Chapter Three

Two hours later the four of them were sat stiffly round a table on a private jet. Vittoria and Sophie avoided each others eyes and Robert was off on another planet. He had several pictures of the engraved wall spread out in front of him, many with scribbled notes or circled symbols. Nothing made sense even now after he had looked at them properly, hopefully things would make more sense when they got to Spain.

"I'm missing something, there has got to be a link between Soto and Maes Howe I just can't see it! I need to know more about it."

"We could search for it on my lap-top; I fetched it out of the car just before we left." Sophie said leaning down to the side of her chair, and pulling up her lap-top bag.

"Yeah, good idea, love, but I doubt the internet will work your 30,000 feet above the ground!" Riley looked up at her grinning.

Sophie grinned back and turned to Robert "What is it you want to search for?" Robert looked perplexed for a bit before he answered "Soto, and try Huelva.It's around there think!" Sophie tapped away at the keys for a moment before leaning back, sighing contentedly.

"I think I might have found our match but I'm not sure about the significance of it!" She paused for a moment taking in the shocked expressions of the three people sat around the table. "Dolmen de Soto, a Neolithic monument very similar to Maes Howe. Built around the same winter Solstice."

"But…how did you find that out?"

"On the internet…It said you could get the internet if you plugged your USB lead into this very nice plug down here! It works on satellite signals." That wiped the smug grin off the Detective's face.

"When you two have finished do you think we could get on with solving this murder case!" It was the first time Vittoria had entered the conversation and everyone looked up at her, expecting her to point something extremely obvious to them. She never got the chance, the pilot's voice cam over the intercom. "We are preparing to land, please put your seatbelts on." They were going to land in a private runway, they had called in a flight plan but the idea had been that as few people knew where they were as possible and so the runway was hidden in an area outside of the big cities.

The landing went relatively smoothly but the greeting they got when they arrived was not. As soon as the engines had stopped whirring, twenty men dressed in full riot gear and armed with assault rifles span out to surround the planes only exit. "Policía, Open the door slowly and come out with your hands above you head!" The voice boomed from the megaphone and out across the open tarmac. Something hit Robert as not quite right with the men assembled outside but with twenty guns pointed at him he didn't dwell on it long! Slowly, Riley opened the door and stood with his hands in the air as the steps slid out automatically from underneath the plane. Riley was the first to come down the steps, followed by Robert, the two women and finally the pilot. "Stop right there and keep your hands up!" The voice erupted again. The group stopped and watched as the man with the speaker waved to some of the men surrounding them to move forward. Five men sprinted forward each running behind one of them. Within a minute all five of them, including the pilot, had been handcuffed, blindfolded and were sat in the back of a van with their ankles chained to the bench underneath them.

Robert felt the engine start up beneath him and listened as the doors slammed shut behind him and the slither of light that had peeped through his blindfold was extinguished. When he was sure they were on the move he whispered "Is everyone alright?" There were a number of grumbles and finally Victoria spoke.

"I don't know what's going on but they're not police, they were wearing Kevlar armour. No police force uses them any more, there was a project going on at CERN just before I left we had found a new polymer material stronger than Kevlar, we had just distributed it to Spain and I am sure they would have sent them to the SWAT teams first. I don't like this at all!"

The van had left the smooth roads now and moved onto a bumpy track. In the back the five of them bounced around, unable to steady themselves with their hands tied behind their backs. Eventually the van stopped. They had been driving for about an hour and three quarters of it had been on the uneven ground. Robert judged that they must have travelled quite a way from civilisation in that time. A lot of the area surrounding Soto was dry forest that in some places was almost desert; Robert guessed that they were probably in the middle of that now.

The door of the van opened and after a minute or two when Robert felt someone unchaining him from the bench, strong arms hauled him out of the van and dropped him to the dusty floor. He felt the sand underneath him and coughed as the dust entered his throat. But he was lucky, his blindfold slipped down a little bit and before he was dragged away he caught a glimpse of his surroundings. There were in an open space of desert, and in the distance he saw a line of trees. Nowhere could he see any sign of the city or any houses, other than a dirt track that lead to where the black van was parked along with five four wheel-drives, and just in his vision to the side a large worn down building, almost like a hangar but inside he could see several concrete walls all with sturdy metal doors. At one time this had been a prison but it had been long abandoned by the police. Whoever had got them where definitely not part of the law!