Free The Babel Codex by Alex Archer Page B

destroyed. Since the prince was so devout and beloved of God, God placed the power of tongues into a device belonging to the prince, and He commanded that the device be forever hidden from the eyes of men.”
    Annja felt as if she was back in the orphanage, listening to the nun during storytelling hour. But she didn’t want to interrupt Bhalla, and took the opportunity as she listened to assess his men’s numbers and how well armed they were. And what options she had.
    “God scattered all the men of the Earth at that time, but he did not want to lose the First Language, the language that he had given Adam and Eve to speak in the Garden of Eden.” Bhalla glanced over at her. “In all your travails, you have not come across this story?”
    “No,” she said, envisioning her sword in the otherwhere, ready to call it up at a moment’s notice.
    “I thought it might be on my brick.”
    “It’s not your brick,” Burris interrupted heatedly. “I bought that brick and I’m sharing it with—”
    One of the guards rammed the butt of his weapon into Burris’s stomach, dropping him to the stone floor in a gasping heap. Burris cursed and tried to get to his feet only to be knocked down again.
    “Stay down, you idiot,” Annja said.
    Burris held up a hand in surrender. “Okay. I’m good. I’m just gonna sit here.”
    “The brick is mine,” Bhalla said. “The man I purchased it from was betrayed. Therefore, I was also betrayed.” His dark eyes reflected the blue light of the flares as he gazed at Annja. His voice was harder and colder when he said, “Now, Ms. Creed, I want my brick.”
    * * *
    Wearing night-vision goggles, Garin moved quickly down the tunnel. He carried a Heckler & Koch MP3-SD5 in his hands and wore pistols in shoulder leather and at his hip. His security troops ran after him.
    His security network had locked onto Bhalla and followed him to Damascus. Getting into Syria had been a little difficult, but Garin was selling weapons to the Syrian military as well as the Arab Spring rebels. Tape had been cut, palms had been greased and Garin had landed in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains by helicopter only minutes after Bhalla and his people had arrived at the hidden cave.
    Spotting the flashlight glare ahead and around a corner, Garin held up and signaled his team to fall into place behind him. He peered around the corner.
    Sixty feet away, four men stood in front of a hole in the wall that looked too uniform to be a tunnel mouth. Flickering blue-tinted light gleamed from inside the doorway.
    Spinning around the corner, Garin opened fire on full-auto. The silenced 9 mm rounds chopped into the four men and took them down, killing them before they had time to cry out in warning.
    Garin swapped out magazines and charged down the tunnel. He hadn’t heard any gunfire from the other end of this tunnel, so he felt certain Annja would still be alive. Although, as Garin knew, life could be taken just as quickly with a blade. Annja, like Roux, could be a thorn in his side and a definite roadblock to certain plans he had, but he didn’t want anything to happen to her.
    Bhalla on the other hand...
    Stepping through the blood of the dead men, Garin slid into the doorway, following the machine pistol into the room with his finger on the trigger. When he heard Annja’s voice, he relaxed a little, but he maintained a murderous focus and grinned at the thought of killing Bhalla.

Chapter Sixteen
    “I don’t have the brick.” Annja stared into Bhalla’s eyes. She reached for the sword in the otherwhere, grabbed the hilt and prepared to yank the weapon into the cave.
    Bhalla returned her gaze full measure for a moment, then addressed his men. He spoke in English so she could understand. “If she does not produce the brick in the next moment, kill this man.”
    Burris looked up at her. “Give him the brick.”
    “I don’t have it,” Annja said as earnestly as she could. “I didn’t want to bring it all the way out