The four leapt off the stone slab, tumbling into the dirt. Behind them the rock-slab lever crashed back to the ground with an echoing boom. There was a space under it like the nook beneath a flight of stairs. They could see the actual fulcrum was a thick length of log resting on notched-stone blocks. In the crease where the rock met the floor was another small wooden contraption whose purpose was unknown.
No sooner had the echoes died away than there came a new sound, a deep rumbling hiss from someplace above them. Eric flashed his light to the ceiling twenty feet over their heads just as sand began to pour out of dozens of manhole-sized openings.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mark said.
The wooden device was the trigger for a booby trap that activated when the pivot returned to its original position.
They cast their lights around the room. It was about ten feet square. Three of the walls were natural rock, part of the limestone cavern—one had the alcove for the lever device. The fourth wall was mud bricks laid with mortar between the joints. They ignored the rock and concentrated their attention on the brick. There were no holes or openings of any type, no handles or other kind of mechanism for getting out of the room.
In the five minutes they spent searching the wall, two feet of sand had built up on the floor in uneven piles that shifted and spread, with more dropping down from above. Linda pulled her knife from its sheath and pried at the mortar near one brick. It crumbled under the blade, and she was able to loosen the brick enough to work it out of the wall. Behind it was an identical layer. And, for all she knew, there were a half dozen more.
“We’ll have to try to move the lever from underneath,” Linda said. She accidentally backed into the stream of fine sand cascading from the ceiling and had to shake her head like a dog to dislodge the grit.
There were three holes directly in front of the alcove, and already it was half full of sand.
Eric countered, “With that much sand right in front we’ll be buried before we can push it open.”
“We’re trapped,” Alana said, panic making her voice crack. “What are we going to do?”
Stoney looked at Mark Murphy, and for the first time neither man had an answer.
THIRTY-ONE
TARIQ ASSAD THANKED HIS PILOT FRIEND AND STEPPED from the helicopter. He closed the flimsy door, gave it a tap, and scurried from under the whirling blades. The small service chopper lifted off the desert floor in a dust storm of its own creation. Assad had to turn his back to it and keep his eyes tightly closed.
As soon as the helo had lifted clear, he strode toward the team commander. The seething anger he had felt in the wake of the police raid back in Tripoli had been replaced with unmitigated joy. He embraced the terrorist leader, kissing him on both cheeks effusively.
“Ali, this is going to be a great day.” Assad grinned.
He’d radioed ahead that he was coming and saw with satisfaction that his orders had been carried out. The men were waiting at the rear cargo ramp of their Mi-8. When Assad waved, they gave him a rousing cheer. Their prisoner was bound to one of the bench seats, a rag tied over his mouth.
Ali noticed Assad’s look. “When we do not gag him, he shrieks like a woman. If he wasn’t such a supposed expert on Suleiman Al-Jama, blessings be upon him, I would put a bullet through that fat lout’s head and be done with it.”
“What a remarkable turn of events,” Assad said, Emile Bumford’s treatment all but forgotten. “A few hours ago, I was moments from being grabbed by the police, and now we will shortly discover the lost tomb.”
“Tell me again how you found it,” Ali invited. They strode to the waiting chopper, whose blades started to beat the superheated air.
“Coming in on the helicopter, I had the pilot swing south when we crossed the border into Tunisia, and as we came down the old riverbed, flying just above it, I spotted an area where it appeared that a section of the bank had been blasted into the river. Had I known about the waterfall a little farther downstream, I wouldn’t have paid it any attention, for surely a sailing ship couldn’t have navigated it. But I didn’t know, so I had the pilot set down so I could investigate.”
“When was this?”
“Moments before I radioed you. What, a half hour ago? And when we landed, I saw evidence that people had been there recently. There were four distinct sets of shoe prints. Two are women, or maybe small men, but I think one might be the American archaeologist who worked with our guest there.” He pointed across the cargo bay to Bumford.
The turbines’ whine made it so Assad had to shout to be heard by the man sitting to his left. “The prints all disappeared into a cave located behind a hill along the river. They must all still be inside. We have them, Ali, the Americans who have disrupted our plans for the last time, and Suleiman’s tomb.”
JUAN ACCEPTED A CUP of coffee from Maurice, the
“How are you feeling, Captain?” the dour Englishman asked.
“I think the expression is ‘rode hard and put away wet,’ ” Juan said, taking a sip of the strong brew.
“An equine reference, I believe. Filthy creatures, only good for glue factories and betting at Ascot.”
Cabrillo chuckled. “Dr. Huxley juiced my leg so it’s feeling pretty good, and the handful of ibuprofen I scarfed down are kicking in. All in all, I’m not doing too badly.”
The one secret about pain Juan had never shared with anyone other than Julia Huxley, as medical officer, was that he felt it constantly. Doctors call it phantom pain, but to him it was real enough. His missing leg, the one shot off by a Chinese gunboat all those years ago, ached every minute of every day. And on the good days it only ached. Sometimes he’d be hit with lances of agony that took all his self-control not to react to.
So when it came to dealing with the discomfort from where he’d cut out his tracking chip, it wasn’t bravado that made him ignore it. It was practice.
