As his patience began to fade, King noticed a hill on the other side of the river. Small ruins sat at its base. He toggled his mic again. “Bishop, did Babylon expand to the other side of the Euphrates?”
“Hold on…” King could hear rustling paper and Knight’s voice in the background. “Yeah. Looks like a good portion of it did.”
“That’s all I needed to know.” King broke contact and gave up on his current search. He turned and made for the bottom of the hill, where a U.S. military boat launch had been built. Three black patrol boats were tied to the docks, each with a mounted machine gun.
As King approached the dock, a lone soldier stomped out a cigarette and blew the smoke from the side of his mouth. “You one of them USGS fellas I’m supposed to assist if asked?”
“How’d you know?” King said.
“Been watching you walk back and forth with your head turned toward the ground for an hour now. Only two types of people do that. The clinically depressed and people in love with dirt. You ain’t depressed are you?”
King grinned. “Not yet.”
“You spend too much time out here and I promise you will be.” He gave a smile that revealed a set of nicotine-stained teeth. “Name’s Bowers. What can I do you for?”
“I need a ferryman,” King said.
“Going to the other side of the Euphrat is like crossing the River Styx,” Bowers said.
“How’s that?”
“Ain’t nobody over there to save you. You’ll be on your own.”
“Not quite,” King said with a grin. “You’re going to wait for me.”
Bowers stepped aboard the nearest boat. “Well shit, this will be the most I’ve done in weeks.”
King boarded the boat and they cast off. They crossed the river quickly, beaching the craft on the sandy bank. As King stepped out of the boat and onto shore, Bowers took note of the XM25. His mouth opened a little. “Geologist, my ass. What the hell are you looking for?”
“Just be ready for anything,” King said with a glance at the machine gun. “Anything.”
“You got it,” Bowers said and began loading the machine gun. “How will I know what to shoot?”
King looked back as he hiked up the sand toward the ruins and the small hill beyond. “Odds are it won’t be human.”
* * *
THE DIM LIGHT in the barracks-turned-storage shed was hardly enough to see by, so Bishop had propped open the door allowing the sun to light the room. Unfortunately, it also allowed gritty sand to swirl inside with every gust of hot wind. They did their best to ignore the air quality and focus on combing through boxes of archaeological data.
And there was enough to keep them occupied for days. Knight spent his time going over maps. Though he couldn’t read a word of Arabic, he could clearly see that there were no ancient ziggurats drawn on any maps. Bishop combed through the notebooks, skimming each entry for keywords. Thus far he’d found nothing.
Bishop and Knight were so intent on their work that neither noticed the men who entered the barracks until they closed the door. Knight turned as their light was cut in half. With his hand now on his rifle, Knight focused on the door where an Iraqi man dressed in brown pants and a white button-down shirt stood. General Fowler stood behind him.
“We tracked down one of the men involved in the pre-2003 excavations. He might be able to help make sense of all this,” Fowler said, motioning to the stacks of boxes. “Let me know when you’re finished with him and we’ll send an escort. Now if you’ll excuse me, my attention is needed elsewhere.”
Fowler left quickly, leaving a nervous-looking Iraqi standing in the middle of the room.
“What’s your name?” Knight asked.
“Rahim, sir. My English not so good.”
Without standing or turning around to greet the newcomer, Bishop said, in perfect Arabic, “You were a part of the Babylonian excavations, Rahim?”
Rahim replied in Arabic. “I was an assistant to one of the archaeologists. I was here for three years.”
“Do you know of the Tower of Babel?” Bishop asked.
“We searched for it for years,” the man said, growing excited.
“And?”
“It’s not here.”
Bishop stopped paging through the journal in his hands. He closed it, stood, and turned around. Rahim stumbled back away from Bishop, his eyes fearful. The military hardness of Bishop combined with his muscles and shaved head no doubt brought back memories of times when men like Bishop were to be feared.
“You’re Iraqi?” Rahim asked.
“I was born in Iran,” Bishop said.
This only deepened Rahim’s fear.
Bishop showed a relaxed smile. “But I was raised in America. You have nothing to fear from me.”
Rahim’s fear eased a little, but he didn’t take his eyes off Bishop for very long.
The conversation was interrupted by King’s voice in their ears. Rahim looked at them like they were insane as Bishop and Knight stopped everything and listened. Then Bishop turned to him. “You said the tower isn’t here?”
Rahim nodded. “We scoured the whole site with ground-penetrating radar. We found many exciting sites, but no ziggurats large enough to fit the profile of the Tower of Babel. But some of the team believed the tower lay elsewhere, outside of Babylon.”
“What is beneath the mound on the opposite side of the river?” Bishop asked.
The man’s head snapped up, his face excited. “We never got a chance to dig, but the archaeologists suspected it was the Hanging Gardens.”
“The Hanging Gardens,” Bishop said to Knight in English.
Knight relayed the information. “King, a man from the original dig is here. He’s saying that the Tower of Babel isn’t here, and that the site you’re checking out might be—”
A burst of static cut him off.
“King. King? Do you copy?” Knight looked at Bishop. The only reason King wouldn’t reply was if he couldn’t.
“Rahim, we need you to show us where this mound is,” Bishop said.
* * *
A HALF MILE away on the opposite side of the Euphrates River, atop a mound of sand, the only trace of King’s presence was a divot in the earth. With each passing moment, the wind filled the hole with fresh sand. Less than a minute after King was sucked into the earth, no trace of him remained—except for his XM25 assault rifle.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Severodvinsk, Russia
THE CITY OF Severodvinsk was not what Rook expected, not this far north. In some ways it reminded him of Portsmouth, New Hampshire—built on the coast, home to a submarine yard, featuring an old fishing culture still eking out a living—but Portsmouth’s population was closer to thirty thousand. Severodvinsk supported a population of nearly two hundred thousand.
Not that he minded the crowded streets. It made hiding in the open that much easier. Being a major naval hub, the city was full of military men, some in uniform, more in plainclothes. Despite wanting a stiff drink, Rook avoided the pubs and stuck to coffee shops, all the while searching for the one man who might be able to help him: Maksim Dashkov.
After leaving Galya’s cabin, he had hiked five miles before making it to a main route. Heading north, he caught a ride with a truck driver with a shipment destined for the sub yard. He’d been dropped off in the center of town an hour ago.
The coffee shop bell jangled as Rook entered. He smiled at the heavyset woman behind the counter and ordered a coffee. Black. He paid with money taken from Galya’s cabin and headed for a table. Halfway to the table, as though an afterthought, he asked, “Do you have a phone directory I could borrow?”