The Forbidden Tomb

78

Dade slid the heavy plate from the top of the chute, giving them access to the desert above. He peeked out of the concrete cylinder like a meerkat looking for a predator and quickly learned that they weren’t alone.

Unable to use the tunnel himself, Kamal had waited patiently near the hatch, playing a hunch that Dade would exit in the same place that he had gone in. His restraint was rewarded when his former colleague emerged from below. Wasting no time, Kamal grabbed Dade by the neck, lifted him from the hole, then tossed him through the air like a bag of trash before he turned back to deal with his accomplice.

A moment earlier, Dade had been blocking her path on the ladder. Now he was nowhere in sight, as if he had been grabbed by Amun and pulled to the heavens above.

Sarah glanced up to figure out how that was possible.

She had her answer a second later.

Kamal’s face filled the space above, soon followed by a glimpse of his gun. In the cramped space of the tunnel, she knew she was an easy target. With those odds hanging over her head — not to mention the ugly brute — she did the one and only thing she could think of to avoid near-certain death.

She released her grip and plummeted to the floor below.

Kamal didn’t care how she died, only that she did. With that in mind, he simply stepped to the edge of the opening and fired a single shot at the woman on the ladder. He watched her fall before he slammed the lid shut and refocused his attention on Dade.

His death would not be quick.

Dade, still reeling from the shock of his unexpected flight, rose to all fours while trying to catch his breath. Unfortunately, this made him an attractive target to Kamal, who charged toward him and kicked him as hard as he could in the midsection. The giant smiled when Dade started to cough up blood, knowing that he had broken some ribs.

‘Get up, you deceitful slug!’ Kamal shouted in his native Arabic. He didn’t care if Dade understood him. He was merely venting his anger. ‘Stand up and face the consequences of your actions!’

But Dade didn’t stand.

He merely groaned in pain.

So Kamal kicked him again, toppling him onto his back.

Kamal glanced down at him without pity and raised his boot above Dade’s face. Then, with as much force as he could muster, he tried to stomp his head into the ground, but somehow Dade found the strength to roll out of the way.

The giant smiled at the effort.

He was having fun.

Sarah opened her eyes at the base of the ladder. Her ears were ringing and her head throbbed from her crash landing on the floor, but she was okay.

At least she thought she was.

She patted herself just to make sure.

No blood, as far as she could tell.

Just a bump on her head.

Still gathering her senses, she glanced at the ladder above and tried to remember everything that she had seen before her fall.

The hatch. The giant. His gun.

Then it hit her. ‘Simon!’

Dade clambered to his feet. His neck ached and his ribs were broken, but he had to fight through the pain. His quickness was the only advantage that he had over his bigger, stronger opponent, and he couldn’t use it lying on the ground.

Kamal raised his fists like a boxer. ‘Come. Fight like a man.’

In response, Dade flung a fistful of sand in the giant’s face, momentarily blinding him. Then he charged forward, hoping to use the moment of weakness to incapacitate his opponent with a swift kick to the groin. The plan probably would have worked on a shorter man, but due to a combination of things — Kamal’s height, poor traction in the desert sand, plus Dade’s inability to swing his foot high enough to even reach Kamal’s crotch — Dade barely grazed his target. Instead of inflicting excruciating pain, his foot got stuck between the giant’s thighs like a car getting wedged between two walls.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Dade said, embarrassed by his failure.

Soon his shame would turn to pain.

Still blinded from the sand, Kamal couldn’t fully see his challenger, but he could feel his foot in a place it shouldn’t be. He responded by grabbing Dade’s leg and twisting it with so much force that the ligaments ripped in his knee and ankle.

Dade screamed in agony and tried to pull away but was unable to break the giant’s grip. He frantically clawed at his tormentor, hoping to break the vise-like lock as the shooting pain in his leg took hold of him. He was on the verge of passing out when Kamal finally released his grasp.

Not out of sympathy.

But to end Dade’s life.

The thought of Dade had driven Sarah to her feet. She knew he was defenseless, having dropped his shotgun before ascending the ladder. She scrambled to find the weapon, knowing that it was still fully loaded.

Dade hadn’t fired a shot.

She had seven chances to settle things.

She grabbed the gun in one hand and climbed the ladder with the other. Her progress was slow and lurching as she struggled with the awkward, single-handed climb.

Still, she couldn’t give up on him.

Not in his time of need.

Kamal’s anvil-like fists rained down on Dade, unleashing a torrent of pent-up rage: for the indignity that he had suffered at Hassan’s house, the humiliation of tracking the Americans through the sewers, the devastating loss of his entire crew, and his displeasure at accompanying Dade in the city and during the long ride through the desert.

It was simply too much to handle.

Enjoying every single moment, Kamal had started low and had methodically worked his way up. Now that he had reached Dade’s face, he stared down at him with a crazed look in his eyes. He grabbed Dade’s jaw and smiled, making his next target clear.

‘For Tarek,’ he growled in English.

Dade defiantly spat blood in the thug’s face. ‘Fuck Tarek.’

Infuriated by the insult to his dead best friend, Kamal grabbed a softball-sized rock from the sand and swung it at Dade’s head. The bones of his face collapsed under the pressure, killing him instantly. But Kamal continued to pound away, releasing his hatred with blow after angry blow. The giant never let up, not even as Dade’s skull was reduced to nothing but a sopping stew of bones and brains and hair in the arid desert sand.