“Let’s open it,” Martin said and reached for the jar.
Anna pulled it away. “This can only be opened in a contained, sterile environment. I’m taking no chances. If this is the cure for the plague, and we inadvertently contaminate the ointment—”
“It looks like it’s been opened before, Anna. There are two different colors of wax sealing the lid to the—”
A roar filled the cave, growing, closing in on them.
Anna spun around to look at the moonlit entry. “Bombers. Coming our way. Probably the cleanup crew, targeting fleeing hostiles and civilians.”
“Anna, rewrap the jar and give it to me so I can tuck it safely between our clothes in my pack. We have to get out of here before the whole place crashes down on top of us.”
She hesitated, as though she did not want Martin to get his hands on the Marham-i-Isa. “This is more valuable than our lives, Martin. Do you understand that?”
“Of course I do. I’ve been searching for it my whole life.”
She handed him the jar.
Martin ran for the exit, and crawled outside dragging his pack behind him. When he stood on the ledge, he opened his pack, tucked the jar in the middle of their clothes, then shrugged the pack on over his shoulders. The canyon gleamed as though every ledge bore a coating of finely ground pearl dust. Far out in the distance, the rhythmic thumping of helicopters sounded. The wind had changed direction, blowing from the east. He sniffed at the odd urinelike tang on the breeze.
Finally, Anna stepped out breathing hard, and shrugged her pack over her shoulders.
“Which direction, Anna? What do we do now?”
“We head to the Nile. If my contact, Yacob, was not here, our fallback rendezvous point was Karnak.”
She led them northward along the ledge trail at a fast clip.
CHAPTER 16
NIGHT.
The world swayed, gently rocking Micah in its arms. Bursts of color blazed on the insides of his eyelids. His mind provided the science-fiction sounds: war in space, phasers firing, loud explosions in vacuum.
“Ranken?” he croaked. “Beter? Answer me!”
The sound of a river penetrated his panic.
It required monumental effort to reach out and search for his rifle. It had to be close. Had to be.
Even if I was dead on my feet, I wouldn’t have turned loose of it until my heart stopped beating and my brain suffocated. It’s here …
His gloved hand found wood. His fingers moved along a sort of lattice, woven slats, then lifted and found a gunwale. That fact so startled him, his eyes opened … and he saw stars gleaming.
Constellations consistent with the Tropic of Cancer. Egypt? Maybe northern Sudan.
Vague memories surfaced.
I was on an op in Africa … How did I get in this boat?
Where are my men?
Nauseated, he had to choke down the bile that rose when he forced himself to sit up. He hung his head over the edge of the small reed boat and stared at the water glistening around him. His dark-skinned reflection stared back. His oval face and square jaw seemed distorted, but his eyes were perfectly round black holes in his face. The surface of the Nile—had to be the Nile River, for it was too big to be anything else—reflected the laser show in the sky above, where tongues of flame licked at the darkness. Each stabbed his brain, making his staggering headache worse. When his stomach pumped, he just clung to the gunwale and rode out the spasms.
As he eased back into the boat, he saw his rifle and pistol. Both lay within reach of his right hand. He pulled his rifle onto his chest and clutched it against him like a lover. An almost orgasmic relief tingled through him.
Was it possible that he’d walked to the river, found a boat, and set himself adrift in the water to get out of the line of fire?
Yes. Possible.
Though he remembered none of it.
Micah drifted to sleep.
CHAPTER 17
SEPTEMBER 27. 2100 HOURS.
The private who stood guard outside the cave snapped to attention as Colonel Joseph Logan walked up the moonlit trail. Black Canyon had turned hazy, the air filled with dust and debris from the bombing campaign. “At ease, Private. Anything unusual to report?”
“No, sir. The MEDINT team has been in there for about two hours.”
MEDINT. Medical Intelligence.
“All right. Carry on, Private.”
Logan ducked into the cave. As he straightened, he took in the scene. Five fluorescent floodlights had been set up and gleamed around the circumference of the cave. Three illuminated the stone ossuaries. One aimed at the floor, and the last pointed up at the ceiling. The arrangement threw the wall inscriptions into strange relief. He scanned them. They were meaningless to him, though he found the different scripts beautiful.
After Hazor’s team went down, they’d sent in the backup team, Beta Four, to capture Taran Beth-Gilgal. Beta Four did not find the priest at the church. Instead, they’d found the trail of ten zealots heading out into the dunes. They’d followed it, surrounded Taran Beth-Gilgal and the zealots, and captured them. It had taken the interrogation team four ugly hours to extract the information on the ointment and the cave’s location from Taran Beth-Gilgal.
Logan turned toward Captain Maris Bowen, who leaned over one of the ossuaries, her gloved hands collecting samples. A burgeoning pile of sealed sample bags rested in a sterile container beside her. Every ossuary had been opened. The lids leaned in a line against the far wall. From what Logan could tell, most of the artifacts had already been bagged.
Except for the boxes of ammunition. There must be twenty thousand rounds in here.
“SITREP, Captain,” Logan called.
“We’re almost done here, sir. What’s happening out there? Anything I should know from the briefing?”
Bowen had her short black hair stuffed into a plastic cap. In her late thirties, the style gave her face a blocky appearance, almost cubist. Her nose was a perfect triangle, her mouth a long thin rectangle. Plastic covered her khakis. She looked up at him with severe brown eyes. Bowen had a PhD in microbiology from Stanford, but she was career military.
“Operational activities are winding down. A cargo helo is coming ASAP, and will be ready to remove your samples from this cave. NSA wants these ossuaries powdered to dust and analyzed for chemical and biological information.”
Bowen expelled a breath and nodded.
It had been a long, difficult night for everyone. They all wanted to get back to their command post aboard the USS Langtree. “How much is left to do?”
“Very little in the way of objects, but there are thousands of wall inscriptions. We’ve photographically documented everything, but—”
“Mount of Olives is more concerned with material objects.”
Bowen gave him a sidelong look. “Colonel, I swear to you, the analysts are wrong. Asher wasn’t looking for an object, and certainly not a revolutionary new weapon. Hakari had been raving about the coming plague for years. He must have set her on the path to find the cure, and it led her here.”
Two hours ago, at the briefing, Logan had been allowed to read the classified air force intelligence reports about Asher. The military had become aware of her strange activities six months ago. She was canny, though. Every odd request or curious usage of equipment could be tied in some manner to her assigned cryptographic duties. Nonetheless, they were oddball enough to draw attention. Both the CIA and FBI had been tasked with monitoring her movements. Asher had used every military asset she could to locate this ancient cave, then, about three months ago, she’d gone AWOL from the air force without telling a soul that she’d found it. They’d searched everywhere for her to no avail.
“You’re not the first person tonight to surmise that, Captain. So, let’s say you’re right. Why didn’t she call in military analysts to assist her in the search? Was it just greed? Did she hope to make a fortune? Was she ill?”
Bowen shook her head. “Her annual medical
reports were flawless. She was healthy as an ox. She never took a single day of sick leave. Not in the five years she worked in cryptography, or her four years of service before that. She constantly worked overtime. Her performance reviews were outstanding.” Maris heaved a sigh and looked away, toward the cave entry. The air vibrated with the sound of choppers coming in. “So, she wasn’t ill. Any word on Anna’s whereabouts?”
“Negative. But we’ve traced her path, and that of her companion, through the satellite feeds. They made it all the way to the Nile before we lost them. JWICS is still processing the data.”
The Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System was a sensitive, highly compartmentalized portion of the Defense Information Systems Network that analyzed multipoint information exchange involving voice, text, graphics, data, and any available video.
Bowen rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. “You’re not going to find her.”
“Of course we will. NSA considers it a matter of urgent national security.”
“I worked with her in D.C. for three years, sir. She certainly knows you’re looking for her. She knows the equipment you’re using and how it functions. And she knows how to avoid detection.”
Logan propped his hands on his hips and looked away. “We’ll find her. The top brass have committed a lot of resources.”
Bowen’s brows pulled together. “You look worried, Colonel. Things are cascading pretty fast out there, aren’t they?”
They were. At an alarming rate. But Logan didn’t want to affirm or deny any rumors, so he simply said, “We should all be worried.”
Voices murmured on the ledge outside, soldiers discussing something.
Logan folded his arms across his chest to ease the painful thudding of his heart. “What have they told you, Captain?”
“No one in the military is talking. But…” She brusquely stripped off her plastic gloves. As she flexed her fingers, she said, “Inside the medical community scuttlebutt is rampant. Cases of LucentB have cropped up on four continents, and nobody can figure out how the virus works.”
“Why not? What’s the problem?”
“LucentB is a genetic mystery. The vaccines that were developed to combat the disease are totally useless against it. Obviously, pharmaceutical companies are still working, but…”
“I hadn’t heard that part.”
Bowen wiped her forehead on her sleeve. “What’s the military saying behind closed doors, Colonel? Can you give me any information?”
He hesitated. “Don’t know much. China just blocked the South China Sea to try and stop the plague from entering their country. The U.S. is threatening war to keep the shipping lanes open so we can get medical supplies through. Don’t know anything else.”
He frowned down at the ossuary where her gloves rested. Inside, white bones lay like sticks beneath a small skull with a strange brown patina. The skull had been tipped upward. Logan could see inside the dark hole at the base of the skull. A crown of twisted grass rested above the figure’s head, and another at the bottom of the ossuary.
He gestured. “Female?”
Bowen lifted a shoulder. “The contents of this stone box are a mystery to me. I think the skull belongs to a young boy, around twelve or thirteen. See the pelvis—the hip bones? Looks male to me. Women have a wider opening to ease birthing. However, the long bones, especially the femurs, leg bones, appear to be those of an elderly woman. But I’m a microbiologist, not a forensic anthropologist. I’m no expert on sexing ancient skeletal remains.”
Logan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, before he said, “NSA says LucentB is tied to some sequence in our junk DNA, Captain.”
She stared at him. “The term ‘junk DNA’ is a misnomer, Colonel. There’s just DNA we don’t understand yet. What about the religious kooks in Bir Bashan? They were supposed to have info about the plague.”
“Well, they didn’t. All Cozeba got out of their leader, Beth-Gilgal, was the location of this cave and the fact that he’d seen a woman meeting Asher’s description.”
“Must have made Cozeba livid. I assume he handled the interrogation personally?”
“He did, and he is. Livid. Apparently this crazy religious order specializes in healing formulas that rely on plant poisons. The general is cursing himself for not doing more research. If he had, he’d have realized the old priest might carry some kind of poison as a last resort to prevent him from revealing too much. We’re just lucky the truth agent took hold before the poison did.”
Distaste twisted Captain Bowen’s mouth. There was no love lost between Bowen and Cozeba. They detested each other. And, if the truth be told, Logan agreed with her. Cozeba was an amoral bastard who didn’t care one whit for human life—which was probably what made him such an extraordinary general. The man had no ability for empathy. To him, human beings were little more than blinking cursors to move around a computer screen; he used them to achieve military objectives, or he killed them at his earliest convenience. The general’s personality disorder, however, had allowed him to win great battles. Which, in the end, may have saved the lives of millions of U.S. soldiers.
“I’m worried about Asher, Colonel. Is there really no news—”
“Captain, according to the reports, she went AWOL with information vital to stopping this plague. She’s a traitor who should be shot on sight.”
Bowen clamped her jaw.
She and Asher had been close friends in D.C. Rumors said that when Asher’s treachery became apparent, Bowen had tried to defend her, and Cozeba had exploded. He’d transferred Bowen to another department to keep her quiet.
Bowen propped her hands on her hips while she gazed at the inscriptions that covered the cave. “I wish I knew what all this says. I’ll bet Anna knew.”
Dirt gushed into the cave when the choppers arrived outside. Bowen threw up an arm to shield her face. Two soldiers dressed in plastic suits crawled through the opening, and snapped out salutes.
Logan returned the salutes and pointed. “Bag the ossuaries first. The sooner we start analyzing them, the sooner we’ll know if Asher found anything useful here.”
CHAPTER 18
HYPOGEUM
Rolling to his side on the cold stone floor, he put his hands over his ears to block the sounds of playing children that crept along the dark halls of the labyrinth. The earliest tunnels, blind alleys, and burial chambers had been carved into the soft limestone by megalithic farmers over six thousand years ago, and they created perfect echo chambers for the pattering of small feet and high-pitched voices that rose up from the darker, deeper levels.
“Please, be quiet,” he called into the darkness. “I have to think.”
Brother Stephen, who sat cross-legged on the floor reading the Breviary by candlelight, said, “Everything is quiet, Brother. Too quiet, actually.”
A little girl’s bubbly laughter rang out. As it climbed upward, it bounced around the stone walls, returning over and over to bombard him.
“Please, stop! I must think!”
The childish voices died away, and the darkness swaddled him with such intense cold, it left him shivering.
Brother Stephen came over to kneel beside him. “What do you hear, Brother? Are demons tormenting you?”
“The girl. The little girl…”
He rolled away from Stephen, onto his stomach, and stretched his arms out from his body, making the sign of the cross on the stone floor. When he squeezed his eyes closed, the tears that had frozen on his lashes crackled loose and rattled across the rock. “Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Patris…”
As Stephen lifted the candle and brought it closer, yellow flickered on his closed eyelids.
“Brother, you’re scaring me. Please tell me what you hear?”
“V-voices.”
A little girl’s steps tapped on the stairs, climbing up the dark throat of the tunnel.
A few seconds later, she whispered, James? You awake? Your eyes are closed.
“Leave me alon
e.”
Stephen said, “I can’t. I’m sorry. The sickness is worse. The island is being evacuated. Brother Andrew Paul doesn’t want you to be alone down here. He knows you must speak with God, but he fears you’ll get lost, and we won’t find you when it’s our turn to go. We volunteered to be the last to board the ships.”
“How long have you and I … been down here?”
“Seven days, Brother. Don’t you recall?”
“How do you know the island is being evacuated?”
“Brother Andrew Paul leaves me letters just inside the mouth of the tunnel. All of the brothers are overwhelmed tending the sick. No one can take the time to come and find us in here. We are so deep, and the tunnels are so dangerous.”
The little girl bent down, pulled up one of his eyelids, and squinted at him. She wore a threadbare tweed cap, but short black hair stuck out around the edges.
You were praying it wrong.
“What?”
“Don’t be concerned. The mayor says we have a few days before we have to leave.”
You are so forgetful now. It should be Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Our help comes in the name of the Lord, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You said it came in the name of the Father: Patris.
“What do you want?”
Stephen slumped to the floor at his side and tenderly patted his back. “I’m right here if you need me, Brother.”
The girl gave Stephen a suspicious glance, tucked her index finger into her mouth, and sucked it for a few moments. I came to get you. That machine is spelling again.
“Oh.”
Dragging himself to his feet, he blinked at the candlelit reflections fluttering around the large stone chamber.
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