by Andrew Linke
Frank stalked down the length of the helicopter, eyes fixed on Oliver. He stopped an arm’s length from Oliver.
“Kyle, tell me exactly what this guy is good for.”
Kyle twisted back around the side of the pilot’s seat, his head already clamped into the shell of a helmet, wires jacking him in to the helicopter’s radio system spiraling down from a junction box in the roof. He looked on in silence for a few seconds, then flipped the visor of his helmet down and replied, “We need the girl to translate any old writing we find. Do what you want with him.” He went back to flipping switches on the control panel.
Diana made to unstrap herself, but was restrained by the mercenaries sitting to either side. Frank grinned and lunged forward, striking out with his massive left fist in a powerful blow that would have knocked Oliver flat if it hadn’t been thrown off target by the constraining bandages wrapped around Frank’s chest. Oliver staggered back, easily dodging Frank’s awkward attack. A glance told him that Diana was completely helpless, but at least the other mercenaries didn’t seem interested in helping Frank kill him.
The helicopter motors coughed to life and settled into a deep thrumming sound that Oliver could feel in his chest. Frank swung at Oliver again. Oliver dodged to the side, letting the blow slip past his face by mere inches, and grabbed Frank’s forearm. He jerked hard on the arm, adding his own weight to the momentum of Frank’s attack. The wounded mercenary stumbled forward and crashed into the bench seat, nearly falling into the laps of his comrades. Frank roared in frustration and scrambled back to his feet. Instead of going after Oliver with his fists again, Frank grabbed the assault rifle resting between the knees of the man he had just fallen on. The rifle was secured to the mercenary by a webbed strap, so it jerked back and fell as Frank raised it. Oliver took that as an opportunity to jump out of the helicopter.
He hit the ground hard and allowed himself to fall to the sand and roll up into a crouching run. The blades of the helicopter had begun to spin over his head, pulling air downwards and whipping the sandy canyon floor into a hurricane of gritty dust. Oliver ran in a crouch until he was beyond the downdraft of the blades, then stood and ran as fast as he could, heading in the general direction of the Range Rover, but throwing in the occasional zig or zag. Oliver was grateful for the obscuring cloud of sand whipped up by the blades of the helicopter, but he knew he was dead if he didn’t get to cover. He reached the Range Rover just in time to see the glass of the passenger window shatter and hear the crack of a shot rip through the low thrum of the helicopter blades.
Oliver dropped to the ground and tumbled behind the front wheel of the Range Rover, putting the heavy steel of the brake assembly and engine between himself and Frank’s rifle. He prayed that Kyle was simply letting Frank blow off some steam. If the mercenaries took off right away he might get out of this alive, might even be able to rescue Diana, but if Kyle held the helicopter at ground level while Frank got out and hunted Oliver down, he was a dead man. More shots crackled through the air and Oliver covered his face to protect his eyes from chips of stone and glass that spattered up around him.
He waited.
The sound of the helicopter reached its zenith in a dull thumping pulse that he could feel in his chest, but hardly hear. A part of Oliver’s mind not entirely concerned with surviving the next minute noted that he must have not heard the mercenaries approach because the helicopter employed some sort of stealth design to reduce the noise of the rotors. The shots ceased and Oliver rolled onto his belly and slipped under the car, keeping the dense mass of the engine block above him as he slithered back to the side where the helicopter had rested. It was gone. The dust was beginning to settle and the pulsing noise and impact of the rotors was already fading.
Oliver waited until the noise was entirely gone before slipping out from under the Range Rover. The vehicle was a complete wreck. Multiple bullet holes deformed the side panels and only the rear window remained intact.
Looking around, Oliver saw his and Diana’s backpacks laying on the ground not far from where the helicopter rested. He walked over and looked down at them for a moment, pondering the likelihood that they had been booby trapped and left for him, just in case he had survived the gunfire. After a moment’s hesitation, Oliver slowly unzipped the bottom access panel of his bag and found his camera, still safely nestled in the padded pouch. He closed the bottom panel and worked his way through each compartment, unzipping each slowly and using the flash light of his phone to peer in through the narrow opening and check that no explosives waited for him. It took nearly ten minutes, but eventually Oliver was satisfied that the bags had simple been left behind in the scramble to board the helicopter, or perhaps they had been intentionally abandoned to ensure that Diana and Oliver were dependent on their captors for everything.
Oliver transferred Diana’s emergency rations and water to his own pack. He pulled the memory card out of her camera, but left the camera in the bag. As much as he hated to leave it, there was no point in carrying the extra weight of it.
Oliver was pleasantly surprised to find Diana’s spare ammunition clips in a side pouch of her pack, as well as his own backup gun still tucked away in the very bottom of his bag. It was increasingly evident to Oliver that Kyle had grown sloppy in his desperation to save his own skin. He was grateful for that because, along with Frank’s desire for revenge on someone after being shot, it had allowed him to escape and provided these supplies. On the other hand, Diana was now trapped alone with Kyle and his men and Oliver could see no way of rescuing her.
Oliver tossed Diana’s pack into the back of the Range Rover and sat down in the bullet riddled passenger seat to think. He pulled out his phone and saw that he now had no service, so there was no chance of calling for help until the antenna somehow managed to catch a signal, which might happen when he left the cage of the car. He pulled up a map of the area and did his best to mark the locations he and Diana had identified on it from memory. Even if he couldn’t chase the mercenaries, he could hope that they would let Diana live or, at worst, abandon her at the temple. If they did that he might be able to track her down before she died of dehydration.
Oliver heard a stone tumble across the sand, clattering against other rocks as it fell down the canyon wall.
He grabbed for his gun and dove out of the car through the open door. Looking back towards the entrance of the canyon he saw nothing out of place. He spun, scanning the canyon walls, and saw a party of five figures in light colored desert robes and headscarves emerging from a narrow cleft in the rock about two hundred feet away. The shortest of the group, Oliver now saw was a young woman holding the arm and hand of an old woman, supporting her as they hobbled across the sand. The three remaining figures continually swiveled their heads back and forth in apparent watchfulness. Glancing upwards from the group, Oliver noticed a narrow trail cut into the side of the canyon wall, switchbacking up to the desert floor high above.
The party spotted Oliver. The three guards pushed aside their robes to reveal automatic rifles, which they shouldered and pointed at Oliver. They began shouting in Arabic for him to drop his gun and lay down on the ground. The young woman wrapped her arms around the older woman and dropped to the ground, rolling to put her body between Oliver and the woman she had been leading.
Oliver sighed deeply and dropped his gun. This day just kept getting worse and worse. He stepped back from the gun and held his hands up, but did not drop to the ground. He had no idea why these people were in the canyon, let alone threatening him with guns, but he intended to find out.
“I am now unarmed.” Oliver shouted in his best Arabic. “I mean you no harm. My partner was recently kidnapped, that’s why I had my gun out.”
The men with rifles glared at Oliver and continued to keep their weapons leveled at his chest, but they stopped shouting.
“My name is Oliver. I am an archaeologist. Who are you?”
The older woman began shouting at her younger counterpart in a dialect that O
liver did not recognize. The young woman was doing her best to keep her elder down on the ground, out of danger, as they argued. One of the men turned around and joined in the discussion. Oliver had no idea what they were saying, but got the impression that the older woman wanted to get up and look at him, while the others were concerned for her safety. Ultimately the woman won the argument, using her guardian’s shoulder as a prop to push herself to her feet.
The old woman moved towards Oliver with a tottering step, her wrinkled brown hands stretched out towards him. Her assistant leapt to follow, skirts spraying sand as she hurried to the old woman’s side and took her arm.
One of the men approached Oliver, keeping his gun pointed at him the whole time. He came almost within reach, then stopped and said, in Arabic, “We heard shooting and saw helicopters moving west. What happened here?”
“I told you. My research partner was kidnapped. The men who took her were trying to kill me. They probably think that they succeeded.” He nodded towards the bullet-riddled remains of the Range Rover.
The man nodded his head gravely and glanced back at the others. The old woman was still shuffling forward. She was not far away now. He called out to her in the dialect that Oliver could not understand. She replied with a burst that sounded to Oliver like questions.
“Why are you here?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
“You might, but you are... what, British? American? You speak Arabic with an accent... and I’d wager you don’t have a permit to excavate here.”
Oliver couldn’t have explained why, but he didn’t get the impression that these people were a threat to him. Something about the way they all seemed to defer to the old woman, who now stood just behind his interrogator and had fixed Oliver with a piercing gaze. He slowly lowered his arms and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his trousers. He tried to relax, despite the guns pointed at him, and decided that the best course of action was to tell the truth, mostly.
“My name is Oliver. I’m a photographer and treasure hunter. I found some clues that suggested I might find a powerful relic here. Since I don’t read hieratic or hieroglyphs very well, I brought along a colleague who does. While searching the house down there, we were attacked by a group of American mercenaries who are also looking for the relic. They killed an Egyptian agent who was helping them and kidnapped my partner, then went to track down the actual resting place of the relic.”
It all spilled out of Oliver and when he was finished, he deflated. His shoulders sank and he lowered his head, feeling utterly exhausted from the stress of the day.
The men said nothing, but Oliver noticed that their faces had gone completely blank, where before they had been animated and angry. It was obvious that something in his story had caught their attention, but they were trying to hide it. The young woman was busily whispering in her elder’s ear, apparently translating Oliver’s story. The old woman nodded slowly, her wrinkled face betraying little as she assimilated the information. When her assistant had finished, the woman turned her intense gaze back to Oliver and uttered a few short statements.
This time, the young woman translated for Oliver. She had a soft, melodic voice, but there was an intensity to her speech that commanded Oliver’s attention, especially when she addressed him flawless English.
“The priestess asks whether you saw anything else while you were in the house, and what parts of the estate you explored.”
Oliver hesitated. He wasn’t so much surprised by the young woman speaking English, since it was the common tongue of mass media throughout the world, as he was uncertain how much to say. There was no going back now though, and he still had that niggling feeling that this woman would understand his story and it would bring him no harm to tell her. He returned the old woman’s gaze and did his best to speak in a level tone, switching to English as he said, “We explored the front hall, throne room, and a guest room of the main house. We were following a passage to the back of the house when...” He paused, then shook his head and said, “When we were attacked by a living skeleton.”
He waited for a sign of surprise from the young translator, but she simply nodded and began speaking to the old woman. The woman did not appear surprised, so as soon as the young woman stopped speaking, Oliver continued.
“We also entered the chapel in the rear garden. There we were attacked by the living remains of an Egyptian general named Sephor. I destroyed him and we were in the midst of reading an inscription that he made on the wall of the chapel when we were attacked by the mercenaries.”
Oliver did catch a look of surprise cross the young woman’s face when he claimed to have defeated Sephor. The surprise passed, darkening into something that Oliver feared would spell his doom. Before she could finish translating he quickly said, “I have photographs of the inscription. Sephor apparently carved it into the wall some time after he was transformed into an undead guardian himself.”
The young woman shot him a cold look, then turned back to her elder and continued to translate what Oliver had said. The old woman’s eyes widened as her assistant translated. She looked at Oliver with an expression that seemed equal parts horror and respect.
As the translator finished speaking one of the men raised his rifle and strode closer to Oliver, pointing the gun at his head and laying his finger alongside the trigger. His impassive mask had fallen and now his face was etched deeply with rage. He shouted back at the women in their dialect, spittle flying from his lips and flecking his dark brown beard. Without waiting for a reply from the old woman he switched to Arabic and shouted at Oliver, “You bastard! You filthy heathen bastard! How dare you defile this place? What right do you have to come here and destroy our holy places?”
Oliver put his hands up and stepped back, thinking fast. Most of the sites he raided were so remote, so obscure, so long forgotten that there was little risk of encountering human devotees of the shrines he violated. Still, he had encountered relic cults on couple occasions and been able to talk his way out of a fight more often than not. Generally he would lie to them, perhaps even try to insinuate himself into their sacred myths as some sort of holy messenger or invulnerable herald of evil, but he had already told too much of the truth to start lying now. Not to mention that they were clearly modern people who were unlikely to fall for such a rouse.
He looked straight at the man holding the rifle and spoke calmly, keeping his voice low as he said, “I had no intention of damaging anything. I came to take photos and look for clues to the location of a temple that has been lost for thousands of years. The guardians of the house and chapel attacked me, so I defended myself.”
This had no visible calming effect, but the man did not shoot Oliver between the eyes, so he continued.
“Please, tell me who you are. Perhaps we can help one another.”
The old woman pushed her enraged guard aside and took Oliver’s right hand in her own. She gripped his finger tightly with one hand and reached up, stroking his face with the palm of her left hand as she looked deeply into his eyes. The skin of her fingers felt like brittle paper against his cheek. Oliver swallowed hard, trying to suppress the thought that she could read his mind or peer into his soul. This was just a crazy old priestess, accompanied by her acolyte and guards, drawn here by the sight of helicopters and the sound of gunfire.
The woman cupped Oliver’s chin in her hand and began to speak to him. Her voice quavered at times and the expression in her eyes shifted wildly. At times her eyes bored into Oliver with such intensity that he would have looked away, had she not held his chin, and at others she appeared on the verge of tears. She paused at times, to allow her assistant time to translate, then continued before Oliver or the men with guns could interject.
“Your presence here is a sign of evil, American. You have witnessed violence and caused damaged in a sacred place where my ancestors once lived in peace. Dangerous men have followed your trail here and even at this moment I feel the threat of them growing. Despite th
is, you are not an evil man yourself. That which you have destroyed was... profanely sacred... so I both abhor and thank you for its destruction. You are hungry for knowledge that is beyond you. Beyond what humanity should know. I cannot compel you to cease your quest, but I can help you stop a great evil.”
The woman released Oliver’s chin and dropped her hand to his shoulder. She looked over her shoulder to the armed men and spoke. Her assistant translated for Oliver’s benefit, “We will return home now. This man will accompany us. Tomorrow he will set out to bring an end to the evil that he carried with him to our lands. Then I will return here to see that which we have guarded unseen for over an hundred generations.”
Oliver allowed himself to relax and took a deep breath. He didn’t fully understand what had happened, or how he was expected to bring an end to an evil he had brought, but he figured that it had something to do with stopping the mercenaries. The old woman released his hand and began walking back towards the cliff path. One guard, the one who had threatened Oliver, ran ahead of her and began to jog up the path. Her assistant glanced back at Oliver and said, “We will speak more on the way.” Then she followed the old woman, taking her arm to help her up the path.
One of the remaining guards slung his rifle under his robe and enveloped Oliver’s right hand in a double-handed grip. “I am Zaid Ahmad, chief guardian of the Elder.” He said in Arabic.
“Oliver Lucas. Photographer and international trouble-maker.”
Zaid did not smile, but something in the set of his shoulders gave Oliver the feeling that he got the joke and approved.
“Take your bag and follow us. You will forgive me for keeping your gun in my possession until you depart from our company.”