by Nick Thacker
The effect was that, by tinkering with the power and direction of the beam, Vilocek’s team could use the pulse to “freeze” whatever they wanted for a short period of time.
From Vilocek's vantage point he could see a pulsating cloud of semi-opaque air that seemed to have consumed the guards. Beka was wriggling out from beneath the cloud, hurrying to avoid coming in contact with the slowly descending particles. Content that the security force was completely contained, Vilocek stood, packed up the tripod and binoculars and headed down toward the facility. “Come,” he ordered, not even bothering to look over his shoulder at Jensen and Corinne.
He entered the complex confidently, an air of ownership surrounding him. Everything was perfectly under control: Karn had set up his modified assault rifle on a separate mount and shifted the trigger to a fully open position — one of the small tweaks they’d made to the rifle. Beka joined Karn at the gate as Vilocek entered. Professor Andrews and Corinne followed behind, still in shock from what they had just witnessed.
Once inside the gate, Vilocek nodded at Beka and Karn. They hustled into action, Karn turning toward the small box he’d mounted on the gate and Beka rushing toward the group of paralyzed men.
Beka approached the first two men, still held in the powerful force from Karn’s rifle. He stood face to face with the first guard, a young man no older than twenty.
Slowly, meticulously, Beka took the gloves Vilocek’s scientists had coated with the special material out of a breast pocket and slipped them onto his hands, then retrieved a long, straight-bladed knife from his belt.
18
8:07 pm - Outside of Cairo, Egypt.
Whittenfield’s plane landed at the Cairo International Airport. They were making exceptional time, and Whittenfield was pleased. He had never met Vilocek, but if his fathers’ journals and the current media opinion were even moderately accurate, Whittenfield felt he knew him enough. Dr. Tanning Vilocek was known to be aggressive, confident, and egotistical, as well as charming and disarming at the same time. Newspapers, magazine articles, and websites proclaimed him as the “new face of popular science,” for his extensive pharmaceutical and bioengineering work around the world. The man attracted more reporters and gossip columnists than most celebrities. He was undeniably intelligent — possibly even a genius — and there was no doubt his business sense matched his expertise in research and science. Still, Whittenfield had always had a bad taste in his mouth regarding the man — despite all the public praise and media fawning, there was always something that seemed sinister about Vilocek, just beneath the surface.
Whittenfield didn’t need anyone to remind him of the disgrace Vilocek had caused his father — and he didn’t need to be reminded that this same man, long loved by American culture, had orchestrated a break-in at his company, stolen precious documents, and apparently was holding people against their will in his laboratory. Whittenfield was tantalizingly close to discovering what this was all about, and with any luck, equally close to snatching his father’s most prized possession out of the grasp of his rival. He had to recover the stone, and he had to prevent Vilocek from cashing in on its potential power.
Not to mention that finding the stone and eliminating Vilocek would provide an unbelievable boost to Whittenfield Research.
He turned to his computer and pressed a button next to the display. A satellite-fed image flickered a few times and a grainy black-and-white silhouette of a triangular-shaped structure appeared on the screen. The image was extremely shaky, evidence that the low-resolution video was being captured by a helmet-mounted camera, except in this case the camera was mounted onto a shoulder pad of Bryce’s body armor. Bryce’s team was bouncing over the road leading into the heart of the Giza necropolis in a rented Jeep, and the resulting video feed was less than ideal.
As he tried to focus on the feed without getting motion sickness, Bryce’s voice crackled over the speakers. “Time to target, under 2 minutes. Nothing unusual, no personnel in view. Stand by for arrival.”
The camera panned left, toward the driver’s seat, where Sean Bartlinski sat. Sean was guiding the Jeep around the larger potholes on the road toward the tourist station outside the grounds of the Great Pyramid, followed by the Thompson brothers and Cole Reed in another Jeep directly behind. As Bryce turned right to left in the passenger seat to offer the camera an unobstructed panorama of the scene, Whittenfield could see the old village of Nazlet el-Samman situated to the east of the pyramids. Behind the main pyramid, the rest of the landscape was dotted with buildings ranging from the ancient structures of the Egyptian builders to modern security and communications huts. Two other looming figures on the plain mirrored the shape of their larger sister: the Pyramid of Khafre and the Pyramid of Menkaure. Each of the three massive structures been built for a different Pharaoh who had reigned over the Egyptian dynasty. Each was a spectacular achievement of engineering, and Whittenfield knew that the grainy image in the failing light of dusk didn’t do the complex justice.
He would have given almost anything to be there with the team and see the sight for himself, but he knew the risk was too great. If Bryce’s team couldn’t retrieve the stone, or if they were eliminated by Vilocek’s group, Whittenfield would find another opportunity to take it from Vilocek. Plus, at his age, Whittenfield knew he wasn’t suited for a chase through the small crawlspaces of the pyramid’s internal passageways. He was only ten years older than Vilocek, but the younger man moved and acted as though he was no older than twenty. It was fascinating what the human body could achieve when habitually trained and optimized.
The Jeep pulled through the abandoned ticket station. Around a bend in the road ahead, Bryce thought he saw a stream of rising smoke emanating from somewhere out of sight.
“Boss, you see that smoke?” Gary McGowan asked Bryce from the back seat. “Looks like they took the easy way in.”
“Yeah,” Bryce said, “but I can’t see where it’s coming from — Bartlinski, pull over here and we’ll walk the rest of the way in. If they’re waiting for us, we don’t want to let ‘em know we’re here.” He clicked a button on his headset. “We’re going quiet, Whittenfield, but we’ll keep the feed on.”
“Roger that, Bryce. Be careful,” Whittenfield replied. He heard the click of the microphone, and the video feed lost its sound. He leaned toward the screen, trying to capture as much of the mission as possible.
The teams dismounted from the Jeeps and Sean and Wayne parked them near a small rock outcropping, hidden from view on two sides.
As they approached the pyramid on foot, the smell of fried electronic components stung their noses, and they saw some charred earth — sand that had been blasted into glass, and twisted metal from what could only have been an entrance gate. Next they found the open hole in the fence leading toward the main visitors’ entrance, as well as several bodies strewn about.
“God, what is that?” Bartlinski whispered. His eyes were glued to the area in front of the pyramid, a few hundred paces ahead. Wayne and Jeff ignored him and focused on the perimeter, taking up flanking positions.
“They look… frozen,” Cole whispered.
A cluster of men, all dressed similarly, stood in an unmoving half-circle facing the gate. As Bryce and the team cautiously entered, they could make out a faint cloud of air encompassing the group.
Something in Cole’s mind clicked. Frantically looking around, he spotted something to his right and ran over to it. “Here it is,” he muttered.
“What? What is it?” Bryce called, his weapon still trained on the catatonic group to his front.
“They’re under some sort of trance — like, frozen or something. The same thing happened to me — I was running away from those guys back in New Mexico, and they shot me — with this, I guess — and I couldn’t move. It’s like temporary paralysis or something like that. Completely harmless afterwards.”
Cole was standing next to an assault rifle, mounted on a folding tripod, with the trigger locked in its pres
sed position. A small canister, about the size of a camp propane tank, was laying next to the rifle with its hose connected to the weapon. An almost invisible line reached straight through the air and stopped at the strangely motionless group of men.
His pace quickened as he got closer to the guards, all frozen with their eyes open. He wondered if they could see him as well — it was like they were made of wax, uncannily lifelike figures cast with glass eyes. He approached the first man in the line, but took care to stay clear of the translucent line emanating from the rifle. He squinted, his eyes drawn to something just below the man’s chin.
“Cole,” he said, “don’t touch that rif — “ but he was too late.
Cole had already disengaged the wire around the trigger, and released it before Bryce finished speaking. The cloud surrounding the guards dissolved and disappeared.
Bryce jumped back. Eyes wide, he watched as the men were released from their invisible bonds and began moving.
He suddenly realized what he’d seen on the first man’s neck.
A thin red line.
Blood.
He watched as the men woke from their paralysis. Some grabbed at their necks, the blood now flowing forcefully through their fingers. Some of them dropped to their knees, either too weak to fight.
They all dropped to the ground until one man remained standing.
About forty, his eyes were dark and set deep into his face. He looked toward Bryce, and opened his mouth to speak. Then he grimaced and suddenly clutched his side. Blood began to ooze from multiple bullet wounds, staining the shirt beneath his hands, as if he’d been shot no more than a second ago. The man tensed, then suddenly started convulsing as he, too, collapsed.
Bryce caught him as he fell, cradling his head in the crook of his arm. Groaning in agony, the man fixed on Bryce with his intense eyes. Bryce knew he couldn’t help the man.
To his surprise, the man muttered in English, “they enter,” and raised an arm slowly and pointed to the entrance to the pyramid. His energy gone, he closed his eyes and died.
By now the rest of the team, except for the Thompsons, who were still guarding their flanks, had gathered behind Bryce.
Bryce tried to piece it all together.
The blasted gate.
Sixteen guards brutally murdered and frozen in place at the instant of death.
He wasn’t sure what exactly had happened here, but he knew it would have to wait. Right now they had to get inside the pyramid, find the Lower Room, get the stone, and escape from Vilocek’s men.
“We’ve got company,“ Wayne announced suddenly. “Heading in from the northwest; looks like government,” At the head of a growing dust cloud, six vehicles were bearing down on the pyramid. The first three were unmarked, jet black SUVs, followed by two troop transport vehicles, and finally a Humvee with an Egyptian flag flying from its antenna.
“All right, everybody move out,” Bryce ordered. “Let’s get in and out ASAP. I don’t know who called the federales, but I don’t want them to think we crashed their monument and wiped out their security.” He took off toward the pyramid at a run.
19
7:42 pm - Giza, Egypt
Vilocek’s team was making good time through the pyramid’s inner sanctums. Vilocek crawled ahead down the Descending Passage and through the antechamber outside of the Lower Room. He knew this pyramid had been scoured and studied, and he knew from his research that there were only two paths through the pyramid system — up or down.
As Professor Jensen had confirmed, any uncharted passageways or secret chambers would most likely be hidden down below the pyramid itself, inside or near the Lower Room — Professor Jensen had argued that since most archeologists and Egyptologists felt that this subterranean section was unfinished, their best shot for finding any clues would begin there.
Besides, Vilocek had it on good authority that there was something more to be said about the Lower Room. Even though he hadn’t found any reference to it in Whittenfield Sr.’s journals, he had seen the layout map of Washington, D.C. On it, at the bottom of the Potomac River, exactly where his father had told him the original crystal stone had been found, was exactly where the Lower Room of the Pyramid of Giza had been superimposed.
The Founding Fathers had been wise enough to hide the stone in a location that was protected, unknown, and unlikely to be undisturbed. They mentioned nothing of the stone in their writings.
Thankfully Vilocek hadn’t needed to waste his own time hunting down the rock — it was given to him by his own father, who had done much of the legwork with Whittenfield Sr. Now, almost 30 years later, Vilocek was going to finish their work. It was only a matter of time.
Vilocek hesitated for a moment at the threshold of the Lower Room. The magnitude of the crystal’s potential came on him like a flood — the idea that he was so close to finally finding it made him hesitate with near-reverence.
But only for a moment. The promise of the crystal’s scientific value and immense power got the best of Vilocek’s greed. He entered the room, eager to make the groundbreaking discovery he knew he would find there. The rest of the team followed him in, dispersing around the small room.
20
No had one bothered to look in the well in the center of the room except Corinne.
“What’s this?” she asked. Corinne could see that the inside of the shaft had been filled with rocks and dusty debris, to about eight feet from the top.
“It’s a shaft,” her uncle answered. “No one knows its true purpose, but since it’s been filled in almost to the top, many people believe that it may have been the original burial tomb, meant for Pharaoh Khufu.”
“But isn’t there already a King’s Chamber up above us somewhere?” she asked.
“Yes — he is believed to have been buried in the King’s Chamber, but no one ever found his remains. The Lower Chamber is commonly used as the burial chamber in Egyptian pyramids, and that’s what makes this one special. For whatever reason, not only was this room not used as a crypt, but it wasn’t even finished. You see that the south hallway doesn’t go too far before there’s a dead end — why would the ancient builders build a hallway that just ends?”
As Corinne listened, they both walked the length of the south hallway. Reaching the end, she noticed that it didn’t appear that the hallway had been left unfinished; the passage seemed intentionally designed.
“It’s perfectly finished — carved and everything! There’s no room to even slide a credit card through the cracks in the stones, much less a finger or hand.”
“I know,” Jensen said. “It truly is something. The craftsmanship and placement of the individual stones here rival that of the rooms and passageways that are considered ‘complete.’ Obviously the work here was not abandoned — it seems purposeful; intentionally built this way.”
To Corinne, Vilocek was beginning to look a little worked up — apparently his five minutes of searching the chamber’s already-excavated areas was long enough for him. He called out to the pair at the end of the hall. “Did you two find anything over there, or is this place a waste of my time?”
Jensen shook his head. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here, Dr. Vilocek.”
Vilocek let out an exasperated sigh. His normally impeccably-moussed hair had become disheveled, and he looked fatigued. Clearly he had lost sleep in anticipation of what he might find down here.
“Come on, then,” Vilocek said. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We need to figure out what this D.C. map means, since it clearly wasn’t telling us to come to the Lower — “ Vilocek cut himself off as his eyes fell on the wall next to Corinne. “What’s that?”
Their eyes followed his. On the wall at Corinne’s side, about three feet off the floor, was a square, outlined in bluish light on one of the blocks of stone. The stone itself was smaller than the surrounding stones, like an afterthought or filler of some sort. As Vilocek drew nearer, the blue glow intensified. As he faced the stone the blue lines went f
rom a throbbing, pulsating glow to solid, constant lines of light.
“Amazing,” Vilocek whispered. “What did you do?” he asked, looking sharply at Jensen.
“N — nothing,” Jensen stammered.
“Well, something must have caused the stone to light up like that, “ Vilocek said. “Everyone, lights off. Let’s see if there’s anything else in this pyramid we’re missing.”
All throughout the Lower Room and hallway the men’s lights flicked off. All at once they were bathed in heavy darkness — even after their eyes adjusted to the pitch black, the glowing blue square didn’t light much beyond the immediate area.
“Vilocek,” Corinne said, “look at your pocket.”
From inside one of Vilocek’s pants pockets a blue hue of light was shining through the fabric like a fading star. He reached in and withdrew the object.
Opening his palm, he revealed a beautiful, spherical crystal.
Dr. Vilocek held the ball close the square stone at the end of the hallway and immediately the lines around the block glowed a bit brighter. Then, dead in the center of the block’s face, a strange symbol appeared:
“It looks like hieroglyphics,” Beka said in amazement.
“Could be,” Vilocek said. “But we don’t have time to figure it out. There’s got to be a way to…” His voice trailed off as he brushed the symbol with the hand holding the crystal. The ground below them began to gently shake.
“Do you feel that?” Corinne whispered.
Jensen nodded. “I think it’s some sort of door. It’s moving.”
The small stone block began to slide backwards into the wall. It moved slowly and steadily for about three feet, stopped for a split second, and then moved sideways into a hidden space behind the wall.
The scraping of the small block continued for a few moments before stopping completely. From somewhere deep beneath the pyramid, the grinding and gentle shaking also eased and stopped. Karn and Beka flipped on their lights. The moving block had left behind a hole in the wall the size of a small crate.