The Mongol Objective (36 page)

After pausing only to give her straining muscles a rest, she started up again. Near the end of the light’s reach she paused on the back of a stallion surrounded by six archers, took off her pack and retrieved the other flashlight. She shined it left, then right, then—
there.
A glint of silver.

The case.

Just where Montross had said it would be.

Nina judged the distance, eyed the best approach accessible from the side. Once there she could easily scoop up the case with the grappling hook, then leapfrog the remaining statues back to the shore. The problem was the darkness. With careful aim, she threw the flashlight in an underhand toss so it rolled between six terra cotta warriors and came to a rest, facing backwards, against something lying on the ground.

Ah, there you are, Agent Wagner.

Nina flexed her legs and leapt to the nearest warrior, hugging him about the neck before climbing to his shoulders.

Five minutes later, she dove, ducked, rolled and then stood up in a crouch, ready to drop flat at the slightest sound. But there was nothing. She looked over her shoulder as she scooped up the light she had thrown this way. The army. Thousands of heads and arms and legs and torsos, all standing motionless in the shadows, glaring at her impassively, perhaps inwardly seething at her escape.

She bent down, grabbed the handle of the silver case she had tossed here, picked it up and walked calmly to the nearest boat.

#

The way back wasn’t as hard as Alexander had figured. But what made it more difficult was that Phoebe and Orlando were dragging behind, and they all had to go at the slowest member’s pace. Orlando had lost a lot of blood, and they didn’t have much in the way of nourishment or drugs to help him. But they carefully retraced their steps, back through the room with the collapsed ceiling and up the rope, Orlando’s condition making it considerably more difficult. They continued down the corridor and headed left, back across the tricky mosaic floor, which they managed to cross without slipping or touching any trapped stones.

When they reached the upward-sloping ramp, Caleb, his arm around Alexander’s shoulders said, “Almost out.”

“What next?” Phoebe asked, from behind them. “Do we wait for Nina?”

“She’ll be here,” Montross said.

“Then what?” Orlando asked, his voice weak. “I think I can find us some translation software and we can scan in the text.”

“No.” Montross had quickened his pace, walking ahead of them. His voice was still strong and forceful, echoing in the hallway.

Alexander pulled ahead of his father, trying to catch up with Montross, always eager to be first. “I wonder what time it is. Will it be light outside?”

But then Montross turned, and there was movement at his back, like darker patches of shadow pulling away from what Alexander now realized to be the night sky. As he froze, more shapes detached, separated, circled around Montross, and then spread out into the descending passage—

—surrounding them.

Caleb’s light caught one figure, then another, revealing their black body armor and their face masks. They came equipped with helmets, Kevlar suits, gloves, HK submachine guns, and flashlights attached to their headgear. Beams that suddenly turned on, ten times more intense than their own flashlights. All those beams, stabbing at once, blinding them.

“I’m sorry,” Montross said. “I thought we might have more time, but I knew this was coming.”

“What?” Caleb held up his hand, shielding his eyes. Alexander couldn’t see a thing, having covered his head with his arms. The light was so painful after being in the gloom for hours, and his eyes began to water and his head throb. But then rough hands grabbed his arms and held him fast, just as he heard Phoebe scream.

“Don’t resist.” Montross called out. “Do as they say.”

“That’s right,” came another voice, authoritative and brusque. Footsteps marching down the ramp.

Alexander blinked away the tears, looked up, tried to focus. He saw a large man with his helmet off, short blond hair and a face like an anvil. He spoke into a heavy satellite phone.

“Sir. Yes, we have them.” A pause. Then he aimed a gun—some kind of nasty automatic thing—at Alexander’s face. “One of you kindly hand over the tablet and the keys.”

“We don’t have them,” Caleb protested.

The hammer pulled back.

“He’s right.” Montross again, his voice still surprisingly calm. “We left our treasure back inside the tomb.”

“Bullshit.”

Phoebe cleared her throat. She rose to the occasion quickly, playing along. “Yeah, just go on down there and get it. Take your first left, and then—”

“Shut up.” He turned away. “Edgars, what do you have?”

Alexander saw another man running up, with a box with a handle and a TV screen, and stared at it as he waved it around ahead of him.

“Heat signatures of all present here,” Edgars said. “And one more. Coming towards our location. About ninety yards away.”

The commander nodded. He made a motion with his free hand, and eight commandos slipped away down the ramp. He smiled at Alexander, but kept the gun pointed at his face.

“So, your boss,” Montross said, crossing his arms, “it’s Mr. Robert Gregory, is it? Made it out after all. And here we were, all mourning his incineration.”

“Robert?” Phoebe gasped. “He’s alive?”

Montross nodded. “Alive and apparently far more involved than I gave him credit for. Seems I didn’t investigate my earlier partner carefully enough.”

His shock wearing off, Caleb sighed. “Robert wanted that tablet all his life. He’d stop at nothing to get it. But he fooled me too. I thought he had no more resources than those of a Keeper.”

“Enough,” the commander said. “Let’s all—”

And then gunfire erupted behind them. Three screams in quick succession. Then more. One, two, three.

A soft chuckle escaped Montross’s lips. “She’s led them across the mosaic floor.”

“What?” The commander bristled, then barked into his comm-unit, “Hayes! What’s going on down there? Hayes!”

Nothing.

One more scream, agonized and desperate, as if someone not quite dead writhed on a skewer.

A woman’s voice over the speaker:
“Hayes and your men are incapacitated. Who is this? And where is Xavier Montross?”

“Who is
this
?” the commander snapped back. But then he saw Montross smile. “Ah, Nina Osseni. Your reputation is well-deserved, it seems. Those were some of my best men.”

“
I had some help. Now, why don’t you let Montross go, get back in your choppers or tanks or whatever you brought, and get the hell out of here before I pick you off one by one.”

“Give me the artifacts,” said the commander, “and I’ll let your friends live. Best I can offer.”

“
No deal.”

The commander pressed the barrel of his gun against Alexander’s head and made him cry out. Caleb tried to lunge but couldn’t break free of the strong, restraining arms. Montross calmly held out a hand. “Let me talk to her. I’ll get you what you want.”

The commander looked him over. Then he shrugged and gave him the walkie-talkie. “Fine. But if you order her back inside the tomb, I’ll kill you all, then we’ll go in with every resource I have.”

“Agent Wagner lost almost twenty men down there,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Agent Wagner. Where is she?”

Montross lowered his voice, but couldn’t hide the satisfaction in it. “Alas, she didn’t make it.”

The commander thought for a moment, then shrugged. “You have five seconds.”

Montross took the transmitter. He spoke softly into it. “Nina. Now’s not the time to be a martyr. Come on out peacefully.”

“What?” Caleb pulled at his bonds again. “You can’t—”

“Just do it,” Montross repeated. “And turn over the artifacts.”

Nina’s voice.
“But . . .”

“Do it.”

He handed the transmitter back to the commander, then turned his back on the others and started up the ramp. The commander pointed to Caleb. “Take that one too. In my chopper along with Montross. The others can go in the transport helicopter. Chain them to the chairs. And I don’t want a peep out of them.”

“No!” Alexander cried. “I can’t leave my dad.”

“Shut up, kid. Your Uncle Robert has plans for him. For both of them.”

“You know about that?” Alexander whispered. “The prophecy?”

The commander winked at him. “Mr. Gregory knows everything.”

“I doubt that,” Phoebe said as she walked by, head down. They dragged Orlando next. He seemed to be on the verge of passing out. “Can we get him some medical help?”

“In the chopper,” the commander said, waving them on as he stood in the center of a line of commandos waiting near the entrance.

In under a minute, Nina appeared, walking stoically up the center of the ramp.

She stopped in front of the commander. Her eyes were grim, full of resolve. She handed over the case.

He took it from her, then drove his fist into her gut, driving her to her knees. “When we’re done,” he whispered in her ear, “I’ll flay the skin off your bones for what you did to my men.”

He left her unable to speak, and as he turned and sprinted to the first chopper to join Montross and Caleb, his men restrained Nina and brought her aboard the other helicopter.

#

Inside, they had only handcuffed Alexander’s left wrist to the seat while the others were cuffed, both wrists and ankles, and belted in. As they rose, and as Alexander glanced at each of the faces beside him, seeing their complete desperation, the overwhelming sense of failure, he thought of something.

Digging into his pocket, he pulled out the sheet of paper Montross had given him. He opened it up, flattened it out.

The pilot and the guards in the front seat never turned around.

“What’s that?” Nina whispered. She looked pale, about to collapse from pain and exhaustion.

“Something Xavier gave me earlier,” Alexander said. “Told me I’d know the time to show it to you.” He studied the drawing, frowned, then held it up so Phoebe and Nina could see.

“It’s us,” Phoebe said after a glimpse.

“The same scene, at the tomb’s entrance. It’s what just happened down there,” Alexander said. “He saw it. But I don’t understand.”

“What does it mean?” Orlando asked weakly. His eyes were lolling back in his head, still trying to focus. They had a saline bag hooked to his arm, re-supplying electrolytes and pumping in antibiotics.

Nina’s lips broke into a smile. Her whole face suddenly brightened. “It means that he knew we’d be captured. And he still brought us out of the tomb. We could have waited it out down there, or lured them in to pick them off, but he led us out.”

“So?” Phoebe asked.

“So, Montross doesn’t do anything without thinking it through and seeing the consequences. He saw this, and must have seen something else. Probably that we’d have a better chance of ending this, of winning, if we let ourselves be captured.”

“But,” said Alexander, “that doesn’t make any sense.”

Nina leaned back in her chair. She closed her eyes and kept smiling. “I think it does. I think Montross knows where they’re taking us. And knows, or at least suspects, what’s going to happen. And that we have a good chance of surviving.”

Alexander frowned, rubbing at his handcuff. “Where are we going?”

“A place we probably couldn’t get into by ourselves. Someplace where we’d need the connections and resources of your other uncle to provide access.” She opened her eyes and met their stares.

“We’re going to Egypt. We’re going under the damn Sphinx.”

19.

Cairo, 11 P.M.

Robert Gregory faced the smooth onyx door. With the electric torchlight at his back, his huge shadow stretched over the golden floor and was abruptly devoured by the implacable onyx barrier, the unyielding door that had denied Pharaoh Khufu forty-five hundred years earlier.

Taking a deep breath, Robert spread out his arms to embrace his destiny. In minutes, his brothers would be coming down the stairs behind him, coming to join him on this day of victory, joining him in the fulfillment of the great prophecy.

In 2560 BCE, Khufu had discovered this entrance and attempted to proceed beyond, naively believing himself worthy when he was not. And throughout history, many others have sought that right, believing themselves to be something greater than themselves.

The fools. Today they still believed the Great Pyramid was Khufu’s, when in fact he simply had the arrogance to claim the ancient monument and storehouse for his own tomb. He had expanded the area, building rough imitations for his sons and stamping his name on the whole complex here. But the more reliable sources such as
Herodotus
maintained that the Great Pyramid was built by “a shepherd named Philitis.” And in Robert’s studies of all the resources at the new library, as well as those recovered from the old, it was clear that what was meant here was a derogatory term for a prince from the land of shepherds—or wanderers. The land of the biblical Chosen Ones. The land of Palestine. And the man . . .

This Philitis, this enigmatic character, could be traced to another whose identity is one of the chief mysteries of the Bible.

The time frame pointed to only one of sufficient fame and wisdom to construct such a complex pyramid, something so grand it was never to be duplicated again. One who was mentioned only twice in the Hebrew Bible, yet held a position of mystical, almost divine reverence.
“Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God.”
One who many claimed to have built the Ark of the Covenant himself. The Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts describe him to be ageless, godlike. Many believed him to be the Christ himself, ageless, and later reborn as the Christian world’s savior.

Melchizedek. The King of Righteousness. The Prince of Peace.

Or, as Robert believed, another incarnation of the ancient enemy.

Thoth.

Suddenly he heard noises from above. The motors dying, helicopter blades subsiding.