The three of them turned and strode confidently back to the pickup truck Fydor and Xandra had arrived in, climbing inside and slamming the doors. In a moment, the truck was turning around and heading for the highway, a cloud of dust rising behind it.
Barlow watched them go and then focused on the men with him. “Unload the trailers.”
Robson opened the back doors of Barlow’s truck and manhandled a ramp into place. He and his men climbed inside and soon emerged riding four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles. Each ATV had basic excavation equipment strapped on the back.
“Follow me,” Robson shouted.
He twisted the throttle and sped off, heading west. Four identical ATVs followed, three of them carrying Robson’s mates and one of them hauling a special guest who had been far more cooperative than any of them anticipated.
As Robson and his men moved out, Barlow turned to the last members of his team. “Break these trucks down and get those birds in the air. We have no time to waste.”
Unloading the last two trucks was a more complicated task. Instead of opening the back doors, Barlow’s men climbed up on the roofs of the trucks and began unscrewing large panels.
The lightweight roof panels were detached and tossed aside. With this done, the hinged side walls and the aft doors of the trucks were lowered to the ground. When that effort was complete, the trucks resembled flowers with opened petals. At the center of each flower, sitting on the flat bed of each trailer, was a helicopter with its rotors folded.
The helicopters were painted to match those of a well-known tour operator famous for its sightseeing flights in the area. A perfect disguise, Barlow thought, should anyone notice them buzzing in and out of the canyon.
With the helicopters now exposed, their crews went to work making them airworthy. The rotors were unfolded and locked into position. The power systems, fuel pumps and hydraulic systems were checked, the electrical systems were tested and confirmed operational.
When the green light was given, Barlow climbed into the lead helicopter. He was joined by a pilot. A second pilot and spare crewmen climbed into the number two aircraft. Both helicopters had cargo bays filled with lighting and excavation equipment, all of which Barlow expected to leave behind when he loaded the helicopters with treasure.
He wasn’t sure how many trips in and out of the canyon he would have time to make, but he hoped to leave the helicopters behind in the desert while driving out of Arizona with several trailerloads of priceless Egyptian artifacts.
Sliding a headset over his ears, he made a whirling motion with his hand. “Let’s go.”
As the helicopters powered up, a radio call came in from several miles up ahead. It was Robson. “We’ve found the old road. We’re taking it down into the ravine. Meet you at the bottom.”
* * *
—
As Barlow and Robson prepared for the excavation, Omar Kai was navigating the streets of Page, a small town at the eastern end of Lake Powell.
Page was a tourist town, packed with boaters and vacationers in the summer, quieter in the fall—except on the weekends. Like a lot of tourist towns, it had a cluster of motels and plenty of fast-food joints.
Omar Kai studied the buildings as he went by. Most were garishly painted, some adorned with giant-sized plastic food or whimsical signs promoting their wares. It seemed a hodgepodge of things grouped together with little overriding thought except as a way to make money from those passing through.
“How typically American,” he said, his voice simultaneously filled with admiration and dripping with disdain.
“We can do without the commentary,” Xandra said. “Just find the boat ramp.”
Kai wasn’t about to hurry, but he understood the tension. His men were crammed in the back of the truck while Xandra and Fydor shared the front bench seat. All of them were looking forward to getting out.
Following the signs, he descended a curving road that ran between a row of motels and then took a secondary road that led east to a spot where they could access the lake. Finding no one else around, they backed the powerboat into the water.
Fydor and Xandra went aboard, looking ghastly pale and out of place in their particular outfits.
“Try not to die of sunburn before this is over,” Kai joked.
Fydor was already plastering a stripe of zinc oxide on his nose.
“We’ll be fine,” Xandra snapped. “But you’re going to need more than sunglasses and ugly shirts if you plan to take over the dam.” Kai and his crew were dressed like tourists. “How do you plan on sneaking weapons past the guards and metal detectors?”
“We don’t need to bring guns with us,” Kai said. “We’ll pick them up once we’re inside.”
Xandra stared at him as if trying to detect a lie. Then she understood. “You’re not as dumb as I thought.”
Kai gave the boat a shove and watched it drift out. As it began to pull away, he turned his attention to the dam. His demeanor grew instantly more serious.
Climbing back into the truck, he took the measure of his men and found them ready. “Let’s see if we can make the one o’clock tour.”
A short drive led them to a bridge that crossed the canyon just downriver of the dam. Crossing it gave them a perfect view of the tremendous structure.
“That’s larger than I thought,” one of the men said.
Kai had seen plenty of dams in his time, including several in China that were larger than anything in the Western world, but those were dark and industrial while this structure had beauty to it. The contrast of colors struck him—from the blue waters stored up behind it to the stark white face of the dam itself to the red-orange hues of the sandstone cliffs into which the dam had been built. Even the trickle of aquamarine that marked the Colorado River below the dam looked as if it had been painted with an artist’s brush.
Kai put the thoughts aside as they pulled into the visitor center parking lot and climbed out of the truck. Carrying nothing with them but their wallets and a few bottles of water, Kai and his men made their way into the air-conditioned building and paid for a tour.
The cheerful guide told them the next one started in twenty minutes. Kai did the calculations in his head. It was not much of a problem. They had plenty of time.
He sat on a bench and reached down to his tennis shoes. With deliberate care, he untied and then retied them, carefully checking that the oversize metal tips at the end of the laces remained secured and in place.
Chapter 56
Silver Box Ravine, Navajo Nation, Arizona
The swarm of ATVs navigated the crumbling switchback road with caution. The descent was treacherous, with uneven ground, crumbling shoulders and a steep drop of several thousand feet waiting for anyone who lost control of his vehicle. Robson was pleasantly surprised that they didn’t lose anyone along the way.
Reaching the bottom, the ATVs spread out from their single file formation and roared noisily into the open area between the vermillion cliffs. The road had dumped them out heading east, but from the FBI file they knew the entrance to the cave lay behind them to the west.
“This way,” Robson said, moving away from the broad exit and back toward the upper section of the canyon. Traveling in a group, they scoured the walls. After a few minutes Robson was sure they’d gone too far.
He pulled up and shut his engine off. The team followed suit. “Any of your lot see a cave?” he asked, his face half hidden by a pair of tinted goggles.
Snipe had pulled up next to him. “Nothing.”
“Zilch,” Gus added.
“Are you sure this is the right spot?” Fingers asked.
“What do you think?”
Fingers recoiled at the reply. “I think all these bloody canyons look the same.”
Robson shook his head. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to him.”
The driver on th
e last ATV had stopped a few feet away from the rest of them. He’d been unsteady on his vehicle since the beginning and had almost crashed it twice by the time they reached the steep road down to the bottom of the canyon. Robson had expected him to balk at the dangerous drive, but the desire to see what was there proved stronger than the fear.
Professor Cross pulled his helmet off, revealing a head of curly gray hair. He raised his goggles up and parked them on his forehead. The rest of his face was dirty, leaving the area around his eyes looking as if it were highlighted.
“We’re waiting, Professor.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Well, the entrance should be quite near,” the professor told them in his proper English accent. “But I don’t see any . . .”
Professor Cross had studied the maps and the old photos. He’d compared them to the satellite views of the canyon that were available on the internet. It wasn’t a precise science, but he estimated that the margin of error could be no more than a quarter mile. They’d covered that much and more at this point. He felt certain that the entrance to the cave should have revealed itself by now.
Twisting his head about like an owl, the professor studied the walls until the answer appeared. “Of course,” he said, grinning. “Tutankhamen’s crypt was hidden by a landslide as well.” He pointed toward a sloping pile of debris that jutted out from the canyon wall. “That’s got to be it. Let’s hope we can dig our way in.”
They turned around, drove back to the rockslide and parked. After dismounting their ATVs, Robson and the professor climbed up to the top of the debris, where they found a narrow gap.
“Tight fit,” the professor said, ducking his head inside. “I should want a little more room to be on the safe side.”
Robson shook his head. “We’re not moving the whole mountain only to find it’s the wrong cave. Get in there.”
“Right,” the professor said, suddenly remembering he was technically a prisoner. “Coming?”
“Don’t like closed-in spaces,” Robson said. “Jail will do that to you.”
The professor nodded politely. Reaching into a pocket, he produced a headband with a light attached to it. He pulled it over his head, made sure it was snug and then switched the light on. A flashlight from a second pocket fit into his palm.
Getting down on his hands and knees, the professor crawled into the cave and vanished.
Robson and his men waited outside.
“What if he gets killed by a booby trap?” Fingers asked.
“Then we know we found the right place,” Robson joked, “don’t we?”
“But we won’t know if he’s dead unless we go in and search around ourselves,” Gus pointed out.
“Relax,” Robson said. “You ever heard of a trap that still worked two thousand years after it was set? Besides, if there were any traps in there, they’d have killed the archeologists who found this place a hundred years ago. Now, pipe down, you’re annoying me.”
With the ATVs shut down and his men holding their tongue, Robson came to appreciate how utterly silent the canyon was. He could hear small trails of sand sliding down the rock pile as he moved, he could hear lizards scurrying around in a brush fifty yards away.
The silence made the time drag. Finally, Robson had had enough. He grabbed a flashlight of his own, switched it on and moved to the opening. Before he could climb in, the grinning face of Professor Cross appeared in the entry.
“It’s all here,” the professor said giddily. “Everything. Everything we could have possibly hoped to find.”
Chapter 57
By the time Barlow’s helicopters landed, Robson and his men had spent thirty minutes digging at the debris. The pile wasn’t entirely gone, but by using shovels and pry bars and chains attached to the ATVs to drag the larger boulders away they’d managed to take several feet off the top. A four-foot-high opening had been excavated at the apex and the inclines accessing the cave had been flattened and smoothed considerably. It now resembled a dirt ramp leading up, in and then down.
“Good work,” Barlow said, studying the progress. “We’ll need that space to get everything in and out.”
“Another twenty minutes and we’ll have this looking like the on-ramp to the motorway,” Robson said.
Barlow wasn’t about to wait that long. “Let your men do the rest. I want you and the professor to show me what you’ve found.”
Robson laid down his shovel and ordered Fingers, Gus and Snipe to keep working. That done, he steeled himself to enter the dark cave.
Barlow whistled to the crewmen who’d flown in on the helicopters with him. “Unload everything. We’ll need the lights ASAP and the crawlers soon after.”
The pair of lights each had a high-powered array of multiple LED bulbs on it. Each was powered with a heavy lithium-ion battery and was capable of lighting up the inside of the cavern like a stadium.
The crawlers were specialized handcarts equipped with motorized caterpillar tracks. These machines could carry thousands of pounds and would be used later to haul out the heaviest of the items.
With the unloading under way, Barlow and Robson turned to the cave. Scaling the ramp, they went inside with Professor Cross leading the way.
They descended the inner slope and began moving through the dark tunnel. With their eyes used to the brightness of the ravine, they saw only what their flashlights illuminated.
“The interior of the cave is perfectly flat,” Barlow said, noticing how smooth it was underfoot.
“That should come as no surprise,” Professor Cross said. “The Egyptians were wonderful engineers.”
Robson kept glancing back at the entrance. “Are you sure you need me?”
“Keep moving,” Barlow ordered.
They continued on, spotting a row of small statues up against the wall. Behind them, in a state of disrepair, were parts of several chariots. A pile of furniture and decorative items stood nearby.
“There’d better be more than this,” Barlow warned.
“Of course,” the professor said. “These are just the gifts for the Afterlife. The treasure is this way.”
They pushed on past the hastily stacked furniture and arrived in a huge open room. Even in the poor illumination of a couple of handheld flashlights, Barlow could see that this room was filled with ornate carvings, life-sized statues, artwork and mummies. In the center, he spotted a sarcophagus.
As his crewmen arrived, he ordered the lights to be set up. “There and there,” he said, pointing to a couple of areas spaced widely apart. “Be quick. I want to see it in all its glory.”
The men arranged their portable floodlights and set them up quickly. Switches were thrown and, one by one, the powerful LEDs came on. Each unit’s bulbs pointed in slightly different directions, but most of the light was aimed upward and out, first hitting the walls and ceiling, then reflecting back on the artifacts.
As each section of the cavern was illuminated, more treasure appeared. As Barlow turned from one quarter to the next, he grew almost hysterical. It was better than he dreamed. His tractor-trailers couldn’t carry half of it. He would have to pick and choose. He knew the royal items would be the most valuable and found himself focused on the sarcophagus in the middle of the room.
He turned to Professor Cross. “I thought you said there would be at least fifteen Pharaohs buried down here.”
“I’m sure there are more around here somewhere,” the professor said. “We’ve only explored a small part of the cave.”
Barlow nodded and walked toward the sarcophagus with Professor Cross at his side.
As they went that direction, Robson looked the other way. With the lights on and the large, open space, he’d forgotten his claustrophobia and begun imagining his portion of the wealth.
Looking around, he took it all in, stopping only when his eye fell on something that didn’t belong among the Pharaoh�
�s treasures. He blinked twice to make sure it wasn’t a trick of the shadows or a figment of his imagination.
In the far section of the cave, up on a platform at the end of a smooth ramp, he spied a dust-covered vintage automobile. The machine had a long, sleek hood and gracefully curved fenders that swept down over multi-spoked wheels. Running boards graced the side of the car and a pair of forward-jutting headlights stuck out in front of the vehicle’s radiator. It appeared to be very well preserved. Even the tires, though showing signs of age, were still inflated.
He walked toward it, climbing the ramp that led up to the platform. As he neared the vehicle, more details emerged. The machine was a two-seater convertible with its top down and only a simple, flat-plate windshield sticking up in front of the passenger compartment. A tarp that must have been placed over it at one time appeared to have slipped off and now lay on the ground. Though the vehicle was covered in dust, Robson could see it was painted a lustrous black.
Stopping at the top of the ramp, he spoke without turning back to the others. “Did the Pharaoh own a car?”
All eyes turned toward him and the automobile.
“The Granzinis must have left that here,” the professor said. “Or one of the archeologists.”
Robson looked into the passenger compartment. It sported a wooden steering wheel, a metal instrument panel and a badge that read KISSEL. He assumed that was the make or model, though he himself had never heard of it.
The more he studied it, the more certain he was that this wasn’t a car an archeologist would own. He figured it must have belonged to the Granzinis, but why the smugglers would have left it in the cave escaped him. Nor could he come up with a reason to drive such a fine automobile into a desert canyon in the first place.
He reached inside, touched the steering wheel and noticed a placard attached to the instrument panel. Sweeping the dust away with his fingers revealed engraved letters. The sign read Property of C. B. DeMille.
The name rang a bell, but Robson couldn’t place it.
Journey of the Pharaohs Page 28