The further they walked, the more tents they passed, all lit up like giant lanterns. Inside, the shadows didn’t look like evil men—they were talking, sitting around TVs or radios, reading, playing cards. Normal. Candice wondered what made them want to hurt people, hurt the world, be more like this raging storm than anything human. Visions of some glorious past or magnificent future, perhaps, but how could anyone turn their back on a past that was already as glorious as that solar barge, or fill the present with blood in hope the future would justify it? It made no sense to her. She didn’t know if it even made sense to them, or if they’d rather live in peace—if it was only threats or lies that had brought them here and made them enemies.
The tents passed, and now there was only the sandpaper of the storm raking Candice’s skin. She had no way of knowing if they were going in circles or moving at all. Nevada was the only true north she had.
When the ship’s prow loomed out of the obscuring sands, it could’ve been a Viking longboat coming to shore out of a fogbank. They staggered up the side of the dune, clinging to each other like drunks. The storm wasn’t only hurling sand through the air, it also ripped it off the ground, out from under them, making Candice feel like she was in an earthquake. She saw the ramp of packed sand leading up from the ground to the deck. Each step up it was precarious, her weight making the sand tumble away underfoot, but they made it up onto the wooden deck, the planks giving a reassuring creak at their weight. The deckhouse was only a few yards away.
Excitement overcame Candice and the last few steps passed in a rush. Clutching the AR-15 she’d taken from the sentry, Nevada shouldered the door open and swept inside, aiming at… no one. The space was empty.
Candice piled in behind her, and together they closed the door, barring out the howling wind. They were inside history, wrapped up in it like a cocoon. Candice could feel millennia in the air. Then she forced herself to look with a critical eye. She was a scientist, after all—not a tourist.
The space was about the size of a two-car garage and however the Egyptians had originally furnished it, it was picked clean now. Either the Egyptians themselves had taken everything with them or—Candice winced—the Khamsin had pitched everything out into the desert, burned it, buried it. There was a dining table in the middle of the room, but it was comparatively new—medieval instead of ancient, and not made of cedar. Surrounding it were folding chairs and stools, and on the tabletop were disassembled electric power drills, and big glass jars right out of a candy shop: they held ball bearings, coins, marbles, spent shells, razor blades, nails, screws, even LEGOs. There were piles of prepaid phones, lengths of detonating wire, bright red blasting caps, and enough bricks of plastic explosive to go with all of them.
“They’re making bombs,” Candice said.
Nevada nodded. “This isn’t a training camp; it’s a beachhead. They make IEDs here, suicide vests, then move them through the desert. No border control… You find the treasure. I’ll deal with this.”
Candice looked around, coughing into her hand. With all the sand she’d breathed in, it felt like her throat had been strip-mined. There was nothing in the room except piles of sand blown in from outside. Candice prodded her foot into them, working her way to the back of the room.
“What’s it look like?”
“It’s a skull! Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie?”
“I’m just trying—” Candice stepped on a rotten plank that gave way under her, dropping her foot down into the open air of the boat’s overhang. She cringed and pulled her foot back.
“You okay?” Nevada called.
“Yeah.” Candice toed experimentally at the planks around the hole. They creaked threateningly. “Not up to code. Wait a minute…”
If her foot could break through a plank, there was no reason someone long-dead couldn’t have removed one, hidden something away, and re-secured it. She poked and prodded at the walls, but gently, careful not to demolish the place any more than she already had.
“Do you ever wear men’s underwear?” Nevada asked, apropos of less than nothing.
“What? No!”
“Me neither. I guess it’s just a one-way thing. Probably because they don’t make thongs for men.”
“They make thongs for men,” Candice said.
“They do?”
“They do.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I’m European.”
“Oh. Right.”
A plank shifted under Candice’s touch. She pried at it, finding plenty of give. Once she found the right angle, it popped out, showing her a recessed space. Inside was a codex. One of the first books, and it looked it, the papyrus yellow and weathered, the binding so faded and discolored that she feared it would fall apart in her hands if she dared to touch it.
“You aren’t supposed to show up for two more centuries,” she breathed. “Take that, Bembridge scholars.”
“You two need a moment alone or are you going to pick it up?” Nevada demanded.
Candice resisted the urge to ask if Nevada was jealous. “It’s a priceless relic.”
“It’s luggage!”
Cringing, Candice picked the codex up. It was reassuringly solid, miraculously well-preserved. She chanced opening it, finding hieroglyphs spread out before her like a feast.
“It’s a ship’s log,” she reported breathlessly. “I think we just set Egyptology ahead by a century!”
“Uh-huh,” Nevada said. “Skip to the last page. See if they mention the Aegis.”
Candice didn’t argue. Moving with painstaking care, she eased the codex to the final page and found blank papyrus staring up at her. She flipped backward, the sound of the storm outside and Nevada’s frantic work falling away as she lost herself in touching something that was older than the country she’d grown up in.
Finally, she came to the last entry. The ancient words flowed into her eyes. “There was a storm…” she translated, wincing a little over how rough her summary was. “It ran the ship aground… they decided to build a burial chamber for the queen… then come back and repair the ship.” Candice looked up. “They never came back.”
Nevada sighed. “Of course not. Does it say where they went?”
Candice flipped back another page. “Yes. They sent out scouts to find a proper burial site and they found one… in the mountain. Mountain? Fifteen miles north of here.”
“That’d have to be the Tibesti Mountains,” Nevada said. “But they’re not fifteen miles north of here… more like fifty.”
“Take it up with them,” Candice replied.
“I intend to.” Nevada shoved something in her pocket and picked up the AR-15. “Pack it up. We’re leaving.”
Candice looked around. There was a pile of gym bags, backpacks, and vests in the corner—no doubt intended to carry the explosive payloads built in this lab. She picked up one of the backpacks, carefully nestled the codex inside, and zipped it up as tightly as she could.
Nevada pulled the scarf back over her face. “Ready?”
Candice nodded.
Nevada threw open the door. The sandstorm charged inside like a rampaging beast. Candice and Nevada had to force their way out, arms linked. In the rush of discovery, Candice had forgotten how miserable the sandstorm was. The screeching winds, the grating of the sand against every body part, no matter how tightly bundled, the precarious footing, the air snatching at them, all made even worse by how they were going downhill on the slanted boat. Tasting the sand as it inevitably got in her mouth again, Candice couldn’t think of anything worse.
Then the wind died down. The clouds parted. The sun came out, illuminating Nazir with an entourage of his men, not thirty feet away.
Nevada didn’t hesitate an instant. She hauled her rifle upright, the stock braced against her shoulder, finger around the trigger. But the pull only resulted in the dull clicking sound of the trigger being moved. Nothing came out of the muzzle but a trickle of sand.
The Khamsin stil
l reacted to having a rifle aimed at them, throwing themselves to the ground. It took them a good second to realize nothing had happened, and in that second Nevada spun around and ran back for the deckhouse, pulling Candice so hard she was nearly lifted off her feet. Candice’s brain finally edged from shock into reaction. She ran, the howl of the storm fading from her ears, replaced by the crack of gunshots behind her. Bullets ripped into the cedar deck all around her, kicking shredded splinters into the air for what felt like hours before they made it back inside. Nevada threw the door closed. From outside, they heard Nazir yelling angrily, and the gunshots stopped.
“They won’t shoot in here,” Nevada said confidently, pushing the dining table against the door with a minimum of grunting. “It’s full of explosives!”
Then she realized what she’d said.
“If I could critique your plan…” Candice started.
“Go easy on me, would you? I’m about to die.” Nevada pressed the mag release on the AR-15 and pulled the clip out. A dollop of sand poured out of the receiver. Nevada tossed the rifle aside with a noise of disgust. “This is why you test-fire new guns, by the way. Lucky I didn’t blow my damn hand off…”
“I think they may take care of that for you.”
Nevada rolled her eyes to a particularly disgruntled height. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m—” Candice smelled something bitter. Looking about, she noticed a wisp of smoke trailing from her shoulder. She turned her head and saw a blackened hole in her backpack—a bullet that had seared its way into the codex and been stopped by the thick papyrus. “Bloody wankers!” she hissed, moving for the door when Nevada caught her by the arm. Candice’s checked momentum spun them in a circle before she was hauled to a stop.
Nevada whooped with laughter despite the circumstances. “Save it for the play-offs, champ.”
Candice sputtered indignantly, just aware enough of her impotent rage to be still more angered by it. “This is exactly— exactly what happened to the Library of Alexandria!”
“History repeats itself,” Nevada said, her voice droll, her body in furious motion. “Or maybe just the eighth grade, I don’t know.”
Candice forced a cleansing breath on her heaving lungs and only then was cool-headed enough to notice what Nevada was doing. She’d collected a vest from the pile, brought it to the table, and was now stuffing the pockets with plastique, wiring them with electrical cord, and threading those into one of the electric drills.
“Nevada,” Candice said gently, “are you making a bomb vest?”
“Yes,” Nevada said. “But don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. They let amateurs use these things all the time.”
A strong blow rattled the door, knocking the barricading table half an inch. Nevada pushed it back into place. Looking to arm herself, Candice snatched up a mallet from the tabletop.
“It’s rubber,” Nevada told her. “No sparks.”
“Great, I can test their reflexes before I die.” Candice tossed it away.
Khamsin clambered on top of the deckhouse—Candice could hear them walking across the planks, see their shadows through the slender gaps. Some of them dropped down on the other side. They were surrounded.
Nazir spoke from the other side of the door. “You’ve earned a screaming death, Easy Nevada.”
“Shoot, I picked up a screaming death at the store last week. I knew I should’ve held off until there was a sale…”
Nazir rapped his knuckles against the door. “Shall we really play this out in full? You have nothing to defend yourself with and no way to keep us out. If you’re willing to be reasonable, I can offer you a quick death.”
Nevada cleared her throat. “I can offer you eighty Navy Seals, the First Armored Division, and a squad of Apache helicopters, all within five klicks and just itching to wipe this place off the map.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“Would you believe John Wick with a pencil?”
“No.”
“How about me and the suicide vest I’m wearing?”
“You’re bluffing.”
Nevada flung the table aside and threw the door open, suddenly in Nazir’s face with a half-dozen of his men’s guns pointed in hers.
“ERHH! Sorry, Nazir, wrong answer. And you didn’t even use your lifeline.”
Nazir didn’t back down an inch. “Do you think I am not prepared to die for what I believe in?”
“Well, your boy wasn’t. I’m guessing he was supposed to make sure that train went ka-boom, but he was ready to jump ship the first chance he got. Like father, like son—am I right?”
Candice couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The guns held tightly onto Nevada. She didn’t move an inch. The detonator in her hand didn’t waver.
“And what do you believe in?” Nazir asked. “Whatever it is, are you prepared to die for it? Because that is your only choice. Die now and you take me with you. But do you have the will?” He smiled. “You love life, despite all it has done to you. But you don’t hate like I do. Not enough to make the hard choices. That is why you’re going to die here, and I am going to walk away.”
“Wiz, right now the only thing keeping me from pushing the button is wondering if I’ll stay alive long enough to see the look on your face as it comes off your body.”
Nazir took a step backwards. He kept looking at Nevada, but when he spoke next, it was to his followers. “Allah has more work for me to do. Wait ten minutes, then shoot them both.”
Nevada swung the door shut. “I’m going to count that as a moral victory.”
Suddenly Candice could breathe again. And as though her mind and body had been waiting for that spine-tingling paralysis to end, an entire train of thought flooded into her mind all at once. She knew at once what to do, how to escape—she felt like she could kiss God on the lips if she wanted to.
“Nevada—”
“I know, I know,” Nevada said offhandedly. “You love me, you’ve always loved—”
Candice grabbed Nevada’s head, making an effort not to break her neck, and forced her to look at the spot on the deck where her foot had crashed through the floorboards.
“Oh,” Nevada said.
She rushed over and pried experimentally at one of the jagged splits. It broke off in her hand; she dropped it down the hole.
“Take off your jellabiya,” Nevada said.
“Why?” Candice asked, mainly out of disgruntlement with the fact that she was already pulling her arms out of the sleeves.
Nevada lowered her voice to a whisper. “Because as soon as they figure out what we’re doing, they’re going to shoot through the walls and kill us.” Candice threw the robe. Nevada caught it and draped it around the hole. “Besides, it doesn’t go with your shoes.”
She drove her fist into the broken planks, widening the hole one floorboard at a time, the fabric dampening the noise. Candice still looked around fearfully. The lurking shadows of the guards were all around the deckhouse. She wondered what it would take for them to fire. Would trying to obey Nazir’s order buy them a few precious seconds?
Candice heard shouting from outside. She looked to Nevada, who threw the fabric aside, instead using her boots to kick out one side of the hole. A rifle barked, bullets chopping into the deckhouse and whizzing overhead as Candice threw herself to the ground. More shouting, even louder, and the shooting stopped. An argument, a hurried explanation—Nevada dropped through the hole, landing in a crouch. Candice followed her, landing on her hip.
“Now what?” she asked, getting up only for Nevada to tackle her back to the ground.
They rolled down the slope, the world spinning around them. Behind them, the shouting reached a crescendo, everyone on the same page as the shooting began in earnest—rifles spewing gun smoke, bullets sending up plumes of sand in explosions all around Candice. More sizzled overhead, whistling as they overshot her body.
Finally, Candice stopped, flat on her back. There was no more slope to roll down. She felt bile rising
in the back of her throat and tried to fight her way to her feet but was too dizzy to make it there.
“Stay down,” Nevada’s voice came from close by. “We’re out of range.”
Shouts came from the Khamsin coming after them. Candice held her spinning head as Nevada punched numbers into a cell phone she’d picked up on the boat.
“And now,” Nevada said, “the West Des Moines Historical Reenactment Society presents ‘My Grandparents Using a Microwave.’”
She pressed Send.
The boat blew apart. A red-orange flame sent pieces of wood and flesh in all directions. The airburst kicked up sand down the slope before rolling over Candice like a strong tide, pushing her so hard it was like she was falling down the slope again.
The Khamsin chasing them were knocked flat and were still half-buried when the overhanging half of the boat came crashing down. It veered down the slope on its side, for a moment sailing on a wave of sand as it crushed the Khamsin under it with the merciless disinterest of a lawnmower over grass. Then it tipped, rolling end over end, the prow snapping off in the sand.
Candice felt Nevada pull at her, muttering, “Bad day, bad day, bad day!”
She ran, her heart beating so loud in her ears that it came as a shock when she heard the banging of the ship coming down the slope, louder, louder, finally so loud that the noise was physical. Candice felt the impact of the wreckage coming to a stop in the sand. It nearly rammed itself underground, like it was trying to return to the history buried under the earth. The sand shook until there was nothing for Candice to run on. She went down in a tangle of limbs, and where she landed, she could see the prow’s new home and the trail of flaming debris it had left all the way across the mountainous slope. It had come to a rest only ten feet away from them.
“I think we missed the boat,” Nevada said.
They’d kicked the anthill; it was time to pull their foot out. Running as fast as their bruised bodies could carry them, Candice and Nevada made their way to the rendezvous point. For once, luck was on their side. Usama stood with the camels, all of them saddled and ready to ride.
Candice Cushing and the Lost Tomb of Cleopatra Page 21