Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(92)
Thirty-four Potential Sites
“You must watch for scorpions, my friend.” Nouri had a long stick and was happily flipping over stones with it, inspecting the dimpled bits of earth they left. “Also snakes. There are snakes to be very afraid of: the saw-scale viper, the horned viper” (he pronounced it “hornèd” like some old English poem), “also the cobra. And the giant centipede. And . . . ah.” He gazed around. “Wolves. Hyenas. In rare cases, lions, tigers. We have both, you see. Then too there are bears, which must be very much avoided . . .”
“Are you winding me up?”
“Not at all, my friend. These are great dangers. You must be aware.”
“And isn’t it better not to stir them up, if they’re there?”
He flicked the stick, raising a plume of dirt. “Let us know our enemies, know their positions. A snake bite or a scorpion sting—”
“You’re wearing tennis shoes.”
“Ah yes. I will admit. Not the best choice.” He leaned upon his stick. “The city of Assur is more than four thousand years old, a great historic monument. It has outlasted the Sumerians, the Assyrians, and the Persians. With luck it will outlast us, as well. The Americans placed troops here to defend it from destruction in the war. It would be a bad place to die, I think . . .”
“No doubt.” Dust blew, scouring my face in a hot blast. The low, eroded mounds seemed not so much ruinous as still under construction, as if the builders had just gone for a siesta. I didn’t blame them, either. My back was soaked in sweat; the heat and dust brought tears to my eyes, and I could hardly see.
I took a handkerchief and mopped my face. I pulled the reader from my pocket, switched it on, set the levels. Almost immediately the lights began to dance.
“So, my friend. Where to?”
“Away from the scorpions.”
I left Carl at the truck with the bulk of the gear. Nouri followed me, but after a short time, sat down on a block of masonry and watched as I roamed about the site. It must have all looked pretty aimless, I suppose, and yet it wasn’t. I had the site map in my hand. Each time I took a reading, I’d jot it down, near as I could place to the location. But that seemed to be throwing up more questions than solutions. A census in the seventh century bc had listed three palaces and no less than thirty-four temples in Assur, not all of which have been uncovered yet. Thirty-four potential sites of worship. Thirty-four charged spots. But it had been a thousand years or so since anybody’d actually bothered with them, and things had grown a little sloppy in the meantime. There was power here for sure, but I couldn’t get a clear location. It just seemed to have leeched away into the rocks, diffused across the site and probably beyond. I didn’t have the cable length to stretch that far. Assur might be a small city by modern standards, but it’s still a good couple of miles across. And that was more than I could handle.
I watched a heron strutting through the shallows of the river, the curve of its neck as graceful as the Arabic calligraphy I’d seen since my arrival, its movements delicate, almost hesitant. Then suddenly its head shot forward. It scrabbled in the water, shaking like a dog. The neck swung up, its beak raised to the sky, and it gulped, greedily, too fast for me to catch a glimpse of what it had.
I checked the reader once again.
Flick, flick, flick.
Stood. Took a few steps, one mound to the next.
Flick, flick.
I raised the water bottle to my lips. Perhaps the god was everywhere, melted down into the Earth. Or maybe there was more than one—two, three—thirty-four? Gods in swarms, like birds, like fish . . . ?
I looked back. “Nouri!” I called. I saw his head come up; he’d been playing on his phone. Now he jumped to his feet, gave me a mock salute. “Let’s get the gear,” I said, “and get started!”
I don’t know how many jobs I’ve done. I daresay there’s a record somewhere. Some were easy: in and out, more time setting up than actually doing them. Still, there are always dangers. “Your biggest threat,” I’d tell trainees, “is you, thinking you know it all.” But sometimes it’s not that. Sometimes it’s just dangerous, and no amount of care and forethought is ever going to make it safe. As a trade, Field Ops has its share of casualties, and everybody thinks, “It won’t be me.” Until the day it is.
I’d had my own slice of the damage, sure enough. Esztergom, in Hungary. I could pretend it hadn’t been my fault, except it had: I should have done the final check myself, and not left it to my trainee partner. A good op checks once, and then again. Another message for trainees. And I bore my share of guilt for what had happened since, and what might still be happening, somewhere in the world. Hopefully a long, long way from here.
I scanned the ground for scorpions and other nasties, then sat down on a rock. Carl and Nouri brought the truck as close as possible and started unloading equipment. A bunch of kids had gathered. Nouri bribed the bigger ones to keep the rest away. I hoped that they were good at it. I didn’t want kids within a mile of the place, especially with the strategy I’d got in mind. That’s if I went with it. Right now, I couldn’t quite make up my mind.
What I wasn’t happy with, though— and less and less so, as the day wore on—was Dayling’s “stealth” plan. It wasn’t terrorists that worried me. There were just too many people round about. Carl felt the same, I knew, but he was careful not to say too much. He came towards me now, a canvas carrier of cables loaded on each shoulder.