The tank came rumbling on, unstoppable. Now it was just yards from their Toyota and Ben realised it wasn’t even going to slow down.
And it didn’t. The tank’s twelve-foot width kept on coming. The caterpillar tracks seemed just to engulf the parked vehicle. The tank’s front lifted as it rode straight up on top of it, then sank down as the forty-six tons of steel and armour plate bore down, crushing it like an eggshell. The huge machine lumbered onwards as if it hadn’t even noticed. In its wake, the Toyota was a flattened mess of twisted metal.
Kirby turned in horror to Ben. ‘Now we’re totally fucked’, he screamed over the roar.
Before Ben could stop him, the historian ripped the little .38 revolver from his pocket and aimed it at the tank.
Ben knew what would happen if he fired. It was like pitching a child’s dart gun against a raging bull. The low-velocity round would whang harmlessly against the massive armour plate. It wouldn’t even dent it, but the crew inside would hear. Then the tank would stop. The gun would swivel around towards them. It would locate them in an instant, and it would blow them to pieces. At this range, their bodies would be scattered over a circle of desert two hundred yards across.
Kirby squeezed the trigger. The .38 round kicked dust off the gun turret.
And at the exact same moment, the tank detonated with a gigantic fiery explosion and a screech of ripping armour plate.
Both of them ducked instinctively as the ground rocked under them. Shrapnel and pieces of caterpillar track and rocks and boulders blasted in all directions. The turret hatch burst open, and flames and black smoke poured from the hole. A burning man tried to scramble out, but fell back with his arms waving in agony. He disappeared as a secondary explosion tore the turret from its mountings. The armoured beast seemed to crumple and sink in death.
‘Got the bastard!’ Kirby yelled, waving his little revolver in glee.
Ben was stunned for a second before he realised what he’d just seen. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, professor. That was a landmine.’ And a big one, he thought. Maybe fifty kilos of high explosive. If they’d driven over it in the Toyota, they’d have been vaporised. He glanced skywards and said another quick thanks under his breath.
‘Felt good anyway,’ Kirby said. He was about to clamber over the rocks when Ben stopped him.
‘Wait. And give me that before you do anything else stupid with it. You could have got us both killed.’ He snatched the .38 from him.
They waited two minutes, then three, and Ben listened hard. But other than the crackle of the flames from the burning tank, the desert was silent. He guessed that wherever the rest of the Sudanese armoured division were, they weren’t close enough by to worry about-at least, not yet.
After four minutes, Ben decided that he and Kirby were the only living human beings within a wide radius, and he stepped out from behind the rocks and surveyed the smoking battlefield.
He threw a long, regretful look at the ruin of the Toyota. There was nothing left there to salvage. No weapons, no equipment. And no water. The dark patch where their bottles had burst was quickly evaporating on the hot sand. With no vehicle, the only thing between them and a slow, baking death was what little water they carried in their belt canteens.
That was something else he could worry about later. Evening would soon be falling. Dying of thirst would be a more pressing issue in the morning. In the meantime, he had a treasure to find.
He wiped the dust and sweat off his face. ‘Let’s go,’ he sighed to Kirby, and led the way through the canyon towards the ridge. Fifty yards further on, he stepped over the body of the motorcyclist who’d almost made it. The sling of the dead Bedouin’s AK-47 had been snapped by a bullet and the weapon was lying a few feet away. Ben picked it up. The stock was decorated with metal studs and mother-of-pearl insets. The barrel was crushed and bent from a shrapnel impact.
He tossed the useless weapon back down. Walked grimly on.
The sun had sunk below the cleft now, just a shimmering golden rim of its disc visible over the rocks. Without the glare in his eyes, Ben could see the towering rock in more detail. He ran his eyes down its craggy face.
And stopped.
And stared at the cave entrance that hadn’t been there before. The tank’s final shell had carved away a section of the ridge, exposing a jagged black crevice a few metres up its face that before must have been covered with millennia of fallen rock and storm-blown sand.
Kirby had seen it, too. They glanced at one another, and ran. Sand and loose stone slithered underfoot as they clambered up the slope towards the cave entrance. Ben got there first, and peered cautiously into the dark space.
‘We need a torch,’ Kirby panted.
Ben ran back down the slope and trotted back to the motorcyclist’s body. ‘What are you doing?’ Kirby called after him. Ben snatched up the ruined AK rifle and tore the dead man’s robe away. He ripped it into ten long strips, stuffed nine of them in his pocket and wrapped the tenth around the end of the rifle. He ran back up to join Kirby at the cave entrance, took out his Zippo, flipped it open and lit the strip of material.
The improvised torch cast a dull, flickering glow on the rock walls ahead as they moved deeper into the cave. The tunnel was long and winding.
‘We’re going downwards,’ Kirby’s voice echoed.
Ben nodded. The cave was leading them deep underground. The light began to burn out, and he quickly wrapped another strip of cloth around the rifle. They walked on.
From somewhere deep inside the rock came a long, low rumble. Dust and stones showered lightly down from the ceiling. Ben froze and tensed, waiting for a massive cave-in.
It didn’t come. The dust shower stopped and he could breathe again. ‘I don’t think that tank shell did this place any favours,’ he muttered.
The tunnel kept snaking downwards. It was a natural cave, but Ben could see from areas of smoothed wall that someone, somewhere in time, had been here before. Had that someone been Wenkaura, leading his expedition deep under the ridge, a procession of men carrying caskets of treasure to a place where the heretic pharaoh could never find it?
‘It seems to go on forever,’ Kirby whispered.
‘There’s a bend up ahead,’ Ben said.
A few metres on, the claustrophobic atmosphere of the narrow tunnel suddenly seemed to lift, as though a bigger space had opened up around them. Ben wrapped more cloth around the dying torch and the flame burned brighter. He raised the flickering light over his head.
‘Sweet Jesus, look at this,’ Kirby murmured.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The scene ahead in the torchlight was breathtaking. They were standing at the opening of an underground cavern the size of the largest of cathedrals. The fire glittered off weird and wonderful rock formations.
‘This is fantastic,’ Kirby said, stepping forward.
‘Careful,’ Ben said, stopping him. He shone the torch downwards.
‘Whoops,’ Kirby breathed.
Below them was a deep abyss, falling away into blackness. Massive pointed stalagmites jutted up from the depths like huge stakes, waiting to impale anyone who fell into the chasm. Ben raised the torch higher, and the orange light flickered off great craggy stalactites that hung down from the cavern’s ceiling a hundred feet above them.
‘Looks like giant fangs,’ Kirby whispered in awe. ‘Like an enormous mouth. A shark’s mouth.’
‘Not a shark,’ Ben said. ‘A crocodile. You’re looking at the teeth of Sobek, the crocodile god. “Pass through the teeth of Sobek, and you will discover.”’
Kirby gasped at the realisation. ‘But how the hell do we get across?’
Ben stepped towards the edge and the torchlight glinted off something in front of him. A rope bridge, spanning the void, stretched far into the darkness ahead. Ben put out his hand and his fingers closed around the thick, taut rope. It felt strong and dry in his fist.
‘This way,’ he said.
‘No way,’ Kirby protested. �
��It’s thousands of years old. It’ll never take our weight.’
Ben stepped out onto the bridge. The wooden slats were cracked and grey with age, and the creak of the ancient ropes echoed through the cavern. But it held. He took another step. He was standing right over the abyss now. He turned to Kirby. ‘Are you coming or what?’
Kirby hesitated.
‘Fine.’ Ben took another step. ‘Then I’ll find the treasure myself.’
‘Not on your life,’ Kirby said, following quickly behind. The bridge creaked and swayed as they made their way towards the darkness.
Another deep rumble echoed through the cavern. Stone grinding on stone. Millions of tons of pressure bearing down above them. Ben glanced up at the jagged ceiling and sucked his breath in between his teeth. Something was not right up there. Something fundamental within the structural integrity of the rock had been dislodged by the enormous impact of the tank shell. Maybe it was nothing. Or maybe it would all come crashing down at any moment and this place would be their tomb. There was only one way to find out, and only one way forwards.
‘I feel like I’m walking into hell,’ Kirby said shakily behind him.
‘Maybe you are,’ Ben said.
Another grinding rumble from above, and a shower of small rocks fell from the ceiling. One shattered off a stalagmite. The rest dropped away into nothing. It was a long, long way down.
From somewhere below in the abyss came another sound. The distant rush of fast-moving water. An underground river, an ancient relic from the days when the Sahara desert had been a lush, green paradise.
The crossing of the rope bridge seemed like an eternity, but eventually they reached the far side. Kirby took the last few steps at a run. The sweat was shining off his face in the torchlight. ‘Thank Christ that’s over.’
‘Until you have to cross the other way,’ Ben said.
‘I really needed to be reminded of that.’
Ben didn’t reply. He was already pushing on into the tunnel, wrapping another piece of cloth around the torch as he went.
This was no longer a natural cave. The shaft they were following now was man-made, dug with amazing precision out of the solid rock. The walls were covered in faded paintings, strange images that didn’t look familiarly Egyptian to Ben.
‘I don’t know who carved this passage out,’ Kirby said. ‘But it wasn’t Wenkaura.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Sure as I’ll ever be. Look at these images. I’ve never seen anything like them before. These are nothing any scholar would recognise. Some Predynastic culture built this place. Or Nubian, or some other civilisation we don’t even know about. It’s incredible. How Wenkaura found this place, we’ll never know.’
A loud, echoing series of rumbling cracks made them spin around. Ben watched as a thin fissure slowly spread across the tunnel wall beside him and part of a painted image crumbled away.
‘This can’t be good,’ Kirby murmured. ‘The place is falling apart.’
Thirty yards further on through the dark, winding shaft they came to a dead end. The wall that blocked the tunnel was covered in ancient cobwebs and dust. ‘Hold this.’ Ben thrust the torch into Kirby’s hands and brushed away the webs, revealing the cracks between stone blocks. ‘There are more markings here. And these are definitely Egyptian.’
Kirby came up close. The firelight sent dark shadows into the carved hieroglyphs in front of them.
‘Can you read it?’
Kirby’s mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, God.’
‘Can you read it?’ Ben repeated impatiently.
Kirby turned. ‘It says, “Amun is content. The treasure is restored.” This is it. We found it.’
‘Then let’s see what we’ve got.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Straight through this wall,’ Ben said. He took the blazing rifle from Kirby and swung the stock hard at the wall. The crash of solid wood on stone echoed through the tunnel. A block moved, maybe an eighth of an inch.
He swung the rifle again. The torch went out, and they were in darkness. ‘Stand back.’ He hit it again, blind. There was a crash of something falling. He kept swinging and swinging until the rifle stock broke and clattered to the stone floor. He felt for another strip of cloth, wrapped it around the barrel, flicked open his lighter and relit it.
He smiled at what he saw. There was now a hole in the wall just about big enough to crawl through. He stooped down beside it, and felt a sigh of warm air escaping from the chamber inside. Dust particles hovered in the torchlight.
‘Here we go,’ Kirby said. ‘Monte Carlo or bust.’
Ben took a deep breath and crawled through into the darkness. Shone the torch at a floating mist of dust.
Kirby struggled through the hole and jumped up to his feet. ‘What do you see?’ he whispered.
‘Nothing,’ Ben said.
But then, as the dust slowly settled, he could see.
Chapter Fifty-Five
The details of the room gradually emerged from the mist. Strange forms seemed to lurk in the shadows. Ben narrowed his eyes and raised the torch higher as he stepped carefully deeper into the chamber. He was suddenly aware that he’d stopped breathing for a few seconds. He blinked, caught his breath, blinked again.
Sitting like a silent council of elders presiding over the huge chamber were a circle of giant seated statues. The light of the flames rippled over their perfect contours and threw back the glint of gold. The faces of the golden statues seemed to peer curiously out of the darkness that had surrounded them for thousands of years. They weren’t human, and they weren’t animal. They were the animal gods: the falcon-beaked face of Ra. Bastet, the cat goddess. The fanged snout of Sobek, the Ibis head of Thoth. The refugees from the religious dictatorship of Akhenaten threw long, flickering shadows on the chamber walls.
The space at their feet was stacked ten-foot high with an endless profusion of objects. It was enough to fill a museum. A golden jackal lay watching them from a plinth. Gold caskets and vases and magnificent cups everywhere, stone urns decorated with polytheistic images and brimming with sparking gold coins, jewels, amulets, pendants and rings, bracelets and crowns. Gold falcons and ankhs, gold shields. There was gold everywhere, unseen and untouched for millennia, smooth and sparkling and beautiful.
Kirby let out a strangled cry. He ran forward and plunged his hands into one of the urns. Filled his fists with precious artefacts and rubbed them over his face. ‘I found it,’ he mumbled over and over again. ‘I found it. I’m rich.’ He slipped a gold bangle the size of a dumbbell weight over one wrist, admired it with flashing eyes for a moment, grabbed a gold necklace and hung it around his neck. He cupped his hands and dipped them up to his elbows in glittering coins, brought out a piled handful and watched, mesmerised, as they slithered through his fingers. ‘It’s too much,’ he whispered. ‘It’s unbelievable.’
Ben watched in the torchlight as Kirby danced from one corner of the chamber to the other, touching and caressing everything, wild with excitement. In his gold fever the historian seemed to have forgotten that they were stranded out here in the desert. They were virtually unarmed, they had no transport, and very little water. The mouth of the cave could be swarming with Sudanese soldiers by now, or rebel militiamen who might take a lot of persuading that these two white Europeans should be allowed to go on their way.
Ben propped the torch at the foot of a statue, took out his phone and used it to photograph everything. Then he set it to video camera mode, walked to the middle of the chamber and filmed a slow, sweeping 360-degree panning shot.
‘What’s that for?’ Kirby asked, looking up from a fistful of artefacts that he’d been gazing at lovingly.
‘Evidence.’ Ben snatched a foot-long, falcon-headed golden deity statuette from an urn and thrust the heavy object in his belt. ‘Now let’s get out of here before this place caves in on us.’
Kirby frowned. ‘But the treasure—’
‘We’re not here to take th
e treasure,’ Ben said. ‘Just to find it. It’s not ours.’
‘You can’t just let this slip through your fingers,’ Kirby protested. ‘You can’t just walk away from it.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Some things are worth more to me.’
‘Like what?’
Another groaning tremor resonated through the rock, then stopped.
‘Do you want to discuss this outside?’ Ben asked. ‘Or under a million tons of rubble?’
‘That’s what I’m saying. At least we can save some of this stuff, if the worst happens.’
‘If the worst happens, it’s someone else’s problem,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t come here to fill my pockets with trinkets. Now move it.’ He wrapped another strip of cloth around the torch, and saw Kirby’s sullen expression in the dancing flames.
They crawled back out through the hole in the wall and made their way back along the tunnel. The historian was strangely quiet as they crossed the chasm and passed through the teeth of Sobek much faster than on their earlier journey, but Ben paid him little attention. All he cared about now was getting out of the desert and somehow contacting Harry Paxton to tell him the search was over.
Ben moved faster through the sloping tunnel. Behind him, he could hear Kirby’s breath rasping as he fell further and further back in the shaft. At last, Ben found himself climbing the final stretch, towards the mouth of the cave. The air was fresh and cool. Night had fallen during their long exploration of the tunnels, and a pool of moonlight shone through the entrance.
When Kirby caught up with him a minute or two later, Ben took the .38 from his pocket and handed it to him. ‘Take this back. No hard feelings, OK?’ He walked on a few steps.
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 131