Callsign: Bishop - Book 1 (An Erik Somers - Chess Team Novella) Read online

  CALLSIGN: BISHOP

  Book 1

  by Jeremy Robinson

  and David McAfee

  © 2011 Jeremy Robinson. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: [email protected]

  Visit Jeremy Robinson on the World Wide Web at:

  www.jeremyrobinsononline.com

  Visit David McAfee on the World Wide Web at:

  mcafeeland.wordpress.com

  Older Kindle model? Click here for e-store.

  FICTION by JEREMY ROBINSON

  (click to view on Amazon and buy)

  The Antarktos Saga

  The Last Hunter - Pursuit

  The Last Hunter - Descent

  The Jack Sigler Thrillers

  Threshold

  Instinct

  Pulse

  Callsign: King - Book 1

  Callsign: Queen - Book 1

  Callsign: Rook - Book 1

  Callsign: Knight - Book 1

  Callsign: Bishop - Book 1

  Callsign: King - Book 2 - Underworld

  Origins Editions (first five novels)

  Kronos

  Antarktos Rising

  Beneath

  Raising the Past

  The Didymus Contingency

  Short Stories

  Insomnia

  Humor

  The Zombie's Way (Ike Onsoomyu)

  The Ninja’s Path (Kutyuso Deep)

  FICTION by DAVID MCAFEE

  Bachiyr Novels

  33 A.D.

  Saying Goodbye to the Sun

  61 A.D.

  Horror Novels

  NASTY LITTLE F!#*ERS

  The Gallows Tree (Coming Soon)

  Short Story Collections

  The Lake and 17 Other Stories

  Devil Music and 18 Other Stories

  After: Taras and Theron, Beyond Jerusalem

  The Dead Man Series (With Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin)

  The Dead Woman

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter15

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  Sample: THE LAST HUNTER by Jeremy Robinson

  Sample: 33AD by David McAfee

  Sample: THE SENTINEL by Jeremy Robinson

  Help Spread The Word!

  CALLSIGN: BISHOP

  PROLOGUE

  Somewhere in the Kavir Desert, Semnan Province, Iran

  Aziz and Muhaddar walked across the superheated ground and through the occasional scraggly brush. Above them, the sun blazed down from the hot Iranian sky, baking the earth and the dying vegetation and making the trek nearly impossible to bear, but neither man wanted to go back. Jihadists had taken over their village and accused nearly all the men of collaborating with the West. Shouts of “infidel” had split the air along with the sound of gunshots and the screams of the dying. Aziz and Muhaddar, not wanting anything to do with the Jihad, had simply run. A few bullets came close, but none touched them, and before long, they were far from their doomed village.

  Of course, trekking through the sun-baked lands in central Iran wasn’t an ideal escape. As the heat rose from the ground in visible waves, Aziz began to wonder whether maybe they should have stayed. At least the jihadists would have killed them quickly. Better that than a slow, painful death in the desert. Already his body felt heavy, even though he knew he’d lost weight. After only one day, he had trouble putting one leg in front of the other. His arms and legs felt sluggish and weak, and there was no water or food in sight. Maybe Muhaddar was right. Maybe they should travel at night. It would be cold, but maybe that would be for the best.

  Not that it would make much difference. Without water, they had no chance.

  Aziz was just starting to consider turning around to face the jihadists when Muhaddar spoke.

  “Look,” Muhaddar said. “Over there. A building.”

  “It is not real,” Aziz said, not even raising his eyes. He’d seen enough mirages already.

  “No, look,” Muhaddar said, grabbing Aziz by the chin and forcing his face up. “I tell you, there is a building there. See?”

  Aziz squinted, looking in the direction his friend pointed. At first, he could see nothing but the waves of heat radiating up from the ground, but after a minute, he spotted something. It looked like a large, squat box half buried in the earth. The sun reflected off a shiny panel on top of the box. A solar panel, maybe? Maybe it was a building. What better place to use a solar panel than the middle of the desert?

  “Perhaps they have water,” Muhaddar said.

  The thought of water made Aziz’s mouth ache. His throat felt so dry he thought it would crack open at any moment. “Perhaps, but who are they? And what are they doing here?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Aziz thought about his village. The images of the slaughter came to his mind. Bodies falling into the street, hands clutching their wounds as they cried out in pain and fear. Blood splattering the buildings as more and more people died, many of them women and children. Only a few moments ago, he’d been considering walking back to his village to face the same fate.

  “No,” he replied. “It does not matter.”

  Together they trudged through the sand, making their way to the squat building. As they grew closer, Aziz realized his initial impression that the building was half buried was not far from the truth. The part they could see was a squat round cylinder made of concrete. The rest was hidden below the surface, leaving only the cylinder visible.

  As they approached, he expected to hear shouts, or shots, but none came. Soon they stood directly in front of the structure. There was no door, but a set of steel bars embedded in the concrete formed the rungs of a ladder that went to the top. After exchanging a glance with Muhaddar, Aziz grabbed the first rung and pulled himself upward, climbing toward the top.

  A steel door sat on the roof like the hatch of a submarine. The shiny surface he’d seen from a distance turned out to be a small solar panel, after all. Words were stamped into the metal door, but they were written in a language neither man could read.

  “Is that American writing?” Muhaddar asked.

  “I don’t know,” Aziz replied. “It could be.”

  Aziz had never learned to speak or read English, but some of the characters did resemble the writing he’d seen on television the few times he’d watched American programs. That didn’t necessarily mean the building was American, however. It just meant the builders used the same letters as the Americans. Just above the steel door was a symbol he thought he had seen before. It looked like three crescent moons arranged in a triangle with their backs touching. A solid circle ran through all three moons, with an empty space in the exact center of the image:

  He
didn’t know what it meant, but the symbol filled him with a sense of foreboding.

  “Maybe we should not bother them,” he said.

  “Water,” Muhaddar replied. “What if they have water?”

  Aziz looked back the way they had come. The desert stretched away in every direction; it was a flat, barren stretch of land dotted here and there by an occasional bush struggling to stay alive. Without help, they would not last another day.

  Maybe the symbol meant nothing.

  “Very well,” he said. “Open the door.”

  Muhaddar pulled on the hatch, but it didn’t move. After a moment, he grunted, and Aziz could see the strain in his muscles. The door lifted up about an inch. Muhaddar was normally the stronger of the two, but a day spent wandering the desert with neither food nor water had made them both weak. Aziz stepped over to help, and together they lifted the steel plate up enough to reveal a metal ladder leading down into darkness.

  “Hello?” Aziz yelled into the opening. “Is there anyone here? We need water.”

  No answer.

  Aziz looked at his friend, who nodded.

  “Go,” Muhaddar said. “Whatever is down there is sure to be better than what is up here.”

  Aziz agreed. He grabbed the rung of the ladder and started down. Muhaddar followed just after him.

  The ladder descended about twenty-five feet below the door, and the lower they went, the cooler the air became. Aziz couldn’t contain a relieved sigh as his feet touched the floor of the building. He marveled at how wonderful the cool air felt on his skin. “I could stay here for a week,” he said.

  “I may never leave,” Muhaddar replied.

  Aziz looked around. They stood in the center of a large chamber filled with machines and computers. To his right stood a bank of monitors showing what he assumed to be other areas of the structure as well as a few that showed the area outside the entrance. Banks of electronics blinked and beeped all around him, and on the far wall, a set of steel doors led deeper into the building. Just to his left was a large map of the facility. It showed the entrance, as well as the room they were standing in, and more. The facility was much larger than he thought it would be, and he wondered who had built it here and how they did it. The map might have held a clue, but all the words were written in American. Everything was labeled, but he could not read any of it.

  Then something on the map caught his eye. A small blue square with a picture of a fork and a spoon in the middle. He knew what that meant: food. And if there was food there, there would probably be water, as well.

  “Aziz,” Muhaddar said, “Is that what I think it is?”

  Aziz nodded. “It looks like a cafeteria or a break room.”

  “I wonder if there is any food there,” Muhaddar said.

  “Let’s find out.”

  They walked further into the facility, waiting for someone to stop them and demand to know what they were doing there, but no one did. Here and there, Aziz spotted a few dark brown stains on the walls and floor, but he couldn’t identify them. He was just beginning to wonder what had happened to the people who built this place when Muhaddar stopped and pointed at a glass window.

  “Look!” Muhaddar said.

  Aziz looked through the glass into a small, square room lined with shelves and documents. Glass jars of every shape and size cluttered the shelves, although many were empty or broken. Some of the documents had been ripped from the wall, and more of the brown stains spotted the room. One of them, in the shape of a hand, sent a chill up his spine. He realized then what the brown stains were: blood. He wondered again what had happened to the people who built the place.

  But Muhaddar did not seem to notice any of it. His attention was fixed on a large white refrigerator in the middle of the far wall.

  “Do you think there is something to drink in there?” he asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, Muhaddar pulled open the door to the room and ran to the refrigerator. On the front of the refrigerator door was painted the same triple moon symbol Aziz had seen on the outside of the building. What did it mean? He wished he could remember.

  “Wait,” Aziz said. “I do not think it is safe.”

  “Praise Allah!” Muhaddar shouted, ignoring him.

  Inside the refrigerator were rows and rows of plastic bottles, each of them filled with clear, cold water. Muhaddar grabbed two and threw one to Aziz, and then he opened his and started gulping down the water so fast Aziz could hear him swallowing from ten feet away.

  Aziz examined the bottle in his hands. The label was white, with black writing, but in the center was that same symbol.

  He looked at it closely, not knowing what it meant but sure it was not good, especially given the many bloodstains all over the facility. But the bottle in his hand was so cold. Condensation had already started to form on the outside, and moisture dripped over his fingers. His dry, raw throat begged him to take a drink. He unscrewed the cap and brought the bottle to his lips.

  Muhaddar’s scream startled him, and he almost dropped the bottle.

  “Who are you?” Muhaddar asked, his voice tight and his eyes wide. He was staring right at Aziz as though they had not known each other their whole lives. “What are you doing here? Where is Aziz?”

  “Muhaddar? Are you well?”

  “Where is Aziz?” Muhaddar shouted, his face twisting in anger. A line of drool dangled from his lower lip, but he didn’t seem to notice. His face looked flush, his eyes bloodshot, and his whole body trembled. “What have you done with Aziz?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Muhaddar launched himself forward, grabbing Aziz by the throat and knocking him to the ground. The bottle of water flew from Aziz’s hand as he and his friend toppled over onto the concrete, spilling its contents across the floor as it rolled away.

  Aziz’s head banged on the floor, causing his vision to go white with pain. When it returned to normal, he found himself staring up at his lifelong friend and fighting for breath under Muhaddar’s crushing grip.

  “Muhaddar,” he gasped. “What are you doing?”

  “Where…is…Aziz?” Muhaddar shouted, banging Aziz’s head on the floor with every syllable. “What did you do with him?”

  “Muhaddar,” Aziz croaked. “I am Aziz. Don’t you know me?”

  “Lies!” Muhaddar pistoned his arms back and forward, bashing Aziz’s head on the floor again and again, choking the breath from his friend’s body.

  Aziz tried again to reason with Muhaddar, but he couldn’t find the breath to speak. He was starting to feel woozy and tired.

  The last thing he saw was the crazed, furious face of his lifelong friend as his head hit the floor one last time, then everything went dark.

  1.

  Pinckney, NH.

  The small, single engine Cessna rolled to a slow, rough stop. The potholes in the asphalt caused the cabin to bounce and jerk, spilling the passenger’s drink in his lap. Cold coffee, several hours old and barely touched. On either side of the pocked runway, a short grass field extended for fifty or so yards before giving way to a huge green forest of maples, birches and assorted evergreens. The scent of pine filtered in through the plane’s vents, mixing with the smells of coffee and aftershave.

  “Son of a bitch,” the passenger said, trying to dry his pants with a napkin with little success. “Good thing it wasn’t hot.”

  “Small favors,” said the pilot.

  “Yeah, yeah. Thank God for ‘em.”

  The pilot chuckled. “As well you should, Mr. Duncan.”

  “Don’t start, Billings.”

  Billings turned his face away, but not before Duncan saw the smirk on his face. Sanctimonious SOB, he thought.

  “Looks like your ride is here,” Billings said, pointing out the starboard window.

  Tom Duncan, former President of the United States, shifted in his seat to look right. The Cessna didn’t have much for windows—or passenger space, for that matter—but he was able to spot a single b
lack SUV rolling its way up a thin gravel road toward the plane. Other than Billings, only one other person on the planet knew Duncan was coming to Pinckney.

  Jacobs, Duncan thought. Let’s see what’s so important.

  Eli Jacobs headed Duncan’s cleanup team at the site of the old Manifold Genetics lab nearby. Jacobs and his men were responsible for going through Manifold’s records, storage facilities, computers and anything else they found to try to figure out just what the hell Ridley had been doing. With all the strange genetic experiments Manifold was involved in, it was often difficult to keep track of everything. Judging by the spotty record keeping in the Manifold Alpha lab, even the Manifold employees had had trouble sorting through all the data.

  But Jacobs had found something. He wouldn’t have called Duncan if it wasn’t important. Not long ago, Duncan would have had to fly to the site in a large private helicopter. Two fighter jets would have flown escort and it would have been impossible to hide his presence from the locals. Those days were long gone. He had even waived his right to a Secret Service detail. Now he was as anonymous as it gets, sitting on an overgrown, pothole-filled runway in the backwater of New Hampshire. The tiny Cessna would have fit easily inside the belly of Air Force One.

  Duncan smiled a bittersweet smile, then moved toward the door.

  It’s better this way, he told himself. The chains are broken. He was free now to pursue his role as Deep Blue, Chess Team’s handler, mentor and operations eye-in-the-sky, without the constraints of his former role as President getting in the way.

  He stepped out of the plane and into the field just as the passenger door on the SUV opened. Eli Jacobs, a balding, pudgy man with black horn rim glasses, stepped out of the truck and waved. Jacobs wore his usual white coat over black pants. His breast pocket bulged with a wide assortment of pens, at least six of them. As he waddled over, Duncan was struck by the idea that Jacobs was the poster boy for the American nerd. Short, socially inept and brilliant.