The Pharaoh's Secret (30 page)

Cairo

Tariq Shakir sat in the darkened control room, waiting for news. There were no radio reports, no buzzing walkie-talkies, only the hardwired phone and the data line that ran the length of the pipeline tunnel back to the Osiris hydroelectric plant. Through these wires came the news that his plan was coming to fruition.

Emergency meetings were being called in Libya. Shakir's man, the opposition leader, was getting favorable press. Money had bought that, but sentiment was turning against the existing government. And that was priceless. Riots were going on in every city. The leaders continued promising more water, but the thrum of the pumps in Shakir's subterranean cavern told him that would never happen. He doubted the existing government would last another twenty-four hours.

Meanwhile, across the Mediterranean, Alberto Piola was back in Rome, holding middle-of-the-night meetings and rallying Italian politicians to his side. He reported that they were ready to acknowledge the new government in Libya the instant it became official and to pledge their support for an Egyptian initiative of stabilization and assistance. The French would follow and both the Algerian and Libyan coups would be well on their way to legitimacy.

The only thing that concerned him was the American NUMA operatives and the Italian intelligence agent. They'd escaped his grasp five hours ago. They still hadn't been seen.

A knock on the door disturbed his train of thought. “Come in,” he commanded.

The door opened and Hassan stepped through.

“I expect to hear of success,” Shakir said.

“Scorpion has just returned from France. His men intercepted the American couple. They had to leave a few bodies behind, but they took what the Americans were after.”

“Was it of value?”

“Limited,” Hassan admitted. “The notes of Villeneuve read like a madman's writings. The artwork is just as bad. According to Scorpion, the Americans seemed to think they'd find something hidden in the paintings, but he and his men have gone through the paintings and torn them apart. They found nothing inside, no hidden notes, no secret messages. If Villeneuve or D'Campion ever learned the truth behind the Black Mist and the antidote, it's been lost to history.”

Shakir was pleased but not totally convinced. “What happened to the Americans?”

“No word. They may have escaped.”

“Have the men find and eliminate them,” Shakir said.

“I think that will expose us to unnecessary—”

“It's not your place to think,” Shakir scolded. “Now, what about our intruders? Any sign of them?”

“Not yet,” Hassan replied. “I told you, it's a long shot that they'll ever find their way out.”

“Keep the men on full alert,” Shakir said. “I don't like this waiting game. I'd much rather—”

The lights flickered in the control room, putting a stop to Shakir's rantings. The computer screens skewed for an instant as if they were about to go off, but then they straightened out. He stood, listening. The sound of the pumps had changed slightly.

The technicians at their consoles heard it too. They began tapping away on their computer keyboards, trying to figure out what was going on. Yellow warning flags began to appear on the screen.

“What's happening?” Shakir demanded.

“We lost power for a second. It's been rerouted through the secondary cable.”

“Why would that happen?” Shakir demanded.

“Either the main cables shorted out or the circuit breaker tripped,” one of the technicians said.

“I understand electricity,” Shakir said. “What caused it?”

He was answered by a thud that shook the bones of the cave. The vibration could be only one thing. An explosion.

Ignoring the technicians, Shakir went out into the hall.

Half the lights were out. Only the emergency systems were operating. In the distance he felt a low rumbling, like a large truck heading his way. He stared down the tunnel. Something was coming, something large. It seemed to be crawling in the dark, filling the tunnel from wall to wall. As he strained to make out what it was, a bank of headlights snapped on, blinding him.

They were older, yellow-tinted beams. Nothing like the ones on his cars. Several of his men ran to intercept the vehicle and were cut down by the hammering sound of a heavy machine gun.

Shakir dove back into the control room as the weapon turned his way. Muzzle flashes lit up the cavern behind him and large-caliber shells blasted chunks from the wall.

“Get your men back down here,” he shouted to Hassan. “The intruders have not followed your script. Instead of leaving, they've returned.”

Hassan ran to the console and picked up the phone again. “Section One,” he yelled. “This is Hassan. Get everyone down here. Yes, immediately. We're under attack.”

Even as he spoke, gunfire from the unknown vehicle blasted out the windows separating the control room from the rest of the cave. Hassan took cover and crawled along the ground as glass and rock rained down on him.

Two of Shakir's men attempted to return fire but were quickly cut down.

“That's not one of our vehicles,” Hassan said. “It's a military machine.”

“Where did it come from?” Shakir asked.

“I have no idea.”

With that, Shakir raced out the side door, vanishing down the secondary tunnel that led to the central burial chamber.

Hassan moved to the side door as a squad of troops positioned themselves to defend the control room. He pulled his sidearm, a 9mm pistol. He had absolutely no intention of standing in the way of whatever was blasting the cave to bits, but he knew he would look better if he ran for cover with a weapon in his hand.

—

Out in the tunnel,
Kurt, Joe and Renata had the opposite intention. It would end today, here and now.

Joe had given one of the AS-42
Saharianas
a long-overdue tune-up. The job was easier than he thought. For one thing, the engines from the bygone era were just that: engines, unlike modern vehicles, which were packed to the gills with air-conditioning systems, emissions controls and every imaginable gizmo and gadget. When Joe opened the hood to the AS-42, all he found was an engine block and a fuel system. That made it easy to work on. And the dry desert air meant zero corrosion of anything metallic. Most important, the clandestine base had been stocked with a full set of tools and spare parts.

The only problem was fuel and getting the AS-42 started. Every drop of gas the Italians had brought with them had evaporated decades ago, no matter what kind of container it was in. Not that it would have been any good had it remained.

But the ATV had a tank of fuel in it and a siphon was easy to rig up. It also had a deep-cycle battery and that was easy enough to transfer to the old machine. When the
Sahariana
came to life, Joe felt a sense of pride. Not surprisingly, the deep rumbling of the engine boosted the spirits of all three of them. Now they would ride into battle on the near equivalent of a tank while everyone against them would be on foot.

While Joe worked on the vehicle, Kurt and Renata took up the more thankless job of clearing the entrance back into the main tunnel. They used the ATV to drag the larger boulders and then shoveled the rest until there was just enough room for the low-profile AS-42 to squeeze through.

With sore backs and aching legs, they took up a second task of checking and loading weapons. The vehicle Joe had restored to life carried a Breda Modello 37 heavy machine gun, which fired large shells from twenty-round cartridges. In addition, it carried a 20mm antitank gun that was affixed to a firing platform in the rear. Kurt had found plenty of ammunition for each weapon, but much of it was unusable. He stocked what looked good into the back of the vehicle and brought along two Beretta Model 1918 submachine guns, whose odd design required the magazine to protrude vertically from the top of the weapon instead of downward like most fully automatic weapons.

As a last resort, Kurt still had two vials of the Black Mist. To protect themselves if they had to use it, they'd gathered three gas masks from the Italian cache.

Armed, they began the return trip. Finding their way back to the main hall proved easy enough, but figuring out which tunnel to take from there was more difficult. Several wrong turns later, they came upon the split in the tunnel where the two ATVs had overturned.

Hassan had wisely posted guards there, but the men weren't expecting a fight and Kurt took them out with the Breda before they knew what hit them.

From there, they continued toward the central hub of the cave system, discovering the heavily insulated power lines along the way. Using explosives from the Italian supply lockers, they blasted apart the cable at a junction. They'd expected a total blackout but only got a dimming of the light.

“Power still coming from somewhere,” Joe had said.

“We can't worry about it,” Kurt replied. “I have a feeling we just announced our arrival. That puts us squarely in the ad-lib phase now. We need to find Shakir before he gets away.”

They rumbled up the main tunnel, tangled with a second group of Shakir's men and spotted Shakir himself outside the control room. Kurt opened fire, not to kill him but to force him back into the control center, hoping to trap him. He hadn't counted on a second exit.

Pulling up in front of the control room, Kurt jumped down with the Beretta submachine gun in hand. As he entered the room, he saw two engineers cowering underneath a computer console, but no sign of Shakir.

“Chicken has flown the coop,” he shouted to Joe. “He must have gone out the back door.”

“I'll see if we can loop around and cut him off,” Joe replied.

Kurt gave him the go signal and watched as the AS-42 rumbled forward. To prevent Shakir from doubling back, he moved into the control room. He kept his weapon on the engineers and paused beside the lit console. On the screens above it, he could see the outline of North Africa, along with the network of pumps and pipelines Shakir was using to drain the aquifer.

“English?” Kurt asked.

One of them nodded. Kurt pointed the Beretta their way. “Time to turn it off.”

When they held still, Kurt fired a burst of shells into the floor beside them. Both men hopped up and went to the console. They began typing and throwing switches. Kurt was familiar with pumps and pressure gauges, they were present on every salvage job, reclamation project and ship he'd ever been stationed on. Studying the layout, he instantly saw an opportunity.

“I changed my mind,” he said. “Don't turn them off.”

The men looked at him.

“Reverse them.”

“We don't know what'll happen if we reverse the pumps,” one man said.

“Let's find out,” Kurt said, raising the submachine gun a fraction to enforce the order.

The technicians went back to work and Kurt watched with satisfaction as the flow rates listed on the screen diminished, with the numbers for pumps along the Nile dropping first to zero and then, after a brief pause, increasing again, this time highlighted in red with a minus sign next to them.

A short time later, arrows on each pipeline flipped and showed water going the opposite way, from the Nile back through the pipes and—Kurt hoped—back down into the aquifers.

—

While Kurt
was in the control room, Joe urged the AS-42 onward. The old warhorse moved slowly. The engine was fine, but the tires were mush: dry-rotted and completely flat. It felt like he was driving on marshmallows. Still, they didn't need to break any speed records down there. Just move slowly and take out all resistance, which Renata was doing with deadly efficiency with the Breda heavy machine gun.

At a T-junction in the tunnel, he began a turn and the AS-42 wallowed around the corner. Down the passageway, several of Shakir's men had set up shop behind one of the ATVs. They opened fire, riddling the front of the
Sahariana
.

Joe threw the transmission into reverse and backed out of the firing line. The nose of the vehicle was punched with bullet holes, but, fortunately, the engine was in the back.

“Get out one of those antitank shells,” he said to Renata.

Renata pulled out one of the small, grenade-sized explosive shells from an ammunition locker. They were supposed to be fired from a bazooka-like weapon, but none of the tubes they'd found seemed to be the right fit. Joe had brought them along anyway in case they needed to blow something up.

“What do you want me to do with it?” Renata asked.

“Fling it down the hall,” he shouted. “And then when I drive past and they're busy shooting at me, you pop around the corner and shoot the explosive. You'll have to hit it with one shot.”

“I don't miss very often,” she said confidently.

“Good.”

She climbed out with the explosive in one hand and a Beretta submachine gun over her shoulder. Edging to the corner, she flipped the explosive down the adjacent tunnel toward Shakir's men and pulled back.

Joe revved the engine and jammed the vehicle back into gear. It surged forward, riding unevenly on its damaged tires. It passed the top of the T-junction in a second as a half dozen shots still came his way. Joe ducked instinctively. When he passed the far wall, he looked back.

Renata had moved, as planned, aimed and fired. A deafening boom thundered through the cave, hurling up a cloud of dust. When it cleared, the ATV down the hall was on its side. Several men lay around it, the others were gone. It seemed as if Shakir and his men were running for the hills.

“I'm going for the lab,” Renata shouted. “To see if there's anything else useful there.”

She ran down the hall, covered face to foot in brown dust. It was quite effective camouflage.

Joe watched her go, got the AS-42 back into position and rolled
down the tunnel, driving with one hand and firing the Breda with the other hand anytime he spotted a group of Shakir's men.