Sheba

by Jack Higgins

  Cunningham spun the wheel in a reflex action that took them out of harm’s way as the plane turned completely round and started to move out into the desert again, the engine note deepening as Romero prepared to take off.

  And then the entire aircraft seemed to shake from side to side and slewed violently to the left. A moment later, it lurched forward onto its nose and ploughed into the sand for about a hundred yards before coming to rest in a mass of twisted metal, orange tongues of flame leaping upwards into the night.

  There was an explosion, followed by another, as the tanks went up. Cunningham turned the wheel quickly, turning away as fingers of flame reached out to touch them and pieces of twisted metal hummed through the air.

  The other truck was moving fast toward the gorge and they gave chase, bounding over the ground like some living thing. Kane stood with one foot on the running board, his eyes never leaving the taillight of the other vehicle, submachine gun ready.

  As they passed into the gorge, the truck bounced high into the air as it lifted over a slight rise in the ground, and he was swung violently sideways. The submachine gun went flying into the night as he crashed into the soft sand and rolled over and over.

  As the truck braked to a halt thirty or forty yards away, it came under heavy fire and Kane saw several Bedouins appear from behind the jumbled boulders which, at this point, fringed the bottom of the cliffs.

  He could hear the bullets thudding into the body of the truck and he scrambled to his feet and cried, “Get the hell out of here, Cunningham! Get the women!”

  The truck moved away at once and Kane crouched low, searching desperately for his submachine gun. He saw it lying in a patch of moonlight and ran forward to retrieve it. There was a complete silence for a moment or two and then a stone rattled. He fired into the night. He threw himself behind a boulder as several shots replied, whining through the air above his head and ricocheting from the cliffs. As they finished, he slipped behind the boulder and, keeping to the shadows, ran along the valley.

  Behind him, they still fired blindly, but for the moment, he was alone. He ran along the great avenue which led to the temple, crossed in front of it, and continued toward the oasis.

  When he reached the rim of the hollow, he paused and looked down into the encampment. Cunningham had halted the truck some twenty or thirty yards away from the tents and he and Jamal were sheltering behind it.

  Several Bedouins were moving higher up the slope on their right with the obvious intent of being able to shoot down on them. As Kane was about to shout a warning, Cunningham looked up and saw the danger. He tapped Jamal on the shoulder and they turned and scrambled up the slope toward the cave where the arms were, keeping in the shadows.

  For the moment, they had not been seen and Skiros was not aware of their departure. There was a short period of silence and Kane started to work his way diagonally up the slope.

  He paused behind a boulder and looked up. As Cunningham and the Somali reached the ledge, several Yemenis breasted the slope, cutting them off. Cunningham fired a long burst to keep their heads down, and he and Jamal turned and ran for the shelter of the other cave. Kane slipped from behind the boulder and scrambled up the slope to join them, praying the shadows would hide him.

  From the valley below he heard a cry of anger from Selim and immediately afterwards heavy firing commenced. He was gasping for breath, and he hugged the submachine gun tightly to his chest with one hand and clawed at the loose soil with the other. He could hear the roars of men behind him as they started to follow and then there was a long, continuous roll of thunder above his head. He looked up to see Cunningham crouched on the ledge, submachine gun to his shoulder.

  Kane fell forward on to his face and Jamal’s strong hands lifted him and dragged him toward the cave. They stumbled inside and Cunningham crouched at the entrance, his face clearly illuminated by a broad tracer of moonlight which streamed through, touching the entrance to the passage.

  “That was a pretty close-run thing,” Kane said after a while.

  Cunningham nodded. “We couldn’t pour it in hot and strong down there. I was frightened we might hit the women.”

  Kane nodded. “That’s his trump card and Skiros knows it.”

  Several bullets whined through the entrance and spattered against the cave wall and he looked out cautiously. The floor of the valley was dappled with moonlight and the enemy were clearly visible as they advanced from boulder to boulder.

  “Wait until they’re halfway up the slope and fire when I give the order,” Kane said.

  They waited in silence. Skiros was in the lead and once he looked up toward them, the moonlight falling clearly on his face. Kane grunted. “I’ll say this for the bastard. He’s got guts.”

  And then Skiros had reached the large boulder splashed with moonlight, which Kane had chosen as the halfway mark. “Now!” he said and pressed the trigger.

  The three guns chattered in unison and there were screams and cries of dismay from below as several Arabs rolled down the slope to the floor of the valley.

  The rest of them retreated fast, followed by Skiros, cursing at the top of his voice in German.

  In the silence which followed Cunningham sighed deeply. “Well, that looks like that for the moment.”

  Kane shook his head. “He isn’t going to put up with much of this. I’ve a feeling he’ll come up with something nasty at any moment.”

  As he spoke, Skiros walked forward. “Kane,” he called. “I’m not going to waste words on you. I’ll give you fifteen minutes to come down with your hands up. If you don’t, something unpleasant will happen to the ladies. I’m sure you and Cunningham don’t want that.”

  Kane touched Jamal on the shoulder and the three of them got up and moved back from the entrance. “He’s got us cold,” Cunningham said. “We can’t let him hurt the women.”

  Kane shook his head and his eyes were grim. “If he wants to harm them, he will, and nothing we do will have any effect on him.” He shook his head. “I think he’s stalling. He’s probably got some scheme cooking.”

  At that moment there was a movement high up on the face of the cliff outside and the stones rattled down onto the ledge in a fine spray.

  “I told you the bastard had something up his sleeve,” Kane said, and then a grenade rolled inside the entrance of the cave, clearly visible in the patch of moonlight.

  He turned, pushing Cunningham and the Somali violently backwards into the narrow entrance of the tomb and followed them, dropping to his hands and knees.

  The grenade exploded, bringing down a shower of stones into the entrance, then the whole cliff seemed to tremble and the roof started to cave in.

  Muller stared up at the cloud of dust clear in the moonlight. “Oh my God. Now what?”

  “We get the hell out of here,” Skiros said. “Back to Dahrein. Leave on Selim’s dhow. At least that bastard Kane and his friends have had it. I hope he takes a long time to die entombed in there.”

  “But Berlin, the Führer? What will happen to us?”

  “Nothing, you fool. I’ll get straight on the radio; tell Ritter the Catalina crashed. Hardly our fault and all they need to know.”

  “And the women?”

  “They can come with us for the time being. Now pull yourself together and let’s get moving.”

  He turned and went back down to the camp, waving Selim and the remaining Bedouins to follow him.

  In Berlin, Canaris was standing at the window of his office having a cognac when there was a knock on the door and Ritter entered. The young Major was pale and obviously disturbed.

  “Bad news, Hans?”

  “Operation Sheba, Herr Admiral. I’ve had a rather garbled message from Skiros. He’s closing down and getting out. There was trouble of some sort, the Catalina destroyed, Romero and his men dead.”

  “How very unfortunate,” Canaris said.

  “But the Führer, Herr Admiral. What will he say?”

  “The Führer, Hans, has
a tendency to be very excited about something on Monday which he has totally forgotten about by Friday.” Canaris smiled. “And after all, he still has Poland.”

  “Can you be certain he’ll react in this way?” Ritter said.

  “Of course. I’ve had considerable experience as regards the Führer’s mental processes, Hans.”

  Canaris went and got another glass. “Here, have a cognac. When you’ve been in this game as long as I have you learn to take the rough with the smooth.”

  “If you say so, Herr Admiral.”

  “Oh, but I do.” Canaris raised his glass. “To the Third Reich, Hans and may it last a thousand years.” He laughed. “And if you believe that you’ll believe anything.”

  13

  THE CAVE WAS IN COMPLETE DARKNESS AND KANE took out the small book of matches he had last used in the well. There were only three left, and he struck one with fingers that trembled slightly.

  The small tongue of flame flowered outwards, picking Cunningham’s sweating face from the darkness. The Englishman laughed shakily. “What happens now?”

  “Let’s have some light on the situation,” Kane said. “Didn’t you leave the tools and a spot lamp at this end of the passage when we finished work?”

  The match burned down to his finger and he dropped it and lit another. He squatted, holding the match at arm’s length, and Cunningham said, “Got it!”

  A moment later, a powerful beam of hard, white light flooded across to the other side of the cave, slicing the darkness in two. The cave had decreased in size by at least a half, and a sloping bank of rubble and stones lifted backwards, completely blocking the entrance.

  It was unpleasantly warm and the air was heavy with settling dust and the acrid tang of explosives. “Well, what’s our next move?” Cunningham said.

  Kane started to take off his shirt. “I should have thought that was sufficiently obvious. We’ve got to dig and keep on digging. At least we’ve got the tools, which is something.”

  “And what about our friends outside?”

  “As far as they’re concerned, we’re dead meat,” Kane said. “They probably think the damned mountain came in on us.”

  “They wouldn’t be far from wrong either,” Cunningham told him. He flashed the spot up to the roof and around the walls. “The whole place still looks damned shaky to me.”

  Kane took the spot from him and set it down on the floor so that the beam rested upon the rock-filled entrance. “The only thing we’ve got to worry about is the battery in this spot lamp. You’d better pray that it holds out long enough.”

  But there was more to worry about—much more. They labored feverishly in the weird, dust-filled light, stripped to their waists, sweat pouring freely from their naked bodies.

  Jamal was a tower of strength, his great hands lifting, unaided, rocks which Kane and Cunningham could not have moved together. Time ceased to have any meaning as they worked on, fingers bruised and raw. Finally, Jamal, who was working a little in advance of Kane, gave a strange, animal moan and moved backwards.

  “What is it?” Kane demanded in Arabic.

  The Somali turned, the whites of his eyes shining in the light of the lamp. He pointed and Kane crawled forward into the narrow cutting they had cleared into the heart of the rockfall.

  The beam from the spot picked out an immense slab of stone weighing at least three or four tons which stretched across their path, firmly wedged into place with rocks of varying sizes.

  Cunningham crouched at his shoulder and whistled softly. “My God, we haven’t a hope in hell of moving that thing.”

  He had stated the obvious and there was no answer. They moved back slowly and slumped down against the wall beside the entrance to the passage.

  Kane sat looking at the beam of the spot for a moment and then he leaned down and switched it off. “No sense in wasting the battery.”

  Cunningham laughed lightly and Kane knew that he was near to breaking point. “It’s damned warm in here. I wish I had a cigarette.”

  Neither of them had put it into words and yet it lay between them like a sword. The unspoken, undeniable fact that they were finished. That there was no hope left.

  The darkness settled upon them with a weightless pressure. Something seemed to move through it in a soundless wave, and a strange, sibilant whispering echoed through the cave as if someone had sighed and the sounds were moving on forever like the ripples in a pool.

  Kane shivered and pushed the thought away from him. It was unhealthy to give way to despair too soon. He had to keep his mind active. He had to think of something other than this box of darkness.

  He started to think about the past, letting his thoughts drift back, examining each milestone in his life, the good and the bad.

  Only once before had he been in such a hopeless position. Second pilot on an Army Air Corps DC3 flying to Guam in the Pacific. They’d come down in the Pacific, ten people including passengers and one life raft. Sharks nosing around within an hour. By the third day they were down to four, by the seventh day two, and just when he’d thought he was about to die there’d been a droning noise in the sky. He’d looked up and there it was, a Catalina coming in to land. Twice in his life Catalinas had been significant. One had saved him, the other he had destroyed.

  And then home. He remembered that first day, flying into LaGuardia and seeing New York again. But where was home? Was it an apartment overlooking Central Park? Was it his father’s farm in Connecticut? It was neither of these places. It did not exist in fact, but only in the heart, and he had searched for a long time, never finding, always seeking.

  Marie’s face seemed to flame out of the darkness at him and he laughed softly. At least one good thing had come out of all this. He knew now that she was important to him—more important than anything in his life. The thought of her was warm and comforting, rather like the kiss she had given him earlier, but he would never be able to tell her these things now.

  He got to his feet to stretch his aching limbs and a cold finger of air from the passage touched his flesh, and he shivered.

  It was a moment before its exact significance struck home, and he dropped on his knees and searched in the darkness for the lamp. Cunningham blinked in the sudden glare. “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s a current of cold air blowing from the tunnel,” Kane told him.

  Cunningham frowned. “That’s impossible Where could it come from?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Kane said.

  He explained the situation to Jamal in Arabic and then followed Cunningham along the passage to the spot where they had finished work earlier in the day.

  The Englishman dropped to his knees in front of the pile of rubble and stone which blocked the passage and cried out at once, “You’re right, Kane, I can feel cold air on my body.”

  Kane dropped down beside him and was at once aware of the pressure of air against his bare chest. “One thing’s for sure,” he said. “Muller was wrong. Whatever else it might be, this isn’t the entrance into a rock tomb.”

  “Then where the hell does it lead?” Cunningham demanded.

  Kane grinned. “To a better hole than this—that’s for certain.”

  Jamal had gone for the tools and now he returned and Kane and Cunningham started to dig. The space was confined, and after a while the Somali pulled them out of the way to manhandle a large stone with his bare hands. A hole appeared and air came through in a sudden rush. Jamal carefully lifted several other stones out of the way and then he was on his belly and crawling forward. Kane held the spot on him and he and Cunningham watched the Somali vanish.

  After a short time his head appeared and his mouth opened in a huge grin. He beckoned to them, and Cunningham dropped to his stomach and crawled forward, followed by Kane.

  On the other side of the barrier of stones, the passage was clear, but the roof was considerably lower and they had to walk bent double. Kane followed the Englishman closely, holding the spot lamp extend
ed in front of him.

  They came to the end of the tunnel and crawled out on a shelving bank of shale. It sloped steeply down for fifty or sixty feet into the dark, swirling waters of a river which welled up from the base of the cave and flowed out through a narrow gap between rocks.

  Kane swung the spot lamp in an arc. The roof was shrouded in darkness and must have been of great height, and the stone walls were black and grim and sweated moisture.

  Cunningham squatted on his haunches, heels digging into the loose shale. “There doesn’t seem a great deal of choice, does there?”

  “That about sums the situation up,” Kane told him. “You wait here and I’ll go back for the guns.”

  When he returned, Jamal and the Englishman were at the water’s edge, and as Kane slithered cautiously down the steep bank, the Somali backed slowly into the river, Cunningham grasping both his hands.

  The water rose to his waist and then stopped. He advanced carefully, hands extended in front of him. After touching the opposite wall with his fingertips, he waded back, a broad grin on his face.

  Cunningham laughed excitedly. “It looks as if our luck’s beginning to turn.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Kane said.

  He distributed the guns and gave Jamal the spot lamp. The Somali led the way and he and Cunningham slipped down into the water and followed.

  It was bitterly cold, and after a while the water lifted to Kane’s armpits. At first he held the submachine gun high above his head, but soon his arms began to ache with the effort, and he slung it over one shoulder, allowing it to dangle in the river.

  Gradually the current increased in force as the gap through which the river was running narrowed. He was only a foot or so behind Cunningham, and he could see Jamal in front holding the spot lamp high out of the water.

  The roof seemed to come down to meet him, and he realized that it was only two or three feet above his head. He pushed furiously as the current lifted him, and then he seemed to slide downwards in a rush and the water covered his head.

  His feet touched bottom and he kicked upwards, then he surfaced to the light shining in his eyes and his knees banged against a gently sloping bank of shale.