“Well, look what I foun—” The rest of his words turned into a groan when she threw the dirt into his eyes. He loosened his grip for a moment, enough time for her to drive her knee into his groin. His face contorted before he doubled over to the ground.
She stumbled backward, struggling to get away from her attacker. She threw a glance into the tent opening—and saw the gun pointed at Jacob’s terrified face.
He spotted her.
“Run!” Jacob’s scream cut through the air. Alyssa froze for an instant then whirled and took off for the cars.
She gasped when another man surged out of the tent ahead and into her path. She cut sharply to her left, eyes darting from side to side, scrambling to find another escape route.
She spotted the Cessna at the end of the landing strip.
This is a really bad idea…
Before her brain caught up with her, she was already racing flat-out for the plane, the man pursuing her at full speed.
Seconds later she jerked open the door to the plane and dove into the cockpit. She slammed her hand against the mixture-rich and carburetor knobs. She flipped the master switch and turned the ignition key. After an impossibly long second the engine growled and the propeller slowly cranked over before coming alive.
She jammed the throttle forward and ignored the sputters and backfires as the engine grumbled. A second later the plane began inching forward.
She screamed when the door ripped open and the man’s hands were on her, pulling hard, trying to wrangle her from the cockpit. Alyssa struggled against him, fighting breathlessly to shove his hands away from her body, not allowing him to get a firm grip.
The man’s heavy breaths turned into grunts as he strained to keep up with the accelerating airplane. Alyssa groaned, feeling his grasp on her neck and face. His hand clutched the front of her shirt, just under her chin. She snarled and sank her teeth into his calloused palm. The man’s high-pitched howl transformed into a loud grunt as he tripped and dove headfirst into the ground.
Alyssa exhaled sharply and glanced at the speed indicator. Twenty-five knots… thirty knots… It was creeping up too slowly.
I’m not accelerating fast enough. The engine is cold!
Her eyes darted between the speed indicator and the trees at the end of the clearing.
Forty knots… forty-five knots… Come on! Alyssa’s mind cried out as she willed the needle to move toward the sixty-knot takeoff-speed mark.
“Faster!” she didn’t realize she was screaming out loud.
She looked up again and gauged the distance to the trees.
I’m not gonna make it!
She killed the engine and slammed both feet on the brakes. The end of the clearing and the trees continued to speed toward her.
Stop! Please stop!
Alyssa drove all her weight onto the brake pedals as she frantically fumbled with the shoulder harness. She heard the buckle click an instant before the small plane crashed into the trees and everything went dark.
2 Duke University Genetics Institute, Baxter Lab
Grayson Baxter scrutinized the microarray robot as the bank of tiny pipettes danced over the thin slide, depositing tiny droplets of DNA onto the glass. He turned his attention from the machine to the student operating it, his eyes traveling from her auburn hair down her body, resting on her long legs. As if feeling his probing gaze, the young woman looked up from her equipment and tugged at her white lab coat.
“Progress, Tasha?” he asked, brusquely.
“Almost half the way done, Professor Baxter,” she replied, over-enunciating the syllables in her Russian accent, adding a staccato quality to her speech. “First twenty batches of DNA microarray slides are in quality control stage.”
“Halfway? The deadline is tomorrow morning. I need the equipment freed up by noon. New samples are arriving and will need to be processed immediately.”
“Tomorrow morning?” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I estimate another six hours of spotting ahead of us, Professor.”
“Then I suggest you plan on staying late.”
The young woman opened her mouth in protest but remained silent. She cast her eyes down, nodded, and returned to her task.
Baxter sneered and turned to his computer when the sound of the microarray robot stopped. He looked up from the monitor and scowled when he didn’t see Tasha at her workstation.
Where the hell did she go?
“Professor Baxter.” Tasha’s voice came from behind him.
He turned. “You shouldn’t leave the equipment unatten—”
The word froze in his mouth as he stared down the barrel of a black, subcompact automatic pistol.
Tasha’s violet eyes locked on him from behind the Ruger, a sly smile on her face.
“I don’t think I’ll be staying late in the lab, after all, Professor,” she said, all trace of the accent gone.
Kade Morgan rubbed his palms on the khaki cargo pants until they felt dry. Despite the huge air-conditioned tent that enclosed the excavation site, his gray cotton shirt was pasted to his back as if he’d showered in it. His eyes remained fixed on the half-unearthed stone door at the bottom of the thirty foot deep excavation pit in front of him. Yesterday they had located the entrance precisely where the ground-penetrating radar and satellite imaging predicted it to be. After setting up the large dome-shaped tent that made the work in the desert more bearable, they worked through the night, moving sand and constructing the ramp that zigzagged to the bottom of the pit. Despite their equipment and efforts, the bottom half of the door remained covered by the desert sand.
A line formed between his eyebrows as he studied the door from the top of the ramp while his team continued the excavation. He pored over the close-up images in his hand for the tenth time. No discernible chiseling patterns, no features.
“Dr. Morgan!”
Kade lifted his head to his graduate student. Thomas Marshall looked at him, quizzically.
“You okay, boss?”
Kade nodded, ruefully. “I’ve been waiting for this moment since college, I imagined it a thousand times. I only wish Anja and Alyssa could see this.” He shook off the thought. “Whatcha got?”
Thomas handed him a satellite phone. “It’s Dr. Wallace.”
“About time. He’s cutting it close.” Kade took the phone.
“Where are you, Ed?”
“Our flight from New York was delayed, but we just cleared customs,” Ed Wallace was breathing hard. “We’ll be there in less than an hour.”
“You could never make it to my lectures on time, either,” Kade snickered. “Better get a move on. We’ve got the exterior door almost completely exposed.”
“You just can’t stop ordering me around, can you?” Wallace shot back with a chuckle. “Just because I was your graduate student doesn’t mean—”
“Dr. Morgan!” The booming voice from the entrance of the tent drowned out the rest of the sentence. “What an exciting time!”
Kade whirled. His smile faded when he spotted the middle-aged Egyptian man as he threw the tent flap open and paraded inside, trailed by a film crew. Dressed in his trademark crisp khaki shirt and trousers with a matching wide-brimmed hat that struggled to contain a full head of gray hair, the Minister of the Council of Antiquities gave Kade a flamboyant wave and broad grin.
You gotta be kidding me. He brought the phone close to his mouth. “Get here fast. And start warming up your gear on the way.” He ended the call and put on a strained smile as he faced his visitor.
“Minister! Your presence here is quite a surprise.”
The other man swaggered up to Kade and grabbed his hand. He shook it fervently, accompanied by the clicking of the cameras.
“Nonsense, Dr. Morgan! This is a monumental occasion in Egyptian archaeology. The ministry is here to support you in any way we can.” He leaned in closer and whispered, “And to ensure you do not exceed the twenty-four-hour window the council has granted you.” Before Kade could respond
, the minister turned around and smiled broadly into the cameras, affectionately putting an arm around Kade.
“Let us have some pictures together. The discoverers of the Hall of Records!”
Kade put on a forced grin as he faced the lenses.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Minister, we’ve simply located a door that—”
The minister gave him a dismissive wave. He waited for the clicking of the cameras to stop before turning to the exit. “Well, I should let you continue your work as undoubtedly time is of the essence. Please do not mind as we take additional footage outside.” He paraded out of the tent, his entourage following closely on his heels.
Thomas waited until they left the tent. He looked up at Kade from the stone door. “Looks like he’s already working on his next Discovery Channel special.”
Kade shook his head. “For years he’s been doing his best to prevent this dig, now he’s trying to take credit for it. This was supposed to be kept quiet! Now this blow-dried turd waltzes in here with the press—”
“Whoa!” Thomas exclaimed.
Kade turned to the base of the ramp. His student was motionless, holding on to the trowel he was using to unearth the bottom of the door.
Thomas pointed at the right-hand corner. “Check this out!”
Kade’s eyes followed Thomas’s finger. He paced down the ramp, his brain struggling to process the two-foot wide horizontal slit that had appeared in the bottom part of the door as the earth was being cleared away from it.
Silently, Kade inspected the slit. He ran his fingers along the edge, tracing the slanted cuts in the stone with his fingertips. He glanced up at Thomas.
“These cuts are relatively new, made by a modern tool.” He turned back to the opening. “Look at the front-to-back slant. These marks can’t be more than a hundred years old.”
He took the trowel from his student’s hand and used it to gently clear away the sand from the slit. As he continued unearthing the gap in the stone door, the trowel hit resistance. Automatically, he switched to the round hand brush that Thomas handed him silently, and he gently moved the sand away from the obstruction. After several long minutes, the sand revealed five parallel white bars. Kade held his breath, realizing he was looking at a human ribcage. Dumbfounded, he stared up at Thomas.
“I want a perimeter excavation around the skeleton for a block lift. Make sure to keep the soil from around and underneath it for retrieval of small bones and for sample processing.” He swallowed hard. “And let’s get some air quality samples from the inside… and gear up, just to be safe. I want PPEs on everybody. Anybody without biosafety gear out of the tent.”
Professor Grayson Baxter struggled to control his breathing. He wiggled his wrists as much as the tight rope allowed, trying to get blood flowing through his hands again. How long has he been in this room? The hood on his head itched and the faint smell of kerosene in the air made every breath a struggle. He also had to take a leak so bad his teeth were floating.
After this student, or whoever that broad really was, brought him at gunpoint to the parking garage, he was tied up, hooded, and tossed in the back of a car. Half an hour later, he was led to this room inside of what sounded like a big hangar and locked up. Since then he’s been waiting, running through dozens of scenarios in his head about why he’d been kidnapped. He had certainly pissed off enough people in his life. At least he hasn’t been hurt. Yet.
His heart rate quickened at the sound of the key in the door. Footsteps. High heels?
Baxter blinked as the hood was pulled off his head. He squinted to block out the glare from the lamp shining into his eyes. Tasha took a step back and aimed the Ruger at him with a condescending smirk.
“Somebody would like to meet you,” she said, pointing with her head at the man behind the light.
Baxter squinted again, trying to make out the silhouette behind the lamp. The man standing there looked remarkably tall. Baxter lowered his head to avoid the light, glancing at the man’s crisply pressed pants and handmade shoes.
“What do you want from me?” Baxter asked, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice.
The tall man regarded him in silence. Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke, his voice ringing with a British accent. “Professor Baxter, I apologize for the unusual circumstance of our meeting, but I wanted to ensure that we had your undivided attention. I am Lord George Renley IV.” He pointed at the woman. “I believe you have already met my associate, Miss Mendeva?”
Baxter shot a glance at Tasha. The young woman gave him a shrug.
“We have a saying in the old country, Professor, ‘be careful whose toes you tread on today for they might be connected to the foot that kicks your zadnitsa tomorrow,’” she said, her voice mocking him as she again exaggerated her Russian accent.
“What the hell is this about? Who are you people?”
Renley appraised him for several moments. “Professor Baxter, your work on the reconstruction of ancestral DNA generated headlines throughout the world. Some argue that your efforts should have earned you the Nobel Prize in biology.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“To put it simply, Professor, we have urgent need of your expertise.”
Baxter glared at the other man. “Ever heard of a phone?”
Renley met his eyes calmly before continuing. “You will resign your academic position and enter our employment. If you are successful in our endeavor, you will be rewarded exceedingly generously.”
“And if I’m not?” Baxter said without thinking.
“We have complete faith in you.”
“What is this… ‘endeavor’?”
Renley inclined his head toward Tasha.
“You’re going to reverse engineer genes from samples of DNA and introduce them into the genome of living cells,” she said.
“What kind of genes? And what kind of cells?”
“More in due time,” Renley said.
“Right…” Baxter’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“You will be given a laboratory, a team of technicians, and every resource you require,” Tasha said.
“You want me to create a retrovirus and a delivery vehicle into living cells. So, are we talking gene therapy—or a perfect delivery mechanism for a bioweapon?” Baxter swallowed as he realized the gravity of his situation.
“Our means are yours for the asking, but for now, our ends are our own, Professor,” Renley said.
Baxter wished he could rub his temples to ward off the three-aspirin headache building behind his eyeballs. “How long do I have to consider your offer?”
The man’s lips curved into a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Until Miss Mendeva grows tired of holding the gun. Then, of course, you can return to your laboratory.”
Tasha moved close to Baxter’s ear and whispered.
“As a lab specimen.”
Kade Morgan stood over the skeleton, now displayed in a long plastic container on a folding table. He tried to ignore the increasingly nagging itch on the tip of his nose, silently cursing the bulky white protective bio-containment suit that enclosed his entire body. He continued to examine the skeleton, scrunching his nose, trying unsuccessfully to ease the itch.
“It appears to be a male, approximately five feet, six inches,” he spoke into the suit’s built-in microphone. “Based on tooth wear, the age at time of death is estimated to be between thirty and fifty years.” He focused his helmet camera on the arms and legs. “There appear to be no signs of physical trauma to the long bones or the cranium.”
Who are you? What were you doing here?
Kade turned to the opening carved into the bottom of the entrance. The rest of the team, all decked out in their own biosuits, observed him silently. Only one way to find out. He moved closer to the stone door and crouched awkwardly in front of the exposed hole, the bulky suit preventing him from flexing his knees properly.
Thomas squatted beside him. “Just large enough
for a man to crawl through,” he said.
Or die in, Kade thought dryly as he ran his fingers around the perimeter of the opening. He peered inside, the light on his helmet illuminating the dark space before him. Hesitating, he glanced back at Ed Wallace and the rest of his team.
“This is your moment,” Wallace’s voice came through his headset. Kade turned to Thomas, who gave him a thumbs up.
His student flashed him a wide grin. “Lead the way, fearless one.”
Kade slid into the opening. The hole was barely large enough to maneuver his body through it. After several long seconds of less-than-graceful shimmying, he emerged on the other side. His skin tingled and the sounds of his own breathing echoed strangely in the helmet of the PPE suit.
He spoke into the suit’s mic with a trembling voice, “Morgan to base. I’m on the other side of the exterior door, inside of what appears to be a tunnel.”
Kade jumped at the sound next to his leg. Ed Wallace peeked up at him through his glass visor. Ed snaked awkwardly through the narrow opening and stood up. He dusted off his suit and moved next to Kade. Moments later Thomas and three other students shuffled through the narrow opening one by one. They all stood inside the tunnel, spellbound.
Kade peered through the dark corridor, into the narrow cone of light carved by his headlamp.
“Initial observation confirms the data from the ground-penetrating radar,” he said. “The corridor slopes down due east—the direction of the head.” His skin prickled at his own words.
“Ten-four. This is base,” the voice of the female student rang in Kade’s headset. “Secondary analysis from your sensors just confirmed no pathogens in the air. Sure you want to keep the spacesuits on?”
“Whatever killed that guy may still be here,” Kade replied. “This isn’t the time to play the canary in the coalmine.”
He turned to the wall and ran his fingers along the smooth surface. “No masonry patterns or features,” he said. “No hierograms indicating its origin or period. Just like the exterior door.”
Heir of Ra (Blood of Ra Book One) Page 2
