Taking a trusted guide whom they had used before to navigate the patchwork of languages, customs, and geography making up the exotic tapestry known as the Middle East, Kate and John had set out from Bagdad in a desert-tuned 4x4 filled with enough research equipment to sustain them for a couple of weeks.
Once in the general location they were looking for, they checked in at a small village’s local inn, hired some extra men to help dig, then, based on their pre-formed calculations, caravanned out about another 30 miles into the empty wilderness and set up their dig site. After 10 days, they had turned up nothing but dirt. And the prospect that the archeologists might have been wrong began to loom upon the camp. To keep morale high, John had been in the process of figuring out a new dig site they could try when Kate’s exultant cry of “I’ve got something!” pervaded the camp. The pair personally worked to gently but swiftly excavate the find. At first, the buried object looked to be a large, flat, dark-grey stone that had been smoothly carved from a type of granite. But when they got it out they were shocked beyond belief.
The side of the stone that had been facing down during the excavation was not blank, but filled with neat lines of a form of writing they took to be a derivative of Sumerian. The finding of ancient writing in itself was nothing too peculiar, but it was how the writing had been wrought on the stone that really caught them off guard. Ancient tablets discovered in the area were famously known for being cuneiform. That is, they were samples of writing wrought by people creating impressions in wet clay using a wooden tool. Once the clay was laid in the hot sun to harden, the symbols would be set and the writing preserved. The writing on this stone, however, was far different. It had clearly been etched, each symbol painstakingly carved fleck by fleck in uncannily equal specifications of length and depth. How an ancient person (or persons) had the intelligence, skill, and means to actually carve hundreds of tiny symbols into a piece of solid stone were thoughts that threw the archeologist couple for a loop. They could only take wild guesses at what kind of intricate tools could have been used for this intense craftsmanship; but it was soon clear that the tools could not have been of the same class as the primitive ones which were believed to be dominantly utilized at the time when Sumerian writing, as this appeared to be, was in use.
The second mysterious feature of their find was that the tablet itself, which they had originally thought to be fashioned from a slab of local stone, was not, in fact, made of clay, granite, limestone, ivory, or any material that Kate and John were familiar with. It was something else entirely, something they couldn’t identify. Free from perhaps centuries of dust and dirt, the tablet’s true color had morphed before their eyes from the dull grey they first observed to a deep, inky black. To the touch, it was cool and smooth, like marble; and the side with the mysterious writing was highly polished—having an almost glassy transparent look, creating the illusion that the shimmering obsidian backdrop in which the symbols were etched lay in a separate, unreachable plane.
Though Kate and John were not sure if this was connected to what they had actually been looking for—proof of the existence of that ancient stronghold, the Tower of Babel—the tablet was a spectacular find, anyway; and Kate, who never trusted hard drives or digital storage cartridges, spent the next day moving her portable Internet receiver around the camp, trying to get a decent connection with the satellite to upload photographs of this curious artifact to her website archives for safekeeping. Earlier in her career, she had learned the disappointment of having photos accidently erased or lost and would not want to take anything for granted.
Just when she had finished uploading the photos of their unique find, John, who was working the site, called out that he had found another one! To their amazement, the second tablet had exactly the same appearance as the first. However, they immediately noticed that the symbols carved into their neat lines were not in the same order as the first tablet—it did not display the same message. Like the first, they cleaned and photographed the stone before storing it alongside its mate in a reinforced steel, temperature-controlled case. Kate uploaded the new photos and wrote a few quick lines of information concerning their excavation for her own records, but was careful to keep it simple and unremarkable. They weren’t yet ready to share their amazing discovery.
Seven long hot days since they had drawn the second tablet from its earthy bed, the hope of finding another, or anything else of interest was still high. With the help of Ahmed, their guide and friend, and half a dozen hired natives, the team had branched out the dig by 20 yards in each direction, hoping to find more secrets under the sand. At the moment, John and Ahmed were actively working the site while Kate had taken a break to stretch her legs. After grabbing her binoculars and canteen, she made for a dusty boulder skirting the campsite and climbed it carefully, making sure not to burn her hands on its sun-baked surface. It was from here she was gazing into the horizon toward the far-off ruined city and musing on its clandestine nature.
“Well, Lady Babylon,” Kate said softly to herself, posing a coy smile of her own, “We’ve uncovered one of your secrets. What other mysteries of yours will we find out here?”
As if in response, two pinpricks of undefinable shape seemed to jump out from the distant line of dancing heat waves. Half assuming them to be mirage-like in nature, Kate casually raised her binoculars and looked through the lenses. It took her a moment to scan the dusty plain before she had the moving objects in sight. Immediately, her heart leapt from her chest, and she, in turn, leapt from the boulder. She had to warn John! Two Iraqi military trucks full of armed men were speeding across the desert, heading right toward them.
Chapter 13
The pointed tip of the mini pickaxe sunk halfway into the wall of compressed earth before the time-hardened cake of dirt would yield to it no more. With a firm pull, John Caldwell removed the tool only to methodically strike it again into the face of the small mound—just a couple of inches from his first puncture. As he had surmised would happen, the compacted sandy soil cracked between the two perforations, and he was able to break away a solid chunk the size of his palm. He placed the piece into a large rubber bucket at his side, to be further broken down and sifted through later. The exposed area underneath looked exactly the same as the lump he had just removed - a coarse, off-white mixture of sand and clay. He applied the pickaxe again. Surprisingly, a larger piece of earth immediately fell away to reveal a rounded corner of smooth, jet black stone. John reached for it excitedly, the exposed element feeling cool to the touch.
“Ahmed! Come quick,” he shouted. “I think it’s another obsidian tablet!” Hastily, he snatched up his small chisel and began chipping away at more of the plaster-like dirt from around the smooth, exposed edges.
Ahmed was instantly at his side, marveling at the portion of uncovered slab. “You’re right, Sadiq! That makes three now! I wonder how many there are…”
“It’s impossible to tell since we don’t even know what they are,” John grunted into the earth. He was crouched on his haunches, his face just inches from the crumbly wall face.
“Here,” he motioned to the assistant, “grab a chisel and work on digging out the dirt underneath it. I’ll try to crack off more from the top.” John put his chisel down, grabbed up the small pickaxe again with an expert hand, and began skillfully puncturing the layered cake of fine sand, dirt, and clay resting on top of the slab. Straightaway, cracks in the earth appeared, and John was able to slough off decent-sized chunks.
Beneath him, Ahmed was applying the same technique with his chisel and hammer. More men appeared as excited shouts of the find made their way around the site. John held up a hand in a gesture to keep them back. There wasn’t much room here, and too many hands would be more detrimental than helpful. With John and Ahmed working methodically, it took only a few minutes to expose an entire corner—about a quarter of the tablet, if its dimensions were the same as the other two, which John assumed they were.
“Hand me a brush,” bade John
, blowing dust off the now familiar-looking glassy surface. Ahmed handed him the tool and watched as John cleared off the fine, sandy particles to uncover the neatly etched writing they had expected to find.
“Incredible,” John breathed to himself, again astonished at the highly polished black stone and inexplicably carved writing. “Come on,” he urged, “let’s get another corner out.”
The two quickly resumed their work, now being watched by the members of the entire camp who were craning their necks and rubbing their chins in anticipation. By choosing one of the bare edges and following it along into the face of the mound, John and Ahmed were able to chip and chunk the clay-dirt from above and beneath it steadily. Deeper into the face of the dirt wall, the elements became finer, crumblier—made up of less clay and more sand. The diggers exchanged their piercing tools for miniature trowels, almost spoon-like in shape, and scooped out the remaining gritty bed surrounding the tablet’s second corner.
Then, John grabbed the soft-bristle brush next to his knees and was sweeping the newly exposed surface when he suddenly froze.
“What is it, Sadiq?” asked Ahmed, leaning over to see. His eyes widened in shock.
The writing on this stone. It was different!
Up to this point, the engravings on the tablets they’d found had been long, neat lines of an undetermined, but definite cuneiform-style script. (The short, consistent, wedge-shaped prongs from which all the different characters were formed were what gave it away). But there was absolutely nothing cuneiform about the ciphers which now lay before them. Seeming to almost speak of an otherworld or netherworld origin, the symbols, about twice as large as the Sumerian letters, twisted and curved across the shadowy, crystalline stone-like serpents. Some were tightly coiled like spirals, others long and bendy like a representation of hills and valleys. In several places, the curves were intersected by short straight lines which formed geometric shapes—most commonly triangles and trapezoids. Dispersed between the large spherical twists were smaller images, whose etched precision phenomenally rivaled that of laser-cutting. At their crudest level, the carved images depicted squares within squares, half-moons, curved moons slivers, and perfect circles with dots impressed their exact centers. But John couldn’t help feeling a deep chill run up his spine as he recognized in some of the more intricate icons’ striking similarities to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, early Asiatic pictograms, and even Mesoamerican character ciphers.
“What kind of writing is that?” Ahmed asked, trailing his brush gently across the swirls in the stone.
“I only know one thing,” John finally said. “If this is real, we may have just discovered the ultimate evidence of the origins of civilization.”
Chapter 14
“John! John!” Kate’s terrified shout filled the air as she suddenly bolted onto the site, a cloud of dust riding her heels. “Quick, we’ve got to go! We’ve got company and I don’t think they’re here for coffee!”
Without stopping to explain or even catch her breath, she ran in frenzy around the site, collecting their scattered items—water jugs, packs of tools, notebooks and logs—and throwing them into the 4x4. The workers froze as they watched her; unsure what was happening and what they should be doing. Agitated that neither John nor Ahmed had moved a muscle from where they were crouched and that the natives were watching her as if she was crazy, she raced over to the part of the mound where everyone was gathered, yelling as she ran.
“John! Didn’t you hear me? Everyone, we’ve got to leave now! Get your stuff and get in the trucks!”
“Geez, where’s the fire, Kate?” John replied without looking at her. He was busy working on something in the dirt. Ahmed glanced over at Kate with a mixed expression of confusion and worry, but remained glued to John’s side.
“No one’s coming out here,” John insisted half-heartedly. “We’ve had all our paperwork checked and double-checked. And no low-down pencil-pusher is going to come out in this heat to collect a bribe. You probably just saw a mirage. Besides, we just found another black tablet! Kate, you won’t believe what it’s got carved—”
But Kate wasn’t listening. She knew the difference between a passive governmental permit check and what was, in fact, speeding toward them—heavily armed with semi-automatics—right this second. She had no doubt that their visitors had to do with the “prank” calls they had been getting the last week at their inn: “Leave the dig. Get out of the country or you’ll be sorry.” Someone was here to make good on their threat, and there was no way in Hades she was going to be spending her summer cooped up in an Iraqi jail, or worse…
With fear-fueled anger and strength, she snatched up John’s damp, dirty shirt collar and hoisted him to his feet. “That doesn’t look like a mirage to me!” she screeched as she shoved her binoculars, still attached to her neck, into his hands and forced him to look toward the heat-saturated horizon. Knowing that, at this point, resistance was futile, John hastily scanned the desert, preparing to tell his deranged wife that she was out of her mind when a sudden glare of bright light flashed across the lens. Adjusting the settings with a few quick moves of his fingers, a blurry image came into focus—two military trucks full of men, and guns. John immediately jerked into action.
“She’s right!” He dropped the binoculars and crouched back into the dirt, unorthodoxly wrapping his sweat-slick hands around the exposed edges of the obsidian stone. “Ahmed, tell everyone to get out of here; then, go get the case and get it ready. I’ll try to jimmy this out.”
Ahmed scurried to the truck to get the case holding the two other tablets, yelling as he went in his native tongue for the workers to leave. The scramble began as the hired natives dropped everything and ran to their respective vehicles. Several leapt onto already full 4x4’s, standing on whatever they could find and holding onto the exposed vehicle frames as they drove out in clouds of dust. Kate felt a twinge of relief at their fast response; at least, they should be able to get away, unlike themselves…
“John, stop!” Kate ordered frantically. “There’s no time, you have to leave it!”
“Go start the jeep!” he yelled, placing his feet against the grainy mound wall. Using his strong legs, he pushed against the mound face and pulled at the smooth tablet, rocking it back and forth to loosen the earth holding fast to it.
“Idiot!” Kate screamed in terrified rage, stomping her foot to the ground. She ran toward their 4x4, passing Ahmed who clutched the oversized, steel briefcase in his arms. “You’re both idiots!” she hollered over her shoulder. “A rock is not worth dying for!”
Ahmed sprinted on as if he hadn’t heard, while Kate launched herself into the driver’s seat. Furiously, she smashed in the clutch and turned over the engine. A short-lived growl snarled from the hood before abruptly dying away with a sickening sputter.
“Come on!” Kate mercilessly stomped on the gas pedal several times, straining her wrist to turn the key. In the corner of her eye she could see the plume of dust rising from the oncoming trucks—they would be here in less than a minute. With one more forceful kick to the accelerator, the engine caught the fuel and revved up with a thunderous roar. Grabbing the shifter, Kate threw the truck into gear and pulled off a tight U-turn. Sand and dust whipped up around her as the tires spun across the desert terrain. She headed to the mound and jerked to a stop beside John and Ahmed. Her trailing cloud of dust momentarily blew over them, concealing them from view.
“Get in!” she ordered. The dust cleared and she could see John still pulling at the piece of uncovered tablet, Ahmed right next to him, holding open the case with the other two glassy stones nestled inside. The approaching caravan roared ominously behind them.
John gritted his teeth and gave a final yank.
SNAP!
The tablet suddenly broke, the momentum of his strain throwing John backward into the dirt.
Mumbling a few words, John masterfully contorted himself and quickly regained his feet. He shoved the broken piece into the waiting case and
slammed it shut.
“Go, go, go!” He pushed Ahmed toward the passenger side and scrambled to the back of the vehicle. Kate made a show of revving up the engine as John fumbled with the straps of a harness, securely attaching the precious cargo to the 4x4. Like a signal from a starting pistol, the final click of a belt sent him hurdling into the back of the jeep, and Kate pealed out of the site barely one step ahead of their pursuers.
Chapter 15
Kate floored the accelerator as the tinny clanks of ricocheting bullets followed them across the wind-cracked flats.
“They’re actually shooting at us!” she shouted in disbelief. Simultaneously, John and Ahmed looked behind to see the over-sized military cargo truck hotly pursuing them. Two of these trucks had careened into the dig site, but only one had followed after them. The other must have stopped to rummage through the site. With a deep twinge of regret, John sincerely hoped they wouldn’t find the remnants of the third tablet sticking out of the earth.
Kate glanced into the rearview mirror. Through the wake of dust she saw the open bed of the pursuing vehicle, as well as the 15 men in uniform clinging to the bed’s uncovered canvas frame. Two men were leaning against the top of the cab, where was welded a swivel stand with a large automatic weapon sitting in its cradle. Instinctively, she ducked her head as several sharp pops from the truck were followed by more clanks of bullets hitting the side of the 4x4.
The Snare Page 5
