The Pharaoh's Secret

45

Night dives were difficult under the best of circumstances. Drifting through the dark in a river filled with crosscurrents, sandbars and other obstructions made it even more demanding. But as long as they stuck close to the west bank, they were bound to hit their target.

In the liquid darkness, Kurt used only his legs, kicking slowly and smoothly, while keeping his arms at his sides. He pegged their speed, combined with the current, at three knots. At that rate, it would be ten minutes to the entry point of the hydro channel.

Kurt allowed himself to descend until the water around him was as black as tar and only a slight shimmer could be seen on the surface. At this depth, he would be invisible to anyone on land, but the small amount of light would keep his senses oriented correctly.

He adjusted course to the left and looked back. In the dark he could see two glowing LEDs on the flashlights that Joe and Renata had strapped to their wrists. The two of them had linked up and were swimming in formation. His own light was pointed their way so they could follow it.

A dim glow became visible up ahead. It was the floodlights of the construction project washing over the surface of the river.

Right on track.

With the light filtering through the water, Kurt went a little deeper.

He swam forward, passed under the first wave of lights and caught sight of the concrete buttress that divided the hydro channel from the rest of the river. He needed to stay to the left or risk being swept around the wrong side by the backflow or slipstream.

He passed into the channel without any problem. The current remained steady, but the surroundings were altogether different. A second wave of lights dappled the water and in the soft glow he could see the wall to his right and the concrete-lined bottom of the channel.

Up ahead were diamond-shaped obstructions on the channel bottom designed to add some turbulence to the water flow. He crossed above them, swam closer to the inner wall and slowed himself until he was mostly just drifting with the current. He held his breath, stopping a stream of bubbles that might be seen on the surface, until he was in the shadow of the wall.

The first-stage turbines appeared, looming out of the darkness like a ship emerging from a fog. Dull gray and initially indistinct, they reminded Kurt of the engines of a 747. Each of them had a fifty-foot diameter and dozens of closely spaced blades sprouting from a central hub like a fan. He could hear a clicking noise as the blades rotated lazily in the current.

Kurt kept to the inside wall and slipped through the gap between the nearest turbine and the wall. Glancing back, he saw Joe and Renata following.

As they passed into the central section of the channel, the second stage began. Kurt slowed even further, drifting now and kicking only to keep himself near the wall. He didn’t want to fly past the maintenance ladder that was their only method of escape.

Another sound became audible. This vibration was deeper and more ominous, like the thrum of a distant ship’s propeller.

The main turbine was up ahead. It had nearly twice the diameter of the first and took up most of the channel. He heard the sound long before he spotted the blades, as the front edge of the deflector gate came into view.

Just as they’d hoped, it was in the retracted position, flat against the wall. Its heavy steel face was painted bright yellow to prevent corrosion. And though the color looked faded in the water, it stood out in sharp contrast to the dull concrete wall.

Drifting along beside the gate, Kurt watched for the maintenance ladder, reaching for it and latching on with both hands as soon as it came into view. The rungs were made of curved rebar welded to the steel gates — sturdy and easy to grip.

Kurt reached down, loosened his fins and allowed them to be pulled off by the current. He watched as they disappeared downstream.

The flow of water in the channel was no faster than the river current, but water is denser than air and holding his position against the current was like holding on against a strong wind.

He watched as Joe and Renata approached. Renata hit first, grabbing onto the same section of ladder as Kurt. Joe took hold of the rungs beneath them. Like Kurt, they quickly got rid of their fins and hooked their feet onto the ladder for added stability.

Joe offered a thumbs-up. Kurt looked into Renata’s mask, only inches from his. She was beaming. She made the OK signal with her fingers.

A quick check of his orange-faced Doxa watch told him they’d made good time. Now they’d have to wait. They had three full minutes before Edo would activate the laser and blind the camera on the catwalk above.

Edo had already beached the boat, unpacked the laser and set it up on its tripod. It was a civilian system, designed for surveying, but it wasn’t much different than the targeting systems Edo had used in the military.

With the device set and ready, Edo looked through the scope and located the specific camera they needed to disable. He zoomed in, locked the targeted camera lens squarely in the crosshairs and stepped back.

He checked his watch. Two minutes to go. He had nothing left to do but press the button.

He longed for a cigarette, just for something to pass the time. The waterfront was empty, but a sound intruded on the solitude: the sound of a helicopter approaching.

A light in the sky could be seen heading toward the Osiris building. Edo watched for a moment to be sure that was the helicopter’s path. As it landed, he wondered who could have business at Osiris in the middle of the night.

Clinging to the ladder in the hydro channel thirty feet beneath the surface, neither Kurt, Joe nor Renata knew about the helicopter’s approach. They were dealing with other changes: a loud mechanical clang followed by a noticeable increase in the current.

Upstream from their position, a circular port in the wall was opening. It was the size of a large runoff pipe from a system of storm drains. As its doors yawned wide, the current began to pick up as a huge volume of water began flowing from the newly opened pipe.

They hugged the ladder, trying to present the smallest area possible for the flowing water to press against. Holding on this way, they could feel the strain. Kurt risked a glance at his watch.

One minute.

A second rumbling shook them severely. The vibration went through the ladder and into their bodies as the entire deflector gate shuddered and began to move.

Renata’s eyes met Kurt’s. They were wide with concern. He wasn’t surprised: this was a far bigger problem. The gate was pivoting into the open position and that would accelerate the water flow even further.

Downstream from them, the big turbine spun faster as the gap around it narrowed and the thrumming sound increased. By the time the gates closed flush against the turbine cowling, the force of water washing over them would be too strong to resist for long and they would be pulled off and swept through the blades.

Kurt pointed upward and Renata nodded. He unlatched his BCD and turned sideways to the current, shrugging out of the harness. The BCD, the oxygen tank and the mask were torn from him by the accelerating current and dragged off downstream. He went first, releasing only one hand at a time and ascending the ladder slowly and methodically. Each rung was an effort. Each hand and foot movement a battle with the weight of flowing water.

As Kurt neared the top, he looked back down. Renata and Joe were following his lead. He took one more look at his watch. Ten seconds.

Kurt counted.

Three… two… one…

Time to go.

He broke the surface and climbed onto the top of the deflector gate. It felt great to be free of the rushing water, but the danger was far from over. The moving gate was only three feet wide and the hardened steel and yellow paint were wet and slick.

Kurt remained in a crouch, low and stable. A bulge of water rose up beside the gate where the current was deflected toward the turbine, while behind the gate the water was several feet lower and swirling in a foamy whirlpool. White water churned beyond the cowling, the sound and fury of it echoing along the channel and off the buildings.

The din was too loud to shout over, so when Renata surfaced, Kurt just pointed. Like him, she’d released her diving gear. She nodded and moved along the top of the gate. Joe came up next, also free of his tanks. They followed Renata, making their way along the deflector gate to the catwalk and then along the edge toward the maintenance door.

In the distance Kurt saw an ethereal green glow where the laser was hitting the camera lens.

Good work, Edo.

“Bad timing, the gates opening like that,” Joe said.

“I’m more surprised by that outflow port,” Kurt said. “I didn’t see any bypass tunnels on the blueprints.”

“Neither did I,” Joe said. “But if it’s not a bypass tunnel, then where’s all the water coming from?”

“We’ll have to worry about it later.” Kurt checked his watch and turned to Renata. “We have less than a minute before Edo turns off the laser.”

She was already working. “Plenty of time,” she insisted.

Unzipping the waterproof pouch in her wet suit, she’d pulled out a set of lockpicks. She made quick work of the bolt and they moved inside.

Ten feet from the door, she found the panel for the alarm system. She pulled the cover off and plugged a small device into the data slot. Numbers and letters streamed across the face of the device in blazing fashion as it went through ten million possible codes and deactivated the alarm. In five seconds the lights on the panel went green.

“That’s it,” she said. “The alarms are off and interior cameras frozen. They’ll continue to display a recorded loop for the next twenty-five minutes. Until then, we should be able to move about freely.”

“So much for the alarm system I spent good money on last spring,” Kurt said.

“Remind me to get a dog,” Joe replied. “Low-tech works best.”

Renata nodded and put the small device back in her pouch and zipped it closed.

“Let’s go,” Kurt said.

They moved down the hall and quickly found the stairwell. Three flights down, they heard a high-pitched humming sound.

“Generator room,” Joe said.

Kurt cracked the door and looked inside. They were still one story above the bottom floor. The room itself was huge, a distance of several hundred feet to the far wall and sixty feet from floor to ceiling. A row of circular housings dominated the interior. Each was thirty feet across and at least half as high.

“Looks like the inside of the Hoover Dam,” Joe said.

“Power station,” Kurt said, “just like the plans indicated.”

“Were you expecting something else?” Renata asked.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Had a feeling this would be something more if Hassan was hiding out down here.”

“Looks legit to me,” Joe said. “The water turns the big impeller out in the river, which is connected to these dynamos by reduction gearing.”

“I agree,” Kurt said. “It also looks empty. Not only don’t I see Hassan, I don’t see anyone. Maybe he did turn the phone off and leave. Could he have possibly known we were tracking him?”

“I doubt it,” Renata said.

As they eased the door shut behind them, Kurt moved forward, crouching. Joe and Renata joined him.

The elevator door on the far side of the long room opened. A group of men stepped out and began walking across the floor. Three were dressed in black uniforms, three others in various garb that looked vaguely Arabic, and the last man wore a dark business suit, white shirt and no tie.

The men were momentarily out of view before reappearing on the far side of one of the generators. At almost the same time, the humming sound filling the room changed in pitch and began to slow.

“Someone’s shutting off the power,” Joe noted.

“If they’d have done that five minutes ago, they’d have saved us a lot of stress,” Kurt said.

The whining generators slowed and finally stopped. Green lights on top of each dynamo housing switched over to amber and then to red. The men below continued to a spot near the far wall, where they paused at a computer panel.

“You’ve seen how we generate power,” one of the men said, his voice carrying through the now quiet room and up to the three infiltrators. “Now you’ll see the reason you have little choice but to comply with our demands.”

“This is ridiculous,” one of the Arab men said. “We came here to speak with Shakir.” He spoke heavily accented English. By the nods and other gestures it seemed obvious that he spoke for the other two.

“And you shall,” the man in the suit replied. “He’s looking forward to negotiating with you.” This man sounded European, either Italian or perhaps Spanish. English must have been their common language.

“Negotiate?” the Arab man said. “We were promised assistance. What kind of a trick are you pulling, Piola?”

Kurt noticed a reaction from Renata as the name was mentioned.

“No tricks,” Piola replied. “But it’s important that you understand the nature of your position before you begin to barter. Lest you make a foolish mistake.”

Beside them, one of the uniformed men tapped away at a keyboard. When he finished, a wall panel slid upward like a garage door opening. Beyond it lay a dark tunnel. The only features Kurt could see were a pair of metallic rails shimmering with a dull gloss and the curved side of a large-diameter pipe. A white tramcar with a blunt nose waited on the rails. It reminded Kurt of the driverless SkyTrain cars becoming common at many airports.

“Based on the geometry, I’d say that’s the same pipe that tried to wash us off the ladder,” Joe said.

Renata was glancing around, getting her bearings. “I’m no hydro engineer, but does it make any sense to have a bypass tunnel running at ninety degrees to the course of the river?”

“No,” Joe replied quickly, “and I am an engineer. That water has to be coming from somewhere else.”

On the floor, a new argument broke out. This time, the words were more hushed and the flow of the conversation too quick to catch.

“Probably arguing about whether to get on the tram,” Joe suggested. “For the record, I wouldn’t.”

“Unfortunately,” Kurt said, “that’s exactly what we have to do.” He unzipped his own waterproof pouch, pulled out a 9mm Beretta and began easing down the stairs. “Let’s go.”