The Forbidden Tomb (54 page)

‘Yes, of course. The entire amount will be transferred to her family.’

‘And they’ll still be brought to America?’

Papineau nodded. ‘The arrangements have already been made. First class. All expenses paid. The money will be waiting for them when they arrive.’

Cobb could feel the tension in his shoulders start to ease. Jasmine and her family had been weighing heavily on his mind since the desert. He knew that money wouldn’t make up for the loss of a child, but he was glad to hear that Jasmine’s efforts would not be in vain. Her family would have the life that she wanted them to have.

‘Did you tell them what happened?’

Papineau shook his head. ‘They know nothing, except that she will not be meeting them at the airport. I assumed that you . . .’

Cobb nodded. ‘I’ll take care of it. Thanks.’

Per their original agreement, Papineau didn’t actually owe anyone a full share for a failed mission, but in his heart he knew it was the right thing to do, particularly with the guilt that lingered in the back of his mind about Jasmine. He knew that he had failed her and the others by not detailing the violent outcome of Manjani’s expedition when he had briefed them in Florida. If they had been warned about the attack on Egyptian soil, Cobb would have handled things differently in Alexandria.

His omission had put the team at risk.

As Papineau stared at the sea in silence, Garcia poked his head through the door and cleared his throat to get their attention.

‘Jack,’ he said tentatively, ‘do you have a minute?’

Cobb nodded. He welcomed a distraction. Anything to take his mind off Jasmine. ‘Of course. What do you need?’

Garcia lowered his eyes in shame. ‘I know I shouldn’t be working at a time like this. But, you know, it’s who I am, and I needed something to do.’

Cobb stepped forward and put his hand on Garcia’s shoulder. Unlike Sarah and McNutt, the computer whiz had never encountered death in the field. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ he assured them, ‘I’m fine. It’s just, well, I was going through some things on my system, and I noticed something that I can’t explain.’

‘What kind of something?’ Cobb asked.

Garcia looked at him. ‘Can I show you?’

‘Of course. Lead the way.’

* * *

Cobb and Papineau followed Garcia into his command center and stood in front of the bank of monitors. Each screen was filled with streaming lines of codes, oscillating signal meters, and other images that were beyond their grasp. To Cobb and Papineau, it was hi-tech gibberish – a secret language that only hackers could decipher.

Garcia explained what he had been doing. ‘When we first tapped into the security at the bunker, the goal was to pull all the video feeds from their network, so we could see what they saw. To do that, I used a program that selected only what we needed. The criterion was simple: video signals originating from inside the compound. Everything else was filtered out into a digital scrap bin. With only two computers at the camp, I didn’t have the resources to sort and scan all the data, but I do now. Over the last few hours, I’ve been making my way through the trash. Most of it was digital garbage – just like I figured it would be – but then I came across this.’

Garcia tapped his keyboard, and the monitors switched from unintelligible streams of data to a webcam video of a panoramic desert scene.

It was so picturesque it looked like a screensaver.

‘Pretty scenic, eh?’

‘Very,’ Papineau answered. ‘When was this recorded?’

‘It wasn’t,’ Cobb said as he studied the image. He knew it had been dark when he had first tapped into the communications shed and the sun hadn’t risen until
after
the compound was destroyed. ‘This is a live feed.’

Garcia nodded, glad that Cobb had figured it out on his own. ‘You’re right. It’s a batch signal from an outside source.’

‘Define
batch
,’ Papineau said.

‘Eight in total,’ Garcia explained. ‘They cover a complete panorama.’

With the tap of a button, the main screen was split into a grid of nine boxes. The center block was empty, but the eight perimeter squares combined to offer a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the desert.

The fact that the ground wasn’t smoldering and the air wasn’t gray with toxic smoke told Cobb that this was not being sent from the bunker site. ‘Where is this?’

Garcia clicked his mouse, and a map of the Western Desert appeared on one of his screens. A pulsating red dot drew their attention to a spot a few miles from the carnage. ‘It’s coming from right there.’

Papineau leaned closer, hoping to see something important.

But all he saw was desert.

He turned toward Garcia. ‘What are we looking at?’

‘Beats me,’ he said. He had stared at the images for several fruitless minutes before he had found the courage to bother Cobb and Papineau. ‘I can enlarge the frame a thousand percent, and it’s still the same damn thing. It’s just sand blowing in the wind. Why the hell would anyone take the time to monitor the barren desert?’

‘Bird watching,’ McNutt suggested from the doorway.

Cobb turned and smiled, appreciative of the levity.

McNutt made it clear that he wasn’t joking.

‘Seriously, chief, I’ve seen this type of setup before.’

‘Bird watching?’ Papineau muttered.

‘Not just birds,’ McNutt explained. ‘Alligators, elephants, unicorns – you name it. They put cameras like this in the jungle, so why not the desert? Anywhere there are animals humping, there’s a pervert who wants to watch. Trust me, I’m one of ’em.’

‘A pervert or a humping animal?’ Sarah asked as she entered the room.

Her presence was so surprising that it caught everybody off guard. She had been keeping to herself since their return to the boat, only emerging to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Other than that, she had stayed in her berth.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘Both,’ McNutt said with a laugh.

From across the room, Cobb made eye contact with Sarah. No words were said, but a lot was expressed with a simple glance. He knew that she was still devastated over the death of her friends and understood that her humor was nothing more than a brave front for the sake of the team. He also sensed that she was looking for a distraction of any kind, even if that meant making fun of McNutt for an hour or two.

Meanwhile, Garcia focused on the problem at hand. He pounded furiously on his keyboard until he came across a secured website that seemed to address their needs. Though he couldn’t access the feed itself – the entire site was password-protected, and he didn’t have time to break the encryption with everyone waiting – he was able to read the message on the welcome screen.

‘You’re not going to believe this, but it looks like Josh is right.’

‘Bird watching?’ Papineau repeated.

Garcia nodded as he read aloud. ‘The Western Desert Observation Initiative is an ongoing effort to study the unique wildlife of the region . . . yadda yadda yadda . . . in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs . . . blah blah blah . . . rodents, snakes, and birds . . . and so forth.’

‘Told ya!’ McNutt bragged. ‘Granola-eating tree huggers are everywhere – even in places
without
trees. Tell me how that makes sense.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘It doesn’t. Wildlife studies concentrate on specific areas of interest like a nest, a watering hole, maybe a food source. That’s the exact opposite of this. You don’t put cameras in the middle of a giant void unless there’s a reason.’

Garcia didn’t understand. ‘What kind of reason?’

‘This isn’t research. This is security.’

‘Security?’ McNutt said with a laugh. ‘I realize you’re a thief and all – oops, sorry, I mean a “retrieval specialist” – but in every heist movie that I’ve ever seen, the security cameras are pointing
at
something. You know, something
valuable
.’

‘True,’ she said, ‘but you know what else those movies have in common? The valuables are always stolen because the cameras are in the wrong place.’

‘How so?’ Cobb asked.

‘Think about it,’ she explained. ‘Cameras are usually placed on the outer walls and are pointed inward at something of value. For some reason, people feel safer when guards are able to keep an eye on things from a distance. However, a system like that has a major flaw. The cameras are located on the periphery of the room. That allows someone like me to sneak in and access the camera feeds before I even set foot inside.’

‘And here?’

She studied the video feeds on the screen. ‘These guys did it right. Look at that coverage. If you want to make sure something is safe, you set up multiple cameras in the middle of a zone and point the lenses
away
from the thing that you’re trying to protect. That way you know what’s coming to steal it at all times.’

‘
It
? What’s
it
?’ Garcia demanded, still not connecting the dots in his mind. ‘What in the world would someone want to steal in the middle of the desert?’

She tapped on the blank center square. ‘The tomb.’

Monday, November 1
0

Sahara Desert

(
10
miles southeast of Siwa)

The decision to forge ahead was an easy one. The team was still reeling from the loss of Jasmine, and Cobb sensed this was a golden opportunity to work through their grief together. He knew that Jasmine’s last thoughts were of Alexander, and while they couldn’t bring her back, they could do something that would honor her sacrifice.

Plus, the evidence was too damn compelling to ignore.

As was his way, Cobb insisted on advanced reconnaissance before allowing his team to return to the Western Desert, but unlike previous rekkys that required boots on the ground, he conducted this one without leaving the boat. With assistance from Garcia, he used images from the spy satellites circling overhead and the live video feed from the surveillance cameras at the site to work out the details of their mission.

On the surface, Cobb’s plan seemed part-suicidal and part-inspired, but he assured the team that it would work if, and only if, they trusted McNutt with their lives. Not surprisingly, the vote was quick and unanimous: all in favor of the scheme. Despite his wacky ways, they knew McNutt was a first-rate soldier who wouldn’t let them down. If he promised that he could protect the team, then they damn well believed it.

After the vote, they spent the next several hours gathering supplies, a process that went smoothly thanks to Papineau’s money and connections.

By dawn, the team was packing their cargo into the back of a desert-modified Land Cruiser. When the storage space proved to be insufficient, they loaded the rest of their gear onto the roof of the 4×4 off-road vehicle while saying their goodbyes to Papineau, who would stay behind on the yacht.

Dressed in desert clothes and local headwear to blend in, they reached the periphery of the site a few hours later and were taken aback by the stark terrain. Though they had studied the video feeds in advance and already knew there were no lakes, rock formations, or geographic features to mark the tomb in this flat stretch of desert, the location was more desolate than they had imagined. There was nothing but sand in all directions.

‘This place sucks,’ Garcia muttered.

‘You say that like
sucking
is a bad thing,’ McNutt joked.

Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Is it too late to change my vote?’

Cobb nodded. ‘That’s affirmative.’

‘In that case, I’m going to walk the site to get a feel of things.’

‘Before you do,’ he said while handing her a wire cutter, ‘take out the cameras.’

She covered her face and opened her door. ‘With pleasure.’

Once the cameras were offline and the gear was unloaded, McNutt established a defensive perimeter by lining the terrain with rattlers – the same devices that had protected their camp near Siwa. If they worked as intended, the tiny motion detectors would alert him to the presence of the Muharib the moment they approached.

That is,
if
they approached.

After planting the devices, McNutt climbed to the roof of the SUV and erected a small Mylar canopy that offered a few square feet of shade. Though the fabric kept him relatively cool, he was far more concerned about the glare. He knew that the high-powered spotting scope he had placed on the small tripod next to his rifle would work best in the absence of direct sunlight.

As an added benefit, the others were jealous of his setup.

While they slaved away in the desert sun, he sat on the roof in a folding chair and peered out over the landscape. From his elevated position, he could see for miles in every direction, prepared to eliminate any threat. His lone job was to keep them safe while they searched for the tomb using ground-penetrating radar (GPR).

Gone are the days when most archaeological discoveries were made through trial and error. Instead, modern explorers commonly use GPR to locate ruins and artifacts before the topsoil is even breached. The low-frequency radio waves are transmitted into the ground by a lawn-mower-shaped device, which is pushed back and forth in a grid pattern. Once the radio waves bounce back to the surface, the onboard computer provides data on the depth of the object and the consistency of the soil, as well as an image of the item itself.

Needless to say, it eliminates a lot of the guesswork.

And saves a tremendous amount of time.

The heat and wind of the Sahara certainly presented their challenges, but the dry, sandy soil was almost perfect for this type of radar imaging. In fact, there were few geological materials that could offer a better picture than sand.

Less than thirty minutes into the process, Garcia was still getting a feel for the device when it started to beep like crazy. He assumed he had done something wrong until he looked at the screen and noticed a large object, roughly seven feet underneath the surface. Having little practice with GPR other than a few test runs in Fort Lauderdale, he decided to keep the information to himself until he was certain of his discovery.