Cobb had no idea what McNutt was talking about. It was like he was suddenly speaking in a foreign language. All Cobb knew about raves was what he had seen on television. ‘You mean the all-night dance parties where blitzed teenagers act like zombies? No, Hector, I can’t say that I have.’
‘I’m not advocating the lifestyle,’ Garcia said defensively. ‘I just needed to know if you were familiar with the concept.’
‘Yes, I know what they are. Why?’
Garcia knew he needed to make his point quickly before Cobb shut down the conversation. Still, he felt a little background information would help his cause.
‘Raves’ he explained, ‘started out as a way for kids to blow off steam. The physical exertion of a dance marathon was just innocent stress relief. The problem was that some people didn’t know when to quit. When a few hours of dancing wasn’t enough, they turned to pharmaceutical alternatives to help them mellow out or to keep the party going. Ecstasy, Crystal Meth, Special K, GHB — it was all being passed around like candy. These kids would wind up naked in the hospital, with absolutely no recollection of how they got there.’
McNutt sighed. ‘God, I miss the nineties.’
Cobb smiled. ‘So it was a great time for drug dealers. What’s the point?’
Garcia continued. ‘Besides drugs, the other common element at most raves was an abundance of glow sticks. People would attach them to their clothing or wave them through the air. I’m talking about maybe a thousand people all drawing shapes in the darkness. It’s pretty cool when you see it sober. In a drug-fueled haze, the effect is mind-blowing.’ He paused briefly. ‘Or so I’ve heard.’
‘Go on.’
Garcia looked back at Cobb. ‘The only people who appreciated the light show more than the inebriated masses were the authorities. Particularly the DEA.’
Cobb scrunched his face in confusion. He couldn’t figure out why the Drug Enforcement Agency had an interest in plastic lights. ‘Why’s that?’
‘The biggest raves were thrown by the biggest narcotics distributors. Why waste time selling single hits on the street when they could sell five thousand hits overnight? The DEA knew that the problem was only getting bigger, but the nature of the enterprise left very few clues. These parties would be announced only an hour or two before they started, and all they left behind were overdose victims. Them, and a trampled field or filthy warehouse full of spent glow sticks.’
Cobb finally made the connection. ‘Somewhere along the line, an agent got the idea to check the serial numbers of the glow sticks. If they could determine the manufacturer, they could track where the shipment had been delivered. And if they knew the point of sale, they could get the name of the buyer.’
Garcia nodded. ‘You don’t just walk in and buy ten thousand glow sticks off the shelf. You have to order them in advance, to make sure they’re available on rave night. The party favors led the authorities to the masterminds. They’ve been keeping a logbook on every glow stick manufacturer ever since. They can tell every product, where it was made, by whom, and where it was delivered.’
He pointed to the plastic tube in Cobb’s hand. ‘Which is why I can tell that this glow stick was made and sold in Greece. I’m sure of it.’
‘Okay,’ Cobb said, ‘I’m convinced. The glow stick is from Greece, not Libya. We’ll adjust our theories accordingly. Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ he said as he grabbed a paper towel from the sink and tried to clean the mustard from his T-shirt, ‘I was finally able to salvage some of the footage from Jasmine’s flashlight. Not everything, of course, but a pretty good chunk of it. We’ll be able to access it soon.’
‘How soon?’ Sarah demanded.
He glanced at his watch. ‘Another minute or two. I’m currently uploading the video to our network server. Once the process is done, we’ll be able to view the footage on our televisions, our laptops, and even our phones. As long as you’re on our encrypted network, you’ll have access to the file.’
Cobb nodded his appreciation. Though they were working toward a common goal, each of them was focused on a different part of the investigation. Once the briefing was over, they could view the footage whenever and wherever they liked, without getting in each other’s way or fighting over the remote control.
But that was later.
In the meantime, they would view the video together.
As a team.
43
Garcia tapped a few buttons on his digital tablet. A moment later, the footage from Jasmine’s flashlight was streaming to the television.
Cobb, McNutt, and Sarah watched as he sped through the first portion of the video. They had been with Jasmine when she first entered the cisterns, and there was nothing in those images that they hadn’t seen before. They were much more interested in what her flashlight had recorded after she crawled through the wall.
When Jasmine reached the reinforced tunnel on the screen, Garcia allowed the video to play at normal speed. The footage wasn’t as smooth as the others. It was a rough, choppy assembly of the segments that Garcia was able to save. It looked more like an aged 8mm movie than a modern digital film.
But it met their basic needs.
Sarah saw glimpses of the pictograph. ‘Those are the carvings we found.’
Jasmine’s narration played over the images. Like the video, portions of the audio had been mangled as well. Her voice sounded as though it were coming from the wrong side of a bad telephone connection.
‘I tried to double-check her comments; at least, the ones I could decipher,’ Garcia said. ‘But I had no luck at all.’
‘Why not?’ Cobb wondered.
‘Because my keyboard has letters, not ancient Egyptian symbols. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out a way to type in “a face with horns next to a squiggly line”.’
Eventually, the final panel of the pictograph came into view. They could see the depiction of the tunnel, the waiting boats, and the symbol of Alexander the Great. They listened to the brief exchange between Sarah and Jasmine that they had heard previously on Sarah’s footage and watched as Sarah disappeared into the tunnel.
Once she was gone, Jasmine retraced her steps to the beginning of the wall. She scanned every inch of it, making sure to capture the images for posterity.
To her, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
When she reached the final panel for a second time, the image froze on the screen. At first, Cobb and the others assumed that it was another glitch in her hard drive, but that wasn’t the case at all. Garcia had stopped the video on purpose.
‘Guys,’ he warned, ‘the rest is… it’s hard to watch.’
Cobb nodded in understanding. ‘Maybe so, but we need to see it.’
Garcia swallowed hard and restarted the footage.
On screen, Jasmine didn’t have time to notice anything suspicious. There were no investigations of unknown noises, no calling out to mysterious shadows. One moment she was focused on the wall, and the next she was fighting off an attack.
At first glance, there was little to be gleaned from the frantic images on the screen. The footage showed little more than a panicked blur of movement as she reckoned with an unknown intruder. The muffled screams and agonized groans confirmed that she had been taken by force, and the haunting calm of her sudden silence left them wondering how badly she was injured when she was finally subdued.
A moment later, the video stopped abruptly.
Several seconds passed before anyone said a word.
‘That’s it,’ Garcia whispered. ‘There’s nothing left to see.’
McNutt shook his head. ‘Play it again.’