugly head to rear up from the world’s cesspools? The name wasn’t particularly unique. “Soldier of fortune” was another way to say mercenary. If Jacob remembered correctly, the term had originated in the seventeenth century and referred to soldiers for hire during the various clashes of the great European powers. Noblemen could hire these soldiers of fortune to protect their lands or to wage war on their neighbors.

So, were these terrorists working for themselves, or had they been hired by someone else?

Typing Soldiers of Fortune into Google wouldn’t help him at all, so he logged into the CIA intranet. He felt the usual rush of relief and nostalgia when his credentials were accepted. Technically speaking, he was no longer a CIA employee. The Division had arranged for his retirement from the Agency and forced him to work for them. Well, okay, they hadn’t exactly forced him, but they had forced him out of the CIA, and it wasn’t like he was going to say no to protecting the world from existential threats.

Or had they stolen him from the Agency? Jacob had been unable to contact his old handler, Tyler Wallace, since the Division had taken him and Jana away, but it was odd that his credentials still worked when he was ostensibly no longer an employee. Aaron's didn't work anymore. Jacob had asked him about that a few weeks ago when they had visited him at his cabin in Maine, and Aaron had told him that they hadn't worked for him since leaving but that he had other connections within the Agency who could find information for him.

Jacob’s still worked as though he was an active employee. Maybe the CIA still had him on the roster, and the Curator had been lying about taking him away. Or maybe not. After all, the Agency hadn’t called him.

Can’t do anything about it now. Focus on the mission.

He opened the Agency's database and typed in Soldiers of Fortune. The search came back with a list of dozens of private military corporations—the new preferred term for mercenaries the U.S. sometimes worked with. The term mercenary was not used to describe those outfits the U.S. didn't work with or actively opposed. The Wagner Group were mercenaries, while Blackwater—now renamed Constellis—was a “private military company.”

In any case, this wasn’t what he needed. He typed in “terrorist groups named Soldiers of Fortune,” but that only filtered out the agencies the CIA had deemed “good guys.”

He tapped his fingers on the desk and tried again. “Recently formed terrorist groups.”

That brought up an even more exhaustive—and therefore exhausting—list of every single suspected terrorist cell worldwide. Seeing the list could be disheartening for an inexperienced agent, but Jacob knew that ninety-nine percent of the names and cells listed here would prove to be duds. Ninety-nine percent of those that weren’t duds would end up being clubs of disgruntled college kids trying to make themselves feel cool and dangerous. Very few of them would turn out to be anything resembling a threat.

He used the filter tools to look for Soldiers of Fortune, but that didn’t reveal anything.

Maybe it was a fake name. Maybe the threat was just a bluff to get people looking away while they used that amulet for… whatever it was supposed to be use for.

 That fit with what they knew so far. A lot of loud noises and thick smoke but very little in the way of actual explosives. A lot of people scared but no one killed. A lot of people looking one way while the thief went the other. Maybe they had manufactured this terrorist threat just to distract people from whatever it was they were really doing.

Maybe. But if that wasn’t the case, and the Soldiers of Fortune were real and actually intended to attack New York and kill a lot of people, then Jacob wanted to know about it. True, there were other experts trained to stop these kinds of attacks, but that didn’t mean Jacob just wanted to ignore the situation.

He tried one more time, hoping that the recent attack on the Met might have shown up on the CIA’s radar and linked to other attacks or threats that could shed light on these Soldiers of Fortune. He typed in “Soldiers of Fortune, Met museum bombing.”

That finally yielded something. A short blurb in the CIA database read, “Met bombed: 0 casualties, property damage roughly $4m. Soldiers of Fortune claim credit.”

The name Soldiers of Fortune is linked to a file. Jacob grinned. "Here we go."

He clicked on the file, and his smile faded. There was very little information here. The Soldiers of Fortune were an American group with no known affiliations, an unknown complement and leadership structure, and an unknown political leaning. They had made no statements of purpose, released no manifestos, and aligned themselves with no known movements or philosophies. Aside from the bombing at the Met, the only other known incident involving the group was the tire slashing of a fleet of police vehicles in the town of Fiddler's Bluff, New Mexico.

Jacob looked the town up. It had a population of seven thousand. No people of interest existed in Fiddler's Bluff, and nothing had ever happened there that interested the CIA in the slightest before the tire-slashing incident. That incident had occurred three months ago and put the Soldiers of Fortune on the CIA's radar, but there was no reason to believe that those tires weren't slashed by bored teenagers. There was the name match, but it wasn't like Soldiers of Fortune was a particularly unique name.

He debated reaching out to the case officer handling the Met bombing, but he hesitated. He wasn’t sure what his standing was with the Agency. It seemed ludicrous to have to wonder that, but there it was. He was one of the most accomplished agents in the CIA’s history, and had contributed greatly to the defeat of such organizations as the Sword of the Righteous and the Order—both organizations that had more than once threatened to use ancient technology to cause widespread death and destruction and even to overthrow the U.S. government and other legitimate world powers. Jacob didn’t like to brag, and he liked even less thinking of his service as some sort of medal, but he felt like he deserved more than just to be shuttled aside.

Still, he wasn’t sure if it was known to leadership that he still had access. It was possible that Tyler Wallace had just neglected to kick him out as an unspoken favor to him. If he reached out to another agent, it could expose that and end his access.

So he sighed and left the Agency website. He would have to find another way to determine who the Soldiers of Fortune were.

He looked up the town of Fiddler's Bluff just to be sure there was no connection to the incident at the Met. The town's website was the typical low-budget nightmare of poorly constructed pages, semi-reliable links and very disorganized information. The town’s greatest claim to fame appeared to be that it was sixty miles northwest of Carlsbad Caverns.

He tried the Wikipedia article and found a similar dearth of useful information. The town was founded in 1920 as an oil town, only for the oil to dry up within five years. Its population had lingered on somehow, first due to the railroad depot, then to an Army Reserve station, and most recently due to its proximity to the Caverns.

The one piece of possibly interesting information was under the list of notable people. There were a grand total of six names. Five of them were oil barons who had died decades ago. One of them was “Victor Nash, Industrialist.”

Jacob clicked on that name. His eyes widened. “What have we here?”

Victor Nash was the founder and CEO of American Materials Corporation. Jacob clicked on the company’s website and learned that American Materials was a supplier of components and raw materials for the U.S. military. The bulk of its business appeared to be split between two major arms. The first arm was the manufacture of armor and armor components, everything from personal body armor to armor systems for vehicles.

The second arm was explosives.

Jacob clicked on that, and the first product advertised was shaped-charge low-yield explosives for hostage rescue situations. A common problem with explosive breaching was the fact that hostages were often injured or killed during the rescue because of the force of the explosion used to breach the door. American Materials provided a solution to that by using a proprietary formula consisting of thermite and inert chemicals, ensuring that the explosive energy was kept unusually low.

That could have been the explosive used to destroy the doors. It had been powerful enough to embed glass in the ceiling, but that could have simply been due to a large amount of the explosive. The narrow area of effect could be partially attributed to the shaping of the charge but also to the explosive’s tendency to impart limited energy over limited space.

“All right, Victor Nash. Let’s see what you’re all about.”

He clicked on the founder’s bio and pulled up a picture of a man in his mid-fifties with gray-brown hair and piercing gray eyes. Victor wore blue jeans and a black t-shirt two sizes too small for him. He folded his arms over his chest to make his toned shoulders and biceps look even bigger. Both arms sported a liberal amount of tribal tattoos, what Jacob thought of as douchebag tattoos.

Douchebag was a perfect way to describe Victor Nash. He looked like one of those influencers whose brand was to show off how much manlier and tougher they were than everyone else. Someone somewhere must have written a psychological essay on why the most insecure people always felt a need to brag about how secure they were.

There was one other useful bit of information. Victor Nash had a military background. Not the Special Forces background that he probably hoped people attributed to him, but a military background, nonetheless, and a fairly relevant one. He had spent fourteen years in the Army and left as a Sergeant First Class with an MOS of 92Y. Unit Supply Specialist.

A Unit Supply Specialist could be the guy who requisitions toilet paper. Or he could be the guy who requisitions explosives.

Jacob rubbed his chin and wondered how much it meant that Victor Nash now ran a weapons company and had once possibly been the guy who knew how many explosives a unit needed to accomplish a particular task. The answer was that it was impossible to tell with the information available. It could all be coincidence, or it could mean Nash was their guy.

But it was a place to start.

CHAPTER FIVE

Jana studied the photos of the amulet she obtained from the Met and compared them to the photos on the Division database. There was no doubt that they were one and the same. The specific design of Wadjet's eye was common, but there were subtle differences that made it clear that this amulet was the one cataloged by the Division for reasons that the August agency had chosen to redact from its records.

One interesting note about the amulet was that its construction was listed as METAL-UNKNOWN.

Amulets in Egypt were rarely made of metal. Typically, they were made of ivory or bone. Occasionally, they might be etched onto stone. But metal was almost unheard of for ceremonial objects, especially that early in Egypt’s history. The Bronze Age had only begun a couple of centuries before then, and metallurgy was typically reserved for weaponry or very rarely for embellishment or armor on chariots.

The fact that the metal was unknown was odd, too. Early Bronze Age metals were all very simple alloys, typically tin, and copper. It shouldn't be hard to figure out how much tin and how much copper was in something. Some cultures used arsenic rather than tin, but this wasn't true of ancient Egypt. Even if it was, it was pretty damned easy to detect arsenic.

And finally, even if this was some exotic metal not found anywhere else, that would be noteworthy and raised the importance of this object from PERSONAL ITEM to IMPORTANT EVIDENCE OF ADVANCED METALLURGICAL TECHNIQUES.

So why wasn’t it? There had to be an answer, and if that answer was hard to find, that probably meant the Division wanted it hidden.

Which meant she had to wonder if that answer had been hidden.

She scrolled to the photos of the amulet's reverse and raised her eyebrow at the markings present. They were hieroglyphic symbols of the sort used during the New Kingdom. Jana recognized the symbols for tomb, bronze, worker, and Pharaoh. The loose translation could be something like "Tomb of Pharaoh's metalworker."

Which was very interesting considering the things they had seen in the past. What could possibly interest their terrorists in an old metalworker’s tomb, though?

“I might have something,” Jacob said.

She turned to him. "Good. I might have something, too."

“Oh yeah? What do you have?”

“You first.”

He bowed. “As you wish, my lady. I have a possible connection between our mercenaries and a weapons manufacturer.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Do tell.”

He showed her his laptop. It showed the stereotype of the toxic alpha male. “Who’s the frat boy?” she asked.

“Victor Nash, former Unit Supply Specialist in the U.S. Army and current CEO of American Materials Corporation. They are primarily known for two things: armor and explosives.”

She chuckled. “How convenient. They sell explosives and stuff to protect from explosives.”

“Or they sell armor and stuff to blow up armor. Ironic. Anyway, it’s a pretty thin connection at the moment, but the Soldiers of Fortune first pop up three months ago in Fiddler’s Bluff, New Mexico when they slash every tire of every police car in the town’s fleet.”

“Damn.”

“That’s not all. It took a little bit of digging since everyone’s embarrassed about it, but I found out that the day the police lost their tires, there were six unconfirmed explosions in the desert beyond the town.”

“So they hamstrung the police, then tested their explosions.”

“That’s a thought, isn’t it?’

“What’s the connection with Nash?”

“Fiddler’s Bluff is his hometown.”

She sighed. “Well, you’re right. That’s a terrible connection. But we’ve worked with worse. And the body armor stuff could align with what I found.”

“What’s that?”

She showed Jacob her own laptop. “This is our amulet. Notice anything important?”

“Yeah. It has words on the back. Those are words, right?”

“Yes. Loosely translated, the symbols say ‘Tomb of Pharaoh’s metalworker.’”

“Huh. Interesting.”

“It gets better. The composition of this amulet is listed as METAL-UNKNOWN.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Do we think this is a special metal?”

“I think so.”

Jacob crossed his arm. “How is a metal unknown?”

“My question exactly.”

“Hmm.” He tilted his head. “So we have an unknown metal, a tomb, and an industrialist hiring terrorists to obtain something valuable that might lead him to more of that unknown metal that he can use—I assume—to make weapons or armor or components for the above. This reminds me a little bit of the Negev adventure with Blackstone.

Garrett Blackstone was the CEO of a technology company that attempted to steal billions of dollars of rare Earth metals from a stockpile created by King Solomon. That endeavor had ended with the loss of his own life and the loss of his co-conspirators. It had nearly ended with the loss of Jacob’s and Jana’s own lives, an outcome averted at the last second by a Division team led by their friend, Robert Bledshaw.

“I can see the parallels,” she said. “Do you think they’re connected?”

He shook his head. “Blackstone and American Materials—that’s Nash’s company—never worked together. Garrett Blackstone and Victor Nash never met each other.”

“So it’s a coincidence?”

“Maybe. Probably.” Jacob sighed. “I’m just a little on edge, I guess. I’m starting to see a pattern, and that scares me.”

“I don’t blame you,” she replied. “But let’s keep our eyes on this one problem in front of us, okay?”

Jacob nodded. “Yeah. Fair enough.”

“We need to figure out what this metal is,” Jana said, “and what Nash intends to do with it.”

“I think that is an excellent idea,” Jacob said. “I have found the location of American Materials Corporation’s headquarters. It’s right here in New York. Staten Island, to be precise.”

Jana rubbed her chin. “Can you handle the infiltration by yourself?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I mean, if I have to. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I just want to see if I can get something on this metallurgy angle.”

“What a coincidence. I also want to see if I can get something on this metallurgy angle.”

She smiled. “I get the cushy job because I’m an ancient history/archaeological expert. Besides, this is just useless information that doesn’t matter anyway, right?”

He gave her a dry look. “That’s not exactly what my previous argument was, but I accept the correction anyway.”

“Good. Have fun playing with guns.”

“You know, sometimes I wonder if you really love me, or if you’re just waiting for a chance to watch me get hurt.”

“Oh yeah? Huh.”

She stared at him without saying anything else, and he chuckled. “Well, enjoy your old books, nerd. I’m going to get a piece of action.”

“With Victor Nash?”

He grimaced. “Yeah, that came out very badly. I’ll see you later.”

"See you later. And because, for some reason, I do love you and don’t want to see you get hurt, please be careful. If you need help, call me.”

“You got it.”

He left, and Jana chuckled again, then turned her attention back to the metallurgy problem. She thought for a minute, then looked up an archaeological database run by the University of Cambridge. The database was the brainchild of Dr. Horatio Thorne, an old mentor of Jana’s and one of the founding fathers of modern Egyptology. If there was a record anywhere of exotic Egyptian metallurgy techniques, it would either be on that database or in the Division’s records.

She typed in "Egyptian metallurgical innovations." The screen was instantly filled with journal articles detailing Egypt's innovations with smelting and casting, particularly their development of the "lost-wax" casting technique, modern variations of which were still used in fine metalworking. The amulet itself had likely been made using the lost-wax technique, assuming that the metals used in its construction had properties similar to those of bronze and tin when molten.

She added “unknown metals” as an additional search term and found some articles talking about more Egyptian firsts. These included rather dubious claims that the Egyptians were the first to create bronze from tin and copper, claims that the Egyptians had a short-lived but very successful iron-smelting industry prior to the collapse of the Sixth Dynasty, and a few scholarly articles outlining the influence of Egyptian metallurgy on later Greek techniques.

Nothing there spoke of some exotic metal or alloy.

Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe the unknown metal was unknown because it was just another alloy of bronze.

But it didn’t look like one. It lacked the silvery sheen of tin or the reddish luster of copper. Instead, it was a dull pewter-gray. It wasn’t pewter, though. That was another very common metal and very much understood by modern science.

She searched a few more archaeological databases but found nothing that could help her. When she’d spent two hours scouring the available academic literature and still found nothing helpful, she sighed and gave in.

She opened the Division’s database again and typed in “Egyptian metallurgy.” The search return here was sparser than before. That could be because there was little there to interest the Division, or it could be because the Division had little interest in sharing what they knew.

Most of the articles that were there related to the Staves of Ra. It wasn't common Knowledge, but the Egyptians had discovered the radioactive properties of uranium and used them to create weapons that could kill people from a short distance. The Staves were ceremonial objects, but Jacob and Jana had discovered that they could be used far more dangerously by people who understood how nuclear weapons worked.

The Division had some information on this, but it still posed a problem for Jana. The amulet wasn’t radioactive. It had been displayed in a polycarbonate case next to a plethora of other mundane artifacts. Even if it was radioactive and it had somehow survived intact over the centuries, it would have been easy to identify the metal.

She drummed her fingers and looked back at the pictures taken by the Division and the Met. She reread the symbols on the back announcing the Tomb of the Pharaoh’s Metalworker.

She looked up famous Egyptian metalworkers and got a list of blacksmith shops in Egypt. She tried again with “famous ancient Egyptian metalworkers” and got nothing.

She sighed and got to her feet, pacing the room. What was she missing? What were they missing? And if it was hidden, then why was it hidden?

With no answers, she tried again. She looked up famous ancient Egyptian craftsman and got articles on pottery in ancient Egypt. She tried famous ancient Egyptians who weren’t Pharaohs and ended up with an advertisement for a movie about Cleopatra.

She sighed and exited the search. This was a dead end.

But it couldn't be. She was convinced that this was their lead. The Soldiers of Fortune had stolen that amulet for a reason. Clearly, they thought it was special.

So why? What secrets could that tomb hold that Victor Nash had blown up the Met to get it?

He’d been careful to spare people’s lives too. That was worth noting. He had only damaged property, had, in fact, been very careful not to hurt people.

That could be a good sign. Or it could mean that Nash wanted things to be as quiet as possible while he worked, and he knew a massacre would attract unwanted attention.

She sighed. It wasn’t like he’d been subtle. He had attention now.

She picked up the phone and started to dial the Curator’s number. She stopped hallway and then exited the cal. She wasn’t ready to do that yet. She doubted like hell the Curator had their best interests at heart.

She would have to find another way to answer the questions tormenting her.

CHAPTER SIX

American Materials Corporation’s New York Office was located approximately one mile off of the Bayonne Bridge in an industrial park near Port Richmond. The campus consisted of a four-story office building and a seventy-thousand-square-foot production facility. Jacob debated which of the buildings he wanted to infiltrate and decided the office building was most likely to give him the answers he wanted.

He parked the car across the street in the lot of a scrap metal yard and used his field binoculars to give him a look at the situation so he could figure out a plan of attack.

Security appeared fairly typical. The fence was fourteen feet high and topped with razor wire. Cameras were spaced every ninety feet or so along the perimeter fence and provided decent coverage of the ground outside. At the gate were two armed guards, and within were four other patrol officers. At nine o’clock, business hours were over, but there were still a number of employees burning the midnight oil.

The guards didn’t appear particularly vigilant. The location itself was fairly nondescript as far as major business neighborhoods, and from what Jacob could see of the inside of the building, the office workers were typical white-collar stock.

Jacob might be able to get in, get information, and get out without being seen. That would make life a lot easier.

He pulled on his mask and gloves and began moving toward the property. He headed away from the gate, staying in the shadows across the street and planning his next move.

The gate was completely smooth up to the razor wire. If he wanted to scale it, he’d have to move quickly and try to grab the top of the wall.

He listened for the patrols, and when he didn’t hear any, he took a deep breath and ran toward the wall. Just before running into it, he brought his legs up and ran up the wall, reaching out with his hand and just grasping the top.

He pulled himself up until he could see over the wall. The patrols were dozens of yards away, so he lowered himself, then pulled himself up quickly to gain momentum. He brought his feet up to the edge of the fence, then kicked up and pulled forward. He sailed high into the air but only drifted forward, just barely far enough to avoid the razor wire. He landed heavily, rolling to break his fall but still grimacing with the jolt of the impact.

He got up slowly and tested his weight. He was still good. No injuries. He breathed a sigh of relief and moved toward the building.

Up close, the building didn’t look anything special. Victor Nash was clearly not expecting a CIA agent to arrive anytime soon and try to sneak in.

The front door opened, and Jacob stilled. A group of five people walked down the courtyard, laughing and talking with each other. Jacob counted how long it took the door to close behind them.

Then he waited. This would be the easiest way in, but if it looked like he wasn’t going to get any help, he’d find another way.

Fortunately, another group of late-night employees left the building a moment later. Jacob ran forward along the edge of the building, staying in the dark as long as he could and moving as quietly as possible. He reached the front door and slid inside just before it closed.

And found himself in an exceptionally well-lit lobby. There was no receptionist, thank God, but either the lights had motion sensors or just didn’t turn off at night. Not to mention that he was all over the security cameras now.

He listened quietly for any alarm or panic, but nothing came. He breathed a sigh of relief and quickly left the lobby.

Past the reception area, the building’s lighting was far more subdued. A few lights were left on here and there so that anyone somehow left behind could find their way around. He didn’t feel like he was being displayed to the world anymore, though.

His goal was to find an open computer. He was counting on one of the office workers not to have locked his or her desktop before leaving for the day.

The work was tedious. Each office he came across had a computer, but each computer was locked and password-protected. Jacob would rather avoid guessing at a password if he could help it. He'd done it before, but the consequences of failure could be drastic.

He checked seven offices and found seven locked computers. He was about to give up and start trying to guess at passwords when he passed an office that was somewhat larger than the others. The nameplate on the desk read ANDY MALICK.

Andy Malick’s computer had a screensaver, and when Jacob moved the mouse, the screensaver disappeared to reveal the desktop and a dialog box that warned that his session would end automatically in thirteen seconds if he didn’t indicate that he wanted to keep it.

Jacob informed the computer that he would very much like to keep that session, and the dialog box disappeared and revealed a desktop featuring an image of a smiling African American man in his forties waterskiing. Andy was an adrenaline junkie.

“Let’s see if he’s also involved in whatever Victor Nash has going on.”

Jacob opened a folder titled PROJECTS. There were three sub-folders. The first two were internal organizational projects, one to streamline the chain of responsibility for production facility orders and one to create an employee app that would allow people on the same project to collaborate over a platform that could store everyone’s ideas in one place.

And simultaneously make it company property. Good one, Nash.

He opened the final folder and pumped his fist. Bingo.

This folder was entitled PROJECT NEW WARRIOR. Jacob opened the overview document and learned that Project New Warrior was the marketing name for a new generation of armor systems made using a newly discovered metal referred to as METAL X. Not the most original name, but he wouldn’t hold it against them.

The armor itself appeared to be fairly similar to other designs Jacob had seen for advanced armor systems. Its appearance varied depending on application. There were tailor-made modular systems for various military vehicles. There were three different versions of body armor, ranging from light armor intended for highly mobile units, medium protection for general infantry, and heavy armor for Tier One operators and quick reaction forces. There were even a series of plates that could be installed on permanent structures to give some protection against snipers and artillery.

What appeared to be special was the metal. The data was sparse on its actual composition, but American Materials was making some bold claims. Its strength-to-weight ratio was stated to be ninety times greater than that of titanium. Its shock resistance was claimed to be seventy times greater than Kevlar at half the weight. It was said to possess an ability to transfer energy almost perfectly across multiple plates, meaning that joints in modular armor were no longer weak points.

It all seemed fantastic. Except that Jacob had seen quite a few fantastic things.

Still, there was a notable lack of hard data on this metal. Jacob wondered where exactly American Materials was getting the information they needed to make these claims.

Apparently, Andy Malick wondered the same thing. An email thread saved to the folder detailed a conversation between Andy and the company's research and development department. Andy asked R&D what they were basing their claims on and was told that they had evidence of ancient Egyptian techniques that could lend that property to known alloys of bronze. When asked to clarify, R&D refused saying that the technique was still being refined and informing Andy that the marketing materials provided weren't intended for public distribution yet.

“Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser.”

Jacob looked for more information on the project and was able to find an interoffice report on R&D’s research into the ancient techniques. The information they had was apocryphal, but it seemed that they had discovered some ancient tablets dating from the rein of Ramesses II that talked of a divine substance stronger than bronze and able to protect that Pharaoh from all those who opposed him.

It was all very vague. Jacob had an idea that was why Nash needed the amulet. He had vague information, the beginnings of ideas, and a surface understanding. He needed real information, concrete ideas, and a deep understanding.

And somehow, that amulet was the key. A memo from R&D to Andy all but admitted that American Materials was going to hire outside help to procure an item made of Metal X that would allow them to unlock its secrets and proceed with construction of the prototypes.

Key. How appropriate.

Jacob didn't like making leaps of faith, but part of intelligence work involved making those leaps. Sometimes, it worked out, and sometimes, new information proved that you were on the wrong track and had to turn around and try something new.

The leap he was making now was that there was a connection between the amulet and the Lesser Key of Solomon. Not the spellbook by that name, but the actual bronze key that last year had opened the door to a chamber filled with billions of dollars of rare earth metals.

King Solomon had lived centuries after Ramesses the Great, but perhaps the great King of Israel had learned some metallurgy from the great Pharaoh of Egypt. Perhaps the great Pharaoh had borrowed that information from an even greater civilization.

Of the many secrets the Antiquities Division had discovered and held, the greatest was the existence of a civilization well over one hundred thousand years old that had at one point achieved a level of technological greatness beyond anything ever achieved by humanity since. That pre-Ice Age civilization had destroyed itself. No one knew how. At least, the Division claimed not to know.

Their technology, however, had lived on, and lately, it had become clear that its remnants informed the great discoveries of many of humanity’s greatest known civilizations. Jacob couldn’t believe that the ancient Egyptians had somehow managed to create a super-metal that was among the strongest substances ever created or discovered on Earth. He had no trouble believing that the pre-Ice Age culture had.

And learning recently that the Division was altering historical records and hiding so much of the truth from people made him wonder if this pre-Ice Age culture had at one point been not just well-known but ubiquitous. If he had been a fly on the wall of Ramesses II, would he had heard the great Pharaoh speak of those forebears the same way modern humans spoke of ancient Egypt?

Footsteps pulled him from that speculation. He quickly downloaded the file onto a thumb drive, then shut down the computer and crept out of the office.

A flashlight beam arced down the hallway. Jacob cursed and dropped to the floor. The beam swept from side to side as the guard approached the office. Jacob swore again and crawled backwards behind the desk.

The guard swung his flashlight into the office. Jacob held his breath as the beam swept over him. The guard stood still a moment, looking into the office, then moved on. Jacob held his breath until he heard the guard start whistling, then released it in a soft sigh.

He got to his feet, left the room, and left the building.

Outside, he had to dodge another patrol on his way to the fence, but he was able to hide behind a panel van until the security officers passed. He climbed over the fence the way he had climbed in, running up to the top, pulling himself off, then doing a front flip over the razor wire. He landed somewhat more gracefully this time and soon, he had reached his car and was on his way back to Jana.

He might not have found all of the answers he was hoping for, but he had at least confirmed that Nash was the man behind the theft of the amulet.

They had identified their opponent. Now they needed to defeat him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jacob returned just before midnight. Jana looked him over. “You don’t look too much the worse for wear.”

“Fit as a fiddle,” he replied. “And I confirmed that Nash is behind the theft.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I even have evidence.” He held up a thumb drive. “American Materials’ R&D Department admits that they hired outside help to procure an item made of Metal X that would be the key to their understanding the material.”

“Metal X?”

“It’s what they’re calling the primary raw material for their Next Generation Warrior line of armor.”

“Armor? Seriously? That’s what this is about?”

Jacob shrugged. “I mean… if it can do what they say it can do, I understand. They will corner the market. That’s a seven-figure industry.”

She pursed her lips. “It just seems so… mundane.”

“A lot of the world is mundane. Most of it even. What’s not mundane is the properties this metal supposedly possesses.”

“Such as?”

“Well, basically it’s one of the strongest substances on Earth, and Nash is convinced that the key to understanding and producing it is locked inside ancient Egyptian secrets of metallurgy.” He grinned at her. “It looks like Pharaoh’s metalworker might actually have been a real person. Or people, at least. Speaking of, do you have any news for me?”

She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t for the life of me find any history on this amulet or any history of Egyptian metallurgy beyond what we already know. I can’t find anything that mentions a Pharaoh’s metalworker and nothing from the rein of Ramesses II that suggests he had possession of anything out of the ordinary.”

Jacob frowned. "He's thought to be the greatest Pharaoh in Egyptian history, isn't he? Rumored to be godlike in battle?"

“Lots of ancient kings are rumored to be godlike in battle.”

Jacob shrugged. “Maybe there’s truth to that.”

“Maybe.” She got up and started pacing. “In any case, the Division either doesn’t have any records on the subject, or they’ve redacted it all. Or maybe I’m just not cleared to know it.”

“Have you asked the Curator for more clearance?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to bring him in unless I have to. I don’t trust them to be open with me.”

“I mean… if they knew something, they’d probably tell us. I can’t think for the life of me how it benefits them to hide this information from us.”

“Because if they show us extensive records of advanced metallurgy in ancient Egypt, we’re going to wonder why there are no records of this outside of their possession. We’re going to wonder what else they hid. Maybe… maybe hiding those records means hiding other things that would completely fly in the face of our understanding of world history.”

Jacob sighed. "Yeah, maybe. That's a lot of maybes, but… maybe."

“And I don’t want them to have this,” Jana blurted out.

Jacob looked at her. She sighed. “I just… don’t want them to have this. They always end up with the ancient technology. They always end up being the only ones with records of that technology. They have the storm maker, the seismic bomb from Mongolia, and the Sphere of Archimedes. They have samples of the Medusa Agent and Apollo’s Breath. I am almost certain they have at least solid replicas of the Staves of Ra. Who knows what else? I don’t want them to have this too, whatever it is.”

Jacob sighed. “I mean… I don’t want them to have it either, but I really don’t want Nash to have it.”

“Let’s just please try it on our own. Okay?”

Before Jacob could answer, his phone rang. He frowned. “Captain Kennedy.” He answered, and a moment later, his eyes widened. “All right. Doing it now.”

He reached for the TV remote and switched it on. Jana paled when she saw an image of a dark silhouette underneath the headline SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE LEADER SPEAKS!

And speak he did. Or she. It was hard to tell with the voice disguised the way it was.

“You have been very patient with us while we put together our list of demands. Thank you for that. We’ve discussed amongst ourselves what we feel would be an appropriate ransom for the future existence of New York City, and we’ve come up with the following:

“First, we want the head of the President on a silver platter, just like the head of John the Baptist was delivered to King Herod Agrippa’s wife. With the President of the United States, we also want the heads of the Governor of New York State and the Mayor of New York City.

“Second, we want every law enforcement agency in the United States to step down immediately. They must hand all their weapons over to an independent commission composed of elected civilians.

“Third, we want seventeen billion dollars in cash provided to us at the following coordinates.”

The voice listed coordinates, then outlined the consequences of failing to meet those demands.

“If you do not meet our demands. We will detonate bombs that will destroy the U.N. Building, The Empire State Building, One World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, and Yankee Stadium. You have seventy-two hours. You’ve been warned.”

The broadcast switched to a terrified reporter trying and failing badly to make sense of all of this.

Jana shook her head. “It’s a bluff. It has to be. Seventeen billion dollars? They know they’re not going to get that kind of money.”

"I like how you don't bat an eye at a request for the President's head on a platter, but the money is just too much."

“It’s all too much. Those aren’t real demands. It’s screw-you money.”

“What money?”

"Screw-you money. Like when an auto mechanic gets a job they don't want to complete. Instead of just straight up refusing and looking bad, they quote some ridiculous, off-the-wall price that no one would ever pay. It's called screw-you money. As in, screw you, go someplace else."

“Ah. That term meant something different when I heard it last.”

“Anyway, the point is that they know they’re not going to get what they’re asking for. This is a bluff.”

“Why, though?”

“Maybe they can’t actually follow through on their threat. I could see them getting to one landmark, but all of them?”

“Maybe they mean one at a time.”

She shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t think so, though.”

“What do you think they’re doing?”

She got up and started pacing. “I don’t know. Distracting the world. They want us to pay attention to this big, loud threat so they can quietly accomplish some unstated goal.”

“Why go to all of this effort, though? It’s overkill?”

She stopped pacing and tapped her arms with her fingers. “It’s the amulet. It has to be. They think they’re onto something big, and they want people’s attention focused elsewhere.” She tilted her head. “Maybe they even want the Division’s attention focused elsewhere.”

“I doubt that. Most people still don’t know the Division exists, even after it was exposed to the public.”

“They might not know it’s the Division, but they know that Garrett Blackstone, Adrian Blackwood and Marcus Sterling all tried to use incredibly advanced ancient technology and were all killed and their companies broken up. They might have made these bold claims to make whoever’s behind that think that they already have something exceptionally powerful.”

“And then everyone’s attention is focused on New York and not wherever these guys are actually working,” Jacob said. “It’s not the craziest plan I’ve heard.” He met her eyes. “So what do we do now?”

She sighed. “We need to figure out what that amulet is. We need to figure out if the Tomb of Pharaoh’s Metalworker means anything, and if it does, what. Preferably, we need to do all of that before Victor Nash does.”

Jacob nodded. “Well, we’re not going to do that here. American Materials doesn’t yet know what they’re looking for. There aren’t any records in the civilian world that can help us, and the Division either doesn’t know either, or they’re keeping us in the dark. Either way, we need to head to the source and find an answer ourselves.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He nodded. “We need to go to Egypt.”

His phone rang, and he frowned slightly. “But first, we need to think of something to tell the NYPD.”

“Do we really? Just tell them we’re following up on a lead.”

“I’ll do that,” he replied. “But… also, to play Devil’s advocate, we should probably have a backup plan just in case the Soldiers of Fortune are actually planning to blow New York up.”

She looked out of the window of their hotel room and thought of the millions of people outside blissfully living their lives unaware that at any moment, some asshole with his finger on the button of some superweapon—ancient or modern—could end it all for them.

Or perhaps not so blissfully and not so unaware. That was a public broadcast. Maybe the sea of red she saw on the roads below wasn’t just typical New York twenty-four-hour traffic. Maybe people were already panicking and abandoning their city, afraid that what had happened at the Met would happen on a larger scale and with far more casualties.

“So what are you going to tell them?”

“I’m going to tell them to take this threat seriously. I’m going to tell them to evacuate the civilians and scour the named targets for any sign of explosives. It’s like the Curator said. They have resources to handle these kinds of threats. So, they can handle it. It has the added benefit of convincing Victor Nash that his bluff—if it is a bluff—is working.”

Jana could see the brilliance of that now. If the Soldiers of Fortune really were threatening them, then they were mobilizing a massive law enforcement apparatus to protect the largest city in America. If it was only smoke and mirrors on Nash’s part, then they were throwing up smoke and mirrors of their own so they could pursue him and put a stop to what he was really planning.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll start packing and get us a flight to Egypt. You call the NYPD and give them their marching orders.”

While she handled the travel arrangements, Jacob called Captain Kennedy back. “Hello, Captain. Yes, I saw the broadcast. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the FBI believes very strongly that this is a serious threat. We understand that it’s a monumental task, perhaps even an impossible one, but you need to do everything in your power to evacuate those locations and conduct a thorough search for explosives. The demands, clearly, aren’t reasonable, nor do we believe they are intended to be reasonable. To be frank, we think they’re mocking us, butt’s imperative that you take the threat of bombings very seriously anyway. We believe the Soldiers of Fortune are just getting started.”

He listened to the captain’s response, offered words of assurance, then hung up and met Jana’s eyes. “All right. As far as Nash knows, we’ve taken the bait.”

“Good. Here’s hoping we can catch him with his pants down.”

Jacob grimaced. “I would have preferred any other analogy.”

Their flight left in four hours, so the two agents took advantage of the lull to catch a quick nap. If past experiences were anything to go by, it could be their last chance to sleep for a while.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Victor Nash sipped his whiskey and returned the flight attendant's smile. She was a bombshell, tall but not too tall, with natural blonde hair, smoky blue eyes, full lips, and hips that were made to pull men's eyes to them. In ordinary circumstances, Victor would absolutely take advantage of the signals she was giving him, but he had more important things to think about right now.

Such as becoming extremely wealthy.

Victor would be the first to admit that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He was far from an idiot, but he wasn’t the guy anyone would look to for sage business or financial advice.

The one thing he had going for him was will. His career in the Army had been as unremarkable as his intelligence, but he had found a way to leverage that into a career that had made him rich. Others slaved away at dead end jobs or clung to the Army until they were pried off of Uncle Sam’s teat kicking and screaming, but not Victor. He had done his time, found his niche, and leveraged that to become the owner of a multimillion-dollar defense company.

Soon, American Materials Corporation would be a multibillion-dollar defense company.

The pilot’s voice filtered through the PA. “Beginning our descent into Cairo, sir.”

Victor nodded and sipped more of his whiskey. The flight attendant arched her eyebrow at him and looked slightly disappointed when he didn’t take his last opportunity to enjoy some intimate time with her. He wasn’t sure if those were her honest feelings or if the charter company trained its flight attendants to appear desperate for the attention of their clients. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t looking for that anyway.

What he was looking for couldn’t be found in a woman. Up until yesterday, he wasn’t sure it could be found at all. But Lance had proven himself once again. Now Victor had the amulet, and soon, he would have the secrets the amulet unlocked.

The Next Generation Warrior Project was the closest Victor had ever come to being truly brilliant. Not because the idea was particularly innovative, although parts of it were, but because the execution of it was like something out of a textbook on how to create a market and then corner that market. Well, okay, maybe not create a market, but certainly revolutionize it.

The key was the metal. The information Victor had gathered on this ancient Egyptian alloy was beyond promising. If he could only figure out what the hell they’d done to make it so strong, he would have by far the best material for armor on Earth. And with New York about to be devastated by the deadliest terror attack to ever strike U.S. soil, Victor would basically be handed a very eager customer base who wanted nothing but the best to address this new threat. Instead of haggling with the U.S. military to receive the lowest possible price for the minimum possible product, Victor would have law enforcement agencies champing at the bit to outbid each other for the best features he could pack into his armor. Eventually, this would trickle over into armored vehicles, and that would be his in with the military.

And, as the owner of every intellectual property law related to the metal, Victor would have the market cornered. Oh, someone would probably figure out a way around copyright laws and reverse-engineer the metal so they could make something like it, too. That's the way business worked, and Victor knew that there were people out there smart enough to circumvent him eventually.

But it would be a sweet ride up until then, and it would make him fantastically wealthy. And who knew what the future held? Maybe R&D could keep American Materials ahead of the curve so they didn’t lose their top dog spot.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the amulet. It was fairly unimpressive to look at. It honestly reminded Victor of the tourist trap stuff they sold at markets all over Cairo. He could probably find a few that even looked the same.

But oh, the secrets it held. First of all, the metal it was constructed from proved that all of Victor’s claims were valid. He couldn’t believe that the experts at the Met had never tried to find out what it was made of.

There was no doubt, though. This amulet had been fashioned by the famous metalworker out of the super metal said to have imbued the weapons and chariots of Ramesses II and his armies with a magic that would let them defeat any foe and survive any battle. And on the back were clues that would tell him where to find this metalworker’s tomb. There, he would learn the man’s secrets and use them to create modern-day armor so strong that it would seem like magic.

A thought struck him so powerfully that he nearly jumped. Bullets! He could make bullets out of that metal, armor-piercing rounds that would be unstoppable by anything not made out of the same metal.

He was going to be much wealthier than even he had anticipated.

He grinned through the window as the Bombardier Global Express touched down on the tarmac. He’d have to rethink calling his intelligence unimpressive. The bullet idea would probably make him another five billion dollars.

The plane touched down with surprising gentleness. This pilot was good. The plane taxied to a private gate where a private car waited to take him to a hotel. He’d be there long enough to take a power nap, then he would rendezvous with Lance and begin his search in earnest.

And when the dust settled, the world would flock to him.

CHAPTER NINE

“We need some sort of advantage over Nash,” Jacob mused.

“Really,” Jana said drily. “You don’t say.”

They were in first-class seats on a Boeing 777 bound for Cairo. The first-class seats were expensive, but the Division was footing the bill, and they needed privacy to discuss what their plan of attack would be when they landed in Egypt.

"I do say. Right now, he's holding all the cards. He has the amulet, he has the terrorists, and I'm willing to bet that he'll soon have the secrets to ancient Egyptian metallurgy. And if we're not going to ask the Division for help countering some of those advantages, then we need to find some other way to make up for it."

Jana frowned. Jacob wasn’t challenging her decision to keep the Division in the dark, but he was raising a good point. Without asking the Division for more resources, they were punching above their weight against Nash. It was a situation they’d found themselves in many times before, and Jana was comfortable with it, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable staying there.

“I have an idea,” she said, “but I don’t think you’ll be comfortable with it.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a very encouraging thing to hear.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I know. If it makes you feel better, I’m not very comfortable with it either. But I’m more comfortable with this idea than I am with relying on the Division.”

“Since I don’t know what ‘it’ is yet, I can’t offer an opinion as to how comfortable I am with it.”

“I was thinking I could call Cynthia.”

Jacob frowned. "Ah. Well, then, no, I'm not comfortable with it."

“Didn’t think you would be.”

Dr. Cynthia Crane was a friend of Jana’s. She was a very well-respected archaeologist the two had first encountered during the investigation into Apollo’s Breath, a hallucinogenic compound used by the Order to manipulate world leaders and create a power vacuum into which the Order could step and take over the world. That was their idea, anyway. Jacob and Jana had helped stop them, in no small part due to help from Cynthia Crane.

But Cynthia was a civilian, and Jacob and Jana both had qualms about putting her in danger to help them with an assignment like this. That was compounded by the fact that Cynthia had only recently recovered from being shot and left for dead by mercenaries in the Negev desert. That wasn’t Jana’s or Jacob’s fault. She had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Still, Jana didn’t feel good about involving her. The problem was that if they didn’t involve her, they had to involve the Curator, and Jana didn’t want to do that unless it was absolutely necessary.

“We don’t have to take her anywhere,” Jana explained. “I just want to use her expertise.”

“What expertise? She’s a Greek specialist, not an Egyptian specialist.”

“She has extensive knowledge of many ancient cultures, including Egypt,” Jana explained. “And she’s currently working as a research director for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo specializing in the New Kingdom.”

Jacob sighed. “So she’s qualified.”

“Highly.”

“And she might have information that can help us know what Nash is looking for.”

“Yes. And that information might help us get there first and understand what we’re looking at.”

“Damn it.”

“Yeah. I know.”

The two of them fell silent, each coping with the idea of endangering a woman both considered to be a friend. Jacob tapped his fingers on his knee. “I don’t like this. But… I understand why bringing the Curator into this now would be a bad idea. All right. You can call her.”

She raised her eyebrow. “I was never asking for permission.”

“Well, you can call her with a minimum of grumbling from me.”

She chuckled briefly, but it was hard to be humorous right now.

Don’t worry, she reassured herself. She won’t get hurt. If you’re careful, she won’t get hurt. Just don’t let her tag along with you.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the number.

Cynthia answered on the first ring. “Jana! Hi! Oh my God, I haven’t heard from you in ages! How are you?”

Jana couldn’t help but smiling at Cynthia’s bubbly enthusiasm. Even after nearly dying, she was unfailingly positive. “Hey, Cynthia. You sound good. How’s tricks?”

“I asked first.”

Jana’s smile widened. “I’m doing well. Ups and downs, but more ups than downs.”

“That’s good. Any downs going on now that I should know about?”

“Well… I’m hoping not.”

“Hoping not?”

Jana sighed. “This is the part where I admit this isn’t just a social call.”

“Ooh! Does this mean you’re on an assignment?”

“Yes.”

“CIA?”

Jana hesitated. She absolutely didn’t want Cynthia to know about the Division and even less that she was working for them. That being said, she didn’t want to have to argue with Cynthia about not running around the world like a spy.

She couldn’t think of a good lie, though, so she said, “Yes.”

Cynthia squealed, “Oh, how fun! The answer is yes. I will help you with whatever you need. Oh, it’s so exciting! I get to be a spy again!”

Jana shared a rueful look with Jacob. This was what they were worried about. Cynthia had a tendency to get far too enthusiastic about things like this, and Jana really didn’t want Cynthia getting too closely involved and putting herself in danger again.

She decided to nip it in the bud. “I’m not asking you to be a spy. I just need help deciphering some markings on the back of an amulet that was stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday morning.”

“Well, you’re in luck, because I am pretty much an expert in ancient Egyptian art.”

“That’s exactly why I’m calling you.”

“Not just because you miss the sound of my voice?”

Jana smiled. “I do miss the sound of your voice, but I wouldn’t be calling you right now if we weren’t in a rush and in need of your help. Otherwise, I would finish this job and then call you when I don’t have to fight you to keep you from putting your life in danger.”

“Well, that’s no fun. You get to put your life in danger.”

“But it’s not fun for me. That’s the difference.”

“Come on,” Cynthia wheedled. “Let me in. Besides.” Her voice grew a little more serious. “My life can be endangered even when I’m not saving the world.”

Jana lowered her eyes. She was glad Cynthia wasn’t here to see that. “Yes. That’s true. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to be okay with endangering it any further.”

“Fair enough. So tell me about this amulet.”

“It’s an eye of Wadjet dating from the nineteenth dynasty, probably the rein of Ramesses II. It’s made of an unknown metal and it has etchings on the back of it and an inscription that I believe reads ‘Tomb of the Pharaoh’s metalworker.’”

“Ooh!” Cynthia exclaimed. “I think I know that amulet! Can you send me a picture?”

“Sure.”

Jana forwarded the pictures she had downloaded from the Met. While they waited for the images to reach Cynthia, Jana asked, “So how are you doing? Really?”

“I’m doing great. I make metal detectors beep now because of the plates in my shoulder, but other than that, I feel fit as a fiddle.”

“No headaches?”

“Nope! Not since the last round of treatments. They were never that bad, anyway, but I’m glad they’re gone.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Cynthia sighed. “Are you going to feel guilty for the rest of your life? That wasn’t your fault, Jana. You didn’t even know anyone wanted the scroll.”

“I know,” Jana said. “I don’t feel guilty. I just feel bad.”

“Well, don’t. I’m fine. I’m healed, I have a wonderful job that I love, and I have good friends, including you. If you feel bad, you’re disrespecting my recovery, and I won’t have that.”

Jana smiled. “Well, when you put it that way.”

“I do put it that way. I’m okay. Really.”

“Okay.”

“Ooh! Got the picture. Yes! It’s it! It’s the one I’m thinking of!”

Jana raised an eyebrow. “You recognize it?”

"Hell yeah, I do. I was part of the dig team that discovered it."

Jana’s eyes widened. “You were?”

“Yes. It was my first job after I was allowed to go back to work. Finding it was what landed me the research director job here. Well, not just the amulet, the whole dig site. The Nineteenth Dynasty is the gift that keeps on giving in Egyptology. Just when we think we’ve learned all there is to learn about the New Kingdom, we find something else to blow our minds. That amulet was one of them. We used every test we know of to figure out what that metal is, but we couldn’t come up with anything. It’s probably the most unique example of advanced metallurgy during the rein of Ramesses II.”

“Do you know what the markings on the back mean?”

“I have some very good ideas. I’ll show you photos when you get here. You’re coming here, right?”

“Yes, we land in Cairo in four hours.”

“Awesome! Just in time for dinner.”

“Dinner? Won’t it be almost ten at night when we get there?”

“What are you, sixty? Come by the museum. I’ll let you two in. I assume since this is a CIA job, you’re bringing your pet hunk with you.”

Jana grinned. “He’ll be with me, yes.”

“Wonderful. I’ll make some chicken and couscous. I have to say, Egypt has to have the most underrated food on Earth. When you guys are done saving the world, you’ll have to come by just to see the sights.”

“Count on it.”

“Perfect. We’ll see you soon! Ooh, I can’t wait!”

She hung up, and Jana turned to Jacob. “Well, that went well.”

“Sounds like it. She’s excited to be involved.”

“She is.”

“Are you going to be able to keep her from tagging along when shit hits the fan?”

Jana smiled sheepishly at him. “I was sort of hoping you could be the bad guy.”

He sighed. “Really? She’s going to think I don’t like her.”

“No, she’ll think you’re overprotective, and I just don’t have the balls to stand up to you.”

He stared at her for a moment. “And that’s better?”

“Well… it’s easier.”

He rolled his eyes. “We’ll both grow some balls and tell her together that she can’t come. We’ll make it up to her by visiting her when we’re not working and letting her take us sightseeing.”

“Okay. I can accept that.”

“Don’t leave me hanging, all right? We both tell her she can’t put herself in danger.”

“I won’t leave you hanging.”

“Okay then. So she can help?”

“Oh yeah. She was part of the team who discovered the amulet.”

Jacob blinked. “Well, that sort of sucks.”

Jana frowned. “Why?”

“Because Nash might go after her.”

A chill ran down Jana’s spine. “Shit. I didn’t think about that.”

Jacob sighed. “We might not have a choice but to drag her along with us.”

“We don’t know that he knows about her. You didn’t see anything at their offices that suggests they do, did you?”

He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Considering how little information appears to be publicly available, it’s possible they don’t know yet. But if he doesn’t know, he’ll find out.”

“All the more reason we need to find him first. Besides, we already knew we were on a deadline. We only have sixty hours before those bombs go off. If there really are bombs.”

Jacob’s frown deepened. “Wonderful. So not only is one of our close friends possibly in danger, but the population of the largest city in the United States is in danger.”

Jana smiled thinly. “The world is in danger, Jacob.”

They fell silent and contemplated the coming days. In one way, Jana was glad to be working with Cynthia again. Her positivity would help her stay grounded as she faced the latest threat to the planet.

Heaven knew she needed some positivity right now.

CHAPTER TEN

Cynthia greeted them at the airport, squealing and throwing her arms around the two of them like they were long-lost relatives. Jacob endured the scientist’s fierce embrace and grudgingly admitted that he’d missed the bubbly archaeologist.

Not so grudgingly, actually. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that they were probably going to end up putting Cynthia in danger.

“Damn!” Cynthia exclaimed, grabbing Jacob’s biceps. “Look at you. Did you get even buffer?”

“Sure,” Jacob said. “We’ll call it that.”

Cynthia grinned at Jana and kissed her on the cheeks. “Hey, baby. How are you? I asked you that already. I’m just so excited to see you two! Wait until you see my office.”

She grabbed both of their hands and led them to a waiting taxi without waiting for Jana’s response to their questions. As soon as they sat in the vehicle, the two women began talking nonstop about archaeology. Jacob tried to follow along, but when they started talking about Intermediate Periods and at least a dozen different dynasties, he admitted that he was out of his depth and tuned them out.

That left him with nothing to think about but the coming investigation. He hadn't yet shared with Jana his speculation about the connection between this assignment and the one in the Negev. He wasn't sure if it really mattered for this case, but it might be significant for their wider investigation into the Division. Jacob and Jana didn't always see eye to eye on the Division, but he wouldn't argue against the point that they were hiding a lot of Knowledge from the world.

He didn't know if it really mattered that they were hiding this Knowledge. If they were hiding it. Let's say for the sake of argument that they knew of a technological connection between the treasure of Solomon and whatever treasures this amulet led them to. That could confirm a link between the ancient Egyptians and the pre-Ice Age culture, or it could just be more proof of a link between ancient Egypt and later Levant cultures, something everyone already knew about.

That was the problem with the line of work they were in. The general rule of thumb was that if you heard hoofbeats, you thought horses, not zebras. Except that sometimes you were in Africa, and sometimes hoofbeats meant water buffalo, not horses or zebras.

He was beginning to understand Jana’s frustration. The Division’s tightfistedness with information made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They couldn’t make any assumptions at all. About anything. Instead of starting with a good base of Knowledge, they started with almost nothing and had to put the puzzle together from scratch.

And they had to do it from behind. Nash was several steps ahead of them.

And so was the Division. Jacob wondered what puzzles the Division was trying to solve. At one point, he had feared that the Division intended to subjugate the world the way the Order had. He’d come to believe that wasn’t the case, but he still didn’t know what their end goals were.

And if he and Jana didn’t align with those goals, what challenges would they face opposing the Division?

The taxi pulled to a stop, and Cynthia led them inside. She and Jana were giggling like schoolgirls, and Jacob felt a rush of affection for the love of his life. He rarely got the chance to see her like this. Since working with him and the CIA, all of the excitement she felt about archaeology and history was tainted by the fact that she had to apply that curiosity to prevent terrorists and megalomaniacs from killing people or taking over the world, usually both. Jacob wasn’t so self-centered that he thought that meeting him had ruined her life, but he sometimes wondered if meeting her outside of work would have given her a chance to have more moments like this and him fewer days of worrying about her safety and happiness.

Cynthia opened the door of a modestly sized but well-appointed office with upholstered mahogany furniture and a number of tasteful and intriguing decorations that Jacob assumed were genuine archaeological artifacts.

“Well?” she asked, gesturing around. “What do you guys think?”

“It looks pretty damned cool,” Jacob said. “So you’re the big boss here now, huh?”

Cynthia laughed. “No, I’m a little boss. The big boss is Omar Malek.”

Jana’s eyes popped open. “The Omar Malek?”

“Yep,” Cynthia confirmed. “The Museum stole him away from Oxford and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He keeps saying he’s going to retire, but I don’t think he will. He likes this job too much.”

“I don’t blame him. It’s the best job in the world.”

Jacob guessed that Omar Malek was a well-known figure in archaeology. “So you’re the research director. Does that make you second-in-command?”

Cynthia sighed and shook her head. "Why is it always about who's in charge with you? My title is Director of Research for Ancient Egyptian Archaeology. There are eight other research directors specializing in different areas of research at the museum. We're in charge of our own research teams, but other than the perk of this lovely office, it doesn't come with much more than getting to do the best damned job in the world."

Jacob laughed. “Oh, is that all?”

“Yep. Nothing special.” Cynthia giggled, then said, “Oh! Couscous!”

She pulled three plates from somewhere underneath her desk. “I kept them warm for you. The seasoning is a recipe I convinced the chef at a restaurant on the Nile to give me. It is to die for.”

“I’m going to make my toast to not dying, if that’s all right,” Jacob quipped.

The food was delicious, though. The meat melted off of the bone, and the seasoning was spicy and savory without being overwhelming. Jacob could do without the couscous. He’d always found it bland and flavorless, no matter how much sauce or seasoning you used with it. The chicken however? Chef’s kiss.

He let Jana and Cynthia make small talk while they ate, mostly so he could cling to the illusion that they were just visiting a friend and not in the middle of an investigation into possible terrorism. Eventually, though, he could make no more excuses for their delay. They were on a deadline, and though he still suspected that the terrorist threat was a bluff, the consequences of being wrong about that would be unfathomable.

Besides, if Victor Nash got access to pre-Ice Age technology, there was no telling what sort of can of worms that would open up.

“So you were the one who discovered the amulet,” he asked Cynthia.

Cynthia grinned. “That’s Jacob’s gentle way of saying shut up already and tell us how to find what we need. Not to worry, superspy. I have exactly what you need.”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a manila folder. “Voila! The file on the metalworker’s amulet.”

She pulled out several photos of the amulet, all of which were sharper and clearer than the photos on the Met website. In these pictures, the amulet was brighter and had a stronger luster than it appeared to have on the catalog pictures.

“Looks pretty,” he said.

“I think it looks beautiful,” Cynthia agreed. “It has a simple but elegant design that was a signature of Khnum-ankh’s work.”

“Khnum-ankh?”

“Yes. The metalworker who made the amulet.” She pointed at two small hieroglyphs on the bottom right of the amulet. “That’s him right there.”

“So Khnum-ankh was well known?” Jacob asked.

“He was a legend,” Cynthia replied. “At least, we’re pretty sure he was. We’ve found five different tablets referencing him, and all of them agree that he was by far the best metalworker in Egypt. Two of those tablets were actually written in the Middle Assyrian Empire, confirming his reputation even outside of Egypt.”

“Damn,” Jana said. “He got around.”

“Well, his work did. Most records indicate that he was a personal retainer of Ramesses II. Not a bad gig working for the most powerful man in the known world.”

“And do you have other examples of his work?”

“Oh yes. Actually, the more research we do, the more we believe he was responsible for a great deal of the personal ceremonial objects in Ramesses’ palace. We also believe he designed the chariots and weaponry of Ramesses’ army, and in my not so humble but totally correct opinion, his designs gave the Egyptians a huge leg up over the Hittites, which is probably the only reason the Egyptians maintained regional dominance in the face of Hittite aggression and Assyrian expansion.”

“Anything like the amulet?”

Cynthia raised an eyebrow. “No. That’s the strange thing. Well, maybe strange isn’t the right word. But the amulet is the only thing we’ve found that’s made out of… whatever it’s made out of.”

“So you have no idea what it’s made out of?”

“Well, we know that part of the material is bronze. We were able to identify the tin and copper. There’s a third element, though, something we’ve never seen before. We sent reports to different universities and think tanks, but we haven’t received a response.”

Jana's lips thinned, and Jacob knew she was thinking that the Division was probably responsible for that. Jacob had the same feeling. Furthermore, he had a feeling that the Curator knew exactly what had been taken from the Met and that he'd sent Jacob and Jana after it, hoping they would retrieve it.

His lips thinned further. That was the reason he’d told them not to worry about the terrorist threat. This amulet, whatever it was, was special.

“What about the etchings on the back?” Jana said, “The ones that aren’t words?”

“That… we don’t know. The only thing we’ve been able to translate is ‘Tomb of the Pharaoh’s Metalworker. We speculate that this charm was given to Khnum-ankh upon his death to protect his tomb from evil spirits.”

“Where was it found?”

"In a home believed to have belonged to a Twentieth Dynasty merchant. We think his tomb was raided long after his death, and the amulet was taken by the merchant to protect his own household."

“Sounds like it didn’t work,” Jacob remarked.

“Actually, the merchant in question was believed to have died of old age after a long and prosperous career. His home was very well-appointed, and there are signs that he was fabulously wealthy at the time of his death.”

Jacob nodded. “Oh. Good for him.”

“So are we looking for Khnum-Ankh’s tomb?” Jana asked.

“I couldn’t tell you for sure,” Cynthia said. “But I can tell you that finding his tomb would be a totally badass thing to do.” She looked at them with big puppy dog eyes, and Jacob braced himself for the question to come. “So…”

Jana preempted it. “No,” she replied firmly. “We’re not going to put you in any more danger, Cynthia.”

“Oh, come on! Jana, think about it! This would be the crown jewel of my career!”

“You’ve had a wonderful career, and you’ll continue to have a wonderful career. Once we deal with the threat we’re facing, I’ll be happy to turn the tomb over to you and even give you credit for its discovery, but I’m not going to have you on the wrong end of a terrorist’s gun.”

Cynthia sighed. “I can see you two have had a long flight. Why don’t we all get some rest, and in the morning, maybe you’ll be more amenable to letting me tag along?”

“We can get some rest,” Jana said, “but the only thing we’re doing tomorrow is everything we can to find this tomb so that Jacob and I can stop the terrorists without putting you in danger.”

“Sure,” Cynthia said, clapping them on the shoulder. “I promise I won’t pester you until you give in.”

Jana and Jacob shared a wry look. Jacob decided to leave the argument for later. “We’ll talk tomorrow, Cynthia. No matter what happened, I very much appreciate your help.”

“Of course. What else are friends for?”

They took a cab to an upscale hotel a few miles from the museum. Both of them wore similar pensive looks that Jacob fully understood. They finally had a good lead, but he couldn’t shake the fear that it would come at a cost they weren’t prepared to pay.

A cold voice in his head replied, Just make sure the terrorists pay more.

That was a comforting thought in one way, but in another, it worried him. Just how much colder could he get before all of the things that made him a good guy were gone?

Jana’s hands slipped around him, and he allowed himself to find comfort in the arms of the woman he loved. It might be a while before he could find that comfort again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Captain Mark Kennedy ran a shaking hand over his forehead as he read the latest communication from the Soldiers of Fortune. The past twenty-four hours had been by far the most stressful of his career. When the FBI first told him that this outrageous threat was likely genuine, he was certain that there was no way they could respond in time.

But they had. Somehow, some way, the NYPD had stepped up and evacuated all of the targets the Soldiers of Fortune had named. They had pulled civilians away, and bomb squads were now scouring the city to find any sign of the bombs with which the Soldiers threatened to destroy most of New York.

And now that victory had been rendered meaningless.

He read the note again, published as an open letter on several different online news sources.

To the brave but ultimately stupid leaders of the New York Police Department:

It's cute that you think you can evacuate civilians and turn our strike into a glorified demolition, but that won't work for you. We'll shift targets instead: how about Times Square? How about Wall Street? Do you think you can evacuate those places and keep them empty? How long do you think you can keep them empty? We'll be ready to attack in forty-eight hours. That doesn't mean we won't be ready to attack seven days after that or seven weeks or seven years. We're going to get what we want, or we’re going to kill a lot of you. End of story.

Aside from the snarky tone that suggested their enemy found the deaths of civilians amusing, there was the issue that the two new targets mentioned were far more difficult to evacuate than the previous ones. Times Square could maybe be closed. Maybe.

But Wall Street? In the words of Kennedy’s uncle, Fuhgeddaboutit. Wall Street was the financial capital of the United States, one of the financial capitals of the world. If Wall Street was evacuated, then the losses could run into the billions every hour. You’re talking the NYSE shutting down, Blackrock, the credit bureaus, JP Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs… It just couldn’t be done.

But it would have to be done. Somehow, Captain Kennedy would have to convince the wealthiest people on the planet to leave their place of business to cater to a terrorist’s demands.

He dialed the number the FBI agent gave him. Voicemail again.

He cursed and closed his phone. Of course the FBI wasn't touching this now that the stakes were so high. They were fine taking the credit, but when it came time to deal with the potential fallout of a failure… hell no.

They were on their own.

His phone rang, and for a brief moment, he allowed himself to hope it was the FBI agent.

It wasn’t. It was the chief. He allowed himself another brief moment of hope that the chief was taking this out of his hands and giving it to someone else.

No such luck.

"Kennedy," the chief said in her smooth, cultured politician's voice. "How are you feeling?"

“Do you want the truth or the spin?” Kennedy replied.

The chief sighed. When she spoke again, the politician’s voice was gone, replaced by the cop’s. Kennedy respected that voice a whole lot more. “I want the assholes responsible this hogtied and lined up in front of me is what I want. I assume you’re aware of the new targets.”

“I’m aware.”

“I further assume that the FBI is being no help?”

"None at all. They stuck around just long enough to tell me that this is a serious threat and I should probably do something about it."

“Yep. I figured. You can always count on the feds to avoid anything that might carry a political cost.” She sighed. “So what can we do?”

Kennedy chuckled. “I mean, what choice do we have? We’re talking millions of people.”

She sighed again. "Yeah. Damn it." She took a deep breath. "Okay. I'll put some pressure on some people to ignore the protests the business barons are going to give us. You create a plan and start executing it. Don't wait for my go-ahead. We might need to use a little ask for forgiveness not permission here, but that's fine with me."

Kennedy smiled. It made him feel better to know the chief was on his side. Maybe it shouldn’t make him feel better, but it was something to hold onto, a lifeline in the middle of a seriously frightening storm. “I’m on it, boss.”

He hung up, took a deep breath, then made another phone call. All right, terrorists. This is how you want to play? Come get some.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jana and Jacob reconvened with Cynthia first thing in the morning. The night’s sleep had re-energized Jana, but it also left her impatient and restless. She wanted answers now before Nash could find them.

Cynthia, of course, was having the time of her life. To her, this was just another incredible adventure. Jana wished she could see it that way, but of course, she had more information than Cynthia did.

She served them spiced coffee and dates for breakfast. The coffee, she said, was an Egyptian spin on Turkish coffee—something else she learned from the chef who gave her his chicken recipe—and the dates were “just delicious.”

“Can we make this a working breakfast?” Jana asked. “I’m afraid we’ve wasted too much time already.”

Cynthia’s smile widened. “Well, lucky for us, I’ve been working for three hours.”

She pulled another manila folder from her desk and opened it to reveal photographs of ancient scrolls with translations on the next page. “So these are the Egyptian tablets we’ve found that reference Khnum-ankh.” She pointed at the translation. “This is something interesting here. Typically, only pharaohs are accorded epithets in ancient Egyptian records. It’s very rare for anyone else to even be named, but Khnum-ankh not only gets a name, but he also gets an epithet. See?”

She pointed at the exact hieroglyphs. Jana recognized the first two as matching the Khnum-ankh signature on the amulet, but the other two were unknown to her. They repeated twice, and it looked like it was possibly the symbol for birth or arrival. "Is this… Does this say rebirth?"

“Yes!” Cynthia said exuberantly. “Good job! Well, that’s not exactly what it says, but you’ve got the right idea. The full name is ‘Khnum-ankh the Reborn’ or ‘the Twice-Born.’”

“What does that mean? Is it some sort of spiritual thing, like how Christians are born again?”

“It’s not… No. The simple answer is no. The more precise answer is something we’re still working out from the records, but it appears that Khnum-Ankh suffered an accident when he was a young smith.”

“What kind of accident?”

Cynthia flipped through the papers and pulled out another one. “Here, check this out. This guy actually had a biography. That’s crazy! You never hear of this in ancient Egypt. Granted, it’s a short biography and doesn’t compare to the records of his buddy Ramesses’ exploits, but still, for a guy who was basically a servant to have his own biography… We have to start reconsidering just how important craftsmen were in ancient Egypt. You know, we have the typical hierarchy: Pharaoh first, then priests, then merchants, then soldiers, then tenant farmers—the land was essentially owned by Pharaoh at this time, so everyone who ‘owned’ land was basically a tenant of the Pharaoh—then slaves. Craftsmen would slot somewhere in between merchants and soldiers, but this guy was so revered.”

“Anything in there that might give us an answer on the amulet?” Jacob asked.

Jana was growing impatient too. This was all fascinating stuff, and she definitely wanted to hear about it, but they needed to put a stop to Victor Nash.

“As a matter of fact, maybe,” Cynthia replied.

“I love the assertiveness,” Jacob said drily.

"Here, I'll just read it to you." She cleared her throat. "Some liberties were taken with the translation, obviously, since hieroglyphs aren't an alphabet, but the primary points stand. Here goes.

“‘And thus it was, in the fifth year of Ramesses, Ptah came to Khnum-ankh in a dream. “Rise,” said Ptah. “Follow me.” And Khnum-ankh followed. The god showed him the furnace, the great furnace from which all things were made. Khnum-ankh looked into the furnace and saw all manner of wonders and creations, both of all things that are and all things that may yet come to be. And Khnum-ankh said, “My lord Ptah, why have you shown me this?” and Ptah said, “I have chosen you, Khnum-ankh, to be my greatest craftsman and to provide to my servant, Ramesses, great tools of war that Egypt may become even greater, and that her enemies might be cast down and ground even unto dust. But first, I must purge the dross that is inside you that what remains is the purest gold.”

“‘So saying, Ptah flung Khnum-ankh into the fire. Khnum-ankh cried out, for he saw his flesh sear and melt from the heat of the flame, but he felt no pain. He wondered at this, but he did not wonder long, for he heard the god’s voice tell him, “So shall you be forever known as Khnum-ankh the Twice Born, for you have entered the furnace of the gods and come out alive.”

"'And at this, Khnum-ankh awoke from his trance, and his eyes saw all knowledge of hidden crafts. He immediately took up his hammer and began to work so that he might fulfil the charge of Ptah and create for Ramesses tools of war so that Egypt may grow even greater and cast her enemies down.

“‘And so it was that Khnum-ankh the Twice Born, greatest of the metalworkers, gained his talents and created the strongest bronze in all the world.’”

Jana shared a look with Jacob, then looked back at Cynthia. “Wow.”

“I know. Flowery stuff. That’s not something you hear about a metalworker every day.”

“So he had a furnace accident and a vision, and he became the world’s greatest metal worker?” Jacob asked.

“That’s the legend.”

Jacob sighed. “I mean… that’s cool and all, but how does that help us?”

Cynthia blinked. “I… guess it doesn’t.”

“It might,” Jacob said. “This furnace where he was burnt, that was his furnace?”

“Yes.”

“And that furnace was where he worked for the rest of his life?”

“We believe so.”

“Okay, then we need to find his home,” Jana said. “Or that furnace, at least.”

Jacob frowned. “You think the furnace has special properties?”

“It might, but If it doesn’t, it might have examples of this metal there,” Jana said. “If we can figure out its specific properties, then we might be able to figure out why Nash wants it so badly.”

“Fair enough,” Jacob said. “Any luck finding that, Cynthia?”

Cynthia sighed. “I’m afraid that’s where the luck train runs out. We can’t for the life of us figure out where Khnum-ankh’s furnace is.”

“The amulet mentions his tomb,” Jana said. “Is there any reason to believe they could be in the same place?”

“No, not really, but it’s possible. Either way, we don’t know. We know where Ramesses was buried, of course, but we haven’t found Khnum-ankh’s tomb.”

“Could he have been buried with the pharaoh?” Jacob asked.

Jana shook her head. “No, retainer sacrifice was really only present in Dynasties Zero, One, and Two. It died out as a practice in Egypt long before Ramesses.”

“Got it.” Jacob crossed his arms. “And there haven’t been any other examples of this super alloy?”

“No,” Cynthia replied. “It’s true that Egyptian weapons were stronger than other weapons of the day, but not to an extreme degree. We’re fairly confident that Khnum-ankh’s designs were revolutionary, but it was nothing that exceeded the bounds of normalcy. He was just the best smith of his age. To be honest, until we discovered the amulet, we assumed all of the embellishment about his capabilities was just embellishment. But if he made that amulet, and he could have made other things with that alloy…”

“Wouldn’t we have seen those other things, though?” Jacob asked. “I mean, if all of the chariots and weapons we found were garden variety, then is it safe to assume that the amulet is a one-off?”

Jana got to her feet and began pacing the room. “It’s possible that the alloy he used to create the amulet was a very difficult alloy to make. Presumably he wouldn’t have access to any techniques more advanced than what was commonly available. Considering the properties that metal has, it’s likely that it was very difficult to work with, meaning he would only have worked with it on rare occasions.”

“That makes sense,” Cynthia said. “And considering how badly the Valley of the Kings has been looted over the centuries, it’s possible that those objects have been scattered far and wide and lost to us.”

Jacob nodded. “Yeah, Jana’s right. We need to find that furnace.”

“Wonderful,” Cynthia said. “I’ll get us a guide and—”

“No,” Jana interrupted.

“Come on!” Cynthia pleaded. “I can help!”

“You are helping. You’re not putting yourself in danger.”

“But—”

“No!” Jana shouted. “Damn it! I already almost watched you die once! I’m not going to watch you die again.”

Cynthia lowered her eyes, and Jana felt a wave of guilt. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout at you. I just… I really can’t, Cynthia. I can’t watch you get shot up the way you were in the Negev. These guys are serious. And they might already know who you are.”

“Probably not,” Jacob said. “I feel like they would have come after her already if they did.”

“Be that as it may, they could figure it out at any moment. I think.” She sighed. “I think you need to go somewhere else for a little while. Just to be safe. Just until we stop these guys.”

“So not only can I not come with you, but I can’t stay here and do my job.”

Jana looked away. “I’m sorry.”

Cynthia sighed. “It’s not your fault. I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t suck, but it’s not your fault that terrorists exist.” She lifted her gaze. “But I’m not done trying to convince you. I might not be a badass superspy, but this is my world too, and if I can help save it, then I want to.”

Jana met her friend’s eyes. Cynthia was so happy and bubbly all the time that it was easy to forget that she had steel too. Hell, Jana’s first meeting with Cynthia, the woman had pulled a knife on her and threatened her, believing her to be one of the people responsible for what happened to her archaeology team in Greece when Apollo’s Breath was discovered.

Still, Jana couldn’t risk her life. She had strength, but she wasn’t trained for this. Jana had grown up her whole life training for this, and Jacob had years of experience both in the Army and in the CIA. Cynthia didn’t.

“The best way you can help us is by staying alive and taking care of yourself,” Jana told her friend. “Your expertise is proving invaluable for a second time. We can’t risk losing that.”

Cynthia sighed. “Fine. I guess I’ll stop asking to be a spy. But you guys aren’t going anywhere yet. So let’s pretend that this isn’t the end of the world and work together like colleagues. Maybe I’ll forget that you guys are keeping me out of the cool part if I act like this is the cool part.”

“Act? This is the cool part.”

Jacob’s phone rang, distracting the two archaeologists. He frowned when he saw the number. “It’s the…” He glanced at Cynthia. “It’s our boss.”

Jana frowned. “Hold on, Cynthia.”

They stepped out of the office, and Jacob answered. “Hello, sir. We’re with a civilian right now, so we can’t talk too openly.”

“Is this civilian in earshot right now?” the Curator asked.

“No sir, not this second.”

“Then you can listen. The Soldiers of Fortune have threatened to bomb Times Square and Wall Street now. As you might imagine, evacuating those locations—especially Wall Street—isn’t so simple a task. The NYPD is experiencing stiff resistance, and as nearly as we can tell, they’re not going to be successful in completely evacuating the area.”

Jacob gave Jana a grim look. “Does this mean we know for a fact that the terrorists aren’t bluffing?”

“We’re fairly sure,” the Curator replied, “since NYPD has already found fourteen different bombs at One World Trade Center alone.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Jacob’s stomach flipped when he heard that. He didn’t realize until just then how much he was hoping for the terrorist threat to be a bluff.

“Fourteen? Just at the World Trade Center?”

“I am not in the habit of exaggerating,” the Curator replied. “NYPD has found fourteen bombs at One World Trade Center. They are in the process of disarming them now. They haven’t even had a chance to get to the other locations. They’re reaching out for help from the National Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but I think you get the gist.”

“How? How the hell are the terrorists moving so fast?”

“The natural assumption is that they aren’t just now moving so fast but have been planning this for some time now. We have other assets working on that question. Your job is to stop the Soldiers of Fortune at all costs, and time is running out.”

Jacob and Jana shared a look. Jana’s lips thinned. Jacob knew what she was about to do and knew how much she hated that she had to do it. But they were past the point of getting to pick and choose what resources they used.

“We’ve discovered information that might help us learn exactly what the terrorists are after,” she told the Curator.

“You have? Excellent. Let’s hear it.”

Jana’s lips thinned even further, but she did a good job of hiding her anger when she replied. “The attack on the Metropolitan Museum of Art two days ago wasn’t just a terrorist attack. You were right. The terrorists stole something.”

“What did they steal?”

“An amulet. An ancient Egyptian amulet believed to have been made by a metalworker named Khnum-ankh during the reign of Ramesses II. The amulet is constructed of an unknown superstrong alloy.”

“I see. Am I safe in assuming that this alloy is the ultimate goal of the terrorists?”

“Yes,” Jacob said. “I believe the Soldiers of Fortune are either contracted by or a creation of Victor Nash, the CEO of American Materials Corporation. I’ve uncovered evidence that Nash intends to learn how to make this alloy to create advanced armor that will allow his company to corner the market. As to what he hopes to gain by blowing up New York other than to distract people, I don’t know.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” the Curator replied, “He’s creating a need. He’s going to blow up New York so that police forces become afraid. Then he’s going to offer them armor and weapons made from this superalloy. If I were him, I would look to create some sort of technology that could detect and address terrorist threats, but perhaps he knows such an aim is outside of his depth. Either way, I believe you two are on the right track.”

Jana sighed. “Well, we’ve reached a dead end. I looked up Division records on the amulet, and I do find evidence of the amulet’s existence, but nothing else. We’ve found other records that led us to this smith, Khnum-ankh, along with hints that the secrets to his metallurgy techniques and possibly this superalloy are to be found at his furnace or possibly his tomb. Unfortunately, we have nothing that tells us exactly where those locations are.”

“Hmm. I’m not familiar with a Khnum-ankh. I’ll reach out to our Egyptian specialists. I’ll ensure you have access to all of our records of New Kingdom Egypt and that you’re contacted as soon as we have information from the specialists. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do right now.”

“Anything helps,” Jana said.

"Very well. Good luck, you two."

He hung up, and Jacob looked at Jana. She was stiff as a board, her arms crossed, and her fingers digging into her triceps so hard that her knuckles were white.

“Well, that sucked,” he offered.

“Yeah, it did. We just gave the Curator everything we had to hear him tell us it might be for no reason.”

“I mean, they have a lot more eyes than we do. They might be able to get information faster than we could on our own.”

Jana sighed. “Yeah. It just…” She shook her head. “Well, it’s better than New York getting blown to smithereens.” She sighed. “Okay. Let’s go back inside and talk to Cynthia.”

“You go ahead,” Jacob said, “I’m going to call Tyler and see if the CIA has more information that can help us.”

Jana lifted an eyebrow. “You think he’ll talk to you?”

Since being "stolen" from the CIA by the Division, Jacob had been unable to get a hold of Tyler. He wasn't sure if this was the Division's decision, the Agency's decision, or Tyler's own decision, but whoever was responsible, his friendship with Tyler appeared to be on indefinite hiatus.

This was different, though. “A major terrorist threat against New York City? Yeah, I’m betting he talks to me.”

Jana shook her head. “I hope you’re right.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

She stepped into the office. Jacob took a deep breath and then dialed the number.

To his relief, Tyler answered almost immediately. “Hey, Jacob. Long time no talk.”

Incredibly, despite the seriousness of the situation, Jacob felt a surge of hurt and anger. “Yeah. It has been a long time. What the hell, Tyler?”

Tyler sighed. “It’s not so simple as it seems, Jacob.”

“The hell it isn’t. You told me to pursue closer ties with the Division. You even told me that I should consider working with them so I could be the CIA’s inside man.”

“Jacob—”

“Then you sell me to them? And you stop talking to me? I could understand ‘retiring’ me and giving me to them if you were doing that so I could be the inside man like we talked about, but then you just fall off the face of the map?”

“Jacob, please listen—”

“I will, but I want you to listen first. You wanted me to be the inside man, so I’m being the inside man. Jana and I have worked with them for a while now, and…” He frowned. “And… well, I still don’t know if I should trust them or not. At first, I was certain that they were trying to become the new Order, but after working with them for a while, I started to think that maybe they meant well. Maybe they really were just trying to be the shield that protects the world from the most dangerous pieces of ancient history.”

“And now?”

"Now? Well, now… Now, I'm not sure. They're…" he looked through the window of Cynthia's office door and lowered his voice. "They're altering historical events, Tyler. They're changing history."

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said. Jana and I have been gathering data, but it looks like the Division has altered major historical events to change the established history of the world. We don’t know how far it’s gone or what we can and can’t trust, but it’s big.”

“I see.”

“One more thing. They’re not an American organization.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“They’re not American. They are now, but they’ve existed for a long time. A long time. At least eight centuries but probably longer than that.”

Tyler was silent for a moment. “Wow. I was going to tell you that I was instructed not to talk to you for at least six months after your recruitment, but what you just said is far more interesting. You have proof of all of this?”

“We’re gathering evidence,” Jacob replied. “We don’t have enough yet, but we’re working on it.”

“Wow. I almost wish I could tell you to forget about New York and just focus on that.”

Jacob chuckled. “I almost wish I could say the same thing.”

It felt good to talk to Tyler again. It felt good to know that the CIA hadn’t forgotten about him.

And it put his little love affair with the Division into perspective. Jacob could make the argument that they were the lesser of many evils, but that didn’t mean they weren’t evil, and it didn’t mean that they should be allowed to operate unchecked. It was good that the CIA was still keeping an eye on them and good that they still trusted Jacob to be a part of that.

And it was good that he and Jana were in agreement now. When he had a chance, he would tell her about this conversation.

“Well, we can’t,” Tyler said, pulling Jacob back to the matter at hand. “And you called me. I imagine that’s because you need the CIA’s help with this problem.”

“Yes. We’ve discovered that Victor Nash of American Materials Corporation is behind this threat.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“They’re a supplier of armor and explosives to government and law enforcement. I believe their largest contract is with the Army.”

“Hmm. And you’re sure they’re behind this?”

“I’m sure.” He briefly outlined the amulet and Nash’s plans to use the terrorist attack to put the world into a state of fear that he would capitalize on by selling his new product line created from the Egyptian superalloy.

When he finished, Tyler whistled. “That is some next level messed up crap. He doesn’t even want world domination. He just wants people to buy his armor.”

“That’s what it looks like to me.”

“So what can I do for you?” Tyler asked.

“I need to know if American Materials has resources in Egypt,” Jacob said. “Jana and I are here in Cairo. Jana’s trying to get ahead of Nash and find this metalworker’s furnace so we can figure out what his metallurgy technique is and possibly remove all of the evidence before Nash gets there. I would like to run some interference and maybe get Nash pointed in the wrong direction.”

“And also see how far they’ve come to understanding this stuff,” Tyler said. “Okay, hang on. Let me see what I can find.”

Jana looked back through the window of the office. Jana and Cynthia were bent over the desk looking at Jana’s computer, probably at whatever evidence the Curator had given them. He really hoped that it would be enough to answer their questions about the alloy. Ideally, Nash would be stopped before his plans got off the ground, but if he wasn’t, and if he gained access to the alloy, then Jacob would feel a lot better knowing they could come up with some sort of countermeasure. Victor’s current ambitions might just be to corner the market on armor systems, but once a man became invincible, he started thinking different things. He started wondering if maybe the sky wasn’t the limit, if maybe he could be the one who decided when the sun shone and when it set. If they faced that version of Victor, Jacob would feel a lot better if they could meet him on even ground.

“Jacob, you there?”

“Yeah, Tyler. I’m here.”

“Okay. We have one location for American Materials Corporation in Cairo. It’s a warehouse to store goods shipped to Cairo for distribution throughout Africa. According to our records, it’s lightly guarded, but if Nash is there, then that might have changed.”

“Got it. That’s fine. Send me the coordinates, and I’ll find a way in.”

“On their way to you. Good luck, Jacob.” After a brief pause, he added, “It was good to hear from you.”

Jacob smiled. “Yeah. It was good to hear from you too.”

Tyler hung up, and Jacob took a deep breath. He put his phone away and walked back into Cynthia’s office.

The two women looked expectantly at him.

“I’ll be back,” he told them. “I have an errand to run.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The American Materials warehouse was located in an industrial park two miles inland from the Port of Cairo. That meant it was out of the way of the bulk of the road traffic. There was still enough traffic to allow Jacob to approach fairly closely without being seen, though.

The property was far less heavily protected than the Staten Island facility. The warehouse itself was little more than an enormous prefab steel building surrounded by a small parking lot, a much larger loading dock, and a chain link fence topped with razor wire. Jacob walked around the building, keeping a half mile or more of distance between himself and the facility at all times and using his field glasses to assess the security situation.

There was a single gate protected by two armed guards. That was it. No armed patrols. The security cameras only covered the entrances to the building. He counted several windows through which he could enter without being seen on camera. He’d have to see what was inside the building before he did that, of course, but it looked like this facility was exactly what Tyler had said it was.

That worried him. With forty hours to go before New York City suffered the worst terror attack in history, the last thing he needed was to waste his time scouring a glorified closet.

But they didn’t have any other leads right now. The Division had limited information on the amulet and the superalloy, and the CIA had given Jacob all the information they had.

So, here he was, about to infiltrate a warehouse in broad daylight and hope that he wasn’t compromising their stealth for no good reason.

He approached the fence, choosing a route that would keep him out of sight of the guards and the cameras the entire time. When he reached the fence, he paused only to look around and make sure he wasn’t being watched. Then he scaled the fence. The chain link was much easier to climb than the fence in Staten Island, but it wasn’t sturdy enough for him to use acrobatics to flip himself over the razor wire. This time, he had to carefully lift himself over the wire and swing his leg around to give himself enough momentum to carry him over.

He landed without injuring himself, even if the stumbling backwards roll wasn’t the most graceful thing he’d ever done. He got to his feet and continued his journey to the building, breaking into a dead sprint. This was the most vulnerable part of the operation. He needed to hope that he could get into the building and avoid any internal security. Then he needed to hope that he could find something in the records there that would tell him where Nash was and what his plans were.

He looked through the nearest window. The window opened into a hallway that looked empty. Jacob tested the window and found it solid enough, but not particularly strong. He didn’t want to make a lot of noise and risk alerting security that he might not see, so instead of smashing the glass, he pulled his combat knife from his pocket and worked it over the sealant.

He moved it across the bottom of the glass and up the sides first. Then, with three sides cut through, he pushed the glass in until he was able to hook his fingers under the bottom of the pane. He held it still while he cut through the sealant on top, praying silently as he did that no one would walk up on him.

He finished cutting the sealant, then sheathed his knife. Carefully, using both hands, he tilted the glass and pulled it through the window. He lowered it to the ground and breathed a sigh of relief. So far so good.

He entered through the window and quickly confirmed that there were no security cameras visible. Of course, there could be cameras not visible, but he could only focus on what he could control.

He moved down the hallway, listening carefully. He couldn’t hear anyone.

Halfway down the hallway, he came to a door that led deeper into the building. He looked through the window, and his eyes widened. Instead of a large warehouse like he expected, he saw a room that looked like a university-level laboratory.

Some of the instruments were labeled: a spectrometer, a durometer, and an electrical conductivity meter. A few others Jacob couldn’t recognize.

He tested the door handle. Locked. It appeared to be a simple lock, so he braced himself and twisted hard, forcing it open.

No alarm sounded. Clearly, Nash wasn’t expecting anyone to break in.

Jacob looked through the instruments, trying to find anything that might tell him if Nash was successful in his efforts to determine the composition of the alloy. He was about to leave the room when he found a stack of paper sitting on a desk. It was held down by a paperweight made of desert glass.

Jacob glanced through the paper. Then he did more than glance.

The top page was a summary of chemical properties of Alloy E651. The trade name of Alloy E651 was given as Metal X.

Jacob’s heart leaped. He had no idea what the listed properties meant other than the hardness of the metal listed at nine on the Mohs scale. That number made it harder than any known material except diamond. Hardness was only one trait to consider, though. Jacob still didn’t know if the alloy would make effective armor or weaponry.

But he knew Nash had been here, and he knew Nash wasn’t here anymore. He didn’t know if the results Nash obtained meant he could make more of the metal or if he still needed to find Khnum-ankh’s secrets.

He leafed through the rest of the papers. On the bottom of the last paper was the conclusion that fabricating a synthetic equivalent of the metal was possible but prohibitively expensive, requiring roughly eighteen kilograms total of several different input materials for one kilogram of a similar but functionally inferior output material.

So Nash hadn’t unlocked the secrets yet. Maybe he’d found another lead and was currently pursuing it.

Jacob left the laboratory and continued looking through the laboratory. Nash couldn’t be that far ahead of them. They still had a chance to stop him if they could figure things out fast enough.

He checked the next door but found only a janitorial closet. The door after that was a restroom.

When he reached the last door at the end of the hallway, he struck gold. There was no computer in that room, but there was a whiteboard.

From where he stood, Jacob could see enough to know exactly where he needed to go next. The whiteboard contained notes in blocky handwriting: Khnum-ankh’s furnace. Instructions there. Determine technique, possibly an early form of electron substitution?

And the final note, the most important note, a set of coordinates.

Jacob took a picture of the whiteboard and punched the coordinates into his GPS. It showed a location in the Great Sand Sea, deep in the Western Desert.

That must be it. That was where Khnum-Ankh’s furnace was, or at least, where Nash thought his furnace was.

“Hey!”

Jacob snapped his eyes toward the voice to see a security officer frowning as he approached. He tried to feign ignorance, putting his phone in his pocket and grinning widely. “Hey, I think I’m in the wrong building. I’m looking for Siwa Motorsports. I’m picking up a sand rail from them.”

The guard drew a handgun and aimed it at Jacob’s head. “On your knees! Now!”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t believe me either. That was a weak excuse.”

“On your—”

Jacob snapped to the left, away from the firing line of the handgun. The guard fired instinctively, and the shot went wide. Jacob took a step forward and twisted to the right, chopping at the guard's wrist as he did. The gun flew from the guard's hand, and as soon as the guard took his eyes off Jacob to look at his weapon, Jacob smashed his palm into the man's nose.

He felt the nose shatter and the skin pulp. The man dropped like a sack of bricks.

Just in time for Jacob to see two other guards staring at him in shock. He turned around and found three more rushing toward him.

Well, shit.

He ran into the office and rushed to the other door. He heard shouting behind him, and a second later, a bullet punched through the first door.

Jacob ran through the second door into another hallway, leading deeper into the warehouse. He rushed down the hallway and out through the door on the opposite side. A bullet sailed past his forehead, and he drew his weapon. He was hoping not to have to shoot anyone here. He didn't know how many people at American Materials knew about their boss's extracurricular activities, and he didn't want to kill anyone innocent.

He might have to injure some people, though, if he couldn’t find a way out of here. More bullets whizzed past him, and he spun around and fired behind him, aiming high. The guards ducked low, and Jacob took advantage of the distraction to increase the distance between them.

He ran through another door and found himself in the main warehouse. A woman holding a clipboard stared at him in shock, then shrieked when she saw the gun.

“It’s all right,” he told her, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The woman shouted back in Arabic, “Who are you? What do you want?”

Before Jacob could answer, the door burst open. Jacob cursed and ran toward a stack of shipping containers. A bullet pinged off of the one of the containers just as Jacob dove behind it.

He looked to his right and saw an open warehouse door. There were commercial vehicles parked outside, but Jacob didn’t want to steal a vehicle and end up in the middle of a police pursuit.

The guards shouted directions to each other. Jacob heard one guard say they were going to flank him. He looked up and judged the height of his jump.

With a grunt, he leaped up, grabbing the edge of the container and pulling himself to the top. He flattened himself on the roof and heard the guards curse when they rounded the corners of the container and couldn’t see him.

“What the hell? Where did he go?”

“He must be behind one of the other containers,” another guard said. “Go!”

Jacob waited while the footsteps led away. When he thought there was enough distance, he army-crawled to the edge of the shipping container and looked over the edge.

The guards were searching through the other containers, cursing and looking around wildly. Jacob got to a crouch and looked to his right.

The woman with the clipboard was staring at him, wide-eyed. He lifted a finger to his lips. She nodded, and he gave her a thumbs up, then leaped down from the container. He landed softly, rolling to minimize the noise and the impact, and ran for the exit.

The guards didn’t follow him. Jacob exited the building onto the loading dock and hugged the side of the building until he was facing away from the gate where the two guards were currently listening to their radio and frowning, probably hearing about the armed intruder their companions were looking for.

Jacob climbed the fence quickly, leaping over the razor wire. The wobbly chain link fence did him no favors, and a link of razor wire cut a groove in his calf.

He wasn’t badly injured, though, and he could dress his wound later. He ran away from the facility and soon lost himself in a more crowded portion of the Port.

His leg burned, but he was grinning like a fool. He had their best lead so far. They could find Nash and discover Khnum-ankh’s secret at the same time.

Most importantly, they could find out where the bombs in New York were and figure out a way to stop them. Tyler’s lead had come through.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jana wasn’t surprised at all to learn that the Division did indeed have more information on Khnum-ankh. When she first searched for the amulet, she’d received very sparse records. Even Cynthia had more information on it than the Division.

Then she had talked to the Curator, and suddenly, here was all of this information. She was getting really tired of being drip-fed only the information the Curator thought she deserved.

Of course, she was using the information to which she had access to build a case against the Division for lying about history. She hoped the Curator didn’t know that, but she could see how it might not be in their best interests to be forthcoming.

Now you sound like Jacob.

She chuckled at that, and Cynthia asked, “What’s funny?”

“Nothing. I just sometimes feel like the… like the CIA doesn’t share everything they know.”

"Oh. Yeah, I figure they wouldn't. I mean, they're the CIA. It's their job to know things and make sure other people don't know things."

“Well, we need to know what they have on Khnum-ankh.”

Cynthia frowned. “Wait, they have information on Khnum-ankh? I thought you were looking for information on the terrorists.”

“Jacob’s looking for information on the terrorists. I’m trying to figure out where Khnum-ankh’s tomb and furnace are so I can make sure that we get to it before the terrorists do.”

“Gotcha,” Cynthia said distractedly. Then, with a lot more excitement, “So what does the CIA know about Khnum-ankh?”

Jana clicked a file. “Well, it looks like Khnum-ankh actually did make chariots out of the superalloy.”

Cynthia’s eyes bugged open. “Really?”

“Yep. Five hundred chariots made of an unknown superalloy were discovered near the Pyramids of Giza. It looks like they were held at a CIA/MI6 joint facility that was destroyed during World War II.”

“Wow. That’s incredible.”

It was also a lie. The chariots had actually been held at a Division facility, but after numerous failed attempts to determine the composition of the alloy and figure out a way to make more, they had given up on it and stored it in one of the dams destroyed by the Order a couple of years ago.

She felt a stab of guilt at lying to Cynthia. She had just been complaining internally about being lied to by the Division, but she had literally done the same thing to Cynthia.

That was different, though, wasn’t it? Cynthia was a civilian. It was dangerous for her to know too much. It could hurt her.

So, some knowledge is too dangerous for people.

She got to her feet and started pacing the room. That was the argument Jacob always used. She hated it. It sounded like the worst excuse of a tyrant trying to control access to information. Before this very assignment, she had argued that even dangerous information should be accessible to people so that the human race could learn from its mistakes. Now, here she was, actively withholding information from a friend—worse, lying and feeding her false information—because the truth was too dangerous for her to hear.

But this is different!

Is it?

“Jana? Hey, are you okay?”

Cynthia’s voice pulled Jana from her thoughts. She smiled at her friend and hoped the look appeared genuine. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just trying to think where Khnum-ankh’s furnace might be.”

Cynthia leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “Honestly, it might not be there anymore, wherever it is. It could have been destroyed centuries ago. We might stumble across it thirty years or three hundred years from now. Or we might never find it. But the good news is that the terrorists won’t find it either if that’s the case.”

Jana smiled wanly. “That’s a big if, Cynthia.”

“Yeah,” the archaeologist agreed.

They fell silent for a long moment. Cynthia broke the silence by standing and saying, “Well, I’m stumped for now. I’m going to take a walk outside and get us some lunch. You want to join me?”

Jana opened her mouth to say yes, but a thought occurred to her first. “I think I’ll keep looking while you get lunch. I’ll take a break when you get back.”

“Suit yourself,” Cynthia said, “but when this whole thing is over, you’re letting me show you around the city.”

“Count on it.”

Cynthia gave her a thumbs up, then left the office. Jana counted to ten, then logged back into the Division database.

She didn’t go to the general records section, though. She went to a portion of the records that she had first accessed in Greece during the hunt for the Sphere of Archimedes.

That portion of records contained a list of Division changes to history, recorded as “adjustments.” So far, she had only found adjustments relating to historical facts of ancient Greece during the time of Archimedes, but she knew the Division was hiding more than that.

She had access to more information now. Maybe she also had access to other “adjustments.”

She opened the “adjustments” tab, and when she saw a date for 1274 BCE, her heart leaped. She frowned at that reaction. Hardly something to be excited about.

But it was more proof. It was something she could use to demonstrate that the Division was altering history.

She opened the adjustment. It read May -1274. Ramesses II of Egypt defeats Muwatalli II of Hattusa by leading a chariot charge that decimates the Hittite ranks. Hittite shields show signs of weakness to Egyptian weapons. Chariots composed of Superalloy 78 used in charge.

A link was provided to the adjustment. The adjustment read May -1274. Ramesses II of Egypt engages Muwatalli II of Hattusa in pitched battle. The battle is inconclusive, with heavy casualties on both sides. However, due to the attrition of warfare and growing pressure from the Assyrian Empire, the Hittites rapidly decline and are scattered throughout the major Levantine empires.

Jana read and reread the information. As “adjustments” went, this one looked pretty tame. The general course of history hadn’t been altered. The Egyptians won their war with the Hittites. The Hittites declined, Egypt remained strong, and the Assyrians were ascendant.

Why would the Division change this information? Just to hide the fact that the Egyptians had a superalloy?

She frowned. Something was missing here. There was a piece of information that could make all of this make sense, and Jana bet it had something to do with the alloy itself. There was a reason the Division didn’t want people to know about this alloy. Was it just because of its strength?

The door opened, and Jana jumped. Cynthia giggled. “Did I just catch the superspy off guard?”

“Yeah, you got me,” Jana said. She quickly downloaded the information and sent it to a personal file folder of hers. “What’d you get us for lunch?”

“Lamb kebabs. There’s a place near the museum that is so good.”

“Sounds delicious.” She exited the server, closed the laptop and smiled sheepishly. “Well, I haven’t found anything useful. I think we might need to just give up on this angle and help Jacob with his investigation into the terrorists.”

The door opened, and both Jana and Cynthia jumped. Jacob walked in, his eyes intense.

Jana knew that look. “Did you find something?”

“I have something,” he confirmed. “Coordinates.”

Jana’s eyes popped open. “Coordinates?”

Jacob nodded. “Yes. Nash was here, in Cairo. Probably as recently as yesterday.”

“No way.”

“He was. That warehouse I investigated wasn’t just a warehouse. They had some sort of laboratory where they analyzed the metal of the amulet. Didn’t learn anything there we didn’t already know, but the results of the analysis also told them that it would be cost-prohibitive to manufacture the alloy themselves.”

“So they were going to try to make more?”

“Yes, but they can’t. So they figured out where Khnum-ankh’s furnace was.”

Cynthia and Jana gasped and asked at the same time, “They did?”

“Yes. Or at least, they think they did. I was able to get the coordinates. They lead to a place in the Great Sand Sea deep in the Western Desert.”

“Let me see,” Jana said.

Jacob showed her the coordinates. Cynthia leaned over the phone. When she saw the coordinates, she gasped. “Of course! That’s what the etchings are!”

Jana turned to her. “On the amulet?”

“Yes. It’s a map! I thought it was just decorative, but those coordinates here… If you… hold on.”

She dashed to her desk and pulled out the file folder containing photographs of the amulet. She pulled it out and held it close to Jacob’s phone. “Yes… Here we go… Yes. Yes!”

She grinned and used two fingers to zoom in on the map. “If you start… here, at this oasis, then you move eight thousand cubits north, you find yourself at this crossroads. Five thousand cubits west, and you come to a rock formation, one of very few in the Sand Sea.” She glanced at the watch. “And… Six thousand cubits northwest from there, and you arrive here. Right at the coordinates you found from the terrorists’ warehouse.”

Jacob and Jana shared a look. “Well, I guess we know how Nash figured it out.”

“How quickly can we get there?” Jana asked Cynthia.

“The only way there is by air,” Cynthia replied. “There are no roads in that part of the country. The crossroads I mentioned is an ancient one. It hasn’t been used or maintained in millennia. I don’t know if it’s even visible anymore.”

“By air is fine,” Jana said. “Any idea where to find a pilot who will take us?”

Cynthia brightened. “I know someone!” She grew a sly look. “But he’ll only take other passengers if I go with him.”

Jana smiled drily. “Nice try.”

“Come on!” Cynthia whined. “Let me come with you! It’ll be fun! It’ll be like old times.”

“No,” Jacob said. “I’m putting my foot down. Cynthia, you are awesome, and I look forward to spending time with you when we’re not trying to save the world, but the point you’re missing here is that Nash doesn’t need you anymore. He’s not going to come after you because he figured out what he needed to know without you. You’re safe, and that’s very important to me.”

“To both of us,” Jana agreed. “So you’re going to get us that pilot, but you’re going to stay here. As soon as the part where we fight terrorists is over, I’ll make sure you share in the archaeological spoils. But until that time, you’re waiting here in safety, understood?”

Cynthia sighed and lowered her head. When she lifted her gaze, her expression had hardened. “I understand that you two are worried about me. I appreciate that. But I’m not just some dumb little girl who has no idea what she’s getting into. I’ve worked with you before, remember?”

“Yes, and you’ve almost died,” Jana retorted. “Twice now.”

“That’s the risk we take when we try to save the world.” She crossed her arms. “You two wouldn’t even know about the furnace if it wasn’t for me, and you wouldn’t have a plane without me either. I’ve already proven invaluable to this investigation. You guys are good friends of mine, but I don’t work for free. You feel me?”

Jana and Jacob shared a look. Jana sighed again and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Fine. I guess you have us at a disadvantage.”

Cynthia pumped her fist. “All right! I’ll call my pilot friend.” She reddened a little, “By the way, you might hear some things that make it sound like he and I are a thing. We’re not. It was just one time at a conference in Antioch. He happened to be there on a charter flight, one thing led to another, and… Well, anyway, he owes me. That’s all this is.”

Jana and Jacob shared a sly look. Jana lifted her hands. “That’s your business, Cynthia. But if you like him, maybe you should—”

“No. No setting me up.”

She dialed the number and arranged for their flight. Jana shared another look with Jacob, this one more sober and businesslike.

This was where the shit really hit the fan. The next few hours would decide the future of the world.

“No big deal,” Jacob said. “We do this all the time.”

Jana smiled and took his hand. “No one does it better.”

Jacob grinned. “Damn straight.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Victor wiped sweat from his brow and checked his GPS. The group had to land near the Oasis rather than at the possible location of Khnum-ankh’s furnace because the terrain meant their charter pilot couldn’t go any further. They had to cover the rest of the distance on foot. It gave Victor ample time to reflect on the fact that he was in terrible shape compared to his Army days.

“Just about two miles, sir,” Lance said. “We’ll be at the coordinates then.”

Victor sighed. “Yeah, I got that part. I just really hope that the furnace is there. I’m going to be seriously pissed off if I just wasted my time.”

Lance frowned. “Well, it doesn’t change anything in New York. That’s already set.”

“Is it? Last I heard, NYPD had found all of your bombs.”

Lance’s frown deepened. “They’ve found some of our bombs. Not all of them. And even if only one location is successfully hit, you’re still talking about massive damage. Trust me, sir, everyone will be begging for Next Generation Warrior products.”

“Sure. If we have products to give them.”

“As I said, sir. Just about two miles.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed. He studied Lance’s face but found nothing to indicate sarcasm on the part of his right-hand man and the field operations leader of the Soldiers of Fortune. “All right,” he said after a minute. “Give the team fifteen minutes to break for lunch. Then we’ll keep moving.”

Lance nodded and passed the welcome news down the line that they were going to break for lunch. There were scattered thank-yous from the metallurgists in the group. The security officers didn’t react. Victor had a feeling they were just irritated at having to stop all the time for the civilians.

Victor understood that frustration. It reminded him of being in the Army when some officer would get a bug up his butt and decide that he needed to “do something” with the men. Invariably, the men were much happier when officers stayed in officer-land and did whatever it was officers did than they were when officers wanted to “show solidarity.” All that meant was becoming a babysitting problem for the enlisted folk.

He broke out an MRE and popped the tab. This one was supposed to be fettucine alfredo. It didn't taste like fettuccine alfredo, but it was still Victor's favorite MRE.

He ate the meal efficiently, scanning the horizon as he ate. He didn’t see any threats, and if he had, it would be Lance and his men who had to deal with them, but old habits died hard.

He had never had the chance to see combat in the Army. His MOS meant that he spent all of his time on the reservation, and since his MOS was so important, he was almost never allowed to drill with the men and got precious little range time. He’d supplemented that with practice on his free time, but he still felt like an outsider in the Army.

Thank God he’d kept up with his training. He’d spent every spare moment he could training like a real soldier, just in case they were ever attacked. That day had never come, but that was all right. He was going to prove his worth in other ways.

He was pulled from his thoughts when he heard Lance swear. He glanced at his security chief and heard the man say, “When? How many? Just one? You’re sure he was spying on us?”

That caught Victor’s full attention. Spying on them? Who?

Lance sighed. “All right. Find out what you can and try to keep the police distracted. I’ll handle things with the boss.”

He hung up, and immediately, Victor asked, “Handle what, Lance?”

“The warehouse in Cairo was attacked this morning,” Lance explained. “One man. Broke in and was caught snooping. He disabled one of the security officers and escaped the rest of the team.”

Victor swore. “And he has the coordinates?”

“My man at the warehouse believes so, sir.”

Victor sighed. “Shit. Shit!” He ran his hands through his hair. “Okay, a covert ops team is after us. I guess that’s to be expected.”

Lance frowned. “It was one man, sir. And we don’t know that he was anything more than a common thief.”

"No, I have a bad feeling about this. I think our 'thief' was trying to figure out where we were going." He looked ahead. "We need to hurry. Tell the men that break time is cut short. We need to get to the coordinates ASAP."

Lance passed the news along. Once more, the responses were mixed, with the mercenaries showing no indication one way or the other how they felt about the command while the metallurgists groaned in protest.

They were moving in five minutes. Victor tried to calm himself, but his heart pounded.

How had they found him? How had they traced this back to him? He’d been so careful, so stealthy.

But they had been more careful, stealthier.

He took a breath and shook his head. No, they hadn’t been better than him. They just had an advantage. He had a goal, they didn’t. He knew exactly what he wanted to achieve while they were happy with any ending save one.

It just meant he needed to try harder. That was one thing he’d always been good at. It hadn’t helped him in the Army, but it would help him here.

Besides, he was ahead. He’d get to the coordinates first. As long as he was there first, he would win.

Thus encouraged, he resumed his journey to Khnum-ankh’s furnace and immortality.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Cessna Caravan turboprop was often hailed as the workhorse SUV of the light airplane world. It was to airplanes in Africa what Land Rovers were to other vehicles. The old, utilitarian Land Rovers. Not the new hyper-luxury vehicles.

In other words, it was slow, loud, and not particularly comfortable. On the other hand, it was sturdy, rugged, and dependable, and it could land just about anywhere flat.

The pilot was a swarthy, barrel-chested man of around forty with as much hair on his bulky forearms as he carried on his head. His name was Baahir, and Jacob would never in a million years understand why a beautiful woman like Cynthia was attracted to him. But hey, to each their own, and it got them their flight, so he was all for it.

But she was clearly attracted to him. Despite her earlier insistence that the two of them weren’t a “thing,” she spent the entire flight flirting with him—laughing at everything he said and touching his brawny forearms. Jacob and Jana watched them with bemused smiles, and Jacob decided he was wrong to judge Baahir by his appearance. He was charming and funny in a brash way that fit perfectly with Cynthia’s energetic goofiness.

“So you three are saving the world again?” he asked. “I hope you’ve made room for one more. It’s been a while since I’ve had a real adventure.”

He spoke with a rich, rather pleasant baritone that reminded Jacob a little bit of Sallah from the Indiana Jones film series.

“No,” Jana replied. “Come on, Cynthia, this isn’t a field trip.”

“And I am not a student,” Baahir chuckled. “Don’t let the size of my belly fool you. I served in the Egyptian Army for eighteen years.”

“That so?” Jacob replied. “Well, we could use another shooter.”

Jana flashed him an irritated look, and he shrugged. It wasn’t like they were forcing Baahir to do anything, and it really would be helpful to have another fighter when they went up against Nash and his mercenaries.

“So how did you two meet?” Baahir asked.

“We met through work,” Jana answered. Jacob shot her a warning glance, but she followed that up with, “I’m an archaeologist too.”

“Ah, so this is a scientific mission.”

“Exactly.”

“What are you hoping to find?” Baahir asked.

“I heard a rumor about a tomb in the Great Sand Sea,” Cynthia replied. “We’re going to scout the area and see if there’s any truth to it. If there is, we’ll organize a full dig team.”

“How excellent,” Baahir replied. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and said, “I am sure you are experienced enough to know this, but you should be careful how many people you tell about this tomb. Looting is still a problem in Egypt, I’m afraid.”

“We’ll keep it close to chest,” Cynthia assured him.

He frowned. “Close to chest? I haven’t heard that before.”

“It means we’ll keep it hidden,” Cynthia explained. “I think it’s like saying we’ll clutch it closely.”

“Ah. I see.” Baahir chortled. “Such a fascinating language English is.”

“I’m warming up to Arabic,” Cynthia replied. “What was that phrase you taught me in b—when… the last time we saw each other?”

“Oh.” Baahir reddened and leaned closer to Cynthia, whispering in her ear. Cynthia giggled and blushed just as red.

While the two of them flirted. Jacob leaned close to Jana and whispered so the other two wouldn’t hear them. “So what’s the plan if we find this tomb?”

“We stop Nash.”

“Well, yeah, but besides that.”

She looked sideways at him. “Are you asking if I plan to tell the Division about the tomb?”

He chuckled bitterly. “Well, they’re going to figure out it’s there no matter what we do. But they might not figure out what’s inside of it.”

Now, it was Jana's turn to utter a harsh laugh. "I think they can put two and two together. At the very least, we'll find more examples of the superalloy. They already know about the superalloy, so that's not a big deal. If Nash is right, though, and we figure out how they made more of that superalloy, then we have a problem."

“Is it a problem we can solve?” he asked.

She turned fully to him. “What are you suggesting?”

“Well… If there’s nothing there for the Division to find, then they won’t find anything.”

She stared at him for a moment. “You’re saying we destroy the tomb?”

“Like our esteemed pilot said,” Jake replied. “It might be better if fewer people had access to this tomb.”

Jana didn’t respond right away. Jacob had a feeling she was dealing with a lot of conflicting emotions right now.

He was right. Her next words were, “I hate that we have to even think about that. This could be one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of the modern era. I know I say that a lot, but it’s true. The ancient Egyptians are already considered to be one of the great civilizations of history. This find could elevate them to the level of ancient Greece and Rome in terms of their contribution to the world.”

“They’re not already considered to be at that level?”

“In some ways. They were the most successful of the first civilizations—well, what mainstream historians think of as the first civilizations. They were incredibly innovative with their math and astronomy, and a lot of experts believe the Greeks and later the Romans built on the foundation Egypt set. But there’s a clear divide between what Egypt accomplished and what Greece accomplished. The Model T was a badass car, but the Rolls Royce Phantom is better. If this tomb or smith shop or whatever we find can prove that Egypt had the ability to make alloys that were significantly stronger than anything that came after them, then Egypt will be more than just the precursor civilization to everyone who came after.”

"That's a good point," he replied. "But then what happens if the Division gets a hold of that technology?"

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I hate it. The scientist in me wants to insist that we preserve that knowledge no matter what. The agent in me wants to make sure that people like Victor Nash never see it. The human in me is terrified of what the Division could do with it.” She frowned and looked sideways at him again. “Why are you suddenly so opposed to the Division? I thought you agreed that they needed to be caretakers for things like this.”

Jacob sighed. “I guess I’m not sure anymore.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I talked to Tyler.”

Jana’s eyes bugged out. “You talked to Tyler? When?”

“Yesterday before I visited the American Materials warehouse in Cairo.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, you could have told me earlier. But I’ll give you more shit for that later. What did he say? Does the CIA know something about the Division that made you reconsider?”

He shook his head. “No, nothing new. Just… I guess I was reminded that I’m not stuck choosing the lesser of two evils. There’s still good in the world, and I can still fight for it.”

She nodded. “Exactly. That’s the point I’ve been trying to make the whole time. We can’t give up on our ideals, even when they seem unachievable.”

He sighed. "Yeah. I guess it's just hard to see that when I'm facing the possibility of a hurricane flattening Washington, D.C., or a series of earthquake bombs sinking half of California. Or a massive terrorist attack in New York City, killing millions of people. The lesser of two evils seems pretty attractive when I'm looking at a greater evil that's so… well, great."

"But what are we trading away?" Jana asked. "That's what's always concerned me. We fight for the lesser of two evils, but how much power do we give that evil, and at what point does it become the greater evil? I'm really concerned with the way they're messing with history, Jacob. It's Political Science one-oh-one. As soon as the powers that be control the past, they control the future."

“I know. I’m not disagreeing with you. I just didn’t think we had a chance to fix that before.”

“And now?”

"Now?" He shook his head. "Now, I still don't know. But the CIA hasn't slept on the Division. That encourages me. They're aware of the threat, and they're taking it seriously. I don't know how much we can do to oppose them right now, but at least I know that when the fight comes, we won't be alone."

He looked at her. “Which brings me full circle. What do we do if we find what we’re looking for?”

Jana sighed. “I wish I could think of a good answer to that. It’s just… Maybe it’s the archaeologist in me, but I feel like erasing history so the Division can’t erase it themselves is six of one, a half dozen of another.”

“But they don’t get knowledge that gives them even more power.”

“Yeah, but then we don't get knowledge that can change our understanding of history. Then we're hiding, and we're still letting them dictate what we can know and what we can’t know. It’s just…” Her lips trembled with anger rather than grief or fear. “It’s just not fair. I know that life’s not fair, and I know I sound like a child, but it’s the truth. It’s not fair that we still have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Why can’t we choose the good? Why can’t the entire world know about the secrets of Khnum-ankh’s metallurgy, and no one uses it as a weapon or tries to erase it from history? Why can’t we just”—she laughed—“have nice things?”

Jake smiled slightly, but there was no mirth in his smile. “People are selfish. It’s in our nature to want more. We want to take and take and take. It’s a nasty side effect of evolving from animals who weren’t apex predators and who evolved in a part of the world where food was scarce and surviving was difficult. We were built to always want more, even if it means taking away from other people.”

“See, I don’t believe that,” Jana said. “If that were the case, then everyone would be fighting constantly, and there’d be no kindness in the world. I don’t think that most people are selfish. I think a few people are selfish, but because they’re selfish, they become powerful, and when they become powerful, the rest of the world has no choice but to fall in line.” She looked at Jake, her jaw set, her brow furrowed. “But we can’t give in to those people. We can’t play by their rules. We have to fight them. With every single last ounce of our strength, we have to fight for a world not run by greedy people.”

Jacob nodded. “I agree.”

“I am sorry to interrupt what sounds like a very intense conversation,” Baahir said in English, “but I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Jacob frowned. “What news?”

“The terrain below is rougher than I expected it to be. It appears there was a windstorm here recently. There are drifts of sand every hundred yards or so, and I can’t land the airplane.”

Jacob and Jana shared a look. “So we’re going to jump?” Jana asked.

“I’m afraid so. The good news is that the Cessna Caravan is an excellent platform for jumping. I can slow to seventy knots and still maintain altitude for a brief period of time. You have a big side door to jump through and no engines in the rear that could chop you up. I have two parachutes in the rear of the aircraft. They were recently inspected, so they should work well.”

“Sounds like you were expecting this,” Jacob said drily.

Baahir shrugged. “There is always a chance that a landing will have to be abandoned. The desert is profoundly unconcerned with the needs of those who seek to explore it.”

Jacob sighed. “All right. Get us as close as you can.”

“Of course. I can deliver you directly to your destination. You’ll just have to land a different way.”

“Only two parachutes?” Cynthia asked.

“I’m afraid so, my dear. I didn’t have time to obtain more. You did say you needed me as fast as possible.”

Something in his smile told Jacob that Baahir might have wanted to get Cynthia alone. That probably wasn’t fair of him, but at least it meant Cynthia wouldn’t be in danger.

“We’ll get you next time, Cynthia.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she replied. “Be careful down there, guys. Seriously.”

“We’ll do our best,” Jacob replied. He turned to Jana. “I guess we get to be paratroopers today.”

“Nothing you haven’t done before, right?”

“Good point.”

They unbuckled their seatbelts and strapped on their parachutes. Baahir gave them a thumbs up, which Jacob returned.

“We will be there in five minutes,” he informed them. “I’ll let you know when it’s time.”

Jacob looked through the window at the expanse of tan below. He saw no sign of Nash’s team. That was good. Maybe they’d be lucky enough to arrive before the terrorists did.

And if not, Jana was right about one thing. Jacob had done this before.

Just like old times, he thought wryly. Parachuting in to confront a numerically superior enemy force. Stakes are a little higher this time, but that’s why they send the best.

He positioned himself on one side of the door. Jana took the other. She reached across and took her hand in his, and Jacob’s spirits lifted. Whatever they would face below, they would face it together.

As long as that was the case, he liked their chances.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“All right, my friends!” Baahir cried. “We are approaching the jump coordinates! Feel free to open the door.”

Jana grabbed the door handle and twisted. The big panel door slid open, and the noise in the cabin increased exponentially. Jana looked through the door and guessed that they were about three thousand feet above the ground. They would have very little time to clear the aircraft and pull their cords. Fortunately, anywhere they landed would be soft sand, so they didn’t have a lot of decisions to make.

“Wonderful! Whenever you are ready, my friends.”

“Good luck!” Cynthia added.

Jacob looked at Jana. He nodded, and she braced herself against the door with her left hand on the outside of the fuselage. She took a deep breath, leaned back, then propelled herself through the door.

She had parachuted before, but each time, the first few seconds were an odd mixture of terrifying and exhilarating. Actually, that wasn’t so odd. Those emotions did seem to go hand in hand.

She counted to four to give herself enough time to clear the aircraft, then pulled her chute.

Nothing happened. She pulled the emergency cord. Still nothing.

The exhilaration disappeared, replaced by more terror. The sand was soft, but not when someone impacted it at one hundred twenty miles per hour. She cursed and twisted around to see Jacob above her. She waved her hands to let him know there was an emergency.

Jacob twisted his body and folded his arms and legs to increase his velocity. He reached her a moment later and pulled her into his arms, then tugged on his parachute cord.

And thank God, the chute opened immediately. The giant white sail billowed out behind them, and she felt a jerk as it caught the air and slowed them down.

“Brace yourself!” Jacob shouted. “We’re going to land hard!”

A few seconds later, Jana felt another jolt as they impacted the ground. They landed on the edge of a dune and tumbled down together. The cords of the parachute wrapped around them, binding them tightly. They had survived the fall, but if they couldn’t get free of the cords soon, the parachute was going to pull them tighter and cut off their circulation.

Jana grunted and struggled as the parachute pulled them along the ground. Jacob cursed and tried to pull his arm free, but it wouldn’t come out. He shared a dry look with Jana, and she laughed in spite of herself. The situation was serious, but it was also absurd.

“Recently inspected, my ass,” Jacob growled.

The wind caught the parachute again, and Jana grimaced as she and Jacob were dragged across the rough sand. The movement allowed her to free her arm, thought, and she was able to reach the knife in her boot.

The wind changed, dragging them longways on the ground. The cords shifted position, tightening around Jana’s left arm and bringing a grimace of pain to Jacob’s face. She gritted her teeth and unsheathed the knife.

The paracord was thick nylon, and cutting through it proved to be a challenge. Her knife was a Ka-Bar with a serrated top edge and a thick carbon steel blade, so it was up to the job, but it wasn’t going to happen quickly.

It’s not going to happen faster if you dawdle, she thought.

She started cutting one of the cords, using the serrated edge to minimize slippage and bite into the nylon faster. The cord snapped, and Jana felt a slight change in the pull of the parachute. She cut another cord and felt some of the pressure on her limbs ease.

One by one, she cut through the cords. It seemed to take forever, but after a few minutes, she cut a cord and felt all of the pressure ease. She tumbled off of Jacob and settled on her back, breathing heavily. A moment later, she heard Jacob grunt and looked back to see him shrugging off the parachute. The sail—half of its cords severed—billowed out ahead of them, dragging the pack in short hopping motions before twisting around itself and falling to the ground.

Jana got to her feet with a groan and looked around for Baahir’s plane. She found him circling overhead and gave a thumbs up to let him know they were all right. The Caravan waggled its wings, then banked away and headed back east to Cairo.

“Nice of him to stick around and make sure we were okay,” Jacob said.

“It’s the least he can do giving us parachutes that don’t work,” Jana said.

“Good point. Nice knife work, by the way.”

“One of the more useful skills Dad taught me. Nice parachute work.”

"One of the more useful skills the Army taught me," he replied. He pulled his satellite phone from his pocket and checked their coordinates. "Looks like we're five miles away from the location of the tomb. It should take us about three hours to get there."

“Which will leave us about twenty hours until the bombs go off,” Jana said. “Speaking of, what do we do about the bombs?”

Jacob’s lips thinned. “We hope. I suppose we can threaten Nash to get him to stop the bombs, but it’s doubtful he’ll listen. We need to hope that NYPD and the New York National Guard can find and disarm them, or at least evacuate everyone in time.”

“Can they?”

Jacob sighed. “I hope so.”

They fell silent for a moment, trying to process the reality of their situation. Part of Jana wished they had abandoned their pursuit of Nash and focused on the bombs instead, but they were only two people, and while they were both trained in bomb disposal, it wasn’t something they encountered frequently. They wouldn’t have been able to contribute much to that effort.

But they could find the asshole responsible for the bombs and make sure that he never had a chance to place more.

She started walking. “Come on. Let’s get to the furnace before Nash does.”

The two of them trudged across the sand. It was late morning now, and the sun beat down on them, reflecting off of the sand and making Jana feel like she was walking through an oven. They kept their pace moderate to avoid overheating, but Jana could feel sweat trickling down her back within minutes.

It occurred to her that without a plane ride back home, they would be in serious trouble. They had canteens, but in a best-case scenario, that was twenty-four hours of water. According to the map Cynthia had taken from the back of the amulet, their destination was nineteen kilometers from an oasis, or about twelve miles. They could reach that oasis in time, but they would be SOL after that.

One problem at a time. Stop the crazy terrorists trying to blow up New York, then look for water.

Besides, Nash and his men might have vehicles. That would make their problem a lot easier to solve.

“How the hell do people live out here?” Jacob asked, looking around at the expanse of sand.

“They don’t,” Jana replied. “They live by the enormous river that runs through the western half of the country.”

“Fair enough. I don’t think I’ve seen this much sand in my life.”

"Fun fact," Jana said. "Did you know that the fertile red soil in the Eastern United States is mostly composed of silt from the Sahara that's blown across the Atlantic?"

“I did not know that.”

“Yep. That same silt is also the cause of all of the rain that falls in the region. So in a way, the Sahara desert is one of the most fertile regions of the world. It’s just not fertile here.”

“Huh. The more you know.”

“I’m just full of wonderful facts,” Jana said.

“Got any facts that might help us reach our destination faster?”

“Plenty. None that are useful in the moment, though.”

He sighed. “Worth a shot.” He looked around again and said, “We’re going to have to think of a way out of here.”

“I know. I was thinking that myself. I was also thinking that we should save that problem for after we solve the problem of Nash.”

“Yeah, good point.”

They walked in silence for a little longer. Once more, Jacob was the one to break it. “Why do you think Khnum-ankh would have built his shop out here?”

Jana shook her head. “I have no idea. It could be that there was a nearby oasis here thirty-three hundred years ago. And this place would be far from the major roads and far from cities. It would be easier for him to hide his secrets, although if I had to guess, I would say he probably worked in Ramesses palace complex for most of his life and only came here when he was elderly.”

“Still, it seems like an odd choice for a person to live, even if there was water.”

“Maybe he was a misanthrope. A lot of older folks are too tired to deal with other people, so they move somewhere quiet where they can keep to themselves most of the time.”

“I can understand that,” Jacob said. “That’s kind of what Aaron’s done, I guess.”

“Exactly. Khnum-ankh might have just been tired, and he knew if he stuck around the city, he’d be pestered constantly. So he came here to his own little hobbit-hole and spent the last few years of his life in peace.”

“God, that sounds so wonderful, doesn’t it?” Jacob said wistfully. “Peace. I can’t remember what that felt like.”

“You’ve never experienced it,” Jana said. “I haven’t either, really. Even when I was a kid, my dad was always gone, and I never knew where he was or what was happening to him.”

“Yeah. It’s tough. I feel sometimes like we’re fighting for a world we’ll never achieve. The most we can do is keep it from getting worse, but we can’t make it any better.”

"Then we make it not worse," Jana retorted. "Keep your head up. We already talked about this. We fight as hard as we can, no matter how difficult the fight is. Other people get to enjoy the fruits of that labor. Besides, we get pretty nice perks in return."

“Such as?”

“We get to travel the world.”

Jacob laughed. He gestured grandly around them. “Welcome everyone to the newest resort location: the Great Sand Sea, Egypt! We have sand, we have sun, we have blistering heat! Water? Who needs it? Color? Pssh, the only color worth anything is light tan.”

Jana giggled and opened her mouth to retort.

Then her smile faded. Jacob caught her look and turned around. His own smile faded a moment later.

Nine men were arrayed in a half-circle around them. They had popped into view over the crest of the dune they were climbing.

They all carried rifles, and those rifles were all pointed at Jacob and Jana.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jacob flicked his eyes left and right but saw nothing they could use as cover. Their enemies occupied the only cover, and in the loose sand, he and Jana wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough to evade. Their only chance would be to take weapons from their attackers when they came to tie Jacob and Jana up.

The mercenaries seemed to know this. Instead of rushing forward to capture them, they took a more cautious approach. One of them, a man around Jacob’s age with hair the color of the sand and eyes the color of the clear sky overhead, said, “You, the male, take three steps to your left.”

Jacob remained still.

“If he doesn’t comply, shoot the female.”

Jacob’s lips thinned. He stepped to the left.

“Both of you, on the ground, face down and spread eagle.”

Jacob complied. He heard the soft rustle of sand as Jana did the same.

“Tie the male first. If he or the female resist or make any movements they’re not commanded to make, shoot the female.”

“Real tough guys, huh?” Jacob said.

“It’s very much in your best interests if we don’t have to be tough,” the blonde—clearly the leader—replied.

A moment later, Jacob felt a knee in his back. From here, he could roll over quickly, disarm the man on his back and start shooting the other mercenaries.

But he couldn’t do that fast enough to keep Jana from being murdered. So, he remained still while the man on his back handcuffed his wrists, then his ankles, then handcuffed both together.

“Good. Now bind the female.”

Hogtied as he was, Jacob could only remain face down on the sand while Jana was cuffed. When the mercenaries were finished, the leader said, “You two are very lucky. I suggested that we kill both of you the moment we saw you jump from the aircraft. My boss felt differently, which is the only reason the two of you are alive.”

“Your boss Victor Nash?” Jacob asked.

“Wow. How clever of you. I’m so shocked that you figured that out. Oh my goodness, you’re so smart.”

“Go to hell.”

“This is close enough to hell for me,” the mercenary said. “All right, boys. Pick them up. Don’t give me those dirty looks. It’s a short walk back to camp, and they’re hogtied. Just watch out for teeth, and you’ll be fine.”

A moment later, Jacob felt hands underneath his thighs and his armpits. He was lifted into the air and carried forward.

“Guess we get the VIP treatment, huh Jana?” he told her.

“Do you always joke when you’re in positions like this one?” the lead mercenary asked.

“It helps the time pass,” Jacob said. “So what brings you guys to Egypt? Looking for some fun in the sun?”

“Shut up, or I’ll gag you.”

“Sounds kinky.”

The mercenary sighed but didn’t dignify that with any further response. Jacob didn’t press the issue.

Jacob lifted his head, but tied the way he was, he couldn’t lift his head to see in front of him. He looked to his right and saw Jana in the same position, hogtied and carried face down. She wore a dark frown that Jacob completely understood. They were stuck at the moment. This was the worst possible way they could have encountered their enemy.

Actually, it was the second-worst possible way. As the mercenary leader had mentioned, the worst possible way would have been giving him what he wanted and letting him shoot the two of them.

They reached the mercenaries’ camp a few minutes later. The mercenaries tilted Jacob and Jana and sat them with their sides leaning against a rock.

Jacob got his first good look at where they were. The camp was little more than a few canvas tents on a flat stretch of sand partially shielded from the wind by the rock they were leaning against and another large stone edifice twenty-five yards away.

That stone edifice wasn’t a mere rock, though. It was a giant slab of massive bricks that reminded Jacob of the Pyramids or the Sphinx. Not nearly so large as either landmark but clearly manmade. It stood at an angle, and Jacob could just see another wall perpendicular to that one. This wasn’t just an edifice either. It was a building. It had sunk into the sand and tilted a little, but there was no doubt that they had found the location of Khnum-ankh’s tomb and possibly his furnace as well.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Jacob said. “Looks beautiful.”

“Quiet,” the mercenary leader said.

A second voice joined his. “Actually, no need to be quiet just yet. You two are going to answer some questions for me.”

“Gonna hazard a guess here,” Jacob said. “The man standing timidly just outside of my field of vision is terrorist, con artist and well-known cowardly lion Victor Nash.”

The second voice chuckled. “A for effort, buddy, but as long as you’re the one tied up, you’re not gonna make me feel bad.”

"The deaths of millions of people don't make you feel bad?" Jana asked.

“Nope. Sorry. People die all the time. The key is to make sure you’re not one of them.”

“Kind of a bitch move to kill people to make them want to buy your products, isn’t it?” Jacob asked. “That’s what this is all about, right? You want to sell your magic armor?”

“It’s called creating a market,” Victor replied. “See, I’m not a genius.”

“Wow. How self-effacing of you.”

Nash laughed. "I'm not trying to be humble, don't worry. I'm just acknowledging that I don't have the mental prowess others do. I'm never going to get rich looking for some superweapon to force people to bow down to me or some treasure trove of resources that will allow me to corner the markets in multiple industries. I do a couple of things really well. That's how I've managed to be successful, even competing with the big names in defense.

“But this is going to give me a leg up. This is going to be the ace in the hole that lets me actually achieve real success.”

“Can’t let Zuckerberg have a bigger yacht than you,” Jacob quipped.

“I like you,” Nash said. “You’re funny. I like funny people.”

“You should see me at parties.”

Nash laughed. “Well, look, I’m not going to pretend you’re wrong. I want to be fabulously wealthy. I want a yacht. I want a big damned mansion and acres of beautiful land. I want to fill all of the above with beautiful women who will do whatever I want them to do. I’m a simple man, and I want to fill my life with simple pleasures. I don’t need to rule the world. I don’t need to be the most respected businessman on Earth. I don’t even need to be a player on the level of Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk. I just want to live like a king.”

“Is that so much to ask?” Jana said sarcastically.

“Hey, you’re funny too. That’s good. Bet you guys crack each other up all the time. Do you tell jokes to each other during sex?”

“Sure do,” Jacob said. “Usually we laugh about pathetic, insecure frat boys who think it’s cool to blow up cities so they can have a bigger boat.”

“Ooh. That wasn’t your best effort, buddy. You’re not gonna make me feel bad, and if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s insecure. Like I said, I know my limits. I’m just comfortable working within those limits. Lance, turn them so they can see me.”

Footsteps crunched through the sand, and a moment later, the blonde mercenary spun the two of them around and leaned them against the rock. Jacob got his first look at Victor Nash. He looked like every stereotype of the tough guy middle-aged alpha male.

“Huh,” Jacob said. “Little shorter than I expected.”

Nash laughed again. “Boy, you just don’t quit. Army, right?”

“Yes. Just like you. Except I actually fought instead of just haggling over requisitions.”

“Hey now,” Nash countered. “You know that without guys like me, your life would have been even more miserable than it was. Anyway, I guessed Army because there’s no way a Marine would be clever enough to come up with those jokes.”

His smile vanished. “How many more of you are there?”

Jacob realized that Nash didn’t know they were alone. He could take advantage of that. “Snow, Jacob, serial number G-eight-eight-seven—”

Lance backhanded him viciously across the chin. “Try again.”

“Snow, Jacob, serial number F-U—”

This time, Lance buried his fist into Jacob’s solar plexus. Jacob gasped as the air flew from his lungs. He coughed and chuckled, “Why the hell would I tell you anything?”

“Because I’ll make you watch me throttle your partner to death if you don’t.”

Jacob’s smile faded, He needed to be careful not to push Nash too hard. “There’s an entire platoon of us. We thought you were coming with more men, so we went overkill. We have machine guns, grenade launchers and forty very pissed off soldiers who would love the chance to show you that even non-Marines can do a very good job of fucking things up.”

“I’m sure they can,” Nash said. “I’m also sure that you’re bullshitting me.”

“He’s not,” Jana insisted. “We’re the scouting team. They sent us ahead to find you. Now that we’ve found you, we’re supposed to report back your coordinates. Then they send in the cavalry. Obviously, we’re not going to report back, but that’s fine. They already see you. They’ve been watching by satellite. Now that they know where you are, they’re going to send everything they have after you. So unless you have another fifty mercenaries hidden somewhere, I’d start thinking about surrendering and convincing them not to just shoot all of you on sight.”

Nash’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”

“No. I’m not.”

Nash’s gaze faltered. Jacob felt a leap of hope. If they could convince Nash to untie them, then they could turn the advantage in their favor.

Instead, Lance said, “They’re lying. There’s no way the U.S. military would send an advance scouting team of two people ahead of a single platoon.”

He stepped forward and grabbed Jana by the hair. Jana cried out and winced as Lance dragged her in front of Jacob. Jacob bared his teeth. “I’m going to remember that, asshole.”

“You’re really going to remember the look on your partner’s face when I start cutting pieces of her off,” Lance said. “Tell us the truth now, or I get started.”

He yanked Jana’s upper body off of the ground by her hair and pressed his knife to her throat. Jana cried out, and tears welled from her eyes as her hair was yanked nearly out by the roots.

Jacob looked at her, and a thrill of fear ran through him. He glared at Lance and Nash. “I swear to God, I’m going to kill both of you.”

“Would you like to see her die first?” Lance asked.

Jacob sighed and lowered his head. “It’s just us. We’re CIA agents. We were sent by ourselves to look for intelligence on the terrorists threatening New York City.”

Lance looked shrewdly at both of them. Finally, he nodded. “He’s telling the truth this time.”

Nash chuckled. “Wow. I have to say, you almost got me there. Like I said, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But like any good business owner, I surround myself with good people. Now.” He stooped down in front of Jana. “You’re going to help me with something, or I’m going to cut pieces off of your boyfriend. He is your boyfriend, right?”

Jana glared at him and didn’t respond.

“Doesn’t matter,” Nash replied. “You’re going to help me, or I’m going to make the last few moments of his life miserable. Understand?”

Jana still didn’t reply.

Nash nodded at Lance, who stepped forward, grabbed Jacob’s head and pulled it back. Jacob felt a knife blade press against his throat and heard Jana cry out, “Wait! All right. I’ll help you.”

Jacob sighed. He couldn’t blame Jana for doing exactly what he would have done, but it still hurt to know that they had given their enemy power again. It wasn’t over until it was over, but it was sure starting to feel like it was over.

Sure wouldn’t mind a surprise rescue right now.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Damn it. Not again.

Those two simple words meant so much to Jana right now. They were once more held captive by an enemy that was motivated and numerically superior. They were facing the prospect of catastrophe on U.S. soil.

And once more, it fell to Jana to give the enemy as little of her expertise as possible for as long as possible so that they could somehow figure a way out of this mess.

“Outstanding!” Nash said when Jana agreed to help. “Lance, keep an eye on… You know, I haven’t gotten your name yet. I know the woman is Dr. Jana Peters, archaeologist extraordinaire. I tried to find her when I realized we’d need an expert’s help dealing with this amulet. Imagine my surprise when I learned she was already in Cairo. That reminds me, Lance. Call Cairo and tell them to call off the kidnapping at the Egyptian Museum.”

Jana suppressed a shiver. To add to her list of not against, the enemy had gone after Cynthia anyway. Thank God she had convinced them to take her along. If she had been at her office, she might have been hurt despite their good intentions.

“Puddin Tane,” Jacob said in reply to Nash’s request for a name. “Ask me again, and I’ll tell you to go screw yourself.”

Nash released another of his not actually amused laughs. “Kid’s got talent, Lance. I could see him on the Tonight Show. Anyway, keep an eye on Johnny Carson here. I’m going to uncuff Dr. Peters’ ankles. If she tries anything, cut his throat.”

“With pleasure,” Lance replied.

Jana imagined all of the fun ways she would hurt both men if she got the chance. She could hear the snap of Nash’s neck as she imagined herself hooking his head with her legs and twisting until his spine separated.

But Lance kept his knife firmly on Jacob’s throat, one strong hand holding a fistful of her fiancé’s hair, his bright blue eyes right on her. So she had no choice but to stay docile as Nash uncuffed her.

“All right,” he said when he finished. “Let’s open up a blacksmith’s shop. Is it called a blacksmith when they don’t work with iron? Well, whatever. Bronze smith.”

He hauled Jana to her feet and steadied her until she found her balance. His eyes moved appreciatively over her, and her skin crawled. He noticed this and seemed delighted by her disgust. “Go on ahead,” he told her. “I’m sure you can figure out where the front is.”

She turned toward the massive structure in front of them. The door was on the smaller side, maybe five feet wide and six feet tall. No handle was evident, and there were no hieroglyphs that offered a clue as to how it might be opened. The only writing was above the door and consisted of the two hieroglyphs that formed Khnum-ankh’s name.

Looks like we’re at the right place, at least.

She studied the door. There was no handle, but there was a depression in the middle of the door. Markings extended at opposite angles from either side of the depression.

“Do you understand what those markings are?” Nash asked.

“No.”

“Do you know how to open the door?”

"Also, no."

Nash sighed. “If I show you the amulet, can you figure it out?”

“What amulet?”

“Cute. Don’t play stupid with me, Dr. Peters. If you were in Cairo, then you were talking to Dr. Cynthia Crane. If you’re here, then you were talking about the amulet because you, like me, figured out the map on the back of it. I’m going to show you the amulet, and you’re going to tell me if it will help me open this damned door. Are we clear?”

“I’ll do my best,” Jana replied, “but it’s not like I can just look at the amulet and suddenly know how to open the door.”

“I sure hope you can figure something out. I don’t want to have to tape your eyelids open so you can see it when Lance scalps Johnny-boy over there.”

Jana felt a chill and forced her face to remain calm. “That’s not how it works.”

“Then he’s dead. Simple as that. Look, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you can’t tell just by looking at the door and the amulet how to open it. I’m only saying that if that’s true, you’re going to watch your boyfriend die. So for both of our sakes, I hope inspiration strikes, because it would be pretty shitty for you if you can’t figure it out and end up watching him die through no fault of your own.”

Jana tried the only bluff available to her. “If you hurt him, I won’t help you at all. You have my promise.”

“I hold all of the cards right now, Dr. Peters,” Nash snarled. “Don’t treat me like an idiot. Here.”

He thrust something in front of her face. Jana recognized the amulet. Up close it was decidedly unimpressive, just a chunk of metal that looked vaguely like something she could buy for five-ninety-nine at a home goods store.

Of course, the remarkable thing about the amulet wasn’t its design but its construction. That was what Nash wanted so badly. That was what Jana couldn’t give him.

“I’m guessing that’s the amulet?” she said, feigning ignorance.

“Obviously,” Nash growled. “Look at the back.”

He flipped it over, and she saw the etchings that matched the ones in the photographs Cynthia showed them.

Well, of course they match. Those were photographs of this damned amulet.

She still played dumb. “Those hieroglyphs… Give me a minute. I’m a little rusty with my ancient Egyptian.”

She squinted and looked closely at the hieroglyphs. “Well, the symbols at the bottom right corner match the writing above the door.”

“Yes?” Nash asked hopefully. “Do you think that means this amulet opens the door?”

She looked again and knew immediately that he was right. The design called to mind the entry to the Chamber of Solomon in the Negev Desert. The etchings of the map on the back of the amulet matched the etchings on either side of the slit in the door ahead.

Another not again to add to her list. Why were these two places so similar? Did it mean anything that Khnum-ankh’s smithy was locked in a manner similar to Solomon’s chamber? Could the famous metalworker have worked with more than just bronze? Maybe the secret ingredient was one of the rare Earth metals that Solomon squirreled away three hundred years later. Maybe the great king had borrowed from Egyptian techniques when he created the chamber. Or maybe both of them borrowed from a much older, much more advanced and powerful civilization.

“Hey.” Nash snapped his fingers in front of her. “Earth to Dr. Peters. Will this amulet open that damned door?”

Jana took a deep breath and met his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” Lance said behind her.

Nash raised a hand to Lance, keeping his eyes on her. Jana noted that his eyes were a dull gray that nonetheless seemed to shine far more brightly than Lance’s blue eyes. “I’m going to ask that question again, Dr. Peters. If you answer with anything other than ‘Yes, I know, and here’s how you do it,’ Lance is going to scalp Puddin Tane. Have you ever seen someone scalped before?”

Jana didn’t answer.

“I have,” Nash replied. “Despite Puddin Tane’s little insult to me earlier, I did see combat. We were moving our FOB to a new location in Kurdistan when we stumbled across a little band of insurgents. There were a lot of those little bands back in the day. Eventually, they coalesced into the Islamic State in the Levant.

"They were torturing a man, I believe, for the crime of trying to protect his daughter from being assaulted by the leader of the insurgent group. They had him tied to a stake in the center of town, and the guy in charge cut his scalp right off with a scimitar. The scalp bleeds a lot. The guy bled out in five minutes, I think. It might have been ten. I think he lived long enough to see my unit obliterate the insurgents and save his family, but he might not have. Let me tell you something, it's an odd experience to see the white of a man's skull. Thinking about it is as close as I come to PTSD.

“So here goes, Dr. Peters. Will this amulet open that door?”

Jana didn’t reply.

Nash nodded. "Lance cut Puddin Tane's scalp off."

As soon as he said that, he grabbed Jana and spun her around, forcing her to look at Jacob. “Keep your eyes open, or I’ll shove this amulet down your throat and Puddin Tane can hear you choke to death,” he growled.

Lance jerked Jacob's head back, and Jana shrieked, "Yes! Yes, okay? Damn it, yes! The amulet opens the door!"

Nash yanked her hair and forced her head back, causing her to cry out. He growled at her, “You’re sure?”

His breath was heavy and thick. Her nostrils flared, and she resisted an urge to bite his nose off and spit it back at him. “I’m sure,” she growled. “I’m sure that it will open the door.”

“Good.” Nash spun her around and walked her to the door. “Tell me what to do.”

“It’ll be easier if you hand me the amulet. I won’t fight. I know you’ll kill my partner if you do.”

Nash chuckled. “God damn. You just don’t give up. I’m not going to take your handcuffs off. You might be an archaeologist, but you carry yourself like a soldier. I don’t want to see what you can do with those hands free. Tell me what to do, or for the final time, I will make you watch us torture your boyfriend to death. He is your boyfriend, right?”

Jana didn’t answer.

“Yeah, he’s your boyfriend,” Nash said. “No way you two look at each other like that unless you’re long past wondering what it would feel like to be naked together. So, Dr. Peters, do you watch us badly hurt the man you love, or do you give me something else to do with my hands?”

Jana took a deep breath and released a heavy sigh. “Press the amulet face first into the depression. Make sure the markings are aligned.”

Nash did so. Nothing happened. Jana felt a rush of fear when he looked back at her. “Excuse me?”

“That should work,” she insisted. “I don’t know why it’s not working. It should work! I… that’s what… the markings on the amulet match.”

Nash held up a placating hand. “All right, all right. Shh, shh. I believe you. Well, that didn’t work, so let’s you and I work together and figure out how it might actually work. Got any ideas?”

Jana swallowed. She hated how desperate she was for this to work and for the evil terrorist to actually get his damned way.

She just didn’t want Jacob hurt.

“Try twisting it.”

Nash twisted. Nothing happened. He gave her another look, and irritation flashed across his face. “I don’t want to alarm you, doctor, but we’re getting pretty close to that time when I’m going to hurt your boy even if you’re not lying to me.”

“No!” Jana cried out. “It should work. I don’t…” She took a deep breath. “Try tilting it a little off of alignment, then twisting it to alignment.”

Nash tried that, positioning the markings so they were to the right of where they needed to be. He twisted again, and nothing happened.

He sighed. “All right, Lance. Cut his—”

“The other way!” Jana shouted. “Try it the other way! Please!”

Nash looked at her coldly. “Last chance, doctor.”

He tilted the amulet the other way. When the markings on the amulet were just to the left of where they were supposed to be, the amulet slid a half inch deeper into the door.

Nash’s eyes widened. He twisted the amulet, and as soon as the markings lined up, the door rumbled and slid open.

Nash grinned at her. “Look at that. Puddin Tane gets to keep his gorgeous hair.”

He turned to the open tomb and clapped Jana on the shoulders. “Nice job, doctor. You just contributed to history.”

Jana lowered her eyes. Besides her relief at Jacob’s safety, the only thought in her head was not again.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

NYPD Explosives Squad Sergeant Trinity Decker looked hard at the item below and begged God that it wasn’t what it looked like.

But it was. Of course it was.

She sighed and pulled her radio to her lips. “Got one. Big one. Looks like two kilograms.”

“Shit,” came the voice of Captain Kennedy over the radio.

“Yes, sir,” Trinity agreed.

There were twelve hours to go before the bombs were set to go off, and Trinity had just found the largest one yet at Times Square. Assuming the plastic explosive she was looking at was C4, the two kilograms in this device would be enough to bring down the billboard tower in front of One Times Square. Trinity had a suspicion that the plastic was some exotic type like the other bombs. In that case, it could bring down the entire building for all she knew.

“Okay. So Times Square wasn’t a bluff. Shit. Can you disable the device?”

Trinity tried to keep her voice from sounding too panicked. Considering what she had to say, that was difficult to do. “Sir, I can’t even see for sure how the device is detonated.”

“You can’t?”

“No, sir.”

After a brief pause, Captain Kennedy said, “Is there a chance that you’re wrong, and it’s not an explosive device?”

Trinity sighed. “No, it’s definitely a bomb, sir. I can tell that this is plastic explosive, and there are wires leading from it into the ground. I just can’t tell what each wire does, if any of them are duds or fail-safes, or if any of them are the actual lines that will spark and detonate the explosive.”

“Shit. Okay. It looks like they’ve managed to disable the bombs at One World Trade Center. They’re halfway through Yankee Stadium and the U.N. building. I’ll send some people your way to help. In the meantime, do a thorough sweep of the square and find any more bombs. Don’t worry, Sergeant. We’ll get through this. We’re the NY-fucking-PD.”

“Yes, sir,” Trinity said with far more enthusiasm than she felt.

“All right. I’ll be in touch soon.”

Trinity tapped off the radio, then gasped and pressed her palms to her temples. She sank to her knees, her eyes fixated on the bomb.

What the hell? What the hell is going on? How did they set all of these?

The answer to that last question was, unfortunately, obvious. There were over eight million people in New York. The NYPD was the largest police organization in the United States with over thirty thousand uniformed officers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t stretched thin. It wasn’t like they could watch every single square inch of the city every single second of every day. It would be easy as hell for a hundred people disguised as normal citizens to leave bombs and just not be noticed.

She shivered. Had the terrorists not felt a need to announce the bombs and their general location, they might never have found them.

Pull your shit together and do something about it, she thought.

She took a deep breath and picked up her radio again. “All units of Explosives Squad Ten. We’ve confirmed the presence of devices in Times Square. Time to look thoroughly for every single device in the square. We have help coming to disable, but right now, we need to know exactly what we’re looking at. Move quickly, but not so quickly that you’ll miss something. We still have time. Let’s do this right.”

And if you believe that, wait until you see the bridge I have to sell you in Brooklyn, she thought humorlessly.

Still, she managed to calm herself a little bit. They were the NY-fucking-PD. They had weathered storms far more powerful than the Soldiers of Fortune. They could handle these two-bit art thieves.

She almost made herself believe that. Almost. Then her team reported back that they’d found another bomb.

And another.

And another.

And another.

Fifteen minutes later, they had found seven bombs in Times Square, and they weren’t even halfway finished. Trinity was back in a squat with her hands pressed to her temples, staring at the brick of putty in front of her and fighting hard not to give in to despair.

Please God. Please let us figure out how to turn these things off.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

“Lance,” Nash called. “Uncuff Puddin Tane’s ankles. I want him in our sight at all times.”

Jacob looked at Jana. Her expression was miserable. He wanted to tell her that it was okay, that everything would be all right. The problem was that he had no idea if everything would be all right.

Lance frowned. “Sir, I suggest we keep him here so he can’t try to fight us.”

“They both have their hands cuffed,” Nash replied. “The best I can see them doing is tearing free of our grasp. Then they’re fucked. I want him somewhere Dr. Peters can see him so she’s motivated to help us out.”

Lance’s frown deepened, but he didn’t protest further. He pressed his knife against Jacob’s throat again and whispered in his ear, “I promise you, I will kill you instantly if you make trouble. I don’t care what Victor says.”

He uncuffed Jacob’s ankles and pulled him roughly to his feet. Nash nodded and said, “Okay. We’re going in. You ready everyone?”

He got a smattering of affirmatives, then led the group through the door.

A chorus of audible gasps erupted from the crowd when they entered the chamber. It was a small room, twelve feet by six feet, and dominated by a single massive sarcophagus in the exact center.

So this was Khnum-ankh’s tomb after all.

“This is Khnum-ankh’s tomb,” Jana said, echoing his thoughts.

“You don’t say?” Nash said drily, “What does it say on the sarcophagus?”

“I can’t tell,” Jana replied.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Nash snapped. “Do I really have to threaten to hurt Puddin Tane every time?”

Jana rolled her eyes. “It says, ‘The tomb of the great bronze worker, Khnum-ankh, servant of Ramesses, blessed by the gods, friend of Egypt.’”

“Nothing else? Nothing about how he managed to make that superalloy?”

“No, the Egyptians didn’t usually include recipes on their sarcophagi,” Jana quipped.

“Funny. You two are just hilarious. Couple of regular comedians.”

Nash moved his flashlight around the tomb. “What about these markings on the walls? What do they say?”

Jana followed his flashlight beam. “They’re stories. Stories of Khnum-ankh’s exploits.”

“What do they say specifically?”

“I can’t tell if you keep waving your flashlight all over the place.”

Nash frowned. “Right. Lance, tell your boys to set up the lights.”

“Boys, set up the lights,” Lance said.

Nash looked hard at the mercenary leader, probably trying to figure out if Lance was making fun of him. He clearly was, but apparently, he kept it out of his face well enough that Nash couldn’t be sure.

Lance dragged Jacob to the sarcophagus and forced him to a sitting position. “Move, please. I mean it. I really want an excuse to kill you. Please give me one.”

Jacob stared back at Lance without a word. Lance sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot. Maybe later, yeah?”

He clapped Jacob on the shoulder, then backed off a step and watched him while the other mercenaries brought in floodlights with cables trailing outside to portable generators.

“How many hours of light will we get from those generators?” Nash asked.

“Ten hours, give or take an hour,” Lance replied. “The lights themselves don’t draw much power, but the generators aren’t particularly powerful. They had to be portable.”

“That’s fine,” Nash replied. “Ten hours is just fine.” He shone his flashlight on the wall. “I can’t believe we actually found this place.”

“Me either,” Lance said. “Look at it. It’s beautiful. It’s a shame we have to destroy it when we’re finished.”

Jana lifted her head in shock. Lance chuckled. “Does that offend you, Dr. Peters?”

“There are many things about you that offend me,” she replied.

Lance laughed again. “If it makes you feel better, I’d rather keep this place untouched. It’s just that you never know who’ll show up after us.”

“Oh yeah,” Jacob said. “Wouldn’t want a crazy group of terrorists hell-bent on destroying New York to show up, would we?”

Lance shrugged. “If you want to win, you have to play hard.”

A low hum filled the room as the generators were switched on outside. A moment later, Nash flipped a switch, and the first floodlight covered a wide swath of the cave with light. As the other lights came on, the darkness slowly retreated until the entire interior of the tomb was lit like midday.

And it was beautiful. Lance was right. The walls were covered floor to ceiling with hieroglyphs that looked undamaged by the centuries. Even some of the color remained; brilliant blues, golds and reds bringing the symbols to life.

“Okay, doctor,” Nash said. “Tell me a story. Tell me what I’m looking at here.”

Jana took a deep breath and sighed. “Like I said. They’re stories about Khnum-ankh.”

“I like stories. I asked you to tell me a story. Tell me a story.”

"All right," she said. "'In the first year of the rein of Seti, Khnum-ankh was born to a smith whose name is now forgotten. He was raised in the ways of his father, a cunning artificer in brass, bronze, and… I believe that symbol is copper, but it could be gold. In the first year of the rein of Ramesses the Great, Khnum-ankh, then but a youth of twelve, wrought a curious work of brass, an amulet of the eye of Horus. Hid father presented the amulet as a gift to the Pharaoh, and the Pharaoh was so impressed that he commanded that Khnum-ankh be provided with all he needed to further his education. So, the great Ramesses moved Khnum-ankh and his father to Pi-Ramesses. There, Khnum-ankh was educated in all manner of cunning works in bronze and brass. His instructors all said that he was the brightest and most gifted smith they'd ever met and commended him to the Pharaoh often."

“Blah, blah, blah,” Nash said. “What does it say about the superalloy.”

“Nothing. This is a tomb, not a classroom. All of this writing is just the story of his life.”

Nash frowned. “And nowhere in the story of his life does it talk about the greatest accomplishment of his life?”

“I’m sure it does.”

“So find that story.”

Jana sighed and looked around. "Okay. Here it is. 'In the fifth year of the reign of Ramesses, the great Pharaoh looked upon Canaan and coveted its wealth. "Hear me," said the Pharaoh. "Is not Canaan the wealthiest land in all the world save for Egypt? Is not the River Jordan the greatest river save for the Nile? Should this land belong to any other than the great people of Egypt?" And all his counsellors said, "You speak the truth, great Pharaoh."'"

“Get to the part about the alloy,” Nash snapped.

Jana rolled her eyes. "'And so, Khnum-ankh began his great work. But alas, the Pharaoh's ambitions were great, and Khnum-ankh was only a man. He begged the gods for wisdom that he could accomplish this work, for it was too great even for him. And the gods heard the prayer of Khnum-ankh and took pity on him, for he was, after all, only a man and could not hope to achieve the will and ambition of a god-king without the aid of the gods.'

“‘And thus it was, in the fifth year of Ramesses, Ptah came to Khnum-ankh in a dream. “Rise,” said Ptah. “Follow me.” And Khnum-ankh followed. The god showed him the furnace, the great furnace from which all things were made. Khnum-ankh looked into the furnace and saw all manner of wonders and creations, both of all things that are and all things that may yet come to be. And Khnum-ankh said, “My lord Ptah, why have you shown me this?” and Ptah said, “I have chosen you, Khnum-ankh, to be my greatest craftsman and to provide to my servant, Ramesses, great tools of war that Egypt may become even greater, and that her enemies might be cast down and ground even unto dust. But first, I must purge the dross that is inside you so that what remains is the purest gold.”

“‘So saying, Ptah flung Khnum-ankh into the fire. Khnum-ankh cried out, for he saw his flesh sear and melt from the heat of the flame, but he felt no pain. He wondered at this, but he did not wonder long, for he heard the god’s voice tell him, “So shall you be forever known as Khnum-ankh the Twice Born, for you have entered the furnace of the gods and come out alive.”

“‘And at this, Khnum-ankh awoke from his trance, and his eyes saw all knowledge of hidden crafts. He immediately took up his hammer and began to work that he might fulfil the charge of Ptah and create for Ramesses tools of war that Egypt may grow even greater and cast her enemies down.

“‘And so it was that Khnum-ankh the Twice Born, greatest of the metalworkers, gained his talents and created the strongest bronze in all the world.’”

Jana fell silent, and Nash said, “And?”

“And what? That’s it. The story picks up with a description of the Battle of Kadesh. There’s no step-by-step on how Khnum-ankh made the superalloy.”

“You’re telling me that the Bible has a recipe for fucking bread in the book of Ezekiel, but the story of Khnum-ankh doesn’t even mention how he made the strongest alloy in history.”

"I'm telling you, it's not here," Jana said. "It might be somewhere else, but it's not here."

“Sir!” a voice called. One of the mercenaries. “We’ve found a doorway!”

All eyes turned to the mercenary. Jacob’s eyes widened when he saw the door the mercenary pointed at.

Not just because of the door, but because of the markings above it. Not just the hieroglyphs. Unless Jacob was greatly mistaken, the very modern and very English letters K-A and the very modern and very Arabic numerals 556 were written above the door.

Jacob guessed that K-A stood for Khnum-ankh. He had no idea what 556 meant, but whatever it meant, it also meant that someone had been here before them. They weren’t the first people in the modern era to visit this tomb.

Considering what they’d learned earlier, Jacob would bet his life that the Division had been here before.

Nash noticed the markings too. “Hey. What the hell are these?”

“I believe they’re letters and numbers,” Jake offered.

Nash flashed him a glare, then turned to Lance. “Was someone here before us?”

“Why the hell are you asking me?”

Nash cursed. “Shit. How the hell did someone beat us here?”

He looked at Jacob, his eyes narrowed. “Do you know who was here?”

“How should I know who was here?”

“You look like you know. You’ve got that bullshit little smirk on your face like you’ve pulled one over on me.”

“I’m happy to know that someone beat you here. It doesn’t really matter to me who it is.”

“Yeah? So it could be some Al-Qaeda cell, and you’d be fine with that?”

“Did you forget that you’re threatening to bomb New York City?”

Nash’s lips worked. His fists clenched and unclenched. He turned to his men and shouted, “Open the door.”

The mercenary who discovered the door looked for a handle. Nash cursed and looked at Jana. “Same deal. Tell me how to open that door, or I’ll kill Puddin Tane.”

“Got it,” the mercenary said. “Here we go.”

He slid his fingers into a narrow cutout and grunted with effort, pulling the door open. Two other mercenaries joined him, slipping their fingers around the edge of the door and pulling as soon as they had room.

The other mercenaries watched from a safe distance back, ringing Lance and Nash in a half-circle. Jacob took advantage of the fact that their attention was taken from him to carefully step through his handcuffs and bring his hands to the front of his body. He wasn’t sure if he was about to get the opportunity he thought he was, but he wanted to be ready for it.

The door slid all the way open. The mercenaries side and turned to their boss with grins on their faces.

And the pendulum that swung down from the ceiling sliced all three of their heads off.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

That counted as one of the more gruesome things Jacob had ever seen, but he didn’t waste time staring in shock. As soon as the booby trap tripped, Jacob sprinted toward the nearest mercenary. He grabbed the man’s head and twisted, snapping his neck. He hated killing someone in such a vicious way, but this was probably going to be their only chance to get out of here alive.

He picked up the man’s weapon and shot another mercenary, then spun toward Nash.

“Fire that weapon, and I’ll shoot her in the throat!” Lance roared.

Jacob turned to the voice to see Lance standing behind Jana. He held her arms behind her back and pressed the barrel of his handgun to her neck.

She smiled at Jacob, “A for effort. You almost made it.”

Lance jammed the barrel into her windpipe. She choked and coughed, and Jacob took a step toward Lance and started to swing his handgun around.

With surprising speed, Nash stepped forward and slapped the weapon out of Jake’s hand, then stepped forward and planted a vicious side kick into Jacob’s midsection, sending him flying backwards.

One of the other mercenaries aimed his rifle at Jacob. “Give me the command,” he snarled. “let me aerate his ribcage.”

Jacob resisted the urge to poke fun at the man for that comment. He was only feeling snarky right now because he was frustrated.

Damn it, that was their chance. That was their opportunity to stop these assholes. If he could have just been a half-step faster, he could have killed Nash and Lance before the latter had a chance to get to Jana.

“You’ll get your chance, Herman,” Nash said. “He can still be useful to us.” He looked coldly at Jacob. “Get up. On your feet now, or I beat your woman.”

“You coward,” Jacob said, getting to his feet. “If you took those cuffs off of her, she’d kick your ass and have time left over to beat your buddy Lance to a pulp too.”

“I’m sure she would. Hence my earlier comment about not wanting to see what she could do with her hands untied. As it stands now, though, both of your hands are cuffed, and I will hurt her if you give me any more trouble. Walk to the door.”

Jana flinched, and Lance jammed his gun barrel into her throat again. She stumbled backwards, and Lance shoved her to the ground. He drew his leg back and kicked her viciously in the stomach. Jana gasped and doubled over in pain, and Lance kicked her in the jaw, snapping her head back.

Jacob took a step toward him, and Nash said, “Uh uh. One more, and I’ll shoot her in the head.”

Lance reached down and picked Jana up by her hair. Jana winced and struggled. Lance steadied himself, then threw a crashing blow into Jana’s temple. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she crumpled.

“That’s enough, Lance,” Nash said. “We need her alive to translate.”

“You coward,” Jacob repeated. Tears of frustration and fear for Jana welled in his eyes. His hands shook, and he wished desperately that he could shoot both of them faster than they could kill Jana. “Both of you. You’re nothing but fucking cowards. I’m going to kill both of you.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Nash said. “Lance, make sure she’s all right for God’s sake. If you beat her stupid, I’m taking that out of your paycheck.”

“She’s fine,” Lance snapped. “She just has a concussion. She’s a tough kid, she’ll be all right.” He grabbed a handful of Jana’s hair and yanked her head up. “Right? You’ll be awake enough to help us translate, right?”

Jana met his eyes, breathing heavily. Her eyelids fluttered, and Lance shook her. “Hey! You’ll be able to translate right? Or do I need to smack some more sense into you?”

A flash of anger crossed Jana’s face. Then it faded. She sighed and lowered her head, then nodded.

“Good.” Lance pulled her to her feet, then looked at Nash. “You want to send Puddin Tane through first just in case there are more booby traps?”

Nash grinned. “Exactly my thoughts.” He looked at Jacob. “Okay, Puddin. Get moving. I hate to keep repeating myself, but you seem to have trouble understanding simple instructions. You know now that I can’t kill Dr. Peters. You also know that I will hurt her. Make trouble for us, and I’ll let Lance have some more fun. Are we clear?”

“You’re a coward.”

“What happened to all of the clever comebacks?” Nash asked coldly. “I don’t care if you think I’m a coward. Move.”

“No,” Jana protested. “Please.”

Her voice sounded hoarse, probably from the strikes to the throat. Jacob shook with rage, but there was nothing he could do. Nash had them by the balls.

“Fuck your please,” Nash said. “Puddin, move.”

Jacob shuffled toward the open door. The headless bodies of the mercenaries lay in a pool of blood underneath the pendulum. Now that it wasn’t moving, Jacob could see that it was a simple double wedge of bronze. He couldn’t tell if it was the superalloy bronze or just normal bronze. Not that it mattered.

Jacob ducked underneath the pendulum and made his way into the narrow passageway that had opened up when the mercenaries pulled open the door. A flashlight beam shone past him, and he moved slowly, looking everywhere that beam illuminated for signs of other booby traps. He expected at least one more before the journey was over.

The passageway was free of hieroglyphs. In fact, it was free of adornment of any kind. The only things that broke up the smoothness of the walls were sconces where torches once sat. The torches were long rotted away, leaving only the bronze sconces.

Or superalloy sconces. Or kryptonite sconces, for all Jacob knew.

All of this is just for stronger metal. What's wrong with the metal we have now? Armor works just fine.

Even as he said that, he knew it wasn’t strictly true. The armor Nash could make with this superalloy would be superior by far to the best composite armor available. Tanks could become relevant again instead of being drone fodder. Infantry could enter battle with reasonable protection. Secret Service agents could form a literal shield around VIPs. Armored cars could become impervious to anything smaller than a heavy air-to-ground missile.

There was a lot of money to be made, and at the end of the day, that’s what it was about, right?

They traveled for about seventy yards before Jacob heard a soft click. Instinctively, he dropped to the floor. Something whipped through his hair. He heard a cry and a grunt, then a burbling cough.

Still on the ground, he turned around to see one of the mercenaries on the ground, the haft of a spear sticking up from his chest. He coughed, spitting blood and staring in fright at Lance, who looked down at him in horror.

The mercenary stiffened, shuddered, then stilled. The spear tilted lazily, then tore out of his chest. The mercenary’s body jerked sickeningly as the bronze head tore through his ribs.

Actually, considering how cleanly it sliced the rib when it fell, Jacob was pretty sure the spear was made of the superalloy. This was confirmed when Nash, seemingly unconcerned with how close he had come to death, picked the weapon up and examined it closely.

“The superalloy,” he whispered. “This is the superalloy.”

Lance gave him a look of horror, disgust, and anger. Jake almost hoped Lance would kill Nash, but if he did, Jacob and Jana were almost certainly next on the list.

Nash grinned at them. “We’re on the right track.”

The other two surviving mercenaries shared a look. One of them glared at Jacob and lifted his rifle. “That should have been for you.”

“Hold on before you do that,” Nash said. “We’re not there yet. Puddin, please continue.”

Jacob got to his feet, bracing himself against the wall. Lance and the other two mercenaries stared at him stonily. Jana looked at him with worry in her eyes. Nash just looked excited.

Jacob continued down the tunnel. It ran for another hundred feet before ending in a large chamber. Jacob stopped just before entering the chamber. Nash frowned and nudged him forward. “Move.”

Jacob turned around and glared at him. “There’s a trap here.”

“What trap?”

“I don’t know, but this is the last good chance for one.”

“Yeah? Let’s see what it is.”

“Go to hell.”

One of the other mercenaries cursed and stepped forward. “Get your ass through that door now, or so help me God—”

When he was within reach, Jacob grabbed him and shoved him through the door. As soon as his head crossed the threshold, two massive bronze slabs came together in the center of the doorway, crushing his skull. He dropped like a rock, twitching.

Jacob moved quickly, maneuvering around the slabs and entering the chamber before the outlaws could think to take revenge. He needn’t have worried. As soon as the others entered the room, they were too awed by what they saw to focus on their dead companion.

This chamber was massive, much larger than the tomb. A huge anvil formed the centerpiece, the bronze of its construction as pristine as it was the day it was made. Probably also made of the superalloy, Jacob guessed.

There was a table, a large basin that was probably used for quenching, and racks for finished weapons or tools, but the most impressive part of the room by far was the enormous forge set against one wall. It's chimney led through the ceiling, and the chamber inside looked large enough to comfortably fit a fully grown man. The forge and all of the walls around it were covered in hieroglyphs, just like the first chamber. It was probably just Jacob's imagination, but they seemed even sharper and more brightly colored here than in the tomb.

There was no doubt that they had found the smithy of Khnum-ankh.

“Wonderful,” Nash said. “Whoever was here before us had the courtesy to leave everything intact. Let’s hope they didn’t take the formula for the superalloy.”

“I don’t think they managed to get through that door, or they would have been killed by the booby traps,” Lance pointed out. “If we can get the information and get out of here, we can patent the superalloy products and get contracts before anyone else can enter the market. When the other guys show up, we’ll figure out a plan to deal with them.”

“Works for me,” Nash agreed.

The last surviving mercenary gestured at Jacob with his rifle. “We don’t need him anymore, right?”

Nash grinned. “Nope. Puddin Tane is about to be turned into puddin’.” He laughed at his joke. “Much offense, Puddin. I hope it hurts like hell when you die.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” the mercenary said. “I’ll make sure it lasts a long time.”

He leveled his rifle at Jacob, but before he fired, Jana shouted, “Stop!”

All eyes turned to her. She stood in front of the forge. Her hands were in front of her, and she held a massive stone tablet over her head, straining with the effort. Instead of taking advantage of her captors’ distraction to try to kill them, she had found what Jacob guessed was the best leverage they could get.

He was right. She glared at Nash and said, “Hurt him, and I’ll shatter this tablet. You’ll never know how to make the superalloy.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Trinity stared at the numbers slowly counting down and wished she could close her eyes and open them again to find out that this had all been a dream. She actually did close her eyes, but of course, when she opened them, the numbers were still there, and this was real life.

“Good news,” Captain Kennedy said over the radio. “Wall Street is clean. These guys don’t have unlimited resources after all. We found eight objects, but seven of them were dummy bombs, and the only one that was real didn’t have a detonator. It was basically just a lump of silly putty.”

Another voice informed them that the U.N. building was completely disarmed, and Yankee Stadium only had two bombs left. The National Guard bomb squad handling Yankee Stadium was confident that they would finish that in less than an hour.

That’s when Trinity had to give them the bad news. “I really hope you guys can finish it in less than an hour, because if these bombs are all set to go off at the same time, then we only have nine minutes.”

There was a brief pause. Then Captain Kennedy said in a brittle voice. “Send me a picture of what you’re looking at.”

Trinity obliged. A moment later, Captain Kennedy said, “Motherfucker. God damn it. Are you serious?”

“Wish I wasn’t, sir.”

“Can you stop the countdown?”

“I really hope so.”

“Don’t tell me you hope so, Sergeant, tell me you’ll get it done.”

“I hope so, sir,” Trinity said, her voice barely a whisper.

"No," Kennedy replied firmly. "Screw that. Sergeant, listen to me. You are NYPD. You are Explosives Squad. This is New York, where you and your family live. Where your kids go to school. Where the Yankees are going to crush the absolute shit out of the Dodgers the next time they see them and pay them back for that World Series loss in 'twenty-four. You will stop that countdown, and you will live to have a front-row seat to the trial when we find the assholes who did this and hold them to account. So quit whining and do your job, Sergeant.”

Trinity felt a sudden wave of affection for her captain. Kennedy wasn’t doing a great job of encouraging her, but he was trying hard. Even in the face of disaster, he was going to use every ounce of his ordinary city cop talent to fight back.

Actually, he was doing a damned good job of encouraging her. He wasn’t any more special than she was. He was a captain, yes, but that was just because he’d stuck around long enough and kissed the right asses.

And he was still lifting a fierce New York middle finger to terrorism. She could do the same. If this was the last thing she ever did, so be it. She was a New Yorker through and through, and she wasn’t going to let some punk assholes threaten her town and take it lying down.

She bent down in front of the wires and got to work. Six minutes left.

The wires were standard sixteen-gauge insulated copper strands. There were eighteen strands in total, each plugged into different locations in the two-kilogram copper brick and all plugged into the detonator. The detonator itself was a simple twin-circuit fuse. That meant a maximum of four of those wires actually did anything.

Five minutes.

She removed a jeweler's screwdriver and a flathead and carefully pried open the plastic housing of the detonator. She shone a penlight through the detonator and saw the glue holding the plastic and two tiny wires designed to set the detonator off if the casing was disturbed.

Most importantly, she saw the four wires that actually connected to the twin circuits within the detonator. Now she knew which wires to cut.

Four minutes.

Her radio crackled. “We just disarmed the one underneath the stage in the Palladium, Sergeant Decker. Howes and Keller said they took care of the ones under Bush Tower and the Knickerbocker.”

Three minutes.

“Outstanding. Give me two minutes, and I’ll have this bitch figured out, too.”

She cut the first wire. Nothing happened, which was a good thing. It meant she could cut the others without being worried about the bomb blowing up.

Actually, it didn’t necessarily mean that at all, but she didn’t have a choice. She had to try and hope for the best.

She cut the second wire. Still nothing. She was about to cut the third wire when she saw the tiny tendril of the satellite wire leading from the detonator wire into the fuse box. If she cut that wire, the bomb would go off.

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

Two minutes.

She ran her hands through her hair and tried to think. She needed to cut the wire without interrupting the voltage to the detonator.

She took a voltmeter out of her bag and tested the voltage. Sixteen volts, three amps, direct current.

One minute.

She pulled out her ace in the hole. She had made this on a drunken bet in explosives training. She’d only kept it around for nostalgia’s sake, but here she was with an actual need for it and an actual chance to use it.

Please let this work. Please, God, let this work.

She powered on the device. It was a modified version of the power supplies people used to jumpstart their cars. It had an input screen where Trinity could decide how much power she wanted to release. It was basically an instant device charger, but it could sustain a precise voltage and amperage.

She took the prongs of the device and pressed them to either side of the tiny guide wire. Using three fingers, she held the prongs still and put her thumb over the power button.

Ten seconds.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

She pressed her wire cutter over both wires, compressing them together so she could cut both at the same time.

Five seconds.

She said a brief, silent prayer, then cut the wires and pushed the button at the same time.

The timer read one second, then zero seconds. A spark moved back up the prongs of her device, and the device buzzed and shorted out.

And that was it. Nothing else happened. No bomb went off. She was still there.

She gasped heavily and collapsed to the floor, wheezing and sobbing and choking with relief. Her radio buzzed. “Sergeant?” Captain Kennedy asked. “You still with us?”

She took a deep breath and answered, grinning like a fool. “Still here, Captain. Bomb’s disarmed. Weren’t no thang.”

Kennedy cheered. “Hell yeah! Whoo! That’s New York, baby! That’s NYPD!”

Trinity laughed. “Tell those terrorists not in our town.”

“Not ever in our town!” Kennedy shouted. “Ha! Wait until those cowards in the FBI hear about this! We never needed them!”

Trinity wiped tears from her eyes with a shaking hand. “I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces, sir.”

“You’ll be standing right next to me. Damned good job, Sergeant. Damned good job.”

Trinity looked through the window of the lobby of One Times Square and smiled at the blue sky outside. The terrorists had failed. New York was safe.

I hope you guys have an escape plan, she thought. We’re coming for you. You better hope you figure something out before we find you.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Nash stared at Jana, hate and disbelief warring for supremacy in his eyes. “Jesus. Lance, are you serious? Your one job was to watch her.”

“Excuse me if I’m a little distracted right now,” Lance snapped. “I just watched all of my men—men who put their trust in you—fucking killed by this bastard. Why is he still alive?”

“Because I will end any chance you have of making this superalloy if you hurt him,” Jana reminded him.

“She’s bluffing,” the other surviving mercenary said. “That’s not the tablet. She’s lying.”

“How do you know?” Nash demanded.

The man glared at Nash. He clearly just wanted a reason to kill Jacob. “Think about it. Why would she tell the truth? She doesn’t want to help you figure out a way to become the wealthiest weapons manufacturer on Earth. She wants to save her boyfriend’s life. She’d say anything.”

“He’s got a point, Victor,” Lance said. “I wouldn’t put anything past these two.”

“If they’re wrong, then you lose everything the moment I let this go,” Jana reminded Nash. “You lose everything.”

Nash’s eyes flicked back and forth between Jacob, Jana, and the two mercenaries. Jacob watched him warily. Jana prepared to destroy the tablet the instant Nash shot Jacob.

And this was the tablet. As soon as Jana read the first few rows of hieroglyphs, she knew she had found Khnum-ankh’s secret.

And what a secret it was. Khnum-ankh wasn’t just a brilliant metalworker. He was a genius. Or maybe he was just very lucky. Or blessed. Who knew? Maybe the gods did exist. Maybe remnants of the pre-Ice Age civilization had lingered and appeared to the Egyptians as gods.

Either way, they had taught Khnum-ankh a method of making an alloy that was more sophisticated than any other form of manufacture in Earth’s history. This was a genuine forge, but it wasn’t the forge Khnum-ankh had used to make the superalloy. Wherever that forge was, it would look more like something out of a science fiction show than an ancient smithy. The processes described here were nothing short of revolutionary.

And Nash would lose all of it. No matter what. As much as Jana wanted to save Jacob’s life, she couldn’t let him escape with this knowledge. She needed to hope that she could stall long enough for them to figure out some way to get out of this.

Nash glared at Jana. “You know what? I’m tired of being jerked around. Lance, how long until the bomb in New York goes off?”

Lance checked his watch. “Three and a half minutes.”

Jana’s eyes popped open. “What? There’s no way we’ve been down here that long.”

“We haven’t. I lied about the time the bombs would go off. Come on. Do you really think I’d give the NYPD an accurate timeline for the bombs’ detonation? I need people to die in those explosions, Dr. Peters.”

“You cow—” Jacob began.

“Find another insult,” Nash snapped. “All right, doctor. You have three minutes to carefully hand that tablet to my associate. If you do, I’ll let Puddin Tane live, and I’ll spare New York. With that superalloy, I won’t need to create a new market. I’ll have something valuable enough that they’ll buy it anyway.”

“You’re bluffing,” Jana fired back. “There’s no way you’re really going to set those bombs off early. You just made that up.”

“Maybe. And maybe you’re lying about the tablet. I guess we’ll have to find out.”

Jana looked at Jacob. Jacob was red-faced with impotent rage at being unable to act. Lance and the other mercenary held their rifles on him, their teeth bared. They wanted to kill him. They were only waiting for an excuse.

Nash watched Jana. He wore a cocky smile, but underneath that smile was fear that she would follow through. She tried to leverage that fear.

“Those bombs go off, and I shatter this tablet. I don’t want to die, and I especially don’t want Jacob to die, but if we have to die, we will, and we’ll take Khnum-ankh’s secret with us.”

“Jacob, huh? So Puddin Tane has a name after all. Okay. I’ll kill Jacob if you don’t give me the tablet. You have… How long does she have, Lance?”

“Two minutes.”

“Two minutes. Then Jacob Puddin Tane and probably… we’ll say three million people die.”

Jana narrowed her eyes. “And you’re willing to lose everything for this?”

“I won’t lose everything. We can find another Egyptian expert to help us put the tablet back together and translate it. As a matter of fact, we have a backup plan in case you don’t work out.”

Jacob looked at Jana. The message in his eyes was clear. Don’t let him frighten you.

The problem was that nothing mattered more than Jacob. Not even the rest of the world.

She lowered the tablet. “You’ll stop the bombs?”

“Jana, no—”

The mercenary stepped forward and smacked Jacob with the butt of his rifle. Jacob grunted and fell to his knees.

Nash lifted two fingers in a salute. “Scout’s honor. Like I said, I run a few demonstrations of this superalloy, and I’ll have buyers. It doesn’t even need to be the military. This stuff can replace anything. There are applications in construction, automotive, heavy machinery… so many different places. This is gonna make me rich.”

“He’s lying,” Jacob choked out. “You know he is.”

The mercenary kicked him in the ribs. Jana flinched.

“I’m definitely not lying when I tell you that I’ll kill him if you don’t give me the tablet,” Nash said. “And you have less than a minute now.”

“Jana…”

The mercenary pulled his legs back again, but Nash held his hand up. “What’s it going to be, Dr. Peters?”

Jana looked at Jacob again. She knew Nash wasn’t trustworthy, but she didn’t have any options. She might be able to kill Nash and maybe even get to Lance before the mercenaries could react, but she wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to keep them from killing Jacob. And the bombs were already going to go off. If there was even the slightest chance of stopping them, she needed to take it.

She lowered her head. “I’m sorry, Jacob.”

“No—”

The mercenary kicked him in the ribs again. Jana heard a crack as one of them broke. Her hand curled into a fist, but she didn’t react otherwise.

She handed Nash the tablet.

With a primal roar, Jacob got to his feet and swiped at the tablet. The tablet fell to the ground and shattered.

“No!” Nash shrieked. “You piece of…”

He didn’t finish because Jana stepped forward and planted an elbow into Nash’s temple. The terrorist dropped like a rock.

She ran toward Lance while Jacob wrestled with the other mercenary. Lance cursed and swung his rifle around, but Jana reached him first, grabbing the rifle and kicking Lance. He stumbled backwards but kept his hands on the rifle, pulling Jana off balance.

She released the rifle briefly and threw her shoulder into Lance, but the mercenary was prepared for the blow. He tripped Jana and sent her to the ground.

Jana heard a gunshot and saw the other mercenary fall out of the corner of her eye. Jacob turned toward Lance, and the lone surviving Soldier of Fortune cursed and aimed at Jacob. Desperately, Jana kicked Lance’s knee.

He and Jacob fired at the same time. Jacob’s bullet entered Lance’s left eye and blew out the back of his skull. He fell, dead before he hit the ground.

“Yes!” Jana cheered. “You got him!” Jacob didn’t answer. “Jacob?”

She turned to him and saw him clutching his abdomen. Blood spurted between his fingers. He looked up at Jana, and a terrible understanding came to his face.

“No,” she breathed. Then, louder, “No! Jacob!”

Jacob sank to his knees. Before he could fall all the way to the ground, Jana grabbed him. She lowered him gently and pressed her hands to the wound.

“Too… late…” Jacob said. “Abdominal aorta. I’ll bleed out… in seconds.”

“No!” she shrieked. “No, the Division can fix you. They have technology that will fix you.”

Twice before now, the Division had miraculously healed them from injuries that should have killed them. Jana didn’t know what exactly they had that allowed them to do that, but she knew that if the Division could get to them soon enough, Jacob would be all right.

She heard a groan and saw Nash getting to his feet.

“Stop him,” Jacob wheezed. “Please.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t lose you.”

“The world, Jana. New York…”

“It’s too late for New York,” she said bitterly. “The bombs went off already.”

Nash’s feet scraped on the ground. She turned to him, eyes burning in anguish. Nash held her gaze, an odd look in his eyes. It wasn’t quite guilt, and it wasn’t quite pity either, but it was almost understanding.

He looked away from her and began gathering the shattered pieces of the tablet, stuffing them into his pockets. Jana turned away from him and made no attempt to stop him. She had to keep pressure on Jacob’s wound.

“Jana… don’t do this. Please.”

“It’s too late,” Jana said miserably, fumbling in her pocket for her phone. “We didn’t stop him in time. New York’s already gone.”

“So stop him!” He punctuated that with a series of wet coughs, spraying blood from his mouth. “Don’t let him get away!”

“I can’t,” Jana wept. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t. I can’t lose you.”

Nash grabbed the last of the tablet fragments and ran from the cave. Jana pressed the emergency button on the Division issue satellite phone.

A moment later, the Curator’s voice answered. “Jana. Where are you two?”

“We’re in the tomb. I’ll send the coordinates. Please send help. Jacob’s dying.”

“We have the coordinates,” he replied. “Where is he wounded?”

“His… His abdomen. He’s bleeding out.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be all right. Where’s Nash? Did he get the secrets of the superalloy?”

Jana closed her eyes to avoid Jacob’s pleading gaze. “Yes. He escaped with fragments of a tablet detailing the steps to forge the superalloy.”

Jacob sighed, and Jana sobbed with guilt and fear.

“How long ago?” the Curator asked crisply.

“Just a few seconds. Right before I called you.”

“Very well. I’ll send a team.”

“Thank you.”

The Curator hung up, and Jana burst into tears. She felt horrible. She had just sold her soul.

But she couldn’t lose Jacob. Her earlier bluff about being willing to sacrifice both of their lives to keep the secrets of Khnum-ankh from Nash was just that. A bluff. At the end of the day, she couldn’t do it. Push had come to shove, and she had fallen. She was weak, and because she was weak, their enemies would win.

She pressed hard on Jacob’s wound. His lifeblood seeped between her fingers, and she wept with guilt and fear and despair.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Victor knew it was a mistake to let Dr. Peters live. Her boyfriend was certainly going to die, and when that happened, she would be consumed with revenge. Considering the damage they had done when they were supposedly his captives, he shuddered to think what she would do when she was free and hunting him with nothing left to lose.

But he had the alloy now. He could go home, and as long as he could avoid her for a few weeks, he would have time to make the first prototypes. He could armor himself, his car, his house, and his office and just make sure he was never vulnerable. Once he had the first production examples, the U.S. government would step in and forbid her from hurting one of their important suppliers. He’d be all right.

He just couldn't bring himself to kill her. The look in her eyes, the anguish he'd seen before on the faces of the daughters of the man his unit commander had scalped.

He’d lied to them about the insurgents attacking that man. The truth was that his unit had been ambushed in the middle of moving to the new forward operating base. The insurgents had killed the platoon sergeant, a statuesque and beautiful woman who had been engaged in a not-so-secret affair with the unit commander. Disobeying orders, the unit commander had tracked the insurgents to their village and massacred them: men, women and children.

All except for the family of the man who had killed his lover. He left them alive and made four of his soldiers hold the man still while he scalped him and cut off other parts of him. Other soldiers forced the man’s family to watch. Victor would never forget the screams of the man’s wife. Maybe he’d deserved it for killing Americans first, but the brutality of the captain’s revenge disturbed him, and it wasn’t easy to disturb him.

So he couldn’t kill her. Jacob was already dead. He had the tablet, and Dr. Peters had failed to stop him from bombing New York. It was over. There was no need to be cruel.

The ghost of what at one time was Victor Nash’s conscience accused him. Not cruel? You just killed more Americans than those insurgents ever did, more than anyone ever has.

It hit him like a punch to his gut that he had probably killed more people than any war in American history. It hadn’t seemed real to him before now, but…

He shook his head irritably. That was the price of success. At the end of the day, humans were animals, and nature was brutal. You had to be brutal to survive and even more brutal to succeed. Morals were for the weak.

He left the tomb and pulled his satellite phone from his pocket. “This is Victor Nash. I’m at the tomb. I need extraction ASAP. Just me. Everyone else is gone.”

There was no answer.

“Hello? This is Victor Nash. Gary, answer me!”

“Gary’s not coming.”

Nash cried out and turned to the voice. The owner of the voice was a man of slightly below average height and lithe build with curly dark hair and eyes as bright blue and clear as a summer sunrise.

He was surrounded by two dozen men clad in black body armor carrying assault rifles. The color drained from Nash’s face. That bitch! She had called for backup. He should have killed her. Damn it, he should have killed her. This was what he got for having an attack of conscience.

“I’ll destroy the fragments,” he said desperately. His voice was a hoarse croak, and he hated how obvious his fear was. “I’ll destroy them. You’ll never have the secrets of the superalloy.”

The blue-eyed man smiled slightly. “You know better than that, Victor. If you’d like to survive, stay still and let my men search you.”

Nash’s lip trembled. It wasn’t fair! He was about to win! He was about to win, damn it!

But he didn’t have a choice. Reluctantly, he lifted his hands. “Go to hell,” he growled. “All of you.”

They didn’t answer. Two of the black-clad individuals stepped forward and searched him. The fragments of the tablet were quickly recovered and placed in a bag. Everything he had worked for was taken from him. All of that for nothing.

When the last of the fragments were taken, the blue-eyed man nodded. He drew a handgun and aimed it at Victor.

“Wait,” Victor began. “What—”

Fire erupted from the gun’s barrel. The world exploded into white, then faded to pitch black. A loud buzzing noise echoed in Victor’s ears, faded, then went silent.

 ***

Eitan Katz holstered his weapon and nodded at the others. They sprinted into the tomb. While he waited, Eitan called the helicopters. “It’s done.”

Almost instantly, Eitan heard the engines spool up as the helicopters lifted off from the other side of the dunes and approached them. His team had arrived less than an hour after Jacob and Jana were taken, but at the Curator’s orders, they had refrained from showing themselves. Ideally, Jana and Jacob would have obtained the tablet and defeated Nash on their own, but they always knew there was a risk that they were asking too much of the agents.

Disquiet echoed through Eitan’s mind. He had just given the Antiquities Division another component of the ultimate weapon.

And it was a weapon. Whatever the Curator might assert, the gravity engine was a weapon, and the Division would use that weapon to forever alter the course of human history.

But they were right, weren’t they? Look at the world. Look at the violence and selfishness and stupidity. Look at what they did to each other. It was only by luck that millions of people hadn’t just died in New York City. Humanity had failed. They needed to reset and try again, just like they had before.

He almost convinced himself. Almost.

The team returned. Jacob was on a stretcher, unconscious, an oxygen mask strapped to his head. Jana walked with him, tears streaming down her face. She lifted her eyes to Eitan, but no recognition crossed her face. She didn’t know who he was. If Jacob had been awake, he might have recognized the thief he chased through the streets of Jerusalem, the man who had stolen the Lesser Key of Solomon so that Garrett Blackstone didn’t find it, but Jacob was unconscious and would remain so until after Eitan left them.

The helicopters landed. The group boarded. Eitan sent a brief message to the Curator. It’s done.

Then he nodded at the pilot of his helicopter, and the helicopters lifted smoothly into the air, leaving behind the tomb of Khnum-ankh but carrying the ancient smith’s secrets with them.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Jacob groaned and opened his eyes. At first, his vision was only a swirl of colors and lights, but soon it coalesced into shapes. He blinked a few times, and those shapes sharpened into the image of the love of his life smiling softly down at him. “Hey, baby.”

He returned her smile and lifted a hand to caress Jana’s face. “Hey yourself. So the Division patched me up, huh?”

She nodded. Her smile faded a moment, then returned. “Yes. You’re… well, you’re not all better, but you’re well on your way.”

He looked around. He recognized the sparse room as a Division hospital room. “Thank God for miraculous ancient technology that can magically repair injured people.”

Jana chuckled, but there was no mirth in her laughter. Jacob looked at her, and a chill ran through him at her wan expression. “New York?”

Her answer surprised him. “New York’s fine. They managed to disarm all of the bombs. Turns out a lot of them were duds, but they stopped the ones that weren’t.”

Jacob’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Really. I know, it surprised me too. I guess an NYPD sergeant managed to stop the biggest bomb from going off at the last possible second. She’s going to get the keys to the city and a couple of other perks. The National Guard took care of most of the rest, and a few other NYPD bomb squad officers are getting medals.” She smiled, but once more there was bitterness in that look. “No harm, no foul.”

Jacob took her hand in his. “I would have done the same thing if it was you lying there.”

Jana lowered her eyes. “No, you wouldn’t have. You would have done whatever you could to stop Nash. You would have stayed true to the mission.”

“No,” he insisted. “Not if you were dying in front of me. I couldn’t do that. As much as I’d like to think I could, I know I couldn’t lose you.”

Jana sighed. She didn’t look comforted at all. “I called the Division for help.”

“That’s all right. You didn’t have a choice.”

“I did, though. That’s the problem. I had a choice, and I made the one choice I promised myself I wouldn’t make. I sold out. I gave the tablet to the Division. I told them where Nash was and let them take Khnum-ankh’s secrets. They now have the knowledge to make the superalloy. I gave the most dangerous organization on Earth a superweapon.”

Jacob debated saying this, but in the end, he decided it was a good point to make. “The Division wasn’t planning to kill millions of people. I know I told you earlier that I’m not a big fan of them, and I’m not, but you were between a rock and a hard place. I’d rather no one had Khnum-ankh’s secrets, but if I had to choose, I’d give it to the Division over Victor Nash.”

Jana released another bitter laugh. “That’s the problem. We always have to choose, and the Division is always the right choice. That scares me. It can’t be a coincidence that we’re always forced to give them what they want.” She shook her head. “There’s something we’re not seeing, Jacob. Something’s going on behind the scenes that makes it so we always end up helping the Curator.”

“Do you think he’s behind these events?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he’s just an excellent opportunist. When a problem arises, he gives us the tools to solve it, but he makes sure that solution is always to give them what they want. I don’t know how he does it, but I can’t think that it’s coincidence anymore. Something’s going on, and I’m tired of feeling like a pawn in someone else’s game.”

Before Jacob could reply, the door opened, and the man in question walked into the room. He smiled at Jacob, and Jacob got an uncomfortable impression of a wolverine’s toothy grin.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s awake.”

Jacob nodded at the Curator. “Looks like you guys patched me up again. Thank you.”

Jana pressed her lips together and looked away. The Curator noticed her expression and scoffed. “Come on, Jana. This is a victory. We stopped a terrorist. No one got hurt… well, no one innocent died, anyway. We have the secret of the superalloy, and we’re going to make sure it never gets out to anyone who can hurt innocents.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Jana asked.

“What did I just say? We’re going to keep people from using it to hurt other people.” He sighed. “You two need to stop assuming the worst about us. This is now… Hell, I don’t even know how many times we’ve rescued you two from certain death and also helped prevent a terrorist from destroying the world or causing some other unfathomable catastrophe.”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything,” Jana protested.

“You were just complaining to Jacob that you gave the most dangerous organization on Earth the secrets of the superalloy and speculating that we were manipulating events to make it so that you had no choice but to give us what we wanted.”

Jana and Jacob both stiffened. They should have known that the Curator was listening in to them. They should have known that the room was bugged and the Division would hear everything they said. They had just admitted to trying to hide things from the Division and being upset at being unable to do that.

The Curator allowed the shock to settle for a moment, then said, “And yet, here you two are. Alive. Healed. About to head home with our blessing and our thanks. If we were as evil as you thought we were, would we leave you alive?”

“As long as we’re useful, yes,” Jana replied.

Jacob shifted uncomfortably. They weren’t ready to challenge the Division. Jana needed to be careful about how antagonistic she was.

“Well, you’re useful. Very useful. And it would be the opposite of useful for us to discard you just because you have trouble accepting that we’re not the boogeyman lurking in the dark. But since you ask, we’re going to make limited quantities of body armor out of the superalloy and distribute them to our security forces and possibly some of our more valuable agents. Including you two.” His voice dripped with sarcasm as he added, “I very much look forward to the angry, slightly guilty looks on your faces when you grudgingly accept the armor while still insisting how wrong and dangerous it is for us to have it.”

Jacob kept silent. It wasn’t the armor that was the problem. It wasn’t even really that the Division had better technology than other organizations. The problem was not knowing what their ultimate motives were. The problem was not knowing how much of history the Division had altered to fit their narrative and hide God knows what from the world.

But he didn’t say that out loud, and thankfully, Jana didn’t either. Instead, she offered a cautious, “I just don’t like being kept out of the loop. There’s a lot that you don’t tell us, and considering how similar you are to the Order in some ways, it worries me.”

Lovely, Jana. That’s exactly how you don’t spook your opponent.

“We’re not saying you guys are terrorists,” he said, trying to backpedal from Jana’s accusation a little. “But a lot of things look weird, and you’re asking us to just take it at face value. If you could clue us in a little more, then we might have an easier time trusting you.”

The Curator sighed. “I don’t know how much more we can clue you in at this point. We have allowed you access to a lot more information than most agents receive, and you’ve only been with us for a year or so, a little longer if you include the work you did with us while you two were with the CIA. And you haven’t proven especially aligned with us.”

Jacob thought of his response before offering it. “We want to believe that you’re telling us the truth. We want to believe that you’re the good guys. But keeping us on the outside will naturally make us suspicious.”

Jana looked at him, and he could see the unspoken understanding in her eyes. He was trying to convince the Curator to give them access to more information while also giving her an opening to shift away from exposing herself as opposed to the Division. They could apologize for their suspicions while also learning more about what the Division was really planning. They had flown far too close to the sun, and it would probably take a little time to repair that damage, but they could still spin this to their advantage.

The Curator tilted his head, considering. When he finally replied, it wasn’t exactly encouraging. “You two have to think of yourselves as newcomers. Just as the CIA didn’t tell you everything right away, so we can’t tell you everything right away. The one thing I can promise you is that everything we do, we do to protect humanity. We aren’t the bad guys. We’re fighting very hard to protect the world. Sometimes, that will require hard choices. The value you two provide to us is your unwillingness to accept compromise and your almost superhuman ability to take away the need to compromise. Do you understand? People like you two and Dr. Bledshaw keep us honest. You give us a way to protect humanity without becoming the evil you fear so terribly.”

“Well, thank you,” Jana said curtly. “I’m glad we’ve managed to prevent you from becoming the overlords of the planet.”

The Curator smiled slightly. “You’ll come to understand our point of view soon enough. Just as Dr. Bledshaw did.”

“Where is Robert, by the way?” Jacob asked, trying to keep his tone casual and not accusatory.

The Curator looked at him. “He’s fine. He’s on other assignments. I would love for you two to work together, but I can’t have two people who don’t trust us working with someone who used to not trust us. Once you understand things a little better and don’t view us as a threat, we can pull you a little more into the fold.”

Jacob set the hook. “That has to go both ways. If you don’t talk to us, we can’t know that what you’re telling us is the truth. If you hide information from us, then we can’t know that you’re not hiding that information for nefarious reasons. Give us a little so we know you’re people we can work with and trust.”

The Curator fell silent and held Jacob’s gaze. Jana watched him warily, hopefully.

Finally, the Curator sighed. “You make a compelling argument. Very well. We will share a little more with you when we need you again. There are reasons we work the way we do. Perhaps we can make those reasons a little clearer.”

He turned toward the door. “I will send an escort to take you two back home. As a token of goodwill, I will raise your security clearances one level. Feel free to browse our records and familiarize yourself with us a little more. I hope that will be a good start to greater trust between us.”

He left the room, and Jacob shared a look with Jana. It was too soon to know if this was the victory they hoped it was, but at the very least, they had averted disaster.

And if the Curator was telling the truth, and the two of them were helping to keep the Division honest, then maybe the light at the end of this tunnel was a little brighter and a little closer than they thought. They could always hope.

EPILOGUE

The Curator was in a foul mood when he met Eitan in the latter’s office. “We’re going to have a problem with those two,” he announced unceremoniously.

“How much of a problem?” Eitan asked.

“I don’t know. I thought it was ordinary distrust common among intelligence agents, but I’m beginning to think that they’re deliberately hiding information from us. I don’t mind if they have moral qualms about working with us, but when they actively withhold knowledge, it concerns me.” He met Eitan’s eyes. “Did you see no indication of this? You’re supposed to be watching them.”

As a matter of fact, Eitan had known about their mistrust since before they joined the Division. Lately, he had been anonymously assisting Jana by preventing the Curator from blocking access to the adjusted history related to their current assignments and allowing her to uncover more evidence of the Division’s dishonesty.

He obviously couldn’t tell the Curator that, though. “I knew that they didn’t trust us, but up until recently, it was primarily Dr. Peters who didn’t trust us, and the root of her distrust was a dislike of our choice to conceal certain artifacts. As an archaeologist, it’s her passion to uncover the past, not hide it.”

“And recently?”

Eitan controlled his emotions. He didn’t want to reveal this next point, but the Curator would learn it soon enough, and it would look suspicious if Eitan didn’t share it with him. “Recently, Agent Snow has been in contact with his handler at the CIA.”

The Curator’s eyes widened. “Wallace contacted him?”

“I believe he contacted Wallace.”

The Curator cursed. “Wallace was supposed to refrain from any and all contact. Our assets in the CIA assured me of that.”

He took a seat behind Eitan’s desk. Eitan wondered if he was even aware of the act, or if he just assumed that he was entitled to the seat of power regardless of whose office it was.

The Curator drummed his fingers on Eitan’s desk. “Perhaps it’s time to deal with Wallace permanently.”

A chill ran down Eitan’s spine. He wanted Wallace safe for the eventual endgame against the Division. “That’s a bad idea, sir.”

“We can make it look unconnected to us.”

“To everyone but Agent Snow, yes. But Agent Snow will know that Wallace was killed to punish them. It’s dangerous enough that they suspect the truth about Dr. Bledshaw.”

The Curator frowned. “Yes. You’re right.” He sighed. “We need to figure something out, though. They’re our most capable assets. We need them. We can’t have them turning tail on us. Not when we’re so close.”

Eitan hesitated before making this suggestion, but if the Curator agreed, it would make it much easier for Eitan to feed them information. “Perhaps it’s not a bad idea to include them a little more, sir. It seems that their distrust doesn’t stem from typical intelligence agent skepticism nor from resentment at our choice to conceal certain historical events but from the fact that we don’t seem to trust them. If we showed our faith in them, perhaps they’d be willing to give us the benefit of the doubt.”

“Hmm. That’s what Agent Snow suggested.” He drummed his fingers on Eitan’s desk again. “We can’t tell them the truth, Eitan. If they learn the truth, they will immediately try to stop us. I am confident you can solve that problem if it arises, but that doesn’t mean I’d like it to arise. They must be kept in the dark.” He sighed. “But they must be shown a little light.”

He stood and adjusted the lapels of his coat. “I leave that to you, Eitan. Show them enough to make them believe they see everything. Make them stop asking questions. Under no circumstances can they be allowed to know about the gravity engine.”

He took two steps toward Eitan’s door, then stopped. “We’re almost there. With the pre-Ice Age culture’s knowledge of metallurgy, we can fabricate our own components to contain the energy generated by the engine. We’re very rapidly nearing the point where we can test it. It’s critical that we be allowed time to finish. The fate of humanity depends on it. You see that, don’t you?”

That question raised alarm bells in Eitan’s head. He carefully kept that fear from showing on his face. “Of course, sir.”

The Curator nodded. “Good. Make sure they don’t see it. But keep them on our side.”

“I will, sir.”

The Curator nodded again, then left the office. Eitan released a heavy sigh and collapsed into the chair in front of his desk, the one intended for visitors. He ran a trembling hand over his face and looked pensively at the door the Curator had walked through a moment ago.

Things were becoming far more dangerous. The line Eitan had to walk was growing slimmer and slimmer. Eventually, he would have to fall to one side or the other.

He already knew on which side he would fall. He only feared that he would be forced to fall before he could ensure the landing was safe.

And not only for him. For the world.

NOW AVAILABLE!

TARGET NINETEEN

(The Spy Game—Book #19)

“Thriller writing at its best... A gripping story that's hard to put down.”

--Midwest Book Review, Diane Donovan (re Any Means Necessary)

From #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author Jack Mars, author of the critically acclaimed Luke Stone and Agent Zero series (with over 5,000 five-star reviews), comes an explosive new action-packed espionage series that takes readers on a wild ride across Europe, America, and the world—perfect for fans of Dan Brown, Daniel Silva and Jack Carr.

In the shadowy depths of London's underground, CIA Agent Jacob Snow and astute archaeologist Jana Peters chase a doomsday cult through a web of historical intrigue, aiming to recover Sir Isaac Newton's stolen alchemical secrets. But as they piece together the puzzle, they realize the cult's true plan—one that could alter the balance of world power forever.

An unputdownable action thriller with heart-pounding suspense and unforeseen twists, TARGET NINETEEN is the nineteenth novel in an exhilarating new series by a #1 bestselling author that will make you fall in love with a brand-new action hero—and keep you turning pages late into the night.

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TARGET NINETEEN

(The Spy Game—Book #19)

Jack Mars

USA Today and #1 bestselling author Jack Mars is the author of numerous thriller series, including Luke Stone, Troy Stark, Spy Game, and Jake Mercer series. Jack’s latest releases are the Lara King, Grant Valor, and Axel Strike series.

Please visit jackmarsauthor.com to learn more, join the email list, receive free books, and stay in touch.

SERIES BY JACK MARS

AXEL STRIKE

GRANT VALOR

LARA KING

TYLER WOLF

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THE SPY GAME

TROY STARK

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THE FORGING OF LUKE STONE

AGENT ZERO