The Revelation Code (Wilde/Chase 11) Read Online Free Page A

Book of Revelations says!’ Rosemont barked. ‘This isn’t Sunday school; this is a Special Activities Division operation. You’re an agent, not a preacher; now shut the hell up and carry out the mission!’
    Cross regarded him for a moment, his face unreadable behind the mask, then he turned away. ‘Don’t you walk away from – son of a bitch!’ Rosemont yelled after him. ‘You’re finished, you hear me?’
    Cross ignored Rosemont’s angry shouts as he jogged back towards the ruins. The wind had shifted, wafting the yellow mass off the shore and out over the lake. The fires from the crashed helicopter and the burning reed beds cast a hellish glow across the landscape.
    Appropriate, he thought. From the moment he first saw the angel inside the temple, he was absolutely sure, more than he had ever been about anything, that he knew what he had found – and what it meant.
    But there had been only one angel. According to the Book of Revelation, there were three more. So where were they?
    He approached the spot where the broken pillar had stood. The only thing there now was a rubble-strewn crater.
    From which the gas was still rising.
    He reached the edge of the gouge in the earth. A shallow pool of dark water was at the bottom. Amongst the debris around it, his light picked out a shape that was clearly not natural. Part of the statue. One of its wings was still attached, but the embossed metal that had been wrapped around the angel’s body was now twisted and torn where the figure had been smashed by the explosion, exposing a darker core hidden inside.
    The strange gas was belching from this black stone. The wind was enough to blow it clear, though he resisted the temptation to remove his mask for a better look. The sight put him in mind of a smoke grenade, but . . .
    ‘Where’s it all coming from?’ he whispered. Smoke grenades contained enough chemicals to produce a screen for ninety seconds at most, but this was pumping out a colossal volume, and showed no signs of stopping.
    He stepped down cautiously into the pit. A sound became audible even through his hood’s charcoal-impregnated lining, a sizzling like fatty bacon on a grill. The dark material at the statue’s heart almost appeared to be boiling, blistering with countless tiny bubbles, each releasing more gas as it burst.
    Another wisp of the gas to one side caught his eye. A chunk of the broken statue, smaller than his little finger, had landed at the very edge of the pool. He crouched to examine it. There was a sliver of the dark material embedded in the cracked ceramic shell, partially beneath the water’s surface. The exposed section was burning away just like its larger counterpart, consuming itself in some reaction with the air. As he watched, the top of the splinter spat and bubbled to nothingness . . . and the thin line of yellow smoke died away.
    Intrigued, Cross gently lifted the fragment from the water. It was warm, even through his glove. After a moment, the strange substance fizzed and puffed a new strand of yellow fumes into the wind. He dipped it back into the puddle. The reaction stopped.
    A light swept over him. ‘Cross!’ called Rosemont from the crater’s lip. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
    ‘I found the angel,’ Cross replied, climbing out to meet him and indicating the larger hunk of the statue. ‘That’s where the smoke’s coming from. It wasn’t a chemical weapon; it was here all along, hidden in the temple. Waiting for us to find it. Waiting for me to find it.’
    Rosemont shone his flashlight over the broken figure. It was still belching out its seemingly endless plume of oily yellow gas. ‘Damn. What the hell is that?’
    ‘It’s a messenger from God. Look.’ Cross illuminated the little pool. The dark water was revealed as a bloody red, the discoloration spreading outwards from the fragment like ink across damp paper. ‘“And the third part of the sea became blood . . .”’
    The lead agent snapped his