“Upward, to the Queen’s and then the King’s Chamber, or continue down to the subterranean chamber. Input here would be good.”
“Where were the secret passages found?” Hayden asked.
“Heat anomalies saw passages at ground level, the first course of the pyramid and in the top half, above the King’s Chamber, leading to the apex. Nobody knows what was found or if they even looked.”
“Odd. All the other depictions were found low down,” Mai said. “I would say we try the subterranean chamber and passage.”
“Or the King’s?” Kenzie put in. “Him being important and all. Plus, I’d like to know if that secret passage goes all the way to the top.”
They hesitated. In the end the decision remained moot as soldiers began to fill the tunnel below them. The first pointed them out and then the bullets started flying. Crouch and Yorgi crowded into the upward tunnel and the rest jumped in after.
“No room to fight,” Drake said. “We got a problem here.”
Bullets whistled past the opening to their tunnel, non-stop.
Dahl waved an arm out, firing his weapon blindly. A scream paused the hail of gunfire for a while and Drake risked a peek out.
“I’m counting eight,” he said. “And they’re moving pretty fast.”
“We got more trouble,” Kinimaka said, looking up. “They’re coming from both directions.”
“Sounds like my prom night,” Alicia said. “This is gonna be a slaughter.”
It was indeed a kill box, Drake saw. Nowhere to go and two enemies coming at them. Kinimaka decided the way they would go. He was in front and charged at the descending men. A bullet flew past his head, dislodging rock, and then another displaced a large, jagged chunk that plummeted onto his temple stopping him like a rocket would stop a rhino, forcing him to his knees.
The oncoming mercs cheered, still coming. Kinimaka was down, head hanging, groaning and winded.
“Let ’em have it!” a voice rang out.
Then Mai was in action, running, planting a foot firmly on Mano’s back and using him as a springboard to launch her body among the mercs. She landed hard and true, scattering their weapons and unbalancing them. Instantly, she kicked out whilst they were already unstable, toppling one headlong into the griping Kinimaka and another in his wake. The one above her landed on his tailbone, yelping. She grabbed his gun, twisted it in his hand and shot him three times with it. The fourth bullet went past his head as another man sought to target her. The fifth made sure he collapsed back into the man above, head blown away.
Giving her clearer sight of the tunnel above. The mercs were bunched up, hampered beyond measure, and she added one more body to the mix, killing the next visible merc and making him fall among his comrades.
“Close quarter combat,” Luther breathed in an impressed tone. “Now there’s a specialist.”
Drake backed Dahl as they slowed the oncoming mercs in the other direction. Effectively, they were guarding the exit and the mercenaries were trapped. The dubious factor was that the mercs were leaving.
What had they found?
Overheard transmissions told him nothing except they had radioed in for heavy machinery, which could mean absolutely anything. It was clear though that the mercs were in a desperate hurry. They were sacrificing their number just to get close to the exit.
Kenzie jumped after Mai, looking to help. She dragged the first dead man away, let him slide past, then used the close-set walls as a fulcrum to jump over the next. She kicked him down until his body slithered into Kinimaka. The Hawaiian got the message, heaving upright and wincing even as he threw the dead men past him.
All the way to Drake, who rolled them out into the downward passage.
Communications flared between both mercenary groups. Drake could hear one team telling the other to fall back, to let them take the lead, to get the hell out of the way.
“We found it!”
His heart leapt as he heard those words. Crouch zeroed in on it too, coming to Drake’s shoulder and listening.
“No way we’re gonna lift that mother,” someone shouted into a walkie. “It’s almost thirty by thirty and weighs about six tons. We got a stallion en route, but someone gotta smoke these fuckers first.”
What’s he talking about? Drake mouthed at Crouch.
“Must admit I’m stumped. I thought all we were here for was a wall painting, a mural. Could he be talking about the weapon itself?”
Drake guessed it was possible. “These men are clearly FrameHub’s mercs. If Tempest and the others were ever here they’ve been dispatched. Maybe that’s why the mercs are in such a rush—to safeguard what they found.”
“Sounds likely,” Crouch said.
The incredible close-quarter battle continued inside the Great Pyramid. Drake saw a dead policeman thrown in front of the upcoming mercs, positioned as shields, and gritted his teeth in hatred. Another was thrown from above, striking Kenzie and knocking her to the floor. Mai resisted a concerted attack, breaking a man’s knees with her gun and watching him stagger past into the arms of Kinimaka.
Today, not kind arms.
Mai fired up at the next, using each man as a shield to reach around. Twice bullets ripped through clothes but passed her by.
Drake and Dahl braced as the mercs inched closer. They had lost eight of their number but still retained at least that many, uncompromising with their advance. The time was approaching when they would push past the upward passage and that was going to present some problems.
For all of them.
“Make sure you’re fully loaded,” Drake shouted. “Here they come!”
CHAPTER FORTY
An unknown quandary faced them. Nobody had ever fought in such close quarters against so many armed men inside an ancient pyramid before. Alicia pointed it out, and the rest had to agree.
Luther was halfway up the incline, helping Mai, drawn to her courage and skill. Pine and Carey were at his back. That gave the rest of the SPEAR team chance to ponder the mercs coming from below.
They couldn’t step out into the line of fire. They could hardly let them pass. But they found they could not stop them either. At least eight mercs attacked in a line, carrying their dead and at least one man not-so-dead, with them and forcing them against the hole where Dahl and Drake crouched. Their bullets struck the dead bodies; the dead bodies fell upon them, their number weighing everyone down. A flapping skull struck Hayden, felling her. A lifeless, weighty frame came down on Drake, pinning him to the floor. A slim man pushed up at Dahl, rocking him back on his heels and then another was added to the weight and the makeshift barricade, forcing him back and allowing more mercs to slip past.
They did get some shots off, and through, heard cries of pain. Bullets found their mark. Some came through the other way too, one almost felling Kinimaka for a second time.
“Not again,” was heard as he went gasping to the floor, shocked at how close it had come.
Drake wriggled free of his obstruction. Another landed atop him, slithering across the man above and adding its weight. Drake was trapped. Perhaps the ascending mercs could have made more of that chance, but their heads were pointed in one direction only, their orders to escape as fast as they could.
Mai fought tirelessly, dragging down the last of the mercs and throwing him over her shoulders. Luther caught him in mid-air and slammed his head against the bedrock, only dropping him when all life had departed the body. When Mai had checked for stragglers she turned and caught Luther gazing at her.
“You,” he said, “are one incredible conflict diamond. And I mean that in the best possible way.”
“I know how you mean it.” Mai acknowledged the compliment with a nod.
“If I weren’t such a gentleman I’d ask you to accompany me on your next available date . . .” He left it hanging.
Mai picked her way through the dead. “And are you a gentleman?”
“Depends what your answer would be.”
“No, it de
pends on what you intend to do with us once this is finished.”
Luther took in the scene with fascinated eyes. From the bodies strewn up the incline that led to the King’s Chamber to those Drake and Dahl and the others were throwing off further down. “This is . . . captivating.”
“For us, mate, this is normal,” Drake said. “Now help me lug this big moose off Alicia.”
“That is Alicia,” Kenzie said.
Drake almost fell for it, glancing twice, but caught his natural instinct at the very last second. Once Alicia was free and the way cleared, Dahl took a tentative look back up the tunnel, toward the exit.
“Looks clear. Ready to move?”
“All good.”
“Wait.” Crouch stopped them. “This merc is still alive.”
“Well, what do you wanna do?” Alicia said. “Nurse him? These guys made their own . . . tomb. Let them lie in it.”
“You’re not wrong,” Crouch said. “But he may have information and, people, that is just what we need right now.”
He knelt alongside the faintly gasping man, cradling his head and helping him to achieve a more comfortable position. “Listen up,” he said. “Your own men shot you, used you as a human shield so they could escape. All I want is one answer—what did you find?”
“I am not with them,” came the soft, indignant reply. “I am . . . professor at Akhet . . .” Crouch knew this was the museum of natural history in Cairo. “They . . . forced me to come along and . . . help.” He coughed hard. “Then . . . they use me as human . . . shield. The wall painting,” he said. “It was the same as the last which we found already opened just an hour ago . . . the capstone . . .”
Drake closed his eyes with the frustration. They had lost the race here simply because they had stopped to help people. Because the cars had gotten snarled up and the mercs had access to helos. Having said all that, he wouldn’t have changed a moment of it.
“The same?” Crouch repeated. “We know the capstone is the weapon. Please do not tell me those mercs are now headed to where it’s hidden?”
“The last depiction showed a section of the lower wall highlighted. The kids with the brains—and the mainframes—took a gander. They used thermal scans and say the whole thing lit up. There’s a passage, a big one, inside this pyramid, hiding the capstone.”
Crouch blinked. “Which capstone?”
“The capstone. The capstone of the Great Pyramid. I’m sure you know—the one that’s being missing for thousands of years?”
Crouch couldn’t stop himself shifting in utter amazement. “Here? I find that . . . incredible. You’re saying it’s been here the whole time?”
“Along with all those passages the Egyptians knew about and never bothered to excavate. Yes.”
“We have to go,” Dahl urged. “They already have a five-minute start.”
“Wait a minute,” Hayden said. “If they’ve found the capstone here, inside the pyramid, are they now able to use it as the doomsday machine?”
“Lady,” the professor said, “I was there, greatest moment of my life, finding and ogling the missing capstone, so it took me a while. But let me help. The capstone isn’t the weapon. You’re standing in it.”
Hayden glanced at her feet, then back at the professor.
Crouch looked like he’d been hit with a car tire, but recovered fast.
“Dahl’s right. We must get moving. But we can’t. We need this man’s knowledge. I believe I know what’s happening now. It’s one of those legends nobody really knew was real because the only way to properly test it, was to turn it on.”
“I don’t follow,” Dahl said as he started to run. “Turn it on?”
The professor shifted uncomfortably, still bleeding despite Crouch’s and Drake’s best efforts. “The fantastical legend is real, it seems. As far back as the nineteenth century the British inventor, Siemens, was allowed to climb to the top of the pyramid with his Arab guides. On hearing stories that other guides heard an acute ringing noise when they raised their hands with outspread fingers, Siemens did the same. Bear in mind this is the founder of the Siemens Company, of course.” The professor paused for a hacking cough, face turning paler by the second. “Siemens raised his index finger up there and felt a definite stinging sensation. After that, he raised a wine bottle that he’d brought to drink from and received an electric shock. Being a scientist, he moistened a newspaper and wrapped it around the bottle to create a rudimentary capacitor.”
Crouch looked dumbfounded. “I read about this but thought it farfetched.”
The professor nodded. “And I. But Siemens was not a joker. Holding the bottle up, he saw it charged with electricity, sparks being emitted from it. When the Arab guides attempted to stop him he pointed the bottle toward the Arab and gave him such a shock that it knocked him to the ground.”
Hayden frowned, helping Kinimaka stand as the big man struggled with a head wound.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not the capstone, it’s the pyramid,” Crouch said. “The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the ancient doomsday weapon.”
Drake urged the team to rise and make ready. “What do we need to know, Professor? I’m sorry we can’t save you, but to help us, to save countless lives, what do we need to know?”
“Physicists throughout time have studied the Great Pyramid with painstaking detail. They concluded it could have been designed to gather, amplify and gel energy emissions from a particular target and return them with the exact same harmonic frequency. Opera singers can do it—smash glasses with their voices by matching the basic harmonic vibration of the glass. It causes a shift in the glass’s natural vibratory rate and makes it shake until it shatters. You’ve all seen it happen. In 1997, I think, the US government conducted research into acoustical weapons. They also analyzed the Great Pyramid and determined that the configuration of its chambers, and the placement of its passageways, could be used as a great loop, generating sound waves which could then be directed at a target. It was thought to be the most powerful weapon that ever existed on earth. Amplified energies.” He wheezed. “Enormous force. It would neutralize all electronic equipment and detonate all explosive devices, including nuclear bombs. It would directly kill every living thing, including viruses. In truth, it is the way the chambers are placed and the passages built, the inclusion of shafts that lead nowhere, the precision with which it was built, metal pins attached to doors that look like electrodes, that made people look at the pyramid as a machine, rather than a tomb. The placement of the capstone will . . . switch it on.”
“Right,” Drake said. “Grab the capstone. That’s all you had to say.”
In another few minutes the professor’s life had drained away, taken by the heartless, merciless men he had been forced to help.
Crouch bowed his head. “At least he paid them back in the end.”
“Let’s hope,” Drake said. “We do this for him as well as the rest of the world.”
They raced toward the pyramid’s exit, surrounded by bedrock and ancient majesty, the ghosts of long-dead workers still haunting these halls, the labor they had undertaken an epic endeavor that would resonate through time. The Great Pyramid soared above them, a mass of six million tons perceived and crafted by the hand of man; extraordinary.
Is it really all just a big coffin?
Drake shut the thought down, listening to Crouch as he yelled out an explanation. All the while, the exit drew closer.
Dahl slipped out into the light, backed by Smyth. Drake came next, quickly shifting his body in all directions and scanning the area for hostiles. They moved swiftly and carefully to the right, heading toward the eastern side, since that was where the hidden tunnels had been found.
“Here we go,” Dahl breathed.
Mercs were waiting for them, dug into the sand. Drake dived forward onto his stomach, landing hard but keeping his head up, his gun up, and firing blast after blast. Sand kicked up around the mercs. They scrambled behind some ruins, s
everal low walls that were left to crumble with time. Bullets destroyed some of the stone, tumbled others. Drake rolled in the sand and dirt, firing potshots at the enemy. One was hit and then then second, precious minutes passing, and then they were up, running hard for the eastern corner of the pyramid.
The sun beat down hard. Weariness was a predator tearing at their limbs. Drake hit the side of the pyramid hard first and waited for the others, concealed, just waiting to sneak a look around to the other side.
“Moving?” he asked.
“Ready,” they said.
He peered around the wall, eyes going wider and wider as they encountered one of the craziest, most astonishing scenes he’d ever witnessed.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
In all his days Matt Drake never expected to see anything like this.
About thirty mercs stood against the wall of the pyramid, guns raised and tough looks stretched across the granite-like faces. Most of them were shouting. A helicopter hovered close to the ground and off to their left, further away from Drake’s vantage point. A big one. A Sikorsky, he thought, capable of lifting enormous weight. Three more civilian choppers rested behind, their rotors idle for now.
Sunlight flashed from every surface.
Standing before the mercs, facing them down, were just four people. Drake wanted to rub his eyes, cartoon-like, just to make sure they weren’t deceiving him because one of those people was Karin Blake.
Words, and thoughts, failed him.
Alongside her were two young men, standing like soldiers and with guns perfectly poised. Maybe they’d graduated from the same school?
The fourth figure took even his breath away.
“What the fuck is that?” he breathed.
Intrigued, the entire team came around the corner. No longer wary, they didn’t need to be. The mercs’ attention was completely engaged.
The fourth figure was crazy looking, a large behemoth dressed in robes and rags, all draped and wrapped around his torso. Around his face he wore more rags so that only his eyes peered out. His legs were clad in knee-length shorts and on his feet he wore brown sandals. One hand held the biggest machine gun Drake had ever seen, over 15mm diameter and heavy as hell. The flesh Drake could see was corded and brown. It was the other hand that drew his attention. He’d seen something like it before, but never quite as vicious looking.
The Seven Seals of Egypt (Matt Drake Book 17) Page 20