Crash and Burn Read online

  She had crashed here, struck down by blind chance. And while it was easier to dismiss such a mishap as bad luck, she knew better. She knew exactly why she had crashed on this island. It wasn’t a matter of being at the wrong place, wrong time.

  Instead, she was at the right place, right time.

  So this could happen.

  From the shadows, Seichan watched a small girl run across the sunlit terrace, her bright pink dress blooming behind her. She ran into her father and hugged his legs with both arms. He lowered a fresh paper crown to her head, lifted her in his arms, and kissed her on the forehead.

  Satisfied, Seichan turned away, drawing deeper into the shadows. She now understood it was darkness where she needed to be, so others could play in the sun.

  Happy birthday, Amelia.

  What’s True, What’s Not

  At the end of my full-length novels, I love to spell out what’s real and what’s fiction in my stories. I thought I’d briefly do the same here.

  First, I thought I’d share the genesis for this story. I blame it on the season. When I began writing this, October was just around the corner, so I thought what better way to celebrate that spooky month than to craft a Sigma story featuring a haunted hotel, hordes of bats, and rampaging zombies—then throw Kowalski into the mix with a new toy. Speaking of which . . .

  Piezer. Kowalski’s new toy is based on a true concept being explored by HSARPA—Homeland Security Advanced Research Project. It’s a double-barrel shotgun that can fire showers of shocking piezoelectric crystals, with a range of one hundred and fifty feet, all without those pesky Taser wires. So, of course, Sigma Force would be perfect to field test such a prototype, and who else but Kowalski is best suited for this gun? You’ll be seeing more of this innovative weapon as it’s put through its paces—in ways only Kowalski would think to employ—in the next big Sigma novel, The Seventh Plague.

  Colossus. The other weapon showcased in this story is based on a Boeing patent for a new HPM (high-powered microwave) deterrent. Like the device featured in the story, Boeing is exploring crossing two such beams and modulating the frequency and resonance to produce a unique and powerful effect. Has anyone thought of crossing an HPM with an EMP? So far only me—but I wouldn’t put it past someone to explore this possibility. Especially since researchers at the Natural Science Foundation of China have published a paper on how certain wavelengths of an electromagnetic pulse (an EMP) do have an effect on the brains of rats, causing an increase in cerebral vascular permeability. Could it create zombies? Am I wrong to hope it does?

  The Azores. I’ve never been to this Portuguese archipelago in the North Atlantic, but with their verdant grottos, steaming hot springs, crater lakes, and stunning beaches, I’m ready to go when you all are. Let’s just not visit a certain resort that’s about to have its grand opening.

  What’s Next?

  At this story’s conclusion, Seichan is headed on assignment to Marrakesh, and Kowalski is off to visit his girlfriend in Leipzig, Germany, but alas, neither of them will get to enjoy their time apart for very long. Soon the pair will be summoned to join forces yet again, to thwart an ancient peril ripped from the pages of the Bible in The Seventh Plague. I hope you enjoy the mayhem to come!

  An Excerpt from The Seventh Plague

  A British archaeologist—a member of an expedition gone missing for over two years—stumbles out of the Egyptian desert. Before he can explain what happened to his team, he dies. But his remains hold a terrifying discovery that only deepens the mystery: Something had begun mummifying his body while he was still alive. Summoned by a former ally at the British Museum, Commander Grayson Pierce of Sigma Force must uncover the truth behind the brutal murder and discover the fate of the missing team.

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next Sigma Force adventure . . .

  THE SEVENTH

  PLAGUE

  Coming in 2016 from William Morrow

  Click here to preorder!

  Prologue

  Spring, 1324 b.c.

  Nubian Desert, South of Egypt

  The high priestess knelt naked in the sand and knew it was time. The omens had been building, growing more dire, becoming certainty. To the west, a sandstorm climbed toward the sun, turning the day’s blue sky into a dusty darkness, crackling with lightning.

  The enemy was almost upon them.

  In preparation, Sabah had shaved all the hair from her body, even the brows above her painted eyes. She had bathed in the waters to either side, two tributaries that flowed north out of the deeper desert and joined at this sacred confluence to form the mighty river that the ancient kings of heqa khaseshet called the Nahal. She pictured its snaking course as it flowed past Luxor, Thebes, and Memphis on its way to the great blue sea that stretched past the river’s fertile delta.

  Though she had never set eyes upon that region, she had heard tales.

  Of our old home, a place of green fields, palms, and a life ruled by the rhythmic flooding of the Nahal . . .

  It was from those lands that Sabah’s people had fled over a century ago, escaping the time of plagues, starvation, and death, chased by a pharaoh now long dead. Most of the other tribes in the delta had sought refuge in the deserts to the east, conquering the lands out there and creating a kingdom of their own—but her tribe had lived in an area farther south along the river, near the village of Djeba, in the Upper Egyptian district of Wetjes-Hor, known as the Throne of Horus.

  During the time of darkness and death, her tribe had uprooted itself and fled up the river, beyond the reach of the Egyptian kingdom and into the Nubian Desert. Her tribe had been scholars and scribes, priests and priestesses, keepers of great knowledge. They had retreated into the empty ranges of Nubia to protect such knowledge during the turbulent times that followed the plagues, when Egypt was beset and overrun by foreigners from the east, a fierce people with faster chariots and stronger bronze weapons who conquered the weakened Egyptian towns with barely an arrow fired.

  But that dark time was coming to an end.

  Egypt was rising yet again, chasing out the invaders and building monuments to their many victories and spreading ever in this direction.

  “Hemet netjer . . .” her Nubian assistant—a young man named Tabor—whispered behind her, perhaps sensing her distress or merely trying to remind her of her role as hemet netjer . . . the maid of God. “We must go now.”

  She understood and rose to her feet.

  Tabor’s eyes were upon the storm to the west, clearly the source of his worry, but Sabah noted a wisp of smoke due north, marking the destruction of a town alongside the fifth cataract of the Nahal, the latest conquest by the Egyptian armies. It would not be long before those same forces reached this mighty confluence.

  Before that happened, Sabah and the others of her order must hide what they had protected for over a century, a wonder unlike any other: a blessing by God, a cure hidden at the heart of a curse.

  Watching the Egyptians creep and spread up along the river, consuming town after town, preparations had been under way for the past thousand days, mostly acts of purification, all to ready her and her order to become immortal vessels for God’s blessing.

  Sabah was the last to be allowed this transformation, having already overseen and guided many of her brothers and sisters on this path. Like the others, she had forsaken all millet and grain for the past year, subsisting on nuts, berries, tree bark, and a tea made from a resin carried here from foreign lands. Over the turning of seasons, her flesh had dried to her bones, her breasts and buttocks gone sallow and sunken. Though only into her third decade, she now needed Tabor’s strong back and arms to help her move, even to slip her linen robe back over her head.

  As they set off away from the confluence, Sabah watched the sandstorm roll inexorably toward them, laced with lightning born from the roiling clouds of dust. She could sense that energy flowing across the desert. She smelled it in the air, felt it stir the small hairs along her arms. With God’s will, thos
e same blowing sands should help cover their handiwork, to bury it under windswept dunes.

  But first they had to reach the distant hills.

  She concentrated on putting one foot before the other. Still, she feared she had waited too long at the river. By the time she and Tabor reached the deep cleft between two hills, the storm had caught them, howling overhead and scouring any exposed skin with burning sand.

  “Hurry, mistress,” Tabor urged, all but picking her up. Carried now, she felt her toes brushing the ground, scribing the sand underfoot with indecipherable glyphs of beseechment.

  I must not fail . . .

  Then they were through the dark doorway and hurrying down a long, steep passageway to the greater wonder sculpted out of the sandstone below. Torches lit the way, flickering shadows all around them, slowly revealing what was hidden, what had been created by artisans and scholars working in tandem for over seven decades.

  Tabor helped her over the arcade of large stone teeth and across the sprawl of a sculpted tongue, carved in exquisite detail. Ahead, the chamber bifurcated into two tunnels: one that dove through the rock toward the stone stomach below, the other ringed by small ridges and leading to the cavernous chest cavity.

  It was the latter route they took now in great haste.

  As Tabor helped her, she pictured the subterranean complex beneath these hills. It had been dug out and fashioned to model the interior workings of a featureless figure in repose, one whose body lay buried under these hills. While this sculpture had no exterior—for the world was its skin—all of the internal details of the human body had been meticulously carved out of the sandstone, from liver and kidney to bladder and brain.

  Beneath the hills, her order had created their own stone God, one large enough to make their home within, to use its body as a vessel to preserve what must be kept safe.

  Like I must do now . . . to make of my own body a temple for God’s great blessing.

  Tabor led her to where the ridge-lined passageway split yet again into two smaller tunnels, marking the same division of airways found in her own chest. He took her to the left, requiring that they duck slightly from the curved roof of the smaller passage. But they did not have far to go.

  Torchlight grew brighter ahead as the tunnel ended and opened into a massive cavernous space, seemingly supported by stone ribs that arched up to the carving of a mighty spine overhead. In the room’s center sat a stone heart, rising four times her height, again rendered in perfect symmetry, with great curving blood vessels that fanned outward.

  She glanced to the handful of other Nubian servants, all on their knees, who awaited her in the chamber.

  She stared over to the colonnades of curved stone ribs. Between those ribs, fresh bricks had been used to seal the many alcoves hidden there. They marked the tombs of her brothers and sisters of the order, those who had preceded her into the future. She pictured them seated or slumped on their chairs, their bodies slowly finishing their transformations, becoming vessels for the blessing.

  I am the last . . . the chosen maid of God.

  She turned from the walls to face the stone heart. A small doorway opened into one of the chambers, a place of great honor.

  She shook free of Tabor’s arm and took the last steps on her own. She crossed to the doorway, bowed her head low, and climbed inside. Her palm felt the cold stone as she straightened. A silver throne awaited her inside, equally cold as she sat upon it. To one side rested a bowl of carved lapis lazuli. Water filled it to just shy of its silver-embossed brim. She lifted the bowl and let it rest on her thin thighs.

  Tabor leaned toward the opening, too pained to speak, but his face was easy to read, full of grief, hope, and fear. Matching emotions swelled within her own breast—along with a fair amount of doubt. But she nodded to Tabor.

  “Let it be done.”

  Grief won the battle in his face, but he matched her nod and bowed out.

  The other servants came forward and began sealing the entrance with dry bricks of mud and straw. Darkness fell over her, but in the last flicker of torchlight from outside, she stared down at the bowl in her lap, recognizing the dark sheen to the water. It was colored a deep crimson. She knew what she held. It was water from the Nahal, from when the river had been cursed and turned to blood. The water had been collected ages ago and preserved by their order—along with the blessing held at its cursed heart.

  As the last brick was set, she swallowed hard, finding her throat suddenly dry. She listened as a fresh coat of mud was smeared over the bricks outside. She also heard the telltale scrape of wood being stacked under the base of the heart, encircling it completely.

  She closed her eyes, knowing what was to come.

  She pictured torches igniting that bonfire of wood.

  Slowly came confirmation as the stone grew warm underfoot. The air inside the heart—already stifling—did not take long to become heated. Any moisture dried away, escaping up the flue of the sculpted vessels. In moments, it felt as if she were breathing hot sand. She gasped as the bottoms of her feet began to burn. Even the silver throne became as hot as the scorched lip of a dune under a summer sun.

  Still, she kept quiet. By now, those outside should have exited this underworld, sealing the way behind them. They would leave these lands under the cover of the storm, vanishing away forever, letting the desert erase all evidence of this place.

  As she awaited her end, tears flowed from her eyes, only to be dried from her cheeks before they could roll away. Through cracked lips, she sobbed from the pain, from the certainty of what was to come. Then in the darkness came a soft glow. It rose from the basin on her lap, swirling the crimson water with the faintest of shimmers.

  She did not know if it was a mirage born of pain, but she found solace in that glow. It granted her the strength to complete her last act. She lifted the bowl to her lips and drank deeply and fully. The life-giving water flowed down her parched throat and filled her knotted stomach.

  By the time she lowered the empty bowl, the heat inside the stone heart had intensified to a blistering agony. Still, she smiled through the pain, knowing what she held within her.

  I am your vessel, my Lord . . . now and forever.

  9:34 p.m. EST

  March 2, 1895

  New York City

  Now this is more like it . . .

  With his goal in sight, Samuel Clemens—better known by his pen name Mark Twain—led his reluctant companion through Gramercy Park. Directly ahead, gaslights beckoned on the far side of the street, illuminating the columns, portico, and ironwork of the Players Club. Both men were members of this exclusive establishment.

  Drawn by the promise of laughter, spirits, and good company, Twain increased his pace, moving in great, purposeful strides, trailing a cloud of cigar smoke through the crisp night air. “What do you say, Nikola?” he called back to his chum. “According to my pocket watch and my stomach, Players must still be serving dinner. And barring that, I could use some brandy to go with this cigar.”

  Younger by almost two decades, Nikola Tesla was dressed in a stiff suit, worn at the elbows to a dull sheen. He kept swiping at his dark hair and darting glances around. When he was nervous, like now, the man’s Serbian accent grew as thick as his mustache.

  “Samuel, my friend, the night is late, and I still have work to finish at my lab. I appreciate the tickets to the theater, but I should be off.”

  “Nonsense. Too much work makes for a dull man.”

  “Then you must be exceptionally exciting . . . what with your life of such extreme leisure.”

  Twain glanced back with an exaggerated huff. “I’ll have you know I’m working on another book.”

  “Let me guess,” Nikola offered with a wry smile. “Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer get into more trouble.”

  “If only those two bastards would!” Twain chuckled, drawing the eye of a passerby. “Then I might be able to pay off my creditors.”

  Though Twain kept it quiet, he had declared bankrupt
cy last year, turning over all of his copyrights to his wife, Olivia. To help pay off his debts, he was due to head out on an around-the-world lecture tour over the next twelve months.

  Still, the mention of money had soured the moment. Twain kicked himself for mentioning it, knowing Nikola was struggling as much as he was with financial hardships, despite his friend being a veritable genius, a polymath who was equal parts inventor, electrical engineer, and physicist. Twain had spent many afternoons at the man’s South Fifth Avenue laboratory, the two becoming great friends.

  “Maybe one drink,” Nikola conceded with a sigh.

  They headed across the street toward the portico under the hissing gas lamps. But before they could reach the entrance, a figure stepped from the shadows to accost them both.

  “Thank God,” the man said as he ambushed them. “I heard from your doorman that you might end up here tonight.”

  Momentarily taken aback, Twain finally recognized the fellow. Surprised and delighted, he clapped his old friend on the shoulder. “Well met, Stanley! What are you doing here? I thought you were still in England.”

  “I only arrived back yesterday.”

  “Wonderful! Then let’s celebrate your return to our shores by raising a glass or two. Maybe even three.”

  Twain moved to draw the other two men inside with him, only to be stopped by Stanley at the threshold.

  “As I understand it,” Stanley said, “you have the ear of Thomas Edison.”

  “I . . . I suppose I do,” Twain answered hesitantly, knowing all too well of the deep-seated friction between Edison and his companion this night, Nikola Tesla.

  “I have a matter of urgency to discuss with the inventor, something to show him, a task given to me by the Crown.”

  “Truly? What a tantalizing bit of intrigue.”