As this thought ran through the supervisor’s head, he suddenly felt more awake. A tiny spark of adrenaline had hit him from somewhere.
Always the same.
It dawned on him that the images shouldn’t be the same. He should have seen the technician appear on at least three of the camera feeds as he made his way to the catwalk by the hydro channel to replace the burned-out sensor.
He grabbed the radio and pressed the talk switch. “Kaz, this is base. Where are you?”
After a slight delay, Kaz’s voice responded. “I’m out on the catwalk, replacing the camera.”
“Which way did you go to get there?” the supervisor asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Just tell me!”
“I took the main hall to the east stairwell,” Kaz said. “What other way would I go?”
He’d never appeared on the screen.
“Get back to the stairwell,” the supervisor said. “Hurry.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
The supervisor began to drum his fingers. He was suddenly wide awake, his body pulsing with adrenaline.
“Okay, I’m in the stairwell,” the technician called out. “What’s wrong?”
The supervisor flicked through the cameras until he was able to bring up the east stairwell on the screen. The display automatically divided into four quadrants, one camera aiming at each floor. Nothing had changed. “What level are you on?”
“Third floor. I’m standing right here. Can’t you see me?”
The supervisor couldn’t see him. He knew instantly that something was very wrong, something beyond a mere malfunction.
“No, I can’t see you,” the supervisor said. “Is the camera damaged?”
“No,” Kaz said. “It seems to be in fine condition.”
The supervisor put it together. A camera on the hydro channel shorting out. The internal video feed incapacitated and frozen. They had a breach in security. They had an intruder.
He hit the silent alarm button, which would alert the guards, and switched the radio to all channels. “I need the entire building locked down and searched,” he said. “Every square inch. We have a possible intruder, or intruders, and we cannot rely on the cameras or automated systems. You’ll have to search and clear each section of the structure in person.”
Far from the security center of the hydroelectric plant, the intruders had found the two-seat ATV with the roll cage and surprised the black-clad guards sitting in it. They’d taken them out with ease and were dragging the subdued guards down a side tunnel when they discovered the lab.
An outer door made of glass with a rubber seal around its edge was unlocked. Kurt pushed through it. Joe and Renata were right behind him. The two workers in lab coats looked up in shock.
“Don’t move,” Joe said, a pistol in his hand.
The male scientist froze, but the female lunged for an alarm or intercom button. Renata tackled her and knocked her cold.
“Amazing how often people move right after you tell them not to,” Joe said.
Kurt turned to Renata. “Remind me to keep you close next time I’m in a bar fight.”
Across from them, the man kept his hands up, practicing a policy of nonconfrontation.
“You’re a scientist, I assume,” Kurt said.
“Biologist,” the man said.
“American? Your name?”
“Brad Golner.”
“You work for Osiris,” Kurt said. “Back in the real world, in a pharmaceutical division.”
“I was hired to work in the lab in Cairo. There’s also a lab in Alexandria,” he said. “Zia works with me.” He pointed to the unconscious woman.
“But the special projects happen down here, don’t they?” Kurt said.
“We don’t have a choice. We do what we’re told.”
“Neither did the Nazis,” Kurt said. “I’m guessing you know why we’re here and what we’re after.”
Golner nodded slowly. “Of course. I’ll show you what you want.”
The biologist led Kurt through the lab, which seemed wholly out of place in the ancient tunnel complex. It was brightly lit and filled with modern equipment, including centrifuges, incubators and microscopes. The floor, walls and ceiling were covered in shiny antiseptic plastic, which made it easier to sterilize if there was some accident. Deeper in the core, they came to a glass-walled air lock that separated a smaller section of the room from the main lab.
Then Golner walked toward the air lock and raised his hand to the keypad.
“Careful,” Kurt said, moving in behind him and jabbing the pistol in the man’s back. “Unless you can survive without your liver.”
The biologist raised his hands up again. “I don’t want to die.”
“That makes you the first nonfanatic I’ve encountered on this trip.”
Standing in front of the air lock, Kurt glanced back at Joe and Renata. “Strip the guards down,” he said. “Get into their fatigues. I have a feeling we’re going to be hightailing it out of here. Might as well look like we own the place.”
They nodded and dragged Zia and the two men deeper into the lab.
Kurt turned back to the biologist. “Slowly, now.”
The man typed in a code and the air lock opened with a soft hiss. He stepped through. Kurt followed.
Kurt had assumed he’d find refrigerated shelves lit from behind and stocked with tiny glass vials and test tubes, probably with a biohazard symbol marked on them. Instead, they passed through a second door and entered another large room in the cave with a broad dirt floor. It was sweltering inside, dry as a bone and illuminated by blazing-red heat lamps. It looked like the surface of Mars.
In the main control room, far from the lab, Shakir, Hassan and Alberto Piola stood in front of a bank of computer screens that covered an entire wall. The screens displayed the interconnected network of pumps, wells and pipelines drawing water from the deep aquifer and delivering it to the Nile.
On another wall, charts and diagrams represented a different project, one that had required Shakir’s men to map the labyrinth of tunnels around them.
“I’m amazed at this place,” Piola said. “How extensive are the tunnels?”
“We’re not certain,” Shakir replied. “They continue beyond anything we’ve explored. The pharaohs mined gold and silver from here and then salt and natron. There are hundreds of tunnels we’ve yet to explore, not to mention fissures and rooms in the cave system.”
Piola had never been here. He’d taken most of what Shakir promised on faith—with a large helping of cash. “And all of this was flooded when you found it?”
“The lower levels were,” Shakir said. “We began to pump them out and discovered ancient drawings indicating that the water bubbled up periodically. That’s how we found the aquifer — it’s fairly close to the surface here, but it runs deeper as it goes west.”
Piola’s eyes sharpened as they got down to business. “So the aquifer covers the entire Sahara?”
“Better to say that the Sahara covers it,” Shakir insisted. “But, yes, all the way to the border of Morocco.”
“How can you be sure the other nations won’t discover or tap into it? Digging deeper than they have so far?”
“The geology makes it difficult to locate,” Shakir said, “though, eventually, they’ll find it.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “By then, we’ll control them, directing and governing an empire stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. Even Morocco will fall. My grasp will encompass all of North Africa, and you and your friends will get access to everything — for a fair price, of course.”