The Staff of Moses (Oliver Lucas Adventures)

by Andrew Linke

  Oliver scooted his seat around a little and looked to the right. As he turned his head a narrow line of flickering flame appeared in the fleck of mica. He lowered the guide stone and found himself looking at the side wall of the room. He put the guide stone back to his eye and the flame appeared again, flickering against the wall of the house as if he was looking through the wall at a distant pillar of fire.

  Elder Layla spoke solemnly beside him and Hadiya translated, “Follow the fire and you will find the temple. Rescue your friend and prevent the staff of the foreign god from falling into the hands of the violent men. I only ask that when you have rescued your friend you return the stone and key, if you are able.”

  Oliver looked away from Layla and raised the guide stone to his eye again. Despite his aching muscles and the knowledge that Diana was in danger, Oliver couldn’t help laughing out loud.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Oliver swerved the wheel to the right and gunned the accelerator to dodge around a boulder jutting out of the sands in front of the jeep. The sun was high enough now that it no longer burned bright in his rearview mirror, but it would still be several hours before the desert air whipping through his hair grew unbearably hot. He rested one hand on the wheel and used the other to pull the guide stone out of his pocket and hold it up to one eye as he drove. The flickering pillar of fire continued to burn at the center of the mica fleck.

  Duha and her husband had returned to the house, along with the guard Zaid, soon after Elder Layla gave the guide stone and key to Oliver. He had quickly packed his bag, tossing in several parcels of food that Hadiya had wrapped up for him, and filled the bladder of his water pack, then tossed all of his supplies into the jeep. Zaid had returned Oliver’s gun and wished him luck. The whole family gathered in front of the house to wave him goodbye as Oliver turned the jeep around and sped up the dusty road leading out of the village and the fertile valley in which it rested.

  The jeep was an old ragtop model with zip windows that had long since been lost. The top was a patchwork of the original canvas and dozens of repair patches of differing ages, which served well enough since its primary purpose in this climate was to provide shade from the sun.

  He drove west, skirting the edges of canyons, picking his way though fields of boulders, and keeping clear of deep sand dunes. Every ten minutes or so he pulled out the guide stone and checked that he was still pointed in the right direction.

  Diana had estimated that the temple was within one hundred fifty miles of Sephor’s estate, possibly closer, but couldn’t be any more specific acting solely on the information provided in the inscription. They had marked out over a dozen possible locations for Kyle and the mercenaries to search and Oliver had no idea which, if any, of these might be the actual location of the temple. For all he knew they might have arrived at the temple within half an hour of leaving him to die in the canyon yesterday, or they might have just broken camp in preparation for a second day of searching for the temple. Unlike the mercenaries and Diana, Oliver now knew the exact direction to travel and had a key that would help him find the entrance, but he had no way of knowing how far he had to go and had to contend with the obstacles of traveling over the surface of the desert.

  As he drove, Oliver tried to formulate a plan for what he would do when he arrived. Any plans he made, however, were contingent upon what he found when he reached the temple. If the mercenaries had already reached the temple he would have to go with his gut and try to rescue Diana before they realized that he had arrived. On the other hand, if they hadn’t reached the temple yet, his goals would probably be best served by hiding the jeep under the camouflage netting that Zaid had provided him and attempting to enter the temple himself. Then he might be able to set up an ambush and rescue Diana as the mercenaries worked their way through whatever defenses the temple might possess.

  He patted his breast pocket, feeling the crinkling of the paper Hadiya had given him, translated from what Elder Layla had told her. He had not yet had time to read it, but he truly hoped that the old woman was right in saying it would give him a fighting chance in the temple.

  Two hours into the drive, Oliver saw a bloom of sand to the north. He brought the jeep to a stop and reached back to pull a set of binoculars out of his bag. Adjusting the focus showed him the swirling clouds of sand pouring out across the desert like the front of a sand storm. Oliver shifted his view upward to the top of the storm and saw the vague outline of a helicopter painted in shades of sandy tan and brown.

  The mercenaries.

  The helicopter moved across the desert in near silence. The beat of the rotors reached Oliver’s ears as a whisper of wind, accompanied by an inaudible pulsing beat that made his chest resonate strangely. As Oliver watched, the helicopter slowed and hovered for a while about two miles farther along his track. Then the beat in his chest slowed and the helicopter dropped out of sight behind the ridge of a sand dune.

  So much for getting there ahead of them, Oliver thought.

  He shifted the jeep back into gear and continued following the guide stone towards the place where the helicopter had set down. He drove at a slower pace now, wary of alerting the mercenaries to his approach with a plume of sand from his jeep. If this was the temple, then he was already to late to set up an ambush, so he would have to wait and see how the mercenaries fared gaining entrance to the temple, and whether they still had Diana with them.

  Oliver parked the jeep at the base of the high dune that separated him from the mercenaries. He pulled out his pack and slung it comfortably over his shoulders, checked his gun, and slipped the guide stone into a side pocket of his vest.

  He turned to face the dune, over which lay Diana, the mercenaries, and a temple filled with secrets. He took a long drag from his water tube, stretched his arms and legs, and set off jogging up the face of the dune. He kept running until he thought that his head might show over the ridge. Then he bent into a crouch and ran bent half over until he was high enough that prudence dictated dropping to the sand and crawling the remaining distance on his belly.

  Oliver wriggled across the sand until he could just see over the ridge of the dune. The opposite side swept downwards to a deep bowl of sand and rocks, with an immense reddish brown stone jutting up in the center. Atop the stone stood a temple built of carved granite blocks stacked one atop another in a long low structure that covered much of the surface of the rock. A series of stone pillars spaced about twenty feet apart led from the temple rock across the sand-filled bowl of the dry lakebed, and into a high mound of sand several hundred yards to Oliver’s left. Each of these were also built of reddish stone up to the upper three feet of their length, at which point the builders appeared to have switched to a more conventional white sandstone.

  Examining the scene through his binoculars, Oliver surmised that the site had remained untouched across the ages in part because of its inaccessibility. In its prime this site had been a beautiful temple complex built on a rocky island in the center of a lake. It had most likely been accessed via a bridge built across the pillars, which had since collapsed under the weight of the sand that had drifted onto it over the centuries. After the lake dried up and the bridge collapsed, there would have been no way to reach the temple save making a treacherous climb up several steep, and in places, sheer rock faces. That, and the site’s location so far to the west of the Nile, had likely protected it from looters until modern times. As to why nobody had excavated the site in the last two hundred years...

  The helicopter rested on the sands of the dry lakebed. Turning his binoculars towards it, Oliver saw the forms of seven men in desert camouflage moving around the exterior of the helicopter. One of them, Oliver assumed was Frank, had a white sling supporting his left arm. As he watched, six of the men, including Frank, broke off into two groups and began stalking around the base of the rocky island in opposite directions. Oliver assumed that these would be searching for an easy route to the top of the rock. The seventh man returned to the helicopte
r and began gesticulating to an unseen figure inside the crew compartment.

  It was clear that the mercenaries were not sure how to proceed, and that Oliver had a snowball’s chance in hell of slipping past them and entering the temple first, so he slipped back down the slope a couple feet and pulled the folded paper that Hadiya had given him from his breast pocket and opened it to read the words that Elder Layla had spoken.

  The temple of the staff is built upon an island in the center of an oasis lake three days’ journey to the west of my estate. If the guards still live they will challenge you when you attempt to cross the bridge to the temple. Speak to them the sacred words of my household and you will be allowed to pass. If the foul warriors in blue have slaughtered the guards, as I fear, your first challenge will be the gates of the temple. These will open to whoever possesses the key, or to one who knows the sacred name of the god whose staff I captured. I pray to Osiris and Setesh that the staff of the Hebrews has been left untouched, for if those who stole my sacred treasures have succeeded in disturbing it you may be faced with the plagues that befell our forefathers. In that event I can only pray that your heart does not tip the balance as you pass between our gods and the sun to enter the inner sanctum. The staff must be kept at the center of the altar, else its power will be unleashed.

  Oliver read the letter three times, trying to find some solid clue that might help him survive whatever traps might have been laid by the ancient guardians of the temple, but he could find nothing that explained what he ought to do once he entered the temple. This didn’t especially worry him. He had delved into temples and tombs from South America to Iceland with as much information, but Elder Layla’s words had given him hope that he would enter this particular temple with more information than usual. And then there was the matter of the mercenaries and Diana. Oliver didn’t usually mind working from vague clues because he often had plenty of time to examine the site and puzzle his way through a temple’s defenses. That was unlikely to be the case today.

  He risked another look over the ridge. The scouting party on his side of the rock was nearly half way along the length. They didn’t appear to have selected a place to ascend yet. Back at the helicopter stood a man. Oliver zoomed in as far as he could and saw that it was Kyle leaning against the fuselage of the helicopter talking to someone within. As Oliver watched, the other person climbed out of the helicopter and held a set of binoculars to their eyes to examine the walls of the temple high above.

  Oliver felt a great wave of relief pass over him when he focused the binoculars on the person and realized that it was Diana. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that it was hard to believe that just yesterday they had been exploring the chapel in Sephor’s estate together.

  He slipped back down the hill and pulled out his phone to check for a signal and was not surprised to see that there was none. He did have a message though. As he drove away from the home of Elder Layla he had sent a quick tweet to Amber, informing her that he knew the location of the temple and was going after Diana and the mercenaries. He had immediately put away the phone to concentrate on navigating the jeep safely across the desert and had not checked it since.

  Don’t do anything stupid.

  Short and to the point. Oliver smiled as he held the phone up over the ridge and took several photos of the helicopter, the rocky once-island, and the men moving along the base of the rocks. He pushed all of the images into an e-mail addressed to Amber and his father and hit the send icon. If the phone picked up even a hint of signal it would send his messages right away. Sending the images in this manner would ensure that the geolocation data encoded in them by his phone’s GPS chip was preserved.

  He put the phone back in its zippered pocket and sipped again from the water tube on his pack as the considered his options.

  Arriving within minutes of the mercenaries presented a challenge. If they had been at the site for a few hours, or since the previous night, then there would have been the chance that they were all deep within the temple. If he had arrived first, Oliver might have been able to find a way up the rock and into the temple complex before them. But now he would have to think of a way to scale the rock without being shot while the mercenaries were on highest alert.

  Oliver went back to the jeep and pulled the camouflage net from the rear compartment. He then climbed slowly back to the top of the dune and settled down under the net with his camera to watch the men below through the longest zoom lens he had brought with him. He took care to get close up photos of Kyle and the helicopter, as well as the Leonidas Security patches on his uniform. If he made it out of this alive, he intended to make life difficult for these men.

  The two scouting groups returned to the helicopter within twenty minutes. The news they brought obviously agitated Kyle because Oliver could hear him shouting all the way from his perch atop the dune. His words were twisted by the winds that carried them, but the tone was clearly thick with frustration. Oliver guessed that he had been hoping they would find a path to the top of the rock, but they apparently hadn’t. The men all piled into the helicopter and the blades began to spin, slowly at first but then faster until they were a nearly invisible blur at the center of the dust cloud that had formed around the helicopter.

  The helicopter rose into the air and Oliver waited under his net, hoping they wouldn’t spot him.

  The pilot directed the helicopter to hover over the narrow plaza outside the temple gates, between the closed gate and gap where the bridge had once stood. Oliver wondered why they didn’t simply fly to the center of the temple complex and set down, but assumed that they had some good reason for remaining outside the walls. Both the French expedition and the Elder Layla had believed that the temple was guarded by supernatural forces, so perhaps the mercenaries had already seen signs of such guards from the air.

  Now that the helicopter was hovering over the stone plaza instead of a deep pool of sand, the cloud of dust surrounding it began to dissipate. A roll of black rope tumbled out of the side door of the helicopter and dangled down to the surface of the plaza. As Oliver watched, six mercenaries slid down the rope one after another in rapid succession, followed more slowly by Diana. Each of them ran to crouch in the lee of the wall, beside one of the large statues that lined the plaza, as the helicopter tilted back and moved away from the plateau to settle down on the sandy lakebed once again.

  This was the opportunity Oliver had been waiting for. There had been only seven mercenaries, including Kyle and Frank, at Sephor’s estate. That left just the pilot in the helicopter. Judging from the rapid movements of all the men who had repelled from the helicopter to the plaza, that pilot was the injured mercenary Frank. If Oliver could somehow get aboard the helicopter, he could either force the pilot to take him up the the plateau, or disable him and find his own way to the island surface.

  He ran down the slope of the dune to the jeep and tossed his backpack and camouflage into the back. Oliver started the jeep and drove southward along the base of the sand dune until it leveled out to meet the desert floor. He turned north west and saw the bowl of the dry lakebed stretching out below. The helicopter was now hidden from view on the far side of the island and Oliver could see the towering white walls of the temple wrapping around the upper edge of the red rocks.

  He used the large water bottle in the back of the jeep to top up the reservoir in his backpack, checked that he had a box of spare ammunition in the side pockets of his backpack and two full magazines in his vest, then rearranged the central compartment of his backpack so that the few climbing supplies he had brought with him were on top. That done, he threw the camouflage net over the jeep and marked its location on his phone. If he survived this little adventure, and he had every intention of doing so, it would be faster to follow a GPS track than backtrace from landmarks, though he did take visual note of the jeep’s location relative to the temple island and the pillars of the fallen bridge.

  Thus prepared, Oliver snugged the straps on his backpa
ck and set off at an easy jog down the slope to the bottom of the dry lake.

  It took him nearly ten minutes to reach the rocky base of the island, glancing up now and then as he ran to check that he was not being watched by any of the mercenaries from above. Oliver estimated that the island was about a quarter mile long at the base and half as wide. It narrowed as it went up, but only marginally so the slope of sheer rock, broken in places with outcroppings of wind-scoured boulders, would be almost impossible to climb without more ropes and pitons than he was carrying.

  Oliver took a sip of water from his drinking tube and wrinkled his nose. It tasted stale. He hadn’t noticed it before, but decided that the flavor was probably a result of mixing his own filtered water with that which he had been given back in the village. He tucked the drinking tube away and set off at a lope around the western side of the island. The helicopter had come to rest on the northeast side, cockpit facing south, so he hoped to come at it from the rear and catch the pilot unawares.

  Soon enough he saw the tail of the helicopter around an outcropping of rock. Oliver sidled up the rock and risked a glance around the corner. He didn’t see Frank, or any of the other mercenaries. The side doors of the helicopter rested open.

  Oliver slipped his gun out of its holster and checked that there was a round in the chamber and no sand blocking the barrel or jammed in the mechanism. He took a few deep breaths, then crept forward, ready to roll aside and fire if Frank appeared holding a machine gun. Oliver didn’t relish the thought of killing the man, but Frank had already made it clear that he had no compulsions about riddling Oliver’s body with holes.