by K. T. Tomb
“I see them,” Judge whispered without turning around. “Good eye. From the looks of the tracks, the camel stuck around for a while, but then, left much lighter than it was when it got here. That’s bad news for the rider.”
Sara nodded in comprehension. The only reason the camel would have left lighter is if the rider was not with it anymore. The camel would have stayed where its master had left it until it needed water, and that would have taken days. With no signs of a camp or fire, the reasonable explanation was the rider entered the ruins of the pyramid but hadn’t made it back out.
Judge stopped to the left of the entrance and cautiously peered into the dark. He pulled out his flashlight and shone it inside. The view didn’t improve much: just more stone walls, and sand-covered floors.
“Hello! Anyone in there?” Judge yelled. The sudden interruption of the quiet made Sara jump and almost shriek. Judge turned around to apologize to her, but a tiny noise caught his attention. He moved closer to the opening, hoping to hear the sound again. When he did, Judge’s eyes widened.
“You hear that, Sara?” Judge asked.
Sara said, “Yes, it sounds like a man’s voice is coming from deep within the ruins.”
Judge nodded and yelled in Arabic toward the sound, “Can you hear me?”
He was rewarded by another muffled yell, this one a little more excited, but not stronger.
“Do you understand what he is saying?” Sara asked.
“A little,” Judge said. “Something about a bad step and a long fall. I have a suspicion he might have found himself on the wrong side of a booby trap. I’m going to go in, but very cautiously. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Stupid man, of course I’m coming with you.”
Judge knew she would and smiled. “Good, but step where I step. I don’t want either of us going for a long fall.”
He holstered his gun and picked up a piece of stone that had fallen from the miniature pyramid. Then Judge took his first step into the ruins, slowly adding his weight to it. The stone beneath his foot didn’t give way, so he brought the rest of his body inside and continued his careful movements. Sara followed his every move, using her own flashlight to look for signs of hieroglyphics. Judge’s flashlight swept across the floor three feet in front of him with each step, looking for any signs of trouble. After the fifth step, Judge found what he was looking for. In the beam of light, he saw sand disappearing beneath the stone wall on his left. He swept the flashlight to the right and saw a large pile of sand.
“Found our trapdoor,” Judge said to Sara, “and I bet our friend is below us somewhere.” He switched to Arabic again and said, “Did you fall through the floor here?”
“Yes,” came the weak reply. “You must be very careful, or you will share my fate.”
Judge translated for Sara and then asked the man, “How far did you fall? Are you bleeding?”
“I fell roughly fifteen meters,” said the man, his voice getting weaker despite being closer to Judge and Sara. “The bleeding stopped yesterday, but I can’t feel either of my legs.”
Judge shook his head at this and turned to Sara. “I need you to go back out to the Hummer and grab the rope from the back. This guy is in bad shape, but we might be able to get him out.”
Sara nodded and retraced her steps out of the pyramid. Judge stayed inside to determine the dimensions of the trap. From the sand, he guessed that he would be safe walking on the right side of the hallway, but one step on the left would be disastrous. Judge got down on his knees and brushed along the ground, looking for the groove that would mark the beginning of the trapdoor. When he found it, he removed the sand from the area, working carefully so he didn’t put too much weight on the trap. By the time Sara had returned, Judge had cleared the area.
Sara handed him the rope. “So, what’s the plan? You lower me down to him and I patch him up so you can pull him back up?”
Judge’s admiration for Sara grew a hundredfold after hearing her suggestion. He knew she wasn’t some frilly girly-girl, but it did his heart good to hear her volunteer to get into the action like that.
“That is my plan B, if you are okay with it. First, though, I want to lift this trapdoor and see if our friend can extricate himself. If not,” Judge said, “then you may be going spelunking.”
Judge put the piece of stone he had brought inside the ruin on the closest corner to him, and the trapdoor moved down two inches, while the right-hand side lifted the same amount. Judge noticed the left-hand side of the fake floor plate extended under the left wall. So, as long as you walked on the right-hand side, your weight would keep the floor plate from tipping you into the pit below. The plate itself was made of one long, five-inch thick stone, with a wooden pole going through its center. Judge lifted the heavy stone so it was perpendicular to the ground. He shone his flashlight into the hole created, and saw at the bottom of the pit an older Egyptian man lying on the ground, far below them.
“Hello, down there!” Judge yelled in Arabic. “I am going to throw down a rope. Do you think you can tie it around your body so we can pull you up?”
In the artificial light, the older man shook his head. “No, I am far too weak. It is no use; please do not try to rescue me. I am too far gone.”
Sara could only understand a word or two, but she got the gist of what he was saying from the tone of his reply. She leaned over the hole and yelled down, “Do not give up hope! We will get you out.” She grabbed the rope and began tying it together into a makeshift harness. Judge took the other end and wrapped it around a support beam right above the hole. As he tested the beam’s strength, he couldn’t help but smile at Sara’s determination. She’s a keeper, Judge thought to himself.
When Sara finished knotting the harness together, she stepped into it and moved close to the edge. “All right, you feeling strong, Judge?”
Judge sheepishly smiled. “I don’t know, I was up pretty late last night, burning off a whole bunch of energy.”
Sara punched him in the arm. “You keep making jokes like that, and you’ll never get another chance to burn off energy with me again.”
Judge kissed her quickly and said, “Don’t worry, I would never drop you. Just be careful down there. He could be playing possum.”
“Doubtful. I saw a large puddle of blood around his head and pelvis,” Sara said. “When we get him up to the surface, he will be lucky to live long enough for us to drive him to a hospital.”
Judge had nothing to say to that, so instead, he wrapped the rope around his shoulders in preparation for Sara’s descent. He’d faced death several times as a Ranger and as a CIA operative, but that didn’t make it any easier for him to deal with. Sara sat down on the far edge of the trapdoor and then eased into the hole by holding on to the lip. When she finally let go, Judge gradually lowered her down. After five minutes, Sara touched down and called back up to Judge.
“I’m down, safe and sound. Tell him I am going to put the harness on him, would you?”
Judge yelled down the translation, and Sara got to work. As she moved the ropes up the older man’s legs, he did his best to not scream out in pain, but he moaned loudly several times when it became too much for him to bear. She got a close-up look at his injuries and realized how right she had been. If he makes it out of the pyramid, it will be a miracle, she thought.
“Judge, we’re going to have to go with a shoulder harness. Lifting him in a seat harness will make him pass out in pain, and then, he might fall out,” Sara said.
“Sounds good, Sara. Do what you have to,” Judge called down.
Sara moved efficiently, knowing she was putting the man through agony. Once she was done, Sara gave the stranger a smile and said in a halting Arabic, “Judge will lift you now. Hold on tight.”
Judge heard her, and started pulling. Amazingly, the old man was lighter than Sara, but Judge took it slow to make sure he didn’t swing him into a wall, aggravating his injuries. It took ten minu
tes to bring him to the surface, and the hardest part was getting him clear of the hole. Once that was done, Judge moved the old man out of the pyramid and laid him down in the back of the Hummer.
While Judge tended to the old man, Sara moved her flashlight around the chamber. It was a plain shaft, roughly five feet by five feet, with no special markings. Sara knocked on each wall, and received a solid sound for her effort. This isn’t just some hole the builder dug under his pyramid to catch gravediggers, she realized. This is part of the pyramid. That means it is much bigger than we first suspected.
Just then, Judge dropped the rope back down. “Don’t worry, Sara, I didn’t forget you. Ready to come back up?”
“Yep, just let me put the harness back on,” Sara said and she slipped it over shoulders and then pulled. Judge felt the signal and pulled her up briskly. About halfway up, Judge heard the support beam he had wrapped the rope around begin to break, so he stopped.
Sara’s head snapped up as soon as her upward momentum stopped. “Quit screwing around Judge. Lift me out of here.”
Judge eyed the support beam and saw that it was buckling. He slowly pulled on the rope, and the beam bent down further in the middle. “I’m working on it, Sara, but the beam I’m using for a counter-balance is about to give way. How far from the lip are you?”
Sara looked up and tried to determine the distance. “I’d say about seven feet. How bad is it?”
Judge gave another pull, lifting Sara two feet, and the bottom of the beam completely separated. “I’d say I have one more pull, and the beam will fully give out. Do you think you can reach the lip if I do?”
Sara looked up and said, “As long as you make it a good one, yes. You got that in you, don’t you, Adventure Boy?”
Judge laughed. “Is this really the time to make fun of me, young lady? Of course I can. I’ll pull right after three. You ready?”
“Yes, sir!”
“One!”
“Two!”
“Three!” And Judge gave a massive pull. It was so strong that Sara’s hand and head cleared the hole. It also caused the beam to break and the ends were aiming straight for her. Judge leaned forward, grabbed her hand, and pulled her out of the hole before the beam could crash down on her. He fell backward and Sara landed on top of him, her head on his chest.
“Nice pull, Adventure Boy.”
Judge hugged Sara to his body and said, “I aim to please, miss.”
“Yeah, I bet you had this planned the entire time, just so you could get close to me. Anything for a cheap thrill, right?” Sara joked.
Judge kissed the top of her head. “You’ve wounded my pride, but I’ll let it go for now. We need to get our patient to a hospital, and it won’t be an easy journey for him.”
The two archeologists walked out of the pyramid hand-in-hand, feeling good about their rescue mission. When they got to the Hummer, that good feeling faded away. Sometime between Judge setting him down in the vehicle and Sara’s tenuous escape from the pyramid, the old man had died. His eyes were open, but lifeless. Judge leaned over and closed his eyes.
“To Allah we belong and to Him is our return,” Judge said in Arabic. He then rolled the man’s body over and fished out his wallet. Inside was an identification card with the man’s name on it. Judge turned to Sara. “This will help the police of Nekhel find his family. We might as well head in that direction.”
They drove away from the ruins in silence, retracing their journey back to the road. Judge drove them straight to the police station, where they both had to show their work permits and passports after revealing their sad cargo. It turned out the man was a well-known junk dealer and had no family. The police thanked them for helping the old man, and told them to be careful.
They both got back into the Hummer and drove toward Cairo. Judge turned his head to Sara. “Did you see anything interesting at the bottom of that pyramid shaft?”
“You mean, other than the fact that it is a pyramid shaft, making the part we can see only the top ten feet of a much bigger pyramid? No, nothing interesting,” Sara said.
Judge nodded. “I thought you would find that interesting. It means it is a lost pyramid, and in this area, it could only belong to one pharaoh, King Beneskay.”
Their discovery had meant months of work for more than a hundred people in the area. It had also meant several published articles from Sara, and a new novel from Judge. Six months after the initial discovery, the CIA needed to talk to him, and that meant a trip to Doha, Qatar. He got the message while in bed one morning with Sara.
“Who was that?” Sara asked while rolling over to face him. Judge loved the way she looked in the morning, her dark hair tousled about her head, the fog of sleep slowing her speech.
“Friend from the agency. He wants to know if I’m free for dinner tonight,” Judge told her, which wasn’t exactly a lie. He and Ed had become friends over the years, and they were planning on having dinner together, but it would take an airplane ride to get there.
“Am I invited, or will you two be speaking in codes?” Sara asked. Even though she was still waking up, she didn’t miss much.
Judge kissed Sara’s collarbone and neck. “Not this time. We are gonna talk a little shop, and I’m afraid it will bore you. I’ll be back in the morning, though.”
Sara’s ears perked up a bit at that. “In the morning? Where are you having this dinner?”
Judge decided to trust her with a little bit of information. “Qatar. I can’t say much more, I’m sorry.”
Sara made a quick move and rolled on top of Judge. “That’s fine, Adventure Boy, but just remember you aren’t James Bond, so no picking up some shiksa in a bar while doing your spy stuff.”
Judge kissed Sara long and hard. “That is not happening. I’m just going for a dinner. We’re going to talk about old times, and that’s it. This is not some mission briefing.”
That turned out to be a lie, but Judge didn’t know it at the time.
Chapter Six
When his chartered jet landed in Doha, it pulled into a hangar where Ed and several operatives were gearing up. Ed filled him in on the mission, including the fact that it would mean going under deep cover for at least four months.
“Jesus, Ed! Could you have told me some of this before I left?” Judge asked. “I kinda have something big going on right now in Nekhel.”
Ed rubbed his sunburned bald head and said, “Is it the pyramid you’re digging out of centuries of sand or the archeologist you’re banging?”
Judge was shocked by Ed’s rude language. “You want to change your phrasing on that Ed, or do you want to lose some teeth?”
Ed locked eyes with Judge and his voice took on a dark tone. “Judge, while you’ve been playing Indiana Jones out here in this burnt part of the world, the rest of us have been chasing people who make Nazis look like choirboys. You know what your real job is, and I don’t want to hear you bitch about it. I told the higher-ups that I didn’t think you were up for this, but they insisted. So I want you locked, loaded and ready to go ASAP.”
Judge looked at the other operatives around the room, and saw the same look on their faces as the one Ed was giving him. They all think I am a bellyaching tourist on this mission, Judge realized. I’ll show them!
“Fine, Ed, if that’s what you think I’ve been doing. I’ll show you I can still play with the big boys. But when this is over, you and I are having words,” Judge said, and then went about putting his gear together.
Over the next five months, Judge had no contact with Sara or anyone else in the archeology world. At the end of the successful mission, he had a few more scars, several more stories he couldn’t tell, and he had lost one girlfriend…again. He had tried repeatedly to contact her on the phone before boarding a plane bound for D.C., but she would never pick up the call. Judge’s plan was to resign from the CIA after his debriefing, and tell anyone who got in his way just how far they could stick it. Then he would fly back to Egypt and chase down Sara.
“No,” Ed said as Judge dropped the simple white piece of paper on his handler’s desk. There were three typed paragraphs of formal language on that paper that could easily be boiled down to two words: I quit.
Judge looked at Ed and asked, “What do you mean, ‘No.’ This is my letter of resignation. It isn’t a vacation request or an invitation to a Super Bowl party.”
Ed picked up the letter and dropped it in the waste basket beside his desk. “I know damn well what it is, but I am still saying ‘No.’ You cannot resign, Judge. You work for the agency until we say you don’t work for the agency anymore.”
Anger flowed into Judge’s face. He had spent the last five months planning for this conversation. Suddenly, he shouted, “Ed, accept it, don’t accept it, I don’t give a shit. The fact remains that I am no longer working for the CIA. You can’t force me to come here and do your dirty work. I never signed my life away. This is America.”
“You are right, this is America,” Ed said, leveling his beady eyes to Judge’s, “and in America, some are called to serve. You were called, you answered the call and you were accepted.” At this point, Ed stood up and yelled, “And the next time you’re called, you will come running again! Until then, you can go play in the sand and dig out another fossil. You can try to find Dr. Sara Goldstein and see if she will take you back. Hell, you can even write another bestseller adventure novel, if you want. But if I dial your number, you will answer and do whatever the FUCK I tell you to do!”
