Ancients

'Fifteen thousand years ago this area was forest land with compacted soil good for trees and plants. This equipment should have no trouble penetrating a few lousy feet of sand to reach the old earth beneath.'

'What's the matter, Professor Leekie, modern science failing you?' Dutton asked with a smile, masking his ire.

'If we have to use the laborers to remove six or seven feet of sand before we can search, we'll be here forever. Let me try the probes attached to the walls; their base should be closer to that ancient topsoil--at least two thousand years closer.'

Dutton heard Professor Leekie curse again:

'Damn, I'm getting a better reading, but there's still nothing there. No metal and no empty space that would indicate a shaft or cave.... Damn, I thought ... Oh ... Just damn!'

One of the Event Group assistants slapped his head with his palm. 'Just a sec, Doc. I didn't switch on that last sonic probe.'

Leekie shook her head and watched as the young man trotted back to the base of the prayer tower and vanished through the arched doorway. She wanted to shout out that it wasn't necessary but then decided that they had to be thorough, at least.

'All right, Doc, it's on,' her assistant called out from the tower's opening.

Leekie switched the mode over to the frequency of the last probe. When the picture came onto the screen, she saw only a rounded blackness, as if she were looking into an old well. She tapped the laptop once again in anger.

'This thing, I swear--' She looked over at the base of the prayer tower. It was round. Then she looked at the screen again. The darkness there was round, too. She looked up suddenly. 'There's nothing!'

'Well, maybe your people were wrong and this is just a wild goose--'

'No, I mean there's nothing there! The ultrasound probe isn't picking up anything under the sand inside the prayer tower but empty space!'

'What are you saying, Professor?' Dutton asked.

'I'm saying that the empty space I'm looking at is a covered shaft of some kind and it's deep. Damn, this may be the place. The mosque is here to cover the opening!'

'I was informed that no one knew about this spot until recently,' Dutton stated. 'You said earlier this burial site predates all religions. So why is there a mosque here?'

'Who knows? Maybe it wasn't a mosque to begin with. Maybe it was something else long ago and future generations just added to the foundations.' Leekie's pretty face lit up with the answer to her earlier question concerning the age of the mosque and its foundations. 'My God, that's why the foundation and wall ages don't match. Don't you see, it all fits! The people of this area, never knowing an original structure covered the ancient burial site, have used this place repeatedly. They never knew that a structure was here literally thousands of years before their civilization was even born.'

'Okay, you sold me, Professor. What are you waiting for--let's recover this device,' Dutton said, impatient to be out of there.

'I can't believe it,' Leekie said, slamming her laptop closed. She smiled and jumped up and slapped the reserved Dutton on the shoulder. Then she ran to get the diggers to unearth the shaft inside the smashed prayer tower.

'She's excited about something,' Jack said, adjusting his field glasses. 'She must have discovered the burial site.'

Carl watched Leekie as she hastily gave out orders; the reserved professor was more excited than any of her colleagues at Group had ever seen her before.

'Damn, Jack, you didn't say she gets to keep the diamond, did you?' Everett asked.

The Ethiopian diggers worked within the confined space of the ancient and collapsed prayer-tower base. The sun was now beyond its zenith, which cut the heat significantly. The sand was loose and hard to keep out of the hole they were digging. Finally, a shovel struck something hard with a loud ping--a sound that Leekie had always equated with finding buried treasure.

Three workers went to their knees and started shoveling the remaining sand out with their hands, until they hit a smooth surface. Leekie squeezed her way through the workers and knelt, brushing away the last of the sand.

'A cover stone,' she said barely above a whisper.

'What's a cover stone, Doc,' Mendenhall whispered beside her.

'In ancient times, civilizations such as the Egyptians and Greeks used cover stones to ... well ... cover anything buried. They were a deterrent to grave robbers and usually had curses written in their language warning an intruder that foul things and horrible deaths would befall them if they removed the cover stone.'

'I guess that's you, huh, Doc?' Mendenhall asked, becoming nervous when she mentioned the word curses.

'Yes, that's me, Lieutenant.'

Leekie instructed her team to remove the large, flat stone from the hole. Three Americans plus Will started pulling and prying with long-handled steel bars. The stone moved easily, and Leekie was surprised at the ease of removal after thousands of years.

'Can we get some lights over here?' she called out.

In minutes, several high-powered lights were shining down into the deep shaft. Leekie pulled a long tube filled with green liquid out of her pack. She snapped the inner casing inside the tube, then shook the liquid inside to life. When it began to glow bright green, she tossed it into the hole, where it soon struck bottom.

'There's flat flooring beneath. This is definitely a manmade excavation.'

Mendenhall watched as Leekie removed a small device that resembled a flashlight from a case, turned it on, and pointed it down into the shaft. A thin red laser caught some of the swirling dust, making the beam visible. She turned it off after only a second and looked at the readout on the handle.

'It's only seventy-five feet deep. We can rappel down.'

Mendenhall wished the colonel were there to lead this side of things, but he couldn't dwell on that now as he reached into his rucksack and brought out his gear used for a short repel.

'That cover stone was blank, right, Doc?'

Ten minutes later, Mendenhall and two of the Green Berets had hammered their rope stakes deep into the soil closest to the tower's foundation. Then they tossed their ropes into the shaft. Will pushed off first from the edge, quickly followed by the two Special Ops soldiers.

Will let the rope play through his belly ring smoothly, hitting the sidewall only twice to cover the seventy-five feet to the bottom. He held his position two feet above and examined the packed earth in the green glow of the nightstick. He saw solid footing below and then allowed the final feet of rope to slide through his gloves. He hit bottom and immediately shone his flashlight around the large chamber. A moment later, the two soldiers hit bottom and joined him.

'Holy shit,' Mendenhall said as his light caught the large and intimidating features of two statues along the far wall. 'I think we hit the right spot.'

'Now, that's impressive,' one of the soldiers said as he looked at the closest twelve-foot statue. 'Who is it?'

'Zeus,' Mendenhall answered. 'Listen,' he said.

The two Special Forces men quieted as they shone their lights around the earthen room. The twin statues of Zeus, on either side of a long and dark corridor, watched them as they looked around. Will' shone his flashlight down the eight-foot-high corridor and caught sight of a sloping ledge in the distance.

'When these guys dug a hole, they really dug one,' Will said as he glanced down and noticed something in the outer limits of his light's range.

'What in the hell--' He leaned down and felt the dark earth. It was wet, and as he held his fingers to the light, he saw that they were red with blood. It had been there for a while but, without the sun to dry it out, remained moist. As he aimed his light around the ground, he saw that he was standing in a large stain that had yet to soak entirely into the soil.

One of the soldiers stepped past Will and started forward.