The Cult of Osiris nwaec-5

by Andy McDermott

  It moved less than a foot before crashing to a stop as the chains securing it to the deck snapped taut. But the restraints were designed only to keep it in place while the hovercraft was in motion, not to withstand the force of several hundred horsepower. Steel tracks screeching horribly over the floor, the excavator started to tear itself free, the cargo rings creaking and squealing.

  Diamondback held his place behind Nina, one eye on the snarling vehicle twelve feet away. ‘Well, go ahead!’ he shouted to Eddie. ‘It’s your move.’

  Eddie glanced at the jar. Could he kick it into the fire before the bulldozer broke free?

  But if it came to a choice, he knew there was only one he could make—

  A ring snapped. The extra stress on the remaining restraints was too much, and less than a second later they shattered. The bulldozer ground backwards.

  Towards Nina.

  Diamondback rolled away from her, throwing himself to the far side of the bulldozer. Eddie fired, but both shots clanged uselessly off the machine.

  He ran to Nina, who was desperately trying to free her arm.

  The earthmover continued its inexorable advance, five feet away, four. Eddie knew there was no way she could get her hand loose in time - and instead jammed his gun against the metal ring.

  He pulled the trigger. The bullet severed the tie, ricocheting off the ring and knocking the gun from his hand. The muzzle flame burned Nina’s arm. She screamed, but he had already pulled her back as the earthmover ran over the dented ring.

  They rolled clear as the hulking machine rumbled past, but the danger wasn’t over. Shaban raced past for the canopic jar. Diamondback was a few paces behind him, gun raised. Eddie looked for his own weapon—

  It vanished under the bulldozer’s track with a crunch of flattening metal.

  He hauled Nina with him round the rear of the crawling machine. Diamondback fired, the shot tearing a chunk from the yellow bodywork. The American was about to run after them when he realised there was a shortcut, and jumped up to climb into the cab—

  Eddie was already there.

  He made a diving tackle over the seat, and both men crashed to the deck. The revolver clattered across the floor.

  Shaban reached the jar and snatched it up, feeling a moment of pure relief as he saw it was undamaged and still sealed. He ran back to the dune buggy. Berkeley looked out from his hiding place; the cult leader scowled at him, making him cringe back.

  Eddie punched Diamondback - with his injured arm, causing himself almost as much pain as he delivered. The American realised something was wrong and clawed at his adversary’s forearm, fingers digging into the bullet wound. Eddie screamed, jerking back and giving Diamondback the chance to kick him away. The bulldozer rolled past them.

  Nina climbed into the machine’s cab. She kicked the spanner off the accelerator and shoved the gearstick into neutral, the bulldozer clanking to a stop just short of the spreading fire at the back of the hold. In front of the earthmover she saw Diamondback smash an elbow down on Eddie’s chest, beyond them Shaban climbing into the dune buggy - and through the gaping forward ramp . . .

  The cliff!

  Diamondback hit Eddie in the ribs again, then sprang up to find his gun. It was in front of the bulldozer. He grabbed it and straightened, turning to shoot Eddie—

  And froze as the dune buggy peeled away with a screech of tyres. Shaban was at the wheel, clutching the canopic jar to his chest. ‘Sebak!’ the American yelled, voice lost amongst the roar of wind and machinery. ‘Wait!’

  Eddie sat up. Diamondback snapped out of his shock at being abandoned and took aim—

  Nina slammed the bulldozer into gear.

  It jerked forward - and its scoop hit the American hard in his back. His gun flew from his hand and landed in the steel bucket. He reeled towards Eddie - then lurched backwards as a fist ploughed into his face.

  Eddie hit him again and again. Diamondback spat out blood. Eddie wound up and smashed an uppercut into his chin that knocked the other man off his feet against the scoop’s edge, the metal teeth ripping through the back of his snakeskin jacket.

  Diamondback wasn’t finished, though. He saw his gun, groped for it—

  And was hauled into the air as Nina raised the scoop.

  His weight pulled the jacket tightly over the steel teeth, leaving him hanging helplessly. He tried to shrug off the garment, but couldn’t get his arms free.

  Eddie drove one last punch into his stomach as the bulldozer stopped, then looked towards the bow.

  Shaban drove the dune buggy off the ramp.

  The rugged off-roader hit the ground hard, slamming the Egyptian against his seatbelt. He just barely managed to keep the vehicle under control with one hand as he gripped the jar. For a moment the Zubr gained on him, the ramp’s jutting edge like a huge shovel blade about to scoop up the buggy . . . then he pulled away, making a hard turn to one side. The hovercraft blasted past him.

  Heading straight for the cliff.

  Macy saw the dune buggy swing away, and realised who was driving.

  If Shaban had escaped, then where were Nina and Eddie? Were they—

  No. She refused to accept the possibility. They hadn’t given up on her; she wasn’t going to give up on them.

  Jaw set, she dropped down a gear and pushed the accelerator to its limit. The temperature gauge was in the red, the elderly Land Rover overheating, but it still began to overtake the hovercraft.

  Nina ran to Eddie. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, taking in his multiple injuries.

  ‘Nothing a month in the Maldives won’t fix,’ he rasped, gripping his arm to stop the bleeding. Ignoring the impotently kicking and swearing Diamondback, he surveyed the hold, seeing the hatch leading to the starboard engineering compartment. ‘We’ve got to stop this thing. Maybe we could chuck something in the engine—’

  ‘There isn’t time!’ Nina cried, jabbing a finger at the front ramp. ‘We’re gonna go over a cliff!’

  ‘What? Shit!’ His search became more desperate. The fire at the rear ramp was now a swirling inferno, and if they tried to jump off from the bow the hovercraft would mow them down.

  No way out—

  A crash of metal made them whirl - to see the battered Land Rover lurch backwards up the front ramp. Macy had driven directly in front of the Zubr, then braked hard, to be swallowed up like a minnow by a whale. The 4×4 skidded as she slammed on the brakes, slewing round to face them.

  Macy sat up, dazed, then her rattled expression became one of delight as she saw Nina and Eddie. ‘Come on!’ she shouted. ‘Get in!’

  They ran for the bullet-pocked Defender. ‘Logan!’ called Nina. ‘Move your ass!’ Berkeley emerged from his hiding place and scurried for the Land Rover. They all piled in.

  Through the bow, Eddie saw the edge of the cliff for the first time, rushing towards them. Too close for the Land Rover to get clear. ‘The rear ramp, go!’ he yelled.

  ‘It’s on fire!’ Berkeley protested.

  ‘Just go!’

  Macy slammed the Land Rover into gear and drove the 4×4 between the two ranks of heavy equipment. She saw the whipping flames. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Go through it!’ cried Eddie. Diamondback was still hanging from the earthmover’s scoop, but had twisted round enough to reach his gun. ‘Go!’

  Diamondback aimed the revolver at the Land Rover’s driver as the vehicle charged towards him—

  Fear paralysed his trigger finger. He had been so intent on recovering his gun that he hadn’t seen the approaching cliff - until now.

  He overcame his shock and fired, but a fraction of a second too late. The bullet punched through the Land Rover’s roof above Macy’s head. The Defender surged past him.

  Nina looked back. ‘We’re not gonna make it!’ The Land Rover was designed for endurance, not acceleration.

  ‘We’ll make it,’ said Eddie, gripping her tightly. They passed the last earthmover, flames swelling ahead as Macy angled for the ramp. ‘Although I thi
nk we should duck!’

  They dropped as low as they could as the Land Rover drove into the blaze, tongues of fire licking hungrily through the broken windows.

  They hit the ramp—

  The Zubr reached the cliff.

  A huge blast of escaping air swept sand and stones off the rockface as the skirt vented into the void below. Its support gone, the hovercraft’s bow dropped, the massive vehicle jolting violently as the bottom of its hull ground against the lip of stone. Still driven onwards by its three huge propellers, it balanced like a see-saw - before tipping over the point of no return. Everything inside it that was not lashed down slid forwards . . .

  Including the bulldozer on which Diamondback was pinned.

  He screamed as the earthmover screeched down the hold. The machine shot out into the open, plunging at the ground with Diamondback trapped on the scoop like a shrieking hood ornament.

  Thirty tons of steel smashed down at the base of the cliff - followed by over five hundred tons of metal as the hovercraft landed on top of it. The Zubr exploded with earth-shaking force, a burning mushroom cloud roiling upwards.

  Towards the Land Rover.

  The 4×4 hadn’t gained enough speed to cancel out the hovercraft’s forward momentum as it flew out of the stern, and it skidded backwards to crunch to a halt with its rear wheels over the edge of the cliff. The front wheels spun uselessly, lifted off the ground as the back end dipped . . .

  Though half stunned by the hard landing, Nina realised the danger - and threw herself against the dashboard.

  The shift of weight was just enought to bring the Defender’s front end back down, the tyres finding grip and pulling the vehicle back on to the clifftop with a bone-shaking thump. The fireball boiled upwards behind it, setting one of the wheels alight. Still engulfed in the cloud of sand, the Land Rover got about thirty feet before the burning tyre blew out. Macy brought it to a jolting stop.

  The dust gradually settled. Coughing, they climbed out. Berkeley shakily faced Nina. ‘Thanks for waiting for me.’

  ‘And thanks for . . . sort of trying to help me. I guess,’ Nina replied dubiously.

  He looked relieved, holding out his hand. ‘No hard feelings?’

  To Macy and Eddie’s surprise, she shook it, once . . .

  Then punched him in the face. He dropped on his ass, stunned. ‘Actually, yes! That was for selling out in the first place, you son of a bitch!’ Eddie pulled her back before she could take another swing.

  ‘What about Shaban?’ Macy asked. She looked into the distance, but the dune buggy was long gone.

  ‘Shit!’ said Nina, thoughts returning to larger concerns than Berkeley. ‘He’s got the jar! How’re we going to catch up with him?’

  ‘We’re not,’ Eddie told her. ‘He’s got a head start - and I bet he’ll be able to get someone to pick him up by chopper. That buggy had a sat phone.’

  ‘So he wins?’ Macy asked, appalled. ‘After all that, he gets away with it?’

  ‘No,’ said Nina. ‘No way. I’m not going to let that happen.’ She stared after the departed Egyptian, thinking. ‘We need to get back to Abydos.’ Both Eddie and Macy appeared on the verge of making sarcastic comments about the obviousness of her plan. ‘Don’t even start. I said we needed to contact the authorities. We still do.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Eddie, indicating the Land Rover’s smoking rear tyre, ‘we’d better change that wheel. It’s a bloody long walk.’

  The Egyptian Mil Mi-8 helicopter approached from the west, silhouetted against the bloated red sun on the horizon. It kicked up a swirling vortex of sand as it touched down near the Osireion at Abydos.

  Nina, Eddie and Macy stood by the battered Land Rover, Berkeley sitting sullenly in its rear seat, shielding their eyes from the blowing dust. Hatches opened, six men emerging. Five were soldiers, but their uniforms were not the standard tan of regular Egyptian troops: these were the darker camouflage pattern of a special forces team.

  The sixth man was a civilian - Dr Ismail Assad, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. ‘Dr Wilde,’ he said as he reached the Land Rover.

  ‘Dr Assad,’ Nina replied. She looked past the helicopter to the desert from where it had come. ‘I’m guessing you checked out the GPS co-ordinates I gave you on the phone before coming here.’

  ‘I did. It was . . . incredible.’ He shook his head in near-disbelief. ‘And I only had time to examine the entrance chamber. How much more is there?’

  ‘A lot,’ said Macy. ‘All the way down to Osiris’s tomb.’

  ‘Incredible,’ Assad repeated. ‘I left a team from the Antiquities Special Protection Squad,’ he nodded at the soldiers, ‘to secure the site - the SCA will send a full expedition as soon as possible.’

  ‘Shaban won’t be going back there,’ Eddie warned. ‘He’s got what he wanted from it.’

  ‘Yes, the canopic jar you told me about,’ Assad said to Nina. ‘Are you serious? You believe Shaban is going to use it to make a biological weapon?’

  ‘He certainly believes it,’ said Nina. ‘And he’s got the resources of the Osirian Temple - well, the Setian Temple now, I suppose - to back him up. From what I saw in Switzerland, he might be able to do it.’

  Assad frowned. ‘Maybe so, but weapons of mass destruction are a little out of my field. And without proof, I can’t persuade higher authorities to take action.’

  ‘There’s something that is in your field, though,’ said Nina. ‘The zodiac from the Sphinx. I’m sure Shaban has it - Osir would have shipped it back to Switzerland. He even had a space picked out for it in his Osiris memorabilia collection.’

  ‘If Shaban has the zodiac,’ Assad mused, ‘that would definitely justify taking action. He’s an Egyptian citizen, after all - and our government takes a very dim view of archaeological thieves.’

  Eddie regarded the soldiers. ‘You’d send this lot in to extradite him?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t comment on whether the ASPS have ever carried out missions outside the country,’ the Egyptian said with a small but meaningful smile.

  ‘And if along the way you also happened to find proof that he was manufacturing biological weapons,’ said Nina, ‘well, then you’d have to do something about it, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I would. But first I would need proof that he has the zodiac.’

  Nina looked at Eddie. ‘Which means getting back inside the Osirian Temple’s headquarters.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’ Macy asked. ‘I mean, we saw the place - it’s like a fortress. Because it literally is a fortress! They won’t let you walk right in this time.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Eddie said thoughtfully, ‘but there’s someone they might . . .’

  29 Switzerland

  Soft lights washed across the high stone walls of the castle as the last glow of sunset faded behind the Alpine mountains. The pyramid dominating the courtyard took on new form as blue LEDs along its edges flicked on, the black glass building becoming a neon outline topped by an intense beam shining skywards towards the pole star: a pointer to the ancient Egyptian gods.

  More lights approached along the lakeside, turning on to the short spur leading to the castle and stopping at the gatehouse. A sleek black Mercedes S-Class, windows tinted almost as dark as the paint. But it wasn’t the chauffeur’s window that smoothly lowered to respond to the voice from the intercom; instead, the rear window revealed the single passenger.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Grant Thorn, flashing his movie star smile at the cameras. ‘Khalid Osir invited me to visit the Osirian Temple. Well, here I am!’

  ‘What brings you here, Mr Thorn?’ said Shaban, bland politeness barely covering his contempt - and suspicion.

  Grant made himself comfortable on the leather couch in Osir’s lounge. ‘I was in Switzerland to meet some of the backers of my next movie - gotta keep the money men sweet, right?’ He grinned. ‘Since I was here, I thought I’d take Mr Osir up on his offer to watch his old movies toget
her. Is he around?’

  ‘My brother is . . . out of the country,’ said Shaban.

  ‘Aw, man! When’ll he be back?’

  A small, crooked smile. ‘Not for some time. But your trip might not be wasted. The Temple is holding a special ceremony tonight - you will attend. If you prove your faith and loyalty, you will be rewarded.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Grant. ‘But if Mr Osir’s not here, who’s holding the ceremony?’

  ‘I am in charge.’ A larger smile, edged with smugness.

  Someone knocked at the door. A large, grey-haired man entered: Lorenz, face still bruised from the fight in the Hall of Records. ‘The first bus is coming.’

  Shaban nodded, then turned back to Grant. ‘I have to prepare for the ceremony. Wait here - someone will come for you.’

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ Grant said as the two men left. He waited several seconds, then took a cell phone from his pocket - a phone with an open line. ‘Did you get that?’

  ‘We got it,’ said Nina into her wireless headset.

  Half a mile up the valley, a pair of Mitsubishi Shogun 4×4s and a panel van were parked overlooking the castle. The van’s boxy cargo area was large enough to contain the six-foot-diameter zodiac, but it was currently serving as an impromptu command post for a team of ten soldiers from the Egyptian government’s Antiquities Special Protection Squad.

  ‘What kind of ceremony?’ asked Assad, in charge of the unit. Nina could only shrug, and Macy had nothing helpful to offer either. He frowned, turning to one of his men. ‘He mentioned a bus. See if there’s anything heading for the castle.’ The black-clad soldier nodded and jumped out. ‘The ASPS are only equipped for a surprise raid. If there are more people there than we expected . . .’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Grant asked. ‘This zodiac dealie, it’s in a room full of Egyptian stuff - I saw it on the way in.’

  Assad shook his head. ‘We can’t do anything until we have visual proof that Shaban has the zodiac. The minister made that very clear - this operation is on shaky enough diplomatic ground as it is.’