Reid ran his tongue around his too-dry mouth. Dark silence pressed down on him—a greater weight than the mass of rock in which they were entombed.
“This is not happening,” Kilgore France spoke softly in the stygian black. “I mean, shit. Two days ago I was in New York, at the Grand Hyatt. How can I be entombed in Egypt?”
“You saw him,” Yusif reminded. “The gunman jumped on the hammer’s trigger. Allah have mercy on his soul.”
Reid squeezed the bridge of his nose, reliving that last horrible moment.
Yusif’s voice barely hid panic. “It’s the sound that will haunt me to my grave. That wet crunching of the man’s bones.”
“How big is the stone?” Kilgore’s voice reeked of surrender. “A couple of square meters, you said? And granite? What would that weigh?”
“Four tons or more,” Reid guessed, having no idea. “The good news is that it’s been maybe twenty-four hours? We haven’t even heard a peep from the gunmen.”
“You call that good news? May I remind you, sahib, that we are trapped inside a mountain without food or water?”
“Who are they? What did they want?” Kilgore asked yet again. “This tomb’s a big fake. Yusif, even if these artifacts were authentic, what would they be worth on the international market?”
“I’d guess five to ten million euros. Maybe more.”
“Even in this economy, that would be something,” Reid muttered as he resettled his back against the stone pedestal. Kilgore shifted beside him. The floor had no give.
“My publicist and agent both know where I am, and that I’m working for Skientia. The chariots, the sarcophagi, anything tied to this tomb would be too hot for sale on the open market. There would be too many uncomfortable questions like, ‘Did you kill Dr. Kilgore France to obtain these?’”
A long silence ensued.
“How’d you get into forensic anthro?” Reid asked.
“I wanted to dig up fossil humans. You know, be the next Mary Leakey and rewrite paleoanthropology. Had to learn human osteology, which took me to paleopathology, to anatomy, to a crime lab, and on to fame and fortune.” A pause. “I’d give everything, every last cent I own for a tall glass of ice water.”
Yusif rasped, “Myself, I’d give all of your wealth—and Reid’s, too—for that glass of water.”
Reid nerved himself to ask, “What gets us first, Kilgore? Hypoxia or dehydration?”
“You think this thing is really sealed? Airtight, I mean.”
“Might get a little seepage around that block. It fit loosely enough to slide down without binding.”
“Dehydration, then,” she answered softly. “Three days. Maybe four.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter that we took our masks off.”
“If we’re infected, nothing will have time to incubate.”
Yusif said thickly, “I never thought I would choose disease. But in this case, it means I—”
“Shhh! What’s that?” Reid cocked his head; the high-pitched grinding sound reminded him of being a couple of doors down from the dentist’s office. He got to his feet and thumbed on his flashlight. The hot white beam hurt his eyes, and he squinted as he made his way around the chariot to the great stone. Careful not to step on the dried fluids that had squirted out, he placed an ear to the cool rock.
“Someone’s drilling,” he said softly. “So, folks, I guess we’ve got a bit of a dilemma. If they don’t get through to us in the next couple of days, it won’t matter if they’re the bad guys. If they do, and they’re—”
“We don’t know that they’re bad guys, Reid. We only heard what we thought was shooting. Maybe Skientia is really the bad guys, and this is all some perverted prank.” Kilgore seemed to be trying to convince herself. She had pulled her Tyvek hood back to expose her curly hair.
Yusif’s voice was flat. “The man who leaped down and was crushed? My first impression, as he pointed that machine gun at me, was that he was not here to encourage my health or welfare.”
Reid made his way back to the sarcophagus and resettled himself next to Kilgore. He flipped the flashlight off; darkness dropped like a weight.
The faint sound of drilling mixed hope with terror.
“You got a family, Reid?” Kilgore asked after what seemed like an eternity.
“Mother and father in Colorado.”
“No wife or kids?”
“Ex-wife. Field archaeologists shouldn’t marry. Especially when they’re young and very drunk. You?”
“Long-term relationships don’t survive late-night phone calls. The kind you get every time a corpse is found in a dumpster or shallow grave in the woods. Life’s easier when your relationships are with the dead. They don’t make as many demands . . . and they don’t give a rat’s ass if you miss a date.”
“Got a point there.”
I just hope we’re not going to end up as the dead . . . even if it means we won’t be making any demands on anyone.
He must have drifted off, fallen asleep. Not that a person could really tell in the utter blackness, but when he came back to his senses, it was with the realization that his ass ached, his joints were stiff, and his back hurt.
Kilgore’s head had fallen against his shoulder, the warmth of her body against his arm reassuring.
He tried to swallow, his tongue like a dry stick; his desperation for a drink bordered on being crazed. In a misguided attempt to add to his madness, he imagined cool water trickling around his tongue, how it would slip magically down his throat and into his cramped stomach.
Carefully he reached up, trying not to disturb Kilgore.
“Hmmm?” she rasped and pulled away.
“The drilling’s louder,” Reid told her. “Watch your eyes; I’m turning on my flashlight.”
He narrowed his eyes to slits and flicked it on. In the dazzling glare he got up and walked to the great stone. In the glow, the Mayan mathematics and the diagram on the wall seemed to mock him.
“It’s a lot louder.” He felt high-frequency vibrations through his fingertips. Then a chip spalled off. Reid jumped back as a drill leaped out from the stone and was pulled back.
He could hear the machine shut off, then faint voices. Placing his lips to the inch-in-diameter hole, he called, “Hello?”
“To whom am I speaking?” a voice asked.
“Dr. Reid Farmer. Who are you?”
“Dr. Farmer? I’m Major Sam Savage, United States Army. Is Dr. Kilgore France in there with you?”
“She is. So is Yusif al Amari.”
“Who is he?”
“Excavation director for the Skientia project.”
“Anyone else?”
“Nope.” Reid frowned. “Excuse me, but how do we know that you’re an American? And what’s the United States Army doing drilling holes in tomb stones in Egypt?”
Reid shifted as Kilgore and Yusif crowded closer.
“Dr. Farmer, we’re here to get you and Dr. France out of there. As to the Egyptians, we’re kind of hoping they don’t become aware of our presence before we manage to extract you and the sarcophagus from that tomb. Now, before I get on with that little detail, is there anything you and your people need? Anyone injured?”
“No. Just water, food . . . and out.”
“If you all will step back to the farthest possible corner, or behind whatever shelter you can, my EOD expert, Corporal Bradley Houser, will attend to that in short order.”
Another voice called through the hole, “I’m plugging the bore now, so there will be no further conversation. When I detonate the charge, the plug will be expelled like a bullet, so you will want to be off to the side. Is that understood? I’m shooting in fifteen minutes.”
Kilgore pulled at Reid’s shoulder. “I’ve cataloged and analyzed too many remains from bomb blasts.” She pointed to the corner. “There. That’s our best bet. Yusif, you in the corner, then Reid and me crouched over you.”
“Why are you and Reid crouched over me?”
“Because I’m a forensic anthropologist. I understand these things.”
“Yeah, right.” Reid slapped Yusif on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s move that table.”
In the end, they huddled together, Reid checking his watch.
“What if they’re not US military?” Kilgore had been peeled bare of her usual hard defenses.
“It’s not like we’ve got a lot of choice, do we?”
“If it turns out they’re the bad guys . . .” She couldn’t finish and glanced away.
“Everyone seems to want the sarcophagus with the body in it,” Yusif wondered. “Why? Who is he?”
“Fucking crazy maniac if he built this place,” Kilgore muttered, trying to sound brave.
“This is it, people.” Reid glanced away from his watch. “Any moment now.”
When it came, the effect was almost anticlimactic—a muffled bang, more felt than heard. True to warning, the plug shot out, smacked into the bottom of the big sarcophagus, and peeled a long chip out of the shiny black wood.
Reid straightened, turned, and shone his flashlight on the great stone to find it riddled with cracks. Even as he watched, angular fragments fell away to rattle on the smooth stone floor. Then the whole oversized ashlar fell apart as a steel wrecking bar pushed through. It was withdrawn, only to be followed by a mirror on a pole that angled this way and that as it scanned the room.
Reid lowered his flashlight beam, stepping forward as a voice called, “Could I see all three of you, please? Hands visible and empty.”
Only after they’d complied did a man come wiggling through, a black HK tactical .45 in his hand as he scanned the room. He dropped into a crouch amid the fractured pieces of granite. “Major?” he spoke softly, “I’m in. Three civilians accounted for, no visible threats. Proceeding to check the room.”
Like a hunting leopard, he searched the burial chamber with a light attached to the underside of his pistol. “Room’s clear, sir!”
More stone cascaded, and a second man, also brandishing a pistol, slipped in, got to his feet, and grinned as he studied the fractured remains of the granite. “God, I’m good! Perfect fragmentation.” He glanced at Reid, Kilgore, and Yusif. “You see, figuring the mass, morphology, and density was simple. The trick was to shape the charge cylinder to create shockwaves bouncing around inside the rock. You get the resonance right, and stone, being brittle—”
“Cut the lecture, Houser,” a voice called. “The good doctor isn’t interested.” The next man through was older, five-foot-nine and in his mid-thirties. He pulled a duty cap onto his close-cropped and darkly tanned head before he glanced around, giving off a slight whistle as he took in the chamber’s contents.
“What Uncle Buck would give to see this!” He propped callused hands on his hips and stepped forward as someone on the other side levered more of the shattered granite out of the way.
“You’re really Army?” Reid asked.
“This we’ll defend,” the man said, turning hawklike eyes on Reid and offering his hand. “You familiar with that?”
“Army motto.”
“Yeah, the Marines get so carried away with their Semper Fi we just had to have something to throw back at ’em.”
“Ah, Major, there you go again.” Houser, apparently a Marine, was looking around as yet another man shoved a triangular piece of rock out of the way and stepped in.
The new arrival, a fit-looking African American with a Southern accent, offered a pack. “You asked for this, Major?”
“Thanks, Ghilley.” He took it, opened a pocket, and tossed a water bottle to Kilgore, then one apiece to Reid and Yusif.
Major Savage had to have Native American ancestry. He was gawking around as if he’d just stepped off the bus at Disneyland. He waved a hand around. “This for real?”
“That’s the question, Major.” Kilgore had drained her bottle. “What the hell is going on?”
“Just orders, ma’am. I was pulled out of Kabul yesterday morning. We put a scratch team of specialists together in the AFO. Found ourselves on a carrier in the Red Sea last night, where we picked up a couple of helicopters. Those Navy pilots were kind enough to drop us here a little before daybreak. After a bit of disagreement with the hard cases who were looting the tomb, we found their drill in the passageway yonder and finished the job they started.”
Reid now glanced at the opening to the passage, seeing where the shoulder, head, and one arm of the gunman who’d triggered the hammer had been dragged to the side. A tingle of nausea ran through his gut.
“Know him?” Savage asked, following his gaze.
“He’s one of the guys who were attacking Yusif’s people. He tripped the trigger that brought that stone down.”
“His buddies were busy loading trucks when we arrived. The two who are still alive aren’t talking, but I know military contractors when I run into them.”
“And my people?” Yusif asked, a soft hope in his eyes.
“We found twenty-three bodies, all male, lined out behind a cut bank in the wadi. While we didn’t look too closely, each had a gunshot wound or two.”
Yusif swallowed hard and wilted.
“What about Bill Minor?” Kilgore asked. “About my height, black hair, and khaki pants?”
“We haven’t found him if he’s out there, but my guys are still looking.”
“Major?” Another soldier, this one blond and bearded, ducked out of the passage. “Fat Mama’s got chatter on the box. She’s figured out that someone’s running around under her skirt.”
“How long, Chief?”
“They’ll have jets up in less than fifteen, Major. White Queen will deploy decoys heading west into the desert, which means we’d better be east of the river, scooting and tooting for the carrier soonest, sir.”
“Which sarcophagus am I supposed to retrieve, Doctor? This big black one?” Savage turned to the black coffin with its new chip glaring pale in the light.
“It has tube things in it,” Reid said. “Not a corpse.”
“So, if there’s a body,” Kilgore mused, it’s one of those two. The one on the right suggests a male, the one on the left, a female.”
“People, we’ve got to go. If the Egyptians catch us here, it will become very, very unpleasant.” Savage pointed. “Take them both, Chief. Even if it means tossing out some of the gear. Get your people in here and move them.”
“Aye, sir.” The chief snapped off a salute.
“Which sarcophagus first?” Houser asked.
On impulse, Reid pointed to the one on the right. “That one. The male.”
“How so?” Savage asked.
Reid shrugged. “I was told to pick door number three. Hell, Major, I’m still hoping to win the damn car.”