“That’ll be up to Ira. There’s nothing the three of us can do against that army down there.”
“What if there were more than three?”
The voice had come from behind them. Mercer whirled around, bringing up the knife in a lightning move. Ibriham Ahmad had approached so silently that even Booker hadn’t heard him. He wore his trademark black suit even in the desert, though he prudently wore a dark shirt and tie. Behind him were five more men. They wore dark camouflage and combat harnesses loaded with ammunition pouches. All carried several high-tech automatic weapons. Mercer recognized Ahmad’s protege, Devrin Egemen. The young man bobbed his head shyly in greeting when he met Mercer’s gaze. Even bedecked with an arsenal of weaponry, Mercer couldn’t see the young scholar as a fighter.
“I should have known you’d find a way,” Ahmad told Mercer. His admiration was clear even though he whispered.
“And I should have known you lied to me about not knowing the location of Alexander’s tomb.” Somehow Mercer wasn’t surprised Ahmad was here. “How long have you been here?”
“I’ve had two men camped above the tomb’s entrance since Feines first approached me months ago. I myself arrived this afternoon.”
“You know he’s going to find the tomb quickly.”
Ahmad looked shamefaced. “I never realized the significance of that trench until Poli started digging. I had hoped to bring more men but we are attacking tonight.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Cali hissed. “There are fifty or sixty of them and only six of you.”
“Caribe Dayce had more than a hundred,” Ahmad replied.
Mercer remembered the savagery of that counterattack as he and Cali awaited execution. And he estimated Dayce had at least a hundred and fifty fighters. Ahmad’s team had killed them to a man in minutes. “That was just the six of you?” He couldn’t believe it.
“Actually Devrin was in Istanbul. We were only five. Dr. Mercer, the Janissaries are a military order. We’ve trained for warfare our entire lives.”
“Mercer told me about what you did in Africa,” Booker said. “Taking out a bunch of drunk and drugged up teenagers isn’t the same as going up against fifty battle-hardened terrorists.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Ahmad said simply. “This ends now.”
“It’s suicide,” Cali said. “You know what these fanatics are capable of. They’ll blow themselves up if they think they can get just one of you.”
“He’s right, Cali,” Mercer said. “There’s no other option.” He couldn’t believe what he was about to say when he turned back to Ahmad. “I’m in. What’s your plan?”
Before Ahmad could outline his strategy there was a loud cry from Poli’s camp. Everyone in the wadi looked to where the workers were digging into the hillside. Several of them were dancing in tight circles, cheering and raising their shovels over their heads in triumph. When nearby guards realized the diggers had succeeded in burrowing down to the tunnel, they fired triumphant bursts of gunfire into the air. One of them ran off toward the tents. Mercer followed him with his eyes. Even before he arrived at one set a little apart from the others, Poli emerged. He was wearing just pants and desert boots. His chest was very pale in the dim light but the breadth of it defied imagination. His arms looked as thick as tree trunks and hung from shoulders as broad as a hangman’s gallows. He started jogging up the hill to the excavation.
The man who had been giving a lecture to some of the terrorists stood in a swirl of robes and crossed the desert in Poli’s wake.
“Shit. They’ve broken through.”
Ahmad wasn’t watching the workers celebrating their success. He studied the man in the robes, his mouth set in a grim line, fiery anger behind his dark eyes. “Al-Salibi.”
“That’s the guy funding the operation?” Cali asked. “The one who works for OPEC?”
“He is using Islam as a tool to increase his wealth and power,” Devrin said with as much hatred as his master.
Poli waded into the cheering throng, shouldering aside Qaida fighters until he was at the top of the hole. Al- Salibi joined him a moment later, slapping the big mercenary on the shoulder, a broad smile on his face. Even Feines looked pleased with himself for coming up with this plan to gain easy entrance to the tomb.
“You did it, my friend,” Salibi said to congratulate him.
Salibi would never be his friend but Poli let the comment pass.
The hole was four feet square and sand poured over the sides into the darkness. The sides of the tunnel below were dressed with stone laid in neat blocks. Playing the beam of a flashlight over their surfaces Poli could see they were covered in hieroglyphs. He couldn’t see the floor of the tunnel because it was flooded, water that must have seeped through the rock over the eons and become trapped. He called for a rope. Once an end had been tied around a nearby boulder, Poli tossed the other end into the fissure. He climbed down using just the strength of his arms. As he reached the still surface, he tentatively lowered himself into the cool water, feeling for the floor with his foot. When he touched bottom the water was as high as his upper chest. The tunnel had to be fifteen feet tall and at least as wide. Aiming his beam downslope he could see the loose rubble of where the roof had partially collapsed. There were gaps in it where the ceiling slabs had only crashed partway to the floor. As he pointed the flashlight up the gentle grade the beam of light was swallowed by darkness. The tunnel could climb another two hundred feet before reaching the top of the hill.
He ordered that the construction lights ringing the pit be lowered into the tunnel and for more wire to be readied. He also ordered someone back to his tent for a shirt, his Geiger counter, and a set of scuba tanks in case they needed them. It took ten minutes to get everything in place. Al-Salibi had changed into more practical clothes and joined him in the ancient tunnel along with two of his most trusted fighters.
Every square inch of the walls and the ceiling where it hadn’t collapsed were covered in two-thousand-year- old glyphs depicting the Egyptian creation stories and commemorating Alexander’s journey through death. The natural pigments were as fresh and vibrant today as the day the master artisans had applied them. One of the fighters nudged his comrade to show him how he could scratch out the faces of the gods with his trench knife. They shared a laugh at the senseless desecration.
Poli tied the scuba tanks to the rope and started up the tunnel carrying one of the halogen lights high over his head. In his wake the shorter Saudis were forced to half walk and half swim to stay with him.
“We have to act now,” Ibriham said. “They will load the alembic onto a boat as soon as they bring it to the surface.”
“We have a boat of our own.”
“You do? Excellent. How long will it take to get it?”
Mercer thought through the timing, added a thirty-minute cushion, and glanced at his watch. “By two A.M.”
“The boat might be necessary,” Ibriham mused.
Mercer shifted his gaze to Cali. “Can you do it?”
She looked defensive. “Trying to protect me again?”
Mercer was. He didn’t want her anywhere near the fighting. They’d been lucky so far but this went beyond anything they’d faced since meeting in Africa. Having her with them when they took on Poli’s men wouldn’t make a dent in the odds so there was no sense putting her in danger. Then he asked himself if he was doing it for her or him. He remembered Tisa lying bloody in his arms as they were lifted off a sinking ship by a rescue helicopter. She never heard him say he loved her. “Do you really want to be here if our attack fails?”
“Do you?”
“No, but I feel a responsibility here.”
“And you don’t think I feel it too,” Cali shot back.
“Cali, this isn’t about protecting you. I lost someone I cared very deeply for. I can’t go through that again.”
She touched his cheek tenderly. “I’ll do it, but Mercer, I’m not her and you can’t always be there as my knight in shining armor. Okay?”
“Thank you,” was all he could say.
