by By Jon Land
It was late afternoon by the time they caught their first glimpse of the temple from the gorge, the sky beyond the sandstone monoliths darkening not only with the coming dusk, but also with the clouds of a rare storm approaching. Ben could smell it on the wind amid the dust his donkey kicked up as it thumped atop the hard-packed earth.
“There are several teams working in Petra at any given time,” Major Marash explained when they were grouped tightly again. “But the antiquities you were so gracious to return came from the Khaznet Firaoun, which means ‘Treasury of the Pharaohs.’ According to legend, the Romans hid vast treasures in catacombs beneath its temple that neither the Muslims nor the Crusaders after them ever found. But a few months ago, an American archaeological team unearthed a network of tunnels that may be those catacombs under the Khaznet’s central hall and rear chamber. No priceless treasures have been uncovered so far, but someday ...” The Jordanian completed his remarks with a shrug.
“Then if Ibrahim Mudhil is here,” al-Asi said, “we’ve got a very good idea where to find him.”
“Yes, I think we do.”
* * * *
B
en and Danielle were riding next to each other when they reached the entrance to the Khaznet Firaoun. The structure was hewn out of solid rock, literally carved out of the mountain starting with a magnificent pillared facade, colored a rosy pink and adorned with statues and carvings.
Major Marash was the first to climb off his donkey, and the others followed. A pair of Marash’s men had arrived ahead of them, easily distinguishable from the American students and local bedouins from the Bedul tribe even before they started forward. Marash met them halfway to the broad portico housing the massive entrance to the Khaznet—twenty-six feet in height, built as if to accommodate giants.
Ben walked up alongside Nabril al-Asi as Marash conferred with his men.
“How are we going to handle this, Colonel?”
“Whatever way he tells us, Inspector.”
Ben watched as Marash touched the shoulders of his men affectionately and returned to the group. “My men have quietly been circulating among the Americans and bedouins through the afternoon, showing them Mudhil’s picture. Apparently, a one-eyed man has been passing himself off as a Jordanian government liaison for days. He is inside the catacombs now. Do you have reason to believe this man is dangerous?” Marash asked al-Asi.
“Enough to advise caution when approaching him, my friend.”
Marash looked a bit grim. “I ask because he may have American students around him. My primary concern must be for their safety. We don’t want any incidents.”
“Your suggestion?”
“Wait for him to emerge.”
“How long?”
“Nightfall. Perhaps a little before.”
Ben and Danielle exchanged a glance, each thinking of the ease with which Ibrahim Mudhil had already slipped out of their grasp once today.
“And there’s no other way out of the temple,” Ben raised, “through these catacombs maybe?”
“Not that the archaeologists have found, Inspector.”
“Which doesn’t mean Mudhil hasn’t found it.”
Marash didn’t look very worried. “Petra means ‘City of Rock’ for good reason. If there were any secret exits, they would have been discovered long ago.”
Ben gazed up at the threatening sky. The breeze had begun to blow noticeably cooler.
“The storm’s drawing closer,” said Danielle.
Marash didn’t disagree. “That might work to our advantage, by forcing those inside the temple out earlier than they had planned. You don’t want to be underground around here when a storm comes. The flooding is dangerous.”
“So we wait,” al-Asi agreed, moving off to brief the four agents of the Protective Security Service he had selected to come along.
The first wave of rain, a light sprinkle, began, and one of al-Asi’s men rushed over with a huge umbrella he opened right away. Within minutes the rain was coming down much harder, and the sky had blackened with the promise of thunder and lightning to follow.
The group gathered under the cover of the portico while the students hurried to shield their work in progress on the ground in front of the facade with plastic drop cloths. The wind picked up before many of the cloths could be nailed down, and students ran to each other’s rescue, battling the elements and racing the storm.
“I think I hear some people coming,” Marash said a few minutes later, peering into the darkness beyond the facade. His operatives shadowed him like bookends as flashlight beams swept toward the entrance from within the temple.
Both Ben and Danielle tensed. Al-Asi’s men moved their hands toward their pistols. The colonel remained under his umbrella even though only a light spray of rain managed to penetrate the cover of the portico.
A pair of gunshots rang out. Screams sounded from inside the temple. The flashlight beams crisscrossed madly, then extinguished.
Marash and his men surged through the facade, followed closely by al-Asi’s.
The colonel dropped his umbrella.
“No!”
The shout came from Ben, Danielle, and al-Asi almost at once, but it was too late. More gunshots echoed within the Khaznet. Men shouted, screamed. Return fire blared. Briefly. Then more shots, more screams. The other students who had taken shelter beneath the portico pressed against the facade or dove for cover beyond the columns.
Ibrahim Mudhil had sprung his trap, baited with his gunshots, luring the men into darkness his eyes had grown accustomed to. At that point, he must have cut them down easily.
Marash staggered out, clutching his bloody shoulder. “My men,” he moaned. “My men ...”
He started to collapse against the facade, and al-Asi rushed to cushion his fall. Blood stained his pristine Canali suit jacket as the colonel eased his friend down.
“He’s in there!” Marash screeched. “The bastard’s in there!”
Ben and Danielle had their pistols drawn now, eyeing each other from opposite sides of the entrance. Al-Asi took Marash’s side arm, which had not even left its holster.
“Get him!” the Jordanian pleaded, clutching al-Asi’s lapel with a trembling hand. “Get him!”
Before the colonel, Ben, or Danielle could move, a horde of footsteps thudded toward the huge door from within. Terrified students charged past them into the pelting rain, tools and finds abandoned back in the temple.
Ben and Danielle stood on either side of the onrushing pack, searching for a face that resembled Mudhil’s or a figure stooped to keep his face from being seen at all. The last of the students filtered out with no sign of Mudhil among them.
“What’s he doing? He should have tried to use the American students to escape,” Ben said from his stance just to the right of the entrance.
“No, he doesn’t need them. He’s reduced our numbers,” Danielle reminded him. “Changed the odds to his favor.”
Ben peered into the darkness, where the painful moans of wounded men continued to sound sporadically. “We’ve got to go in there after him.”
She nodded, steadying her breathing. “The wounded first.”
“No,” al-Asi said in what sounded like an order. He was crouched next to Marash, his handkerchief pressed against the Jordanian’s shoulder. “I’ll get the wounded. The two of you go get your man.”
Ben gazed at the colonel, the blood darkening on his suit. “If he gets by us . . .”
Al-Asi was still holding Marash’s pistol. “I’ll be waiting.”
Danielle snatched a pair of soaked, discarded flashlights from the ground nearby and handed one to Ben.
“Don’t turn it on until I tell you,” she instructed.
“Ready?” Ben asked her.
Danielle nodded, and they spun together through the entrance of the Khaznet Firaoun.
* * * *
CHAPTER 36
D
anielle motioned Ben behind her and they crossed into the semidarkness. The interior of t
he Khaznet was utterly plain, in striking contrast to the ornate exterior of the facade. They advanced farther into the central hall, the moans and cries of the wounded covering the sound of their footsteps.
Ben felt Danielle stop short and just missed smacking into her. Her gun hand pressed against his chest signaled him to remain silent and still. Ben heard the click of her flashlight being switched on, the lens pressed against her body to hide the beam until she tossed it forward and to the right.
As soon as the beam pierced the temple’s interior, a quick series of shots aimed at where the flashlight had landed rang out, muzzle flashes like eruptions of color in the dark. Danielle snapped into a shooter’s crouch, but Ben grasped her shoulder before she could fire.
“We need Mudhil alive, Pakad,” he whispered.
“Pity.”
They headed on cautiously for thirty feet, where they found a ladder that descended into the start of the ancient catacombs extending beneath the central hall. Keeping a safe distance with gun ready, Ben shined their remaining flashlight into the hole.
“Well?”
“I’ll go first,” Danielle said, and began to lower herself onto the ladder.
The ladder led down into a circular pit that had obviously been excavated with great care and attention. Whoever had done the digging probably hadn’t expected to unearth the opening to a legendary labyrinth of tunnels. Ben ducked under an archway, Danielle at his side.
The catacombs reminded Ben of an old mine, right down to the lights recently strung from the ceiling to illuminate the students’ work. According to legend, the catacombs had been constructed with a number of “vaults” running off a mazelike network of passageways. It was these vaults that contained the Romans’ treasure, and evidence of persistent efforts by archaeological teams to find them could be glimpsed in the neat chiseling away at various sections of the walls.
Danielle started to lead the way.
“Uh-uh,” Ben said, cutting in front of her. “My turn to go first.”
He kept his gun raised and ready, trying to anticipate any turns that came up in this tunnel so Mudhil wouldn’t be able to surprise them.
“We’re playing right into his hands,” Danielle suggested, “you know that. This is what he wants.”
“I don’t think so. How’s the ground feel?”
“Soft. Muddy.”
“That’s because it’s wet. Water from that storm outside is rushing in from somewhere up ahead.”
“How far?”
“That I can’t tell yet, Pakad. But it’s starting to look like Mudhil has found himself another way out.”
They picked up their pace, sacrificing some caution for speed. Suddenly Ben leaned over and felt the ground.
“Any tracks?” Danielle asked him.
“The water’s pooling too fast.”
Both of them could hear it running down the walls now, making them feel even more closed in.
“Mudhil has to be up ahead somewhere close,” said Danielle as they started to advance again.
“He knows every crevice and alcove, every possible hiding place.”
“He should have tried to get out with the rush back upstairs. He should have tried to run.”
“What’s your point?”
“Why didn’t he? There’s got to be a reason.”
They ventured another hundred feet or so along the ancient catacombs before the line of lights strung above them ended. They continued on until the beam of their single flashlight illuminated a moist, dark wall directly in their path.
Ben sloshed forward, the water covering his feet now, and checked the wall. “This is as far as we go,” he said to Danielle.
She backtracked slightly. “Where the hell is he?”
“Maybe he doubled back, hid somehow.”
“No, no. We would have seen or heard something.” She followed the flashlight beam to a section of the near wall. “Someone’s been digging here ...”
She crouched down near a neat section of wall that had been chipped away at floor level. She could see the water pooling its way through, leaned close to peer inside, and caught a smell like that of spoiled meat.
“There’s something in here,” Danielle said, and pushed her hands through the mud to widen the opening.
Ben had just moved to her side when a flash of movement made him turn. A dark mass loomed to his right. His first thought was that the side wall was collapsing. Then he saw a pistol coming upward, and he locked a hand on the wrist over it as a mud-covered Ibrahim Mudhil slammed into him.
Impact sent both of them smashing backward hard into a stunned Danielle and through the wall she had been working on. The wall collapsed instantly, tumbling Ben and Mudhil into a chamber hidden from sight for almost 1,500 years. The stench of dead, stale air flooded Ben’s nostrils as Mudhil’s pistol flared twice, echoing loudly in the enclosed space. Danielle’s flashlight was rolling back and forth on the tunnel floor beyond, its beam catching what looked like suitcase-sized stone chests stowed neatly through the chamber.
Part of the legendary treasure! Ben realized. No wonder Mudhil wasn’t so quick to take his chances with escape. He couldn’t leave the remarkable find behind. . . .
Ben was still struggling to hold Mudhil at bay when the rolling flashlight beam caught Danielle surging into the chamber, gun rising in her hand. Before she could strike Mudhil with it, he lashed his free hand backward and caught her in the face. Her head whiplashed sideways into a wall and she disappeared into the darkness. Ben glimpsed her frame in the shadows as she slumped toward the oozing ground.
He kicked hard with both legs, managing to extract himself from Mudhil, and rolled when the smuggler clacked off four quick, wild shots from his pistol. Ben drew his own gun as Mudhil lurched out from the chamber and fired one last errant bullet before hastening away.
Ben tried to regain his feet, but the soggy ground afforded no purchase. He ended up half staggering and half crawling back into the catacombs, steadying his pistol before him. He opened fire, aiming not for Ibrahim Mudhil, but high and ahead of the smuggler.
Mudhil was looking back, reaiming his gun on the run, when the tenuous ceiling above him began to collapse in a wet blanket of black. Ben’s bullets had loosened the precarious earth and rock. Mudhil tried to keep going, but he was finally buried beneath the weight of the crumbling ceiling.
“Let’s go!” Ben said, making sure Danielle had recovered enough to move on her own.
When he slowed, she rushed ahead of him, the water up to her ankles now. She reached the irregular pile of stone and dirt that had nearly buried Mudhil alive and drew him upward. He was still breathing, but limp, and it took both her efforts and Ben’s to drag him all the way out of the muck.
Around them the walls themselves were starting to shed pockets of hard-packed dirt, the fragile integrity of the ancient catacombs compromised. The dim lightbulbs overhead popped dead in rapid succession as Ben hoisted the dirt-encrusted Mudhil over his shoulder.
“Hurry!” Danielle yelled.
They ran together along the crumbling tunnel, narrowly skirting the heaps of dirt and rock left by the collapsing walls and ceiling. They reached the ladder to the rumbling accompaniment of a shaking that seemed to encompass the entire temple. The ladder vibrated beneath their grasp, shifting sideways and threatening to spill them off.
Danielle climbed quickly to the top and leaned over to take Mudhil from Ben. He pushed while she pulled the smuggler over the edge, then reached for the last rungs himself.
The ladder listed away from the rim of the pit. Danielle swung back and grabbed Ben’s outstretched hand an instant before he would have been out of reach. She joined her second hand to his wrist and yanked him up off the ladder as it tumbled sideways into the pit, which was now filling rapidly with mud and water.
“Grab one of his arms!” Ben told Danielle when he was safely on the surface.
Danielle reached down for a hold on Mudhil, and the smuggler’s right hand shot up
and grabbed her by the throat. Ben lunged to help her, and Mudhil lashed at him with a knife he must have had hidden. Danielle snapped her foot against Mudhil’s wrist, and the blade went flying before the smuggler could manage a second swipe. Then she kicked him hard in the head. The smuggler’s eyes turned glassy and he let go of her throat, slumping.
Ben and Danielle latched onto Mudhil and dragged his limp form back toward the portico, where Nabril al-Asi was waiting for them just outside the entrance.
“What took you so long?” the colonel asked, as the storm raged beyond.