'Will, drive south, very slowly.'
'But, madam, there is no road, we are off the track. We cannot go further into the plain!' Professor Arturi said as he looked out into the darkness.
Mendenhall rolled his eyes and then put the large Land Rover into first gear and started forward. The wind picked up in violence as if in warning as the small line of vehicles moved onto the plain of Luxor.
Two hours later, Sarah was biting her lip. They had come across nothing even remotely manmade in this horrid area of Egypt. They had traveled in a zigzag pattern and had even spread the vehicles out in a straight line in case they had overlooked something.
'Stop and let me take another bearing,' Sarah said as she placed the laptop on her knees.
The wind was howling at sixty miles per hour, rocking the Land Rover on its springs, and the windows were starting to pit from the abrasive sand. Will felt movement and thought at first it was just the wind. Then it happened again. He felt it in his stomach first, and as it increased he grabbed the steering wheel.
'Did you feel that?' he asked Sarah.
'What,' she asked, her face aglow with the brightness of the screen. She did not turn away from the positioning report.
Mendenhall looked around and peered outside. He turned on the spotlight and shone it around, but he still could not see ten feet in front of the vehicle. Then he let go of the wheel and light handle when he felt the truck lurch again. He knew then that somehow it had slipped downward.
'Uh-oh,' Will said when he felt it again.
'What in the hell was that?' Sarah said, looking up when the laptop jumped in her lap.
'We must leave this spot. There is quicksand all over this area; I told you it was dangerous to leave the road!' Arturi whined.
'Will, get us moving.'
Mendenhall put the Land Rover in gear once more and it started to struggle forward. Suddenly the rear end went down into the sand and the two men in the back screamed. Then the vehicle rolled to the right, then to the left, and then the front went down into the sand. The laptop slid off Sarah's legs as she reached for the radio. Then the Land Rover rolled nearly upside down and then quickly straightened before vanishing into the sand.
The security personnel in the convoy could not believe their eyes as they left the safety of their own transports and ran for the spot where the lead vehicle had vanished.
Sarah and Will Mendenhall had disappeared into the soft sand and there was not so much as a tire track to say they had ever been there.
Jack listened to the final plan for the invasion of Crete. He was impressed with what commanding Marine Corps General Pete Hamilton had devised with the commander of the Joint Chiefs.
'It all boils down to the defenders taking the first piece of bait we throw into the water.'
Collins nodded at the logic. 'If they take your bait, that will expose all of their batteries before our people begin the assault.'
'These are mercenaries--not unlike the terrorists we have tangled with--and I have learned that although it's hard to get inside of their heads, they can be expected to do one thing when the shooting starts, and that's to shoot back. Surprise is key; if we achieve it, we have a fighting chance.'
Jack nodded and looked at his watch.
'Worried about your team in Egypt?' the general asked.
'If we have to depend on taking the front door and using that to gain access to their underground center instead of just holding it, we could be in for a long-running and very costly battle.'
The marine general nodded in understanding.
Jack walked away from the planning table and cornered Everett.
'Nothing from Sarah and Will?'
'I've got Ryan babysitting communications, but there's one hell of a storm over the search area and they may not be able to get any signal out.'
Jack looked at his watch for the hundredth time.
'Jack, Sarah knows what she's doing. Unless she's been swallowed up by the desert, there's no way she'll fail us.'
The eeriness of the sudden silence did not set well with the occupants of the Land Rover. Sand completely covered the vehicle and the air was growing foul.
'We are doomed because you refused to listen to the people who have lived here for thousands of years!' Arturi said, wiping sweat from his brow.
Sarah looked into the backseat and saw through the dome light that the guide was taking the situation far better than his boss was.
'We have twenty men up there that will get us out. What we don't need is for you to go and lose your cool,' Will said, when he saw that Sarah had little patience with the Egyptian.
Suddenly they felt the Land Rover slide farther into the quicksand. Sarah saw long-buried, skeletal-looking bushes slide by the window in the wrong direction and she was worried that very soon they would be too deep to get out without the use of heavy equipment.
'The air's getting a little ripe in here, why don't you open a window,' Mendenhall joked.
'Don't do that, you fool--do you wish to kill us all!'
Sarah looked back at Arturi, then back at Will. They both laughed at the same time.
'You are crazy, both of you, laughing at a time like this!' the professor said with as much indignity as he could muster.
'Mr. Arturi, the more you speak, the less air we will have to breathe. Take a hint from your man there: relax.'
Sarah's words sounded good, but she knew that they were in a very serious situation. The vehicle was sliding deeper and deeper into the loose sand, one or two feet at a time. It as was if the very ground beneath them was spilling into some unknown abyss.
'Uh-oh,' Mendenhall said again as the rate of their sinking increased.
Sarah closed her eyes and thought of Jack. The first thing to enter her mind was the base fact that he would be killed in the assault because they had failed him. The second thought was more personal in nature. The last time they had been together at dinner, she had chided him for being so straight and rigid all the time. She now regretted doing that.
Suddenly the descent stopped as the rear end of the Land Rover sank far lower than the front.
Will looked at Sarah with wide eyes. 'I guess this is--'
He stopped speaking when he saw that Sarah's was looking beyond him through the driver's window. All she could do was point with her finger.
Will turned, not knowing what to expect, and his heart rate increased tenfold when he saw the stern countenance of a white face and blank, hollow eyes staring at him at him through the window.
In the backseat, Arturi yelped in terror.
'What in the hell is that?' Mendenhall asked.
'Oh, my God,' Sarah said as she leaned closer to Will and shone a flash-light on the face in the window. 'It's Apollo!'
'What?' Will asked.
'This is important, Will. What in the hell is it doing here, at the very spot the coordinates said the front gate was supposed to be? Over the years the movement of the desert must have swallowed it up, along with everything the Ancients had marking the place!'
'This is Egypt, young lady, not Greece. Why would a statue of Apollo be here?' Arturi said, when his heart had resumed its normal function.
'Listen, jerk, I know Apollo when I see him. The winged helmet, the--'
Suddenly the guide screamed. Sarah turned and saw what he was frantically pointing to. The rear window of the Land Rover was no longer covered in sand. She could make out ancient-looking timbers. Sarah now understood
