‘Hold it there,’ Meat said. He pulled back on the joystick while pressing his thumb on the control button. Like a charmed cobra, the cable curled at the tip (an integrated hydraulic balance kept the camera level). The first clear pictures immediately shone bright and clear.
‘We’re in,’ Meat said. Just behind the blocked entry, smooth parallel walls set roughly two metres apart tapered off into the darkness. ‘Not your typical cave.’
‘No, it certainly isn’t.’ Jason studied the image, saw no sign of activity. ‘All right, Camel, keep it moving … slow and steady.’
‘Hear anything yet?’ Jason asked.
‘Nothing,’ he reported. ‘It’s quiet in there. Really quiet.’
Jam jumped off the pile and helped Hazo feed more loops to Camel.
A few metres in, Meat spotted something on the walls. ‘Hey, see that?’
‘Hold up,’ Jason called up to Camel. The picture steadied. ‘What is it?’ he asked Meat.
‘Something on the left wall,’ he replied, squinting tight at the screen. He toggled the joystick to get a better angle, then zoomed out for a wide shot.
When the picture came into focus, Jason was amazed at what he was seeing: the entire left wall was filled with narrative scenes carved in pristine bas-relief. The central figure depicted in the scenes was a shapely woman holding a cylindrical object that emanated wavy lines. Assembled around her were men and women presenting gifts and food. There was even a group genuflecting as if in worship. Beneath her feet was a repeating pattern of nautilus-shaped swirls. ‘Whoa,’ Meat said. ‘That’s weird.’ He panned side to side. ‘Looks like a mural or something.’
‘Sure does,’ Jason agreed. ‘Hazo, come take a look at this.’
The Kurd passed the coiled cable to Jam and joined them.
‘What do you make of that?’
Hazo’s brow rumpled. After ten seconds, he shook his head. ‘I don’t know this … ah … but this rosette here?’ He pointed to a bracelet on the woman’s wrist. ‘This means she is like a god, or how you say …?’ He fished for the word.
‘Divine?’ Jason surmised.
‘Yes, divinity. This says divinity.’
‘So she’s a goddess. Some kind of religious image.’
‘I think so. But not Christian. And Muslims would never allow these pictures. Very blasphemous.’
Pointing to the swirls on the image, Jason asked, ‘Is this supposed to be a river?’
‘Um, yes. I’d agree with that.’
‘And what’s this in her hands?’
Hazo shook his head. ‘A large fruit … um, no … maybe a container. These lines …’ Hazo said, tilting his head sideways to ascertain a meaning. ‘Maybe a light?’
‘Or something radiating from it.’
Meat gave Jason a surprised look. ‘What, like magic?’
He shrugged. ‘All right, let’s document everything. Meat, take some still shots, then keep the camera moving along this wall.’
‘Got it,’ Meat said.
For the next ten minutes, Camel worked more cable through the pipe to push the camera deeper and deeper into the passage. The images on the left wall had become progressively disturbing. The swirls rose with each ‘frame’, and Hazo’s early guess that this portrayed rising flood waters proved correct, when later images showed bodies and animals being swept ‘downstream’ in elongated swirls.
Most disturbing, however, was how the story’s depiction of the woman progressed. Her devotees from frame one had obviously had a change of heart, because the final frames showed men binding her, then leading her away with spears to the mountains. The final frame depicted the woman’s gruesome beheading.
‘She must’ve gotten too lippy with them,’ Meat joked as he saved the image as a pix file.
Jason shook his head. ‘Not funny.’
At the end of the storyboard, the wall was covered top to bottom in wedge-shaped hashes laid out in neat rows. Jason asked Hazo to take a gander at what it might mean.
This time Hazo was quick to respond: ‘That looks like a very ancient alphabet. Maybe from Sumer.’
‘Sumer?’ Meat asked.
‘The southern region of ancient Iraq,’ Jason told him.
‘Yes,’ Hazo concurred. ‘Sumerian.’
‘So what is this place?’ Meat asked. ‘One of Saddam’s old bunkers? He liked all this ancient stuff, right? Thought he was the reincarnation of a Babylonian king or something …’
‘Correct,’ Hazo said. ‘King Nebuchadnezzar.’
Jason shook his head. ‘We’ve seen plenty of bunkers. Nothing like this.’ He rubbed his neck while glancing over at what remained of the optical cable. ‘Let’s push the camera in as far as we can. See if we can spot anything else.’
With the camera reoriented straight, the hewn passage walls abruptly transitioned to rough, uncut stone. Three metres deeper, the camera approached a split.
‘Which way?’ Meat asked Jason.
‘Left.’
‘Keep it moving … steady push,’ Meat called up to Camel. Working the joystick, he commanded the flex cable to bend along the turn.
‘How far in do you think we are right now?’ Jason asked.
Meat looked over at what little flex cable remained. ‘Eighteen, twenty metres maybe.’
The light stripped the shadows off the tunnel’s crenulated outcroppings.
‘Wait …’ Meat said to Jason, pressing an index finger against the headphone speaker. ‘I hear something.’ He punched a button on the keyboard and the audio feed played over the unit’s built-in speakers. Sliding the headphones off, he raised the volume some more and listened intently. Jason and Hazo crowded in beside him.
First came the distinct chatter of voices, the dialect unmistakably Arabic. Two, maybe three different men, Jason guessed. The exchange was forceful, argumentative. To him, this was an encouraging development. The Arabs had yet to find a way out. Maybe this tunnel wasn’t so extensive after all.
‘They see the light,’ Hazo whispered, translating the exchange. ‘They don’t know what to do.’
The next sounds were metallic bolts sliding and clicking — weapons being readied.
‘Maybe we should pull the camera—’ Meat started.
On the screen, a glossy shape poked out from around the corner and winked in the light.
‘Is that a mirror?’ Jason said.
‘I think so,’ Meat said. ‘We should pull the camera out.’
‘Good idea,’ Jason said. ‘All right, Camel,’ he loudly called out, ‘let’s pull it back.’
But before Camel could react, the tiny flicker dropped off the unit’s screen just before one of the Arabs popped into view and stormed towards the camera. His rifle was safely slung over his shoulder, but between his hands was a melon-sized rock. His dirt-smeared face twisted into a snarl as he raised the rock up high over his head and lunged at the camera. The last image was a clear shot of the man’s grungy sandals. The last sound was a resounding thwack that rattled the unit’s speakers. Then the image snapped offline and turned to snow.
‘That’s not good,’ Hazo said.
‘Ouch,’ Meat said, cringing.
Camel began pulling out the flex cable in fathoms and Jam coiled the line back into neat loops. A minute later, the flattened tip popped out from the conduit, smoking and crackling.
‘Sorry buddy,’ Camel said to Meat in mock apology as he assessed the damage. ‘That thing’s toast.’ He tossed it to Jam.
‘At least we know they’re still in there, Sarge,’ Jam said.
‘I was thinking the same thing.’
‘Guys,’ Camel said, peering off in the distance. He spit a gob of chewing tobacco on to the ground and pointed out along the flatland. They all turned in unison.
Three kilometres out, a military convoy whipped a billowing dust cloud up into the blazing orange sunset. A UH-60 Blackhawk was flying random crisscrosses above it to scout the terrain.