“Dead ahead,” Lucie told them.
Bodie grabbed some field glasses and held them to his eyes. The huge, dusty field of excavation spread out before him, sandy mounds, pillars and walls as far as the eye could see.
With a steady hand, Bodie scanned the area directly in front of them. “How far?”
Lucie did a calculation on her phone. “Roughly eight hundred yards. Again, depends on the thickness of the ley line.”
Bodie didn’t need to know that. He did need to focus in on the general area though, and did so using a thumb wheel on the side of his glasses, narrowing down his line of sight.
“Of all the... bollocks,” he said.
Cassidy nudged him. “Of all the bollocks, what?” she asked.
“I see them. Dozens of the bloody things. Hoods, I mean, swarming all over a building ahead. Damn, they’re like cockroaches.”
“Nah, they die far more easily.” Cassidy borrowed his field glasses and put them to her eyes. “Well, it’s a good job we’re thieves.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
The cowl was stifling, itchy and hindered his vision so Nimrod, the leader of the Hoods on the ground at Mohenjo-Daro, simply removed his. This was no time to stand on tradition. The Master and his Minervals would accept nothing but total success and, so far, Nimrod’s team had achieved that.
Unlike the team led by his second-in-command, who were still digging out the cave in Algeria after their enemies put a rocket in it.
Nimrod was unhappy. His second-in-command’s failure reflected badly on him; even overseeing the hunt for Karachi’s ore, which had in turn led them here, wasn’t good enough. Bacchus d’Orléans wanted everything done faster, quieter and more efficiently. The line he drew to measure success was so thin it was hard to see, and many acolytes had fallen along the way. Nimrod, though, rose to the top like cream, achieving victory after victory, being useful to his masters and taking no prisoners.
Nimrod had risen through the ranks after the Olympus debacle. Obviously, after so many died, places needed filling. Nimrod took those opportunities with gusto, and with violence if necessary, stepping over everyone weaker than him.
He shone.
Bacchus had noticed him then, and now Bacchus noticed him every minute of every day. Nimrod wasn’t entirely sure he’d done the right thing by thrusting himself to the front of the pack.
He stood now on a small knoll, overseeing the operation. He had men scattered about on rooftops and other knolls, acting as lookouts. They weren’t the best trained—the Illuminati were short on Hoods to carry out all the current tasks and had to draft in mercenaries—and, so far, nobody had spotted anything untoward. His Hoods were carrying out the most important task—securing ore from the excavated building and bringing it to the surface. Only it wasn’t a building, Nimrod thought, it was a well.
The people that built Mohenjo-Daro had constructed between seven hundred and one thousand wells throughout the city, an incredible number that related to one well for every three houses. They used a circular, brick well design, something that—through the discovery of this place—was now attributed to the Indus civilization. Not even the Egyptians with all their fancy pyramids thought of that.
The wells presented their own problem, though, having been built up higher and higher through the city’s life as flooding and rebuilding raised the level of the streets.
But Nimrod had sent four Hoods down there, harnessed up. Through their communications system he kept track of them. Any that protested or disparaged him would be harshly dealt with. That was how Nimrod led, that was how he stayed at the very top.
At the moment, the four men were scraping the bottom of the well, trying to get to the bedrock. Nimrod understood they would be unhappy—but there were no other excavations around here that ran underground. The sand was thick, the old city built up again and again. Using the wells had been his idea, and a clever one.
Bacchus himself had applauded it.
The wells ran deeper than anything else on this site. Bacchus shielded his eyes against a gust of wind and the sand it carried. The sun was past its zenith but was as bright and hot as a blacksmith’s forge. Nimrod ignored it, as well as the sweat dripping from his chin to evaporate in the heat. He was a weapon, a tool, and he did not feel the discomfort.
An alarm rang out, his cellphone reminder. Nimrod hurried down the slope to the nearest vehicle, and pulled a laptop from its nylon sheath. Opening it, he logged on to the server and waited for today’s call.
Bacchus was never late. Not even by a second. The man’s expectant face filled the screen and Nimrod knew through experience that he should speak up first.
“We are almost complete,” he said. “Just collecting the ore now. I anticipate another hour and we can continue on to our next destination.”
“That is good work, Nimrod. We have Atlantis ore and Egyptian ore. The fools in Algeria are still trying to extract theirs.”
“It has slowed us down, Master. Thinned out our company of Hoods and forced us to contract... outside help.” Nimrod made sure he sighed at the idea of using mercenaries and heaped blame on the Algerian team. “Where next?”
“I have a team in Canada, at the Buffalo Lake Medicine Wheel. They are on site too, and should return in a day or so. Do you know the closest sanctum to you, Nimrod?”
He did and knew Bacchus expected it of him. “Yes, Master. The Himalayas.”
“Which must be one of the most arduous, difficult to obtain, ore samples of all,” Bacchus said. “To you, Nimrod, I have given this undertaking. Because I know that you
