There he was, standing over her. That infamous cloak spread open and his maniacal laughter reverberated not from his throat but from somewhere within that tattered shroud. She could just see two of her wiry pursuers fleeing back over the blood soaked rooftops. A third, the one that had wounded her, was leaning back on his knees, his eyes wide in disbelief and his blood still trailing from the single bullet hole in his forehead to the dirty water of the rooftop pool. But two remained. Their faces were ashen and Raven wondered what they might have seen within that insatiable cape. Nevertheless, they fought on. One was hacking at the Shroud, who seemed to be toying with him by the way he dodged and waved his Luger about. And then the other one did something strange. He looked straight into the eyes of Raven and smiled. Then he reached into the sash of the dead thug, retrieved something from its folds, and turned to run. Raven lashed feebly with her whip but the nimble thief leapt high and disappeared into the night.
The Shroud was still dancing with his terrified opponent, but fear had given the thug the energy to swing his deadly saber with amazing force. The Shroud seemed suddenly to realize this and Raven was almost deafened by the sound of the Luger's remaining seven shots. Then silence. Thump.
Gunner Hayes, a.k.a. the Shroud, reappeared into Yishara's field of vision, smiling. She mumbled something that sounded like "Franks," and passed out once again.
* * *
When she awoke, she found herself on a couch in a cozy apartment. Her wet and bloody costume had been replaced by a long, plush robe. The act of being undressed by a man while unconscious would normally have made her furious. There were very few men in Cairo she even liked, her late father the notable exception. In school she had been constantly fighting with boys who thought they were men, and her constant aggression with her male companions had been the reason she had studied akido at the local youth center. That was before the invasion of course. Something about Gunner undressing her was different, though.
The things that frightened her were so overwhelming, so beyond masculinity, to the point of being asexual, that she knew it wouldn't affect him ... it to see her naked. It bothered her to be in the same room with it; the fact that it had undressed her had little to do with the equation.
A cup of tea was sitting in front of her on a long, low table. On the stucco walls were several tapestries of what might have been called modern art before the invasion. Sitting in a tall, backed chair was the ruggedly handsome man known as Gunner Hayes. His face was calm and serene, but his eyes betrayed something a little less placid brewing just beneath the surface. His dark hair was matted and wet, as if he had been sweating, and a single streak of white hair stretched from his left temple to the base of his neck. He still wore the black pants and shirt which were part of his costume, though neither the wide brimmed hat, the raccoon-like mask sat, nor his cloak were visible in the room.
"Thanks for ... oooh," she stammered as she tried to rise.
"Don't mention it," was the deep-throated reply. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop them all. They were professionals, you know."
"Professional what's?" she murmured.
"Criminals. Cutthroats. Thieves. How should I know?" He shrugged his shoulders. "One of them managed to withstand . 'it' . and they certainly knew how to use those scimitars."
Yishara noticed how reluctant he was to speak of the tattered relic which lent him his alternate persona. She thought she'd push it and see what happened.
"It?" she asked innocently.
"Yes, the . cloak."
How interesting, she thought. It wasn't 'my cloak,' it was 'the cloak,' as if it had a life, or at least a mind, of its own. She shuddered with the realization that perhaps it did. Stranger things had happened in the last few months.
Gunner rose, somehow managing to look calm and act nervous all in the same action. He walked to a hall closet and drug out a blanket and pillow which he tossed gently to the young girl sprawled upon his now damp couch. "Why don't you get some sleep? Perhaps tomorrow we can find out who your attackers were."
Her aching head thought that that was a wonderful idea and nodded its approval even before her brain had given its permission. She slumped back onto the makeshift bed and was soon lost to the dark world of her dreams.
* * *
With the girl resting, Hayes walked into the darkness of his bedroom. The room was sparse, though tasteful, and spoke of quiet wealth in the squalid poverty of Cairo. On an old cedar chest was the black hat, mask, and his trusty Luger in a well-oiled shoulder holster. What was on top of the chest didn't disturb Gunner. It was what was in it. He could feel the black cape's greedy eyes staring at him through the cracks. They beckoned him to look into the darkness once more. To look into the inky blackness of the shroud and see his worst fears. He had done it only once, he would never do it again. He hoped.
* * *
In another part of Old Cairo, a soaking figure hobbled into a sandstone building near the Temple of Osiris. Once inside, it wiped the rain from its face, withdrew a small handkerchief from a red sash, and opened a closet door. Stepping into the closet, the figure pressed a loose stone and waited. Soon a heavy, grinding sound filled the small chamber and the rear wall slid to the man's left, revealing a darkened staircase below.
His feet left muddy tracks upon the carved steps as he descended. There was no other presence in the hallway, yet he never felt quite alone in this place. It was always as if a thousand and one eyes were staring at him from the cracks and crevices of the crudely cut tunnel. Finally rounding the last bend in the staircase, he came upon the closed door which was the common entrance to his guild. He knocked thrice, then kicked, and a rectangular peephole slid open, revealing a pair of harsh, heavy browed eyes beyond. The eyes recognized the man, and the door was open. The pungent odor of hashish and cheap Egyptian cigarettes rolled out the door and mixed with his rain soaked mustiness. Inside, men were gambling, singing, and most of all, drinking. "He's waitin', you know," "Eyes" said in a low grumble.
The sopping assassin walked carefully by his fellow guild members; he trusted them about as far as he could reach, and then turned down a dark hallway far to the left side of the room. Passing three more guards, he finally came to the door. The door of the Guild Master.
One of the doormen scowled, opened the door, and waved him in. It was always dark in here. The Master preferred it that way. Some of the members had guessed that the Master was someone of importance on the surface, someone who might be recognized. But no one thought of blackmailing him. To see his face was to see one's death.
He knelt on what the dim light from the doorway revealed to be an exquisite Persian rug. "The mission was successful, Master."
A pause, then a voice spoke from the blackness, "Where are the others?" came a harsh but patronizing voice.
"It was the Raven, master. And the one they call the Shroud."
"Ah. Then you have wet your sword in both their flesh?"
This time the assassin paused before answering, "No, Master. Only that of the Raven." His face was a pale white as he placed the handkerchief before him. He knew that this was as good as failure. Not only had their hand lost four of its fingers, but they had missed the opportunity to kill two of the guild's potential opponents, one of them a Mystery Man. He was doomed, and he knew it. If he was lucky, the penalty would be only death.
And then a thought hit him. "Master, it is rumored that once one has looked into the cape of the Shroud and survived, they are immune to its effects forever."
"Ahhh, yes. I have heard such a tale." The Master paced about the room and stared out a bluish window. He pondered for a moment, then turned to the thief. "You will have one chance to redeem yourself. Take two fingers to the alley again tonight and see what fools stick their noses into our trap. Your mission is the same as before, but this time I want not only their blood. I want their heads. If I do not get them, I will take yours ... with a dull blade."
The man stood, bowed with respect to the Master, and re-entered the
common room.
* * *
Gunner slept. His dreams took him back to the fall, after the bridges crashed into Earth. He had been an agent for Interpol, the International Police Organization, and stationed in Cairo for nearly a decade. After Mobius had assumed power, Interpol had tried to maintain its authority in Egypt, but the Pharaoh had quickly found little use for its meddling and formally closed down the Cairo offices. But Gunner Hayes had been on the verge of apprehending Kazim abu-Dahmi, a Shiite terrorist known to be responsible for numerous airport bombings, and he wasn't one to give up the chase. Four months later, he had managed to regain most of his old contacts and integrate himself into the society of the new "Nile Empire." Finally, he discovered that abu-Dahmi was meeting with an unknown party who would seek to employ his services. The meeting was to take place at a newly discovered tomb in the Valley of Kings, near Thebes.
He could remember the night vividly. The wind was howling and the air was filled with eye-biting sand. The blue night of the desert highlighted a full moon hanging serenely in the sky. The tomb entrance was sunk into the earth, and formed the dead end of a short trench which led up to it. In front of the door were a few sandbags, chairs, and a military radio set up on an old food crate.
Hayes was crouched in a rocky outcropping overlooking the entrance to the trench. There had been an unusual amount of tombs discovered since the invasion, he remembered thinking.
According to his best sources, this was to be the location of the rendezvous, but all Hayes could make out were three Nile shocktroopers sitting among the sandbags and standing guard over the doorway. Surely abu-Dahmi wouldn't show his face before the agents of the government, he had thought.
And then an event occurred which shed light on the nature of Mobius' regime and cast off any doubts of its legitimacy. Abu-Dahmi, clearly identifiable in his habitual yellow and black headdress and green fatigues, drove a senehem to a point not thirty feet short of the shocktroopers and waved. This proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the forces of the Pharaoh were indeed linked to acts of international terrorism and possibly even organized crime. The rumors had circulated ever since the invasion, and Gunner had believed it before. But here was actual proof, and he had witnessed it with his own eyes.
One of the soldiers, obviously an officer of some sort, returned the terrorist's signal and walked to the jeep. They spoke for a few moments, and then the officer waved back towards the tomb entrance and a fourth man, wearing a dark suit and carrying a black briefcase, walked eagerly towards the terrorist.
A rifle bolt slid back and Gunner could feel the cold metal of a KK81 pressed against the back of his neck. He swallowed hard and slowly turned his head. Standing over him was a grinning shocktrooper.
The soldier was pleased with himself and yelled, "Captain Achtiri! I have captured a spy!" He turned his head so that his voice would carry better over the howling desert wind, and that was when Gunner struck. He whipped the butt-end of his own hunting rifle around and caught the shocktrooper square on the jaw. He stepped back a pace, gave Hayes a startled, half-drunk look, and slumped to the rocky ground. Gunner smiled but Schmeisser bullets from the tomb entrance were already pinging off the outcropping around him. He crawled down behind the ridge of rocks he had stationed himself on and looked to either side. There was very little cover and his vehicle was a good mile north. He could hear abu-Dahmi's jeep starting up and "Captain Achtiri" shouting out orders to the other guards. He could think of only one course of action.
The jeep came around the ridge. The terrorist was still driving, Captain Achtiri was in the passenger's seat, and the two door guards were standing in the rear, rifles poised over the roll bar. Achtiri pointed at the stunned shocktrooper sitting in a heap at the outcrop, yelled at him in disgust, and asked where the spy had gone. The stunned soldier pointed to the north, into a swirling dust storm, and the semehen sped off in pursuit. The soldier smiled and removed his headdress, tossing it onto the limp form concealed in the shadows of the outcropping.
He was feeling quite pleased with himself when, seconds later, Gunner heard the jeep returning. There was nowhere left to run, nowhere left to hide — except the tomb. His sandaled feet carried him across the windy clearing and threw him into the darkness of the entrance.
He landed on a stone floor, a heavy, carved door slightly ajar in front of him. There didn't seem to be any more guards, so he quickly maneuvered through. Inside, a flickering torch shed light on a long passageway which seemed to angle downwards. Hayes grabbed the torch and cautiously worked his way down, looking for a hiding place. About thirty meters down, the passage turned to his right, then right again so that this passage paralleled the one before. It seemed to be going deeper into the earth as it went. And then he heard voices near the heavy entrance door. They were full of disgust and Hayes could barely make out the voice and form of Captain Achtiri. He turned down the second passage and was horrified to see a puzzled shocktrooper standing in front of a dead end.
He was trapped. The soldier waved his arms at Hayes, telling him that he wasn't allowed down here. Gunner walked slowly up, as if confused, and approached to within a meter of what he was sure was a young lieutenant.
He rubbed his head, keeping his Caucasian face angled towards the floor, and spoke in Egyptian, "Your sandals are unlaced."
"What?" replied the agitated officer, looking down at his feet.
CRACK! Hayes brought the rifle up into the lieutenant's head, throwing him back into the wall. Then he turned around and waited for the approaching abu-Dahmi and Achtiri. But the young officer was tougher than he had given him credit for and Hayes felt the heavy grip of a Schmeisser smashing down on his carelessly unguarded back.
As if in slow motion, he fell heavily to the floor. To the side he could see picks, shovels, and other engineering tools stacked against the walls. He guessed that they had been having trouble finding the secret door which inevitably led from this tunnel into the actual burial chamber of whatever ancient figure was entombed here, and as he hit the sandstone floor, a strange thought occurred to him. What if the builders had put the secret door not in the walls, but in the floor?
And then he was through! The floor had collapsed under his weight and he felt himself falling through an inky blackness, landing hard on the floor below. He was on his feet seconds later, grabbed the torch, and searched desperately for his rifle. But the enraged lieutenant was already leveling his Schmeisser at Hayes and shouting for help, forcing him to jump back from the hole into the shadows.
He could make out a set of steps leading up near the hole in the ceiling, and somehow he had missed them. He guessed that there was probably a loose stone or some other trigger in the hallway above which would have opened the ancient hatch had the Pharaoh's engineers discovered it. The walls of this chamber were lined with heiroglyphics which Gunner could not read, though many in the New Nile now could. At each of the four corners were statues of asses, the symbol of the god Set, a malignant entity associated with the night and the evils that lurked within it. Several tunnels led off this central chamber with no visible clue as to their destination.
The arrival of abu-Dahmi and Captain Achtiri woke Hayes from his survey, and he charged down the nearest passage, the rounds of the lieutenant's sub-machine gun kicking up dust and stone fragments behind him.
He looked back once and saw Achtiri maneuvering through the rubble of the roof down the staircase. Without a weapon he was doomed. His only chance was to find another way out, a chance he wouldn't have bet a farthing on. With a glance over his shoulder, he continued to speed down the rough hewn passage.
And then he stopped dead in his tracks. Before him was a huge stone slab surrounded by ten sarcophagi. Around the walls were millions of royals worth of gold, gems, and jewelry. Priceless statues were poised on elaborate pedestals arranged throughout the room. But the most frightening thing was the black shroud covering the slab. Beneath it was the unmistakable form of a human body, most likely a mummifi
ed king of ancient Egypt. He stepped further into the room and saw that several other corpses were piled between the uppermost sarcophagi and the wall. They were naturally mummified and Gunner realized that they had probably been the men who had carved out this room for the figure hidden behind the black burial shroud. He knew that certain royal families had buried the architects of their tombs with their fallen kinfolk to prevent them from returning later and looting the very structures they had designed.
A noise from the hall; Captain Achtiri was approaching! Hayes got an idea. He pulled the shroud off the corpse and saw that beneath it was the mummified remains he had expected. The face of the corpse was frozen in a hideous expression, an expression of stark terror. Gunner didn't think that made a whole lot of sense. And since when did Egyptian's cover their mummies with shrouds? He had never heard of that practice. He would have pondered the situation more had the footsteps in the hall not cut him short. He lifted the mummy — it was surprisingly light — and laid it among the more decayed corpses to the rear of the room. Then he jumped up on the slab and covered himself with .
* * *
EARTH! Earth was being shoveled upon him! He was being buried alive! He was in some sort of invisible coffin for he could see the dirt landing upon its surface, stopping inches from his eyes as if looking through an inverted pane of glass. He reached outwards and found that whatever was supporting the earth offered no resistance to his fingers. He clawed and dug and scratched and pushed, breaking off several of his fingernails. The blood mixed with the particles of cascading dirt and caught in his mouth, eyes, and nose. And then a realization. He was not the sole occupant of his invisible coffin. Hundreds of thousands of squiggling, writhing, slimy worms were crawling beneath him. They climbed upon his shirt, wiggled inside his pants leg, and began to probe for the tender flesh of his ears. He clawed even more frantically at the dirt above him, and everywhere he made a scratch, more worms would come wiggling out, hanging like spaghetti before dropping onto his shirt, his head, his lips. Gunner Hayes tried to scream, but the worms were now so thick around his head that he didn't dare open his mouth.
Mysterious Cairo Page 24