The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (140 page)

Then she heard it. “
Elasepha.
”

Down
. Brandt and Rebecca had followed the lower passages.

“They headed down,” Bunny informed the group. “Bring it on screen,” she encouraged Stark, who brought up a map of the passages.

“It’s a dead end,” Prenner stated.

No duh. Everything in that pyramid was a dead end. Unless…

Was it by accident they went down, or did Rebecca remember the controversy of the 1996 documentary
Sleeping Prophet
, which suggested that there were a series of tunnels under the Pyramids and Sphinx, linking them all?

“Get me”—Bunny snapped her fingers, trying to remember the name of the quasi-scientist—”Dr. Schor. I think that’s his name. There should be a diagram in his most recent paper.”

Emily stepped forward. “Dr. Schor. Should I know who that is?”

Bunny didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure yet. The idea had been so crackpot at the time. As a matter of fact, Schor and a few other researchers who had joined their voices to the “There are tunnels under the pyramids” theory had flip-flopped so many times it was hard to keep track of them with a scorecard.

“Here we go…” Stark said as the elaborate tunnel system came up, overlaid on the map of the pyramids.

Underground passages that were supposedly “documented” were in green. Others were yellow, orange, and red. The warmer the color, the more it was based on speculation.

“What are we looking at?” Prenner asked.

Bunny pointed to the green tunnels, which were the fewest in number. “These were ‘discovered’ with ground-penetrating radar…These others were guessed at to complete the circuit.”

If these scientists were correct—and Bunny was nowhere close to saying that they were—it did give Brandt and the rest a chance. A slim one, but a chance.

“But how are they going to find it?” Emily asked. “After the hundreds of excavations of that pyramid, how are they going to find it?”

Bunny stared at the very-red tunnel that abutted the westernmost wall of the lower passage. Was the tunnel just a figment of the scientists’ imagination or a real structure the Egyptians had used to unite the pyramids? Either way, it was obscure. Super-obscure.

“Hell if I know.”

* * *

You had to give it to Rebecca. She was snapping pictures and trying to read the chicken scratch even as Levont was rigging the C4.

“Update,” Brandt asked Talli.

The man craned his head over his shoulder. “Best I can tell they haven’t attacked because they think they have us cornered and the tourist bureau doesn’t want any permanent damage to the tunnels.”

Yeah, they really wouldn’t appreciate what Brandt was about to do. But they couldn’t count on the cops to stay their hand just because their government told them to. All it took was one yahoo with a hero complex and
boom
.

It didn’t matter what country or what situation. There was always one of them in the bunch that had to make it go
boom
.

“Hold on,” his fiancée said. “Think…I think this wall may be booby-trapped.”

“Rebecca…”

“No, really,” she protested. “This here…
Any trying to pass will meet, or visit, or run into, the wrath of Anubis.
”

They really didn’t have time for this, but this was Rebecca. He couldn’t just order her to shut up. If only he could in situations like this.

“Any other bright ideas, then?” he asked. If you couldn’t beat her straight on, let her beat herself.

“I just need a few more minutes to translate…”

She stopped as Vakasa laughed merrily, then kissed the black stone. The little girl jabbered in at least five different languages. Brandt caught, at the least, German, Russian, Arabic, possibly Norwegian, and Swahili.

“Say it again,” Rebecca said. “But slowly.
Lentement
.”

“
Katika
,” the little girl said.

Levont nodded. “That’s Swahili for ‘in the.’”

Vakasa smiled. “Oldhos de.”

“‘Eyes of,’” Lopez filled in. “It was Porteguese.”

Brandt encouraged the girl to continue. Rapidly, she spat out another sentence, which took the entire room to translate the translation.

Rebecca finally summarized. “In the eyes of Khepri, find the rise and fall.”

Frowning, Brandt gave the nod to Levont. “Put the detonator in.”

“Wait,” Rebecca begged.

“That makes about as much sense in English as it did in the fourteen other languages she used.”

Rebecca ignored him. Of course. Instead, she muttered to herself, “Eye of Khepri. Eye of Khepri.”

* * *

Brandt was right. The passage made no sense, but the way Vakasa beamed up at her, it had to mean something. And the ancient Egyptians were known for booby traps. Possibly even biological weapons. Just ask anyone on the Tutankhamen expedition. Oh, wait, most of them you couldn’t because they had died shortly after the opening of the tomb. Currently, the hypothesis was that the tomb was coated in a deadly strain of E. coli.

But what in the hell did Khepri have to do with anything? Rebecca scoured her ancient religions memories. Khepri was the god of something. But wasn’t everybody a god in legend?

“Atum,” Vakasa said.

That was so not helpful. “Anybody?” Rebecca asked the group, but they all shook their heads. Between Brandt, Lopez, Levont, Talli, and her, they had every major language group covered.

“I don’t understand, Vakasa. Atum?” Rebecca asked.

The little girl’s smile only spread. “Ra.”

Now Ra, Ra Rebecca got. The Sun God. The head hauncho of the Egyptian Heliopolis. Rebecca nearly smacked herself on the forehead. Atum was a sun god as well. Only, Ra had a lot more charisma or something, because Atum was phased out for Ra as the cult spread in ancient Egypt.

Khepri! Now Rebecca got it. He was the god of the sunrise.

“Which way is east?” Rebecca asked. When Brandt looked confused, she grabbed his shoulder. “East!”

Lopez was the one to point to the wall to his right. “Thata way.”

Vakasa joined her as Rebecca dug into the wall.

Brandt was none to happy about it. “Rebecca, we’ve got to get a safe distance up the tunnel before—”

“No,” Rebecca protested as the limestone chipped away. “It’s here. If there is a tunnel, it is here.”

“Guys…” Talli said, backing up toward them. “There’s some guy up there rallying the troops to get this over with. He’s got a flash bang.”

“Damn it,” Brandt spat. “Rebecca, we don’t have time—”

Her knife hit something hard. “There!”

Rapidly, the crumbling wall revealed another black slab. Only, this didn’t have any hieroglyphics. Rebecca figured if you got this far, the ancient Egyptians assumed you knew what you were doing.

Wasn’t there a second half to that passage?
Find the rise and the fall
?

What in the heck did that mean? Well, she’d better find out quickly, as Brandt’s thumb was over the detonator.

Then she heard it. The tinny sound of something bouncing. Not something. A grenade.

Vakasa put a palm on the slab and pushed up. Desperate, Rebecca helped her. With a groan, the stone gave way. Unfortunately, so did the ground they stood on.

* * *

Fuck
.

What was the rule? What was always the goddamned rule? Don’t fucking touch ancient artifacts.

Guess Rebecca forget, as she tumbled down a dark passage.

“Do I shoot it?” Talli asked as he aimed at the grenade bounding its way to them.

“No!” Brandt barked. He didn’t have time to give any more orders than that. He just grabbed Lopez by the collar and chucked him down the stone slide. Levont seemed to get the general idea and dove headlong right behind the corporal. Good thing, because the trap door was beginning to close.

Talli jumped out of the way of the grenade. Brandt simply shoved him, sending him down the secret passage. He made it, but damn, that doorway was getting narrow, and Brandt was
not
a skinny guy.

Hurling himself, Brandt went in headfirst, but twisted midair. He watched the grenade bounce past. Waiting one heartbeat, Brandt hit the detonator. The wall blew at the same time as the grenade. Chips of limestone flew through the closing door, peppering Brandt’s side.

But it was worth it. The grenade explosion should cover up their C4 explosives. Hopefully the Egyptians could never prove Special Forces were there.

Then he was slipping and sliding down the slick stone, gaining speed. Brandt only knew the ramp actually ended by the sound of groans as the others hit bottom.

“Incoming!” Brandt warned. He could hear the others scramble to get out of the way. He tried to slow his descent, but there was just nothing to grab hold of. Finally, he gave up as he rounded a curve and slammed into Talli. Bouncing off the sniper, he ran into Levont, who wasn’t a lightweight himself. The three of them crashed into the wall.

Shoving the men away, Brandt made it to his feet, a little wobbly but on his feet.

Lopez swept his light at their surroundings, which looked very similar to the tunnel upstairs. Chiseled limestone.

“You okay?” Brandt asked Rebecca, who stood to the side, guarding Vakasa in her arms.

Rebecca held up a hand. “I know, I know. Don’t touch the artifacts.” Then she smiled. “This one, though,” Rebecca said, indicating to Vakasa, “I think this one actually enjoyed it.”

The little girl’s bright smile took some of the sting out of the multiple bruises he’d just received.

Talli and Levont rose more slowly, brushing off the debris.

They all stood silently for a moment. Craning their ears to see if anyone was going to follow them down the ramp. Sure, there was plenty of noise up there, but their escape seemed undetected.

Brandt swung around to face Rebecca. Her eyes darted to the rest of the men.

“What?” she asked. “Why is everyone looking at me?”

CHAPTER 17

══════════════════

Undisclosed Location

2:44 p.m. (EST)

Bunny watched the live feed from the video screen. No, they didn’t have satellite feed, but they did have CNN. Reports were still sketchy. The only thing everyone could concur upon was that there had been an explosion.

For now, they were blaming it on an overzealous officer, but after watching the base of the pyramid shake and the amount of dust that blew out the entrance, it looked as though it might have been something with a little more kick that was set off.

“It’s good they haven’t reported any remains,” Emily stated as she got her phone out.

Bunny had tried to block that sequella out of her mind. Rebecca had to have found that entrance to the underground passages. She just had to.

“Listen to this!” Stark said as he put the audio feed from the police radio on speaker. Everything was so garbled it was hard to make out anything specific.

“Where could they have gone?” an English-speaking voice called out. “Where?”

She hugged Stark, who blushed. Bunny didn’t think Davidson would mind, given the circumstances.

Even in an explosion of that magnitude, there would have been body parts, well, all over the place. If they were asking where Brandt and the others had gone, they must not have found any—at all.

Emily answered her phone and spoke quickly, relaying the information to her boss. She put a hand over the phone, indicating to the schematic of the underground tunnels, which it turned out were no longer theoretical. “Which way are they going to go?”

Bunny studied the map, trying to think like Rebecca. She tried to imagine herself suddenly in a millennia-old system of tunnels built by ancient engineers. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all that hard. Not after spending any time with Brandt and company.

The question was, how well did Rebecca remember the layout of the tunnels? After about two hundred yards, the tunnel from the Khufu pyramid split into three. One tunnel went out to the Cheops pyramid. The second tunnel emptied out into a near labyrinth of passages that crisscrossed between the other, more minor pyramids. The third main branch angled out to the Sphinx.

Breaking Bunny’s concentration was a strange beep. One. Then a pause, then a second one.

“What’s that?”

Stark’s eyebrows merged into a unibrow. “Not me.” Then his face opened up into a grin. “I left the channel open.”

It took a moment for Bunny to realize which channel he was talking about. Davidson’s channel.

Bunny snatched the headset from Stark. “Sam, is that you?”

* * *

Davidson hit the sat phone button once. The faint click was far quieter than if he’d whispered.

“Oh, thank God.” Bunny sighed. He liked the sound of it. Living in isolation for most of his life, it was odd for someone to worry about him. And a girl? Davidson had written that concept off even before all the burns.

“Yeah, okay,” Bunny continued, clearly nudged on by someone else in the room with her. “Lieutenant Prenner thinks that you have probably set up across from the Great Pyramid. Is that correct?”

Looking through the scope at the sheer and utter chaos at the entrance to the monument, Davidson hit the button once.

“Great—well, not great,” Bunny corrected. “I think Rebecca found them a way out of there and they are heading away from the pyramid.”

Davidson let out air through his teeth. Since that explosion, he’d been worried he was protecting a perimeter that no longer needed protecting.

He clicked the button once.

“There is three ways they could go…” Bunny’s voice trailed off. She wasn’t the most decisive of women. Actually, she kind of hated making decisions, especially big decisions. The ones where your backside was on the line.

He clicked the button once to give her some reassurance.

“I think…Emily needs a direction to go to. She’s arranging an extraction team.”

Davidson clicked it again. He had so little information he couldn’t even begin to help Bunny decide. And it seemed like she had an army guy and a CIA operative. Neither of them was going to know Rebecca and her mind better than Bunny, though.

A rustling sounded when Bunny put her hand over the receiver. He could only make out mumbling until she came back on the line.