Free Veil of the Goddess by Rob Preece

you looking at the explosion?"
    "Maybe you should leave me.” she ignored is question. “Continue on to Istanbul and Venice and see what you can learn."
    "What for?” He gestured to the burning Jeep, forgetting she couldn't see. “They destroyed the Cross."
    Ivy shook her head. “Do you think it would have survived the millennia if it was that easy to destroy? Why would the Moslems have hidden it rather than destroying it? It was the ultimate sign of their enemy."
    He could think of plenty of reasons. After all, Islam teaches that Jesus was a great Prophet, even that he was born of a Virgin. Ivy seemed more and more to be living in wishful thinking, just as she'd believed they could escape the CIA's hunters thanks to a drugged dream.
    "I'll get it,” she told him. “I can see well enough for that."
    She was out of the stream and walking toward the burning Jeep before he could react.
    "Get down, Ivy. The Predator is still up there."
    "A Predator is the least of our problems. We need to keep moving. The militia will be here soon."
    She walked into the fire.
    His muscles clenched as he listened for her scream. Of all of the ways to be injured, burning is the most painful. And the Predator's missile was ignited with phosphorous, burning even hotter than the gasoline from the Jeep.
    Her pants brushed against a chunk of burning steel and smoldered, but Ivy kept walking, knelt by two lumps that, impossibly, glowed black into the white inferno of fire, and carried them out.
    Gasoline burned on the surface of the ancient timbers, but the wood itself seemed unaffected. From the depths of the flames, Ivy looked straight at him—and smiled. She could see again.
    He caught his jaw before it hit the ground. She'd walked through flamed unharmed, and her eyesight had been restored.
    He hugged her quickly, using the occasion to check her out, make sure she was all right.
    Other than some damage to her uniform pants, she seemed fine. Which was more than he could say for himself. Zack was a mess.
    He had to accept that the artifact was powerful, capable of protecting itself and healing those who possessed it. No wonder the U.S. military and the mysterious Foundation wanted it.
    Ivy's delusional belief that she'd been contacted by an ancient priestess still bothered him, but he could no longer doubt that they had found the one True Cross. Ivy had been blind, but now she saw. She'd walked, like Shadrach and his friends, into an inferno yet not been burned. Only the True Cross could work the kind of miracles he was seeing. Only the True Cross was likely to generate the kind of interest, to the extent of redirecting the war in Iraq, that the CIA and the Foundation was showing.
    Zack wasn't prepared to believe that anyone in league with the Devil would be able to carry the Cross, or that the power of the Cross would heal anyone evil. Which meant that Ivy was special. But special or not, he hadn't a clue what to do about it. It was his job as an officer to an enlisted soldier to keep her alive. It was his obligation as a man of faith to help her in her quest.
    "I guess we should keep heading for the border,” he said. “Maybe we'll be safer there."
    "Maybe.” Ivy handed over the heavier main section of the Cross, then headed north, toward the border. “I'm afraid the papers from Smith's briefcase didn't survive the fire. They flared up."
    "Probably flash paper."
    She nodded. “Anyway, I did read some before we got hit, but not enough."
    Speaking of getting hit, the CIA had strayed very close to the border in their attack. This part of Kurdistan had far more Turkish presence than it did Kurdish pesh merga. Zack wondered if that meant the CIA or its clients would follow them into Turkey. Would the U.S. risk an international incident with one of their few allies in the area just to stop himself and Ivy? Based on what he'd seen so far, Zack decided they probably would.
    He should have been depressed. He'd lost his job, his future, and his