The Forbidden Tomb

by Chris Kuzneski

  Copeland pondered what he had been told. He couldn’t care less about the bombs or the people who were killed in the neighborhood above; he was only interested in why the mysterious men had felt the need to bury the tunnels.

  He leaned closer. ‘What did you find beneath the streets?’

  ‘A pictograph in a subterranean temple and a secret tunnel that led to the water. One of the walls was covered in carvings. We haven’t studied the symbols yet because the digital files were damaged in the chaos, but we believe that they illustrate the evacuation of Alexander’s tomb sometime in the fourth century.’

  Copeland’s face lit up. ‘Evacuation to where?’

  ‘We don’t know. That’s where the story ends.’

  ‘Surely Ms Park has a theory. What does she say on the subject?’

  ‘What does she have to say? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!’

  Copeland raised an eyebrow. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the bombers abducted her.’

  ‘Well, that sucks,’ Copeland said with a laugh. ‘I was wondering what got your knickers in a twist, and now I know.’

  ‘Yes, now you know.’

  Copeland stared at him. ‘I have to admit, I’m not used to seeing so much backbone from you . . . I’m still trying to decide if I like it.’

  ‘You’re about to see more.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘In my opinion, Jasmine’s abduction was completely avoidable. If my team had been properly prepared, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘I completely agree.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you do.’

  ‘Wait,’ Copeland said. ‘You’re blaming me for this?’

  Papineau glared at him but said nothing.

  Copeland laughed. ‘Don’t stop now. Speak your mind.’

  Papineau took a deep breath and considered what to do. Even though he had been given permission to speak freely, he was hesitant to voice his concerns. Still, he knew that mistakes had been made, and he couldn’t afford to have them pinned on him. ‘It would be easier for me to run my team without any more of your surprises.’

  ‘Which surprises are you referring to?’

  ‘Cobb introduced a map into the equation. Based on the details he provided, I have to assume that your efforts led to its acquisition from the Ulster Archives.’

  Copeland nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where did they get it? And why was I left out of its procurement?’

  Copeland leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m a very busy man, Jean-Marc. I can’t keep you in the loop on everything. Where would I find the time? As for the Archives, the map was sent to them by Dr Manjani a few months ago.’

  Papineau gasped in disbelief. He knew that a group of archaeologists had gone missing in April and that their trip to Egypt had been led by a notable scholar named Cyril Manjani. But he was also aware that their camp had been found abandoned and that the entire team was presumed dead. Not one member had been heard from since.

  Now Copeland was telling him that Manjani had survived.

  Papineau didn’t know where to begin.

  ‘He’s alive? How did he survive? And where has he been?’ He shook his hands in the air, waving off his previous questions. There were more important things to consider. ‘What is the connection between Manjani and Alexandria? I thought his expedition was lost in the desert.’

  ‘Dr Manjani shares our interests. He was searching for the tomb of Alexander the Great, just like we are. As for the desert, I have no idea what led him there. I only know that he didn’t find any answers buried in the sand. Given his failure, I was hoping your team could see something in his map that he himself had missed.’

  Papineau needed more. ‘You said he escaped. Escaped from what? What did he find in the desert?’

  ‘I think it’s more a case of what found him,’ Copeland explained. ‘He claims his team was slaughtered in the night. After that, he went into hiding, but not before sending the map to the Ulster Archives. From what I understand, he knows the curator.’

  ‘Slaughtered?’ Papineau growled. ‘His team was slaughtered while looking for Alexander’s tomb – the same thing that my team is looking for – and you chose not to tell me about it?’

  Copeland’s stare suddenly grew cold. ‘Check your tone, Jean-Marc. They are not your team. They’re my team. It’s my money that they’re spending and my money that they’re trying to earn. You’d best remember your place!’

  Papineau lowered his voice but continued to make his point. ‘If there was a chance that we were walking into danger, you should have—’

  Copeland cut him off. ‘Danger? Did you say danger? This isn’t the Boy Scouts. We’re not after merit badges. We’re after treasure. Of course there’s danger. I wouldn’t be paying them millions of dollars if there wasn’t danger.’

  Papineau remained silent. He knew Copeland wasn’t finished.

  ‘If the attack in the desert is related to the attack under the city, I cannot be held responsible. No one could have known that one would lead to the other. After all, the two incidents took place hundreds of miles apart. Besides, that Marine of yours requested enough firepower to invade a small country. You’re telling me that he couldn’t defend himself against some local thugs?’

  Papineau shook his head. ‘The men who rigged the bombs were not local thugs. They were something more. I don’t know what exactly, but something.’

  ‘Well, find out!’ Copeland demanded. ‘I want answers, not problems.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Copeland stood, signaling the end of their conversation. ‘In the meantime, if you need either of the missing historians to understand the symbols on the wall, you have my permission to search for Ms Park or Dr Manjani. However, if you can figure out the message on your own or you know of another expert who can step in and fill their void then their recovery is a total waste of time.’

  He glared at Papineau to emphasize his final point. ‘As you know, the only thing that matters to me is the tomb.’

  40

  Tuesday, November 4

  Sahara Desert

  Jasmine woke to the sharp burn of vomit as it bubbled from her stomach.

  The tickle at the back of her throat was the only warning of the nasty fluid that would soon follow. It was all she could do to turn her head before she retched, her system trying to rid itself of the potent chemicals that had kept her unconscious for the last few hours. Her arms trembled and her body heaved as she purged until there was nothing left. She rolled onto her back, exhausted from the involuntary efforts.

  Only then did she manage to open her eyes.

  Though her thoughts were still fuzzy, she could immediately tell that she was no longer under the city. The tunnels had been dark and damp, the floors and walls made of gray stone and concrete. But this room – wherever it was – was bright and dry. Sunlight streamed in through small slits in the wall near the ceiling, illuminating the dirt floor and the rough, reddish-tan bricks that surrounded her. The small room was completely barren, with only a small break in the wall leading to a hallway beyond.

  She closed her eyes again, trying to piece together anything that might help her determine how or where she had been moved. She remembered being attacked and struggling to resist, then succumbing to an overwhelming sensation of sleep. Her nausea and clouded mind told her that she hadn’t simply given up; she had been drugged – though the initial dose hadn’t knocked her out completely.

  She remembered being jostled about in the back of a van and being pinned to the floor by one of her assailants. At some point they had abandoned the vehicle, she knew, because someone had pulled her from the cargo area and tossed her limp body over his shoulder. She recalled fleeting visions of a cramped bazaar and glimpses of alarmed faces as she was carried through the frenzied crowd. But no one intervened and no one seemed to care, as if this sort of thing was common in Alexandria.

  But that wasn’t the case at all.

  In he
r semi-lucid state, Jasmine had actually missed the explosion. She had no way of knowing that the frantic patrons had much bigger things to worry about than a woman being toted through the masses.

  For all they knew, she was being rescued, not kidnapped.

  The bazaar had not only given her assailants cover from the satellites that were circling overhead, it had also camouflaged their escape on the ground. Their efforts blended in with the panicked retreat of the customers and shopkeepers. In the confusion, Jasmine had been whisked away from the city and delivered to the rendezvous point. After which, her kidnappers were relieved of duty.

  Their job was to grab her.

  Others would handle her interrogation.

  Still reeling from the drugs and nausea, it took Jasmine several minutes to notice that her socks and shoes had been removed, leaving her feet bare. Not only that, her wrists had been bound by heavy metal cuffs connected by a long chain that ran through an eyebolt securely anchored into the floor. The shackles would allow her to stand, but her movement about the room would be restricted to a five-foot circle.

  Jasmine could feel the sweat beading down her face as she pawed frantically at the sturdy clamps that encircled her wrists. As the severity of her situation continued to set in, panic and the sweltering heat of the room kept her from catching her breath. Perspiration soaked her skin and clothes as she desperately tried to slip her hands from their steel restraints. The moisture allowed the metal to slide an inch or two, but it wasn’t nearly enough for Jasmine to escape. Each time she tried to pull her arms free, she succeeded only in chafing her skin even more.

  When her efforts began to draw blood, she knew it was time to give up.

  She would have to find another way.

  Jasmine took a deep breath and steadied herself as best she could. She knew she could get through this. She just needed to keep calm and work through the situation, as with any other problem that she had overcome in recent months.

  This self-confidence had not been present a year ago. Back then, real-world dangers would have left her paralyzed with fear. Despite working for a newspaper as a translator, her talents lay in research and language skills, not fieldwork. Of all the members of the team, she was the least suited for their missions.

  But she had worked hard to narrow the gap.

  She knew she could never possess the skills the others had honed over their years of service in the military, FBI, and CIA, but she was determined to eliminate any concern that she was holding them back. When Cobb had instructed her to learn the art of self-defense, she had immersed herself in the training. Day after day, session after session, she had studied the techniques of her sensei, building her skills until the movements became second nature.

  To keep pace with the others, she had broadened her development to include lessons in other areas. Garcia had taught her advanced computer skills, and McNutt had been more than eager to help with weapons training. He took her through a crash course in everything from sub-compact pistols to shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. And yet it was Sarah’s tutelage that would prove to be the most important.

  As part of her ‘survival training’, Sarah had taught Jasmine a few tricks of the trade. She had started with the basics, explaining how best to blend into a crowd and hide in plain sight, then worked her way up to more complicated endeavors such as avoiding surveillance cameras and circumventing standard security measures such as window alarms and motion detectors.

  At Jasmine’s urging, Sarah had even taught her how to pick locks.

  Now, as Jasmine studied the manacles that bound her hands, she could sense her fortune changing. She had yet to master the art of tumbler locks like those found in homes and cars, but handcuffs were a different story. Since handcuffs were designed so that a single key could open many models and sizes, the lock was much simpler. All she needed was something sturdy and small enough to trip the internal mechanism.

  Jasmine scoured the floor for something that could be used as a makeshift lock pick. Seeing only dust and dirt, she checked the pockets of her pants. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, hoping against all logic that she would find a random bobby pin, even though she seldom wore them. Unsurprisingly, there were none to be found.

  Then the answer suddenly came to her.

  In an instant she had unfastened her belt and pulled it from the loops around her waist. She rolled the buckle in her hands, pondering its use. The prong of the clasp was skinny and stiff, with a slight curve at the end. As far as improvised tools were concerned, this was as good as it got.

  Jasmine was confident that she could make it work.

  She slipped the bent end of the prong into the cuffs and slowly rotated the pick around the edge of the keyhole, searching for resistance. Normally, the single bit of the barrel key would release the bite of the receiver, but the belt buckle would work just as well. All she had to do was find the right pressure point.

  As she felt the prong catch on something, she adjusted the angle of entry and pressed hard. With a simple click the rounded steel popped loose from her wrist, its well-oiled hinge releasing her from its grasp. Jasmine smiled as she repeated the process on the second cuff. A few seconds later, it too popped open with the same satisfying click.

  Jasmine beamed as she tossed the cuffs to the floor. She had freed herself. Yes, the confidence and the skills had been imparted by her teammates, but they weren’t around to see her through. She had done this all on her own, without anyone there to help.

  She swelled with pride but kept her emotions in check.

  Just because her hands were free didn’t mean that she was.

  Jasmine silently rose to her feet. Her first steps were clumsy, but her coordination began to return as she walked to the gap in the wall that led to the hallway. There she listened for any signs of her captors. Hearing nothing, she peeked around the corner to the other side. She could see an adjacent room, only slightly larger than the space where she had been held.

  But it too was empty.

  With nothing else to investigate, she crept toward the wooden door at the far end of the adjoining room. She pressed her ear to the warm wood and hoped to hear something – anything – that would help her pinpoint her location.

  Instead, there was only silence.

  Testing the handle, she was surprised to find the door unlocked. Combined with the empty rooms, Jasmine could only reach one conclusion: whoever was guarding her was waiting just beyond the door.

  She looked down, wondering how far and how fast her bare feet could carry her. She breathed deeply, summoning her courage and clearing the last few cobwebs from her mind. Once she stepped through the door, she wouldn’t stop sprinting until she had reached safety. To survive, she only needed to outrun her captors.

  Jasmine nodded to herself.

  It was now or never.

  41

  Under the cover of darkness, Cobb piloted their yacht into the Mediterranean Sea. He knew that the devastation in Alexandria would draw the attention of the world media. Even worse, every nation with reconnaissance satellites under their control would have them focused on the region, looking for anything suspicious. Many of these satellites had sophisticated optics capable of reading the numbers off license plates from two hundred miles above the ground. Tracking something as large as a human would be easy.

  All they needed was a target.

  Cobb was determined to avoid the cameras circling overhead. He knew that every harbor and marina would be scrutinized, with the identity of each boat being compared to the registry from its home country. Vessels flying foreign flags would be of particular interest to the Egyptian government. As a port city, Alexandria’s coastal waters offered the same access to terrorists as they did to tourists, and even though no one would be looking for his team specifically, most of them were listed in military databases.

  He knew any of their faces could trigger a red flag.

  Spotting all of them together would be cause for alarm.

&n
bsp; So they opted for international waters.

  He was by no means at ease, but at least he knew that no one could take them by surprise. They could see ten miles in every direction, and the radar could warn them of approaching aircraft and other ships before they even came into view. The move had cut off their access to the city, but it had also cut off the city’s access to them. And until they figured out their next step, the isolation was worth the inconvenience.

  Once the yacht was anchored, Cobb headed below deck to the forward lounge. He brought a tray of snacks with him. His team had been working non-stop and he sensed that they needed a break. ‘Any luck?’

  Sarah looked up from her stack of notes, her expression conveying her frustration before she even spoke. ‘Not yet. But I’m still looking.’

  Cobb nodded and set the tray of food on one of the tables. Other than a few bathroom breaks, she hadn’t left the room in over a day. She had spent most of her time studying the video footage that Garcia had pulled from Cobb and McNutt’s flashlights, with an emphasis on the mysterious men from the tunnels. She studied their clothes, their movements, their methods, and every other noticeable detail, hoping to match their wardrobe or tactics to other known forces in the Middle East and beyond.

  So far, she had come up empty.

  ‘Here,’ Cobb said as he tossed her an orange. ‘Eat something.’

  She nodded her appreciation. ‘Thanks.’

  A moment later, McNutt bounded into the room. His bulging eyes, disheveled hair, and breathlessness told the others that he too hadn’t gotten much rest. It was also clear that a massive dose of caffeine was now pushing him through the fatigue.

  Cobb stared at him, concerned. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I smell food,’ McNutt shot back. He lunged for the tray and grabbed a sandwich that Cobb had actually made for himself. A look of pure pleasure spread across McNutt’s face as he stuffed it into his mouth. ‘Oh, man, this is good. What is this?’

  ‘Mine,’ Cobb said.

  McNutt wiped his mouth with his forearm. ‘Well, you did a wonderful job. It’s really, really good. Do I taste mustard?’