The Labyrinth Key

by Christopher Cartwright

  Sam shook himself out of a trance, brought on by that approaching roar that crashed through the pyramid tunnels like the rush of fate. He knew he should move, but he found himself gripped by the power of the night and all he could think about was the power behind the consistent drone of the engine spinning the propellers, creating the thrust, and pushing the enemy to them faster and faster… A small part of him inside screamed for Sam to wake up, but this too was overtaken by the speedboat.

  “That’s a lot of power behind it. I wonder if it’s faster than our zodiac.”

  Tom grabbed Sam by the SCUBA respirator hanging off his neck. “That won’t matter if you don’t get off your ass very soon and start hauling it out of here,” he muttered through gritted teeth. As he spoke, the familiar pop drip sound of bullets hitting the water around them filled the air. The engine of the speedboat also got louder, and all of a sudden, Sam snapped out of his trance.

  What the hell was I on?

  He wondered if the air was drugged with some kind of poison. There were stories of pharaohs defending their tombs in such ways and just because it hadn’t been written about didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  There wasn’t time to think about that. They needed to get out as soon as possible. That’s all there was to it.

  He shot to his feet, shouldered his backpack, and began following Tom and Ethan in a full sprint. The rocks suddenly became very quiet as their attackers cut the power and got off. Sam forced himself to focus. That silence could only mean one thing.

  They were on land too.

  Running forwards as fast as he could, Sam struggled with the pocket on his SCUBA suit and procured his trusty pistol. The worn-in rubber grip and perfect weight fit familiarly in his hand and he felt steadier. At splashes and shouts and the whisk of shoes on rock, Sam took a breath and looked behind him.

  Five men clambered out of their larger speedboat, guns in hand. Even from here, he could easily make out the models of the guns and wondered what the hell they’d gotten themselves into. Trapped themselves in here like…

  Mice in a maze.

  Two of them held Heckler & Koch UMP 45’s, and another a Beretta. While three of them were in SCUBA gear as if they were ready to dive at a moment’s notice, two were in street clothes. Sam made out a pale face dressed in an impeccable black suit, while the taller man sported khaki shorts and a T-shirt and Sam thought irrationally that he must be freezing in the desert night, and then thought, why the hell do I care?

  He didn’t give a damn what they wore, as long as they died wearing it.

  But he did care. Some part of his brain must: the black suit looked familiar. So did the glasses the other man wore. But before Sam had a chance to look further, bullets whizzed past his ears, making him duck before firing random shots in the enemy’s general direction.

  Ethan seemed to notice the unusual familiarity too and frowned at Sam as they fled. “I’ve seen those two people somewhere,” he shouted as he aimed his own AK at the five men running after them.

  Sam panted as they fell naturally into step. “Same as me.”

  “Look, there!” Tom pointed directly in front of them. They’d reached the entrance, and the silhouette of the Tahila loomed in the distance, with the FC580 closer, just off the rocks.

  But the men were gaining on them. While the trio were bogged down by the water still in the SCUBA suits, their pursuers were nimble and easily jumped over the large rocks in their way.

  Sam’s breath rasped like fire in his throat as he leaned over his thighs, gasping. “We’re not going to make it.”

  Tom slowed to a stop, panting. “You’re right.” He then brandished his gun, which glinted in the morning Egyptian sun. “But we can fight.”

  He, Ethan, and Sam exchanged grins.

  They ran for cover behind three rocks large enough for them to lean their backs on. It was a gamble: they could try to catch the bad guys by surprise when they went past the rocks, looking for their suddenly vanished quarry, or they could confront them in a firefight now.

  Sam looked at Tom, asking the question with his eyes: Which would it be?

  Sam didn’t have to answer his own question. A voice rang out against the hard, wet stone and Sam clenched his fist.

  “There’s no point in playing games, Mr. Reilly. We know you are there and we know where we want you. I have guns trained on you from all angles.” The voice sent a chill down his spine.

  Ethan’s eyes swung straight to Sam’s with a cold, calculating look. Tom dropped his gun, which clattered onto the stones. “Bastard,” he swore, almost without sound. “Goddamn bastard.”

  The voice went on, all cultured calm and so smug Sam wanted to slap it out of the air. “So I would suggest coming from behind those rocks, hands raised, before I take you all to hell.” It was Armando.

  Sam gripped his gun, preparing to charge out and blast these men into oblivion. To hell with caution, to hell with tact. Rage boiled up in him at men who would like to get what they want. Men who thought there was no other way.

  He was just about to stand and face them, expose himself to bullets and rage, when Ethan surprisingly rose first. Sam hadn’t expected the Navy SEAL to give himself up so easily.

  Maybe if there was no way out Ethan thought it was better to cooperate? Sam looked up at the soldier’s face. He was gritting his teeth, pain and fury warring in his eyes. Ethan’s hands suddenly clenched on the gun. “Josh! What the hell are you doing?”

  Now Sam recognized where he’d seen that suit before. He peered out from around the edge of the rock, trying not to get his head blown off.

  Josh stood with Armando and the three other men in black suits and rough homespun, the only thing linking them as a united force the ruthlessness in their eyes and the deadliness of their weapons.

  In his hand he held printouts. Sam could only imagine they’d been taken from the Tahila, a ship where the man had been welcomed as family.

  Sam’s heart leapt. His crew? Were they safe? What had this bastard done to them?

  Josh spread his hands. “I’m sorry, Ethan. But that was the deal. They would never have let Mia go if I hadn’t cooperated with them.” His grin crooked. “You do want what’s best for her, don’t you?” He gestured at Sam and Tom. “Come on. They promised to let you come back with us, start a life with them, just give us the keys.”

  “Just like you promised?” Ethan stood his ground. “What about them?” His gritted teeth made the words a low growl. “What about Mia? Was she in on this too?”

  At that, Josh had the grace to look contrite. “No. She didn’t know anything about this.” A glimmer of fury sparked. “When were you going to tell me you were fucking my sister?”

  Ethan’s knuckles tightened on the gun. “None of your business.” It was a voice Sam had never heard the SEAL use, no matter how angry or commanding he got in other situations. “You fucking crook! I thought we were friends!”

  Josh stood there in the tuxedo and dress pants, fidgeting and wiping his sweat beaded forehead with a handkerchief. Somehow the water splashing back and forth into the speedboat had completely ignored the lawyer’s clothes.

  Josh gave a crooked smile, holding hard to the arrogance and the cruelty that had helped him survive and climb. “Family over friends,” he said.

  Armando grinned and took off his sunglasses to reveal eyes frozen over and cold as ice.

  “Ethan, is it? Pleasure to meet you, Ethan.” He gestured to Josh. “Please, don’t hold it against him. Your friend has talent. I couldn’t have done it without him, really. He was the best mole I’ve ever had work for me in the cartel. Relayed your every single move every moment.” The new drug lord gave a wet slap to Josh’s back. He stepped away from it. “And without him your Mia would still be in Carlos’s… clutches.” He grinned lecherously, out of place on his distinguished features. “I lost a rival and gained a cartel. You lost a friend but gained a lady love.” He shrugged. “All of these seem fair trades, yes?”

 
Tom shucked his gun and the noise carried loudly over the predawn water. Sam saw him glance at their Zodiac out of the corner of his eye and shook his head. As close as it was, it would still be suicide. Tom glared and shouted around the rock.

  “So, what are you going to do with the map?” Now Sam could see Tom’s hand reaching for the gun he had carefully set onto the rock. Instantly, he knew what their plan would be: Tom would delay Armando and his goons long enough for Ethan and Sam to reach for their guns. Then they would all fire, making a mad kamikaze dash for the zodiac in the process. Was it risky as hell? Sure, but Sam thought it was a hell of a lot better than working as a slave to the Black Muerte.

  “-and that’s a lot of money I can use for goals. My goals, of course.” Armando finished his winding speech, and grinned. “Josh here was kind enough to draw up the contract.”

  Ethan snorted. “Oh yeah?” he glared at his friend. “Better check it for holes. Bet it’s as tight as damn Swiss cheese.”

  Armando laughed. “Oh, the American expressions. Always so amusing.” He bowed, gallant. “It was a pleasure to see you again Mr. Reilly. It was a good day when we struck up our correspondence. I always knew you would be most helpful.”

  “Glad to be of service!” Tom shouted with a glare.

  Ethan saw him tense to make his move and shook his head. Before Sam could stop him he poked his head beyond the rock outcropping, putting himself directly in the line of fire. He slowly raised his hands.

  “Truce!” he called, echoing across the water. “Truce.” He held Josh’s eyes. “You can have them. Just let me come with you. I’ve got the map.” He held up a piece of paper in the growing dawn.

  Sam sputtered. “Ethan, what the hell are you doing?”

  But Ethan wasn’t looking at him. He just kept waving the piece of paper that Sam knew wasn’t the map because HE was holding the map and he and Tom shared a glance and that’s when he saw Ethan beckon at them behind his back – where he was holding his gun at his belt…

  All he had to do was reach for it.

  Sam lunged forward to stop him but Ethan brought his hands down and back and then the gun was in them and he was firing, firing into the men before them with abandon, with rage, bullets hitting flesh and stone and water with hisses and sizzles and pops.

  “GO!” he shouted as the bullets rained back and red opened in his arm, black in the dawn, and Sam dove for his own gun, heedless of the firing squad, got it up and shot from his stomach into the fray as Ethan grunted with another hit and a gasp and then Tom was there, boots scrabbling on the wet stone, and Ethan had tears running down his face and Sam saw that clearly and then his mind went blank.

  Then Tom dragged his arm as Ethan covered them and, firing in quick succession, Tom dragged Sam toward the boat. Under the increased fire Armando and his group ducked, but not before one of them got hit with a bullet square in the chest, falling over and dropping his UMP. Sam and Ethan brandished their own weapons and provided cover fire.

  “Sam! Let’s move!” Tom shouted, racing for the water. Sam followed suit, but Ethan wasn’t moving.

  “Ethan!” he shouted. But Ethan just shook his head, fury filling his face. “I’m not leaving before I strangle that son of a bitch with my own bare hands!” He pointed at Josh, who was curled in a ball on the moss.

  “There’s going to be plenty of time to do that, but only if we reach the zodiac!” Sam said as he grabbed Ethan by the scruff of his suit. Almost instantly they were met with return fire, but this time, they kept running. Sam shot over his stomach and under his shoulder with his pistol but did not dare to look back. For all he knew, they could be right behind him. The zodiac got bigger and bigger in his sight.

  “Almost there!” He dared a look behind him. Armando and his team were gaining, already shouting and gesturing to their boat, giving a moment of reprieve as they gave chase.

  Shit. If they kept running at this rate, they would never make it. Sam didn’t know which was worse- a pitched sea battle or here on the rocks.

  At that instant, Sam’s foot lost traction with the slippery moss a few feet in front of the zodiac. He felt his body accelerating full force into the rocks. “Keep going,” he called to Ethan and Tom when they stalled, seeing him on the ground. “Save yourselves first.”

  “No way,” Tom panted as he struggled to drag Sam’s sprained and limp body into the wildly-rocking zodiac as Ethan covered their retreat. Sam slid into the squeaky rubber and the motor revved and his leg pulsed and ached under him. He turned to Ethan with a glare. “Your goddamn good man is a goddamn-”

  His voice died in his throat. Ethan’s chest was riddled with holes. Blood streamed from cuts in his face. He drew breath with a staggering gurgle that didn’t sound good at all.

  “The Tahila!” Sam shouted. “Go! Now!”

  But he remembered the power of the motor he’d heard in the caves. The enemy had more horsepower than them.

  As if to prove it the cartel’s motorboat roared past the rock outcropping and around the shallow falls.

  Tom glanced at the gas while Sam gasped in pain as the harsh flight jostled his leg. “Got her full throttle, Sam, and can’t do much more!”

  Sam grit his teeth. “Do more.”

  Tom shook his head as bullets splashed the water and they all flinched.

  Then, over the horizon, another noise. A silence, more than a noise. Some kind of presence. Sam couldn’t have said what made him turn – maybe the feel of sea air all his life. But he faced the stern and his mouth dropped.

  There in the distance was the Tahila.

  He squinted. Too much to hope. But no. He could see it now. Definitely moving toward them.

  “Tom!” he shouted.

  Tom stopped firing and let the tiller go for an instant to look behind them. That’s when Armando fired at their hull and the bullets finally pierced the toughened multi layered rubber with a bang.

  Air whooshed out.

  Ethan fumbled his fingers into the hole, plugging the gap. Injured as he was, it was the best he could do. He still cradled his gun in his lap, but it seemed beyond his strength to use it.

  Armando and the cartel closed in fast as the Zodiac limped along toward the Tahila, sputtering spray.

  The men got close enough to see their faces. Josh huddled in the boat with a gun in his hands, shooting. His next shot put another hole in their hull.

  Then he splattered backward. Ethan’s gun was out and level.

  But now there were other guns – suddenly the men in the oncoming boat jerked and shuddered and fell as fast as puppets whose strings have been cut.

  Sam spun as best he could in the slick rubber, with his ruined leg.

  Genevieve stood at the rail of the Tahila, spray splashing in the rose gray dawn. Mia stood at her side, her mouth hard as she stared at her brother’s corpse in the boat with their enemies, and then falling open as she saw Ethan’s bullet riddled body in the boat with Sam and Tom.

  Genevieve waved. In one hand, she held a minigun with the barrel glowing orange from the raw firepower.

  “Morning!” she called, a little too cheerfully. “Fine day to be out on the water!”

  None of them replied and sat there, catching their breath as the boat gurgled around them, the walls slowly deflating. Finally, Sam twisted towards her and managed to grab the rope she threw overboard, attached to a float. The boat sank faster as she dragged it through the water toward the ship, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Another rope slapped down and he heard Mia shout for a doctor, a medic, someone as Ethan grabbed hold weakly.

  Sam could barely hold the rope and he felt Tom’s steady support from below as he was lifted into the air for the deck.

  There he found Genevieve, Mia, Elise, Matthew Sutherland… and the approaching sound of Egyptian police sirens, drawn to the sound of shooting. Matthew looked at the approaching white spray and tightened his lips. Sam wondered if he was thinking about bribes. Just another day on the job.

&nbs
p; Sam realized he was still clutching the map. He unclenched his fingers but it wouldn’t leave his grip. “Morning,” he said weakly, before collapsing onto the deck and everything went black.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Dahshur Necropolis – Egypt

  Staring off into the distance, Sam let the burning sunlight reflected off the sand fill him, trying to scorch out the events of yesterday. He’d slept the rest of the day and most of the night, Matthew tending to his leg which wasn’t sprained as he’d feared but just very badly bruised. He’d be up again soon if he had anything to say about it.

  Still, it had been five days since the shootout on the water and Sam and the crew of the Tahila had been lying low. Ethan’s wounds took time to heal and they all thought it best to let the madness die down before they slipped back into the pyramid with the map.

  There was no way Sam was leaving this godforsaken town without seeing what he’d come to see. He and Ethan deserved that much, at least.

  The last he’d seen of Ethan the night before was a brief glimpse of him in the galley looking for a drink with Mia seated at the table and a low murmur of voices between them. Sam, going for water, had passed by and made do with the filtered water from his faucet instead. Whatever they talked about was their business, though he hoped it got resolved without bloodshed, this time.

  Sam leaned back on his elbows and winced as it twinged his leg. His time at the Necropolis had been a long and wild experience, no doubt about that. Now he was taking a small moment of quiet before the rest of the storm. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going or that he was going and he was sure he was going to catch hell for it from Tom, but he needed to be off the boat and he needed to clear his head to prepare for what was to come.

  As he stared at the mounds of tombs and small pyramids, he could make out the Egyptian masterpieces that somehow endured for centuries. Located conveniently on the west bank of the Nile, it was the perfect location, he thought. The pharaoh had chosen well. Not too close to the river, but not too far. Just about right.

  As the red sun gilded the tops of the dunes and distant pyramids, the rippled steel roofs of shack houses and stores, Sam reflected on how history is passed down. He wondered if the Egyptians had known when they had buried their dead and prepared them for a life in the afterlife full of all the bounty of this world that they would one day be a source of historic and artistic interest centuries later. He bet they wouldn’t have, but anyone who believed that much in the afterlife had to have some interest in legacy, after all.