Cross ignored Rosemont’s angry shouts as he jogged back towards the ruins. The wind had shifted, wafting the yellow mass off the shore and out over the lake. The fires from the crashed helicopter and the burning reed beds cast a hellish glow across the landscape.
Appropriate, he thought. From the moment he first saw the angel inside the temple, he was absolutely sure, more than he had ever been about anything, that he knew what he had found – and what it meant.
But there had been only one angel. According to the Book of Revelation, there were three more. So where were they?
He approached the spot where the broken pillar had stood. The only thing there now was a rubble-strewn crater.
From which the gas was still rising.
He reached the edge of the gouge in the earth. A shallow pool of dark water was at the bottom. Amongst the debris around it, his light picked out a shape that was clearly not natural. Part of the statue. One of its wings was still attached, but the embossed metal that had been wrapped around the angel’s body was now twisted and torn where the figure had been smashed by the explosion, exposing a darker core hidden inside.
The strange gas was belching from this black stone. The wind was enough to blow it clear, though he resisted the temptation to remove his mask for a better look. The sight put him in mind of a smoke grenade, but …
‘Where’s it all coming from?’ he whispered. Smoke grenades contained enough chemicals to produce a screen for ninety seconds at most, but this was pumping out a colossal volume, and showed no signs of stopping.
He stepped down cautiously into the pit. A sound became audible even through his hood’s charcoal-impregnated lining, a sizzling like fatty bacon on a grill. The dark material at the statue’s heart almost appeared to be boiling, blistering with countless tiny bubbles, each releasing more gas as it burst.
Another wisp of the gas to one side caught his eye. A chunk of the broken statue, smaller than his little finger, had landed at the very edge of the pool. He crouched to examine it. There was a sliver of the dark material embedded in the cracked ceramic shell, partially beneath the water’s surface. The exposed section was burning away just like its larger counterpart, consuming itself in some reaction with the air. As he watched, the top of the splinter spat and bubbled to nothingness … and the thin line of yellow smoke died away.
Intrigued, Cross gently lifted the fragment from the water. It was warm, even through his glove. After a moment, the strange substance fizzed and puffed a new strand of yellow fumes into the wind. He dipped it back into the puddle. The reaction stopped.
A light swept over him. ‘Cross!’ called Rosemont from the crater’s lip. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘I found the angel,’ Cross replied, climbing out to meet him and indicating the larger hunk of the statue. ‘That’s where the smoke’s coming from. It wasn’t a chemical weapon; it was here all along, hidden in the temple. Waiting for us to find it. Waiting for me to find it.’
Rosemont shone his flashlight over the broken figure. It was still belching out its seemingly endless plume of oily yellow gas. ‘Damn. What the hell is that?’
‘It’s a messenger from God. Look.’ Cross illuminated the little pool. The dark water was revealed as a bloody red, the discoloration spreading outwards from the fragment like ink across damp paper. ‘“And the third part of the sea became blood …”’
The lead agent snapped his light at Cross’s face. ‘I don’t want to hear one more goddamn Bible quote out of you, okay? This whole situation has gotten way out of control.’
‘I know what we have to do. We have to take the angel out of here.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Rosemont protested. ‘It killed Gabe, it killed Kerim and all his men! We’re not taking it anywhere.’
‘Putting it in water stops the smoke. If we find a container, we can transport it—’
‘Water, huh?’ Rosemont jumped into the crater. Before Cross could intervene, he had hauled the remains of the angel from the ground. The toxic gas swirled around him as he stomped back out of the pit, heading to the lake’s edge.
‘What are you doing?’ Cross demanded as he followed.
‘Making this safe.’ He drew back his arm – and hurled the statue out into the water.
‘No!’ yelled Cross, but it was too late. The broken figure spun through the air, a poisonous vortex spiralling in its wake, before it splashed down some sixty feet from the shoreline. Both men stared at the water until the ripples subsided.
Rosemont turned back to Cross. ‘Right. Now we radio in and—’
He froze. Cross had raised his gun and was pointing it at his chest. ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said the Virginian in a voice that, while level, was straining with anger. ‘You’ve just interfered with God’s plan.’
‘God’s plan?’ said Rosemont, trying to control his fear. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘The Day of Judgement. It’s coming. The first angel bound at the Euphrates has been released. The seals will be broken, the seven trumpets will sound, and …’ He paused, new realisation filling him with greedy wonder. ‘And the mystery of God should be finished …’
Rosemont shook his head. ‘You’re crazy. Lower your weapon, right now, or—’
Cross pulled the trigger.
A single bullet ripped through Rosemont’s heart and exploded out from his back. Eyes wide in shock behind his mask, he crumpled to the ground.
Cross stared at the dead man, then bent to take his radio. He set it to an emergency frequency. ‘Wintergreen, Wintergreen, this is Maven,’ he said, using the operation’s code names. ‘Wintergreen, this is Maven. Come in.’
A female voice responded. ‘This is Wintergreen. We read you, Maven. Sitrep.’
‘Mission failure, I repeat, mission failure. We were ambushed – the Iraqis had a gunship on patrol. Rosemont and Arnold are dead. So are our contacts.’
A pause. When the woman replied, it was with clear concern even through the fuzz of the scrambled transmission. ‘Everyone’s dead?’
‘Yes, everyone but me. Our transport was destroyed. I need immediate evac.’
‘We can’t give you evac with a gunship in the air.’
‘It’s been shot down. I need to get out of here before they come to see what happened to it.’
A long silence as the controller conferred with a superior. Finally, she responded: ‘Okay, Maven, can you reach Point Charlie?’ A backup rendezvous point some miles to the south. ‘If you hole up there, we’ll get an extraction team to you asap.’
‘I’ll make it,’ Cross answered. ‘I’ll contact you when I arrive.’
‘Roger that, Maven. Good luck.’ She paused again, then added in a softer voice: ‘I’m sorry about Mike and Gabe.’
‘So am I,’ said Cross, giving Rosemont’s corpse an emotionless glance. ‘Maven out.’
He switched off the radio, then surveyed the area. The cloud had now mostly dispersed, but he didn’t risk removing his MOPP gear; there were still drifting patches of haze in the air. Instead he returned to where he had donned the suit to retrieve his equipment webbing. There was a water flask attached; he took it, then went back to the crater.
The small sliver of the angel was still submerged in the blood-red water. He removed the flask’s cap, then carefully picked up the shard and dropped it inside before it started to smoke again. The thought occurred that he should find one of the dead agents’ canteens, as there was no way of knowing how long it would be before he was rescued, but he dismissed it. He knew he would find what he needed to survive. ‘“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them unto living fountains of waters …”’ he said quietly as he firmly secured the cap.
His cargo secured, he set out into the wilderness.
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