Kyra met them at the site. A small campfire near the guard shack was sending a stream of smoke into the sky. Dallas saw a small camp coffee maker on some rocks. Kyra greeted them holding a mug with steam coming off it.
“Morning,” she said. “It was a quiet night.”
Yeah, after you’ve killed a bunch of men anything else would seem like a quiet night, Dallas thought.
There was no sign of the bodies. No blood. None of the other vehicles. Nothing.
“Good to hear,” Colton said.
A van pulled up in the parking lot nearby. Kyra downed the last of the contents of her mug and said, “I’m heading back to town to sleep. I’ll be out here again tonight. We have a fresh team that will be hanging out in case anyone shows up and wants to give you trouble.”
As she said it she nodded her head toward a group piling out of the van. These women wore pants and tee shirts, not burqas.
Dallas and Colton thanked her and headed over to the edge of the temple where their work crew was waiting.
“Eban, can we have a word?” Dallas asked.
They pulled him aside and filled him in on the deaths the night before and the plan for the day.
He shook his head and looked down.
“I wanted you to know that I understand if you want to back out,” Dallas said.
His head shot up. “No way. I am not afraid of them. I will not let oppressors scare me.”
Dallas lifted her own head and pulled her shoulders back. “Me, either.”
Colton high-fived Eban. “Let’s do this.”
The three walked over to the crew who were exchanging concerned glances with one another.
“Thank you for coming.” Dallas noticed a few of the faces that had been AWOL the day before had returned. “I understand if you feel working for me is too dangerous and I will pay you two weeks’ wages right now if you want to leave to give you time to find a new job.”
She paused. A few of the men exchanged glances. She continued.
“But if you want to stay I can honestly say I think we are on the brink of one of the world’s biggest and greatest discoveries—finding Cleopatra’s tomb. That’s why people are threatening you and your families. That’s why we’ve had some, uh, problems, with our dig. And I’m very sorry about that. I didn’t know him personally, but I know Hemede was an upstanding man and a friend to many of you.”
A few men nodded.
“That’s why I understand if you must leave. Even if you stay today and don’t come back tomorrow, I get it.”
Dallas didn’t say what she was thinking. She also didn’t want their blood on her hands. She didn’t think she could bear knowing another innocent man was dead because of her.
“But if you do want to stay, I want all our efforts to be focused on the corner we found yesterday. I think we might be close. When Abet and Danny arrive, they will explain our plan for the day.”
Dallas was surprised that despite it all, every man on the crew had decided to stay. By late afternoon, reinforcements had been made to the hole so that Dallas could be lowered down into it.
A rope and pulley system with harnesses had been erected at the top of the hole.
Everything looked good to go.
Colton tugged on the rope for the sixth time. “I think this is sturdy, but I’m not really wild about the idea of you going down there not knowing what awaits you.”
Dallas, who was brimming with excitement, tried to be understanding. “I know. But I’m the only one of the three of us who could easily fit in the hole. You men with your broad shoulders might get stuck.”
They measured the width of the hole all the way down until it opened up into something—a cavern or tunnel—and confirmed that Dallas wouldn’t get stuck on the way down.
“What if when you get to the wider opening, it’s just a bigger hole that leads to the center of the earth?” Colton said it in a teasing tone, but his eyebrows knit together.
“Oh Colton. Listen.” Dallas leaned over and dropped a few pebbles. After a few seconds, they could hear the clatter of the rocks hitting something.
They’d also lowered special equipment to test the air and from what they could tell, the oxygen level was adequate and there didn’t appear to be any dangerous gases.
That alone had excited Dallas. It meant that the space underground had some other entrance or exit or vent someplace else in the temple.
“Should we come back and get you down there first thing in the morning,” Colton said.
Dallas shook her head.
“Let’s do it now.”
Danny and Sam nodded. “I have the monitoring equipment ready back in the tent. Let me just get you outfitted.”
Colton helped her strap on a small camera attached to a head strap.
“We should be able to hear you and see fine with this,” Danny said. Then he put wireless earbuds in her ear and strapped on a utility belt containing a few tools. He helped her strap the harnesses on her legs and doubled checked them.
“Feels good,” she said.
“Looking good. Like a futuristic miner. I should cue the Jefferson’s music,” Danny said. Sam nodded.
“The what? Jefferson?” Colton said.
Dallas shrugged.
Danny snorted. “You’re both too young.”
“I guess we are,” Dallas said, laughing.
Sam turned to Dallas. “You’re good. It’s a TV show, so it doesn’t count.”
“Doesn’t count?” Danny sputtered. “Doesn’t count for what?”
Colton sighed. “Sam and Dallas have been trying to stump each other with movie lines since they were in the cradle. Film. Not TV.”
“Gotcha.” Danny said. “Let’s go.”
Sam gave her one last glance and said, “I’ll go back to the tent and we’ll test this out.”
Dallas waited until she heard Sam’s voice in her ear: “It’s pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed… bred for its skills in
