by David Wood
“How deep—” He broke off, realizing that his voice had been whisper soft, and tried again, with more volume. “How deep are we?”
“About three hundred feet from the entrance.” Nora’s voice was muffled by her mask. “And the water’s surface is another seventy feet down this vertical shaft. We are already deeper than any other tomb in the Valley. It is one reason I believe this was never meant to be a tomb at all.”
“What was it then?”
“It is the entrance to a tomb complex, one that thieves would never be able to penetrate. I believe that Sennedjem intentionally carved this shaft deep enough to get below the level of the Nile, and then began a transverse shaft to connect with the river itself.”
“That’s quite an undertaking.”
“Compared to building pyramids?”
Maddock didn’t need to see Nora’s mouth to know that she was smiling. “Good point.”
“Today, the Nile is about three miles away, but the course of rivers changes over time and, before the construction of dams in modern times, the level rose and fell with the seasons. During the annual flood season, the water reached as far as the statues of Amenhotep we saw on the way here. In the dry season, it slowed to a bare trickle. If Sennedjem did most of the original excavation during the dry season, he would not have had to contend with flooded passages. Only as he neared the river bed itself would that become a problem. It is my belief that, while some of his laborers cut the tunnel through the river, others were carving tombs along the way, tombs which could only be reached from that tunnel. Once it reached the Nile and filled with water, there would be no way to enter them.”
“At least, not until the invention of SCUBA diving,” Bones said.
“It’s an interesting theory,” Maddock said, “and we should be able to give you a definitive answer. Provided of course the entrance to this hypothetical tomb isn’t more than about half-a-mile from where we are.”
Nora’s eyebrows came together in a look of concern. “Why half-a-mile?”
“Because we only brought a thousand meters of cable for our ROV.”
Now the mask did hide Nora’s reaction, but Maddock sensed disappointment. After a moment, she shrugged. “Well, let’s hope it’s enough.” She gestured to the pit. “There’s not a lot of room to move down there, so you should probably operate from here.”
Bones moved to the edge of the pit and after a glance into its depths, nodded in agreement. “Works for me.”
He knelt before the Pelican case, opened it to reveal Uma, nestled in a protective layer of egg crate foam. The ROV looked a little like an oversized handheld spotlight mounted on a scaled down set of helicopter landing skids, and indeed, it was equipped with a high-intensity xenon floodlight, but that was only one of its many features. The molded yellow housing concealed small but powerful thruster fans, a high definition video camera with a wide-angle lens, and a small articulated manipulator arm that could grasp small objects for retrieval. A thin cable, sheathed in black insulation, sprouted like a stray hair from the top of the little machine, connecting it to the laptop computer which served as a control interface. Bones drew out several double arm-lengths of the cable, and then held the ROV up with one hand. “Here you go,” he said, without looking up.
“Did I miss the part where I lost the coin toss?” Maddock said, jokingly affecting a tone of indignation.
He instantly regretted it.
“Dude, look at those steps,” Bones retorted. “You don’t seriously expect me to go down there. This is clearly a job for a little guy.”
“I’m six inches shorter than you.” Maddock held his hands apart to demonstrate the insignificant difference in their respective heights. “Six inches!”
“That’s longer than your package.” Bones raised a craggy eyebrow, then reached up with his free hand to move Maddock’s hands closer together. “There. Six inches.” He turned toward Nora, almost certainly grinning behind his mask. “He always exaggerates that.”
Even in the relatively dim glow of the flashlight, Maddock could see Nora’s furious blush. Hoping to spare the young woman further embarrassment, Maddock took the ROV, cradling it to his chest, and cautiously ventured onto the steps at the edge of the well. “Give me some light,” he said.
Almost as soon as he had said it, Uma’s xenon spotlight blazed to life. Far brighter than Nora’s flashlight, the beam lit up the pit like a small sun. He could see the steps, spiraling down like the grooves inside a rifle barrel, disappearing into the oily blackness at the bottom. The walls of the pit were chalky white near the top, but halfway down, they abruptly transitioned to a velvety black—the mold Nora had warned them about.
As he was about to start down, Nora called out with a final warning. “If you should fall in, whatever you do, don’t drink any of the water.”
“Always good advice,” Maddock replied. “Any particular reason why?”
“Remember how I told you that the water tested as being Nile River water? One of the indicators was the presence of parasites that cause schistosomiasis—what they call ‘snail fever.’ It’s a common disease on the Nile, and the main reason why nobody ever swims in the river.”
“So it’s not because of crocodiles?” Bones asked.
“No. There aren’t any crocodiles north of the Aswan Dam.”
“Just parasites,” Maddock muttered. “I think I’ll just make it a point to stay dry.”
As Maddock descended. Bones continued playing out the cable. It trailed out behind Maddock like a lifeline, but he had no illusions about its ability to arrest him should he fall. The cable and the connection to Uma was designed to withstand extreme pressure, not weight. When they operated in deep sea conditions, a secondary wire tether was employed to assist with retrieval, but the limitations of the operating environment, to say nothing of the added bulk of the tether and the winch required to operate it, had prohibited its use here. The thousand yards of interface cable they had brought along was already pushing the limits of practicality.
He found himself unconsciously hugging the wall of the pit as he descended, drawing a measure of comfort from the scrape of stone against his shoulder. That was fine up here where it was dry, but as he approached the horizontal transition line where the black mold had colonized the interior of the well, he had to move more deliberately.
Then, after too many twists to count, he reached the spot where the steps disappeared into the dark pool. He carefully squatted on the last dry step and eased the ROV out into the water. Despite its not insignificant weight—nearly forty pounds—it did not sink, but instead bobbed on the surface like a toy boat. A gentle push sent it drifting out toward the center of the pit.
“Uma’s wet!” His shout reverberated tinnily up the shaft. He didn’t know if Bones had heard him, but a few seconds later, a humming sound issued from the little remote submersible. As the interior ballast tanks filled with water, achieving neutral buoyancy, it sank quickly, plunging him once more into darkness.
Resignedly, he dug out his mobile phone and activated the built-in flashlight, then began the long climb back to the top.
He found Bones and Nora huddled over the laptop, following Uma’s progress into the well shaft. Nora, her face luminous with excitement, could barely tear her gaze away to acknowledge his return.
“I was right,” she said. “Well, right about the transverse shaft.”
Maddock knelt behind them and looked over her shoulder. The feed from the video camera showed a rough-hewn keyhole-shaped passage, slick with some kind of organic matter. There were no obvious clues to its dimensions and orientation but the indicators on the edge of the screen showed that the ROV was now moving horizontally along an east-southeast vector.
Toward the Nile.
“The vertical shaft continued another forty feet before intersecting this tunnel,” Bones explained. “We’re about fifty meters in.”
“The passage is large enough for a man to walk through,” Nora said.
&n
bsp; “And then some,” Bones added. “I think the chica here may be on to something.”
Maddock just nodded. It was an encouraging result but wishing wouldn’t make it so. Beside them, the interface cable continued spooling out in a slow, mesmerizing rhythm. Despite the constant forward motion, the view on the monitor did not change. The slimy floor, ceiling and walls rolled out to the edges of the screen, but the oblong shadow at the center remained static—an unattainable horizon. Bones called out their progress in fifty-meter increments, and then, as the number edged closer to the final limit, twenty-five. His tone was subdued, anxious.
“Nine hundred,” he murmured “Nine twenty-five.”
Maddock shook his head, ruefully as Uma reached the end of the line. “Sorry. That’s as far as we can go.”
Nora’s forehead was creased with visible disappointment, but she had not given up hope. “One kilometer. That’s not even a quarter of the distance. The entrance to the tomb must be further along.” She raised her eyes to him. “What if we extended the cable?”
Maddock shrugged. “It’s possible,” he equivocated. “We’ll have to see what’s available locally. If we have to have something shipped here, it will probably be a few days before we can take another crack at it.”
“We could dive it,” said Bones. The suggestion was offered hesitantly, as if Bones secretly hoped Maddock would immediately veto the idea. It was a measure of the perils of a potential dive that Bones was anything less than gushing with enthusiasm.
“That wouldn’t be my first choice,” Maddock admitted. “The passage is about forty feet down. The pressure at that depth is about two-and-a-half atmospheres, which means about an hour of air per SCUBA tank. That’s probably a bit generous and doesn’t allow for much of a safety margin. We have two bottles and I brought along a manifold, so I can rig up a twinset and double that.”
“Two hours,” Nora said, brightening a little.
He raised his hands in a “hold your horses” gesture. “Slow down. Two hours means one hour out, one hour back. And that may be overly optimistic. We might be able to extend the survey out another mile or so, but that’s it. There’s no way we’re going to be able to explore the whole thing. Not if it really does go all the way to the river.”
Nora sagged in defeat.
Normally, Maddock and Bones would have jumped at the chance to go underwater, but this wasn’t the open sea, or a cavern full of natural wonders. It was a three-mile long drainage pipe, and Maddock did not relish the idea of spending even one hour in it, much less two.
I guess that’s why they call it work, he thought.
“However...” Maddock was grateful for the respirator, which hid his pained grimace. “We did agree to survey this passage for you, and I intend to do just that.”
“How?”
“We’ll have to rent some additional equipment. A compressor, some spare tanks, maybe a scooter...” He saw her blank look and added, “A diver propulsion vehicle. We’ll need it to shuttle the extra tanks into the passage.”
“Where will you get this equipment?”
“If I’m not mistaken, there are several dive operators on the Red Sea coast.”
“Yes. In Hurghada and Marsa Alam. But it is a four-hour drive across the desert.”
“We can have the dive shop send the equipment by courier. They should be able to have it here by this evening.”
She perked up again. “Mr. Fayed might be able to help with that. He has connections with all the tour operators.”
Maddock nodded. “Even better.” He turned to Bones. “Bring Uma back. We’ll head back to Luxor, stash our stuff at the hotel, and then hit up the golden arches for dinner.”
“Are you kidding?” Bones said. “I can get that crap anywhere.”
Just as Maddock was about to roll his eyes, there was a bright flash in the passage leading back to the surface. His reflexes, honed by military training and real-world experience, kicked in before his brain could even begin to process this new input.
“Get down!” he shouted.
Knowing that Bones would react without hesitation, Maddock wheeled around to Nora, tackling the archaeologist to the floor a fraction of a second before a blast of fire and debris erupted from the passage to engulf them all.
SIX
The cool underground air instantly became blisteringly hot, compressed by the overpressure wave that simultaneously shuddered the ground beneath Maddock, and rocked through him like a gut punch. The larger rocks were like the blows of a sledge hammer, the smaller ones felt like buckshot pellets.
And then, just as quickly as the storm began, it was over.
For several seconds, Maddock lay unmoving, barely aware of Nora shaking under him. He felt like his nerves had gone into overload shut down. A persistent ringing sound filled his head.
He recognized these symptoms for what they were, and more importantly as a sign that he was still alive, but this realization did not automatically translate to hope.
After a few more seconds, he risked opening his eyes.
A mistake. The subterranean gallery had been inundated with a cloud of fine debris that still hung in the air, hiding everything from sight while scouring his eyeballs like a sandstorm. He immediately closed his eyes but the damage was already done. He could feel the grit under his eyelids.
He was vaguely aware of a sound, just below the constant ring. A voice. Nora asking what had happened, or maybe just telling him to get off her. Since his usefulness as a human shield had already ended, he rolled carefully to the side, allowing her unrestricted movement, and as he did, he opened his eyes again but only wide enough to squint through knitted lashes. There wasn’t much to see, but after a second or two, his gaze was drawn to a fuzzy yellow glow.
Nora’s flashlight.
He crawled over to it and picked it up, then stood. The flashlight’s beam swam with dust motes, a solid shaft of light that did little to illuminate the darkness, but when he played it across the floor around him, he could make out Nora, covered in dust and squinting back at him, but otherwise looking no worse for wear. Bones, a few feet away, was just beginning to stir. Through the layer of dust that seemed to coat his entire body, Maddock could see dark splotches—blood seeping from various abrasions and lacerations. Judging by his own condition, Maddock guess none of the injuries would prove life threatening, but that was small comfort. They had a much bigger problem to deal with now.
He shone the light in the direction of the passage leading back to the surface, but instead of the narrow slot through which they had entered, all he saw now was a heap of broken rock spilling. The exit was completely blocked. There was no way of knowing how far up the passage the cave-in extended, but Maddock could tell at a glance that moving the rubble by hand would be impossible.
“What happened?”
The ringing had subsided just enough to let him hear Nora’s voice.
“Somebody blasted the entrance,” he shouted, uncertain of his own volume.
“Who?”
Maddock had no idea, and answering that question wasn’t at the top of his list of priorities. “We’ll figure that out once we get out of here.”
Bones’ deep voice reached out to him. “That was a pretty big freaking charge,” he rumbled. His use of the technical term “charge,” as opposed to “bomb” was almost certainly deliberately intended to put Nora at ease, if only a little bit, but it didn’t lessen the impact of his next pronouncement. “Whoever set it wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be leaving through the front door.”
“I didn’t see another way out,” Maddock replied.
Bones cocked his head toward the pit. “There’s one way.”
“That doesn’t go anywhere.”
“It goes to the river. We know that much. Nora can wear my mask, and I’ll take turns buddy breathing. If I reconfigure Uma for manual operation so we can use her like a scooter, we should have enough air for a one-way trip.
Maddock didn’t share Bones confid
ence in the measures he had just outlined, but there was an even bigger problem with the suggestion. “Just because there’s river water down there, doesn’t mean we’ll find an opening big enough to fit through. The water down there could be filtering in through tons of loose rock.”
“Or not,” Bones countered. “We know there are tons of rock blocking the way out at this end. I say better to take a chance than sit here and wait to suffocate. Besides, don’t you want to know if there really is an undiscovered tomb down there?”
Maddock wanted to argue that they were better off staying put, waiting for someone on the outside to realize what had happened and effect a rescue, but deep down he suspected Bones was right—at least about their chances of making it out through the main entrance. He turned to Nora. “What do you think?”
The archaeologist just stared at him, as if unable to comprehend the choice he was presenting or the dire reality of their situation, but then she nodded slowly. “I want to know,” she said, her voice small behind the dust-clogged respirator. “Before I die.”
“Nobody’s going to die,” Bones asserted.
“Right,” Maddock agreed, hoping he sounded as sincere as his friend. “Well, I guess we’d better get started.”
While Bones worked on the modifications to Uma, Maddock gave Nora a crash course in SCUBA. Despite Bones’ original offer, it was immediately apparent that the full-face masks he and Maddock had brought along were too large for Nora—Bones, thankfully, passed up the opportunity to make an off-color joke—which meant she would be the one buddy breathing from their octopus regulators.
Maddock explained how to equalize the pressure of the descent by popping her ears—a technique called ‘the Valsalva Maneuver’—and assured her that all she really needed to do was breathe normally, but he knew that was easier said than done. The weight of water pressing in, combined with the darkness and the close quarters, would quite naturally lead to anxiety, which would in turn cause rapid breathing, and that would quickly exhaust their supply of breathable air. Nora would also be at greater risk for accidental ingestion of the disease causing parasitic flatworms, but the disease was treatable, and besides, it would only be a problem if they actually made it out of the submerged passage. Maddock tried not to think about the unlikelihood of that.