The Voynich Project by James K Rollins

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Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from The Voynich Project:Nephilim Rising
copyright©by JKROLLINS 2008 All Rights Reserved WGAW # 1296973

CHAPTER 1

Present Day:

Tell Brak Nagar, Syria

The Syrian Desert is a volcanic wasteland so hellish that it seems like the hungry burial ground of an ancient enemy, waiting to be fed.
Dawn crept in over the jagged horizon. Yousef stood alone, quaking with fear, sick with fright. Terror ripped through him like a big, shiny crosscut saw.
Shaitan himself, al-Dajjal, had come to this place. Soon he and his soldiers would soak the sand with blood. Innocent blood.
Soft as the tread of the desert wolf, the night wind that raced before the dawn was still. The roar of an approaching truck startled him. In the distance, pinpoints of light bobbed as the truck jostled across the rough terrain. Suddenly, its headlights loomed large and speared through the darkness-reaching for him.
Yousef wanted to warn them to turn back. He wanted to wave his arms frantically, to jump up and down and scream at the top of his lungs. But instead, with the muzzle of an AK-47 pressed against his spine, he waved the flashlight, signaling the coast was clear, luring them into a deathtrap.
The truck's passenger door, displaying the dust-caked logo of the British Archaeological Society, swung open. The passenger's face was hidden behind a kafeeyeh, a scarf that offered protection from the howling winds. The tall figure jumped to the ground and marched to the rear of the truck.
"As salaam aleeikom, Doktari," Yousef shouted shakily to the figure's back. The doctor didn't reply.
The morning's light was beginning to paint thenight-clad desert and surrounding rock in an eerie radiance.
When Yousef reached the back of the truck, a rough voice rang out, demanding and cursing in vulgar Arabic that the workers be careful. "No, no, no. Stop it, right now. Put that down. That one first. Allez, that's right."
One of the workmen grunted and stood glaring.
"Sonofabitch, don't you dare give me attitude, Rafiq," Doctor Kelly said. "That's it . . . lift together. Allah be with you."
The doctor stood with one foot propped on the bumper, haranguing the men unloading the trucks like some crazed camel driver.
Although covered in sand from her dust-filmed riding boots, to her khaki slacks and matching bush jacket, Dr. Kelley's outfit couldn't disguise the sensual physicality of her, her aggressive beauty.
The majority of the cargo now unloaded, Dr. Blair Morgan Kelly removed her scarf and shook out her hair.
The AK-47 wielding soldier sucked in a sharp breath when Dr. Kelly bent at the waist to toss her mane of long, fulsome hair. She had hair like a wild horse's mane, deeply red-toned and nearly as tousled. She righted herself and tied the scarf around her neck.
She shrugged, nodding at the awestruck guard. "What's with the mon General here?" she asked Yousef. For a woman, her voice had a low, husky timbre that was as seductive as it was alluring, as if filtered through amber-colored whiskey and wisps of smoke. Her lips were full, her mouth sulky and demanding.
The man mumbled to himself in Arabic, stumbled backward, and made wide, frantic hand gestures at her.
Yousef smiled weakly. "He says you're the Harlot of Babylon. He's warding off the evil-eye."
Rolling her simmering sea-green eyes, she said, "Oh, puh-leez."
Yousef's smile faded quickly. He broke out in a cold sweat, swallowed hard. Furtively, he looked around the site. He was trying to hide his fear but imagined that Dr. Kelly could hear his knees knocking loudly, hear his heartbeat thundering like hooves against his rib cage.
Puzzled, she asked, "What's wrong, Yousef? You look like you're about to jump out of your skin."
The sharp crack of automatic weapons fire answered her.

* * *

Iraq-Syria Border

At 0400, twin Chinook helicopters lifted off from the classified desert ops base located west of Mosul, Iraq and headed for the border. In theory, the mission was similar to one launched by Special Forces at the beginning of Desert Storm.
Saddam Hussein was targeting Saudi Arabia and Israel with long range scud missiles. While the scuds were relatively ineffective, they were creating a terror-driven panic and intelligence reports believed they could be equipped with nerve gas such as sarin or a biological warfare agent like anthrax. Despite multiple bombing sorties, the mobile missile launchers were not being taken out. The Iraqis hid the launchers under bridges and in barns or substituted dummy mockups as open targets.
The decision was made to take out the Iraqi Command and Control Center just forty miles south of Baghdad.
Just like before, the Chinooks were filled with two ops teams. The first team would take out the target; the second would set up a protective perimeter.
But Major Brody Devlin knew this mission was entirely different. They were attempting a snatch and grab, an extraordinary rendition.
In plain terms this meant they were making an unauthorized apprehension/kidnapping of a citizen from a foreign country on foreign soil. The country was Syria, and the man was known as al-Dajjal, a ruthless ex-KGB agent who had become muscle for the Syrian regime. The joint private finding between POTUS, the President of the United States, and the UK's Prime Minister had labeled al-Dajjal as a bloodthirsty war criminal.
Rumors of genocide within Syria had been confirmed by local assets, including photos of bodies stacked in mass graves like cordwood, arms lashed together, and for the women and children, a much more humane end-a bullet to the back of the skull.
Major Devlin rode in the lead helo with the squad code-named Task Force Black. Since the findings were joint, so were the squads. The Brits supplied seasoned veterans, who were not currently on active duty, from the SAS-the Special Air Service-and the RAF's counter-terrorism ground troops, and a team from SBS, the Special Boat Service, the equivalent of Navy SEALS. Devlin, known as Brody by friends and fellow officers, commanded a team of operatives from a new branch of the DOD.
In the past, DELTA forces had supplied the much-needed manpower for both overt and covert paramilitary operations. But with too much publicity, combined with having had their role with the State Department usurped by the private firm BLACKWATER, the need arose for a new special response group: the OMEGA FORCE. OMEGA was the perfect designation for the unit. Since it was the last letter of the Greek alphabet, it symbolized the last resort.
The group was composed of ex-Special Forces personnel and a few brainiacs, as the regular grunts called them. Young academics from various sciences who worked under the cover of the Army's Future Combat Systems Division, or for that matter, any federal agency required for the mission.
"ETA to border, one minute, Major." Devlin heard the pilot's words through his headset.
Like before, the helicopters were flying in at low level beneath radar. Even though Devlin knew that Syrian airspace was as easy to penetrate as a horsefly winging through a tattered window screen since the Israelis and the Soviets had all but decimated the Syrian air-defense system, his gut lurched as they churned across the border.
Devlin decided that if he was nervous, so was his crew. "Alpha and Beta squads, systems and weapons checks," he barked into his mic. As both acknowledged, he wormed his way through the helo, making small talk with the troops and surveying the equipment.
Lieutenant Braxton, his second in command, scooted up beside him. "Just like old times, hey, Brody?"
Devlin smiled and nodded. "Whata we got from intel?"
Braxton nodded toward their communication specialist/geekizoid, Scout Thompson, whose fingers were flying over the keyboard of a field laptop.
Scout looked up. "We've got our eye in the sky, a Global Hawk, doing the recon, courtesy of Langley, and they report that the target is on the move again but heading into the northeastern sector as planned." Scout slid his wireframe glasses back to their proper resting place at the bridge of his nose.
Scout was the unit's resident techno wizard, late twenties, sandy mop of hair, with boyish good looks, some peach fuzz on his upper lip. "Satellite imagery shows our target's a sitting duck. Seems the asshole likes to parade around in a vintage black Mercedes convertible decked out with bumper flags like some freakin'-"
"Nazi?" Devlin broke in. "Hear he has a riding crop and sports a white silk scarf. He fancies himself as being Rommel, the Desert Fox."
Sgt. Conners, the Unit's ruddy-faced Scotsman, jumped in. "Well then . . . we'll kick his bloody arse back to Berlin, just like old General Monty did to Rommel."
Devlin cracked a smile and then shot the sergeant a stern look.
"Yes, sir. Minding me own business I am, sir," Conners replied, burying his head in field-stripping his weapon. Conners had come from the Royal Air Force's special unit called "the Rock Apes." And that was exactly what Conners looked like to Major Brody Devlin. With the abundance of coarse, black body hair covering his forearms and chest and his simian stance, he resembled a gorilla.
Devlin knew from his briefing that al-Dajjal's fascination with the Third Reich had a historical basis. His real name was thought to be Eric von Raeder. His father was Doctor Gregor von Raeder, a German zoologist and anthropologist who served as head of Heinrich Himmler's infamous Deutsches Ahnenerbe, (Ahan-ner-ba) or German Ancestral Heritage Society. It was a clever euphemism. Its true agenda included everything from barbaric human medical experimentation, to the investigation of the occult, and expeditions to remote corners of the world in search of archaeological evidence to support Himmler's theories of the origins of the Aryan master race.
His mother, Samira, was Iranian and a respected archaeologist in her own right. After the war, Gregor and Samira fled to Russia where he had been promised less interference with his research. Eric von Raeder had a keen mind and was educated in the finest universities Russia and the UK had to offer, which was sponsored by the KGB.
He traveled the world extensively with his mother, visiting many archaeological digs on her expedition. On one of these digs his mother was killed during an Israeli retaliation raid in Palestine. Since then, Eric had a deep hatred for Jews and of course their staunchest ally, the United States. After his mother's death, he converted to Islam and adopted the name Azrael al-Dajjal. He was initially a KGB operative specializing in the Middle East, due to his fluent command of Farsi and Arabic. But the lure of money made him a freelance consultant. Consultant my ass, Devlin thought. Stone cold executioner was more like it.
Devlin had a bad feeling about this mission and especially about their target. The man was intelligent and a brutal calculating butcher. Even his choice of a Muslim name made Devlin's blood run cold. Al-Dajjal was the Islamic name for the Devil, more specifically-the Anti-Christ-his spawn.
The pilot's voice squawked in Devlin's headset. "Major, I need you up front, ASAP!"
In the chopper's cockpit, Devlin studied the radar screen as the pilot pointed. "See that system moving right at us?
Devlin nodded. "Storm front?"
The pilot shook his head. "Dust storm, big-time. Came up outta nowhere. Really strange but this shit happens out here."
Devlin winced. "Damn it! Shouldn't Sat Recon have picked this up?"
The pilot shrugged. He was a displaced cowboy named Tex. "Shoulda, woulda, coulda, Major. All I know is she's one big mother and doing about . . . a hundred and twenty knots."
"We can't outrun it then?"
"Y'all think y' sittin' in a Raptor Jetfighter or somethin'? Well we ain't . . . this here Baby-Huey-sized whirlybird couldn't outrun my granny with a case uh the trots. I'm fixin' ta put-"
The chopper began to pitch and yaw violently, buffeted by gale-force winds. Tex shouted to the co-pilot, "Find a place to put 'er down and I mean . . . NOW!"
"Where are we?" Devlin managed.
"Smack dab in the middle uh bum fuckin' nowhere . . . or the seventh circle uh Hell for all I know. Better tell the boys ta strap in, we're goin' down steep and fast."
A blinding burst of light blasted the cockpit.
Devlin's hand flew to his eyes.
When his snow-blinded pupils finally managed to dilate enough to see again, he stared in awe.
Tentacles of blue-white lightning formed a tree of fire that snaked down the night and to the ground. The sky exploded again, spitting arcs of electrical discharge to the exact same target below.
A shaft of pale blue light suddenly pulsed from the ground where the lightning bolts appeared to have struck. Then the shaft shot skyward, growing in diameter and intensity.
"Whoa, Nelly," Tex stammered, his eyes seeming to glaze over the longer he stared. "Never seen nothin' like this. Just look at that sucker."
"Let's get a closer look," the co-pilot said, his voice wooden.
A frightening, almost seductive feeling swelled in Devlin's chest. Glancing at the pilots, he could see that they were being affected, too. The pulsing rays throbbed like a beating heart. They were mesmerizing, pulling at your mind like some ghostly tractor beam.