word.
‘Divine?’ Jason surmised.
‘Yes, divinity. This says divinity.’
‘So she’s a goddess. Some kind of religious image.’
‘I think so. But not Christian. And Muslims would never allow these pictures. Very blasphemous.’
Pointing to the swirls on the image, Jason asked, ‘Is this supposed to be a river?’
‘Um, yes. I’d agree with that.’
‘And what’s this in her hands?’
Hazo shook his head. ‘A large fruit … um, no … maybe a container. These lines …’ Hazo said, tilting his head sideways to ascertain a meaning. ‘Maybe a light?’
‘Or something radiating from it.’
Meat gave Jason a surprised look. ‘What, like magic?’
He shrugged. ‘All right, let’s document everything. Meat, take some still shots, then keep the camera moving along this wall.’
‘Got it,’ Meat said.
For the next ten minutes, Camel worked more cable through the pipe to push the camera deeper and deeper into the passage. The images on the left wall had become progressively disturbing. The swirls rose with each ‘frame’, and Hazo’s early guess that this portrayed rising flood waters proved correct, when later images showed bodies and animals being swept ‘downstream’ in elongated swirls.
Most disturbing, however, was how the story’s depiction of the woman progressed. Her devotees from frame one had obviously had a change of heart, because the final frames showed men binding her, then leading her away with spears to the mountains. The final frame depicted the woman’s gruesome beheading.
‘She must’ve gotten too lippy with them,’ Meat joked as he saved the image as a pix file.
Jason shook his head. ‘Not funny.’
At the end of the storyboard, the wall was covered top to bottom in wedge-shaped hashes laid out in neat rows. Jason asked Hazo to take a gander at what it might mean.
This time Hazo was quick to respond: ‘That looks like a very ancient alphabet. Maybe from Sumer.’
‘Sumer?’ Meat asked.
‘The southern region of ancient Iraq,’ Jason told him.
‘Yes,’ Hazo concurred. ‘Sumerian.’
‘So what is this place?’ Meat asked. ‘One of Saddam’s old bunkers? He liked all this ancient stuff, right? Thought he was the reincarnation of a Babylonian king or something …’
‘Correct,’ Hazo said. ‘King Nebuchadnezzar.’
Jason shook his head. ‘We’ve seen plenty of bunkers. Nothing like this.’ He rubbed his neck while glancing over at what remained of the optical cable. ‘Let’s push the camera in as far as we can. See if we can spot anything else.’
With the camera reoriented straight, the hewn passage walls abruptly transitioned to rough, uncut stone. Three metres deeper, the camera approached a split.
‘Which way?’ Meat asked Jason.
‘Left.’
‘Keep it moving … steady push,’ Meat called up to Camel. Working the joystick, he commanded the flex cable to bend along the turn.
‘How far in do you think we are right now?’ Jason asked.
Meat looked over at what little flex cable remained. ‘Eighteen, twenty metres maybe.’
The light stripped the shadows off the tunnel’s crenulated outcroppings.
‘Wait …’ Meat said to Jason, pressing an index finger against the headphone speaker. ‘I hear something.’ He punched a button on the keyboard and the audio feed played over the unit’s built-in speakers. Sliding the headphones off, he raised the volume some more and listened intently. Jason and Hazo crowded in beside him.
First came the distinct chatter of voices, the dialect unmistakably Arabic. Two, maybe three different men, Jason guessed. The exchange was forceful, argumentative. To him, this was an encouraging development. The Arabs had yet to find a way out. Maybe this tunnel wasn’t so extensive after all.
‘They see the light,’ Hazo whispered, translating the exchange. ‘They don’t know what to do.’
The next sounds were metallic bolts sliding and clicking - weapons being readied.
‘Maybe we should pull the camera—’ Meat started.
On the screen, a glossy shape poked out from around the corner and winked in the light.
‘Is that a mirror?’ Jason said.
‘I think so,’ Meat said. ‘We should pull the camera out.’
‘Good idea,’ Jason said. ‘All right, Camel,’ he loudly called out, ‘let’s pull it back.’
But before Camel could react, the tiny flicker dropped off the unit’s screen just before one of the Arabs popped into view and stormed towards the camera. His rifle was safely slung over his shoulder, but between his hands was a melon-sized rock. His dirt-smeared face twisted into a snarl as he raised the rock up high over his head and lunged at the camera. The last image was a clear shot of the man’s grungy sandals. The last sound was a resounding
‘That’s not good,’ Hazo said.
‘Ouch,’ Meat said, cringing.
Camel began pulling out the flex cable in fathoms and Jam coiled the line back into neat loops. A minute later, the flattened tip popped out from the conduit, smoking and crackling.
‘Sorry buddy,’ Camel said to Meat in mock apology as he assessed the damage. ‘That thing’s toast.’ He tossed it to Jam.
‘At least we know they’re still in there, Sarge,’ Jam said.
‘I was thinking the same thing.’
‘Guys,’ Camel said, peering off in the distance. He spit a gob of chewing tobacco on to the ground and pointed out along the flatland. They all turned in unison.
Three kilometres out, a military convoy whipped a billowing dust cloud up into the blazing orange sunset. A UH-60 Blackhawk was flying random crisscrosses above it to scout the terrain.
‘Cavalry’s here,’ Camel grunted.
8
LAS VEGAS
Once the muted thumping inside the vault stopped, Randall Stokes sauntered to the wet bar, pulled a tumbler off the shelf, and poured two fingers of very expensive single-malt Scotch, neat. He withdrew a plastic pillbox from his jacket pocket, popped open the lid, and pinched out a pure white Zoloft tablet.
Putting the pill on his tongue, he raised the glass towards the vault door.
‘Cheers, Frank.’
He nipped at the Scotch and swilled down the dose of tranquillity. Then he went and sat behind the desk.
It hurt when good men - loyal men - were sacrificed for the greater good. Military life had a way of hammering into one’s head the notion that brotherhood always came first. Survival could be a singular effort, but lasting victory could never be. Fighters are made, not born. And that was certainly true with Frank Roselli.
Roselli was an extremely valuable asset. He’d perfectly coordinated the project in Iraq, which, given the mission’s complex logistics and broad scope, was no easy task. Though it was Stokes’s brainchild, Roselli had tackled recruiting the multi-disciplined talent who took the project from concept to reality. From around the globe, he’d assembled a team of renowned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought them into the middle of a war zone to unlock the greatest discovery in human history. It was Roselli who’d designed the ingenious security protocols and eliminated redundancies so that each scientist working on site knew only a piece of the cave’s intricate puzzle. Most impressive was Roselli’s brilliant handling of high-ranking members of Congress, the FBI and the armed forces, to bring together the funding and technological know-how. And as far as the stakeholders were
