Nearing it, the flashlights illuminated something beyond the balustrade. A series of stone steps descended away from the chamber and led down to a narrow river. Beside the gently running water was a neat, rectangular sarcophagus. At each corner was a statue of a warrior, each armed with a khopesh.
Eva raised her hands to her mouth for a moment, speechless with surprise. “This is it,” she said at last. “Cleopatra’s tomb.”
Milo walked to one of the statues and raised his flashlight to illuminate the strange, jagged blade in its stony hands. “What the hell’s this?”
“It’s a khopesh,” Eva said. “A kind of Egyptian sickle sword. They inherited them from the Canaanites. They were greatly feared and with good reason. The khopesh was a savage weapon.”
They all stepped forward and Mason shone his flashlight over the sarcophagus for a few seconds, before sweeping it over the ceiling and down to the river. “This place looks like a death trap to me. Are you sure this is Cleopatra’s tomb?”
Eva leaned in closer and examined the carvings on the stone lid. “It’s written in ancient Greek for a start, which was her mother tongue, plus there’s another reason you can tell.”
“What’s that?”
She ran her finger along some of the letters. “This says Here Lies Cleopatra Philopator.”
“In that case, let’s see what’s inside this bad boy,” Milo said, rubbing his hands together.
Mason ordered the team to remove the sarcophagus’s heavy stone lid, and when they had gently placed it on the sandy river bank, he shone his light inside the sarcophagus and saw a stone carving of Cleopatra.
“That’s her, all right,” Eva said. “From the little we know about what she looked like, this is a pretty close likeness.”
“See anything?” Ella asked.
Eva looked inside. “There!”
She reached inside and pulled out an object wrapped in leather. Carefully opening the small package, she gasped. “The Book of Thoth!”
“I can’t believe we found it,” Milo said.
“Hold it right there!”
Mason spun around to see three figures approaching them. Two were wearing leather trench coats, just as Ikard had described, but the third was an older man he had never seen before. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt, unbuttoned and no tie. He looked like an accountant.
“Who the hell are you?” Garrett said, raising his gun.
“I am Schelto Kranz. Surrender, or I will order these soldiers to kill you where you stand.” As he spoke, several armed men in combat fatigues rushed into the chamber.
Mason could see they had no chance. After Ikard’s warning that there were three of them, he had figured he could take them on and win, but seeing so many heavily armed soldiers standing behind Kranz, he knew he had little choice but to submit to his demands.
Ordering the surrender with a heavy heart, he watched sullenly as the Raiders lowered their weapons. Even Garrett dropped his gun on the sand.
“Raise your hands!” Kranz yelled.
Again, they obeyed. Seconds later the soldiers were swarming around them, removing their weapons and shoving them roughly away from the sarcophagus.
“It was brave of you to challenge Occulta Manu, Mason,” Kranz said with something approaching respect in the tone of his voice. “But also foolish. The punishment for meddling in our affairs is death.”
“Your affairs!” Eva said. “You make it sound like you’re an international charity, when you’re no better than Hitler.”
“Hitler?” Kranz scoffed. “Hitler was OM. I’m surprised you never knew that.”
“Hitler was Occulta Manu?”
“Naturally. Now there was a burgeoning talent.”
Eva shook her head in disgust. “Adolf Hitler was a genocidal tyrant.”
Kranz raised his eyes to the prisoners and gave them a triumphant smile.
“I’m sure he’d appreciate the compliment.”
“You disgust me.”
He grinned. “Why not join us, Dr Starling? We could use your talents?”
“I’d sooner die!”
Kranz laughed and dabbed the sweat from his forehead. “As you wish. It’s a shame you reject the offer of joining the Hidden Hand, Dr Starling. Locating Cleopatra’s tomb and the Book of Thoth is an admirable achievement, but sadly you have instead chosen another path. For me, the initiation into the rank of the Persians, for you and your friends, a painful and lonely death.”
“We’ll see about that, Lion man,” Ella said.
Kranz ignored her, and kept his eyes locked on Eva’s. “Now, Dr Starling, if you would be so kind, please hand over the Book of Thoth, and the ankh key. Now.”
Eva Starling hesitated for a few seconds, but just like the rest of the Raiders she knew her time was up. Kranz, Kiya and Tekin, plus the Egyptian soldiers they were now controlling, outnumbered and outgunned them by too great a margin. Any attempt to fight back would be suicide, and they all knew it.
She held the ankh and the book out at arm’s length, and Kranz lifted them from her hands. His eyes sparkled in the white light of the flashlights as they crawled all over his precious prize.
“Kiya,” he snapped. “Kill them all.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The Egyptian Army helicopter had flown through the night, low and fast over the silent sands of the Eastern Desert, lit blue by the powerful full moon hanging like a lantern on the horizon. On board, Caleb turned from the window and scanned the faces of his sub-unit — Zara, his 2IC, Virgil, Ben Speers and Don French. Sitting behind them was Major Shafik, Sergeant Sharaf and some hand-picked men from Unit 777. Between them, he had zero doubt that he could take out Linus Finn and the other Spiders.
A few months ago, when his ex-wife dropped the kids over to stay in his place in Arizona, Caleb Jackson had taken them out to the Hoover Dam. That had been a great day, and the dam was an impressive sight, but what he was looking at right now was another kind of monster altogether.
At ten times longer than the Hoover Dam, the Aswan Dam seemed to go on forever, and seeing it in the moonlight only increased the sense of awe he felt. It stretched over three kilometers toward the horizon, and as the Sea King Commando swooped down to land it felt like he was about to be swallowed up by the thing.
Now, they finished their attack plans and prepped for the worst. Dam security had contacted Shafik’s superior officer and told them the terrorists had broken into two teams, with one heading to the powerhouse to plant the bomb while the others were defending their escape chopper on the dam’s crest.
Recalling the briefing, Caleb shook his head. “I still don’t understand why Linus is locating the bomb in the powerhouse. If he wants to blow a hole in the retaining wall and flood the valley, then he’s on the wrong side of the dam. Either we’re not getting something or he’s a total idiot.”
Zara shrugged. “Judge not, lest ye be judged yourself, Cal.”
Without warning, the pilot pulled back on the collective and the chopper violently jerked upwards, almost throwing everyone out of their seats. They all heard him cursing in the cockpit as he increased power to the engine and turned sharply to the right.
“Incoming!”
They braced for impact, and then Caleb felt a substantial explosion somewhere off the port side of the chopper.
Zara spoke first, her voice loud in everyone’s headsets. “What have we got?”
Caleb looked out the window and scanned the area below them. To the north, on the dam’s crest not far from the spillway, was a heavy-set man in combat fatigues. He was crouching on the concrete and reloading a weapon.
“Shoulder-launched missile,” he said. “Looks like Kyle Cage down there, having some fun with us. He’s firing again!”