Wild Storm

by Richard Castle

  “Yeah. Check this out.”

  Derrick spun his tablet around so his father could see it. The headline was from a weekly paper in Northern California called the Hercules Express: LOCAL SCIENTIST MISSING, WIFE SEEKS ANSWERS, it read.

  “He disappeared three weeks ago,” Derrick said. “He went out for a jog one day and didn’t come back. You can read between the lines and tell the police did some stuff then, but basically treated him like a walk-away. Here’s another piece.”

  Derrick tapped his tablet and another piece from the Hercules Express appeared: PUBLIC HELP SOUGHT TO FIND MISSING SCIENTIST.

  As Carl’s eyes scanned the piece, Derrick continued: “McRae fits. He went to MIT undergrad, Berkeley for his master’s degree and doctorate in physics. He started working on solid state lasers in the seventies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which has contracts to provide research to a variety of government agencies. McRae eventually became the director of the laser program, and while I’m sure a lot of his practical work was classified, his theoretical stuff was published all over. Three of the people he frequently coauthored with are on our list as well. The difference is they still work there. McRae had started his own consulting business and continued tinkering with this, but it looks like it was a hobby. He officially retired from Lawrence Livermore three years ago.”

  Carl snapped his fingers.

  “That’s why no one noticed him missing,” he said. “Once he was retired, he lost his security clearance. Amazing how the world forgets about you when you get put out to pasture.”

  Derrick ignored the commentary. “So we’re agreed that if you were a terrorist who wanted to kidnap someone who knew enough to help you build a big, scary laser beam—and you wanted it to be someone who was off the radar—this would be the guy. It seems the locals were at least somewhat thorough in their efforts to find the guy. Think they missed something?”

  “I bet there’s an anxious wife out in California who would love to tell you,” Carl said.

  “Yeah, there’s just one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Commercial flights are grounded.”

  “Can you take a train? Drive?”

  “No time,” Derrick said. “I have to call Jones. I’m sure the air force is still flying. He can get me on a military jet.”

  “You know how I feel about that snake.”

  “I know,” Derrick said. “But right now I have no choice.”

  Carl grunted. He had made his displeasure with Jedediah Jones known many times. But even the most loving, protective father realizes he eventually needs to let his child make his—or her—own decisions. All the father can do is hope he has instilled enough of the right values in the child that those decisions are the right ones.

  Derrick had gone back to his notes. “The only article William McRae published since his retirement was extolling the virtues of a promethium laser beam. It was an update of work he had done during the eighties and had come back to.”

  “Promethium? Sounds like something out of a comic book.”

  “No, it’s a real element. I looked it up. Number sixty-one on your periodic table. Named after the titan in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind.”

  “At times like this, I wish we could give it back,” Carl said, then hoisted his coffee mug in the air. “To Lieutenant Marlowe, wherever he is. We’re doing our best, buddy.”

  Carl drank, then set down his mug. And Derrick knew that his father’s mind was once again wandering back to a little girl burned by napalm and the memory of her gasping for her final breaths.

  CHAPTER 9

  WEST OF LUXOR, Egypt

  M

  arble wasn’t supposed to sound hollow.

  Katie Comely did not have a degree in geology, like Professor Raynes did, but she had spent enough weeks down in the crypt where she had been working to know exactly what noise the floor made when you dropped something on it.

  It was solid. Like a chunk. Like there was nothing but a few hundred feet of sand under it, and then bedrock under that, and then the Earth’s crust—all firm substances, all the way down to the molten core of the planet.

  But that was not the timbre of the clanging that resulted when she dropped her hammer. It was more of a thwok. Like there was a pocket of air behind it; a small chamber, perhaps, or some kind of opening that echoed.

  The first time she heard it, she almost didn’t believe it. She assumed she had been underground too long and it was starting to play with her senses. So she picked up the hammer and dropped it again. Sure enough: thwok. She moved to another spot. Chunk. Back to the first spot. Thwok.

  There was no doubt. Katie had been closing up a crate containing a set of common artifacts—some urns that would not generate much interest, tools employed by ancient construction workers, a chunk of wall with hieroglyphs proclaiming the greatness of a pharaoh who ruled Lower Egypt before it merged with Upper Egypt five thousand years ago. Outside the crypt, up on the surface, some of the dayworkers who were hired to take care of the heavy lifting were struggling with another crate at the direction of some of the graduate students.

  She had the crypt to herself. She shoved a wisp of blond hair that had escaped her ponytail away from her face. Maybe she should go fetch the others before proceeding, except…

  Well, maybe it was nothing, right?

  Or maybe it was the greatest find since Tutankhamen.

  Only one way to find out. She went to the corner where she kept a crowbar, and brought it over to the piece of marble in question. There were narrow slits around the sides of it where it met up with other pieces of marble. She worked the crowbar under gently, being careful not to damage the stone. She pulled.

  The crowbar was long enough that it had leverage to lift the heavy piece, but only barely. She peered underneath, hopeful.

  And, yes, there was an opening where the floor should have been. No question. But unless she got the stone moved out of the way, she wouldn’t be able to see how deep it was. Her angle was wrong.

  Her heart had started pumping double-time. Every archaeologist knew the story of Howard Carter, the man credited with finding Tutankhamen, the man who refused to believe that every tomb had been discovered and plundered. He spent years searching before going down what appeared to be a stairway to nowhere, finding a sealed door that led to the final resting spot of a little-known boy king who had been undisturbed for millennia.

  Was this a similar situation? Would she long tell the story of dropping the hammer, hearing the hollow report of the stone, and having the hunch to investigate? Or would Raynes take all the credit, downplaying her role to the point where she would end up a mere footnote? Who was that postdoc anyway?

  There would be more danger of that if she went up to the surface and asked for help to move the marble slab. Raynes might insist on being the first one in—him or one of the pushier male graduate students, who would argue his physicality was needed.

  But if she got it shoved aside by herself and then made the find, there would be no danger of that.

  She looked around the space where she had been working. Off in another corner there was a rolling jack the dayworkers used to help get the crates out. She retrieved it, wheeled it next to the slab, then crow barred the marble up again with one hand. When it was just high enough, she used her other hand to slide the jack underneath.

  Then she began pumping it upward, slowly raising the marble until there was enough space for her to crawl under. She was breathing heavily now. She wiped her brow and turned her flashlight on the hole. The beam disappeared into the darkness without reaching an end.

  It was a passageway, for sure. But to what?

  She went over to her backpack and grabbed her headlamp, securing it to her forehead and switching it on. This way, she could keep her hands free. She lower
ed herself on her belly and slid toward it, preparing to crawl down the hole. She took one last nervous look at her jack. If it faltered—if the marble slipped away or some other unseen calamity hit it—she would be trapped underneath. There was no way she’d be able to lift so large a stone by herself. It might be a long, lonely time before someone found her.

  If they found her. The thought occurred that she ought to tell someone what she was doing.

  But then they might try to talk her out of it, or go in themselves, or…

  Taking one last deep breath, she slunk under the slab, down through the opening headfirst. It was only slightly wider than she was—and Katie was slender—but that made it easier to hold on to the sides as she descended. After perhaps ten feet, she felt it beginning to turn, gradually flattening out. There was just enough room for Katie to slink forward on her belly.

  The passageway—yes, it was a passageway—had been lined with clay, which had long ago hardened, forming an effective barrier against a cave-in. Katie kept her eyes on the tunnel ahead of her. The flashlight beam only went so far, and she found herself straining to see beyond it in the distance.

  She was concentrating so hard on peering into the darkness that, at first, it didn’t register that something was coming toward her. Her ears told her first. It sounded like snapping.

  Then her light fell on an emperor scorpion. Katie shrieked. It was coming toward her. Fast. It had to be at least eight inches long. Its stinger was arched up behind it.

  Raynes had warned all his students—in particular, the Americans who had no experience with the poisonous arthropods—to check their shoes and beds before sliding their feet or bodies inside. Scorpions loved to rest in dark, enclosed places, he said.

  He had not given any instructions on what to do if one was shuffling toward you in a tunnel. One of the dayworkers had been stung on the forearm a few weeks earlier. The administering of the antidote had not prevented it from swelling up like a football, nor had it stopped the pain. The man’s moaning could be heard all over camp. Last she heard, it had gotten infected, and the man was in danger of losing his arm.

  The scorpion advanced. She screamed again, like it would do her any good. Could scorpions even hear?

  She tried sliding backward, but the creature was coming at her faster than she could back up in such an enclosed space. She was probably disturbing its nest. It was clearly determined to fight.

  Well, in that case, so was Katie. She had not come this far—to this country, to this crypt, to this hole—to be cowed by a bug. She balled up her hand and let the scorpion scuttle closer. Closer. Closer still.

  Then, just as it was about to strike, Katie pounded it with her fist. She felt and heard the crunch of exoskeleton. She drew her fist back and mashed a second time, then a third, not waiting to see if its body was still moving. She was taking no chances.

  When she was thoroughly satisfied that her hand felt too moist with scorpion guts for the thing to possibly still be alive, she allowed herself to look. Sure enough, the thing was flattened. A greenish-yellowish ooze leaked from one side. The stinger, still curled above it, twitched for a few seconds before it finally stilled.

  She shuddered, then exhaled heavily. It took considerable will to make herself move forward again, and the only thing that did it was the thought that now took hold: the scorpion had to be coming from somewhere.

  Three turns later, Katie discovered where. Her headlamp illuminated a large opening of some sort. She could make out the far wall, but nothing underneath. Not until she was out of the tunnel. All she could tell was that the cavern was lined with clay, just like the tunnel had been, suggesting that whoever dug it had done so a long time ago. The more modern Egyptians lined interior chambers such as this with stone.

  The fall from the tunnel to the floor was only a few feet, but she couldn’t see much of where she was landing. For all she knew, it was covered with snapping, stinging scorpions. She dropped and came to her feet quickly, ready to stomp any of the little devils that dared come near her.

  But the floor was bare. Satisfied she was out of danger for a moment, she focused her beam on her surroundings.

  And nearly lost her breath.

  It was another crypt. The hieroglyphs lining the walls told her as much. Her light panned over an open stone sarcophagus along the far wall. The lid, also stone, lay in several pieces on the floor next to it, suggesting tomb robbers had reached it at some point, perhaps in antiquity, before the entire complex had been buried under sand.

  Keeping her eyes wide, walking gingerly so as not to disturb anything, she moved slowly toward the ancient coffin. She leaned over, and then peered inside.

  And nearly lost her breath again.

  There was a mummy, wrapped in brittle, yellow linen. The funeral mask, if there had ever been one, was long gone. But the body was still there. Intact. Perfect. The arms were folded, right over left.

  This was not just any mummy.

  This was a pharaoh.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered, even though she had the place to herself.

  It was a find that would change the trajectory of her career, a life-changing stroke of incredible good luck, potentially a discovery that would add to—or alter—what the world knew about one of its most important ancient civilizations.

  But only if the mummy didn’t suffer the same fate as her Khufu statue. She had to get it safely to the lab, or this would all amount to nothing.

  NIGHT HAD COME TO THE DESERT. And with the night came the cold. Sand heated up quickly under the scorching solar glare, but it lost heat just as quickly once the sun set. Temperature swings of sixty degrees or more were not unusual.

  Katie had a blanket wrapped around her as she stared into a fire, watching the flames waver and the sparks leap into the sky. Most nights, they didn’t build a fire—wood was too scarce, and it would be like a signal flare for wandering bandits.

  But Professor Raynes had declared that they would celebrate what just might be the most significant find of the whole expedition. And so they had built a great bonfire. Many toasts followed: to Katie, to Raynes, to Egypt, to the dig’s sponsors, to anything anyone could think to raise a glass to.

  All around her there were drunk and/or dozing archaeologists. The graduate students had gone at it particularly hard.

  Only Katie—supposedly the most celebrated of the celebrants—had not partaken.

  And now she stared into the flames, lost in her thoughts. She had spent most of her life as a student, absorbing information that had been discovered and promulgated by others. But now she was poised on the brink of an important transition: she was going to be in a position to be a creator of information, to add to human knowledge—not just take from it. To actually be in a position to make a contribution to a field she loved so much was almost dizzying. And yet she also knew it could be snatched from her, quite literally at any second.

  “Everything okay?”

  The voice made her jump and gave her a shot of adrenaline. It had been quite a day for her nerves.

  “You scared me,” she said, bringing her hand to her chest.

  Professor Raynes patted her shoulder. “Sorry, sorry. I thought you heard me coming.”

  She shook her head.

  “You ought to be the drunkest among us,” he said. “Why are you the most sober?”

  “Because I’m worried.”

  “About what?”

  She tilted her head toward some of the dayworkers, who were just out of earshot. “Them. They know exactly what was found down there. And I’m sure they can sense from the excitement how valuable it is. If one of them heads back to town and spreads the word that there’s been a big discovery, how long is it going to take until we’re seeing another dust cloud with thieves riding in front of it?”

  Raynes nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that—”

  �
��We have to do more than think!”

  “Settle down, settle down,” he said, putting both hands up like a crossing guard trying to halt schoolchildren. “I’m already taking steps to deal with that.”

  “Don’t tell me by hiring more guards. They turn tail and run the second we need them,” she said, aware she was sounding whiny. “I’d rather try to shoot these bastards myself than rely on those jokers.”

  “No, no. We’re through with them. I’ve contacted the IAPL.”

  “Umm…okay?” Katie said, her confusion plain.

  “Sorry. International Art Protection League. It’s an NGO that specializes in this sort of thing. They started in Bern, Switzerland, and focused on cracking down on museum theft in Europe, helping police agencies cooperate with each other across international boundaries. Too often pieces that were being stolen from one country would appear on the black market in another one, where they weren’t even aware of the theft. They had some good successes early on and attracted some major donors, and now they’ve branched out into Asia and Africa.”

  “I don’t want to catch these guys once the mummy is already on the black market, I want—”

  “That’s the thing that’s made the IAPL so effective. They realized a while back you had to be proactive as well as reactive. They send teams out, filled with—I don’t know what you would call them—mercenaries, I guess. Soldiers of fortune. They’re highly trained and they won’t run the moment some guy in a pickup truck fires a few rounds in the air.”

  “And are they going to help us?”

  “We’ll see,” the professor said. “We’ve made the request. We’ll just have to hold tight and hope for the best. It’ll take a few days to extract that mummy. Maybe they’ll be here by then.”

  Katie’s eyes returned to the fire. “I hope so,” she said. “I really hope so.”

  CHAPTER 10

  HERCULES, California

  I

  f there was one good thing about working for Jedediah Jones, it was that most of the free world owed him favors.