Suddenly, Silas’s vision narrowed. His ears started ringing. His chest tightened and breathing became difficult.
This was MIT all over again. And Mosul.
He looked on, horrified as the young man’s body crumpled to the floor. He dropped with it, taking cover behind the sarcophagus along with Celeste.
“Don’t you dare flake out on me, Grey. I need you!”
Silas turned toward his partner, his eyes wide and face red and wet with sweat. Her voice had the same effect as her touch earlier. It was the breadcrumbs he needed to claw his way back to reality. He swallowed hard and nodded.
In an instant the lights cut out, plunging the cramped space into total and utter blackness.
Nous. And he knew what the darkness meant.
Years of Ranger know-how and enemy combat experience clicked him into autopilot. Without thinking, he reached into Celeste’s back pocket and fished for her phone. She gave a short protest, but when he found it, he quickly crawled around Tut's bulky dwelling of last repose toward the entrance just as the crunch of footfalls echoed closer down through the antechamber and toward the burial chamber.
Silas inched toward the entrance and waited for the moment when—
There.
He brought out the phone, flicked it to life, then selected the flashlight icon and shoved it outward toward his assailant. Praying he was right.
He was.
The man yelled in protest, blinded by the white LED being magnified a thousand-fold through his night-vision goggles.
Silas launched for the man, but not before the hostile popped off a few wild shots. They narrowly missed Silas and thudded into the ancient sandstone walls behind him.
He whipped the butt of his Beretta around and smashed it into the assailant's face. Then again, and one more time until the man went limp.
Three shots sounded to his right, causing him to recoil back into the burial chamber for safety. Then five more. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
The man was met with a healthy response. Seven rounds, all eaten by the mawing darkness around the corner.
Celeste to his rescue. As always.
Then silence.
White light from the phone flooded the space from the floor as the two waited for the man to show himself. He looked back toward Tut’s sarcophagus, searching for Celeste.
She appeared around the front, padding forward with weapon outstretched. She nodded toward the antechamber, motioning for him to join her.
He scurried off the sandy floor and picked up Celeste’s phone, glancing down at the first Nousati for a look.
The man from the hostel.
One down, one to go. Hopefully.
He held out the phone with one hand and gripped his Beretta with the other, resting it on his forearm. He padded forward as Celeste neared the opening to the passageway stretching toward the stairs up to the surface.
Whoever it was who had shot them had retreated to safer ground. But they were definitely not out of the woods yet. The other hostile had higher-ground advantage.
Not good.
Celeste glanced back at him as he came up close. She nodded toward the other side of the entrance, then looked back at him. He nodded in recognition. He could see her take a deep breath, then wait a beat before slipping across to the other side of the darkened mouth.
No gunfire. No nothing.
Silas stepped close to the left side of the entrance, hugging the wall and shining his light toward the opening. He looked at her for orders.
With one hand, she trained her SIG Sauer at the entrance. With the other, she motioned for him to crouch to the ground on three, phone and weapon trained forward. She would come around up top.
He nodded. She counted off.
One. Two. Three.
They held their breaths, and in one motion they moved to their positions to engage.
Again, nothing.
They waited, the silence of the passageway was deafening.
Without looking back, Celeste started inching forward. When she cleared the threshold, Silas stood and followed. The phone light bobbed as he moved, the walls closing in on them with the way the white LED light was playing with the shadows.
The passageway stretched forward and narrowed to the set of stairs. It seemed empty.
They continued forward, inching toward the stairwell. Silas's heart thudded in his ears, his breath hot and heavy as he chugged ahead.
There it was, the stairs illuminated by the high, Egyptian sun like Jacob’s Ladder emerging from Heaven.
Suddenly, Celeste halted and held up her hand.
Silas took a sharp breath and adjusted his grip, then came up to her side.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing. That’s the point. There’s a shoot-out and then silence. Doesn’t make sense.”
“He's biding his time. He knows he has to wait us out. Unfortunately, there's nowhere else to go.”
“Well, I don’t like it.”
“Got a better idea than to press forward and hope for the best?”
She looked at him with flat lips. “I don’t know about Uncle Sam, but ‘press forward and hope for the best’ wasn’t in Her Majesty’s playbook.”
“It is now, partner.”
A noise up the well of stairs caught their attention.
The unmistakable sound of something bouncing, metallic and menacing.
Clink.
Clonk.
Clunk.
They looked at each other, then immediately ran forward, both intimately familiar with what was coming down from above.
Grenade.
They took the stairs by twos and started shooting, wildly and with abandon.
Then an explosion of force and fire, dust and debris catapulted them upward.
They hit the stairs hard. Celeste lost her weapon. Silas hit his head; it blossomed in a shower of stars and pain.
The passageway below collapsed in an angry show of fire and fury. Sealing any escape below.
But no time to cry about it. Bullets were flying again.
He answered back as Celeste scrambled to recover her SIG Sauer.
The raining lead from above stopped briefly with the reply.
But then Silas clicked empty. He reached for his spare, but came up dry. Must have lost it in the explosion.
Luckily she recovered her own weapon—and just in time.
Another flurry of bullets pinged off the stairs and chunks of stone scattered about from the explosion and the collapsed entrance below. One of them grazed past Silas’s forearm. He yelled, not so much from the pain, but from the surprise. But it had seared a mark that was bubbling with blood. He’d live to fight another day.
Celeste stood defiantly, arm outstretched, sending one-two-three-four bullets toward the hostile.
And it worked.
There was a cry of pain. And then something stumbled down the stairs.
Not the Nousati.
The Nousati’s Glock pistol.
Glock, really? Figures.
Silas retrieved the weapon and shoved it in his waist as Celeste scrambled up the stairs. He followed close behind, emerging into the hot, dry Egyptian afternoon.
A figure was crawling across the packed path of desert sand, crimson trailing him in his wake.
Silas ran over to him and pressed his boot against his shoulder, kicking him over onto his back. He quickly trained his Beretta on the man, then narrowed his eyes with recognition.
“You…” he growled.
Celeste came up next to him and looked from Silas to the man. “The thieving cabbie, from Jerusalem.”
“Search him. See if he’s got my phone.”
She crouched to the ground and reached inside his front pants pockets. Finding nothing, she turned him over and searched the back.
She stood back up, handing a black rectangle of glass and plastic to Silas, but frowning. “This what you were looking for?”
He smiled, and said, “That would be the one.” But it quickly faded when he turned over the unit.
Cracked screen. Bullet hole dead center.
The man on the ground groaned, then had a coughing fit. Blood splattered on his chest. A hole in his gut was oozing more blood. He would be a goner in a few minutes.
He offered a short, weak chuckle and smiled as blood trickled down his chin.
Silas clenched his jaw. “You got something to say?”
“Phone,” he wheezed. “Kaput.” The man took several short breaths, then grinned with satisfaction, white teeth stained with blood.
“Maybe Zoe can crack it,” Celeste offered.
“Doubtful.” Silas huffed and stuffed the phone in his back pocket. He went to interrogate the man, but he was gone.
A distant sound sliced through the valley, unmistakable in its authoritative whine. The Egyptian police must have been tipped off about the explosion at one of their most important, and lucrative, national treasures.
“We’d better get going,” Silas said, taking off toward the parking lot.
“Radcliffe’s not going to be happy about this one,” Celeste said as they reached the Land Rover.
He opened his door. “Yeah, especially since I lost his fedora.”