Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake

by Rob Lloyd Jones

  As I hung on, I dared a look down to the bottom of the cave. Oh God, it was high! I had to fight through my fear, and think.

  “Zoom,” I said.

  My smart-goggles focused on the snake lady crawling over the rubble. She had the emerald tablet clutched to her chest.

  That was why Mum and Dad had come to Egypt: to stop the snake lady from destroying evidence of something incredible; a culture far more ancient than anyone had ever known. With that clue we could keep hunting – Mum and Dad wouldn’t be able to stop themselves. But without the tablet we had nothing. Maybe we’d go back to our old lives. In time, Mum would probably ban all talk of this adventure and claim it had been a terrible mistake.

  That tablet might have held secrets to the world’s history, but it was more than that to me. It was the Atlas family’s future.

  I had to get it back somehow.

  “Jake,” Dad groaned. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

  I gripped Pan’s outstretched hand, and climbed. It can’t have been much fun for Dad. I had to dig my feet into his waist and then stand on his shoulders as I wriggled up onto the rock.

  “Get back!” he barked.

  Clinging on with one hand, he used the other to unclip the wire. He refreshed his grip on the rocks, and began to swing. He kicked his legs, swung higher and then let go – so he arced up, back-flipped and landed beside us on the rock.

  Pan and I just stared as Dad rubbed his shoulder.

  “Not done that in a while,” he muttered. “Bet you didn’t expect your old dad to—”

  “John, shut up and get out of the way!” Mum bellowed.

  As the drone lifted her through the opening, she swung the line and leaped to join us on the mountain top.

  “So what now?” Dad asked.

  I turned, blinking in the sunlight. A small black teardrop swept towards us through the sky. As it grew larger, red and white stripes appeared. A reed basket hung from the base, carrying a waving, silhouetted figure.

  “Sami!” Pan yelled.

  “In a hot air balloon?” Mum replied.

  It wasn’t the perfect getaway vehicle, but it made sense – all other forms of transport were being used for rescue operations in the flooded towns. This was the best Sami could do.

  But something else was coming too. Beyond the balloon, the sandstorm blew closer. The brown wall rose even higher than the mountain. It rolled over the desert, silently swallowing dunes and rocks and snuffing out the sun.

  As the balloon approached, Sami lowered two rope ladders from the basket.

  “All right!” Dad called. “Get ready to grab hold.”

  “Just grab hold?” Pan screeched. “That’s the best plan?”

  That was the only plan. The ends of the ladders brushed the top of the mountain as they rushed towards us. They lifted off the rocks just enough so that we’d have to jump to grasp their rungs. High above, Sami waved and yelled from the basket, signalling for us to grab on.

  “Jake,” Pan said. “Are you OK with the height?”

  “Pan, why did you have to mention the height?”

  “Because you’re scared of heights.”

  “But now all I can think about is the height!”

  “Stop squabbling,” Mum snapped. “Here we go!”

  43

  Sunlight stung my eyes as the hot air balloon passed overhead. The rope ladders swept closer, trailing behind the balloon’s basket. We braced ourselves… Waiting…

  We jumped.

  Mum and Dad grabbed hold of one ladder, while Pan and I grasped the bottom rung of the other. The balloon lifted us up, and I clung on tighter as we cleared the rocks and sailed out over the desert.

  I looked down and swore several times as vertigo kicked in and my guts turned somersaults. More than ever I needed to fight it, to focus on the mission.

  Below, three vehicles had emerged from the base of the mountain. They weren’t trucks. The mercenaries were riding hovercrafts, racing over the desert to escape the sandstorm. The snake lady – Marjorie – was in one, and she had the emerald tablet.

  She’d get away, and we’d have nothing. I’d seen enough of her operation by now to know that her people would clear everything from inside the mountain and destroy all the evidence.

  Above, Sami leaned over the side of the basket, beckoning to us to climb. Mum and Dad had already begun to scale their ladder. Pan started to climb too. But the balloon was lifting us higher, further from the hovercrafts, from the snake lady and the tablet.

  I prayed that Sami’s holosphere was working, and that he could hear me through my smart-goggles.

  “Sami?” I called.

  “Jake?” His voice in my goggles’ mic was distorted by wind, but I could just hear. “Climb up!”

  “Didn’t you tell us that our utility belts have bungee cords?”

  “Yes, reeled around the inside. It’s made of BioSteel woven with thermoplastic polymer—”

  “That’s great, Sami, but where is it?”

  Above us, Dad climbed into the basket. He saw me still hanging below, and yelled over the rush of wind. “Hurry, Jake, the sandstorm’s catching up! We have to get above it.”

  I shouted louder into my goggles’ mic. “Where’s the bungee, Sami? The ladder’s tearing, I need the cord!”

  He’d never have told me if he knew what I planned.

  “Pull the clip on your belt,” he replied. “The bungee will come with it.”

  Clinging onto the ladder with one hand, I groped my belt with the other and found the clip. I yanked it, and a thin black cord unravelled from inside the belt. It was barely thicker than a thread. Was it really going to hold me?

  Pan stopped climbing. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting that tablet back.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No!” I yelled. “Actually, yes!”

  I clipped the end of the cord to the rope ladder. I didn’t want to look down again, but I had to watch the hovercrafts. They were directly below me, a fifty-metre drop.

  I ordered my goggles to zoom.

  Each craft carried a crystal coffin and was driven by two armed mercenaries. I spotted the snake lady in the hovercraft at the back. Most of her face was covered with a scarf, but I could see her eyes. She still looked dazed from the stun dart, and kept looking back at the approaching sandstorm. She was clutching the snake case. The emerald tablet was inside, I was certain. Our emerald tablet.

  None of the mercenaries had looked up, but if I waited longer they might, and I’d lose the only thing I had in my favour: the element of surprise. The balloon was rising higher, too, as Sami took us up to escape the sandstorm.

  I had to go now.

  But my hands betrayed me, gripping the ladder tighter.

  I looked up at Pan as she leaned over the basket. Mum, Dad and Sami yelled at me to climb up, but Pan just watched me with those serious, narrow eyes. She nodded – do it, Jake.

  I let go.

  I’ve seen YouTube videos of people doing bungee jumps. They launch off like Olympic divers, limbs thrust out and heads raised, totally cool.

  Mine was nothing like that.

  I just fell.

  I kicked my legs and windmilled my arms. I’d have screamed if my mouth hadn’t filled with sand as the first sweeps of the storm caught up. Instead, I coughed, spluttered and spat. I wasn’t even aware of the cord unreeling from my belt. I flipped over, glimpsed hovercrafts, and realized I was about to crash-land in a group of the snake lady’s mercenaries.

  Five metres above their heads, the bungee bounced me back up into the storm. It felt as if my spine had been torn from my back and snapped in half. By the time I’d plunged back down, then back up and down again, my boots were scraping the desert.

  I was hanging behind the last hovercraft, gripping the bungee, my boots skiing over sand. I looked up, saw Mum and Dad screaming at me, signalling to me to get back into the balloon. I didn’t have long until they’d fish me back up. My chance to
get the emerald tablet would be lost.

  I wasn’t looking ahead, so I didn’t see the dune. I didn’t even know what I’d hit until the bungee dragged me up the slope, my face sliding through hot sand. I twisted, slid down the other side on my back, and managed to get up on my feet so I was ready for the next dune.

  I tugged the cord, causing the elastic to lift me so I boot-skied up the slope and jumped off the top. It would have been fun if I hadn’t been chasing armed villains to steal the one thing they were paid to protect.

  The good news was they hadn’t seen me. The bad news was the sandstorm was here.

  It came all at once, like the tsunami, knocking me forward. Suddenly I was up in the air, clinging on to the bungee as sand and wind battered my back. The air was thick with sand, filling my throat and nostrils. Gripping the cord with one hand, I reached to my utility belt, pulled out its breathing tube and rammed it into my mouth. My goggles protected my eyes, but all I could see through the storm were blurs of hovercrafts obscured by swirling sand.

  Then the blurs vanished and the world turned pitch black, as dark as a tomb. The sandstorm had blocked out the sunlight.

  Blurry white ribbons moved through the dark. The hovercrafts had turned on their headlights. Blown by the storm, they’d sped up, but so had the hot air balloon. I was right on them now, foot-surfing faster in the dark.

  I had to strike now.

  I tugged the bungee and bounced up again. At the same time, the storm blew me forward, so I swung at the rear hovercraft, legs thrust out. My boots thumped against the back of the mercenary driving the craft and sent him tumbling over the side. Before the other two had time to react, I swung again and kicked them both over the edge.

  The snake lady glared at me, eyes bulging in disbelief. She tried to get away, but there was nowhere to run. Her arms were locked around her snake case, pinning it to her chest.

  What followed wasn’t very cool. I lunged for the case and grabbed its edges as her grip tightened. We had a short tug-of-war. She wailed, “Jake, darling, stop!” and I wailed stuff back that wasn’t so nice, but she deserved it. I was about to punch her in the nose to make her let go, but now the bungee pulled as the hot air balloon rose higher. The force yanked me back and tore the case from the snake lady’s grip.

  I had it!

  “Ha!” I yelled. “Finders keepers!”

  The cord lifted me higher, my legs kicking the sandstorm’s darkness. Sami was taking the balloon up above the storm.

  Below, the snake lady pulled off her headscarf and shouted one last threat. “I will see you again, Jake Atlas.”

  “Bet on it, Marjorie!”

  The line pulled me higher. I know that after all I’d been through I should have conquered my fear of heights, but I kept screaming all the way through the sandstorm as the bungee carried me up to daylight. I closed my eyes and let Mum, Dad and Pan hoist me up into the balloon’s basket.

  As soon as I was safe, Mum gripped my arms.

  “Are you OK?” she demanded.

  “I…”

  “Good. Did you get the tablet?”

  With a shaky hand, I held out the case.

  Mum grabbed it and took out the emerald tablet. Dad moved in and they studied it up close, their faces glowing green in the reflected sunlight. I’d never seen them so excited, examining the signs, laughing about the scripts and arguing over symbols carved onto the relic.

  They looked happy.

  Pan was grinning too, and at last she went in for a high five.

  “Not bad, brother,” she said.

  Sami cranked the handle on one of the burners. Flames spurted up into the balloon. “Where now?” he called.

  “Wherever that tablet leads us,” I told him. “The snake lady said her group were looking for other tombs, more tablets left behind by the People of the Snake. There must be a reason.”

  “They’re markers,” Dad said. “Together, they’ll lead somewhere.”

  “But where?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet. That’s why it’s called a treasure hunt.”

  “Wherever it is, we’ll get there first,” Pan decided. “We’ll stop the snake lady from burying history. Mum, you told us you have money stashed all over the place, and fake identities.”

  “And you can train us,” I added. “We have Sami’s gadgets too, right?”

  “I go where you go,” Sami said, smiling. “I mean, I stay back where it’s safe, but I’ll be close.”

  “We do it as a team,” I said. “A family.”

  Dad’s face creased into one huge grin. “What do you think, Jane? Can’t say I’d miss life as a college professor.”

  Mum looked at him, at us, at Sami. At first I thought she might scowl or snap, but her eyes lit up and a smile spread across her face that was as bright and warm as the desert sun.

  “There’s one problem,” she said. “You’re both grounded.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Blowing up ancient monuments, destroying museums, becoming wanted criminals and bad language.”

  “But you swore too,” Pan protested.

  “I am your mother. It’s allowed.”

  The balloon carried us higher, up and over the Great Sand Sea. In one direction was the storm, in the other the blood mountain, and beyond that the green weave of the Nile Valley – crumbled temples, ancient pyramids, lost tombs, found tombs, long forgotten tombs. Secrets hidden in sand.

  “We climbed the Great Pyramid, you know, Dad?” I said. “Bet you’ve never done that.”

  “Several times,” Dad replied. “Your mother and I spent a year looking for clues to the capstone missing from its peak. A legend says it gives the location of the tomb of Alexander the Great.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “No. But we will.”

  “We all will,” Mum said. “One tomb at a time.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rob Lloyd Jones never wanted to be a writer when he grew up – he wanted to be Indiana Jones. So he studied Egyptology and archaeology and went on trips to faraway places. But all he found were interesting stories, so he decided to write them down. Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake is Rob’s third novel, although he has written over fifty other books for children, including non-fiction and adaptations of such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo.

  About writing Jake Atlas, he says, “It began on a rainy day in the countryside. Stuck at home, I watched an Indiana Jones movie and then a Mission: Impossible film straight after. I wondered if you could mix the two: classic treasure hunts but with crazy high-tech gadgets. I especially wanted to set the first adventure in Egypt, a place and history that I’d loved so much since studying it at university. But I didn’t really have a story, just an idea. Then, after becoming a father, I realized that many parents are invisible in stories for young people. I decided to write about a whole family on an adventure together. But not just any family – one with troubles and squabbles, special skills and deep secrets…”

  Rob lives in a crumbling cottage in Sussex, where he writes and runs and moans about mud.

  OTHER BOOKS BY ROB LLOYD JONES

  Wild Boy

  Wild Boy and the Black Terror

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  First published in Great Britain 2017 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2017 Rob Lloyd Jones

  Illustration © 2017 Petur Antonsson

  The right of Rob Lloyd Jones to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may b
e reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-7055-3 (ePub)

  www.walker.co.uk