Storm Clouds

by Steven Becker

  Before he could locate her, a loud crack resounded through the air. It wasn’t a sound he could place, falling somewhere between a shotgun and thunder. Mako ran for the scaffolding, finding himself fighting a steady stream of people running toward him. Another similar sound furthered the growing panic.

  There was no sign of anything amiss, and Mako grabbed a European-looking man running toward him. “What happened?”

  “The portal shattered.”

  If Mako wasn’t aware of the extenuating circumstances surrounding the alleged discovery, he would have been freaked out as well. Rumors about curses cast by the ancients over their tombs had been around for centuries. Most had been fostered to keep people away, but some were never explained. Another crack shot through the air, this time followed by screams.

  Mako still had not located Rashi when he reached the scaffolding. The temporary stairs were a logjam and the structure looked like a jungle gym, with people using the cross braces to climb down. Mako ran a hundred feet to the left of the scaffold and started to climb the cliff face.

  It was an easy climb, until another deeper sound seemed to shake the face. Suddenly, even as he grabbed for the next handhold, he realized that he was descending. A second later the entire face of the cliff started to break away. He tucked into a ball and rode the scree to the bottom of the cliff.

  Chaos ensued around him. The scaffolding had collapsed and the military men were trying to organize a rescue of people trapped in the rockfall at the base of the cavern. By moving away to attempt his climb, Mako had been spared. He scanned the area for Rashi, but didn’t see her. He tried to reassure himself that it didn’t mean she wasn’t buried in the rubble.

  He didn’t hesitate. The area he had climbed before was still intact, with only loose material displaced. Mako started to climb again. He had to stop and cling to his holds several times as the cliff shook and sounds like thunder shot through the valley.

  Mako had no reference of time, but he did notice the cracks had stopped. He reached the height of the cavern and started to traverse the rock toward it.

  Several people remained and were working at a frantic pace to clear the fallen debris from the cavern opening. It looked hopeless, but Mako joined in anyway. There was a very good possibility that Rashi lay within.

  40

  The Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  Beecher left his pack and scrambled down the trail. He rounded a bend and caught a glimpse of the donkey, but it was hobbled. The boy was nowhere in sight.

  He knew these kids for the desert rats that they were. Children of the local workers or from the families that lived in the small village nearby, they knew every nook and cranny of the desert. He had run with a group just like this when his parents were working in the Valley. They had accepted him. Several of those kids were his most trusted workers now.

  Beecher had a following with the boys. They often started their days meeting the balloons when they landed. They had a wide-eyed innocence about them that the tourists couldn’t refuse. After school they could often be found at the excavation sites looking for errands to run. Beecher was always happy to throw a few coins their way. Most would end up working on the balloon crews or with the excavators, as their families had done for generations.

  Beecher reached the base of the cliff and checked his watch. There were still ten minutes until the opening. His only regret about using the expansive grout rather than explosive charges was the lack of a detonator. A number of factors affected the grout: temperature, water content, and geological factors, to name a few. The combinations of variables were endless. Few had more experience with the material than he, but it was still more art than science, meaning the cliff would fall out from under him when it was ready.

  There were warning signals, if you knew what they were. A moaning or creaking as the rock started to move being the most obvious. He tuned into the sounds and started up the cliff face.

  Adon was twenty feet above him when he heard the low-pitched sound emanating from the rocks.

  “Adon, get down!” he yelled, but a loud crack distorted his call. The boy simply looked down and waved. Beecher scrambled up the rock, thinking it was better to be above the demolition than below. He gained the ledge the boy was standing on and reached for the boy.

  “The cliff is going . . .” Another loud crack shot through the air. Beecher felt a charge of electrical energy on his skin and knew he was in trouble. Another sound, this time like a rumble of thunder, which led up to a sharp crack.

  The cliff shimmied, as if trying to keep its balance and, failing that, started to fall away. Beecher saw Adon moving quickly toward the top. He followed, jamming his hands and feet into the newly created holds. The boy appeared at the top of the cliff and waved. Beecher released a hand and motioned to him to stand back. At the same moment he felt the rock disintegrate. The extra handhold might have helped, but he doubted it as he suddenly felt like he was floating on air.

  Beecher heard the boy yell his name, but he was using every ounce of energy to maintain his one-handed lifeline. Everything below him was gone. The cliff seemed to settle again and he chanced a look around. His position was tenuous. What had been a steep but climbable incline just seconds ago was now an overhang jutting several feet from the new face of the cliff.

  Beecher wished he had counted the sounds. That way he would know if more were coming. The knowledge wouldn’t have improved his situation, but he might have been able to deal with it better. What he did know was that his position was likely to get worse.

  Advanced climbers called this move the crux, the hardest move in the pitch. They trained to swing their bodies up and over the obstacle. Beecher had not.

  Instead Beecher broke the biggest rule in climbing: he looked down. There really wasn’t a choice, as it was his only way off the cliff. Beecher had been in bad situations before and had mentally prepared himself for the hundred-foot drop he expected. Instead of looking death in the eye, he spotted a fairly solid area less than twenty feet below him.

  Bracing himself for the fall, he was starting to relax his grip when the edge of the cliff fell away in his hand. He had been so focused on what he was about to do that he hadn’t noticed the rock face shudder and shift again.

  Beecher braced for contact, but it didn’t come. Somewhere in his mind he knew the drop should have been over in less than a second. Just the fact that he realized he was still falling meant something had changed. He knew that people could walk away from ten-foot falls. Twenty feet usually meant a broken bone.

  If he was able to think about how far he had fallen, he was already dead.

  Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  The military men quickly formed a chain gang to move the debris from the cavern opening. Mako felt a tap on his shoulder soon after they had joined in and was replaced by a fresh body. He stood back and watched as the debris was removed from the entrance. Progress was being made, but no more than a dozen people could fit on the narrow lip of rock.

  Several more uniformed men soon appeared. Mako backed away and climbed down.

  “Any luck?” Gretchen asked.

  “Lot of rock,” Mako said, trying to catch his breath. He heard the crowd cheer, and he looked up to see someone being helped onto the ledge. A man was directed to the edge of the overhang, where he was secured to a harness. A minute later, as the first person was being lowered down the cliff, another body appeared.

  Rashi was one of the last rescued, but she seemed to be okay. Mako was making his way over to her when he felt a tug on his sleeve.

  “Mister, man trapped.”

  Mako recognized the boy from the other day. He had been on a donkey meeting the balloons and taken their camels back. He almost told the kid to go away and glanced over at Rashi.

  She was surrounded by first responders and a crowd of other people. All he needed to know for now was that she was alright.

  “C’mon. There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s see what he wants,�
� Gretchen said.

  Mako cocked his head as if to say, lead on. The boy understood and led them away from the staged area around the entrance. Mako immediately recognized the area from the other day—even the rock they had taken cover behind when they were shot at.

  He worried that this was a setup and called for the kid to stop. “Tell me straight. No lies. What happened?”

  The boy immediately broke down in tears. Gretchen moved toward him and put an arm around his shoulder. “Don’t mind him.” She allowed the boy to lead her around the corner.

  It wasn’t the reaction Mako had expected, but he had gotten what he wanted. The boy appeared sincere—or, at least, Mako was counting on it. Thinking how easily it would have been to take one of the Egyptian soldier’s weapons, which had been lying to the side while they were clearing rocks, he felt naked.

  They were out of sight of the main rockfall now, and he had what he had. The cliff face on this side was damaged as well, though it didn’t appear in as bad shape as the entrance. What he saw reinforced his theory that this destruction had been planned.

  His radar kicked in.

  The boy wasted no time. He seemed to pick an invisible path over the debris and started to climb. Gretchen was right behind him, apparently caught up in the boy’s emotions. Mako was trying to remain objective. He constantly scanned the area for any threat, but the cliff appeared to be void of life.

  They reached an outcropping at approximately the same level as the cavern on the other side and stopped.

  “He’s there,” the boy pointed.

  Mako had to stop Gretchen. Whether they were being set up, watched, or someone was indeed in need of assistance, they needed to proceed with care.

  To add to his growing paranoia, the rocks here were unstable, making the footing difficult. The boy seemed to have no trouble and scampered across to a pile of debris. Gretchen had ignored Mako’s warning and was right behind him. Worried more about what lay in front of them than behind, Mako closed the gap.

  Gretchen and the boy stopped suddenly. “A boot. Hurry!” she called back.

  In seconds they were pulling rocks off the pile, which appeared to be encasing a man. Mako tried to guess where the head was and directed his efforts there. If the man was dead, there was no point in killing themselves to save him.

  Mako moved rock after rock until, with blood dripping from the abrasions on his hands, he finally saw a piece of fabric. Another few rocks revealed a hat.

  “Over here.”

  Gretchen and the boy helped Mako clear the remaining rubble. The broad-brimmed hat was uncovered now, but something didn’t look right. Before Mako could figure it out, a cough came from beneath it. He quickly pulled the hat away to reveal a face. The man sucked greedily at the air, coughing several more times before he was able to catch his breath. Even then his breath came in ragged chunks, accented by coughs.

  “We need to raise his head,” Mako said. He realized only he and the boy were working. Together they moved another dozen rocks, which enabled them to drag the man into a sitting position. Slowly his breath normalized and he cracked an eye open.

  “Adon,” he whispered.

  The boy nodded. The man rubbed the dust from his eyes and looked around. Mako would have expected a thank you, or the man to ask what had happened, but he suspected he already knew. It had happened a hundred yards away, but he was sure it was the same man who had shot at them.

  The man’s gaze moved to a point behind Mako and the boy. Mako turned to see he was staring at Gretchen.

  It was clear they knew each other.

  41

  The Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  Mako glanced back and forth between Gretchen and the man. The connection was so palpable that Adon sensed it as well.

  “The boy told us you were caught in the landslide,” Mako said, in an attempt to break the tension.

  The man nodded toward the boy, then turned back to Mako. “Denton Beecher.”

  “Mako Storm and . . .”

  “Gretchen is my daughter.”

  There weren’t many times that Mako was without words. This was one of them. The revelation seemed to only intensify the expression on Gretchen’s face.

  “You going to be able to walk out of here or do we need to get some help?”

  Beecher winced in pain as he adjusted his body. After a few minutes of self-evaluation, he stood. “Think I’ll be alright.” He shook the dust from his clothes.

  “We need to talk.” Gretchen had worked her way behind Mako and whispered in his ear.

  Mako nodded and stepped toward the ledge. “We’re going to try and scout out a route so we can walk out of here.”

  “I know one,” Adon said.

  “No, you stay with your old friend Beecher.”

  Mako could have used the boy’s knowledge, but they were less than a hundred feet up and he needed to talk to Gretchen. He stepped out to the ledge and looked around.

  “He’s no innocent bystander. I know my dad, he did this.”

  “How? There were no explosions. The cliff just disintegrated. Kind of like the Curse of the Pharaohs.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no curse. He did this.”

  Mako surveyed the landscape. The damage was restricted to within a few dozen feet of the area where they stood. If it wasn’t a curse, then it was no accident. The job was professionally done.

  New questions spun around Mako’s head and some dovetailed into old questions that turned into answers. The Gretchen mystery, barring some details, was all but explained. So was the miraculous discovery of the tomb. Mako turned back to look at the damaged area. It certainly appeared to be the back side of the tomb’s location. Beecher had been found here, which meant that if he had destroyed the cavern, there was a back door. Mako turned again, this time to the desert floor. He found the area where they had ridden out the ambush and lined it up with his current position. They must have caught Beecher in the act and not known it. That didn’t mean that Beecher wasn’t aware.

  The realization struck Mako that they had saved the man who had tried to kill them. Mako’s focus turned to an escape route.

  Gretchen stopped him. “We can’t leave the boy.”

  “Adon just saved him. Do you think he’d do something to him?”

  Her eyes gave him the answer.

  “I guess we all have daddy problems?” Mako tried to break the tension.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “Maybe we should leave that up to him. Unless he’s armed, we outnumber him.”

  The gunshot caught Mako off guard. A chip flew from the rock in front of him and hit his face. Grabbing Gretchen, he hauled her to the ground as another shot passed close enough to his head that he could feel the slipstream as it passed by. His question had been quickly answered.

  “The boy’s gonna walk us out of here,” Beecher said.

  He pushed the boy forward. Mako didn’t expect Adon was in much danger, but he and Gretchen certainly were. They followed in single file with Adon in the lead, then Gretchen, Mako, and finally Beecher. As the boy led them down the rockfall, Mako searched the landscape for anything that might aid an escape, but aside from loose rocks there was nothing.

  Situations like this were nothing new to him, but he worried about how Gretchen was handling it. The knowledge that the man pointing the gun at his back was her father added an unpredictable element.

  Lacking any other tools, Mako did what he was good at—he started talking. It would have been helpful to have Alicia feeding him information, but he had the family relationship to pry open.

  “You’re really her father?”

  “Shut up and walk.” Beecher spat out the words like he was in pain.

  Mako took in the information. “I’m guessing, divorced?”

  “I said shut up.”

  “More than once, eh?”

  Poking the bear was one of Mako’s favorite tactics. Irritating Beecher might force him into a mist
ake or reveal his intentions. “Maybe not the best father. Away too much. Behind on the child support?”

  Mako heard the crunch of gravel as Beecher moved closer. He turned at the last second, causing the butt of the gun to just graze his head.

  “Now shut up and move. I won’t miss next time,”

  The exchange had given Mako some insight. Beecher was not going to shoot, at least not here. Mako glanced back at the scene around the cavern opening. They were probably a half-mile away as the crow flew, too far for anyone to see their situation, but too close for Beecher to risk firing the weapon.

  Mako stayed quiet for a few minutes, but knew he would have to act soon. They had descended the rockfall to the desert floor and were now climbing a narrow but well-worn path. Ahead was a ridgeline. Once they passed over the jagged top and were out of sight of the gathering below, a gunshot could be heard, but the desert would make it impossible to pinpoint its source.

  Mako changed tactics. “So, tell me about this wonderful father/daughter relationship.”

  Gretchen slowed. “That might be what relationship. He’s spent his life out here selling whatever he finds to the highest bidder.”

  Mako had no idea if she understood what he was trying to do. He needed to wind her up. “Wasn’t much for sharing, I guess.”

  “A lot of promises, but we never saw anything.”

  “Deadbeat dads are the worst,” Mako said.

  “Enough.”

  Mako knew Beecher was close to blowing, but the ridgeline was also only a few feet away. He needed to push harder.

  “He ever . . . ?” Mako turned sideways, anticipating what was coming.

  The blow intended for Mako’s head struck him on the shoulder, leaving his right arm useless. Before he could recover, a rock whizzed by his head and struck Beecher in the chest. He staggered backward, but kept his balance.