Alysya Siddiqa’s eyes were fixed on the laptop screen, carefully following each movement that Nathan Raine made through the ancient network of tunnels three thousand feet below the naval base. She knew that Ben was somewhere behind him and, not for the first time, wished that the camera had been fixed to his helmet instead of Nate’s. Instead, all she could do was hope that her fiancée was in fact behind the man assigned to protect him.
In the hours since Nadia’s arrest, Sid had been feeling more vulnerable than normal. The betrayal of her friend had hit her hard, shaking her to her core. Once she had calmed down, her mind had gone into overdrive, seeing villains in everyone around her. If her best friend couldn’t be trusted, then how could she trust Gibbs and his team? Or Nathan Raine?
Raine had insisted on carrying a gun into the tunnels. Gibbs had argued that it wasn’t necessary but Raine had proved persuasive. It was his job, after all. The reason he had been released from prison and issued with a presidential pardon — to follow Ben wherever their mission led, as the only other person immune to the tachyon emissions, and protect him against whatever threat awaited.
Now, however, Sid couldn’t help but find some agreement in Gibbs’ argument. The threat had been neutralised. Nadia was under armed guard. The mercenaries employed by the Russians had been reduced down to two and surely they wouldn’t launch an assault on a Royal Navy base. Nor would the Chinese for that matter. Due to the stash’s location beneath Culdrose, the threat of enemy attack was practically nil. So, why the hell did he need a gun?
“According to the map, it should be just around this corner,” King’s voice suddenly cut in over the com-link.
“Roger that,” Raine’s voice replied into King’s helmet speakers as he led the way around the sharp right hand bend in the tunnel and—
Into a dead end.
“What the hell?”
“I think we took a wrong turn, Benny-boy,” Raine replied. His voice was as calm and level as ever, contradictory to King’s own rising concern. In the dark, damp, claustrophobic confines of the mine, his paranoia had only been growing worse. That, added to his rising excitement at finding Kha’um’s treasure, followed by the shock of the dead end, threatened to topple him.
“Damn it!” he cursed angrily, pushing past Raine. Six feet ahead, right where the line on the map ended at the red gem affixed into the dagger’s hilt, right where the treasure should have been, there stood only a very solid looking wall.
“Take it easy.”
“Take it easy?” King snapped. “I’m stuck down here is this hell hole with… you, and you want me to take it easy?”
“What’s going on, Raine?” Gibbs’ voice crackled into both their speakers.
“Firstly,” Raine ignored the SOG operative, “you’re not stuck. The way back is as clear as it was on the way here, so long as your little tantrum doesn’t bring this whole place down on us. Secondly, what the hell do you mean, me? And thirdly,” he added before the archaeologist could reply, “I know where the treasure is.”
This last statement brought King up short. “What?”
“Raine, King, report.”
“Stand-by,” Raine replied. Then he took King by the arm and turned him around to face the dead-end, running his light over the wall, down to the floor… where the shaft of light pierced the ground, dropping through the hole to a yawning chasm beyond. There, it hit something and flared back more brightly than ever.
Gold.
With that irritatingly smug look on his face, Raine didn’t say another word as he began un-looping the rope from his shoulders. He spent several minutes fixing two cams into a secure section of the wall and fed the rope through a series of karabiners until he had built a rig like he had done several times previously on their way down through the abandoned mine.
“Okay, Benny,” he said when he was done. “Just like before, I’ll strap you up, then I’ll go first—”
“No,” King cut him off. “I’ll go first.”
The two men’s eyes locked for a moment and King saw that dangerous glint that he had seen before. It was as though Raine was secretly telling him that he knew he was onto him.
“Alright,” he replied slowly. “Just like before, nice and slowly. We don’t want any accidents, do we?”
All eyes were now glued to the video streaming from Raine’s helmet as he squeezed down through the hole in the floor of the tunnel and shimmied his way through about ten feet of solid rock. For a moment all the screen showed was the jagged interior of the hole, then he squeezed out from below and hung above the cavern.
The view from the camera was limited and it jumped about as Raine slid with militaristic ease down the rope. The beam from his torch, and that of King’s below, couldn’t pierce its way to the walls, giving the impression that the chamber was very large.
“Benny, heads up,” he warned. Then Sid watched as he pulled himself to a stop part way down the rope and yanked something out of the webbing attached to the outside of his hazmat suit. A bright explosion sent the camera out of focus and Sid gasped in fright.
“It’s only a light-stick,” Lake said. The female operative stood looking over her shoulder, as did Gibbs and O’Rourke.
Sure enough, Raine threw the stick down into the darkness and it instantly chased away the gloom that had encompassed the cavern for centuries. But the eruption of light was even more brilliant than any of them had expected, for it was amplified by the chamber’s contents. It bounced off of surfaces, reflecting from one piece of gold to another in quick succession until, for just a moment before the light-stick started to die, the hoard of pirates treasure shone like the surface of the sun.
Gasps of awe escaped from all the spectators’ lips, far more enraptured than the hordes of tourists watching the world famous Vulcan Bomber sweep through the sky, its booming engines masking the noise of the approaching footsteps.
Their lapse of concentration was the SOG team’s undoing as Nadia Yashina appeared, as if out of nowhere, and clutched Sid around the throat, pressing her stolen handgun against her temple.
Benjamin King could hardly believe his eyes, even as he shielded them from the sudden glare as Raine’s light-stick reflected off the surfaces of all the gold.
He had never seen so much. It was literally a king’s ransom, or, more accurately, a pharaoh’s!
The treasures surrounding him made the tomb of Tutankhamen look like that of a peasant. Indeed, by ancient Egyptian standards, the boy-king had been a relatively minor ruler, coming to power shortly after the heretical rule of Akhenaton had brought near-ruin to the country.
“Oh my god,” he gasped, staggering up an avenue of golden treasures to what dominated the space: an eight foot long sarcophagus, fashioned thousands of years ago out of pure gold. Unlike Tutankhamen’s, which had been fashioned into a representation of Osiris, holding the crook and flail, the traditional symbols of kingship, this giant coffin was fashioned into the shape of a baboon, an incarnation of Thoth — Scribe of the Gods. And, as King read the hieroglyphic name of the sarcophagus’ occupant, the association was not lost on him.