Storm Clouds

by Steven Becker

  Gretchen had some explaining to do, but Mako was so relieved to have the cool air blowing on his face that he didn’t press her. While he caught his breath, she was searching the backseat. An ice-cold bottle touched his neck, making Mako jump.

  “Beer and water. What’s it going to be?”

  Mako would have liked the beer, but took the water. By the time he had cracked the top he saw Assam’s cab kicking up a cloud of dust as the driver sped down the long access road. Mako got out of the Range Rover and waved toward the cab. Gravel shot from the wheels of the cab as Assam sped toward them.

  “You okay, boss?” Assam called out the window.

  The question now was what to do. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  Alaa and Assam both extended their phones. Assam’s was closer, so Mako took it. When he leaned into the cab, Adon popped up from the backseat. Mako smiled at the boy. He stepped back, entered Alicia’s number, and pressed connect. As he expected, she didn’t answer, but it only took about thirty seconds for her to verify whatever she needed to and return the call.

  “We’re okay,” Mako started.

  “Great. We were worried,” Alicia said.

  There was an awkward silence. Mako realized that for once he knew more than she did. “Earbud and phone got lost in the rubble.” He gave her a quick version of what happened since the event. The line went quiet again. Mako sipped from the water bottle and waited patiently, wishing he had taken the beer instead.

  He could guess Alicia and TJ were deep in discussion about what to do. The contract was a bust unless Alicia could convince the Agency that Ahmed had actually taken possession of the files. Mako doubted they would buy it, though. He and Gretchen were safe, as was John. That left her without a mission, and Alicia Phong didn’t do well without a goal.

  Mako had already made up his mind. “We need to find my dad and deal with Ahmed.” He was speaking for Alicia’s benefit as well as Gretchen’s, who nodded. That left Alicia. “Can you give us his location?”

  “Sending it to your phone. He’s close by, though,” TJ said.

  Mako placed the phone on speaker mode and opened the messages app. He zoomed in on the map TJ had sent. John was back near the Valley of the Kings.

  Mako handed the phone back to Assam. “Let’s go.”

  “Once you collect him, we have a location for you,” Alicia said.

  Mako wasn’t about to question her motives. Finding whatever the map led to was the key to unraveling the minister’s plans. Not sure how Alicia would react to his end game, Mako kept that to himself.

  They climbed into the cab, with the smiling boy between them. Assam sped out of the parking lot and onto the hardpan. Mako hadn’t seen a speed limit sign since entering Egypt and was not looking now, as the cab seemed to surf across the ridges. It took ten minutes to reach the entrance to the Temple of Hatshepsut. To reach the entrance road to the Valley of the Kings would be another ten minutes by road. A more substantial barricade had been erected at the entrance to the parking lot. Mako could see several army Jeeps and trucks patrolling the road and surrounding area. The Valley of the Kings would be closed off as well. With nothing except wide-open desert between their position and the cliffs, there was no chance they could pass unseen from here. The Valley of the Kings was the better option.

  “Do you have a map?”

  Alaa dug through the glove compartment and handed Mako a trifold tourist brochure. Mako opened it to a map showing the points of interest in the vicinity. He found the Valley of the Worker and traced his finger along the road leading to the Valley of the Kings. To reach it, they would have to drive a circuitous loop.

  “Drop us here.” He pointed to a small switchback on a side road leading to the Tombs of the Nobles. He couldn’t see the exact spot from their present location, but the terrain appeared better suited to travel.

  “Can you guide us?” Gretchen asked Adon.

  The boy’s smile widened. “I best guide.”

  “Take us here, okay?” Mako showed the location on the map.

  “Easy. You want see the hidden tombs?”

  “No. Just here.”

  A small frown crossed the boy’s face, but Adon recovered quickly. He had already benefited from Mako’s generosity, and he remembered the wad of bills in his pocket.

  “No problem, mister.” Adon rattled off something in Arabic to Assam.

  The cab pulled over. “What do you want us to do?” Alaa asked.

  “Do what you can to keep an eye on Dr. Mustafa.” He knew there wasn’t much Assam and Alaa could do, but they had surprised him before. Mako, Gretchen, and Adon climbed out of the backseat. Mako held up Assam’s phone. “Can I hold onto this?”

  “We will use Alaa’s phone to keep in touch.” The cab pulled away, leaving them on the side of the road. Adon dropped down the embankment. He started walking quickly to a small rise about a hundred feet away. Mako and Gretchen hurried to stay close. Once they were out of sight of the road, they stopped.

  “Fastest way so we can’t be seen.” Mako did a quick chamber check of the weapon he had taken from Beecher. He ejected the magazine and counted the remaining bullets. He had four rounds plus one in the chamber. He hurried to catch Adon and Gretchen, who were just ahead. With every nook and cranny looking the same, he needed to keep the boy in sight.

  Adon led them along a donkey path that cut through the hills, allowing them to cover the three-quarters of a mile quickly. But now they faced their first obstacle. They had to cross the open desert and skirt the area around the false tomb in order to reach the path to the Valley of the Kings.

  “Just look down and follow me. They won’t bother us.” Adon started across the quarter-mile no-man’s land. Mako did as he was instructed, but using his peripheral vision he could see the chaos around the excavation.

  Any means for the locals to get the tourists into the vicinity was being employed. Taxis and vans were being herded down by the army vehicles. Small groups of camels and mules carrying the curious were being chased by the smaller four-wheel-drive vehicles. They were scattered over a wide swath of land, but only a few reached the crowds around the base of the cliffs.

  With their destination further to the west, Adon was able to steer clear of the activity. The clouds of dust kicked up by the vehicles and carried by the breeze coming off the Nile helped conceal them. They reached the cliffs without incident and started climbing the same trail as they had earlier.

  Mako hadn’t thought about Beecher until now. With the switchback where they had left the excavator only a hundred feet ahead, Mako rechecked the pistol. Instead of replacing it in his waistband, he carried it by his side.

  “Hold up,” Mako called to Adon, who was moving quickly ahead.

  “Beecher not here,” he said, standing in the spot where they had left him.

  Mako could see signs of the struggle, but the boy was correct. He wondered if the authorities had come and gotten him. “Did you tell the men?” Mako asked.

  The boy looked down and didn’t answer.

  “Let it go, Mako,” Gretchen said. “It was a pretty big ask. Adon’s probably terrified of the soldiers.”

  Mako shrugged. “The location Alicia sent had John just over that rise.”

  They crossed the ridgeline and found themselves looking at the Valley of the Kings. Guards lined the cliff above the rockfall, but with the exception of a group of men working on an excavation, the area was deserted.

  “I go ask the men,” Adon said. He took off before Mako could answer.

  Mako was far from at ease. Knowing that Adon hadn’t told the guards about Beecher meant the excavator was at large. Something caught Mako’s eye near the workers. Mako looked over and saw Adon waving.

  “Let’s go see what he found,” Gretchen said.

  Mako continued to hold the weapon by his side as they crossed the well-worn paths to reach the excavation. They crested a slight rise and could see the group of men moving away.

  John Storm stood j
ust beyond them.

  The two Storms were all business when they met. John had his H&K out and pointed in the direction of the entrance to one of the tombs.

  “Beecher?” Mako whispered.

  “Yeah, cornered like the rat he is.”

  45

  The Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  Ramses II, or Ramses the Great or, as Alaa had described him, “The Big Guy,” was not only one of Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs, but his sixty-year reign allowed time for a massive tomb to be constructed. Even larger was the site known as KV5, the resting place he had built for his sons.

  Mako garnered that information from the sign by the opening. He tried to absorb the map of the tomb, but with 120 rooms and corridors already having been uncovered, all he could get was a general orientation. Even that was distorted by the different directions the builders had chosen as the tomb was enlarged.

  Mako took a picture of the map with Assam’s phone and followed John into the tomb. From the portal at ground level, a series of uneven steps ended in a rectangular room. Straight ahead was an opening into a similar room. Both had been heavily adorned, but the carvings had been eroded by flash floods and the hand of man. Graffiti, much of it from antiquity, covered large sections of what remained.

  Both rooms were empty. Mako followed John into the next chamber, which opened into a large room with sixteen carved-stone columns. Before Mako could take in the vastness of the room, he saw movement at the far side.

  The columns blocked a direct view, but he was sure it was Beecher. He and John leapfrogged each other, using the columns for cover as they approached the far wall. By the time they reached the last set of columns, Beecher was gone. They found themselves staring at a single opening.

  Before he entered, Mako stopped and glanced at the map. He motioned for John to move closer. In addition to the opening in front of him, there were another half-dozen in the other walls. A quick examination revealed most were entrances to single chambers.

  Mako was shocked to see the multitude of openings in the side of the long corridor off the T-shaped axis. It had the appearance of an ancient hotel. A quick count showed over fifty bedroom-sized chambers, one for each of Ramses’ sons. Any one of which Beecher could have ducked into and hidden.

  “What’s his game? He’s got to know we’ll find him eventually,” Mako asked.

  “You really should have listened to Alaa, Mako,” Gretchen said.

  Mako turned back to see her standing behind them.

  “Beecher was working here when part of the burial chambers was found during a survey for a parking lot. I’d bet he’s not hiding—he’s escaping.”

  “Shit.” Mako started to backtrack.

  “If that’s what he’s up to, we’ll never find the exit from above.”

  John entered the corridor, sweeping his H&K from right to left. Mako joined him and together they cleared each chamber. They quickly reached the end of the corridor.

  “Left,” Gretchen said.

  Mako glanced back at her.

  “You really should listen better,” she said.

  She was starting to sound like Alicia. Mako would have gone toward the right, thinking it was the direction of the parking lot. He searched his memory for which part of Alaa’s tour she was referring to.

  The sound of a small rockfall echoing from the left-hand corridor stopped the conversation. John headed toward it. Mako trailed a few steps behind. Together they cleared the chambers as they moved toward the source.

  Mako was sweating heavily. The corridor appeared to be descending and with each step the air seemed heavier. It might have been hotter outside, but it was certainly more humid underground. The atmosphere was stifling.

  With only a dozen chambers until the corridor dead-ended, John stopped.

  “We should let him make his move. Cornering a rat is dangerous business.”

  “I have his gun.”

  John pointed the barrel of his H&K to a pile of tools in a corner of the chamber.

  “They’re still excavating this site. It’s been going on for years now. Besides ruining most of the hieroglyphics, the flash floods filled the grave with a concrete-like mixture, making it difficult to dig.”

  “That would account for this.” John shifted his attention to a pallet with a stack of bags.

  The labels were in English as well as Arabic. “Expansive grout.”

  “That’s how he did it,” Gretchen said.

  The knowledge was of little use right now. What was important was that Beecher knew his way around the tomb and they did not.

  The sound of rocks and dirt falling echoed throughout the chamber. Mako stepped into the corridor in time to see a dust cloud coming from the adjacent chamber.

  The clues all came together. Beecher wasn’t hiding or digging in for an ambush. He was escaping. Alaa’s words came back to Mako. The guide had described how several tombs had been discovered during the ongoing excavation of this one. The elevation drop was no accident. The ancient engineers had intended for the corridor to descend in order to bypass the tombs above it. The scope of the project had demanded flexibility.

  “He’s escaping to the tomb above this one.”

  The distinctive sound of steel on rock resonated off the walls of the chamber. “He’s next door.”

  John motioned for Mako to cover him as he exited the room. Mako entered the corridor just as John poked his head into the adjacent chamber.

  A shot rang out. With his weapon extended in front of him, Mako entered the chamber and found John staring up at a hole in the ceiling.

  “The tomb above,” Gretchen called out.

  John eyed the hole in the ceiling. “Follow him. We’ll go out and try and head him off.”

  Mako nodded. He studied the rough opening. The chamber’s ceiling was low enough that he could reach the opening with his arms extended. The problem was the crumbling rock.

  Needing both hands free to pull himself up, he placed the gun in his waistband. The last thing Mako wanted to do was to enter the chamber above unarmed, but the maneuver to gain access to the chamber called for an Olympic level of gymnastics. First, he would have to pull his body through, then transition into a dip and push upward.

  Just as his hands grasped the broken stone, he realized something was wrong. Beecher, shorter than Mako by a good six inches and in an injured state, could never have executed a muscle-up. The clean floor of the room told Mako that the sounds of the rock falling had not come from here, either. He dropped down, grabbed his pistol, and stuck his head into the corridor. John and Gretchen were out of sight.

  On his own, Mako proceeded cautiously. He cleared the next few chambers, leaving only two more possibilities. He wiped the sweat falling like rain from his forehead with his forearm. Mako entered the next chamber.

  He was looking up, expecting to find another hole in the ceiling, when his feet gave way. Falling had been the last thing he expected, and as his right hip and arm smashed against the lip of the excavation, the gun dropped to the dark cavern below.

  Mako landed on a pile of debris. His eyes, acclimated to the dim light from the strand of bulbs lighting the tomb above, quickly made sense of the dark chamber. His gun was nowhere in sight.

  The tomb fell deathly silent. Debris from the hole in the ceiling covered the entire floor of the chamber, as much as two feet thick below the opening. It would take a serious flashlight to be able to locate the weapon before Beecher could escape.

  Mako decided it was worth a few minutes’ time to search for the weapon before he took off after Beecher. Sharp edges of rocks bit into his knees as he crawled over the rubble pile. Fanning his hands out, he felt for the cold steel of the gun, but found something soft instead.

  Deja vu of a few hours ago struck him when he realized what he had found was Beecher. This time Mako had no intention of saving the man. He took a rock and smashed it into the body, half-expecting a scream, but the strike met no resistance. Beecher was already dead.
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  Mako crawled from the cavern and saw a distant speck of light at the end of the corridor. He had no idea whose tomb he was in or what the layout was, but the light told him the corridor ran straight to an exit. He carefully picked his way to the light, stopping just short of exiting when he heard voices.

  Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  John followed Gretchen back to the main corridor. They ran up the stairs toward the daylight but it stopped them in their tracks, blinded as soon as they stepped outside. John shut his eyes then, blinked hard. The impact of the desert sun was devastating, and it took several long minutes before he could see clearly.

  They both spun in a circle. “Which tomb?”

  Gretchen looked as disoriented as he was. John had a general idea which direction the tomb lay. It would have helped if the builders had laid the valley out symmetrically. Instead they had used the natural features to place the tombs, which meant they were all akimbo to each other. To make matters worse, just because he could see an entrance didn’t mean its tunnel went in the same direction.

  Gretchen had the phone out. “KV6. Over there.” She pointed.

  John saw the entrance to the tomb of Ramses IX just ahead. He started toward it.

  “Halt!”

  John heard the distinctive sound of several AK-47s chambering rounds.

  “Drop the weapon,” one of the men called out.

  John cursed himself for not concealing it when he left the tomb. The sunlight had disoriented him badly enough that he hadn’t noticed the guards or realized he still held the H&K in his hand.

  “CIA. My credentials are in my wallet.”

  The man spat at the ground and said something in Arabic that made the men around him laugh. John took that to mean that the CIA ploy had no effect.

  “Please, the man who blew up the tomb in the cliffs. He’s in that tomb.” Gretchen pointed to KV6.

  The men looked to their leader for direction.