The Forbidden Tomb

by Chris Kuzneski

  As the final pocket of air was expelled from the tunnel, the current pulled her deeper into the void. Exhausted from the swim and without a full breath of air, she knew she wouldn’t last much longer. Her vision blurred, either from lack of oxygen or the increasing depth – she didn’t know which. Not that it really mattered, because neither was a positive development in the middle of the sea.

  The last thing she saw was a silhouette.

  Then her whole world went black.

  32

  Cobb slowly opened his eyes. The concussive force of the explosion had thrown him against the wall of the bunker. That much he remembered. The painful dizziness and the trickle of warmth he felt rolling down his face told him that his head had taken the brunt of the impact – and that the stone had proven harder than his skull. The dull pain in his side let him know he had bruised at least a couple of ribs in the fall.

  His head throbbed and his breathing was labored.

  But he was still alive.

  ‘Josh,’ he called out, ‘are you okay?’

  If there was a reply, Cobb couldn’t hear it. The buzzing in his ears blocked out nearly all the ambient noise. The only things he could detect were the crackles and pops from his earpiece. They might have been voices. They might have been static. They might have been a figment of his imagination.

  In his current state, he couldn’t tell the difference.

  Cobb groped for his flashlight in the darkness. It had been knocked from his hand in the blast, and he was blind without it. He would worry about escaping later. Right now, he needed to know if McNutt was still alive.

  Thankfully, he saw a sign of life.

  Because of the dust and smoke, it didn’t look like a beam of light. Instead, it looked like a radioactive cloud had swallowed the room because the entire chamber started to glow. As Cobb stumbled toward the source of the light, the ringing in his ears began to fade. For the first time, he could hear his friend calling out to him.

  ‘Answer me, chief! Say something!’ McNutt hollered.

  ‘I’m fine! Just banged my head a bit,’ he shouted back.

  Neither realized that they were actually yelling.

  McNutt stepped closer and shined his light on Cobb. He could see the laceration on his head, but there was no point in mentioning it. He didn’t have stitches to close the wound or even a pad of gauze to stop the bleeding. Cobb was walking and talking, so McNutt hoped the only real damage was a splitting headache.

  ‘Good,’ McNutt said. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  McNutt’s optimism was a bit premature. For all they knew, they were now trapped below a hundred tons of dirt and debris. If the damage were even half of that amount, it would take a fleet of excavators to find them, and they would have used up their oxygen long before the arrival of a rescue party.

  ‘Hector, can you hear me?’ Cobb waited a few seconds before he tried again. He knew the odds were slim, but he had to try. ‘Hector? Sarah? Jasmine?’

  ‘Anything?’ McNutt asked.

  ‘Nope. I think the blast fried the circuitry.’

  ‘Same with mine. I couldn’t even hear your transmission.’

  ‘That means we’re on our own.’

  McNutt shrugged. ‘I’ve been on my own since high school.’

  Cobb forced a smile. ‘You went to high school?’

  McNutt laughed. ‘More than one.’

  Ignoring their odds, they inspected the entrance to the bunker and saw that the concrete had shattered. What was once a hole was now a stack of rubble blocking their path. Fortunately, it wasn’t solid. They could see through to the other side.

  McNutt pushed his way into the cistern and got the first glimpse of the destruction. The thunderous vibrations of the bombs had shaken many of the pillars out of position. The ancient supports were precarious before the explosion. Now they stood like a house of cards – one wrong move and the whole structure would come tumbling down.

  McNutt was thankful that the water main had dried up. The chamber was still soaked, but they wouldn’t have to fight a waterfall on their climb. It was the first good thing that had happened to them in quite some time.

  Blood dripped from McNutt’s arm and Cobb’s head as they slowly made their way up the wreckage toward the surface. As they climbed higher, their reserves got lower.

  But still, they pressed on.

  They were battered and bruised, but they weren’t broken.

  The same could not be said for the city above.

  Their hearing had improved greatly by the time they saw daylight, but it was a mixed blessing. For the first time, they could hear the cacophony of horrors radiating down from the street. Sirens. Screams. The sounds of panic and fear.

  Human instinct told them to run away.

  Their training told them to charge forward.

  * * *

  Seawater poured from Sarah’s lungs as she vomited uncontrollably. She rolled onto her side, trying to purge the fluid that had nearly killed her. Nothing around her mattered: not the boat, not the two men hovering near her. Not Alexander’s tomb or the loss of her colleagues. For the moment, her singular goal was to just keep breathing.

  When her coughing finally subsided, she rolled back over to face her saviors. Only then did she recognize that it was Papineau standing over her. He was still wearing his customary shirt and tie, but now the tailored ensemble was dripping wet.

  Sarah couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘Papi?’

  Papineau smiled warmly. ‘How are you feeling?’

  It was a look she had never seen before. ‘I’m fine. Thanks to you.’

  ‘I merely recovered your body,’ Papineau explained. ‘Hector is the real hero. You weren’t breathing when we first pulled you aboard. He was the one who brought you back to life.’

  Sarah turned to see Garcia crouched on the other side of the boat. He was nearly panting as he dealt with the residual adrenalin coursing through his system. In spite of their previous adventure, he was still adjusting to real-world emergencies. He was much more comfortable dealing with things from behind his desk.

  There, he could always reboot the system and start again.

  In the field, things weren’t always as simple.

  Sarah stared at him with decidedly mixed feelings. She was thankful that he had saved her life but knew he would never let her forget it.

  Garcia smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry. Your breath was fine.’

  Sarah nodded her thanks and tried to stand, but found that her legs were still too shaky to support her weight, especially in a rocking boat.

  Papineau caught her as she collapsed. ‘Easy, Sarah. Take a moment to rest.’

  Sarah had been a part of recovery missions in the past. They were often physically demanding, that much she knew, but they were nothing like this. Her perspective had changed. Rescuing someone was tiring. But being rescued was exhausting.

  Still, there were questions that couldn’t wait.

  ‘What about the guys? Did they make it out?’

  Garcia shrugged. ‘We lost them.’

  Sarah took the news like a sucker punch.

  Sensing her misinterpretation, Papineau jumped in to clarify the situation. ‘What he means is that we lost their signals.’

  Sarah stared at Garcia, annoyed by his poor choice of words.

  Garcia quickly realized his mistake. ‘Oh, God. I didn’t mean it like that. They’re not dead – at least, we don’t know that for sure. We just lost tracking and communications. When the bombs detonated, it must have damaged their electronics.’

  This time, his words struck a different chord.

  ‘When the comms went out,’ she said, struggling to find the right words. ‘When we entered the second tunnel and we couldn’t hear you, could you still hear us?’

  Papineau waved off her question. ‘Sarah—’

  ‘Could you still see the video feeds from our cameras?’

  Papineau again tried to silence her. ‘Please, you need to—’r />
  This time it was Garcia who cut him off. ‘We lost the live feed, but that doesn’t mean we lost the footage. If you were still using the flashlight camera, it was still recording. There’s internal memory, a micro-drive that stores the video files.’

  ‘How much footage will it hold?’ she asked.

  Garcia shrugged. ‘Something like a thousand hours, why?’

  Papineau shook his head in frustration. Their attention shouldn’t be on the treasure; it should be on the things that really mattered.

  Sarah fished both the flashlights from the cargo pockets of her pants and presented them to Garcia.

  ‘We found something,’ she explained. ‘A wall with carvings all across it. It’s a pictograph that explains what happened to the library and why Alexander’s tomb was moved. I remember some of the details, but these should show us everything.’

  * * *

  Cobb and McNutt climbed out of the wreckage and into a nightmare.

  The streets were lined with victims of the tragedy. Those who made it out of their homes and offices before the buildings collapsed now watched in horror as their neighbors suffered. Paramedics tended to the injured. Firemen rushed to contain the flames. Police officers struggled to keep the gawking crowd at bay.

  It would have been easy for Cobb and McNutt to flee the chaos and return to the relative safety of the yacht to have their minor wounds tended to. After all, they were still dazed from the blast and grieving for the friends they assumed were dead and/or buried under so much rubble that there was no way they could reach them, but leaving the scene would have gone against everything that they stood for.

  One trip into the burning rubble quickly became two, and then five, and then ten. Time and time again they shuttled the wounded from the smoldering wreckage to the waiting medical personnel. Cobb knew that many of the victims had fatal injuries. Still, those not mutilated or burned beyond recognition deserved a chance to survive, and both he and McNutt were determined to give them that opportunity.

  Eventually, there was nothing left to be done. The twisted pile of debris was too unsteady to climb on, and the growing fire had become too hot to withstand. Continuing their effort would only put more lives at risk – including their own.

  They had saved everyone that they could.

  Now it was time to find the bombers.

  33

  Cobb’s tank was empty. So was McNutt’s. They had started the day on a magnificent yacht, and now they leaned against a battered fire truck. Their muscles ached and their wounds throbbed as they tried to make sense of everything that had happened.

  The cisterns were destroyed, the tunnels were buried, and hundreds were killed or injured – all at the hands of a mysterious foe that had surfaced with violent intent. Sarah and Jasmine were presumed dead since they had last been seen heading toward the epicenter of the blast, and they couldn’t reach Garcia to confirm anything.

  All in all, it was a horrible day.

  The worst they could remember.

  Despite the carnage, McNutt forced himself to take stock of his surroundings. Everywhere he turned, all he saw was chaos. Burning buildings. Sobbing onlookers. Emergency vehicles of every shape and color, along with dozens of crews attempting to handle the situation. After a while, it all started to blend together into one continuous vista of death and destruction . . . until he saw something that stood out.

  McNutt rubbed his eyes in disbelief, convinced that the smoke was playing tricks on him. And yet the man’s appearance didn’t change. He had seen him less than an hour earlier in the cistern.

  McNutt nudged Cobb to get his attention. ‘Jack, it’s one of them.’

  ‘One of who?’

  ‘One of the guys from the tunnels. The goddamn monkey men.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At your three o’clock.’

  Cobb zeroed in on the triage area, scanning for anything that looked familiar. Only one man stood out. ‘Black pants, black tunic, dark skin.’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Almost positive.’

  Cobb nodded in understanding. McNutt didn’t recognize his face, but the man was wearing the same clothes as the other men in the cistern.

  Plus, he was acting strangely.

  With nothing else to go on, they stood back and watched as he worked his way through the tent that had been set up on the edge of the blast site. The victims, both dead and alive, had been spread out in rows so that the doctors could quickly work their way through the masses. Many of the dead had been covered with sheets, towels, or scraps of clothes, and he took the time to uncover every last one.

  Cobb and McNutt understood his intentions.

  He was searching for someone.

  Maybe one of his own. Maybe one of his targets.

  Either way, it showed remarkable dedication to his cause.

  And his boldness filled Cobb with rage.

  Once the man had finished his search, he broke away from the makeshift hospital and made his way toward the periphery of the madness. Determined to get answers, Cobb knew they needed to act fast. They simply couldn’t let a lead like that walk away. Despite the crowd, Cobb sensed their opportunity and decided to take him down.

  ‘Nice and slow,’ he whispered to McNutt. ‘We don’t want to spook him.’

  ‘Slow, I can promise. But nice is out of the question.’

  Cobb took a course to intercept the man while McNutt trailed from a safe distance. No discussion was needed; both knew how to proceed. They had been taught well by the US military. They knew how to coordinate their actions and predict each other’s moves. The entire time they scanned the crowd for trouble without making themselves known. They walked casually but quickly, confident but not defiant.

  They simply looked like they belonged.

  Meanwhile, the bomber was the exact opposite.

  He strode purposefully through the chaos. Not strolling or running but somewhere in between, as if he were trying to do some light cardio in the middle of a warzone. As he walked, the man shook his head back and forth to someone in the crowd.

  The movement was subtle, but Cobb noticed it. Looking ahead, he spotted an ambulance parked fifty feet away. A second man stood next to an empty gurney behind the vehicle. He looked the part of a medic – the uniform, the comfortable shoes, the sterile gloves – but the anger on his face gave him away.

  This was a man who took lives, not a man who saved them.

  Cobb lowered his head and tried not to be spotted, but he was a large white man in an Egyptian city. It wasn’t easy to hide. Eventually the medic saw Cobb’s approach and knew their cover had been blown. He slapped the side of the ambulance, shouting instructions to the driver in Arabic. A moment later the engine roared to life as the medic opened the rear doors and climbed into the back of the van.

  For an instant, Cobb was tempted to raise his gun and fire.

  But all of that changed when he saw the cargo inside.

  Somehow, someway, Jasmine was in there.

  Obviously he was thrilled that she wasn’t buried under a million pounds of rubble like he had feared, and yet her appearance was mystifying.

  When did they grab her?

  Why did they grab her?

  And how did they smuggle her out before the blast?

  The last time he had seen her was in the depths of the tunnels, more than a block away. She and Sarah were heading off to investigate the Roman temple; now Jasmine was lying on a tilted gurney, as if she were watching TV. Her hands and feet were bound to the railings with plastic straps. Heavy tape covered her mouth. Her unblinking eyes were frozen open, but Cobb couldn’t tell the reason why.

  Maybe she was drugged. Maybe she was dead.

  Until he knew for sure, he couldn’t risk a shot.

  Cobb, McNutt, and their initial target all broke for the ambulance at the same time. The medic in the van kicked the empty gurney into Cobb’s path, slowing him down just enough for the first
assassin to get inside. He dove into the rear compartment as the medic slammed the doors shut behind him.

  Tires squealed as the ambulance sped off.

  Bile burned the back of Cobb’s throat as he sprinted after the vehicle. His frustration had been growing throughout the day, but seeing Jasmine had pushed him over the edge. Though he prided himself on his calm demeanor, rage began to fuel his actions. It was a consuming, blinding hatred of those responsible for the day’s tragedies.

  In his mind, justice wasn’t enough.

  They needed to be punished.

  * * *

  The layout of Alexandria has changed very little in the last two thousand years. Though much of the city has been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times, the architects retained the original design of north–south and east–west streets whenever possible.

  Obviously, the grid has grown over time and the roads have been vastly improved, but the only considerable difference between the ancient and modern layouts was a handful of major thoroughfares that linked Alexandria to the rest of Egypt. Had the explosion taken place in the suburbs, the ambulance would have had an easy escape route. On the outskirts of town, wide surface streets offered quick access to the larger arteries that connected the various districts around the city. Once the ambulance reached the highway, Jasmine and her kidnappers would have disappeared.

  But in the city, things were more complicated.

  Though contemporary in appearance – McDonald’s and Starbucks sightings were commonplace – the older section of the city was surrounded by the classical, narrow streets of Alexandria’s past. There were no medians or bike lanes. Even the buses were forced to fight their way through traffic, just like everyone else. It was a striking juxtaposition: the progress of modern buildings nestled in an ancient city.

  Unlike the tragedy of 9/11 when millions of citizens fled New York and stayed away for days, people in the Middle East were more accustomed to bombings. As crazy as it seemed, the streets were clogged in both directions with a mixture of locals fleeing the scene and people who wanted to see the damage for themselves.