She ran.
The window behind her exploded, sending rounds and glass shards into the far wall.
The barrage was followed by a second, much closer demonstration of firepower. The drug runners, fearing an attack, opened fire. Both sides were now fully engaged.
As Queen entered the upstairs hallway, a little voice came out of the darkness in the back bedroom. “Papa?”
Queen’s eyes went wide as she saw a little boy, no older then seven, standing in the bedroom doorway, rubbing his eyes and looking nervous. How she had missed him she had no idea, but she couldn’t leave him here. If he were to walk in front of the window from where she’d fired, the military would cut him down.
With two fast strides, she reached the boy, threw him over her shoulder, and leaped the banister. She landed on the stairway with a hard thump, and jumped the rest of the way down. At the base of the stairs, the boy’s papa stood ready with a shotgun.
Their eyes met for a moment and came to an agreement. He could see she was helping the boy, and given her professional gear, and perhaps the fact that she was a woman, decided to trust her. The man lowered his shotgun and took a step back. Queen put the boy in his arms and said, “Permanecer abajo hasta que la batalla ha terminado.”
She paused at the door way and added, “Gracias.”
The man tilted his head forward as he headed to the back room with the boy. “Y a usted.”
As Queen rounded the back of the house she came nose to barrel with one of her men’s submachine guns. He drew it back without pause and met the other four, whose weapons were trained on the street side of the alley. Anyone who entered would be torn apart. She tapped the men on the shoulder, getting their attention, and then led them around the building to their right. The alley on the other side emerged five feet behind the last of the drug runner’s vehicles. The men were using the car doors and rear ends as shelter when reloading.
Queen paused at the front corner of the house. “Stay low, move fast, and try not to get shot.” She finished the statement with a fiendish grin that intimidated her teammates but also brought smiles to their faces. Queen was nuts, but she was so good at it. And it gave the team a supernatural confidence.
They struck out into the road, ducking low. With the drug runners’ attention on the top of town and their bodies hidden by both darkness and the black vehicles, they moved without being seen.
That is, until one of the runners ducked and turned around, intending to reload his weapon. Instead he took a silenced bullet to the center of his forehead courtesy of Queen’s sidearm. Before his body had slumped to the pavement, the team had entered the other side of town. Two minutes later Queen lead her team into the jungle. Another fifteen and they were airborne, heading north over the jungle and wondering what kind of hell the rest of the Chess Team had been dropped into.
THIRTY-SIX
Rome, Italy
“WHY DON’T WE start with what you know,” Alexander said as he led King and Pierce into a large circular chamber. The fifty-foot-diameter room had three arched exits, was lit by rows of recessed lights, and its tan walls and floor were polished to a shine.
But it wasn’t the finished sheen of the room that held King’s and Pierce’s attention, it was the gallery of objects held within.
Like a museum, the space was filled with glass display cases, glass-domed pedestals, and even a few finely preserved statues. King also noted that the room held several security measures similar to the most high-tech museums—ceiling-mounted cameras, infrared sensors, ultrasonic sensors, and motion detectors. He glanced back at the entrance they’d come through and saw several circular bars hidden in the floor and in the top of the arch. Should something be taken from its place, the room, which was really more of a vault, could be locked down.
King focused on Alexander’s questions while Pierce quickly wove through the displays, looking at the contents with wide-eyed fascination. “We know they’re some kind of golem,” King said, feeling stupid as he did. That they were fighting golems still seemed ridiculous, despite who he was talking to.
Alexander sat in what looked to be a very old chair, its frame built from thick wood. Its leather back and seat cushion were faded and cracked. “Go on.”
“They’re part of Jewish folklore and are created by speaking the word ‘Emet’ and destroyed by the word ‘met.’ Any inanimate objects can be animated, but clay is preferable.”
Alexander waited for more, but when King didn’t speak, his eyebrows slowly rose. “That’s it?”
Pierce’s voice interrupted. “Are these apple seeds?” He was leaning over a pedestal, peering through its glass top.
“They are,” Alexander replied.
Pierce stood up straight, like he’d just been struck by something. He looked at Alexander. “Not from the Garden of the Hesperides?”
“The same. And before you ask, they have great healing properties, but do not grant immortality.”
Pierce mumbled excitedly to himself and continued his journey around the room.
“How much more is there?” King asked. “What don’t we know?”
“A great deal,” Alexander said. “The tales of rabbis using the ability of words to bring golems to life is simply one of the more modern documented usages of a very ancient power. It is something long forgotten by most of the world and buried in many of our ancient languages. Despite being only a fragment of something much larger, the ability to bring the nonliving to life, it is the most commonly used application of the ancient power and can be easily traced through history.
“In the sixteenth century, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, a rabbi in Prague, is said to have brought a golem to life to protect his community from the Holy Roman Empire, which had decreed that all Jews should be cast out or killed. You know the story, yes?”
King nodded.
“It was a skill either taught to him by his predecessors, but used infrequently, or documented in a text the rabbi found. Either way, the knowledge was passed down to the rabbi through a line of Jewish ancestors going back to ancient Israel, where a well-known Jew could manipulate the elements with his words. But the knowledge is older than Israel. The Jews who had fled Egypt took the knowledge with them, led by a man who seemed to have mastered many elements of this ancient power.”
“You’re talking about Moses?”
Alexander gave a nod.
“And the ‘well-known Jew’ who could manipulate the elements?”
“Jesus. Who could walk on water, turn away storms, and, if you believe it, rise from the dead.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” King said.
Alexander chuckled. “He would have liked you, King. You have a lot in common with Thomas.”
King looked incredulous. “You knew Jesus?”
“I met him.”
“And you heard him speak this language?”
“No, but others did. Some claimed to understand it, hearing his words as simple commands. Others were dumbfounded by it.”
“So, what, Christianity is founded on a magical charlatan?”
“Jesus spent his childhood in Egypt, as did Moses, so it’s possible both men found some ancient source of knowledge and used what they learned to perform amazing miracles. But their mastery of the ancient language and its powers went far beyond the creation of golems. It could just as easily be argued that they had supernatural instruction.”