by A D Davies
Valerio spotted it too. “The light beneath the midnight gaze of Zephon.”
“Quoting Thomas again?” Jules said.
Valerio pointed to the hole. “At midnight, thirty thousand years ago, Zendor, their ‘life giver’ star that Thomas called Zephon, will have shone through that hole. As soon as we reset the model to thirty millennia ago instead of two, the location was obvious—within a few miles, anyway.”
“Huh.” Jules set his ears for slithers; no way was he surviving this far only to bite it at the hands (or fangs) of a snake.
And it had to be his ears, as his headlamp barely grazed the blackness, penetrating a seemingly shorter distance than it had in the caves. Horse and Valerio flanked him, their own lights equally pathetic. Valerio produced another lamp that alleviated the murk somewhat, and Horse fired up the halogen flashlight, adjusting the beam wider. Now the path’s width was clear: you’d get a couple of busses down there with ease.
Jules handled the bangles too, embracing their luminescence for once, but their red and green light did little except cast eerie shadows as they progressed inside.
The trail grew slightly steeper, paved much like the cave floor, only here it lacked the glassy sheen. Raised walls lined their route, a shade over two feet high, evidently man-made due to the cut edges, yet the impression was of a guided thoroughfare. They rose in steps, though, keeping the flat edge perpendicular to gravity, like a shelf—or close to it.
“Like an aqueduct,” Jules said aloud, then pretended he meant to. “Except we’re heading uphill. Not a lot. But it’s a lot for an aqueduct.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.” Valerio swept his light side to side. “It’s evenly measured.”
Jules looked up. “What is this place?” His lamp’s beam was swallowed by the dark. “Whatever it is, it’s tall... wait!”
Jules’s light settled on an outcrop of cylindrical stone overhead, the bangles’ glow reaching it too. Not particularly high, then; about three men standing on one another’s shoulders. He maneuvered for a better angle, and Horse joined in with the halogen, and Valerio with his, all crisscrossing for maximum illumination.
A creature stood over them, looming into the halo of light: an elephantine body, long neck, and elongated head tapering to a beak. The color was unclear, but the stone it was carved from appeared light in tone.
“Indricotherium,” Horse said.
Both Valerio and Jules frowned his way.
“I paid attention at school.” Horse held the larger flashlight in front of him and focused on the Indricotherium statue. “It’s a prehistoric creature. Twice as big as an African elephant.”
“And when did this handsome thing die out?” Jules asked. “Lemme guess—the Ice Age again?”
“Try twenty million years ago.” Horse cast the light farther on, finding another statue, or at least part of one, its fearsome reptilian head full of teeth in an open jaw. “That’s a dinosaur.”
“T-rex?” Valerio suggested.
“Smaller. Allosaurus, I think. Top predator of its day. Predates T-rex by tens of millions of years.”
“Genius.” Jules walked on, trying to find a better view. “So these people didn’t just make up stories. They pieced things together logically.”
“As opposed to what?” Valerio asked.
“Dragons,” Horse answered for Jules.
“Right.” Jules shone his light to the left, attempting to gain some sense of scale, but located only a sheer wall face.
“Chinese found dinosaur fossils and gave them a backstory,” Horse said. “Europeans added wings, fire, and drew pictures. Made up stories. These look closer to our own mock-ups, though.”
“Scientists,” Valerio said. “Like the forecasters in the paintings on the way here.”
“Sure, whatever. You got a flare?”
“Of course.” Horse jogged back to where the Ravi brothers dutifully stood to attention.
Jules and Valerio were left bathed in a wan glow, a lonely spotlight amid the blackness.
Horse relieved the brothers of a flare gun and four cartridges and returned to Jules and Valerio. Nothing more needed to be said as he armed the emergency signal, aimed away from the statues, and loosed it off. The orange projectile shot high without hitting any sort of roof. It arced over them, emitting smoke and light.
Jules swallowed and clenched his fists. His heart raced. “No way...”
In the glowing trail, an enclosed city shimmered. Statues of creatures from every era spread out as far as the eye could see alongside monoliths akin to Cleopatra’s needle rising five, six, seven times its height. Behind, over the entrance, a structure had been carved out of the rock face, finished in huge blocks carved as a gigantic cathedral frontage. It just lacked Christian imagery.
The flare dropped, sinking the cavern into darkness once again.
“Another,” Jules said. “Send up another.”
Horse didn’t need telling. He’d already armed a second cartridge and now fired it the same way as the first.
Jules caught more detail this time. The scenery canted at a slight angle, maybe fifteen degrees, but that didn’t alter the majesty of what he saw. Great staircases rose from the ground level up to doors in the carved rock face, with buildings spread out for at least a quarter mile, possibly more; the flare’s glow didn’t reach it. But it did illuminate the roof.
The shadows and shimmering served to define the shape of four walls, narrowing as they met at a point hundreds of feet above them.
“It’s as if we’re...” Valerio seemed lost for words.
“We’re in an ancient city buried inside a mountain,” Jules said as the second flare dropped and was extinguished. But in its final throes, Jules remembered something that now made complete sense. “And that hole they watched the stars through... it’s a chimney...”
“A what?” Horse slotted the penultimate flare into the gun.
“A chimney. ‘The light beneath the midnight gaze of Zephon.’ Or Zendor. Whatever. Or burning beneath the midnight gaze...” Jules held out his palm. Used the halogen to be sure Horse could see it. “Trust me a moment.”
Horse hesitated, but Valerio snatched the flare gun from his bodyguard and passed it to Jules.
“Thanks. Now get ready.”
“For what?” Valerio asked.
But Jules was already concentrating. Remembering what he had witnessed, the directions, the angles. He adjusted his arm’s elevation, followed both his nose and his memory.
He fired.
The glowing ball streaked across the cavern, low and fast, reaching farther. It presented flat-topped structures, boxes with sloped sides and stairs up one of them.
The flare ended its journey by hitting a wall three hundred yards away and bouncing off it to a ledge where it burned merrily but illuminated only a herd of frozen big cats, possibly tigers.
“Okay, let’s have the last one.” Jules reached for the final flare.
“No way.” Horse pulled it away. “You screwed your shot.”
“It was a range finder. Let me have it.”
“No. Boss, will you tell him to leave it? I say we go on, tackle it from another angle.”
But Jules stepped in, snatched the cartridge, and rushed back behind Valerio. Horse lunged as Jules dodged. A playground game of catch me if you can.
Valerio threw up his arms. “Stop!”
Both froze.
Valerio said, “Jules, this had better be special.”
Using the flare petering out on the far wall’s shelf, Jules aimed higher this time. “It will be.”
The flare arrowed fast and true, reaching its apex. Instead of gawking at the feats of engineering and art, the trio followed the spitting ball of orange as it dropped in approximately the same direction as Jules’s first.
“Great,” Horse said. “He’s cooked it again. I’ll send the Ravis back up the tunnel for more.”
“Wait.” Jules watched calmly. He had no doubt. This was goin
g to land just... right.
The dot fell behind another monolith two hundred yards from them, this one wide with a zigzag point, a hundred yards short of the other.
Horse scoffed. “You were saying?”
A whoosh of flame shot upward, marking the flare’s impact point. It wasn’t an explosion, but the five men ducked all the same. Fire billowed high, setting off another series of hidden clunks and resistance. The wall next to the dying flare shifted, cut over the shelf, creeping inward, a chasm opening beneath it. Air sucked that way, creating a short, strong gust of wind.
At the same time, fire traced along channels all over this cathedral-like cavern. Straight lines of flame, branching off in tributaries, those squared-off short walls actually housing a flammable substance, most likely oil or a derivative. Coverage was patchy, the structure’s pitch inhibiting the light show’s efficiency.
Within minutes, fires lit the entire place, all around the quarter-mile-wide construction: streets lined with statues, boxes with lids the size of coffins, freestanding structures like squat apartment buildings, none the same size. Staircases led to not one but three entrance points higher than their own, spread throughout the perimeter, and a central building ascended high on a plinth, a pavilion accessible via yet more perfectly aligned stairs. Smoke was pulled out of the air and shoved up what Jules correctly deduced was a flue, to the pinprick high overhead, where it would be expelled above the hillside.
“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Jules said. “My mom was into some really weird stuff.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Charlie!” Bridget screamed.
Harpal rugby-tackled her, ending her charge toward the disintegrating floor. He tried to be gentle, hoping he didn’t hurt her as they landed. He couldn’t be sure the structural damage wouldn’t spread to their position, but he could try. She squirmed and thrashed, even as Dan backed away, and debris billowed in a gritty cloud.
A booby trap that couldn’t possibly exist had swallowed their teammate whole, but Bridget was freaking out, trying to get to her, as if that would make a tiny bit of difference. She smacked Harpal and swore like he’d never heard the southern lady do before, and it wasn’t until Dan threw himself on the ground beside her that she shut up.
His face was gray in the beam of Harpal’s flashlight, his eyes wide and urgent. “Bridget, calm down.”
“I’m sick to death of people telling me that.” Tears streaked Bridget’s face, but at last, she went limp.
“I can’t get to her. I need your help. But I need you to be calm... I mean, I need you... not like this.”
Harpal felt as confused as Bridget looked. He said, “Get to her?”
“Yeah, she can’t hold on much longer.”
The tension drained from Harpal’s bear hug, and Bridget sat up next to him. Dan seemed to realize what the problem was and urged them through the static dust cloud to the edge of the hole.
Charlie dangled from the figure-eight groove, her stubby combat knife embedded inside it. Her other hand supported her weight via fingertips in another symbol while her toes found purchase on the half inch of floor that remained when the rest collapsed. Her eyes were closed, teeth bared. No way to crab around to the semi-open door to her left or to safety on the fully intact floor to her right. Too far to jump with no leverage.
“That’s what I mean,” Dan said. “She’s okay, but not for long.”
Bridget pressed both hands to her heart and glanced upward before a tear streaked through the muck on her face. “Charlie…”
Once it was clear that Charlie wasn’t dead, Toby sprang into action from his perch. He showed the tablet to what he now thought of as the chief elder, Dasya, who nodded rapidly, full of concern. Dasya hopped down from the helicopter and gathered the two women from their positions by the well, and they all watched as Dan scrambled to reassure Bridget and calm her down.
“Help us,” Toby said, jabbing a finger at the screen.
Dasya tilted his head sagely and the women followed suit. Affirmative smiles.
Toby placed the tablet down and checked the ropes into the well’s mouth, but having expected the village leaders to assemble a crack squad of rescuers, his hopes were dashed as he found himself alone. With no orders being barked, no rushing around from the thinning crowd of spectators.
The elders knelt beside the helicopter. Praying.
From the scene below, crackly though it was, he heard Bridget intone, “Charlie… Thank God for that.”
“Thank Phil for that,” Charlie managed, straining to speak, referencing the odd gift her husband made upon his retirement from the group—the knife from which she was now suspended.
“Keep quiet,” Dan said. “We’re coming to get you. Harpal, your pants.”
Harpal took a second to be sure he heard the man, but as Dan started to disrobe, he realized they didn’t have time to race back to the crypt for rope. Bridget, too, removed her trousers. As she lowered them to her knees, she pulled her top down over her panties—wide black granny panties.
“Hey, they’re practical,” she said, apparently sensing Harpal’s eyes.
“Not judging.” Harpal handed his cargo pants to Dan, now conscious of Bridget assessing his own undergarments.
“Tighty-whities, Harpal?”
“They’re practical.”
“If anyone’s interested,” Charlie said, “I’m wearing a really impractical thong. I’ll show you if you just get me out of here.”
One foot broke a chunk of rock away, the debris tumbling into the hole, out of sight. There was no noise to indicate it hitting the ground.
“Coming.” Dan tied Harpal’s trouser leg to one of his own, an atypical knot that Harpal assumed would hold Charlie’s weight. “This is gonna hurt, by the way.”
“Great...” Charlie flexed her arms, her fingers on the knife slipping an inch.
Dan secured Bridget’s pants to Harpal’s and tested the strength. He handed one end to Harpal and told Bridget to anchor him too. Then he selected a book with no gloves on, and opened it.
“Wait...” Bridget started, but the two men’s quick, stern looks silenced her.
It’s just a book.
Harpal guessed she’d be thinking about the contents, what it might teach the human race, but Charlie’s life meant more than any knowledge, no matter how much it might alter the perception of our ancestors.
Dan wrapped the end of the pants rope around the twenty-inch tome and took in the slack. Harpal wrapped his end of the line around his forearm, and Bridget’s hands tightened around his waist. Dan swung the book on the other end past his knee, clearly assessing the distance.
Charlie’s fingers on the rock slipped. She felt skin break, a graze or cut, she couldn’t tell, but now she dared not rely on those digits in case blood made her slip. If she’d had better purchase she might have tried pushing upward and snagging a finger hold under the partially open door, but it was just too far and too risky.
Dan called, “I’m going to throw this to you.”
Charlie nodded, groaned in pain, beads of sweat pricking on her forehead.
If Phil could see me now.
“When I say ‘jump’ you turn as fast as you can, push away, and grab the line. No pressure, Charlie, but it’s a one-shot deal.”
“What happens... if I miss?”
Dan shone his head torch into the gaping void. Back to Charlie. “Honestly? I don’t know. I can’t see the bottom.”
“Not... helping.” A snort of laughter burst from her. The voice in her head, joking with her so often, was Phil’s. He’d be furious now.
I’m just their tech head.
Logistical support.
I won’t put myself in danger.
If she died now, she wanted her final thoughts to be of the man who would raise their three kids, the man she could not live without, the fact rammed home to her by a grenade in Nigeria. In a tomb in jihadi-held territory. One they’d hunted for through Ethiopia and the regions once know
n as Carthage. One they believed held the body and possessions of a Persian prince who perished trying to build an empire as vast and significant as that of his uncle—one Emperor Constantine. This unnamed prince achieved conquest and brought political change to the region—farming, irrigation, what would be termed “social justice” today, but this only worked over smaller territories. When outside rebels assassinated him, the people he conquered mourned as they would a beloved king and interred him in secret where the rebels could not desecrate his grave. A relatively unknown figure, he could have proven a great hero in the region’s history.
Since no significant institutions were interested in chasing a barely referenced royal figure, LORI went at it alone and even assembled a team of mercenaries as escort, promising a cut of profits from any finders’ fee. But the jihadi group holding that region got wind of a female-led expedition and took exception to it. They had no idea of what LORI were hunting, only that they must be stopped.
It was a simple gunfight that followed. The ex–British Army mercs proved too strong for the disorganized rabble, allowing Harpal to extract the team via a partially armored vehicle with more horsepower than all the jihadi jeeps combined. But not before a seemingly dead terrorist found enough life lingering within to unpin a grenade. A grenade that exploded at their backs and embedded a clump of shrapnel in Phil’s spine.
So yeah, placing herself in danger in this way was a promise broken. One she didn’t intend to repeat. Assuming she got out of here.
“But nice try,” she said in reply to Dan. “Just throw the damn thing.”
Dan eased the book back and forth, the weight needed to carry the trouser leg a sufficient distance. “Ready... three... two... one. Now jump!”
Charlie twisted her head.
Dan tossed the book. The trousers flowed behind.
