The Pharaoh's Secret (32 page)

Kurt glanced around, listening. The chamber had gone silent. The shooting was over. And then a disturbance near the Sphinx stirred the water as one of the crocodiles knifed down the lane, snapped its jaws on the dead soldier's body and rolled over in a swirling death spiral.

“Better get Renata,” Joe said.

Kurt was already moving, grabbing a gas mask from the wrecked vehicle, pulling it over his face and cinching it tight.

Even having spent half his life in water, Kurt was always amazed how hard it was to run once the water level reached above one's knees. He charged forward and found Renata floating and unconscious. He grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder and climbed up on the stone coffin.

From there, he could see the dilemma. The hungry crocodiles had made their way out of the pit. They were moving around the shallow waters now filling the burial chamber in search of a meal. He counted four, but that didn't mean he was seeing all of them.

Behind him, Joe had climbed onto the side of the AS-42 and was safe for the moment. But the water was still rising. Seeing no danger between them, Kurt waved Joe over.

With a gas mask on, Joe trudged to the nearest sarcophagus and climbed up. From there, he hopped from one to the next until he stood with Kurt.

“Biting dilemma we find ourselves in,” Joe said.

Kurt could hear the humor through the mask, though it was muffled. “Let's hope not,” he said.

On the water, Shakir was floating faceup, bobbing in four feet of water. Right beside him was the last vial of Black Mist.

“Cover me,” Kurt said.

He hopped down and waded toward Shakir and the glass container with the toxin inside it. He knew they could use both to their advantage. Shakir might even be more important if they could get him to talk.

He snatched the vial out of the water and grabbed Shakir with his other hand. Towing Shakir, he was moving even slower than before.

“Hurry!” Joe shouted, raising the Breda and firing over Kurt's head.

Kurt tried to hurry, but buoyancy made it difficult to get any traction and, as he tried to run, his feet slipped. Trudging forward, he reached the sarcophagus, hopped out of the water and tried to pull Shakir up onto it.

A bulge of water surged toward them again. A twelve-foot croc
appeared and closed its jaws on Shakir's legs. Kurt's grasp was overcome in an instant and the croc whipped Shakir's body backward and then dragged him under.

The water churned green and red with foam as several of the other beasts fought over the body, and then one of them swam off with the others chasing.

“Guess he's going to meet the god of the afterlife
now
,” Joe said.

“Something tells me Osiris isn't going to like what he's done with the place,” Kurt replied.

“Not that he didn't deserve it,” Joe said, “but there goes our last real chance to find the antidote.”

Kurt stood, scanning the water that lapped at the edge of the coffin beneath his feet. “If we're not careful, we're going to end up following him,” he said. “This little island isn't going to protect us. I've seen crocs in the Amazon jump five feet out of the water to snatch birds from a tree. I've seen worse at the edges of watering holes, where they took down big game.”

Joe agreed. “What do you say we leave now while they're eating?”

“I'll carry Renata. You carry that machine gun. We'll cut straight across to the ramp and then back out toward the Osiris plant. I'll dump the contents of the vial out behind us. You shoot at anything that gets in front of us. And we go as fast as we can.”

“Right,” Joe said. “I have a feeling that last part is key.”

Kurt lifted Renata up over his shoulder and wrapped his left arm around her legs. He held the vial in his right hand.

“Looks clear,” Joe said.

Just to be sure, he fired a few shots into the water ahead of them. He jumped in and began wading forward. Joe was certain
he'd be eaten alive before he got halfway to the tunnel. He fired at something to the left. It was just a shoe. He swung to the right but saw nothing.

Kurt jumped in behind him and flipped the top of the vial open with his thumb and began spritzing the contents out behind them, swishing the water as he went.

He turned as Joe fired again. This time, something raced off through the water in the opposite direction. Kurt watched as it curled around behind them and began an attack run.

Looking back, he saw the beast knifing in. “Joe!” he shouted.

The Breda sounded off once again—two bullets fired—and then it jammed. The crocodile continued forward and crashed into Kurt's legs.

The impact knocked him backward, but its jaws never opened, and when Kurt got back to the surface, he saw it floating away like a harmless toy in the pool. Whether it was the effect of the Black Mist or the accuracy of Joe's shooting, Kurt would never know.

Joe reached the ramp ahead of him, but, in seconds, all three of them were high and dry.

They rested for a moment, yet the water was still rising.

“Let's go home,” Kurt said.

Joe cleared the Breda and they made their way down the access tunnel, past the mummified frogs, to the Anubis room with the pipeline and the tram. One car remained and they climbed in, powered it up and began the ride back to the Osiris plant.

When they finally arrived at the hydroelectric plant, the door to the generator room was already pinned wide open. They stepped from the tramcar and were met by a dozen men in Egyptian military uniforms. Rifles were pointed at them and Joe laid his weapon down and raised his hands. Kurt raised his hands as well, balancing Renata over his shoulder.

A sharp-eyed man came up to them. His uniform was marked with the Eagle of Saladin, indicating he was a major, just as Edo had been when Joe met him.

The major studied Renata's prone form and then looked Kurt and Joe over. “Are you Americans?”

Kurt nodded.

“Zavala and Austin?”

They nodded again.

“Come with me,” he said. “General Edo would like to see you.”

Edo stood in his old uniform, which still fit after two years as a civilian.

“Did you reenlist while we were gone?” Joe asked.

“It's just for show,” he said. “I led these men in. I thought I should look the part.”

“Did you face much resistance?”

“Not here,” Edo insisted. “The men working the plant are civilians, but we dealt with several groups of the Osiris special units coming out of that tunnel. And Shakir will not take this without responding. We have some allies in the government and military, but he does also.”

“I wouldn't worry about Shakir,” Joe said. “The only problem he's going to cause now is a case of crocodilian indigestion.”

Kurt added the details, explaining Shakir's death and highlighting the treasures they'd found at the other end of the tunnel, treasures that were now underwater once more.

Edo listened in a state of fascination. “A great victory,” he concluded.

“An incomplete one,” Kurt said. He held out the empty vial. “All we found was the poison, not the antidote. On top of that, Hassan got away. Once he rallies the Osiris supporters, you'll be fighting it out politically and in the street.”

“Hassan is a wily fox,” Edo said. “He has survived more purges than you know. But, this time, he's left us a trail. According to some of the men we captured, he was seen leaving one of the exits to the mine along with a man whose face was scarred and bandaged. I was told they refer to him as Scorpion.”

Kurt and Joe exchanged a glance. “Any idea where they went?”

Edo shook his head. “No. But we've learned something else from a couple of their pilots. Let me show you.”

He led them over to a map on the wall. “This chart shows the pumping stations Osiris has been using to divert the water from the aquifer to the Nile. There are nineteen primary stations and several dozen booster pumps designed to keep the pressure up. As far as we can tell, all of them are automated. Except this one.”

Edo pointed to a spot on the map west of Cairo, in the barren area known as the White Desert. “According to the pilots we captured, they flew to this site regularly, delivering food, water and other supplies.”

“So it's a manned station?” Kurt asked.

Edo nodded. “But manned by whom? According to the pilots, there were civilians there as well as Osiris regulars. Scientists who took delivery of specially packaged, hermetically sealed crates every three days.”

Kurt recalled what the biologist Brad Golner had told him with his dying breath.

“That has to be the lab where they make the antidote. We need to check it out,” Kurt said.

“My men are spread thin as it is,” Edo said. “Until we can get the backing of the full Army, it'll have to wait.”

“Just give us a helicopter,” Kurt said.

“I don't have one,” Edo replied. “But,” he added, “there
is
one sitting on the roof. If you don't mind flying the colors of Osiris International.”

With Renata in the care of a medical team, Kurt, Joe and Edo took to the skies in an Aerospatiale Gazelle painted with the Osiris colors and logo.

Edo was the pilot in command, Joe sat in the copilot's seat and Kurt studied the blazing-white sands passing beneath them. They covered miles of barren land, endless dunes and wind-carved rock formations that were famous for their ethereal beauty. A pair of vehicles on the desert floor caught their eye, but a quick inspection proved them to be abandoned.

Farther on, Kurt spotted the long, thin track of a pipeline cutting across the open desert. It ended beside a gray cinder-block building, disappearing beneath the desert like a serpent going
underground. “That's it,” he said. “Where the pipeline comes out of the sand.”

Edo angled toward it, descending. There were no vehicles parked by the low-profile building, no sign of a welcoming committee.

“Looks deserted,” Joe said.

“We can't be too sure,” Edo replied. “They may be waiting for us inside.”

“I can see a helipad,” Kurt said.

“I'll put us down there.”

The Gazelle caused a minor dust storm as Edo flared for a landing, but the swirling sand abated once the rotors began to slow down.

Kurt was already out on the ground, crouched and holding an AR-15 in case someone attacked them while they were most vulnerable. He scanned doors and windows, ready to fire, but no adversaries appeared.

Joe and Edo soon joined him. Kurt pointed forward. He'd heard a banging noise, like a shutter broken loose in a storm.

He took point with Joe and Edo flanked out wide so no one could hit all three with a single burst. They found a door that had been left open. It was swinging in the breeze and slamming against the jamb but unable to shut because its dead bolt was extended.

Edo pointed to the handle and indicated he would pull it wide. Kurt and Joe nodded.

As Edo yanked the door open, Kurt and Joe aimed their rifles into the building and switched on their powerful flashlights over the lower rails of the stairs, illuminating the room.

“Empty,” Joe said.

Kurt stepped through the door. The building was incredibly utilitarian. Cinder-block walls, concrete floor. A twisting set of
pipes led from the main line to a trio of pumps that looked like the high-pressure boosters Edo had mentioned. On the far side lay the only thing that seemed out of place. “Look at this.”

Joe followed the beam of Kurt's light and added his own to it. The two lights converged on a metallic cage and a powerful winch system. “It looks just like the elevator in the underground cavern.”

“We're at least thirty miles west of there,” Kurt replied. “But, you're right. It's the same setup.”

Kurt found the power switch and the elevator came to life. “Let's get to the bottom of this.”

The three of them climbed into the elevator car. Joe palmed the loosely attached control box. The gates closed and the car lurched downward.

When the gates opened again, the three were hundreds of feet below the surface, in a room filled with more pumps and pipes.

“These pumps are much larger than the ones on the upper level,” Edo noted. “More like the setup at the Osiris hydroelectric plant.”

Kurt noted that the pipes went downward into the ground. “They must be drawing a huge amount of water from the aquifer here.”

“Or putting it back in now, thanks to you,” Joe said.

They moved past the pumps, searching for the laboratory they'd hoped to find. Through one door they found the control panel for the network. On the display, it was clear that the pumps were still operating in reverse, the way Kurt had set them.

“I'm surprised they didn't just reverse the pumps before running away,” Joe said.

Kurt had been thinking the same thing. He tapped the keyboard and attempted to execute a command. It asked for a password. He typed in some random numbers and was denied. A
message box popped up that read
System Lock
/ Osiris Command Key Required
.

“This is a remote station,” Kurt said. “The pump direction was switched in the main command center. They must not be able to override that order out here unless someone with enough authority types in the proper password.”

They agreed and continued exploring the station.

“Look at this,” Joe said.

Kurt stepped from the control panel. Joe and Edo stood in front of a sealed door like the ones in the lab beside the burial chamber. A keypad on the side was glowing a dull-red color.

“This is what we're looking for,” he said.

“Now, how to get in?” Joe asked.

“I wonder,” Kurt said, stepping forward and typing in the same code he'd watched Golner use in the lab below the Pyramids.

The keypad went dark for an instant. Brad Golner's name appeared on the display, but the door didn't open. The keypad flashed red once again.

“It was a good try,” Joe said.

“Looks like he's in the system but not cleared for access here,” Kurt said.

As Kurt spoke, the keypad turned green and the door hissed and opened slowly. Two men and a woman came out. They wore lab coats. The first man in the group was shorter, with bushy eyebrows that loomed over his eyeglasses like a hedgerow.

“Brad?” he asked, looking around.

“I'm afraid he's not with us,” Kurt said.

They stared, transfixed, at Edo's uniform, quickly grasping the answer to their own question. “You're with the military.”

Edo replied, “Why were you hiding in there?”

They glanced around at one another. Their downtrodden look
showed that they had been bullied and threatened into doing what they had done.

“When the men at this station heard that there was an attack on the Osiris building, they became very nervous,” the one with the bushy eyebrows said. “They kept calling for orders and updates, but no one was answering. Then the pumps reversed and they couldn't counter the command. They heard on the radio news of the raid. They panicked and left. They wanted to destroy the lab, but we locked ourselves in. We know what they've used our work for. We didn't want the antidote destroyed.”

“So you do make it here?” Kurt asked.

The man nodded.

“How does it work?”

“It comes from the bullfrogs,” the man said.

“Something in their skin,” Kurt said.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Brad Golner tried to tell me,” Kurt said. “Shakir shot him before he could finish explaining. But he felt the way you do. He wanted to set things right. And he gave us all the information he could before he died. He said the frog skins were packed in sealed containers and shipped out.”

The technician nodded. “When the skin that the frog has cocooned itself in is finally exposed to rain, it releases a counteracting agent that signals the frog's nervous system to wake up. For the frog, it's the end of hibernation. For humans, we've had to modify the signal, but it works the same way, I assure you.”

“How much of the antidote do you have?”

“A large supply,” the man said.

“Enough for five thousand people?”

“For Lampedusa?” the technician replied. “Yes, we know what happened. There should be enough for five thousand patients.”

“Hopefully, enough for five thousand and one,” Kurt said. He turned to Edo. “Can you fly them and the antidote back to Cairo?”

“Does that mean we're staying behind?” Joe asked.

Kurt nodded. “I don't think we'll be lonesome for long.”

Edo understood. He turned to the technicians. “Do you need any special equipment to pack the antidote?”

“No,” their leader said. “The antidote is stable at room temperature.”

“Then we'll leave as soon as possible,” he said.

The technicians began loading plastic crates onto a wheeled cart. The crates were filled with individual vials of the antidote.

Edo turned back to Kurt and Joe. “I'll be sure your friend Renata gets the first dose.”

“Thank you,” Kurt said.

—

Kurt and
Joe
watched from the shadows of the blockhouse as Edo and the scientists lifted off with the supply of the antidote and the raw materials to make more. At Kurt's request, the helicopter climbed to a higher altitude than normal before tracking to the east and back toward Cairo.

“You think Hassan will have seen that?” Joe asked.

Kurt nodded. “If he's within ten miles of this place, he can't have missed it. I'm hoping it'll make him think the place is empty once again.”

“Do you really believe Hassan is going to come here?”

“If you were Hassan and you had only two chips left to play, both of which were in this building, what would you do?”

Joe shrugged. “Personally, I'd retire to the French Riviera. But Hassan doesn't strike me as the vacationing type.”

“He won't quit,” Kurt said assuredly. “And the only option left to him that would create any leverage is to reverse the pumps and continue the drought. If he manages that, he might yet swing this defeat into some kind of victory. But he's not counting on the two of us waiting for him. Now let's find ourselves a place to hide.”

They entered the building, took the elevator down and studied the setup.

“Each time we've tangled with them, they've had a man in high-cover position,” Kurt said.

“Scorpion,” Joe said.

“If Hassan brings him down here, he'll probably want him in a cover position just as he's done before,” Kurt said.

“The only real point of danger is the elevator,” Joe said. “But from a place on the scaffolding surrounding it, you could cover this entire room.”

Kurt looked up and began climbing the scaffolding. It went up into the rock above, but there was enough space around it to hide and not be crushed as the elevator went past. “Send the car back to the top,” he said, taking up a spot where he could brace his feet. “We wouldn't want to be rude and make them wait.”

Joe pressed the up button and the machinery came to life. The elevator car began its long, slow climb passing Kurt with a foot to spare.

“I'll go hide in the control room,” Joe said. “If he's going to reverse the pumps, that'll be his first stop.”