by David Wood
But he knew that, no matter what the outcome for him, he had succeeded. Fayed’s balloon wouldn’t be able to stay aloft. It would crash, and even if its deadly cargo was released, the exposure would be localized and minimal. Whatever happened to him, it had been worth it.
The impact with the ground was sudden and forceful, and yet not nearly as bad as he had expected. There was still enough air trapped in the folds of the balloon to cushion his landing, if only for a fraction of a second. Just enough to turn what had to have been a fifty-foot free fall into something that felt more like falling off the stage at a concert. It hurt, a lot, and he knew that if he somehow managed to extricate himself from the balloon, it would hurt a lot more in days to come, but everything still seemed to be connected and functional. The wind had been knocked out of him, but since he couldn’t breathe anyway, he barely even noticed.
He fought to roll over, clawing at the fabric, trying to tear it away or at the very least, create some space to maneuver. Somehow, he managed to get his knees under him, and that gave him the leverage he needed to rip through a seam. He felt air on his face, hot and arid like the desert, but fresh, and he gasped in a lungful....
No, not so fresh after all. There was an odd smell wafting over him. A chemical odor, like a plastic bag full of celery set on fire.
Fire!
He struggled to get through the tear, widening it until head and shoulders were free, and twisted around until he spotted white smoke billowing up from the tangle of red fabric.
He had a pretty good idea what had happened. As soon as the balloon had begun losing altitude, the pilot—Fayed or one of his accomplices—had instinctively triggered the burners, sending a jet of flame high up into the balloon, but because the envelope had been deformed by Maddock’s collision, the flames had come into direct contact with the highly flammable synthetic material, and subsequently, had been fanned into a raging conflagration as it fell to earth. Now, that blaze was sweeping across the billowing puddle of the settling balloon in which Maddock was still entangled.
He renewed his attack, tearing frantically at the ripped seam, an insect, struggling to get free of its cocoon. He got head and shoulders through, and then fought to get his feet under him, despite still being mostly covered by the balloon. The effort widened the tear, but in the process, he tripped, and stumbled forward, face-planting on the nylon-covered ground.
The smell was stronger now, almost overwhelming, the fumes burned the back of his throat, and he could feel the heat rising at his back. He tried standing up on the move, half-running, half-crawling, but the balloon was caught on his feet, and even though he was moving, he was dragging it—and the flames—along with him.
He dropped flat again, intentionally this time, and rolled over onto his back, kicking at the fabric until, finally, the last remnants fell away and he was free. He backpedaled away, the flames now so close that he didn’t dare take the time to turn around.
And then he felt the grit of the desert under his hands. He was clear of the balloon, clear of the approaching flames. He scurried back a few more feet and then collapsed backward, exhausted and aching, but mostly just relieved.
He had done it. He had stopped Fayed, and—impossibly— had lived to savor the victory.
Fayed!
Maddock felt a sudden tingle of apprehension. He rolled over and started to rise, but even as he did, he felt the other man’s eyes on him. Nassir Fayed, looking every bit as bruised and battered as Maddock felt, stood just ten yards away, his face twisted with pain and rage. “I should have just killed you and left you in that tomb” he rasped.
Maddock didn’t have the energy to form a witty riposte, so instead he just said, “Yeah. Big mistake.” He sighed. “It’s over, Fayed. You’re finished.”
Fayed’s dust-streaked face was split with a fierce grimace. “Oh, no. It’s not over. I still have the treasures. And I won’t repeat the mistake of letting you live to interfere with my plans again.”
The threat felt like more than just empty posturing. Maddock’s gaze flicked away from Fayed’s face, just for a second. The other man was unarmed and appeared to be alone—if there had been another man with him in the balloon, he was either dead or unconscious somewhere beyond the burning wreckage—but over his shoulder, Maddock could see an approaching vehicle trailing a plume of dust as it crossed the open desert terrain, headed straight for them. It was the white van that had borne them away from Deir el-Medina; Fayed’s van. Maddock surmised it had probably been lingering near the balloon staging area, the intended chase and recovery vehicle for the balloons.
He brought his eyes back to Fayed. “It won’t matter. I’m not the only one who knows what you did. Bones and Nora will make sure the truth gets out.”
“They won’t live long enough to tell anyone. They won’t be able to stay up there forever. When they come down, I’ll be there to greet them. He nodded to a point over Maddock’s shoulder. “Or maybe I won’t have to wait.”
Maddock turned and shot a glance in the direction Fayed had indicated. Behind him, not quite a hundred yards away, the second balloon was coming down. He could see Bones, a towering figure at the center of the gondola, working the vent and burner controls to simultaneously release hot air out the top, while replenishing it with quick bursts from the burner. The basket was just ten feet above the ground, dipping up and down a little, but maintaining a hover. Nora was leaning over the side, one hand cupped to her mouth as if shouting.
She was shouting, though Maddock could barely make out her words.
“Need a lift?”
Maddock brought his attention back to Fayed, just long enough to see that the van had almost reached them, then he turned and started running for the balloon.
A fresh surge of adrenaline numbed him to the pain of his bruises and infused him with a burst of energy. He could hear Fayed calling out to his accomplices, ordering them to run Maddock down, could hear the van’s tires crunching across the desert floor behind him, getting louder with each passing second. He didn’t look back, but when he sensed the van was nearly upon him, he veered to the right. A screech of brakes joined the tumult as the driver halted the vehicle and tried to change directions. Maddock continued zigzagging randomly as he closed the distance with the waiting balloon.
Ahead, Bones pulled the vent cord again, releasing another invisible plume of hot air from the top of the balloon, causing the gondola to drop down hard, and then bounce back into the air a foot or two. Nora was still shouting, and now he had no difficulty hearing her
“Hurry!”
He poured on a burst of speed, crossing the last few yards and leapt for the gondola, twisting over in mid-air like an Olympic high-jumper clearing the bar. Maddock’s landing was nothing to be proud of, but the free-floating gondola absorbed some of the energy. Even as he tried to right himself, Bones, looming over him, pulled the burner handle for a long, sustained blast. With a full-throated roar, a pillar of fire rose into the cavernous envelope overhead.
Suddenly, the gondola jolted violently. With a great splintering sound, an entire section of the wicker basket caved in even as it swung away from the impact like a pendulum, spinning in circles beneath the balloon canopy. Bones kept the burner going, and as the gondola spun completely around, Maddock peered through the broken section of wicker weave and saw the roof of the white van that had just struck them, now falling away as they rose once more into the sky, out of reach.
Bones ran the burner for nearly a minute, rising so fast that the pressure in Maddock’s ears became almost unbearable. For a few seconds, they were caught in the same breeze that had pushed them southeast after the initial takeoff, but as they rose even higher, a swift south wind caught them.
“Whoa,” Bones exclaimed, letting go of the burner handle. “I think that’s high enough for now.”
Maddock edged closer to the hole in the side of the gondola and looked down. Although he had no way to accurately gauge their altitude, he guessed they were at l
east a thousand feet above the ground with the fertile green margin of the Nile disappearing behind them, and nothing but brown desert to their front. Because they were moving the same speed as the wind, the air felt still, but Maddock knew they were probably cruising along at a steady twenty-five miles per hour, maybe even faster than that.
“I guess we should put down soon,” Bones said.
Maddock shook his head. “Not yet. Fayed is just waiting for us to set down. He can outrun us on the ground, follow us around and show up wherever we land.”
“Well, if we don’t set down soon, we’ll wind up in the middle of BFE.”
Nora gave him a perplexed frown. “BFE?”
“Ignore him,” Maddock said, quickly. “We’re heading pretty much north, right? Is there any kind of civilization in that direction?”
“Cairo,” Nora replied, still frowning. “But I doubt we’ll make it that far.” She pointed behind them, indicating the river. “The Nile flows northeast past Luxor, but then turns west at Qena for more than fifty miles. If the wind does not change—and we do not run out of fuel—we will eventually cross it.”
“And are there any towns out there?”
“There are settlements and farms all along the Nile Valley.” Her face creased in though, and then she added. “If we can reach Qena, we can go to the Dendera Complex. Dr. Zahi should be there with Max Riddle.”
“Dendera,” Bones echoed. “Where they have the picture of the light bulb?”
“It’s not a—”
“How far away is that?” Maddock cut in.
“It’s about seventy kilometers along the river course to Qena, but if we continue in a straight line...” She shrugged. “Fifty kilometers?”
“Thirty miles,” Maddock said. He glanced up at the balloon, wondering how much fuel it would take to keep the balloon aloft that long. If they were forced to land in the desert, they would have to walk the rest of the way, but at least that would put them out of Fayed’s reach. “I say we go for it.”
THIRTEEN
The wind bore them north, along the flanks of the sandstone cliffs of the Theban Hills. Bones and Maddock took turns at the burner control, sending up a jet of flame every few minutes to ensure that they maintained elevation and stayed in the wind. Although the air currents did not bring them any closer to the Nile, they never lost sight of the green ribbon that cut through the mostly featureless golden desert. After about forty-five minutes of this however, the river course made the left turn Nora had promised, cutting directly across their path.
Five minutes or so after that, the burner’s flame began to sputter, barely reaching the opening to the balloon. Bones gave a heavy sigh. “Well, we knew that was gonna happen. What now?”
“I can see the highway below,” Nora said. “If we can set down close to it, we should be able to find someone to give us a ride on to Dendera.”
“Fayed might be down there, too,” Bones pointed out.
Maddock shook his head. “One thing at a time. Right now, we need to focus on landing this thing, as opposed to crashing. One hot air balloon crash a day is my limit. Let’s keep whatever fuel we have left for braking, and see where we end up.”
Without frequent blasts from the burner to keep the air hot, the balloon soon began to lose altitude. The rate of their descent was considerably slower than that of a skydiver under a parachute, but Maddock knew that when the air cooled to the same temperature as the surrounding sky, they would simply plummet. He curled his hand around the burner control, and waited for that inevitable moment to arrive. With a little luck, there would be enough fuel left to moderate their descent all the way to the ground. If not....
He didn’t want to think about that.
The wind carried them another mile or two closer to the elbow-bend in the river, almost to the green margin of the valley, but then they dropped out of the current that had borne them north, and descended into a gentler breeze that carried them west, back out toward the open desert. Maddock debated giving the burners a quick blast to get back up into the faster winds aloft, but decided that reaching solid ground was the more immediate priority. As they got closer to the ground however, entering an area of relatively high air pressure, the rate of descent slowed almost to nothing, while the wind from the east continued pushing them further from the river valley.
Maddock decided to risk venting some of the hot air, and was immediately rewarded with a feeling of lightness. He released the pull handle, but the feeling did not go away. “Going down!”
Bones, watching their descent from the edge of the gondola, nodded but was silent for several seconds. Then, he shouted. “Better put on the brakes!”
Maddock pulled the burner control on the first word, holding the sputtering flame for a full five seconds.
“Still falling.”
He pulled again, the flame no longer a continuous tongue of bright orange, but rather an eruption of short, sooty yellow spurts, and held it until Bones finally waved his hand to indicate that they were rising again. A look through the broken side of the gondola revealed the ground, now only about twenty feet below them, and rolling past with unnerving swiftness. Although they couldn’t feel it, they were caught in what had to be at least a ten-mile-an-hour breeze.
Ten miles an hour didn’t seem very fast, but trying to land a lighter-than-air aircraft, which had no means of anchoring in place, much less putting on the brakes, was going to be a tricky proposition. “We’re going to have to bail out,” he announced, and then directing his words at Nora, added, “I’ll hit the vent and try to get us a little closer. As soon as we bump, you jump. But don’t try to stay on your feet. Tuck and roll.”
She nodded, soberly.
“What about that stuff?” Bones said, jerking a thumb at the garbage bags full of mold spores.
“We should destroy them,” Nora said, immediately.
Maddock shook his head. “Let’s hang onto them Right now, they’re the only proof we have of what Fayed planned.”
Bones grinned as if he knew a secret, but then scooped both bags up and promptly pitched them out of the gondola. Then, he helped Nora climb onto the padded edge in preparation for her jump.
Maddock pulled the vent release, and a moment later, the basket crunched against the desert floor. Nora cried out and then was gone. The gondola bounced back into the air for a second or two but then came down again and began scraping across the ground.
Bones, shouting, “Hoooo leeeee craaaap!” hurled himself out. Close on his heels, and feeling a sense of déjà vu, Maddock leapt from the gondola for the second time that day.
Heeding his own advice, he bent his knees to absorb the energy of landing and threw himself to the side, rolling on the hard ground until the last of his forward momentum was exhausted. When he raised his head, he saw that the balloon, now empty of passengers, had risen a few feet off the ground and, still caught in the ten-mile-an-hour breeze, was sailing away across the desert like a ghost ship.
He rose gingerly, wincing at yet another set of bruises and scrapes, and turned to look for the others. Bones had already regained his feet and was helping Nora to stand, about a hundred feet further back. Both were gazing across the desert toward the dark smudge that was the Nile Valley.
“Guess we’ve got some walking to do,” he said as he joined them.
“Maybe not,” Bones countered, pointing toward the horizon.
Maddock followed his line of sight and spotted a plume of dust rising above the desert floor. A vehicle was approaching.
Even from a distance, Maddock could see that it was not Fayed’s white van, but he remained wary as the vehicle—a battered old truck that looked like a cast-off military deuce-and-a-half—rolled up beside them. A wizened old Egyptian in a rumpled jellabiya got out and started speaking in rapid-fire Arabic.
Nora answered in the same language, which seemed to puzzle the old man, but only for a moment. The back and forth continued for a little while, then Nora turned and provided a quick su
mmary of the exchange. “He’s from a nearby farm. He saw the balloon coming down and decided to investigate. He’ll take us to Dendera, but he’ll want compensation.”
“Tell him to bill Fayed for it,” Bones suggested.
Nora grinned and then passed this along to the old farmer. After a moment’s consideration, he shrugged and returned to the cab of his truck. When he was seated, he made a “come on” gesture and barked a quick command which needed no translation.
After retrieving the bags of mold toxin, they settled in for a short ride to the Dendera ruins, which were perched on the edge of the desert, only about five miles from where they had come down.
The Dendera Complex was not as well-organized or majestic as the Temple of Hatshepsut, but it seemed more authentic to Maddock. Perhaps that was due to the fact that, unlike the complex at Deir el-Bahari, there were no tour buses, no crowds of visitors smelling of sun screen. The site wasn’t deserted, but it was definitely a lot quieter. But more than that, the Dendera ruins felt like actual ruins, with broken columns and crumbling walls. The entrance to the temple complex was an enormous free-standing doorway, the stone lintel easily fifty feet above the ground, but to either side, where there ought to have been walls to support it, there were only a few jumbled stone blocks. A headless statue of a reclining lion guarded the left side of the approach—the weathered lump of stone on the platform on the opposite side was all that remained of its twin—and directly behind it was a twelve-foot high stone block engraved with the likenesses of Egyptian gods.
“This is the Gate of Domitian and Trajan,” Nora said, unable to completely set aside her professorial inclination to lecture. “Or what’s left of it.”
Maddock recognized the names. “Roman emperors?”
“Most of the structures here date back only as far as the Ptolemaic dynasty, with most of the recent additions dating to the Roman period, though this has been an important religious center for at least four thousand years.”