Inside, Ethan could see a thick layer of dust and the back of Tjaneni’s ribcage, the thick bones of the spinal column rising up toward the skull. There, resting against them, was a strange little golden object no bigger than Ethan’s clenched fist, wrapped in ancient cloth tied tightly together.
‘That’s not normal for the Egyptians,’ Lucy said as she recovered from her shock and bent down to lift the small object out.
Lopez offered her a sweet smile. ‘Okay, I’ve done you a favor, how about you do us one and get us out of here?’
Lucy nodded absent–mindedly and jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. ‘It’s that way.’
‘It’s what now?’ Ethan asked.
Lucy didn’t look up as she replied while examining the box.
‘The dust is thicker across the stone flags over there than in the rest of the tomb, which suggests that wind–blown dust and sand has accumulated more quickly there than elsewhere. Like you said before, Tjaneni and his comrades cannot have been the last people in this tomb as they could not have embalmed themselves, so therefore there must have been one other person here and there must be another way out.’ She looked at Lopez. ‘That person could not alone have sealed the tomb entrance, ergo, it’s that way.’
Lopez managed a brief sneer as she marched across to the corner of the tomb and examined the wall. Almost immediately she spotted the same patch of thin plaster that Ethan could see as he walked across to join her.
‘They covered up the cracks in this fissure like the other one,’ Lopez said. ‘Looks like a few spots of it have dried up and fallen out.’
Ethan could see tiny slivers in the wall plaster, holes leading into an unseen cavity beyond. He looked at the sand at their feet and could clearly see the slight mound created by thousands of years of sand from outside slowly accumulating inside the tomb from the endless deserts.
‘The Russians will be nearby,’ he said to Mitchell. ‘If we get out and they see us, we’re dead.’
‘Best not to be seen then,’ Mitchell advised.
*
Mediterranean Sea
Doug Jarvis watched as a monitor showed the location of the weak signal emitted by Hellerman’s GPS locator, and Garrett hurried alongside him with an anxious look on his face.
‘We just got a call from an operator called Helen who worked alongside Hellerman,’ Garrett said. ‘He gave her our details.’
‘What did she say?’ Jarvis asked.
Garrett sighed.
‘Our last chance at maintaining any links within the DIA just got blown out of the water. ARIES has been officially shut down and all agents associated with the program were burned.’
Jarvis turned to look at Garrett. ‘Burned?’
‘Two agents died in Manila after they were exposed due to the support being cut off at a crucial moment in their operation,’ Garrett explained. ‘The local and even international media are reporting it as an unsolved homicide of two tourists. Another DIA operative is missing in Berlin, and three more in South America.’
Jarvis exhaled and briefly closed his eyes.
From behind them Lillian Cruz and Amber Ryan walked up and looked at the screen, which showed a map of the Egyptian coast overlaid with various airways and no–fly zones extending south from the capital, Cairo.
‘What do we do now?’ Garrett asked. ‘There’s no way that we can extract them from inside that storm cell.’
Jarvis thought for a long moment. His own granddaughter Lucy Morgan was on the ground with Ethan and Nicola and the team had last been reported heading into the desert with Russian forces not far behind.
‘How precise are the GPS coordinates from where the signal was received?’
‘Accurate to within a meter or two,’ Garrett confirmed, ‘but we don’t know the team’s location now and we received that signal ten minutes ago.’
Jarvis scanned the monitor before him as though somehow the computer image could reveal to him some way of solving every problem they had at once. If he used a UAV to strike directly then he risked killing everybody and losing everything that they had achieved. If he didn’t, the Russians would likely kill them all under the cover of the same storm and make off with everything. Either way, Jarvis lost.
‘We can’t win,’ Jarvis said finally. ‘Order the strike in, and make sure the drone is likewise destroyed in the attack.’
Garrett stared silently at Jarvis for a long moment. ‘You’ll kill them all.’
Jarvis remained calm despite the raw emotion churning within him.
‘This isn’t an easy business,’ he whispered back, ‘and there are impossible decisions to be made every day. If you’re not up to them, Rhys, then perhaps this venture is not for you.’
Amber Ryan stepped forward.
‘You said that we’re not Majestic Twelve, Doug,’ she pointed out. ‘You said that we would be different. From what I’ve heard about them, the decision you’re making now would fit right in with their plans.’
Jarvis stared at her, for once speechless.
‘We have never been like them.’
‘Good,’ Amber said, ‘then there must be another way.’
‘We lose whatever we do.’
‘So we lose,’ Amber agreed. ‘Better to lose and live than have the blood of people we care about on our hands for the rest of our lives, no?’
Jarvis clenched his fists as he looked at the screen one more time, his mind filled with conflicting voices both urging him and restraining him from firing the missile that would destroy the ancient tomb far out in Egypt’s deserts.
Then, one loud voice overcame them all.
‘Fire the missile!’
Jarvis whirled as he saw an exhausted Aisha stagger from inside the yacht, her head encased in a Trans Cranial Stimulator. Amber rushed to the girl’s side as she collapsed on the deck, barely conscious.
‘What have you done?’ Amber whispered in horror.
Aisha gripped her hand and whispered with the last of her strength.
‘Fire the missile, or we will all die.’
Amber saw the fear in Aisha’s eyes and she turned to Jarvis. The old man considered his impossible dilemma one last time and then he dialed a number on his cell and spoke into it.
‘Track the GPS signal. Fire, now.’
***
XLIX
‘It’s this way, keep moving!’
Ethan hefted the desiccated body of Tjaneni over his head, Lopez and Lucy Morgan leading the way with Mitchell carrying Elena. The darkness of the shaft was impenetrable and Ethan was moving more by feel than by the feeble light of Lucy Morgan’s cell phone that shimmered and shook before them.
The shaft climbed upward, occasional steps tripping Ethan in the darkness, but he could hear the sound of the storm raging somewhere above their heads as the wind whistled through tiny gaps in the stone blocks from which the secret shaft had been built.
‘This is going to bring us out to the south of the tomb entrance,’ Lucy called back. ‘If we’re lucky, the storm will conceal us from the Russians!’
Ethan held out no hope that they would escape unnoticed, especially given their less–than–good luck of the day. The last thing he had expected to be doing was creeping through an underground tunnel with a two–thousand–year old corpse slung over his shoulder and a waiting army of Russian soldiers just outside.
Lucy’s pace quickened as the shaft began to widen a little and Ethan somehow knew that they were reaching the end of the tunnel and that the tomb exit was somewhere just ahead. He could smell the ancient scent of the desert gusting on the breeze that touched his skin as they ascended a shallow incline and Lucy came to a halt.
Ethan could see that the shaft ended in a narrowing tip, and that the walls either side supported a vast slab of sandstone that probably weighed several tons.
‘No way,’ Lopez said. ‘Nobody could lift that seal anhd get out of here.’
Lucy touched the wall beneath the seal and Ethan saw blackened stains on
the stones, like ash or soot.
‘They didn’t lift the seal,’ he said as he realized what must have happened. ‘It was propped open with wooden blocks, which were then burned to let the seal close.’
‘Well we’re not getting out this way,’ Lopez said as she stared at the vast seal. ‘Whoever last passed this way must have sealed the tomb behind them.’
‘She’s right,’ Lucy said, ‘we need to blow the side out. Do we have any charges left?’
Ethan fumbled for his backpack and found a single charge. He handed it to Hellerman, who passed it forward to Mitchell.
‘That’s not enough to blow a rock that big,’ Lopez pointed out.
‘Get away from the entrance,’ Mitchell ordered them as he turned and carefully handed Elena’s limp body to Ethan, who had set Tjaneni’s corpse down in the shaft behind them.
Lopez, Lucy and Ethan retreated with his unlikely cargo carried between them. Ethan saw Mitchell set the charge not against the stone covering the tomb exit but in the join where the wall met the block, which itself sat upon the sandstone bricks.
Ethan knew what Mitchell had in mind and he crouched down as he turned to look behind him.
‘Stay low and cover your ears or your ear drums will burst. Cover Elena’s too.’
Ethan pressed one hand over one ear and tucked the other against his shoulder even as he heard the first blast. He looked up in surprise but saw Mitchell still working on setting the charge.
‘Incoming!’
Ethan hunched down lower with his other hand over Elena’s ear, Lopez mirroring his action as he heard the blasts coming from behind them as the Russians set off their explosives. He felt the vibrations and then the weighty thump of the shockwaves thundering through the tomb and past him as the tomb behind them was shattered and the flames of destruction sought an escape.
‘Any time now would be good!’ Lopez shouted.
Mitchell set the charge and hurried back toward them, and Ethan squinted and ducked his head lower as he saw a brief red flash and then the charge exploded with a vivid flash and a blast of debris and shattered masonry blasted toward them.
Mitchell crouched down and shielded them from the worst of the blast with his sheer physical size in the narrow shaft. Ethan heard the sound of huge chunks of sandstone smashing down onto the tunnel floor ahead of them, and then Mitchell’s voice booming.
‘Go, now!’
Ethan picked Elena up as he followed Mitchell back up the shaft and saw in the faint light from the desert outside that the charge had neatly shattered the rearmost third of the sandstone tomb seal. The huge rock had collapsed inward and formed a neat ramp that led up and out of the tomb.
Mitchell hit the ramp at a run as explosions ripped through the tomb behind them. Ethan ran up the ramp and out into the blinding sandstorm with Elena, Lopez struggling along behind with Tjaneni’s brittle remains over her shoulders as he turned and saw Lucy hurry out of the tomb. They staggered away from the shaft as Ethan saw a sudden glow illuminate it as though Hell itself were reaching out for them.
Ethan staggered to one side as a tongue of searing heat and flame roared from within the tomb far below them. The blasts thundered out into the storm, and to his left Ethan glimpsed through the storm the ground give way and sink in a neat depression as the tomb far below collapsed beneath the weight of countless thousands of tons of sand and rock, burying the Ark of the Covenant.
The flames vanished in a cloud of smoke and dust that was whipped away by the roiling winds. The desert was still entombed in the raging storm, the sky above as dark as night and flashing with brief flares of lightning as the mother of all thunderstorms raged through the heavens.
‘Where to now?’ Lopez yelled above the terrible din of the howling gale.
‘Anywhere but here!’
Ethan, his eyes stinging and his skin battered by the sand, turned and saw the rear of the crater–like crescent formation. Deep recesses in the cliffs offered the only salvation he could see from the storm, and at once he set off for them with the rest of the team following behind him.
*
Mishkin sat in the cab of the truck, Gregorie behind him and satisfied grins on their faces as Gregorie pressed the button on his detonator and they heard the blasts reverberate from the desert behind them.
‘And that is the last that anybody will ever see or hear of Ethan Warner again,’ Mishkin said proudly.
Gregorie nodded as he opened the window of the cab and tossed the detonator out into the raging storm before he closed it again. Then he turned and looked at Hellerman, who sat nearby with his mouth gagged and his wrists manacled.
‘What shall we do with this piece of trash?’ he asked.
Mishkin did not even look back at Hellerman as he replied.
‘Do what we do with all garbage, toss him out.’
Gregorie grinned at Hellerman as he cocked his pistol and then reached over and opened the truck door. Hellerman did not wait to be shot, instead he hurled himself out of the vehicle and crashed down onto the sand as the truck bounced and weaved, vanishing into the darkness. Gregorie fired once at the little man’s disappearing and tumbling form, but he could not tell if his bullet found its mark.
He yanked the door shut once more.
‘He won’t survive out here,’ Gregorie said. ‘And we have the fabled tablets from the Ark of the Covenant anyway. Do we know what they say?’
Mishkin held the tablets in his hands and turned them to face Doctor Akhmed, who sat with them in the rear of the cab.
‘Translate this,’ he ordered as Gregorie pressed a pistol to his head. ‘Quickly.’
The scientist looked down at the tablets and frowned as he read them.
‘This is unspeakably ancient,’ he said, ‘but it’s not possible.’
‘What’s not possible?’ Mishkin pressed.
The scientist traced the lines of hieroglyphics as he voiced the words.
‘He who is beholden to these words shall forever be denied the great truth, for none who shall hold them is worthy of the knowledge of the stars.’
Mishkin grabbed Akhmed’s collar and yanked him forward. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
The scientist stared back at the colonel fearfully as he traced a few more lines on the tablets and spoke in a feeble voice.
‘The rest of the text is nothing but records of accounts and Egyptian folklore that I recognize from other studies,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the information you were looking for. The tablets are…, a deception.’
Mishkin’s voice exploded like a bomb in the cab. ‘Turn around, find the tomb!’
Gregorie leaned over his seat and looked into the rear of the troop transporter.
‘Locate the GPS beacon! Find them!’
One of the soldiers looked back at him, a fearful expression on his face. ‘But we took the locator from the American.’
‘Where is it?!’ Gregorie demanded.
Another of the soldiers pulled the locator from the pocket of his camouflage fatigues and held it up to Gregorie. Even as he saw it, Gregorie heard a screeching sound as though some horrific bird of prey had soared down out of the raging storm to attack the vehicle. The huge Russian’s face collapsed into blind hysteria and he opened his mouth to scream at the soldier.
‘You useless fu…!’
The interior of the cab suddenly filled with a fearsome glow as though a sun had burst into life in their midst. Searing flame and heat blasted through the interior and incinerated every single person inside the cab. Gregorie’s last thought was of the unspeakable pain that ripped through his body as he saw his soldiers disintegrate before him as though they had been turned to ash in an instant and blasted into a thousand pieces. Then the white hot heat that was melting the metal seat cradle beneath him burned through his eyeballs and his skull burst like an exploding grenade.
The UAV drone’s missile hit the troop transporter at almost supersonic velocity and detonated directly inside the cab, incinerating ev
erything in a blaze of heat and light so intense that for a moment the blast appeared on monitors across countless military installations as satellites detected the impact deep in the Egyptian desert.
***
L
Pentagon,
Washington DC
Lieutenant General Foxx walked through the corridors of the most famous military complex in the world, a slim folder under one arm and a determined expression on his features. Although he was not the highest ranking officer in the United States Army and rarely appeared in any official documents, that suited him just fine. Such was his security clearance and his power within the government that hiding in plain sight as an unremarkable infantry officer was the perfect cover.
Once, long ago, men in his position had worn black suits, ties and hats. They were tasked with ensuring that witnesses to unusual phenomena, especially UFO sightings, remained silent about their experience and were “discouraged” from reporting them either to the media or friends. Their visits to members of the public from the late 1940s onwards had resulted in them being labelled with a strange moniker: Men in Black.
Those days were long gone now, and instead it was preferred for ultra–covert operatives to remain tucked out of sight in what appeared to be menial roles within the regular military. Foxx’s true role as an agent of a highly classified government organization was thus perfectly concealed from all but those who served alongside him.
The office he sought was likewise anonymous among the many hundreds of others that filled the Pentagon. Foxx reached the door and knocked three times with perfect rhythm.
‘Enter.’
Foxx walked in and closed the door behind him. Inside was a small office with pictures on the walls of the residing officer’s family and military service. A simple filing cabinet stood in one corner of the room and the desk was cluttered with suitably mundane paperwork.
‘Please, sit.’
Foxx sat in the only other chair inside the room and opened his file. There was no preamble, no briefing – Foxx was there simply to file his report, verbally of course, and then destroy all evidence that the report ever existed.
The Genesis Cypher (Warner & Lopez Book 6) Page 32