“Not to mention heavy,” Sonia said, still digging at the edges of the tablet, trying to pull it loose from the ground.
“Besides,” Danielle added, “at the time, ninety-nine percent of the people wouldn’t have been able to read them anyway.”
“So the story changes,” Hawker said.
“McCarter told me that myths form like that,” she added. “Stories begin as basic truth, but over time concrete things are replaced by the idealistic. Buildings and clothing no longer figure in the narrative because the Garden is no longer a working garden but has become a paradise. The work of men and women to till the land and shape the ground and divert the water is replaced by the power of God.”
“He should really be here,” Hawker said.
Danielle smiled. “He probably should.”
Hawker looked around. Despite being submerged for the last few centuries, the place was empty. It resembled many ruins in the modern world: picked over and barren. For all he knew the smoke and soot were not from the previous age but from Bedouins who might have camped here six months ago. Or before the swamp covered it.
If there had ever been gold or onyx or aromatic spices here, they were long gone. About the only thing that remained were the stones and the carved bricks, like the one Sonia was still struggling with.
He dropped down beside her, grabbed a stone as a makeshift tool, and began scraping along the sides of the tablet, trying to help dig it out.
“You sure this is the one?” he asked.
“It has the symbol on it,” she replied. “The symbol of the Garden. The symbol of life. The seeds from the tree are inside.”
Hawker put his hand on the surface of the tablet. It wasn’t made of stone; it was a brick of mud and clay. It had been formed by human hands. Just like the scroll said.
Sonia smiled in the dark. Hawker turned and glanced at Danielle, who was also smiling. It felt at long last like a moment of victory.
And then a burst of static came from the scanner on Danielle’s belt.
Hawker’s eyes fell to the scanner. The green LED was fluctuating: Some kind of signal was being picked up, probably blocked by the stone of the building.
Danielle must have realized this, too. She pulled the scanner from her belt and held it to her ear as she moved toward the entrance.
A second wave of static came over the speaker and then words too faint for Hawker to hear.
Danielle heard them, though. She turned back toward him. “We’ve run out of time.”
CHAPTER 37
Better get that thing out of the ground,” Danielle said.
As Hawker attacked the hard-packed dirt around the edge of the tablet with his jagged stone, Danielle climbed back to the surface. A glow hugged the horizon to the south, but it wasn’t the moon — that wouldn’t come up for hours.
She climbed to a higher point, up on one of the piles of stone.
Dust, illuminated by the lights of several vehicles, rose in a cloud. She could only guess at the distance, maybe a couple of miles.
She heard another radio transmission and realized the voices were speaking English.
“How did they find us?” Sonia asked. “How could they know where we are?”
“They have the scroll,” Danielle said. “And they must still have Bashir.”
The poor man had never resurfaced, either dead or alive. She guessed they’d kept him around for a reason.
Still, she’d rather deal with their enemies than the Iranian military. And they’d already found what they were looking for. If they could just get it out of the ground and get moving the cult might never know they’d been there.
Hawker reached under the tablet and pried it loose. After pulling it out of the ground he heaved it up on his shoulder, like a boom box of some kind.
“How much time do we have?” he asked.
“Five minutes at best,” Danielle said. “But I don’t think they know we’re here. Otherwise they wouldn’t be charging this way with their lights on.”
“Good,” Hawker said. “Score one for us.”
Danielle moved off, making her way toward the edge of the main platform. Hawker and Sonia followed.
Danielle slid down to the lower level, the level that would have been underwater when this place had been a garden. Hawker came to the edge and slid down beside her, moving awkwardly with the heavy stone. Pausing, he looked over at the pit they would have to cross in a moment and then climb out of.
“This ain’t going to work,” he said.
She had to agree. Getting the forty-pound tablet down into the chasm was one thing, bringing it back up was another.
“Break it,” she said, pointing to one of the large blackened stones on the ground. “Crack it in half.”
As Hawker studied the sharp edge of the blackened stone, Danielle turned to Sonia. “Will it be okay?”
“It should,” Sonia said. “We’ll have to break it sometime anyway. All we really need is what’s inside.”
Danielle aimed her flashlight toward the stone. Sonia did the same.
Hawker raised the tablet up off his shoulder and slammed it down onto the sharp edge. The brick tablet cracked, not only in half, but into three major pieces and a handful of smaller chunks and shards.
Danielle studied the ground, moving the beam of her flashlight around. She had expected golden pods to drop out, like ball bearings or Christmas ornaments or seeds from a pumpkin. But there was nothing of the sort.
She crouched to examine the pieces. Sonia and Hawker did the same. But there was no sign of anything like what they hoped to see. Sonia put her hands on one of the pieces, picking it up and examining it.
From the south they could hear the sound of engines approaching.
“Just grab everything,” Hawker said. “We’ll figure it out later.”
Danielle clipped the flashlight back on her belt and grabbed a piece. She jammed it into the pack with McCarter’s samples and zipped the top shut. Sonia did the same with the piece she’d been studying, and Hawker grabbed the last section.
By the time Danielle looked up, Hawker was already on the move. She followed with Sonia trailing behind. They went down the slope and across the bottom of the pit, chasing after Hawker.
She could hear the approaching vehicles clearly now. There was an odd timbre to the noise, one she couldn’t place. She moved across the dry moat, quickly reaching the edge. Hawker was halfway up the rope already.
She held the end for Sonia. “Go,” she said.
The young woman grabbed the rope without saying a word and started to climb. Whether it was the weight in the pack or thoughts of failure swirling in her mind, Sonia did not move quickly.
Hawker had reached the top and lay flat, looking back down. “Come on,” he whispered sharply.
Sonia began to move a little quicker, finally cresting the edge. Danielle began climbing immediately. Her arms were burning by the time she reached the top. She stepped toward her ATV only to have Hawker pull her to the ground.
He pointed out across the sand. The strange-sounding vehicles had reached the far edge of the moat and were prowling the perimeter.
As they turned off their headlights, Danielle understood why the engines had sounded so odd. The vehicles were sand rails, dune buggies with unmuffled motors. She counted four of them and a foreign-looking offroad vehicle something like a Humvee.
At least eight men had dismounted.
Carrying guns and flashlights of their own, they picked their way toward the edge of the pit. She saw one man step out of the Humvee-like vehicle, but he never strayed from its side.
This man began directing the others, but they moved in a ragged fashion, speaking in loud voices without discipline. It sounded like Farsi at one point and then broken English.
“Locals, just like in Paris,” she said. “These guys hire locals to do their dirty work and then kill them to ice the trail. Those poor bastards think they’re about to get paid.”