Operation Syria

— 2 —

The scratching came again as Margaret “Maggie” Boyd bent over Jim White’s fevered torso. Heat came off the sick man in waves and he moaned. Margaret put a hand over his mouth, trying to keep him quiet. She held her breath as the scritch-scratch outside the stone door continued for five more seconds, then fell quiet.

Silence descended once again in the chamber.

The silence of the tomb.

She had to catch the laugh that threatened to bubble up; once she started, she might not be able to stop.

Jim White’s breathing slowed and he was out for the count, whether sleeping or unconscious made little difference given his condition. In their current circumstances, Maggie envied him the oblivion.

The attack had come without warning and so suddenly she wasn’t quite sure, even two days later, what had actually happened.

And I don’t know what they are.

There had been the four of them working in the fifteen-foot square chamber, digging some three feet below the old floor level: herself, Jim White, Jack Reynolds, and Kim Chung Won. The noise had come in from somewhere outside, as if funneled and amplified along the corridor. Loud shouting, then louder shooting and accompanying screams echoed loudly around them and White had been the first to react.

“Rebels,” he said. “Stay here and keep quiet, I’ll check it out.”

The next few minutes were endless, punctuated by wails, screams, and more shooting but Maggie and the others knew better than to venture out of the chamber; it had been their choice to come to a war zone but they didn’t have to be stupid about it. They could only sit, listen, and wonder as to their fate should anyone other than Jim White be the one to return.

White had come back at a run two minutes after the last shot they heard and not long after the wailing died down, leaving a silence that was nearly as terrifying. He dumped two rucksacks on the floor and turned to put his shoulder to the heavy stone doorway of the chamber.

“Help me. We need to get this closed. Get it closed now,” he shouted. He was wide-eyed, pale-faced, and had blood pouring from a wound in his left shin but wouldn’t speak until the door was fully shut. It took all four of them to get it into place but finally it closed with a rasp of stone on stone and sat flush with hardly a groove to show where it met the wall. Margaret had no idea how they’d ever get it open again but White didn’t seem to think that a matter of import at the moment.

“Was it rebels?” Maggie asked but when he replied, it wasn’t to answer the question. He looked sweaty and puffed, hair standing on end and his eyes wide and wild.

Bloody hell. What did he see out there?

“I got a message out on the radio,” White said, his voice little more than a croak. “And I got us some supplies. We need to hide out here until the cavalry come for us. It’s a fucking mess out there.”

“Did you get a reply at the other end?” Maggie asked. “When will they get here?”

But White had spoken his last words between then and now. His eyes rolled up and he fell into a faint. They’d made him up a rough bed from the rucksacks once they’d emptied them of several bottles of water, two loaves of unleavened bread, and a bag of cheeses and meat that was all he’d managed to recover in time.

Since then, they’d settled into a routine of taking turns watching the man, sleeping and having circular conversations that could never come to any conclusions. Their only light came from two portable LED lamps they’d been using on the dig and even only using one at a time, they were visibly starting to dim. It wouldn’t be long now until they would be left in the dark entirely. When that happened, the scratching was going to sound a whole lot worse.

The noise had started an hour after White fell into his semi-conscious state, a hard rasping as if someone stroked roughly with a stick or knife at the bottom of the door on the outside.

“Who’s there?” Reynolds shouted and the rasping had turned into frantic scratching. Maggie had a cat back home in Edinburgh and it made similar sounds trying to get under the bathroom door when Maggie had the temerity to try to get some personal time in there.

I doubt that’s a cat out there.

Reynolds had looked like he might call out again but Maggie shushed him with a finger to his lips.

“I don’t think it’s trying to get in to help us. Do you?”

Reynolds looked like that was a thought he hadn’t considered and it was enough to keep his mouth shut, for now. After a few minutes, quiet had descended again.

“Rebels,” Kim whispered. “It has to be. Jim said it was rebels.”

“Does that sound like fucking rebels?” Reynolds replied and laughed bitterly until the scratching started again, driving them all to silence once more.

Now all they could do was wait and hope. At least they had air, which was flowing freely, a breeze coming in through a crack in the wall high up in one corner. But the bread was gone, as was the meat. All they had left was about a gallon of water and some cheese.

Even at that, White needed most of the water in an attempt to keep his fever from becoming a raging fire. The wound in his leg was suppurating, far beyond what might be expected in the time since he’d been hurt. At first, Maggie had thought it was a bullet wound but it looked more like a slashing cut from a rough-edged knife and now the lips of flesh were blackening, parting to show the flesh inside all the way down to the bone.

“We should bandage that,” Kim said.

“We don’t have anything clean enough,” Maggie replied. “We might be doing more harm than good.”

She didn’t say what they were all thinking; a bandage wasn’t going to conceal the fact that they shared an enclosed chamber — a cell — with a man who was likely to be dead before he took too many more breaths.

The scratching came every time one or the other of them so much as moved. While Kim took her turn sitting by White, Maggie sat on the lip of the dig, looking down at where they’d been working. Their excitement seemed so long ago now but at least the mosaic would be there after this was over. The chamber they were digging in had long been known to be a Roman military temple to their god Mithras but it had been thought that its treasure had all been looted. That was until the team had gone down into the floor and found the colors that had lain there hidden for centuries. So far, they’d only uncovered a quarter of it but White had hoped that it extended underfoot the whole length and width of the chamber. The bit they had uncovered so far looked complete, unbroken and protected through the centuries by the impacted sand above it. It would be a major find and as supervisor of the dig, the bulk of the credit would be going to White.

It’s a pity he won’t live to see it.

As if in reply to her thought, the sick man moaned loudly and that brought a fresh bout of scratching at the door.

If anybody’s coming, please hurry.