“What if he fought you?”
“I’d fight back, get him in handcuffs.”
“What if he was tougher than you?”
Jagger looked at Tyler and smiled, then they did what they always did when Jagger’s masculinity was questioned: they both laughed.
And Jagger tried to push aside the memory of the teenager whupping him in the cave.
[35]
The Jeep shook and rattled over what was suppose to be a dirt road, but Toby suspected the only thing that differentiated it from the desert was that the Jeep was rolling over it. Its wheels seemed to jump on their own into pits and rocks his night vision goggles had not revealed. They traveled without headlights, so only he could see the terrain, a luminous green wasteland rushing toward them. He wondered how well the roar of the engine and clattering of the suspension carried through the desert air. He strained his arm muscles to keep the vehicle from whipping side to side and rolling, and still the steering wheel pendulumed his hands back and forth as though he were helming a schooner on high seas.
A hand gripped his shoulder from behind. Ben said, “A little slower, please.”
Toby said nothing and kept his foot on the gas. Nevaeh had appointed him driver, which meant he would stay outside the compound with the engine running while the others took care of business inside. He hadn’t complained- it wouldn’t have done any good, never did, and whining just made him sound like a kid-but he didn’t have to like it.
In the passenger seat beside him, Nevaeh pulled metamaterial gloves over her hands. The neck hole of the scaly gray shirt was rolled down, exposing her throat. She reached into the footwell and came back with a gorget. The metal collar was about four inches wide with outwardly curved edges. It hinged in the middle, which lined up with the center of the throat and clamped in the back. Nevaeh slipped it on, groaning as she did.
“Are these absolutely necessary?” she said.
“This time especially,” Ben said. “We fight a knowledgeable enemy.”
Nevaeh rolled the shirt collar up over the gorget. She reached behind her and pulled the hood over her head and face. The suit’s battery pack and computer resided in a paperback-book-sized box situated just below the shoulder blades, forcing her to sit forward in her seat. She twisted around.
“Ben,” she said, “check me.”
She switched on the suit, and when Toby glanced over she was gone, invisible even through the goggles. Only her eyes remained, hovering between him and the door pillar.
“You gotta do something about the eyes, Ben,” Toby said. “That’s really creepy.”
“And a major glitch in the suit’s effectiveness,” said Phin from the seat behind her. He stretched his eyelids open with his fingers and glared at Ben.
Toby suspected Phin’s bouncing was only partially the result of the jostling Jeep.
“So is your ‘cologne,’ ” Nev said.
“It’s psychological warfare,” Phin said. “The odor of blood freaks people out. It makes them pause, gives me an advantage, if only for a second.”
Toby caught Phin’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Well, it freaks me out that you wear it like perfume on missions.”
“‘Here’s the smell of blood still,’ ” Phin quoted. “‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’ ”
“Lady Macbeth was referring to her guilt over killing the king,” Ben said matter-of-factly. He was fiddling with something on the cuff of his suit. “As far as the problem with making the eyes invisible, DARPA’s working it. My associates there are still trying to develop a photocell that can bend light and remain transparent when viewed from behind. That’s what we need, two-way metamaterial goggles. It’ll take an amorphous silicon ferromagnetic thin film to achieve it, but the technology hasn’t been invented yet. It’s just a matter of time.”
Toby rolled his eyes. Throwing big words at him was Ben’s way of telling him to shut up. He said, “That’s what I thought.”
The Jeep hit a rut, tossing them into the air. Toby’s thighs smacked the steering wheel; his head brushed the canvas canopy.
“Tobias,” Ben said evenly, “five minutes sooner or later makes no difference. Our arriving in one piece does.”
Nev’s suit beeped again, and she reappeared. In the skintight suit she appeared more like a mannequin than a flesh-and-blood woman, but Toby had to admit she made a fine mannequin. She leaned into the footwell again. When she straightened, she set a pistol and machete-like sword on her lap. Toby’s stomach rolled. That she’d brought the sword instead of her daggers reminded him of their reason for being here. Maybe his role as driver wasn’t such a bad gig after all.
Nev slipped the gun into a pocket stitched into the invisibility suit under her left arm. Toby knew she’d wait to stow the sword. The pocket for it ran the length of her upper leg, from hip to knee. It was a pain to get it in and out while sitting.
Ben tapped Toby on the arm and pointed at the GPS unit suction-cupped to the windshield. “Main road in two minutes. We should hit it on the monastery side of the police checkpoint.”
The Sinai was nasty with police and U.N. checkpoints, left over from the Israeli-Egyptian hostilities of the 1970s and more recent terrorist activities.
“Turn right and we’ll be there. Bring us close, but not too close.”
“Got it,” Toby said. Whether or not he liked his role, the mission was on, and he didn’t mess around when it came to missions. None of them did. In the rearview he saw Phin insert two earbuds and drop an MP3 player into a pocket. Phin pulled on his mask, and a few seconds later everything but his eyes evaporated.
Behind him, Ben yanked the slide back on a semiauto pistol and let it slam back into place, chambering a round.
“Ready, everyone?” he said. “Three minutes.”
[36]
Jagger and Tyler had walked for five minutes and still hadn’t reached the burning bush. Tyler had suggested they take the “scenic route,” which was anything but. They traversed a tight tunnel between two buildings, with a ceiling created by structures built on top of them and spanning the narrow alley. Jagger knew of three such tunnels in the monastery, and he wasn’t sure there weren’t others. None was a straight shot from end to end; they all zigged one way, then zagged the other, making them eerily cavelike. The erratic placement and angles of the buildings, the dead ends, stairs, levels, and bridges from one rooftop to another all conspired to turn the complex into a labyrinth on par with the trickiest mouse maze. It was a nine-year-old boy’s dream and a security specialist’s nightmare.
They made loop-de-loops along the walls and ceiling with the flashlight beams till they emerged from the tunnel at the base of a narrow flight of stone stairs. Tyler started up, pulling Jagger with him. At the top they walked along a terrace to a rooftop, lighted by an amber bulb and sporting a single wooden chair. Jagger stopped in the light.
“Hold on,” he said. “I have something for you.” He dug into his breast pocket and pulled out the coin he’d found in the cave with the teen’s belongings.
Tyler took it from him and held it up to the light, turning it to examine both sides. “Wow.”
“I showed it to Dr. Hoffmann,” Jagger said. “It’s not Egyptian. He thought maybe a tourist dropped it, and it would be okay for us to keep it.” He didn’t mention the “tourist” it may have belonged to. “Ollie called it a ‘Charon’s obol.’ People put it in the mouth of a loved one they were burying. That way the dead person would have money to
