Madly ripping open chest lids and cabinet doors he could not find the documents he had seen Salodius carry into his dwelling. Finally, in the gaining ruckus of furious religious warfare in the temple, the boy fell to his knees, exhausted. Next to the dead pagans he wept bitterly for the shock of the truth and the betrayal of his faith.
“I would be Christian no more!” he shouted, unafraid of being found now. “I will be pagan and protect the old ways! I renounce my faith and put it in the ways of the first nations of this world!” he wailed. “Make me your protector, Serapis!”
The clash of weapons and shrieks of the slaughtered was so loud that his cries would be construed as just another sound of the carnage. Frantic screaming alerted him that something much more devastating had happened and he ran to the window to see that the columns of the great temple section above were being demolished one by one. But the true threat was coming from the very structure he was occupying. Searing heat caressed his face as he peeked from the window. Flames as high as the towering trees licked at the buildings while the statues fell with mighty thumps that sounded like the treads of giants.
Petrified and sobbing, the frightened boy looked for a back way out, but as he leapt over the lifeless cadaver of Salodius, his foot caught on the man’s hand and he came down hard on the floor. Shaking off the impact the boy saw a panel under the cabinet he had searched. It was a wooden panel hidden in the concrete floor. With great toil he pushed aside the wooden locker and lifted the lid. Inside he discovered the heap of ancient scrolls and maps he had been seeking.
He looked at the dead man who he believed pointed him in the right direction, literally and spiritually. “My thanks to you, Salodius. Your death will not be for naught,” he smiled, hugging the scrolls to his chest. With his small frame as his asset, he made his way through one of the water ducts that ran under the temple as a storm-water canal and escaped unseen.
Chapter 1
Bern stared at the great blue expanse above him that seemed to go on forever, only broken by the pale tan line where the flat grassland marked the horizon. His cigarette was the only indication that the wind was blowing, letting its hazy white smoke ghost itself toward the east while his steely blue eyes combed the perimeter. He was exhausted, but he dared not show it. Such absurdities would undermine his authority. As one of three captains at the compound he had to maintain his coldness, his inexhaustible cruelty, and an inhuman ability to never sleep.
Only men like Bern could make the enemy shudder and keep the name of his unit in the clouded whispers of locals and hushed tones of those well across the oceans. His hair was shaven short, his scalp visible under a stubble of black and gray, unstirred by the rushing wind. Pinched by pursed lips, his hand-rolled smoke blazed in a momentary flare of orange before he swallowed its shapeless poison and flicked the butt over the railing of the balcony. Beneath the barricade where he stood a sheer drop of a few hundred feet lurched toward the foot of the mountain.
It was the perfect vantage point for arriving guests, welcome and otherwise. Bern ran his fingers downward over his black and gray moustache and beard, stroking it a few times until it was neat and void of any remnants of ash. He had no need of a uniform — none of them did — but their rigid discipline betrayed their past and their training. His men were painfully regimented and each trained to a fault in various fields, their membership depending on knowing a bit of everything, and specializing in most. Just because they lived in seclusion and kept a strict post by no means meant they had the morality or chastity of monks.
As a matter of fact, Bern’s men were a tough collection of multinational bastards who loved all things most savages did, but they had learned how to harness their pleasures. As long as each man kept up his task and performed all missions with diligence, Bern and his two comrades allowed their pack to be the dogs they were.
It gave them an excellent cover, the appearance of mere brutes following military brand orders and defiling anything that dared front their fences without good reason or holding any currency, money, or flesh. However, each and every man under Bern’s command was highly qualified and educated. Historians, gunsmiths, medical professionals, archeologists, and linguists walked shoulder to shoulder with assassins, mathematicians, and lawyers.
Bern was 44 years old with a jaded past the envy of marauders everywhere.
An ex-member of the Berlin arm of the so-called Neue Spetsnaz (Secret GRU), Bern had been put through some grueling mind games as callous as his physical training regimen during his years as a German working in the Russian Special Forces. While under its wing he was gradually oriented by his direct commanding officer into secret missions for a clandestine German order. After becoming a very effective operative for this arcane group of German aristocracy and global moguls with nefarious agendas, Bern was finally offered an entry-level mission whereby he would, if he succeeded, be afforded a fifth-level membership.
When it was made clear that he was to abduct the infant child of a British councilor and kill the child should its parents not comply with the conditions of the organization, Bern realized that he was serving a group of powerful and hideous bloodlines and opted out. However, when he came home to find his wife raped and murdered and his child missing, he vowed to topple the Order of the Black Sun by any means necessary. He had it on good authority that the members operated under various government agencies, that their tentacles reached well into the confines of eastern European prisons and Hollywood studios, all the way into Imperial banks and real estate in the United Arab Emirates and Singapore.
In fact, Bern soon came to know them as the devil, the shadows; all things that were invisible, but ever-present.
After leading a mutiny of like-minded operatives and second-level members with much power of their own, Bern and his colleagues defected from the order and elected to make it their sole purpose to eradicate each and every subordinate and high council member of the Black Sun.
And so was born Brigade Apostate, the insurgents responsible for the most successful counterforce the Order of the Black Sun had ever faced, the only enemy terrible enough to merit warning among the order’s ranks.
Now Brigade Apostate made its presence known on every occasion to remind the Black Sun that it had a frighteningly competent enemy, although not as powerful in the world of information technology and finance as the order, but excelling in its aptitude for tactical approach and reconnaissance. The latter were skills that could uproot and destroy governments, even without the aid of limitless wealth and resources.
Bern walked through the archway of the bunker-like floor, two floors under the main living quarters, passing through two tall, black, iron gates that welcomed the condemned to the belly of the beast where the children of the Black Sun were executed with prejudice. And as it was, he had been working on the umpteenth morsel who claimed to know nothing. It always fascinated Bern how their displays of loyalty never profited them anything, yet they seemed to feel obliged to martyr themselves for an organization that kept them on leashes and repeatedly proved to dismiss their efforts as due and owing. For what?
If anything, the psychology behind these slaves proved how some unseen force of malevolent intent managed to turn hundreds of thousands of normal, good men into masses of uniformed tin soldiers marching for the Nazis. Something in the Black Sun operated on the same fear-induced brilliance that compelled decent men under Hitler’s command to burn living babies and watch children choke on gas fumes while they called for their mothers. Every time he extinguished one of them, he felt relief; not so much for the release of another enemy presence, but relief that he was not like them.