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| Ancient Egypt and the danger of the unknown |
The Homeland
man, whose name was Bloem, shrugged, moving mountains under the shoulders of
his coat.
“That’s on
a need-to-know basis, I’m afraid.”
“I need to
know. What exactly am I looking for?”
“We need
you to join us in a race to stop a strike against us by some ancient and
unknown weapon, or maybe to uncover something that may be masked as a symbolic
threat. The term ‘smiting’ has
been used. This weapon will be used against America
especially, but also threatens our Western allies.”
Anson
whistled. “The smiting of America! Using the ultimate dirty bomb. That’s
unfair. You knew that would get my interest…” It did more than interest him. It
electrified him. Were they serious? Did Intelligence community paranoia go this
far? Maybe I’m not the only one, after all, who has respect for unseen realities.
Suddenly,
as he went with that thought, a lifetime of theoretical abstraction collided in
a blinding flash with the real world of national interests, conflict,
geopolitics and the whole damned thing. Here was a real-world enterprise that
an outsider like him could only have dreamt about, and, irradiating it all was
the vision like the Holy Grail of some kind of validation at the end.
Was it
possible that he might not have to gnash his teeth in outer darkness forever,
after all?
Excerpt,
The Smiting Texts, first in the Anson Hunter Egypt adventure series
