Journey of the Pharaohs - NUMA Files Series 17 (2020)

by Cussler, Clive

  Entering the church, Sofia and her aunt touched their fingers to a bowl of holy water and blessed themselves. They proceeded to the front, where they genuflected and offered silent prayers.

  Paul and Gamay stood quietly in the back, turning as the man in the overalls came in from the garden.

  Sofia saw him first. “Father Torres,” she said, running back.

  He crouched down and picked her up and gave her a hug and then spoke briefly to her aunt in Spanish.

  As he put Sofia down, she introduced Paul and Gamay.

  “These are my friends from America,” Sofia said.

  “Glad to be counted as friends,” Gamay said, giving the priest their names.

  Fortunately for them, Father Torres spoke excellent English. “It is always good to have visitors,” he said. “Welcome to San Sebastián de las Montañas.”

  “Thank you,” Paul said.

  “Since we’re in a church,” Gamay added, “I want to make it clear for the record that we’ve only just met Sofia and her aunt. We don’t want to proceed under false pretenses.”

  Father Torres laughed. “You have nothing to worry about,” he said. “In truth, Sofia has never met someone who was not a friend.”

  Gamay laughed. “Good to know. It’s a beautiful church.”

  “Not to mention a beautiful garden,” Paul added.

  “I am only responsible for the upkeep of the church,” Father Torres said. “But at the risk of sinning, the garden is something I take great pride in. I find working with the soil most satisfying. If we can coax something to life from the earth, we are doing our best to imitate our Holy Father … Now, what may I do for you?”

  Paul looked to Gamay. She was far better with words than he.

  “We’re looking for the records of someone who may have been buried in the area.”

  “We keep meticulous records,” the priest said. “Thankfully, we have performed few burials in my time.”

  “Well,” Gamay said, “this one wouldn’t be a recent. We’re looking for information on a man who died in 1927.”

  “That is a long time ago,” Father Torres said, “but the records go back centuries. What was his name?”

  “We don’t know,” Gamay said.

  “How about the date of his passing?”

  “We’re not sure of that either,” she said. “It would have been sometime during May of 1927.”

  Father Torres nodded. “There were more people living here in those days than there are now. The silver mine was still open. That said, there couldn’t have been too many burials in a single month. Let’s take a look and see what turns up.”

  “The thing is,” Gamay added, “he was a pilot. His plane crashed nearby. And he wasn’t buried here in town. He was buried somewhere upriver.”

  Father Torres nodded thoughtfully. “Very interesting,” he said. “May I ask what you seek in regard to this man?”

  Gamay hesitated. “Honestly, we’re not looking for the man himself. It’s his airplane we’d like to find. We believe there may be something of great historical interest in the wreckage.”

  “Ah,” Father Torres said. “And when you say great historical interest, you really mean great monetary value.”

  Gamay blushed. “I wasn’t trying to mislead you, I just …”

  Paul had to look away or he’d have burst out laughing. Never had he seen Gamay so mortified. Meanwhile, Father Torres gazed at her with a stern face. He was young, no older than Gamay, but he pulled it off quite well. Still, there was something in the look that suggested it was too practiced, too over-the-top, to be serious.

  A smile broke the façade. “Forgive me,” he said. “I listen to many confessions. The story always starts with the mildest version of what happened. And so I’ve gotten used to the code words people use and the ways in which we all try to skirt the truth. It’s become a game of mine to let the people know that I know what they’re trying so hard not to say.”

  “It is of great historical interest,” Gamay insisted. “And while it could be worth an enormous amount of money, that’s not why we’re looking for it.”

  “Tell the truth,” Paul added. “Confession is good for the soul.”

  He tried to put his arm around Gamay, but she shrugged him off. “If you don’t watch out, I’m going to have something more serious to confess soon.”

  This time Paul couldn’t help but laugh. Gamay was at her most beautiful during the rare times when she was flustered.

  Father Torres laughed as well. “Please, come this way. I’ll show you what I showed the others.”

  Gamay took a step to follow and then froze as the word hit her. “Others?”

  “Yes,” the priest said. “Two men from an English university came here this morning. They asked the very same questions. They also did not admit to seeking anything of monetary value. But they had a feverish gleam in their eyes.”

  Paul and Gamay exchanged concerned glances.

  Father Torres noticed. “You seem worried.”

  “I don’t think you have anything to fear here in the village,” Gamay suggested. “But it’s safe to say those men weren’t from any university.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Villa Ducal de Lerma, Spain

  Kurt, Joe and Morgan reached Lerma by midafternoon and quickly found their way to the church. They discovered Paul and Gamay waiting with five saddled horses.

  After introducing Morgan, Kurt pointed at the horses. “Have you two become caballeros in your free time?”

  “Around here they’re called yegüerizos,” Gamay corrected. “And, yes, since horses are the only way to get to the crash site.”

  “You know where it is?” Morgan said excitedly.

  “We’ve got a pretty good idea,” Paul said.

  “How’d you find it?” Joe asked.

  Gamay explained the discovery. “While you three were entertaining the French National Police, we spent our time learning from the local historians. Turns out the church records noted the burial of an unknown pilot whose plane crashed in the riverbed. The wreck is still out there. Some of the older citizens of the town recall seeing it, though it’s mostly buried in the sand now.”

  Kurt glanced off to the north and the rising terrain. “How far?”

  “About fifteen miles from here,” Gamay said. “It’s in a side canyon near an area called Falcon Point.”

  “We’re told it’s a rough hike,” Paul added. “Not one you’d want to make on foot.”

  “What about ATVs?” Joe asked, eyeing the horses suspiciously.

  Paul shook his head. “I already checked. This horsepower is the only form of all-terrain transport that will get us through. However,” he added, “saddle sores won’t be our only worry. According to Father Torres, a pair of men arrived here this morning asking him the exact same questions we did.”

  Kurt cocked his head to the side. “Did I hear you right?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Who were these men?” Morgan asked.

  “They only gave Father Torres first names,” Gamay said. “They claimed to be from Oxford, but Father Torres thought they looked more like military men. They had buzz cuts and bodies that looked like they spent plenty of time in the gym.”

  “Barlow’s men,” Morgan suggested. “Might even be the same crew that hit us in France.”

  Kurt agreed with that assessment. They certainly sounded more like the intruders from the château than the scruffy-looking hoods who’d attacked them at Cambridge.

  Joe spoke next. “What I don’t get is, how do they know about this place at all? We just found out about it last night.”

  “They must have found something in the château,” Kurt replied. He turned back to Gamay. “How much of a lead do they have?”

  “Four or five hours,” she replied. “We don’t know exactly when they left, but a rancher who lives at the edge of town came by this morning to warn everyone about the men who took several horses and a mule from his property. The descriptio
n of the men matches up.”

  “He’s lucky to be alive,” Morgan said. “Barlow’s people don’t leave a lot of witnesses around.”

  Kurt summed things up. “Five hours is a long lead,” he said, “but they still have to find the plane, excavate it, recover what they’re looking for and then come back down the riverbed. If we hurry, we can surprise them.”

  With no time to waste, they mounted up and rode off, traveling into the winding bed of the river as it ran north from Lerma. For two hours they moved without a break. The first part of the journey was easy as the horses walked alongside the river, but halfway to Falcon Point the ground began to rise. The horses took the grade easily, managing to carry their riders up rocky slopes that no wheeled vehicle could possibly scale.

  Beyond the steep sections they came to flatter ground once again. Here and there, the trickling waters of the stream became trapped behind natural dams in the landscape. As the water backed up, it formed a series of ponds and lakes, each of them surrounded by tall green grasses. The lakes were still, their surfaces reflecting the sky in mirror-like fashion, each of them a Spanish-style oasis.

  An hour beyond the last lake, they finally came to a section of river with vertical cliffs on either side and a towering rock that had split off from the rest of the canyon. Beyond it lay a branch in the riverbed.

  “This is Falcon Point,” Paul said. He was navigating from a map they’d been given, double-checking their progress on a handheld GPS display. “Father Torres said the crash site is near here, in that side canyon.”

  A hundred yards ahead of them, a gap on the left led away from the river. It cut into the higher terrain and was surrounded by cliffs.

  “Looks like a great place for an ambush,” Joe said. He looked awkward on his horse.

  “We know they’re ahead of us,” Kurt pointed out, “but they don’t know we’re coming. All the same, let’s keep out of sight.”

  “Who would land a plane back there?” Gamay asked.

  “Only someone who didn’t have much choice,” Kurt replied. “How far back to the crash site?”

  “No more than a mile,” Paul said.

  Kurt looked at Joe and Morgan. Things were about to get interesting. He pointed to a shaded area fifty yards back. “Paul,” he said. “You and Gamay tie the horses up over there and stand by. Joe, Morgan and I will go on foot. Watch the horses and be alert to any trouble.”

  If Kurt expected a protest, he didn’t get one. “I don’t mind staying behind,” Gamay said. “But what, exactly, are you going to do?”

  “Clearly, you haven’t seen enough Westerns,” Kurt said. “We’re going to sneak up on them, pull our guns and tell them to reach for the sky.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “There they are,” Kurt said, looking through a pair of compact binoculars.

  Kurt, Joe and Morgan had hiked past Falcon Point and into the side canyon. They’d kept to the shadows until they reached a boulder field, where the canyon’s wall on one side had collapsed sometime in the last century. Kurt imagined it calving from the rock behind it like an iceberg from a glacier, shattering into a thousand pieces as it crashed to the ground.

  The mammoth chunks now sat jumbled and piled on one another. Using this terrain as cover, they crept within a hundred yards of the wreck site before halting.

  They lay there, flat atop a truck-sized boulder, peering over the edge, studying the men who’d already found the plane and begun excavating it.

  “I count four of them,” Kurt said. He saw shovels and plastic water bottles strewn about. He saw rifles propped against a rock. Most importantly, he saw that the old aircraft was almost completely unearthed. “They’ve made good use of their time.”

  A deep trench had been dug alongside the fuselage, while another, like a sand trap on a golf course, had been dug underneath the tail. Smaller depressions had been excavated beneath each wing, exposing the engines and the stubs of the propellers, which had broken off in the crash.

  He handed the binoculars to Morgan. “Definitely Barlow’s people,” she said. “I recognize the man in the middle. He’s a mercenary named Kappa.”

  “What about the others?”

  “No one stands out,” she said. “But they’re all cut from the same cloth.”

  She handed the binoculars to Joe, who noticed a serious lack of energy in the group. “Too bad they’re not working at the moment,” he said. “It would be a lot easier to sneak up on them if they were still digging with their backs to us.”

  “Maybe they’re taking a break,” Kurt said.

  Joe watched as one man tilted a bottle up high, attempting to get every last drop of water from it, before tossing it aside. A second man was stretched out on the ground in the shade. The third man stood beside Kappa, who had a radio in his hands. At their feet was a red nylon duffel bag with two straps for handles.

  “Not break time,” Joe said, “quitting time. Take a look at the bag. Ten will get you twenty that it’s filled with the stone fragments we came here to find.”

  Kurt took the binoculars back and trained them on the duffel. He watched as the biggest member of the crew heaved it from the ground and over his shoulder and carried it to higher terrain. The bag’s straps tensed with the load and after hauling it about twenty yards the big man laid it down and rubbed his shoulder.

  Looking around, Kurt spotted the horses and the mule. They were tied up to a twisted canyon oak about forty feet downslope from where the men stood. The horses were chewing on the oak’s leaves. The mule stood by like a statue.

  “We could ambush them when they ride out,” Morgan suggested.

  Kurt focused on the man whom Morgan had called Kappa. He was shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazed into the distance. “They’re not riding out,” Kurt said, “they’re flying. And, by the look of it, they’re expecting to make a departure any minute now.”

  Morgan looked at the setup. The duffel bag had been dragged to roughly the center of the narrow canyon. The walls on either side were no more than fifty feet away. Their sheer cliffs rose two hundred feet, widening slightly near the top. She turned to Joe. “Would you fly a helicopter into this?”

  “Nope,” Joe said. “But they could always drop a bucket,” he added, suggesting the only sane method of airlifting something out of the narrow gorge.

  Kurt tilted his head and listened, picking up the unmistakable sound of an approaching helicopter. It was hollow and distant at first, the sound waves echoing off the walls in a ghostly manner, but it grew stronger with each passing second.

  “Sounds like their ride is here,” Joe said. “We need to hurry if we’re going to delay their departure.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Aircraft wreck site, Falcon Point

  Kappa listened as the helicopter approached. He was tired, covered in sweat from excavating the plane, and sore from head to toe. When he called the extraction team, he let it show. “It’s about time,” he said, holding down the TALK switch on his radio. “We’ve been out here all day. We’re tired of waiting.”

  “We’ve had some trouble finding you. The directions were very poor.”

  Kappa recognized Robson’s voice as it came through the small speaker. Not a word of the apology sounded remotely sincere.

  “We’ll be overhead in a moment. Get your men ready.”

  “We’re ready now,” Kappa snapped.

  Despite the fact that Robson had discovered the link to the aircraft and the wreck’s location near San Sebastián, it was Kappa who’d been given the job of traveling here and digging the ancient plane out of the ground.

  A booby prize, if ever Kappa had heard of one.

  Still, it would all be worth it if he could personally hand the hieroglyphics-covered stones to Barlow.

  Kappa pulled the radio away from his face and whistled to his men. “Let’s go.”

  The others were tired and sore as well, but the arrival of the extraction team gave them some energy. They jumped to their feet and gath
ered around Kappa, gazing upward, waiting for the helicopter to appear.

  When it finally showed up, it moved cautiously into position, adjusting its heading for the breeze and then holding station almost directly above them.

  “Finally,” one of the men said.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” Kappa said. He raised the walkie-talkie. “You’re in position. Lower the stretcher.”

  The side door of the helicopter slid open and locked. Kappa saw Robson swinging a rescue basket into place. The basket, in fact, was a thin, rectangular stretcher. It dropped toward them on a metal cable. Despite a secondary guideline to prevent the stretcher from spinning, it rocked back and forth in the downwash from the helicopter, twisting as it descended.

  “It’s going to be a bumpy ride up,” someone said.

  Kappa knew it would take at least two trips to haul himself and the stone-filled duffel bag and then the rest of his men up to the helicopter. Probably three. He was eager to get started. He pressed the TALK switch on the radio. “You’re a little off to the west side. Straighten up and keep it coming.”

  The response couldn’t have been more surprising. Robson’s voice sounded panicked. “Kappa, you have targets approaching. Three intruders, forty meters from your position.”

  Kappa’s first thought was that Robson was playing a juvenile trick on him, trying to get him to flinch, but then one of his men spotted movement and opened fire. Return fire came thundering back and Kappa dove for cover just as all hell broke loose.

  CHAPTER 36

  Kurt, Joe and Morgan had made it halfway to the wreck site before being spotted from the helicopter. Keeping his eyes on Kappa as they approached, Kurt noticed the sudden tension in his face as the radio warning came in. He knew instantly.

  “Get down,” he shouted.

  Joe and Morgan heard the warning and scattered, finding safety just as Kappa’s men began peppering the canyon with automatic weapons fire.