It wasn't Dak's theological beliefs or his historical assumptions, that took a beating as he peered through the darkness at the golden burial plinth. What he had trouble believing, was who the man was buried just a few feet away from him.
Based on the writing on the wall, the hieroglyphs, and the location of the tomb, there was only one logical conclusion, and it shook him to the bone.
Dak had just accidentally stumbled into the tomb of Gilgamesh the Sumerian.
Nine
Hamrin Mountains
Impossible? Evidently not.
Crazy? Absolutely.
Dak’s breath came in huge, even gulps as he continued to stare in wonder at the sarcophagus.
“I discovered the tomb of Gilgamesh,” he said, mesmerized by the weight of his realization. “Well, I didn’t discover it. The… terrorists did. Still. Who am I talking to?”
He stopped and pressed his lips together.
How had this tomb, the burial chamber of one of the most legendary characters in history, go undiscovered for so long?
To be fair, they were out in the middle of nowhere, on top of a mountain in a backwater part of the world. He wasn’t the best about keeping up with history and archaeology anymore. Life’s tendency of making people busy went double for Dak. Still, he hadn’t heard about anything going on in this part of the world. Most historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists would probably balk at the notion of coming to this place in the Hamrin Mountains, especially with so many extremist groups lurking around.
Still, some of those folks threw caution to the wind in plenty of dangerous locations. Typically, nothing happened, but now and then there was an attack or a heist.
Governments tried to keep incidents like that to a minimum. They needed the revenue from the tourist industry to keep things afloat, and if a bunch of archaeologists were killed or abducted and held for ransom, fewer and fewer would come. That would mean fewer artifacts, not as many headlines in the media. Tourism would suffer, at least that’s what the governments believed.
The archaeological community didn’t mind them taking that stance. That meant things would be safer during digs. Usually.
He wondered how the terrorists discovered the burial chamber. As far as his team knew, the extremist group had been in this spot for more than a month. His intel didn’t go back farther than that, but they might have had been here longer.
“What were they doing here?” he wondered out loud. Since when did terrorists become grave robbers?
The first question would have to wait. It’s possible the terrorists found the cave by accident while looking for a place to hide between operations, eventually turning it into their headquarters. Surely discovering the burial chamber was an accident. He doubted any of the extremist groups were students of ancient history or had unraveled some mysterious puzzle to lead them here.
The second question was much easier to figure out.
Terrorist organizations depended on money to fund their operations. There were travel costs to gather recruits, food to feed them, weapons, munitions, and technology that could be altered and used for nefarious purposes.
Dak had heard of terror cells abducting young girls and selling them to the sex slave trade. Human trafficking was a lucrative business in the tar pits of the underworld. Drugs were another revenue stream that filled extremist coffers. In this part of the world, heroin was one of the big earners, along with a few other opium-based substances.
Considering those sources of income, this group might have been planning on selling these priceless treasures to fund future terrorist attacks. Dak was no expert in pricing ancient artifacts, but his best estimate for this room was in the tens of millions, maybe more. That could buy a lot of bullets and ordnance for a group like this. They’d be able to recruit heavily in the region, and beyond.
Dak chewed on his lower lip for a moment. He looked down at the cell phone in his hand to check the battery life. It still had over 50 percent, which was plenty—if he could find a way out of here soon. Then another thought poked his brain. If the terrorists were going to sell these relics on the antiquities black market, he might find a contact on one of the dead men back in the other room. He loathed the idea of going through the crawl space again, but if he could do it once he could do it again.
First things first, he had to find the exit.
Dak drew a deep breath and marched over to the doorway between the two guards. He recognized them as two of the Anunnaki judges from Sumerian mythology—sons of the great sky god Anu or An, as he was often called. Funny, Dak thought, how certain elements from his education dipped in and out of his memory. It was most often the odd ones for him, the things that other people didn’t care about or skimmed over in their studies. For Dak, those were the nuggets that made history so fun, so inviting. He’d once wowed a professor by including a tidbit about President William Henry Harrison on an essay, mentioning the detail that he was the president who gave the longest inaugural address and served the shortest term.
No one else even bothered to consider that fact, instead focusing on the president’s few high points while in office.
Dak stepped between the Anunnaki guards and into the darkened corridor. He held the light out in front of him, figuring it was unlikely he’d need to shoot anything in an ancient—and until recently, undiscovered—tomb.
The passage angled up and then leveled out after about thirty steps. At the top of the rise, it cut sharply to the right, then back to the left. At the second turn, Dak started to see the residual glow of sunlight on
