Kathlyn Trent, Marcus Burton 01 - Valley of the Shadow (22 page)

"By killing me? By killing my husband and my friends?"

"I'm truly sorry."

Marcus wasn't going to go down without a fight. "I'm not going to sit by while you kill us," he growled. "You may be able to get a couple of shots in, but I won't go down before I break your goddamn neck."

For the second time, Kathlyn threw herself against her husband, a relatively average-sized woman against a bear of a man. Lynn grabbed him with his good arm, as did Juliana, all trying to keep him from walking right into a spray of bullets. Baras had the Glock trained on Marcus' heart.

"No, Marcus," Kathlyn pleaded. "We can't fight this. It's over."

"No, it's not," he rumbled. "If we're going down, I'm going to take a few of them with us."

Kathlyn and Juliana piped up a chorus of pleas while Lynn managed to position himself in front of Marcus, pushing him back.

"No, Marcus," he hissed. "You don't want to go down like this. Not in front of your wife."

Marcus hadn't thought about that. He didn't even care about the potential destruction of his tomb. All he was thinking of was protecting Kathlyn and saving all of their lives.

"I can't let this happen," he said, a measure of desperation coming to the cobalt blue eyes. "This is some sick joke. These idiots have no idea what they're about to do."

"We'll make it," Kathlyn held him so tightly that she was losing feeling in her hands. "But you won't make it with a bullet in you."

"Kathlyn...."

"Please, Marcus."

It went against his instincts to give up, but he did just that. Maybe it was because, upon reflection, he really didn't want to bleed to death in front of his wife. If they were only going to live a few more hours, then he'd rather do it with her in his arms. Kathlyn, Juliana and Lynn continued to hold him stationary as Dougray, Abrahams and the others backed out of the chamber.  Kathlyn clutched him, clinging for dear life, as the seconds ticked away for whatever was about to come.

  They didn't see Baras remove a pin from the grenade he had, ironically, bought from the same military black market dealer Marcus used, and toss it into Corridor C as the rest of the group raced up the steep stairs. When the explosion ensued, it rattled the entire hillside and sprayed dust and debris out of the mouth of the shaft like a volcano.

When Dougray and Abrahams stumbled from the opening, it was in a very convincing performance of a deadly cave-in.

***

It was very, very dark. Kathlyn could feel Marcus against her, his heart beating steadily in her ears as the vibration from the explosion settled.  He held her so tightly that she could hardly breathe, but it was comforting. For someone who was unused to fear, she had never been so terrified in her entire life.

Marcus coughed, dust choking him. "Is everybody all right?"

Lynn muttered something, as did Juliana. They were somewhere in the inky well of darkness, trying to orient themselves. Marcus shook Kathlyn gently. "Are you okay?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she burst into tears. "I'm so sorry. You're all in this because of me!"

"Oh, Christ," he picked her up, holding her against him. "Sweetheart, it wasn't your fault. I'm just sorry they did this to you. People you trusted, people you worked for.  Baby, it's not your fault at all."

She sobbed on his shoulder. "I feel like this is a bad dream," she stammered. "It's just beyond believing. They actually want to kill me in the name of some stupid religious organization I've never even heard of. And I've unknowingly been a part of it for years."

Juliana searched for her in the darkness. Her hands found Marcus' buttocks first and she would have made a joke out of it had the situation not been so serious. By the time she worked her way around the front of him to Kathlyn, she was tearing up, too.  Not knowing what to say, she simply put her arms around her. Marcus disengaged an arm from his wife to include Juliana in their embrace.

"Bastards," Lynn said. His good hand was on Marcus's shoulder.  "If I'd only got that damn gun."

Marcus didn't say anything. What-ifs didn't matter right now, only the current situation. His mind was working furiously as to how they were going to get out of this mess.  His tomb, well constructed as it was, still reverberated with the concussion and until it stopped rolling, he didn't want to attempt any investigation or movement. Since the sarcophagus chamber had remained intact, he was content to stay put for the moment.

Kathlyn's sobs had died down but his heart went out to her. The betrayal must have been extremely hard for her to deal with and he silently cursed Dougray and Abrahams for their treachery. But there was no time for anger or sorrow. He had to figure out how they were going to survive this.

"All right," he squeezed Kathlyn and Juliana. "Let's settle down. We've got a situation here we've got to deal with and I need everybody clear headed."

Kathlyn wiped her eyes and he kissed her cheek before setting her down.  The darkness was disorienting and he fought to get a grip on his bearings.

"First thing we need to do is get a light in here,” he said.

"I've got a few in my pack," Kathlyn replied.  Her nose was stuffed from her weeping.

Marcus pulled it off her shoulder pack and fumbled around in the darkness until he felt the cold hard steel of the Maglight. Removing it from the pack, he flipped it on. The chamber immediately came into view, dust from the ceiling raining down all around them. Juliana grabbed another light out of the pack but Marcus stopped her.

"We'll need that when this one burns out," he said. "Let's only go on one at a time for now."

Obediently, she put the flashlight back. Marcus decided the first thing they should do is see where the damage was.  He tried hard not to think of the three thousand years of valuable history ruined, not to mention the monkey wrench this was throwing into his well-laid plans of a glorious career. But the damage of the tomb or the future of his profession didn't compare to the value of their lives. As they headed for the antechamber, Kathlyn suddenly came to a halt. Marcus realized she wasn't following and paused.

"What's wrong?" he asked her.

She just stood there, looking around. The strange sensations seemed to be fading now, far less powerful than they had been earlier.  But something was abundantly clear to her.

"It's just like those weird visions I've been having," she said gloomily. "We're buried alive, too."

Marcus didn't want to give in to that kind of depression. "No, we’re not,” he assured her. “Until I die in this place, there's still hope."

"I wonder if all of those feelings I had were a warning," she said. "I wonder if that woman was trying to tell me something and I just wasn't listening."

Marcus retraced his steps and took her by the hand.  "It's possible,” he kissed her cheek. “But right now, we have to see how bad off we are, so lets focus on the situation at hand."

Kathlyn didn't say anymore as they moved through the antechamber and into Chamber E.  The room was intact except for the light coating of dust that covered everything. Chamber D had seen chunks of plaster fall from the ceiling and one of the golden chariots had been damaged.  When Marcus shined the flashlight across the bottomless pit and into Corridor C, they could immediately see what had happened. The entire corridor was caved in.

"So that's where they did it," Marcus said with contempt. He turned back to the group.  "So that's it. We're blocked off via Corridor C."

He began mentally calculating how much air they had left and how much time it would take for Dennis and Mark to dig through. That is, providing, Abrahams and Dougray didn't delay things somehow. He knew McGrath and Bardwell would stop at nothing to dig him out of the tomb. But then he began to wonder if they weren't in on all of this, too.  He doubted it; McGrath was Irish to the core and Bardwell probably wasn't bright enough. Whatever the case, he was sure a rescue mission was being launched at this very moment. He just wondered if it would arrive in time.

Kathlyn sat near the edge of the bottomless pit, lost to her own thoughts. She was feeling so guilty she could hardly stand it. A quagmire of betrayal, sorrow and fear muddled her mind. She sat and toyed absently with a small flashlight attached to a key ring, flashing it down into the pit, listening to the bugs rustle below. Juliana came over and sat down beside her.

"What's rolling through your brain, girlie?" she asked, trying to keep the mood light.

Kathlyn shrugged. "I don't know. I just can't believe all of this. It's like the end of the world or something. Never in my life did I think anything like this would ever come about, at least not through Abrahams."

"Me, either."

"I always thought at some point in time, some crazy would come after me for doing what I do. I just never thought that crazy would come from the top."

"It's too bizarre. Abrahams was always our biggest supporter."

Kathlyn cast her a long look. "Now we know why, don't we?"

Juliana lifted her eyebrows in agreement. "But it's not just a personal attack on you, Kat. It's all of us. We've all been to hell and back with you. I worry what Abrahams and Dougray are going to do to the rest of the team. They have no idea what's really going on and it's not like we can run up there and warn them."

It would have been easy for Kathlyn to give into self pity. With everything she was feeling at the moment, she could have rolled up into a fetal position quite nicely. But she wasn't the type to sit and brood. She could be emotional, but it was normally in short bursts and then she moved on. Now, there was a very serious problem at hand and she needed to think clearly for a solution.

"We'll get out of here," she said with more confidence than she felt. "And then I'm going to kick Abrahams right in the ass."

"What about Dougray?"

She looked up at her husband, standing a few feet away. "I'll let Marcus take care of him."

"A fate worse than death."

"Exactly." She shined the little flash light more seriously into the bottomless pit. "We need to think now. Tombs didn't normally have an escape route, but in the case of the Valley of the Kings, they were packed in fairly close together. We're between KV7 and KV2.  Marcus, how close would you say those tombs are to us?"

He heard his name, listened to the question. "KV7 is probably closer, relatively speaking.  If I remember my diagrams correctly, we're probably right on top the main burial Chamber F. Chamber F also had several storage rooms attached to it that run like catacombs all thought the tomb."

"How close would the burial chamber be to us?"

He shook his head. "There would be several feet of rock between us and the chamber beneath our feet, probably forty or fifty feet. We couldn't possibly dig through it if that's what you're about to suggest."

Kathlyn was quiet a moment. "But I've been thinking," she said thoughtfully. "The bottomless pit is thirty eight feet seven inches deep. Marcus, those bugs have got to be coming from somewhere. They haven't just been living in that pit for three thousand years. Maybe there's a crack or something down there that we can enlarge and slip through."

A quirky smile played on his lips. "I knew there was a reason why I married you."

"And something else," she said. "Remember how you and Lynn were speculating about how that huge head of Anubis got in this chamber? If you take a look at this pit, it's wide enough for that bust to be lifted up through it. Is it possible that this is the way they got it in? And if so, what in the hell is on the other side of the pit walls? How did they bring it here in the first place?"

Lynn jumped into the conversation. "I know KV7. There's no way they could have brought the bust through those chambers and lifted it up through the pit.  Those corridors are far too small, not to mention the little problem of sealing up the bottom of the pit when they're finished. It would be an engineering impossibility."

Kathlyn looked at him. "Who said anything about sealing up the bottom? It could have quite easily been a simple matter of sealing up a side."

Marcus' cobalt blue eyes glittered. "A passage between KV7 and KV65? Are you suggesting that one or more walls of the pit may be mud and not solid rock?"

"There's only one way to find out."

A sense of hope filled them. At least it was something to take their minds off their miserable fate. Marcus removed the grappling hook and rope from her pack and secured the hook to the same pillar they had used twice before.  Pulling the rope around behind him, he repelled down into the pit. Lynn followed and they made the women wait while they killed as many of the crawlies as they could before giving the all clear. Kathlyn had shorts on and her bare legs would have been an open invitation for a scorpion tail or some other stinging creature, so they tried to do the best they could. But it was like trying to plug a dam with a cork when what it really needed was a stopper the size of Texas. The bugs were, literally, everywhere.

Kathlyn and Juliana reached the bottom, using Kathlyn's flashlight to inspect the dark, crumbling partitions. They stomped around, keeping the bugs at bay and trying to look for any clues that might suggest an opening. Marcus and Lynn were on the opposite side and they could hear Lynn cursing when the bugs got too close. The man was built like a tank and scared to death of bugs, although Kathlyn could sympathize. They laughed at him in the middle of such seriousness, laughing harder when he yelled at them to shut up.