Hayden tried a commiserating look, realized it wasn’t working and gave up. Lauren had indeed done the right thing in her opinion, but everything she did from here on in—at least for a while—would be under scrutiny. She was intelligent, street-smart, and hopefully working with a crew like theirs for the last few years would have a positive effect on her.
Lauren would come through.
Hayden stretched her weary muscles, opened a bottle of water, and took a long gulp. The room was stifling. Sweat ran freely down her face. Outside, the streets were noisy and packed, just another day for the locals. She wondered what had happened to the mercs.
“Let’s get this done,” she said. “Then we can get the hell out of this oven. First, this ransom demand from a new group calling themselves FrameHub. Opinions are divided. Some say it’s a childish prank, others that the countries involved should be placed on the highest alerts.”
Drake looked interested but Hayden held up a hand. “That’s the kind of job Team SPEAR would have been given,” she said. “We’re not Team SPEAR anymore. At least not in the eyes of the government.”
An air of despondency settled across the room. Dahl wiped sweat from his brow. “We may still want to monitor it.”
Crouch drained a bottle of water. “I can do that,” he said. “My people at Interpol and other European agencies will be watching closely.”
Hayden accepted with a nod. “All right. If you can . . . gather something together. One of the countries involved is Egypt so it could affect us all.”
Crouch nodded. “Speaking of Egypt, what do we do next?”
“Hey, you’re the boss,” Alicia said. “You tell us.”
“I thought Hayden was the boss,” Kinimaka spoke up.
“Shit,” Drake looked around innocently. “I thought I was.”
Hayden laughed. “Nobody’s the boss here, guys. It’s just a family now.”
“We have to be the oddest family in all of history.” Mai looked around. “From the mad, the bad and the incredibly ugly to the pretty, the witty and the ultra-dumb. What a motley crew.”
“Umm,” Alicia frowned. “Which is which?”
Mai laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you can work it out.”
Kenzie put an arm around Dahl. “The mad and the bad are sitting right here.”
Dahl shrugged it off. “Back to business. What do we know about the second tomb, Michael?”
Crouch took a breath. “As I said before, finding the second tomb and locating or not locating the second symbol will confirm if the so-called curse is real. If there’s a second clue then we have to work on the theory that we’re really searching for the actual capstone and that the ancient doomsday machine exists.”
“More tombs? More buried treasure?” Alicia looked gloomy. “More running from the authorities? I’m sick of going underground.”
“Nice. The clue I found back at Amenhotep’s tomb was a depiction of the capstone along with a drawing of a tomb. I recognize the sculptures depicted, with the three pillars outside, but haven’t been able to place it in my memory. But that’s not a problem—we can look it up. The problem is this . . . we’re not the only ones chasing this.”
“Not by a long shot,” Mai said.
Hayden listened for a moment, taking in the mood of the team. In so many ways this was different for them—a guard at the window, a back-street hotel, and a cramped little room, limited tech support, having to look out for authorities rather than encourage them, always worried they may be spotted—but they were now relying on each other more than ever before and the actual mission parameters were the same. Of course, due to intense situations such as theirs, personal issues were sidelined.
Not necessarily a bad thing.
Time away from private relationships helped put them into perspective, it seemed. Her position as leader removed her from deeper feelings. Now that they were all on a par, she saw how badly she’d upset Mano. Whatever words she’d said had been purely manufactured to give her space—but the friendly Hawaiian didn’t know that. She watched him now as he watched the street, wondering if there was any way back.
Crouch continued: “We have to be fast and faultless. If others found that capstone symbol they could be heading to the second tomb as we speak.”
“We have to assume they did,” Kenzie said.
“Definitely. So let’s break out that laptop.”
Mai took it from a backpack and handed it over to Alicia.
The Englishwoman regarded it with horror. “What the hell are you doing? Don’t bring that thing near me.”
“You can’t type, Taz?”
“I don’t do geek. Yogi, my boy? C’mere. Wrap your mitts around this.”
The Russian looked confused but grabbed the laptop anyway. Following Crouch’s descriptions, he began to trawl a path through images.
“All this talk about curses,” Alicia said. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I remember Tutankhamun’s tomb was said to be cursed.”
“Well, a curse is pretty much all-encompassing over here. Any person that disturbs an Egyptian body, be it a mummy or a pharaoh, can be affected. There are no differentiations. Thieves, kids, archaeologists, holidaymakers. You name it. You’re all fair game. Some Egyptian tombs contain curses, some don’t. Most commonly, the mistaken one is Tutankhamun’s. His resting place contained no curse.”
Dahl grunted. “A curse can be distorted into anything you want,” he said. “They’re usually rather vague.”
“And it normally mentions disease,” Crouch said. “Which, when one disturbs a corpse, is not out of the question.”
“No seven plagues then?” Alicia threw a glance at the window as if expecting hordes of flies and locusts gathering there.
“No, and that was different, as you know. That was God’s wrath. But the whole ‘curse’ commotion was thrown back into the light when Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun. Carter’s canary died in the mouth of a cobra, thus inciting the locals to fear the onset of a curse. Later, Lord Carnarvon died, after becoming infected by a mosquito bite. A letter was written two weeks prior to his death, and published in the New York World magazine, in which Marie Corelli asserted that ‘dire punishment’ would fall upon anyone that desecrated a tomb. Mussolini, who some time before had accepted a mummy as a gift, ordered it removed. Next, and incredibly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became entangled in it, suggesting that ‘elementals’ created by ancient priests were involved and had caused Carnarvon’s death.”
Alicia shivered in the heat. “You can stop there if you like.”
But Crouch was on a roll, in his own element and talking about the very thing he loved most in the world. “Soon after, a man called Sir Bruce Ingram, who had been gifted by Carter a mummified hand with a bracelet that bore the inscription ‘cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come water, fire and pestilence’, saw his house burned down and then, after it was rebuilt, suffered a flood.”
“Shit, you couldn’t make this up.” Kenzie laughed.
“Surely you have come across curses in your line of work?” Crouch asked her.
“My line . . . ? Well, I guess as a relic smuggler you’d think so,” Kenzie was taken a little aback by the direct question. “But believe me, the only curses I come across are those I speak and those uttered by my men when I make them work.”
Alicia looked over. “Yeah, Drake’s like that.”
“Hey!”
“Howard Carter himself was hugely skeptical of the curse,” Crouch went on. “But he did write about an unsettling occurrence—when in the desert he saw jackals of the same type as Anubis for the first time in almost forty years.”
Alicia gulped. “And you want us to go out there?”
“Of the fifty eight people present when Carter opened the tomb, only eight died in the following years. Six of those could be attributed in some way to disease.” Crouch shrugged. “You make your own theories, my friends.”
“I’m more interested in mummies to be honest,” Alicia said. “Those guy
s always seem to be angry.”
“Yeah, so Hollywood tells us,” Hayden said. “But if your internal organs were removed, your body washed out with spices, your brain liquefied, all over a period of forty days, and then your dried-out body was wrapped in linen, you wouldn’t exactly be feeling perky now, would you?”
Alicia screwed her face up. “Uh, nope.”
“I have it,” Yorgi said, swiveling the laptop around to face the room.
Crouch stared and then nodded. “That’s it. Meritamun’s tomb, discovered in the nineteenth century. It’s small, insignificant, and came with all the usual objects. Sarcophagi. Canopic jars for internal organs. Amulets. The Book of the Dead. Household furniture of a sort. Ushabti figurines to work for the dead in the afterlife. Food. Wall paintings. Statues and carvings. And, of course, wall-painted spells. Nothing out of the ordinary. Over sixty tombs have been found and most are similar, not unremarkable, but nothing on the scale of Tutankhamun and just a few others. The tomb of Nefertiti has never been found.”
“What are you saying?” Hayden broke in, sensing Crouch might wander off on still another tangent.
“That this tomb, in this place, will have been largely forgotten over the last couple of centuries. It’s dry now. Protected yes, but forgotten. If we looked hard enough we might even find an inventory of tomb photographs online, but I strongly suggest we attend in person.”
“There’s no suggestion about it, pal,” Drake said. “We’re going.”
Hayden watched the team rise up and make ready, and a feeling of pride swelled in her chest. Beaten down as they were, hunted by the most powerful nation on earth, they were still trying their best to work together to save it.
Team SPEAR would never die. Do to it what you would.
“You okay, Hay?” Mano was beside her, looking a bit worried. “You seem out of it.”
“No, no.” She snapped out of it. “Just thinking how, despite everything that’s happening, there are no other people on earth I’d rather be standing in this sweaty room with right now. That’s it.”
Kinimaka smiled. “Me too, Hay. Me too.”
She grinned up at him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Drake always imagined an Egyptian tomb would come with a sense of awe, of wonder and majesty; just like the first they’d visited, but the tomb of Meritamun was a narrow opening close to the ground. High pillars stood outside, adorning the entrance, but Drake got the sense that nobody really cared anymore.
The day was stifling, a hot, dry wind blowing across the desert. The vista was open to the right, broken by a series of low hills to the left. Their jeeps had left long, conspicuous tire tracks in the relatively short stretch of sand they’d covered since leaving the road. The team wore hiking gear, with as few clothes as possible, but carried all the weapons and tech they had. Nobody expected this to be easy today and a confrontation was all but certain. Everyone wore a hat except Kenzie, the ex-Mossad agent well-used to heat and even complaining that the odd gust of wind raised gooseflesh.
Drake, sweating enough to fill a pint-pot, took the GPS and marked the coordinates. “Well, this is the place. The tomb of Meritamun. Looks peaceful.”
Dahl bared his teeth. “Now that’s a proper dumb thing to say.”
Crouch sized up the entrance. “Let’s get this done quickly. Maybe we can be in and out before company arrives.”
“There again,” Dahl complained. “Inviting disaster.”
“Well personally,” Alicia said. “I’m more worried about heading down a mummy’s black hole. Who knows what we’ll find down there?”
Drake broke out the flashlights and other equipment they might need. The Jeeps stayed where they were, parked behind a series of low mounds but almost impossible to hide. Crouch, unable to conceal his excitement, muscled to the front and headed in first.
Alicia shook her head and followed. The rest filed in after. Kinimaka and Smyth stayed back to guard the entrance and the surrounding area. Kenzie ranged further afield, finding a position to watch the road and the desert.
“Something tells me that girl’s as at home in the desert as a scorpion,” Alicia said. “And still as nasty.”
“I think she likes that,” Dahl said wistfully.
“Being nasty?”
“Yeah.” He paused. “I mean there’s being nasty and then there’s being nasty.” He enunciated both words, one with more feeling than the other.
Alicia sighed. “I remember those days.”
“Until Drake tamed you?” Dahl asked innocently.
“Torstyyyyy . . .” Alicia said in a warning tone. “Any more of that and you’ll be wearing your wedding tackle for earrings.”
Even Drake winced. The tunnel continued at a steady decline, burrowing into the earth, leading them away from the baking heat. Drake felt the sweat turn cool and breathed a little easier. He wondered briefly about the curse and the seven seals. If all this really was leading to some kind of incredible weapon how had it stayed hidden all these years? If it was ancient and apocalyptic, shouldn’t it also be large? Nobody had invented a miniature doomsday device yet. His thoughts drifted directly from there to the splinter cell operating within the American government. It was truly incredible how fast and how completely people’s lives could be destroyed by those in power. Criminal, really. Those that cast aside ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and took the law into their own hands were surely just exacerbating the problem. But he was a soldier through and through; never having many aspirations other than living a good, positive life . . .
And becoming world table tennis champion.
That reminded him—Dahl and he still hadn’t properly concluded their rivalry there. Who was Team SPEAR’s premier ping pong player?
The comms burst into life. “All clear up here,” Kenzie said. “Great day. I can see for miles around.”
Alicia, confronted with a pinprick of light in utter darkness, grunted. “Bitch.”
Soon, the tunnel ended and they reached flat ground. The earth was solid and dry, the walls of the tomb strong. Crouch flicked his flashlight around and so did the others, everyone highlighting something different. Drake saw colorful wall paintings and a place where the sarcophagus had been; recesses in the walls for jars and treasures. He saw empty ledges and vacant spaces and concluded they were standing in one medium-sized hollow void.
“Nothing here,” he said.
“That’s the good thing about murals and hieroglyphics,” Crouch said. “For the most part, they stay in place.”
He moved over to the nearest wall, directing the rest of the team to carefully scan the others, not forgetting the ceiling. Dahl got straight to business, finding the furthest, darkest corner, hoping for a repeat of Amenhotep’s tomb. Within moments the entire team was peering at the wall space and into corners, craning their necks high, all searching for anything that might resemble a capstone.
“You mentioned that you might be able to find photos of this tomb on the Internet,” Alicia grumbled, rising and brushing her knees off. “Next time, Crouchy, let’s do that.”
“I prefer my archaeology first hand,” the ex-Ninth Division boss said distractedly.
“Any agencies are most likely doing just that,” Hayden told Alicia. “I’m pretty sure we would have.”
“And we still can’t be sure who knows what,” Yorgi said.
Hayden and then Mai shouted out a couple of false alarms and then, again, it was Crouch that spotted the motherlode.
“I think I have it.”
Drake was close and inched over. “I can barely see that, mate.”
“Glasses,” Dahl said, then squinted himself. “Whoa, that’s nicely hidden away.”
The capstone depiction sat at the base of a man’s foot, just below the sole and a few millimeters above the earth. Anyone not looking for the symbol would never have noticed it, and even those cataloguing the tomb would barely have given it a second glance.
“The second seal,” Crouch breathed. “
The capstone and the ancient doomsday weapon.”
“What the hell is that?” Drake leaned in even closer.
Alicia leant on his back. “You haven’t see one before? That’s an impressive erection, Drake.”
“It’s an obelisk,” Crouch said. “Built by the Egyptians and a hundred other cultures. Only half of the world’s Egyptian obelisks remain here in Egypt; the rest are scattered from Paris to London and America. This one—” he took several photos with his phone “—I have to assume remains in the country.”
Dahl also took pictures as back up. “Let’s hope so.”
“Can we go now?” Alicia asked.
“Yes. We can identify the obelisk up top.”
“Cool, and look at that: no trouble whatsoever. You know, this freelance game seems easier than working for the government. Less dangerous.”
“Watch her,” Mai said. “She’ll be wanting to bring a picnic along next.”
“Domesticated,” Dahl added, sliding his phone away.
Alicia ignored them, heading now toward the exit and dragging Drake along. It was at that moment, as they all started back, that Kenzie’s voice broke over the comms.
“Oh, no. That’s not good.”
Drake immediately started walking faster and keyed the comms. “What? Say again?”
“Choppers,” Kenzie said bluntly. “Two headed this way and at speed. You have less than three minutes.”
Without a word, they ran.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Drake slipped his Maglite into his mouth and pounded back up the tunnel. The way was worn and strewn with debris; mostly piles of sand. The close-set walls impeded him at every step. Twice he rebounded from left to right. At his back the grunts and groans attested to almost everyone else having a similar problem.
“Have you stopped for takeaway?” Mai asked from the back.
“Shut it.” Drake ran hard, feeling the heat increase with each step. Every instinct screamed at him to pull out a weapon and make it ready but the way up was just too unpredictable, treacherous. He counted a minute of running and then the temperature rose sharply. The tunnel walls lightened.
The Seven Seals of Egypt (Matt Drake Book 17) Page 7
