The television in the Adib family lounge room showed news-chopper footage of Giza’s streets, jammed with panicking people and honking cars. As Yasmin and her family watched in horror, the camera zoomed in on men in woollen masks with guns carrying electronic goods from a shattered shopfront.

‘Looters,’ Mr Adib said in disgust, eyes flicking towards the store’s steel shutter. ‘Those criminals are using this chaos as an excuse to run rampant.’

Shouts rang loudly from the street just outside the shop. Mr and Mrs Adib hugged Yasmin and Mahmoud tighter to them on the couch, while Radha clutched her worry beads and murmured a prayer.

Now the television flashed to shaky footage of a handcuffed man in an air-force jumpsuit being dragged along a desert road by heavily armed soldiers.

Seeing the camera, the terrified pilot screamed a single word before he was bundled into the back of a black van, which immediately roared off in a flurry of dust.

‘What did he say?’ Mr Adib asked.

‘“Offline”‘ Yasmin said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Maybe it was an accident,’ Mahmoud mused.

The screen now cut to a grey-haired news anchor trying to appear in control. ‘As you can see, amateur footage of the pilot’s capture has been released,’ he said. ‘From the uniform, it seems the as-yet-unidentified man who flew the F-16 fighter jet is an Egyptian Air Force officer. Authorities have not yet issued a statement. The question everyone’s asking now is whether this was a deliberate attack or the result of a terrible technological malfunction.’

Suddenly, urgent red words flashed across the screen— —as the news channel showed a new horror almost as hard to believe as the pyramid attack. A super-cargo ship—half a mile long and ten storeys tall—was burning out of control in the narrow Suez Canal. Standing amid reeds on the shore, a safe distance from the unfolding disaster, a female reporter tried to make sense of what was happening.

‘About twenty minutes ago, the Futura, which is one of the world’s largest ships, experienced a catastrophic engine meltdown,’ she said. ‘A blaze has ripped through the cargo decks with fire-control systems failing.’

Boom! Boom!

The reporter flinched, then whirled around as the camera zoomed in on orange flames flaring from splits along the Futura’s massive steel hull.

‘What you’re hearing and seeing,’ she said shakily, ‘appear to be explosions originating from the cargo holds. While the crew has evacuated safely, authorities say it’s only a matter of time before the ship sinks, blocking the Suez Canal and plunging Egypt deeper into crisis.’

Twenty minutes ago, Yasmin thought.

That meant the Futura engine had gone into meltdown just as the jet’s missile slammed into the Great Pyramid.

At zero on the countdown!

Yasmin glanced at her phone. She had missed calls from Isabel and Mila and Zander. She knew they’d be worried and she’d call them just as soon as she could. But what made her heart sink was that the phone’s screen still showed a countdown on the Games Thinker website.

What was it ticking down to now?

Yasmin didn’t know. But she knew it could not be anything good.