constellation.” He drew it in.
Vigor recognized it, too. “That’s the constellation for Draco, the dragon.”
Seichan cocked her head as she stared down. “Are you saying it’s a navigational star map?”
“It looks that way.” Gray scratched his head with his pencil’s eraser. “But how does one constellation tell us where to go?”
No one answered.
“It can’t,” he finally conceded.
Gray’s heart pounded in his throat. They were running out of time. Had he just taken them down the wrong path?
Vigor sat back. “Wait,” he mumbled. “Remember Marco’s story. The last stanza. Marco said he drew a map
“And?” Gray asked.
Vigor took the paper, spun it around. “This can’t be stars. It has to be the
Gray shook his head. “That’s a rather strange coincidence that a city should be laid out in the exact pattern of the Draco constellation. If I’m not mistaken, even the stars outside the dragon line mark the placement of real stars.”
Vigor nodded. “But remember, from my study of ancient civilizations…from the Egyptians through Mesoamerica, many civilizations built their monuments and cities patterned after the stars, made to mimic them.”
Gray remembered a similar lesson. “Like the three Egyptian pyramids are supposed to represent the stars of Orion’s belt.”
“Exactly! Somewhere in Southeast Asia is a city patterned after the Draco constellation.”
Seichan suddenly swung around.
Seichan rushed to her pack, pawed through it, and pulled out her laptop. “There’s an encyclopedia program on here.”
Seichan squatted down between the knees of Vigor and Gray. She called up the program and typed rapidly. She double-clicked on an icon and a digital map filled the screen.
“This is the temple complex of Angkor, built by the Khmer people of Cambodia in the ninth century.”
“Notice the layout of the temples,” Seichan said, “where each one lies. I had heard stories of how these ruins were supposedly laid out in a starlike grid.”
With his finger Gray drew a line connecting the temples in a pattern and tapped the remaining temples. He held up the first star map and placed it next to the open laptop.
“They’re an exact match,” Vigor said, awed. “Marco’s City of the Dead. It’s the ancient city of Angkor Wat.”
Gray leaned down and hugged Seichan’s shoulders. She tensed, but didn’t pull away. Gray owed everyone a debt of gratitude, even Kowalski, whose simplistic overview had broken the way to the solution.
Gray checked his watch.
Not a minute to spare.
He held out his hand toward Vigor. “Your phone. It’s time to make a deal.”
Vigor passed him the cell phone and battery.
Gray snapped the battery in place, praying for some measure of good fortune. He dialed Nasser’s number, supplied by Seichan. Vigor reached over and gripped Gray’s hand, offering support.
The phone rang once and was picked up.
“Commander Pierce,” a cold and furious voice answered.
Gray took a steadying breath, struggling not to lash out. He needed to be deliberate and firm.
“My plane is about to land,” Nasser continued, not even waiting for acknowledgment. “For your treachery, I will allow you to decide which of your parents will die first, your mother or your father. I will make you listen to their screams. And that parent, I promise, will be the luckier of the two.”
Despite the threat Gray took some solace. If Nasser wasn’t lying, both of his parents were still alive.
Taking comfort in that, Gray kept his voice even, his jaw muscles aching with the restraint. “I will offer you a trade for their lives.”
“There is nothing you can offer,” Nasser barked back.
“Even if I told you that I’d solved the obelisk’s angelic code?”
Dead air answered him.
Gray continued. “Nasser, I know where Marco’s City of the Dead lies.” Fearing even this might not be enough to sway the bastard, Gray spoke the next words slowly, so there was no misunderstanding. “And I know how to cure the Judas Strain.”
Vigor turned to him, startled.
Silence continued on the phone.
Gray waited. He stared at the digital map of Angkor Wat on the laptop. He sensed that the two arms of the Guild operation — the one following the scientific trail, the other following the historical — were about to slam together.
But who would be crushed between them?
Nasser finally answered, his voice a trembling rage.
“What do you want?”
OUTBREAK
13
Witch Queen
The drums pounded louder than the rumbles of thunder overhead. Lightning spattered, flashing the jungle into stark greens and blacks, limned in silver by the reflection off the wet leaves.
Bare-chested, Monk pulled Susan by the hand up a steep turn in the jungle path. They’d been following the trail for the past two hours in the dark, sometimes waiting for lightning to show them where to step next. Rain continued to pour through the canopy. The switchbacked trail had become a running stream. But the remainder of the jungle was a dense tangle of grappling vines, heavy leaves, thorny bushes, root-choked trunks, and sopping mud.
So they kept to the trail, heading up, always up.
Ryder climbed behind them. He had their group’s one pistol. A 9mm Sig Sauer P228 with a Teflon finish. Unfortunately he had no spare magazines. Only the thirteen rounds already in the gun.
