Corsair of-6

by Clive Cussler

  There was no sign of the old Mi-8 helicopter the terrorists were using as a base, so the team assumed it was farther down the river and would leapfrog the searchers when they reached a predetermined distance away.

  Linc tapped Eric’s leg, the signal for them to retreat off the ridge. He slithered back as carefully as he could, followed by Linda, Mark, and Alana. The former SEAL stayed in position for a couple more minutes, making certain no one below saw any movement.

  He led them southward for twenty minutes before he judged it safe enough to talk, albeit in whispers.

  “What do you think?” Mark asked.

  “I guess we have to ask ourselves WWJD?”

  Mark looked at him strangely. “What would Jesus do?”

  “No. What would Juan do?”

  “That’s easy,” Eric said. “Take out the bad guys, find the tomb, and somehow manage to bed a local Bedouin girl.”

  Alana had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh.

  “Seriously,” Linc went on. “Now that we know where the bad guys are, we’ve only got a few hours before they reach the falls. Do you two geniuses have any idea how to find the tomb?”

  “We need to see the falls to be sure, but, yeah, we’ve got some ideas.”

  This was the first Alana had heard of their plans, and she said, “Hold on a second. I’ve seen the old waterfall for myself. There’s no way a sailing ship could have negotiated them. They’re too steep. The top one is practically a vertical wall.”

  “You’re not giving credit where it’s due,” Eric said mildly.

  “Here’s the plan.” Linda made eye contact with each member of her team. “We’re going to try to find the tomb. Linc, I want you to stay behind and keep an eye on these guys. Radio when you think there’s an hour left before they reach the falls so we can bug out. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  Having already marched to the wadi from their chopper’s distant landing zone, the two men and two women still made good time hiking the six miles to the first set of cataracts that blocked the unnamed river. They had stayed on top of the bluff overlooking the bed so when they reached the falls they had a bird’s-eye view. Linda ordered Alana to stay with the men while she scouted the area. Mark and Eric took up a position overlooking the cliffs and scanned them methodically with binoculars.

  It was only from above, a vantage Alana and her partners had never enjoyed, that the odd nature of the riverbed became apparent. Upstream from the first cataract, there was a natural bowl that spanned the full width of the river, a basin formed of living rock that had resisted the efforts of erosion for aeons. It was roughly a hundred feet long, and its upstream side was yet another cliff face, only this one was just four feet higher than its predecessor. A man-made wall constructed of dressed and mortared stone ran its length. Unlike the streambed, which had been scoured clean by the powerful currents that once washed between the banks, the basin floor was littered with water-rounded boulders.

  Also from above, she could see the footings of another ancient wall that had long since vanished, stretching from the base of the first falls and extending another hundred or so feet downstream.

  She borrowed a pair of binoculars from Eric when she first spied the boulders and spent several minutes observing them, as if she expected them to move. Nothing changed, and yet they were telling her a story about what was happening farther into the mountains.

  “Those are basalt,” she said, handing back the glasses. “Same with that wall.”

  “So?”

  “It’s the first indication of anything other than sandstone in this whole godforsaken country. It means there was volcanic activity someplace around here.”

  “And that means?” Mark prompted.

  “The possibility of caves.”

  “Of that there is no doubt.”

  Her tone turned to disappointment. “But it doesn’t make any difference. Al-Jama couldn’t have gotten his ship above the falls. Period.”

  “You’re looking at this place like a geologist, not an engineer.” He turned his head to talk to Eric. “Where do you think?”

  “They’d need them on both banks. The river’s too wide for just one.” He pointed to a flat ledge just above the riverbank. “There for our side, and that promontory twenty feet higher on the other side.”

  “Agreed.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alana asked. Her only experience with the Corporation was witnessing them as soldiers. She didn’t know what to make of Eric Stone and Mark Murphy. To her they were techno-geeks, not mercenaries, and they seemed to speak in a private code only they understood.

  “Derricks,” they said simultaneously. Eric added, “We’ll show you.”

  They made their way down to the ledge. It would have remained a few feet above the water level even at the height of the spring runoff. It was almost dead even with the first cliff spanning the river, and was large enough to accommodate a city bus. The two men scanned the ground intently. When something caught their eye, one would bend to brush at the dirt covering the sandstone.

  “Got it,” Mark cried softly. He was on his haunches, excavating sand from a perfectly round twelve-inch-wide hole that had been drilled into the rock. He didn’t hit bottom even when lying on the ground and burying his arm to the shoulder.

  “What is that?” Alana asked.

  “This is where they stepped the mast for the derrick,” Murph replied. “Most likely the dressed trunk of a tree. Attached to it would have been an angled boom that could reach halfway across the river. As you can see by the hole, the boom was massive and would have been capable of supporting several tons. There would have been another on the opposite bank.”

  “I don’t get it. What are they for?”

  “Using these they could lower stones into the river—”

  “Not stones,” Eric countered quickly. “We talked about this. They would have used woven baskets, or possibly bags made of sailcloth, that were filled with sand. This way they would eventually dissolve in the current and wash away.”

  “Fine,” Mark said with a tinge of irritation. Alana might be a dozen years older, but she was attractive, and Murph’s only real hope with women was showing off his intellect. “Large bags of sand were lowered onto the wall they’d constructed below the first fall to divide the river channel. That way they could dam up the downstream end on one side and not stop the river entirely. Their earthworks would never have withstood the full force of the current.

  “With the Saqr tucked into what was essentially a shipping lock, they allowed a controlled amount of water into the chamber, building the walls higher as it filled until they could haul the boat forward into the second lock, the one nature had created and which most likely inspired old Suleiman’s engineer in the first place.”

  “They would repeat the process again,” Eric added, “and draw the Saqr onto the upper river.”

  “You guys figured this out without ever visiting this place?” There was respect in Alana’s voice.

  Mark opened his mouth to brag, but Eric beat him to the explanation, saying with his trademark earnestness, “A lock is the only thing that could possibly explain what Henry Lafayette had meant by ‘clever device.’ Knowing that, we studied satellite imagery to verify our hypothesis.”

  “I am impressed,” Alana told them. “And a little mad at myself. I stared at this stupid pile of rocks for hours but never saw it.”

  Mark was about to use this as another opening to brag when Linda Ross approached so silently no one heard her until she was right behind them. “You boys need to be a little more aware of your surroundings. I wasn’t even trying to be quiet. What have you found?”

  “Just as we suspected,” Mark said, giving Eric a look. “During a particularly dry spell, when the river stopped flowing entirely, Al-Jama’s people converted the waterfall into a lock system so they could hide their ship where no one would ever think to look.”

  “So the cave is farther upstream?”r />
  “Gotta be.”

  “Then let’s start hiking,” Linda said.

  She radioed Linc to tell them what was happening and inform him they might lose radio contact because of the distance and topography. He must have been close enough to the terrorists not to risk replying. Her acknowledgment was two quick clicks in her earpiece.

  They started southward, marching three-quarters of the way up the bank so as not to silhouette themselves against the distant horizon, as well as to shield themselves from the worst of the wind that had started to kick up. This region of the desert was enough to make anyone feel insignificant. The brassy sky towered over the party, and the relentless sun beat down on them as they trudged along. They each carried enough water for a day so that wasn’t a concern, but three of the four were operating on minimal sleep and the effects of a punishing few days.

  For the members of the Corporation, they pushed themselves because they saw it as their duty. For Alana, she marched with them because, if she didn’t, she would never lose the image of Mike Duncan’s lifeless eyes, as the petroleum geologist lay on the desert floor with blood leaking from the hole in his forehead. She was an archaeologist and mother, and her place was as far from here as possible, but she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she’d not come. The decision certainly wasn’t rational. However, she’d never been more certain.

  Her life was dictated by rules that the men who killed Mike and kidnapped her had broken, and, simply put, she wanted revenge.

  Two miles above the falls, the riverbed changed dramatically. The sandstone banks gave way to a lighter gray rock that had been part of a saltwater reef millions of years ago but was now limestone.

  “This has got to be it,” Alana said when she recognized the geology. “Limestone is notorious for caves and caverns.”

  Mark tapped Eric on the arm and pointed to a spot across the dry wash. “What do you think?”

  It was an area where a landslide had torn away some of the bank and dumped untold tons of rubble into the riverbed. The slide stretched for a hundred and fifty feet, and behind it the riverbank was significantly taller than anywhere else they had seen.

  “Bingo,” Stone said, and high-fived Murph. “The cave’s riverine entrance was blasted and the cavern sealed. Behind that mess is Suleiman Al-Jama’s corsair, the Saqr, his tomb, and just possibly the Jewel of Jerusalem.”

  The initial excitement of finding the tomb’s location faded quickly.

  Alana voiced the concern. “There’s no way we can move that much debris without heavy construction equipment and several weeks’ time.”

  “Don’t you get us yet?” Mark asked her seriously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Back door,” Stone and Murphy said in perfect sync.

  It took ten minutes to climb down to the riverbed and cross the river before they were standing atop the crushed section of bank. The backside of the hill facing the western desert was a folded warren of gullies and ravines that had been eroded when the Sahara had been a lush, subtropical jungle. They found the first cave entrance only moments after splitting up into pairs and starting their systematic search.

  Eric pulled a small halogen flashlight from a pocket on his upper sleeve and stepped into the man-sized aperture. Ten feet in, the cave turned ninety degrees and petered out into a solid wall of rock.

  Linda and Alana found a second cave that went a little deeper before it, too, came to an abrupt end. The third cave was smaller than the others, forcing Eric and Mark to crawl on their hands and knees. It ran deep into the hillside, twisting with the vagaries of the matrix stone. At times, they could stand and walk upright, and then the next moment they were forced to slither through the dust on their bellies. Stone used a piece of chalk to mark the walls when the cave began to branch off.

  “What do you think?” Eric asked after they’d been underground for fifteen minutes. He was pointing to a carving on one wall. It was crude, done with a knifepoint or awl, and neither man could read it, but they recognized the looping Arabic script. “Al-Jama’s version of ‘Kilroy was here’?”

  “This has got to be it,” Murph replied. “We’re going to need help exploring all these side tunnels.” He tried radioing Linda but couldn’t get reception this deep into the earth. “Rock, paper, scissors?”

  The two men made their choices, paper-covered rock, so Mark turned himself around for the laborious climb back to the surface, his echoing grumbles diminishing as he retreated.

  Eric Stone shut off his light to conserve batteries, but when the weight of darkness pressed in on him like a palpable sensation he quickly flicked it back on. He took a few calming breaths to steel himself, shut his eyes, and killed the light again.

  It was a long thirty-minute wait until he heard the others crawling down the tunnel.

  When Mark’s light swept Eric’s face, Murph chuckled. “Man, you are as white as a ghost.”

  “I’ve never been fond of tight spaces,” Stone admitted. “It’s okay with the lights on. Not so much in the dark.”

  Normally, Mark would have ribbed him more, but considering their situation all he said was, “Don’t sweat it, dude.”

  Linda quickly drew up a plan of attack to survey the subterranean warren of interconnected tunnels and caves. Whenever they came to a fork, one team would check the left tunnel, the other would head right. They would meet back at the branch after ten minutes no matter what. Whichever option looked the most promising was the way they would all go.

  Another hour passed as they laboriously checked each section. It was all the more difficult because of the weapons and extra ammunition the three Corporation people carried. Knees and palms were scraped raw from contact with the rough stone, and without proper equipment each one of them had struck his or her head at least once. Eric had a piece of gauze taped near his hairline where he’d gashed his skin. Blood had dried coppery brown in the furrows of his forehead.

  The four of them were together walking down a long gallery with heaps of shattered stones on the floor when Eric happened to play his flashlight on the ceiling ten feet over their heads. At first he thought the hundreds of projections hanging down were stalactites formed from mineral-rich water seeping into the cavern, but then he saw one was wearing pants.

  Horror crept up his spine. “Oh my God.”

  Alana looked up and gasped.

  Hanging from the ceiling were dozens of pairs of mummified legs, some showing just the foot from the ankle down, others hanging from the upper thighs as if materializing from the living rock. One person was suspended on his side, half of the corpse contained within the matrix stone while the other half dangled grotesquely. The neck was bent at such an angle that the back of the skull was hidden, and the cadaverous face leered down at them through sight-less eye sockets.

  There were animal legs, too, long, awkward camel legs ending in big skeletal feet and horses’ limbs with their distinctive fused hoofs. The dry air had retarded putrefaction, so skin hung from the bones as brittle as parchment and clothing remained intact.

  Mark studied the uneven floor, stooped, and came back up holding a leather sandal that began to crumble almost immediately.

  Linda asked, “What happened to them? How did they get fused in the rock?”

  Over his initial shock, Eric studied the ceiling more carefully. Unlike the rest of the cave system, the ceiling here was black and glossy under a coat of dust.

  “Everyone cover your ears,” he said, and brought his assault rifle to his shoulder. The crack of the shot was especially brutal in the tight confines.

  The bullet had knocked free a splinter of the ceiling. He retrieved it, looked at it for only a moment, and tossed it to Mark Murphy.

  “Completely solidified,” he commented. “When the cave below the pit collapsed it left them hanging.”

  “Of course,” Alana said, examining the material.

  “Little help for the nonscience types.” Linda didn’t bother looking at the rock sam
ple. Her only exposure to geology was a “rocks for jocks” class back in college.

  “Above us is the bottom of a tar pit,” Eric answered, “like La Brea in L.A., only smaller and obviously dormant.”

  “It’s actually asphaltic sand,” Alana corrected.

  “During the summer months, it warmed enough to get sticky and entrap the animals. My guess is, the people were thrown in as a form of execution. Then, at some point over the past two hundred years, the bottom of the pit collapsed—that’s all this rubble on the floor—and exposed the victims at the very deepest part of the pit.”

  “There was something I was told by St. Julian Perlmutter a couple of days after our initial meeting,” Alana said, suddenly remembering. “He’d come across one additional scrap of information. It comes from a local belief about Al-Jama’s tomb. It is said he was buried beneath the ‘black that burns.’ That’s why they had us digging in an abandoned coal mine. The terrorists thought the black was coal, but it was this.”

  Eric took the shard of hardened tar from her and held the flame of a disposable lighter to the thumb-sized lump. In seconds, it caught fire, and he dropped it to the ground. The four of them watched it burn silently.

  Linda snuffed it out with her foot. “I would say we’re getting close.”

  But another hour of exploration still hadn’t revealed the hidden tomb.

  Eric and Mark had separated from the women at yet another juncture. They approached the dead end of a particularly straight and easy section of tunnel deep under the river’s original water level. Eric paused to take a sip from his canteen before they retreated to the rendezvous. The end of the tunnel sloped up in a perfectly flat ramp that met the ceiling. Something about it intrigued him, and he climbed up the incline until his face was inches from where it joined the roof.

  Rather than solid rock, he saw a jagged line, a crack barely a millimeter wide, that ran the full width of the tunnel. He fumbled in his pocket for the disposable lighter, and called over his shoulder, “Kill your light.”