He moved his arm, hearing Flinders gasp in wonder. Staring at the opposite pillar, she sagged as if someone had struck her. “This can’t be.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper.
“What?”
Her eyes found his. They were wide and dilated and her breath caught in her throat like it was something sharp and jagged. She indicated the pillar on the left. “These inscriptions match the characters on the papyrus, the ones I translated. But those—“ she indicated the matching opposite pillar—“are in Vinca.” She stared through the darkness. “I don’t believe this! It’s a Rosetta Stone for the decipherment of the Vinca script.”
She all but leapt forward, peering around the girth of the pillar. “This statue represents Thoth,” she said. “He’s depicted here in one of his earliest incarnations, the baboon, who was associated with the moon.” Positioning her LED on the throne to aim the light at the left pillar, she dropped to the ground and booted up her laptop. Her eyes raked over the carved glyphs.
“’Hear these words and listen, children of Khem,’” she translated. “’Words that will bring you to the Light. I am Thoth, deathless through all the eons, bearer of knowledge and wisdom since the ancient days, keeper of secrets…’This is just incredible!” Her eyes moved down the pillar. “Here it talks about the magnificence of Thoth’s city, Atalatarte, lying on the eastern shore of a great lake at the mouth of a strait that opened onto the sea. That’s got to be Kerch!” She leaned closer, her eyes darting back and forth as she worked out the translation. “And here it mentions some kind of magical stone of great power that came down from the heavens, sent from the gods.”
“The orichcalcum?”
“I think so!” With quick fingers she entered the translation into her laptop. “Apparently they had to travel a far distance to find the source of the stone to mine it.”
“But coming down from the heavens? What could that be? A meteorite?”
“Has to be. Don’t you think?” She swung around to look at him. He could see reflected light gleaming in her eyes.“ Ancient people would have no idea about the workings of the solar system. They would have thought that meteors and comets were sent by the gods.”
“How could a meteorite be a power source?”
Focused on her translation, Flinders gave a distracted shrug. “Look—here it says that the sea broke through its barrier and drowned the glory of Atalatarte, submerging it beneath the waves. The inhabitants brought away as much of the heavenly stone as they could, then fled south to the ‘Place of Sands’.”
“’Place of Sands’? Sounds like Egypt to me,” Skarda said.
She nodded. “It proves my theory,” she answered, the words spilling out of her lips. “The ancient Egyptians were survivors from Atlantis.” Studying the pillar again, she gasped. “Here it says that when the flood hit they transported Thoth’s mummy and the Emerald Tablet to the sacred place in the mountains.”
“The Tablet? Does it say where the sacred place is?”
“No.” She turned to face him. “But it does say that the Tablet gives the location of the source of the heavenly stone.”
“So that’s why the Bad Guys want it.”
“Must be.”
Skarda’s face set hard. “That means we’re going to have to find it first.
___
Under the spread of stars outside, April leaned against a ruined wall, her eyes probing the surrounding expanse of sand, a soft breeze playing with her dark hair. From this standpoint the desert was a limitless pool of darkness surrounding her, embracing no shapes or shadows, refusing to be defined by the weak light of the moon above.
But something was out there. She could feel it. Her intuition was jangling in overdrive.
Then, in a line directly in front of her, movement far out in the desert.
Three sets of headlights had suddenly blinked into view, dipping up and down over the sand dunes, accelerating rapidly toward her position.
___
After Skarda had snapped photos of the pillars, he fished a USB cable out of his pack and downloaded the images onto Flinders’ laptop, then backed them up with another download to his Stealth, a copy of which he forwarded to Candy Man. Then he folded the tripod and zipped the Nikon into his backpack.
“Park!” April’s voice echoed from the outer staircase. “Company.”
SEVENTEEN
THE night air against Skarda’s skin had cooled considerably by the time he helped Flinders clear the lip of the altar, then levered his body out after her. Retracing their steps through the courts, they emerged to find April staring out at the desert. He followed her pointing finger to the dark expanse of sand, where three sets of headlights were approaching fast.
“Well,” Skarda said. “Here we go again.”
Flinders shot him a worried look. “What’s going on?”
“Bad Guys,” April answered.
“How do you think they found us?” he asked.
“They must have sets of eyes all along the roads out here. My fault. I should have thought of it. But not much we could have done anyway.”
Nodding in grim agreement, he caught her eye. A silent communication passed between them.
He turned to Flinders. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen here. These people are probably heavily armed, and we aren’t. I want you to take the camera and the laptop and find a place to hide here in the ruins. We need to get you out of harm’s way.”
For a moment, she just stared at him blankly. Then she began to shake, remembering the men who had tried to kidnap her.
Laying his hands on her shoulders, he looked down at her with a confident smile. “No matter what happens, stay hidden, okay? You’re the one who’s the key to this whole thing. If they get you, they can translate the Tablet if they find it. I’m going to hide the Stealth behind one of the columns over there. If things go bad, call Candy Man and OSR will send somebody to get you out of here.”
Her dark blue eyes were liquid as they locked onto his, realizing the implication of what he was telling her.
“Can’t we make a run for it?”
“Nowhere to go,” he said with a grin. “Nothing but desert out there.” Again he smiled, but the smile didn’t reach the hard intensity of his eyes. “I don’t have anywhere near the skills and training that April does, but she’s worth ten of me. And probably ten of them. So don’t worry. We’ll make it.”
She hesitated, his words freezing her to the spot. The thought of leaving his side filled her with dread.
“Go!”
Finally, with a great effort she nodded. Then she took off into the shadows.
At the altar, April was trying in vain to push the heavy lid back into position. When Flinders had disappeared Skarda joined her and together they shoved. The granite slab wouldn’t budge.
He shook his head in frustration. “Think we can do that handle trick in reverse?”
“Worth a shot.”
He stooped, reaching inside the cartouche shaft to grab the copper handles, then twisted to align them back to their original positions. A distinct crack! came to his ears as the left-side handle broke off in his hand. He tossed it away. “Well, there goes that.”
“Leave it, then,” April said. “No time.” She moved to the shadow of a crumbling sandstone wall, watching the approaching vehicles. “ALSV’s. M2’s. Five men, one woman.”
She meant Advanced Light Strike Vehicles equipped with mounted M2 Browning .50 caliber machine guns. Her eyesight was phenomenal. In the Army she’d hit a test target dead center with a Barrett M107 at close to twenty-five hundred meters in a strong breeze.
All Skarda could see were the yellow cones of the headlights bouncing over the dunes.
“Too much sand,” he said. “The Land Rover’s going to be a problem.”
She shrugged. “It is what it is.” Her voice held the hard edge of fatalism that he always admired. It was her way of facing reality head-on.
Grabbing the Stealth from his pack, Skar
da stashed it in the scree of a ruined column. Then he returned to her side and smiled. “The odds aren’t looking too good on this one.”
Again a shrug.
He looked deep into her bottomless eyes. She put out a hand and touched it to his cheek as a soft smile spread across her lips. He did the same, and for a moment they stood there looking at each other, silent.
One thing he did know for sure: she wouldn’t go down without one hell of a fight.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Then they were racing for the Land Rover
___
In the back of the lead ALSV Jaz braced her legs, using the heavy Browning for support as the vehicle bounced over the dunes like a ship plowing through the crests and troughs of a running sea. Powered by a 160-horsepower Porsche engine, the Chenowth Advanced Light Strike Vehicle was basically an ATV protected by an open-air canopy of tubular bars and light armor. The wind raked through her short-cut, spiked hair and every jarring jolt from the forty-one-inch tires sent shocks of pleasure exploding through her nervous system. She was wearing skin-tight jeans, British Army-issue boots, and a sleeveless T-shirt that displayed the bulging muscles of her arms, knotted with networks of twisting veins and arteries.
Up ahead, the ruins were looming larger in perspective, black cut-outs in the moonlight as the convoy raced closer. Slitting her eyes against a spray of sand, Jaz glimpsed movement: a man and woman running toward a thick stand of palm trees.
She grinned. It would have been far more efficient to bring night-vision goggles, but that was too easy. The fun was in the chase, the hunt.
It was always better when the odds were more even.
Yelling at her driver, she pointed at the dark clump of foliage where the Land Rover was shooting out in reverse.
___
In the black shadows of the palms April’s foot stomped the accelerator to the floor. The Land Rover shot backward at high speed, churning up arcing plumes of sand from each wheel. Skarda glanced behind him, his eyes following the rutted, hard-packed track of the main road. He knew their only chance was to somehow stay on the surface of this straight line. If they strayed to either side, the Rover’s tires would quickly bog down in the dunes.
April kept her eyes on the mirror, her expression detached as the oncoming lights bounced closer. “Get out the knives.”
Reaching into her pack, Skarda pulled out the two Fusion Fulcrum throwing knives and set them on the passenger seat next to his thigh.
Still hurtling in reverse, April gripped the wheel, aiming the Land Rover directly at the oncoming vehicles barreling toward them in a V-shaped pattern like an arrowhead. Twisting around, Skarda winced as the pursuers switched on their brights, flooding the interior of the Land Rover with a high-noon glare. But he’d caught a quick glimpse of a tall woman standing in the rear of the lead vehicle, grinning like she was having the time of her life.
April didn’t waver. She stood on the accelerator, rocketing the Land Rover at sixty miles-per-hour backward. Skarda shot a glance at her face. Impassive, like she’d been sculpted out of wood. But the bright sheen in her eyes meant that she was concentrating on the battle. It was win or die.
The Chenowths roared closer. Her hand steady on the wheel, she centered the Land Rover directly at the lead vehicle. The distance between them narrowed...
…thirty feet—
…twenty feet—
Instinctively Skarda hunched his shoulders, bracing for the impact. The lead ALSV loomed in his vision, like a black missile screaming toward them.
At the last moment he saw the driver spin the wheel and the Chenowth roared to the left, careening, spraying a roostertail of sand. The shotgun rider’s hand lashed out and a black cylinder arced through the empty space between them.
“Flashbang!” April yelled. “Head down!” Grabbing the wheel with both hands, she shot through the convoy in a cyclone of dust. The Land Rover lurched, the two left wheels jumping off the sand, momentarily spinning against empty air.
Skarda ducked, throwing his forearms over his eyes as the wheels grabbed the road and the Land Rover swerved crazily, skidding sideways. With a dull metallic thud the stun grenade bounced off the rear quarter panel, exploding in their wake with a blinding flash, floodlighting the interior with eye-searing brightness. Even with the windows closed, the concussion sent shockwaves echoing through his eardrums.
April flicked a glance at him and grinned like she was spending an afternoon at the amusement park. “They must think Flinders is hiding in the back seat! Otherwise they’d have opened up with that M2 by now. Or used a frag!”
Skarda felt his muscles relax. “Well, it gives us a little edge, anyway.”
“Not much.” Her grin tightened into a determined slash.
Slamming on the brakes, she rammed the shift into Drive and the Land Rover rocketed forward in a cloud of dust. Ahead of them, the Chenowths were slueing around in tight circles, spitting sand. April stomped on the gas pedal, at the same time powering down her window. Skarda could see the bearded driver of the left-hand ALSV fighting the wheel, trying to maneuver an arcing path around them. The man in shotgun position shoved himself up in his seat, raising his arm to throw another grenade.
Without slowing, April’s right hand dipped down, snatching up one of the knives in a pinch grip and letting it fly. Skarda saw a flash of silver caught in headlights and then the blade was jutting from the man’s wrist, driven to the haft through his extensor tendons. His shriek rose above the roar of the engines. The grenade dropped into his lap. A second later the cab of the ALSV erupted in a dazzling white sheet of flame, the force of the ignited mercury and magnesium powder at close range blowing a hole in the man’s stomach and setting his clothes and hair on fire. Spurred by the rush of wind, the fire leaped, setting the driver’s uniform ablaze. He clawed at the wheel, screaming, sending the ATV spinning out of control until it smashed into the vehicle on its left, engine to engine, in a deafening crunch of metal and glass. Smoke and steam erupted as the burning men leapt off, rolling in the sand to extinguish the flames.
In the lead vehicle, Jaz’s driver cut the wheel, swerving around in a tight spin. Skarda could see her better now as the Chenowth flashed past. Her face was bloated and stretched, like a bladder pumped full of air, and the grotesque bulges of muscle on her arms meant only one thing: a steroid freak.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous as hell.
April mashed the brake, slamming the Land Rover to a shuddering halt. So far they had managed to stay on the road, but their advantage wouldn’t last long. Levering the gears into reverse, she hit the accelerator, tires smoking as they flew backward. The ALSV was still turning, broadside to their position. April gunned the engine until the Land Rover’s rear wheel was side-to-side with Jaz’s position, fifteen feet away.
Snatching up the second knife, she aimed at the blonde woman’s neck and let it fly.
But Jaz’s hand was faster.
Unbelievably fast.
In a blur of motion she stooped, her fingers wrapping around the blade the instant before it would have sliced through her carotid artery. Blood gushed from her hand, but she laughed and tossed the knife into the desert.
Skarda watched her grinning face flash past and then April was twisting the wheel, manhandling the Land Rover into a tight spin.
“Our best bet is back in the ruins!” she yelled. “Maybe we can ambush them and get some weapons!”
The Chenowth’s headlights strobed across them as they zoomed toward a clump of date palms.
April glanced in the mirror, seeing Jaz hanging onto the Browning. “As soon they see we don’t have Flinders with us, they’re going to open up.”
Running the Land Rover between two palms, April popped open the door and leapt out, with Skarda following suit. They hit the ground running, their feet pounding up the path toward the ruins. Out on the sand brakes ground to a halt. A man yelled in Arabic and then mini explosions of rock and sand erupt
ed around them as the Browning rattled its kettle-drum beat, hammering out a lethal fusillade of .50 caliber slugs. Sandstone exploded above Skarda’s head and he felt a sharp-edged missile sting his cheek. Blood welled up, trickling down his jawline.
Ahead of them the entrance gate loomed in the moonlight. They sprinted through while bullets splintered the granite blocks. Inside, April veered left, crouching low, heading for a low wall between two columns. Skarda ran up behind her. Through the opening they could see the desert below. The ALSV had stopped, its headlights aimed directly at them. The muzzle flash of the Browning lit up the night, the heavy slugs chopping up the stone around them.
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