“You,” he said, “are one incredible conflict diamond. And I mean that in the best possible way.”
“I know how you mean it.” Mai acknowledged the compliment with a nod.
“If I weren’t such a gentleman I’d ask you to accompany me on your next available date . . .” He left it hanging.
Mai picked her way through the dead. “And are you a gentleman?”
“Depends what your answer would be.”
“No, it depends on what you intend to do with us once this is finished.”
Luther took in the scene with fascinated eyes. From the bodies strewn up the incline that led to the King’s Chamber to those Drake and Dahl and the others were throwing off further down. “This is . . . captivating.”
“For us, mate, this is normal,” Drake said. “Now help me lug this big moose off Alicia.”
“That is Alicia,” Kenzie said.
Drake almost fell for it, glancing twice, but caught his natural instinct at the very last second. Once Alicia was free and the way cleared, Dahl took a tentative look back up the tunnel, toward the exit.
“Looks clear. Ready to move?”
“All good.”
“Wait.” Crouch stopped them. “This merc is still alive.”
“Well, what do you wanna do?” Alicia said. “Nurse him? These guys made their own . . . tomb. Let them lie in it.”
“You’re not wrong,” Crouch said. “But he may have information and, people, that is just what we need right now.”
He knelt alongside the faintly gasping man, cradling his head and helping him to achieve a more comfortable position. “Listen up,” he said. “Your own men shot you, used you as a human shield so they could escape. All I want is one answer—what did you find?”
“I am not with them,” came the soft, indignant reply. “I am . . . professor at Akhet . . .” Crouch knew this was the museum of natural history in Cairo. “They . . . forced me to come along and . . . help.” He coughed hard. “Then . . . they use me as human . . . shield. The wall painting,” he said. “It was the same as the last which we found already opened just an hour ago . . . the capstone . . .”
Drake closed his eyes with the frustration. They had lost the race here simply because they had stopped to help people. Because the cars had gotten snarled up and the mercs had access to helos. Having said all that, he wouldn’t have changed a moment of it.
“The same?” Crouch repeated. “We know the capstone is the weapon. Please do not tell me those mercs are now headed to where it’s hidden?”
“The last depiction showed a section of the lower wall highlighted. The kids with the brains—and the mainframes—took a gander. They used thermal scans and say the whole thing lit up. There’s a passage, a big one, inside this pyramid, hiding the capstone.”
Crouch blinked. “Which capstone?”
“The capstone. The capstone of the Great Pyramid. I’m sure you know—the one that’s being missing for thousands of years?”
Crouch couldn’t stop himself shifting in utter amazement. “Here? I find that . . . incredible. You’re saying it’s been here the whole time?”
“Along with all those passages the Egyptians knew about and never bothered to excavate. Yes.”
“We have to go,” Dahl urged. “They already have a five-minute start.”
“Wait a minute,” Hayden said. “If they’ve found the capstone here, inside the pyramid, are they now able to use it as the doomsday machine?”
“Lady,” the professor said, “I was there, greatest moment of my life, finding and ogling the missing capstone, so it took me a while. But let me help. The capstone isn’t the weapon. You’re standing in it.”
Hayden glanced at her feet, then back at the professor.
Crouch looked like he’d been hit with a car tire, but recovered fast.
“Dahl’s right. We must get moving. But we can’t. We need this man’s knowledge. I believe I know what’s happening now. It’s one of those legends nobody really knew was real because the only way to properly test it, was to turn it on.”
“I don’t follow,” Dahl said as he started to run. “Turn it on?”
The professor shifted uncomfortably, still bleeding despite Crouch’s and Drake’s best efforts. “The fantastical legend is real, it seems. As far back as the nineteenth century the British inventor, Siemens, was allowed to climb to the top of the pyramid with his Arab guides. On hearing stories that other guides heard an acute ringing noise when they raised their hands with outspread fingers, Siemens did the same. Bear in mind this is the founder of the Siemens Company, of course.” The professor paused for a hacking cough, face turning paler by the second. “Siemens raised his index finger up there and felt a definite stinging sensation. After that, he raised a wine bottle that he’d brought to drink from and received an electric shock. Being a scientist, he moistened a newspaper and wrapped it around the bottle to create a rudimentary capacitor.”
Crouch looked dumbfounded. “I read about this but thought it farfetched.”
The professor nodded. “And I. But Siemens was not a joker. Holding the bottle up, he saw it charged with electricity, sparks being emitted from it. When the Arab guides attempted to stop him he pointed the bottle toward the Arab and gave him such a shock that it knocked him to the ground.”
Hayden frowned, helping Kinimaka stand as the big man struggled with a head wound.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not the capstone, it’s the pyramid,” Crouch said. “The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the ancient doomsday weapon.”
Drake urged the team to rise and make ready. “What do we need to know, Professor? I’m sorry we can’t save you, but to help us, to save countless lives, what do we need to know?”
“Physicists throughout time have studied the Great Pyramid with painstaking detail. They concluded it could have been designed to gather, amplify and gel energy emissions from a particular target and return them with the exact same harmonic frequency. Opera singers can do it—smash glasses with their voices by matching the basic harmonic vibration of the glass. It causes a shift in the glass’s natural vibratory rate and makes it shake until it shatters. You’ve all seen it happen. In 1997, I think, the US government conducted research into acoustical weapons. They also analyzed the Great Pyramid and determined that the configuration of its chambers, and the placement of its passageways, could be used as a great loop, generating sound waves which could then be directed at a target. It was thought to be the most powerful weapon that ever existed on earth. Amplified energies.” He wheezed. “Enormous force. It would neutralize all electronic equipment and detonate all explosive devices, including nuclear bombs. It would directly kill every living thing, including viruses. In truth, it is the way the chambers are placed and the passages built, the inclusion of shafts that lead nowhere, the precision with which it was built, metal pins attached to doors that look like electrodes, that made people look at the pyramid as a machine, rather than a tomb. The placement of the capstone will . . . switch it on.”
“Right,” Drake said. “Grab the capstone. That’s all you had to say.”
In another few minutes the professor’s life had drained away, taken by the heartless, merciless men he had been forced to help.
Crouch bowed his head. “At least he paid them back in the end.”
“Let’s hope,” Drake said. “We do this for him as well as the rest of the world.”
They raced toward the pyramid’s exit, surrounded by bedrock and ancient majesty, the ghosts of long-dead workers still haunting these halls, the labor they had undertaken an epic endeavor that would resonate through time. The Great Pyramid soared above them, a mass of six million tons perceived and crafted by the hand of man; extraordinary.
Is it really all just a big coffin?
Drake shut the thought down, listening to Crouch as he yelled out an explanation. All the while, the exit drew closer.
Dahl slipped out into the light, backed by Smyth. Drake came next, quic
kly shifting his body in all directions and scanning the area for hostiles. They moved swiftly and carefully to the right, heading toward the eastern side, since that was where the hidden tunnels had been found.
“Here we go,” Dahl breathed.
Mercs were waiting for them, dug into the sand. Drake dived forward onto his stomach, landing hard but keeping his head up, his gun up, and firing blast after blast. Sand kicked up around the mercs. They scrambled behind some ruins, several low walls that were left to crumble with time. Bullets destroyed some of the stone, tumbled others. Drake rolled in the sand and dirt, firing potshots at the enemy. One was hit and then then second, precious minutes passing, and then they were up, running hard for the eastern corner of the pyramid.
The sun beat down hard. Weariness was a predator tearing at their limbs. Drake hit the side of the pyramid hard first and waited for the others, concealed, just waiting to sneak a look around to the other side.
“Moving?” he asked.
“Ready,” they said.
He peered around the wall, eyes going wider and wider as they encountered one of the craziest, most astonishing scenes he’d ever witnessed.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
In all his days Matt Drake never expected to see anything like this.
About thirty mercs stood against the wall of the pyramid, guns raised and tough looks stretched across the granite-like faces. Most of them were shouting. A helicopter hovered close to the ground and off to their left, further away from Drake’s vantage point. A big one. A Sikorsky, he thought, capable of lifting enormous weight. Three more civilian choppers rested behind, their rotors idle for now.
Sunlight flashed from every surface.
Standing before the mercs, facing them down, were just four people. Drake wanted to rub his eyes, cartoon-like, just to make sure they weren’t deceiving him because one of those people was Karin Blake.
Words, and thoughts, failed him.
Alongside her were two young men, standing like soldiers and with guns perfectly poised. Maybe they’d graduated from the same school?
The fourth figure took even his breath away.
“What the fuck is that?” he breathed.
Intrigued, the entire team came around the corner. No longer wary, they didn’t need to be. The mercs’ attention was completely engaged.
The fourth figure was crazy looking, a large behemoth dressed in robes and rags, all draped and wrapped around his torso. Around his face he wore more rags so that only his eyes peered out. His legs were clad in knee-length shorts and on his feet he wore brown sandals. One hand held the biggest machine gun Drake had ever seen, over 15mm diameter and heavy as hell. The flesh Drake could see was corded and brown. It was the other hand that drew his attention. He’d seen something like it before, but never quite as vicious looking.
“Oh, that,” Luther suddenly said. “That’s my big brother.”
Dahl gawped at him. “You have a big brother? Fuck me.”
“I sure do. His name’s Molokai. But don’t speak to him. He’d just as soon spit down your severed neck than shoot the shit, if you get my meaning.”
Drake couldn’t tear his eyes away from the right claw—a mechanical, knife-edged appendage instead of a hand, all steel and carbon-fiber, and gleaming in the sun, fingers opening and closing mechanically, edged by blades and dripping thick red blood into the thin covering of sand by his feet.
Dahl shook his out of it. “Get moving. We need to help them.”
Luther laughed. “Ha, ha. Not with Molokai. He’s a weapon. Just watch.”
Drake didn’t listen. “This team doesn’t spectate,” he said. “It helps.”
Before they even sprang into motion the battle began. The helicopter hovered and the mercs fired their weapons, the amplified sound immense beside the Great Pyramid. Karin and her accomplices dived to the sides, firing accurately and cleverly, using broken and crumbling steps for cover. Molokai raised the gun that was about the size of Yorgi and opened fire, the clack-clack of its chambers resounding as deep down as Drake’s very soul.
Bullets tacked a line across the mercs, each bullet killing a man and blowing a large hole through his torso. They shattered large chunks from the pyramid. In just seconds Molokai had ended ten men and was walking forward, into the fire. He didn’t go unscathed, taking bullets to the chest, but he somehow walked through the barrage, withstanding the pain. When a bullet struck a part of his body that was not protected by Kevlar he ignored that too—shrugging the through-and-through off with an irritated twist of the mouth.
Half the mercs were finished. Drake now found himself confronted with the unknown scenario of the SPEAR team being forced to simply watch the last battle. They were normally a full part of it.
So this is retirement? he thought ironically. Watching? I don’t like it.
Bullets clattered and struck hard. Karin and her two comrades fought economically and with a minimum of risk. Molokai did resort to taking cover but only when a bullet took off his ear lobe, causing that appendage to start bleeding profusely. Luther grunted with humor at the incident.
“Kai won’t like that.”
The unorthodox fighter dug his clawed hand into a body and threw it at the remaining mercs, shredding it with bullets. It was distraction enough to take out another two. Drake and Dahl were on the scene then, followed by Luther, and finished the mercs that remained.
There was a lull, a strange nonentity of action that lasted half a minute. During this time the big chopper continued to hover.
Drake ignored Molokai and walked over to Karin. The last surviving Blake stared at him with neutral eyes, letting him get close and not dropping her gun.
“It’s me,” he said, wondering if she had a head injury. “Matt.”
“About time,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Where have you been?” he asked. “Why now?” A thousand questions hovered at the tip of his tongue.
“Not now,” Karin said. “After the battle.”
“We just finished it.” Drake laughed.
“What, them? No, they were just the guards. The real force of mercs is coming. They were waiting out front.” She jerked her head in the direction of the Sphinx. “Do you know what they’re chasing?”
“Yeah, the capstone.” Drake shelved his questions for later, turning to the arriving team. “Fighting’s not done.”
“Oh, thank you for that.” Alicia sighed loudly. “I thought we’d missed out.”
Hayden, Kinimaka and others greeted Karin carefully as the black-haired girl looked on. She smiled, nodding, but Drake thought he detected something else there. Maybe it was the training.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry. You can get close again. With us. If you want to, that is.”
Karin motioned at her friends. “Meet Dino and Wu. New friends of mine.”
Luther brought Molokai over, seeming intent on introducing him. At the last moment Molokai stepped back with Luther; Pine and Carey fanning out.
“We can take it from here,” Luther said. “And we can take you. I wasn’t sure I’d need backup to take you, Drake, but called my big brother here just in case. Do you really wanna tangle with both of us?”
They leveled their guns and the standoff began.
“Bloody hell, Luther. Why can’t you see past the trees?”
“Because I have the luxury of not having to. Now lay down your arms, all of you.”
Drake worried, thinking of everything Crowe had said about Tempest and what Lauren might have discovered. If they fought back now, some would die. A glance at Karin told him she hadn’t been expecting this; so she wasn’t in on it.
“Tempest,” he said. “The weapons. The other teams. Luther, we have too much at stake and so does the world.”
Luther waved his handgun. “Down. Now. You have until the count of—”
The whistle started low but grew very quickly, becoming a thunderous roar. It came out of the sky, a missile fired by FrameHub,
precisely monitored so that it struck at the exact angle and the exact point. Drake threw himself headlong. The missile struck the Great Pyramid and exploded, throwing rubble out into the air along its first and second seams, blasting a hole in the side.
The huge chopper still hovered; out of the blast radius.
Over the hill came a running horde of mercenaries.
“Weapons!” Dahl cried out.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Shattered pieces of Khufu’s tomb landed all around them and upon them. The team sighted the attacking mercs and unleashed a hail of gunfire, but the force was too strong and reckless, overcoming them in minutes. The helicopter at their back repositioned slowly, moving until it hovered outside the great hole that had been blasted in the side of the pyramid.
“They’re going for the capstone,” Crouch said. “They just breached the secret passage.”
Drake guessed as much. He smashed a running merc in the face as he raced past, then braced for a return punch of the production of a weapon, but none of the men were fighting. They were running straight for the still-smoking hole.
Chains dangled from the bottom of the helicopter, curled in a heavy iron mass for now. The quicker mercs grabbed hold and began to unfurl them, dragging them into the new hole. More soon joined, lending their strength to the task. Some fought with Luther, Molokai, Mai and Kinimaka, but only a few, causing a distraction. Others took cover and took potshots. The area was in chaos; frantic.
Drake slid over to Crouch. “Ideas?”
“I don’t bloody like it, Drake! FrameHub have researched this. Acting on Intel received inside the pyramid they blew a hole in just the right spot. Now they’re planning to drag it free. This is the same alliance of nutter that just sent Egypt to the Dark Ages.”
Drake caught his drift. “You think they’re gonna set the capstone up top?” He raised his gaze to the apex of the currently flat-topped structure. “No way. Even FrameHub aren’t so stupid.”
“They’re gamers. Juvenile madmen with incredible power at their fingertips. And they’re ghosts, gods. I think they’ll do it just for the kicks.”
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