Park Skarda-April Force: Emerald Part 17

"Or north?" Skarda asked.

"Maybe!" Excitement animated her voice. "So we have air on top, fire on the two points under it. And then here, the lower tip on the left is earth and the one on the right is water."

Skarda traced a finger over the pentagram shape on the Tablet. "What are these?" He was pointing at faint letters, smaller than the rest of the text, below the bottom arms of the pentagram.

She shook her head in frustration. "I don't know. They're not part of the main text. The words translate to 'marching soldiers'. Whatever that means."

His face changed with a new thought. Getting up, he crossed to the railing of the terrace and stared out over the city. The sky was gilded green and gold, the horizon littered with purple stratus clouds, their edges flushed rosy-pink by the dying sun. Golden light glinted off the broken dome of St. Peter's.

Suddenly he laughed out loud. He snapped his fingers and swung around. "We're looking for a map, right?"

For a brief moment Flinders frowned, staring at him, then realization hit her like a blow. She stared at him as if she were reading his mind. "Yeah...a map!"

Watching them, April suddenly grinned. "The symbols..." she said. "They're points on a map!"

"Right," he acknowledged. "But it still leaves us in the dark. The world's a big place. Where do we start?"

"Well, here's goes another long shot," Flinders said, her voice quickening. "We know that Alexander took the Tablet with him on his conquests. What if he himself figured out the pentagram symbols, just like we did-only he knew where to look on the map? And what if he used the information to find the source of the isomer ore? There's another story that a youth named Balinas found the Tablet hidden in a cave in Tyana, in Cappadocia-the same Balinas referred to in the Kitab Balaniyus al-Hakim fi'l-`Ilal translation. But what if it wasn't the actual Tablet that he found, which we now know Alexander carried with him until he died, but instead was the place where the Atlanteans mined the isomer?"

Skarda grinned, getting caught up in her enthusiasm. "Where is Cappadocia?"

"In modern-day Turkey."

"Which borders the Black Sea," April said.

"Curiouser and curiouser," he said. "We need a map."

___.

Ten minutes later Skarda spread out the map of Turkey he'd had brought up from a tourist shop in the hotel lobby. Beside him, Flinders studied the topography of the central Anatolian plateau.

"Okay..." she said. "Here's Nigde, and just to the south is Kemerhisar, where the ruins of Tyana are, about three miles south of town. The problem is, the entire area is riddled with caves and underground caverns. So how do we fit the pentagram to locate the right spot?"

He frowned in concentration. "And what's our scale? The size of the pentagram could be small or it could be huge."

April leaned forward, tapping a finger on two points on the map. "What are these?" She was looking at what were clearly mountains, at an equal distance east and west of an imaginary line running straight north of Tyana.

"That's Mt. Erciyes and Mt. Hasan. Mt. Erciyes is the highest mountain in central Anatolia. They're extinct volcanoes."

Skarda straightened, exchanging a glance with April.

Flinders looked up, catching their expressions. Then her jaw dropped. "Fire!"

Laying a square of acetate over the map, Skarda sketched in the symbols for fire over the two volcanoes. "Okay. Now we have the scale," he said. Quickly he sketched in the shape of a pentagram with thirty-six degree angles, then positioned the acetate again. "Okay...we have 'Air' at the top, meaning up or north. Then fire for the volcanoes. Then here at the bottom is 'Earth'. What can that be?"

"Maybe some kind of natural hill?" April suggested.

"Could be. A commonly-known landmark maybe. And the last symbol is 'water'. But there's no water there."

"Maybe a well?" Flinders said. "Or a dried-up river?"

Skarda nodded. "Okay...then where is the isomer?" He jabbed his finger at the map. "I'll bet it's right here. Right at the center of the pentagram."

Flinders peered. "It looks like it's straight north of the ruins of Tyana."

"What about the 'marching soldiers'?" April asked.

He turned to her and grinned. "Maybe we'll find out when we get there."

THIRTY-FOUR.

Cappadocia, Turkey IT was early in the morning when they took an Alitalia flight from Rome to Instanbul's Ataturk Airport where Skarda haggled with a dealer to buy a used Land Rover for cash with no paperwork. Through one of OSR's contacts, April tracked down an ex-pat Army sergeant in the city who was running a profitable business selling surplus weapons. She filled the trunk with a case containing a stripped-down Steyr AUG-CSL a.s.sault rifle, an RPG-76 Komar grenade launcher, a Glock 9mm pistol, and a dual-sheath chest rig for carrying twin Fusion Fulcrum throwing knives. Now, almost four hundred miles east of Istanbul and the dazzling blue waters of the Aegean they were driving through an ochre-colored, flat plateau of volcanic tufa scarred by the folds of deep valleys and vast ravines that from their far vantage point looked like waves frozen in time. In the distance, undulating folded mountains coruscated with the colors of amber, rose, and gold in the s.h.i.+fting light, backed by the serrated, snow-capped Ala Daglar range, its peaks muted blue and hazy by atmospheric perspective.

To Skarda, the landscape looked surreal, like driving across the surface of the moon. Millions of years of wind and rain had eroded the soft tufa into multi-colored, conelike shapes and phallic-looking obelisks capped with black basalt hoods. Some rose as high as one hundred feet above the plain.

"They're called peri bacalari," Flinders said, pointing at a cl.u.s.ter of rock formations that looked like a grove of giant mushrooms. "Fairy chimneys. People have actually hollowed them out and lived in them in the past. Whole cities, even. They still use them as storerooms for grapes, lemons, and potatoes."

They reached Nigde just before noon. After a quick lunch at the Grand Hotel, they climbed back into the Land Rover and in a few minutes were speeding over a road that angled southwest through the furrowed landscape to Bor. Three miles further south lay the small town of Kemerhisar.

Skarda consulted his map. "It looks like the ruins are on the north edge of town."

In the rear seat Flinders was browsing through pages on the laptop. "Wow," she said, "there's not much left. Maybe a pillar or two and a Roman aqueduct."

April glanced back at her. "At least it's a starting point. We've got to find those marching soldiers."

The ruins turned out to be an arched limestone aqueduct from the reign of Caracalla and a network of Roman baths scattered over the three hills between the towns of Baheli and Kemerhisar. April parked the Land Rover in a crushed-stone lot and they climbed out into the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne. The heat hit Skarda like a force field, causing p.r.i.c.kly sweat to instantly break out on his arms and between his shoulder blades. Taking a slug from his water bottle, he pulled their packs from the rear seat while April popped open the trunk to retrieve the weapons.

To mask their presence, they'd decided to leave the Land Rover and make the trek to the site on foot. But he was worried about Flinders. Even though the excitement of their quest was driving her, the stress was carving lines around her eyes.

He handed her her pack, but she was staring off into the distance, a look of wonderment on her face. "Earth!" she shouted, clapping her hands. He turned to look in the direction she was pointing, seeing a low, rounded hill topped with the remains of two marble pillars.

"It's the Hill of Semiramis," she explained. "She was an a.s.syrian queen, if she existed as an historical person at all. It's possible that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built for her. She may have founded Tyana, so certainly the hill named after her would have been regarded as a local landmark."

Skarda studied the map. "Okay, I'll buy that. It looks like there a valley a bit east of here called 'Emli'. A valley can mean a dried-up river."

"So we're on the right track!"

"Let's hope so."

April grunted her impatience. "All right, let's get going. Straight north."

Shrugging into the knife sheath, she rammed the Glock into the waistband of her jeans and slung the Komar over her shoulder. Then she picked up the steel case housing the Steyr AUG and strode forward, her boots crunching on loose stones.

Skarda grinned as they took off after her.

"Is she always like this?" Flinders asked.

"She's very task-oriented," he answered.

Twenty minutes later the ruins were lost behind them in the distance. Here the plain angled at a slight rise, broken by gullies and shallow ravines and huge boulders glaring in the sun, starkly outlined in the heat-glazed air.

"There's a canyon up here," April called back to them, coming to a halt. She had been outpacing them, scouting ahead for any sign of trouble.

As they walked closer to her position, Skarda could see the depression of the shallow canyon opening below him, shaped liked a gigantic U, as if some primordial G.o.d had taken a bite out of the landscape. Like the rest of the terrain, the canyon floor was made out of soft volcanic tufa, but in many places it had eroded away to expose a bedrock of basalt and limestone slabs, clenched by long fingers of solidified lava three stories high. Fifty miles to the northeast the snow-covered cone of Mt. Erciyes rose thirteen thousand feet into the dazzling blue sky. Staring down at the floor of the canyon, Flinders pointed, letting out a little yelp of delight.

Skarda stared in the direction of her outstretched finger. In the middle of the canyon, surrounded by outthrust fingers of lava, a series of huge fairy chimneys marched in a single row, their flaring conical bases looking like the kilts of Hitt.i.te soldiers and their dark basalt caps perched on the tapering apexes like battle helmets.

"Marching soldiers," April said quietly.

A narrow neck opened ahead of them, leading downward between two huge, tilted boulders to a steep, rock-strewn slope towards the bottom of the canyon. The sun beat down on their heads like a physical weight and with each step clouds of choking dust rose up, filling their throats and nostrils. The windless air smelled hot, like the exhaust from a blast furnace, laced with faint traces of fragrant cedar. By the time they reached the canyon floor, Skarda's cotton s.h.i.+rt was heavy with sweat, but on his bare arms and face the perspiration had evaporated almost instantly. April looked like she was out for a stroll on a balmy spring day, but when he glanced over at Flinders, he saw that her face was red with exertion.

"Give me your pack and have some water," he said, winking. "You're not as tough as we are."

She shot him a look. But then she acquiesced and shrugged off the backpack, pulling out a water bottle and taking a grateful swig. "This climate just sucks the juice out of you!"

Hefting up the pack, Skarda slung it over his shoulder and they moved forward.

At their highest point, the canyon walls towered about one hundred and fifty feet. Ash-and-dun-colored conical tufa formations rose up in serrated rows like fangs, interspersed with basalt and slabs of dried volcanic mud, hard as concrete. Scraggly cedar and spruce trees clung tenaciously to the naked rock, their roots inching into the dark fissures zigzagging over jagged blocks of limestone.

By the time they reached the line of the marching soldiers Flinders was exhausted. Dropping to a table-like boulder darkened by a pool of shadow, she pushed back her gla.s.ses, let out a long breath, and tilted her water bottle to her mouth.

Skarda and April moved into the coolness of the shadow, too. April's eyes roved over the tapering column of the stone soldier that was sheltering them. It stood at least fifty feet high, its dark basaltic head blocking out the sun.

She glanced at Skarda, not looking happy. "There's a lot of ground to cover here."

Taking a swig of water, he nodded, looking out over the vast expanse of rock where the air s.h.i.+mmered with suspended heat. Enemies could arrive at any moment and they were out in the open.

To Flinders he said, "Time to go."

She made a face, but took another gulp of water and got to her feet.

___.

It was only by chance that they discovered the cave opening. After two hours of searching in the hot, breezeless air they had still come up empty. Ma.s.sive clumps of dried lava, thrusting out from the sheer wall of the canyon, encircled the columns of soldiers on both sides like clasping hands as methodically they climbed over each wadi-like rise and depression while the sun blasted down its ferocious heat, blurring the big rocks with dancing heat-s.h.i.+mmers.

Then, scrambling up a valley littered with limestone scree, April noticed an abruptly-angled shadow from a fifteen-foot-tall slab of basalt that resembled a doorway. She climbed toward it, pus.h.i.+ng herself into the black cleft. In the deep darkness she found a vertical crack in the rock wall, large enough for a big man to squeeze through.

When she came out again, she said, "There's a body in here." She disappeared back into the shadow.

Turning sideways to force his tall frame through the opening, Skarda stepped inside the cave behind Flinders, feeling relief at the sudden drop in temperature. April was on her haunches, playing her LED over the shriveled corpse of a small man lying face-down on the stone. Flinders dropped to her knees next to her. Moving closer, Skarda could see that the man's skin had shrunk on his skeleton, like mahogany-colored crepe paper pasted on sticks of bone, held together by dried strings of tendon. Also plastered against his skin were a pair of baggy, pajama-like pants and a pale-colored chemise torn by two ragged holes ringed by brownish-black stains.

April looked up. "Shot," she said. "9mm slugs."

"How long's he been there?" Skarda asked.

She shook her head. "Hard to say. 9mm spans a lot of territory."

He flashed his lamp around the chamber. The s.p.a.ce was V-shaped, with the base end opening to the outside, tapering back to another larger fissure leading back into the interior of the cave.

"Let's see what's back there."

Stooping through the pa.s.sageway, they followed a twisting, downward-angled path until it opened onto a ma.s.sive natural gallery that expanded out into darkness. With cautious steps, they moved into the ma.s.sive cavern, panning their LED's in front of them. Finally April's lamp raked over an outcrop of rock where the rear wall of the gallery rose up in sheer vertical slabs. Swinging his flash to the right, Skarda's beam caught glints of light that shone like amber. More corpses, their shrunken limbs frozen in contorted positions, their eye sockets empty black holes, lying on top of each other like a pile of discarded dolls.

He sucked in a sharp breath, feeling Flinders' nails digging into his arm.

Striding forward, April swept her light across the bodies. All were dressed in similar style to the man at the entrance.

"All shot," she announced. "Looks like a machine gun. Probably the one at the entrance got away and they chased him down."

"Who?" Flinders asked, tearing her gaze away from the grisly mound of mummies.

Skarda swung his light. The beam bounced off the dull sheen of a man-sized stainless steel tub, rounded and closed at both ends.

Their edges limned by the light, straight lines etched in the metal formed the image of a swastika.

"n.a.z.is!" Flinders exclaimed.

April had moved closer to the cavern wall. "These walls have been dynamited and mined," she said. A cavity had been excavated from the wall about twenty feet long and six feet high. It was gouged and fractured by pickaxes, and several small holes had been drilled where the miners would have inserted sticks of dynamite. Her flash picked up a pile of pickaxes, shovels, and an ore cart tipped over on its side. "Those bodies were probably locals the n.a.z.is forced to do their labor for them, then they were shot when the job was finished."

"The n.a.z.is were looking for Vril," Flinders said. "So this must have been where the meteorite crashed, the source of the Atlantean orichalc.u.m."

April ran her lamp along the interior of the cavity. "Nothing but bedrock here now," she announced. "If they found the orichalc.u.m, they cleaned it out."

Skarda moved down the length of the cavern. Next to the stainless steel tub more equipment lay abandoned: electrical consoles, steel tubes and wiring, and a large black rectangular apparatus that looked like a scaled-down industrial furnace.

"s.h.i.+ne your lights on this stuff," he said. "I want to send a picture of it to Candy Man." Taking out his Stealth, he snapped off a series of images and e-mailed them.

They explored the rest of the long cavern but found nothing but more abandoned mining equipment.

Skarda's smartphone chimed. The answering message from Candy Man. He scanned it, then read it out loud: "'looks like equipment for kroll process, refinement of van arkelde boer crystal bar process of 1925 for making t.i.tanium bars. raw ore put in fluidized bed reactor, heated to a liquid, then moved to a stainless steel reactor vessel where treated with water and hydrochloric acid to a porous solid, then melted in an electrode arc furnace and turned into ingots.'"

Closing out the screen, he met the eyes of the women. "So that's it. The n.a.z.is mined the orichalc.u.m, melted it into ingots, and moved it out of here."

Flinders' shoulders slumped, her face slack with disappointment.

"All right," April said. "Not much we can do here."

Picking up the steel gun case, she headed for the way out.

___.

They had just climbed out into the open air when they heard the staccato clatter of a helicopter rotor tearing apart the parched silence of the canyon.