by Peter Vegas
Despite the situation Sam couldn’t do it, and the Short-Haired Man saw the doubt in his eyes. He lunged for the old flare gun and ripped it from Sam’s hand. Aiming it in the air, he pulled the trigger.
There was a dull thunk, and the Short-Haired Man laughed. “Did you even check if it was loaded?” he said as he pulled the trigger again.
His laughter drowned out the repeated thunks coming from the gun.
“Not even loaded,” the Short-Haired Man said as he inspected the chunky brass gun. “I’m not surprised. This is an antique.” He jammed it inside his jacket and grinned at Sam. “Thank you for the parting gift.” He was about to say something else but stopped, and Sam watched the look on his face drift from surprise to concern. Then he started smoking.
Thick and white, the smoke belched from the Short-Haired Man’s jacket, and he began to scream. The noise was fueled by shock, pain, and anger. He had been wrong about the flare gun—it had been loaded, but the shell was old and corroded. A few pulls of the trigger had been needed to set it off, and the Short-Haired Man had gladly obliged.
Fat red tongues of flame signaled the second stage of an explosion that was meant to happen hundreds of feet up in the air. The Short-Haired Man was transformed into a fiery ball of flailing arms and legs as he charged toward Sam.
A quick sidestep would have gotten him out of trouble, but Sam was way past being able to summon the strength for that kind of move. So, he did the only thing he could manage and dropped to the ground.
Instead of hitting Sam, the Short-Haired Man hit a human speed bump crouched right on the edge of the small crater, and for a fraction of a second the brightly burning flare did fly through the air. Then there was the sickening thump of a body landing at the bottom of the shaft.
* * *
SEARING PAIN SHOT THROUGH SAM’S side as he tried to stand, but a couple of cracked ribs was a better outcome than the one he had been staring in the face a few seconds earlier.
Smoke billowed out of the tunnel opening as he stepped down into the crater. The night sky had morphed to a dark blue in the past few eventful minutes. It was still too dark to see to the bottom of the shaft, but the dull moans drifting up with the smoke told Sam the Short-Haired Man still lived. “Can you hear me?” he called out. “I can help you.” The moaning stopped, but there was no response. “I can help you,” repeated Sam. “But first you have to tell me something. . . . How did that man know my parents are alive?”
There was no answer. Sam began to think the fall had become fatal, but then a tortured growl erupted from the smoky pit, and the Short-Haired Man spoke.
“I don’t . . . I don’t even know who he was. I told you, my employers made me work with him.”
“Then tell me who your employers are. If you don’t, I’ll leave you down there to die.”
“If I tell you who they are,” muttered the Short-Haired Man, “I’ll die anyway.”
The distant thumping sound drew Sam’s attention away from the shaft. He turned and scanned the horizon. Help at last? Or more trouble? Not that it would affect what Sam did. He had nothing left. All he could do was watch and wait.
It had been getting harder and harder to fight off the exhaustion. It came in waves, each stronger than the last and carrying the tantalizing promise of relief from the tortured state he was in. Sleep was just a heartbeat away. All he had to do was close his eyes.
Dawn was breaking. Soon the sun would arrive to claim its throne over Egypt for another day, but the helicopter would reach Sam first. The noise grew louder, and then, through weary eyes, he saw the chopper appear out of the blue-black haze, the Verulam family logo emblazoned across the nose.
Sam went down hard. The slope of the crater broke his fall, but the panic hit him like a freight train. Twisting his body, he looked down as the first rays of the new day lit up a hand from hell.
Five bloody, burn-ravaged fingers were locked around his ankle. The climb up the rock wall must have taken superhuman strength, but what Sam saw now, hovering in the white smoke coming out of the shaft, was barely recognizable as human—a burnt and swollen head coated in sand made wet by the weeping skin.
“Come here,” the melting beast raged. “Die with me, Sam.”
Sam kicked at the hand with his free leg, and then drove the heel of his boot down onto the fingers, but he couldn’t stop the slide into the hole.
Globs of red-tinged saliva flew out of the smoke as the horror show that had been the Short-Haired Man continued to moan. “Come to me.”
Sam was being pulled over the edge of the shaft. In one last attempt to stop himself, he threw both hands behind him and dug his fingers into the side of the crater. All he ended up with were two big handfuls of sand, which he threw at the two small, dark pools staring at him through the smoke.
The Short-Haired Man didn’t let go of Sam, but he pulled his head back in shock as the sand hit his eyes. That movement made him lose his handhold on the rock, and he fell back, smashing into the fragile wooden wall. After seventy-three years Jason Verulam’s escape tunnel had finally had enough. Bone-dry wood cracked and gave way. A muffled cry was quickly drowned out by the roar of a desert, hungry to reclaim the space it had been denied for so long.
Sam, with his legs hanging over the shaft, could only lie back and cover his face as a fountainlike blast of sandy air erupted into the sky.
27
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
SAM HEARD RAISED VOICES BEHIND him. Hadi had been found. Someone was calling for medics. He tried to sit up, but the sting of his broken ribs forced him back onto the sand, which was already warming in the early morning sun.
“You look relaxed,” said Mary as she sat down next to Sam.
“I’m pretending I’m sunbathing at the Cairo Waterpark,” Sam answered. “How’s Hadi?”
“The medics say he’s lost a lot of blood. They’re going to chopper him to a hospital right away.” Mary began brushing away the sand that had covered Sam when the shaft imploded. “Who is he?”
Sam was about to reply when the image of his uncle passed out down in the Panehesy flooded back into his mind. “Jasper! We’ve got to get him out!”
“It’s okay, Sam,” Mary assured him. “That’s being taken care of too. You hear that?”
It was the repetitive thumping of another approaching chopper. “A rescue team is almost here.”
“Let me guess. Bassem knew some people?”
“Actually, it was my father who arranged it.”
“How did you find me?”
“We picked up a radio report from a helicopter to the police,” explained Mary. “Bassem persuaded them to let us handle the situation.”
“That chopper had the Ark in it,” said Sam. “Uncle Jasper found it, but now it’s gone.”
“That doesn’t matter right now, Sam. What matters is that you’re okay and that you found your uncle. But how did you get out? The man on the radio said you were trapped underground.”
Sam pointed at the shallow hole his legs were hanging over. “This was the exit of a tunnel . . . that your grandfather dug.”
Sam told Mary everything he’d learned from his uncle and from Jason Verulam’s journal. As he spoke, there was something in the way she accepted the information that made Sam think Mary already knew some of what he was talking about.
“Well, the first thing we need to do is get you out of here,” Mary said when Sam had finished. “Do you think you can walk?”
Sam nodded. “With a bit of help.”
The only evidence of the shaft’s existence was the wooden frame that Sam’s legs were draped over. His pants had caught on a splinter, and as Mary pulled them free, the frame gave way with a crack. More sand poured into the hole, and with it, a faded piece of paper that went unnoticed by Sam and Mary as they climbed out of the crater.
* * *
AN INJECTION HAD DULLED THE pain in Sam’s side, but it was a long and agonizing wait as the rescue team dug their way back into the Panehes
y through the smokestack. With the mess from the explosion cleared, men and medical equipment were ferried into the buried ship, and all Sam could do was sit and wait. Mary did her best to distract him with food, drink, and cheerful banter, but his eyes remained fixed on the small portable crane that had been set up over the new hole.
The sun was directly overhead when the signal came that Jasper was being brought out.
“Sam, wait here,” Mary said as he struggled to his feet. It was sound advice. Despite the painkillers, the throbbing around his cracked ribs was almost unbearable. But the urge to see his uncle was stronger, and he pushed through the cluster of men in red jumpsuits.
Jasper slid out of the top of the Panehesy’s smokestack strapped to a lightweight metal rescue stretcher. He blinked uncomfortably as the sun hit his eyes, but was unable to lift an arm to shield them. A medic spotted the problem and stepped in to block the light, and it was then Jasper caught sight of Sam.
“My boy, my boy,” he exclaimed. “They told me you were okay.”
“I’m fine,” said Sam, beaming. “I was worried about you.”
“Me?” asked Jasper, with a look of mock surprise. “I went into the Panehesy down a rope by hand. I’ve come out business class.”
“And you don’t even have a big bum,” quipped Sam. His uncle didn’t get it, but behind Sam, Mary laughed. “Uncle Jasper, I want you to meet Mary. Mary Verulam,” he said as Mary crouched down next to the stretcher.
“Hello, Mr. Force.”
Jasper nodded approvingly. “Delighted to meet you, Mary, and please call me Jasper.”
“I’m glad you’re okay, Jasper,” said Mary. “And I know my father will be very relieved as well.”
The reunion was cut short as the men in the red jumpsuits, who had been standing back politely, muscled in and took control of their patient. They carried him to the back of their chopper, which was set up like a small hospital room. It was made clear to Sam and Mary that their presence was not welcomed while the medics did their work, so the two of them sat in the shade of the Verulam chopper and watched.
“What’s Bassem doing?” Sam asked. He’d seen the giant Egyptian take a couple of the rescue team and some equipment over to what was left of Jason Verulam’s tunnel.
“I think they’re planning to dig out the body,” said Mary. “My father will want to find out as much as he can about that man who tailed you here.” She got to her feet. “You wanna come check it out?”
Sam shook his head.
“I’ve had enough digging in the sand for one day.”
* * *
THE MEN IN RED CONTINUED to fuss over Uncle Jasper until one of them finally signaled to Sam that he was allowed to approach.
“Your uncle is stabilized, but he’s lost a lot of blood,” Sam was informed by one of the medics. “We need to get him to a hospital, so you must say your good-byes quickly.”
Jasper had been sedated, and his glassy eyes watched Sam approach from under sagging eyelids. “I’m so sorry about all this,” he said, reaching out for his nephew. “I failed you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sam.
“I was led to believe we might find something to tell us what happened to your parents, but it seems to have been a dead end.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Sam. “Anyway, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I led those men to you. Because of me, they got the Ark.”
“I don’t think they did,” announced Mary as she joined Sam at the door of the chopper. Look what Bassem just found.” She held up the faded pieces of paper. “It was jammed into the frame at the mouth of the tunnel.”
“What is it?” asked Sam.
“A letter from my grandfather.”
June 25 1942
I have freed myself from the iron tomb of Panehesy but find I have ascended from one black world to another. I cannot wait for night to pass. I am close to death and must have water. The Nile was beneath us before the storm; it cannot be far. From there I can begin my trek to Al Minya.
This is my plan, but should I not prevail, this letter must serve to record what I am unable to pass on. I leave it in the hope it will find its way to those worthy of it.
I have seen the original Ark. Engraved on it is the record of a time when there were many. Many Arks in many pyramids across the world. The Arks were destroyed; the pyramids left as empty shells. Why?
Recorded also was the location of a pyramid that this Ark can rest in. P518 is carrying this sacred treasure, sacred heart, to its new home.
P518 was my grand deception. It will complete the mission while I was supposed to accompany the decoy. I had thought I was the only one on board who knew of this plan until Thomas’s confession.
His death weighs heavily on my conscience. I have killed before in the name of our sacred task, and if called upon, I will kill again. But I pray I shall never be forced to commit an act so horrific as that which I perpetrated on the traitor, Thomas.
Surely no man can commit a crime so heinous as to feed upon another. But without his blood to sustain me I would never have made it out of the Panehesy. I will tell myself the end justifies the means, but this rings hollow within my soul.
I leave now with the knowledge that I shall be brought to account for this vile act. In this life, or the next.
Jason K. Verulam
“He must have gone the wrong way,” said Sam when Mary had finished reading the note to them. He glanced down toward the Nile, blue and sparkling in the midday sun. “The river’s only a couple hundred meters away.”
“That’s true,” said Jasper. “But it was night; he was near death. I guess he mistakenly stumbled off into the desert. . . .”
Mary stared at the letter as if she hoped it would give up a few more clues. “No wonder he went crazy.” She sighed. “He was racked with guilt because he drank human blood to survive.”
“Incredible,” said Jasper. “The will to survive . . . the effort his escape must have taken . . . Makes ours seem like a bit of a picnic, eh, Sam?”
Sam laughed. “Speak for yourself.”
“But you know what this means?” continued Jasper. “Thanks to Mary’s grandfather, the original Ark got away safely, and P518 is the key. . . . If we only knew exactly what it was and where it was headed.”
“P518.” Mary recited it slowly. “It was engraved on my grandfather’s arm. Maybe he did it when his mind started to go. So he wouldn’t forget.” She shuddered. “It used to gross me out. He must have done it himself, out here in the desert. It looked disgusting. These big purple scars on his forearm. Whenever I went to see him, he was just lying there, rubbing them like they were braille.”
“But you never knew what they were?” asked Sam.
“No. Neither did my father, until five years ago.” Mary looked at Sam, then his uncle. “Jasper, I’m afraid my father wasn’t entirely straight with you about your mission to hunt down the Panehesy.”
Jasper’s hairy eyebrows lifted. “Really? How so?”
Mary threw Sam another embarrassed look before she spoke. “I don’t think he thought you would find out any more about Sam’s parents out here. You have to understand,” she pleaded, “he’s obsessed with his work to uncover the secret behind the pyramids. He would have said anything to get you to help him.”
“I see,” said Jasper.
“But he did have some information that he told me he intended to share with you. Father always suspected that P518 was an important clue. He created a computer program to scan the Internet for anything to do with it.” Mary removed her phone from her pocket and pulled up a page. “When he found this five years ago, he knew it was something to do with my grandfather’s pyramid theory.” Mary handed the phone to Jasper, who propped himself up on his stretcher.
“That is the story that led my father to get in touch with your parents five years ago, Sam,” Mary said. “He knew submarine P518 had to be linked to my grandfather’s original mission, and he saw a chance to solve the mystery.
My father was aware of your parents’ interest in the links between the pyramids around the world, so he offered them the chance to go to Belize and investigate the submarine.”
“They told Jasper they were in Jamaica,” Sam said.
THE BELIZE NATIONAL
THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 2010, ISSUE NO. 8279
STORM UNCOVERS SUB BURIED IN RIVERBANK
POLICEMAN FINDS WWII SUB BURIED IN RIVERBANK
A mystery, hidden in river mud for nearly seventy years, was uncovered recently. The discovery of the World War II submarine was announced by Felix Ramos, head of the Orange Walk Police Department, at a press conference yesterday. Officials say there are no records of the submarine in Belize in World War II, and they are mystified by the discovery. Superintendent Ramos said that a calendar found on board dates the sub’s arrival to 1942. Experts were also surprised by the location of the sub, saying it was incredible that the vessel made it so far up the New River. Superintendent Ramos said the submarine had been hidden in a small side stream near the ruins of Lamanai. Had it not been for the recent typhoon that washed away large sections of the riverbank, it would have remained undiscovered.
Mary nodded. “My father swore them to secrecy and insisted they tell no one.”
“And then they disappeared,” Jasper said as he handed Mary’s phone back.
Mary nodded. “My father felt terrible about that,” she said. “He told me he spent thousands sending investigators to Belize to find out what happened to them, but there was no trace.”
“But they were onto something,” Sam said. “Your grandfather’s last letter proves it.”
Jasper lay back on his stretcher. “It does indeed appear that the next clue to this ancient mystery leads us to Belize,” he mumbled as he closed his eyes.
* * *
MARY AND SAM KEPT THEIR heads down until the wind and sand settled. Sam felt uncomfortable about being separated from his uncle so soon. It was a strange, new feeling. So little of the past week had been spent with him, but still Sam felt a new bond brought on by the adventure they had both been part of.