“Somehow, I liked the mummified ones better,” Kurt said.
“They were certainly smaller,” Joe said.
It looked as if the pit below them was recessed several feet, apparently deep enough to keep the crocodiles contained as two men walked past them unconcerned and went into a tunnel at the far end of the room.
“Are you sure we’re not inside one of the Pyramids?” Renata asked.
Joe shook his head. “I’ve been to Giza three times,” Joe added. “I don’t remember this being on the tour.”
“It’s incredible,” Kurt said. “I’ve heard rumors of caves and chambers under the Pyramids, but usually on those TV shows that insist aliens built everything and then left it all behind.”
“How would anyone build something like this?” Renata asked. “How could they work down here in the dark?”
Joe crouched down and touched the floor, plucking some pumice from the ground. Much of the cave seemed to be covered in it. “This is sodium carbonate,” he said. “The Egyptians called it natron. It’s a drying agent designed to help the mummification process, but, combined with certain types of oil, it makes a smoke-free fire. That’s how they made enough light to work in the tombs and in the mines. This place might be both.”
“A tomb and a mine?”
Joe nodded. “It’s odd, though,” he added. “Natron is usually found where water enters and then dries up.”
“Maybe it’s being pumped out,” Renata suggested.
Kurt wondered. “Why make it into a tomb?”
“It would kill two birds with one stone. By putting the tomb here, they could excavate the salt and the natron and then bring in the dead and use the materials here to mummify them right at the site.”
“Imagine,” Renata said. “A lost tomb with more gold and art than Tutankhamun’s and no one knows about it.”
“Because Osiris International found it first,” Kurt said. “This place must have something to do with the Black Mist.”
“Maybe they found what D’Campion and Villeneuve were looking for down here.”
“That would make sense,” Kurt said. “And when they found the secret, and learned that it actually worked, they put a lid on this place, dug that tunnel and made sure no one was ever seen coming or going.”
The sound of a small engine came from down below. Kurt pulled back into the shadows as a wide-tracked two-man ATV came out of one of the tunnels. It had a pair of seats, a roll cage and a flat shelf at the back.
Two men in black fatigues sat up front. Behind them, on the shelf, were two passengers in lab coats. Each of them had one hand on the cage’s roll bar and the other wrapped around a small cooler as if they were trying to keep it steady.
The ATV crossed the floor beneath them, drove past the golden Sphinx and off into another tunnel.
“Unless those guys are taking a twelve-pack to some secret underground ballpark, I’d say that was a pharmaceutical setup,” Kurt said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Renata said.
Kurt was about to go after them when he heard voices echoing through the burial chamber. A group of men could be seen crossing the floor in front of the Sphinx, headed past the row of stone coffins and toward the pit of crocodiles.
They stopped right beside it and were soon joined by two more men.
“Hassan,” Kurt whispered.
“Who’s the guy next to him?” Joe asked.
Kurt said, “I have a feeling that’s Shakir.”
49
“The three of you have an opportunity to rebuild Libya,” Shakir told his guests.
“As what? Your satraps?” one of them said. “And then what? We bow to your demands? You wish to rule us as the English once ruled Egypt? And you, Piola, what is this for you: a new attempt at colonialism?”
“Listen to me—” Piola began.
Shakir silenced him. “Someone will rule over you,” he told the three men from Libya. “Better for you that a fellow Arab does it than the Americans or the Europeans.”
“Better that we decide for ourselves,” the Libyan man said.
“How many times must I explain?” Shakir asked. “You will die without water. All of you. If necessary, I will allow that to happen and repopulate your nation with Egyptians.”
The three men went silent. After a moment, two of them began to confer.
“What are you doing?” their leader said.
“We can’t win this fight,” they responded. “If we don’t give in, others will. In that scenario we’ll lose all power instead of just some.”
“I’d listen to them, if I were you,” Shakir said. “They’re talking sense.”
“No,” the leader of the three bellowed. “I refuse.”
He turned toward Shakir with fury in his eyes. But Shakir calmly pointed a small tube at the man and pressed a button on the top. A dart fired outward, hitting the Libyan resistance leader in the chest.
The man’s face registered surprise and then went blank. He dropped to his knees. His two cohorts reacted with shock but then raised their hands. They didn’t want any part of this fight.
“Wise decision,” Shakir said. “I’ll send you back to your country. Where you shall await further orders. When the government falls, Alberto will nominate someone to take up the reins. You will give that person your full support no matter how bad your prior dealings were.”
“And then?” one of them dared to ask.
“And then you’ll be rewarded,” Shakir said. “The water will be allowed to flow again, at a higher level than before, and you’ll be glad that you complied.”
They looked at each other and then at their leader, who lay slumped on his side. “What about him?”
“He’s not dead,” Shakir insisted. “He’s merely suffering from my latest weapon. A new version of the Black Mist that causes paralysis. This is a less powerful form. It induces a waking coma. Something doctors call a locked-in syndrome. He can see and hear and feel everything a normal person can, but he can’t react, respond or even cry out.”
Shakir leaned close to his beaten adversary and flicked his forehead. “You’re still in there, aren’t you?”
“Will it wear off?”
“Eventually,” Shakir said. “But it’ll be too late for him.”
Shakir snapped his fingers and the guards rushed to the fallen man. Without the slightest hesitation, they picked him up and hurled him over the stone wall into the crocodile pit.
The crocs reacted instantly. Several of them lunged. One had an arm, one had a leg. They seemed about to tear him apart when a third one barreled in, snapped its jaws on his torso, snatched him away and swam off to a deeper part of the pool.
“We keep them hungry,” Hassan said, grinning.
The remaining Libyans looked on, horrified.
“The crocodiles don’t believe in mercy,” Shakir said. “Neither do I. Now, come with me.”
The group moved on, leaving the crocodile pit behind and heading down the nearest tunnel.
Kurt, Joe and Renata watched the carnage from above. Any thoughts that they weren’t dealing with a full-blown sociopath were gone.
“Let’s not end up like that guy,” Joe suggested.
“Not interested in being a dinner snack,” Kurt said, agreeing. “The people on the back of the ATV looked like medical personnel. They must have a lab down here. We need to find it.”
“And they went down the tunnel going in the other direction,” Joe said.
Kurt was already on his feet. “Let’s see if we can find them without getting ourselves into trouble.”
50
The security supervisor at the Osiris hydroelectric plant remained at the control desk, watching the clock. The images on the computer screen in front of him flickered and changed in their usual monotonous rotation and the supervisor fought off the desire to rest his eyes. Main lot, secondary lot, north exterior, south exterior, then all the internal camera shots. There was no job on earth more boring than watching security video. It was always the same.