The Pharaoh's Secret

52

Edo stood on the deck of the small boat, scanning the waters of the Nile with night vision goggles. It had been hours since Joe and his friends went into the Osiris building.

The helicopter had left the compound forty-five minutes earlier. The flow of water from the end of the hydro channel had increased to a torrent and still there was no sign of them.

As the clock ticked, Edo grew more and more concerned. He was worried about his friend — that much was true — but being a military man, he also knew the danger of a failed assault. It left one vulnerable to a counterattack.

If any of them was captured, they would be tortured until they gave in. Edo’s name would be mentioned eventually. That put him in danger. Danger of being killed, arrested, imprisoned. And even if nothing so dire came of it, he would still end up back where he’d started: under his brother-in-law’s thumb, working a job he despised and prevented from any opportunity to get free.

Strangely, that fate seemed worse than any of the others.

He decided the time had come. He started making calls. Calls he should have made when Joe first came to him. Initially, his old friends ignored him.

“You must understand,” he told a friend who was now part of Egypt’s antiterrorist bureau, “I still hear things. I still have contacts who are afraid to talk to people such as yourself. They tell me that Shakir is going to strike at the Europeans. That he caused the incident on Lampedusa. That he and Osiris are behind everything taking place in Libya. We must intervene or Egypt as a whole will never survive.”

The men he spoke with were a diverse group: ex-commandos, current members of the military, friends who’d gone into politics. Despite that, their responses were remarkably similar.

Of course Shakir and Osiris are a danger, they said, but what do you expect us to do?

“We need to get into the plant,” Edo said. “If we can prove what they’ve been doing, the people will rally behind us and the military will save this country again.”

Stony silence followed, but, eventually, the men began to see it his way. “We must move now,” Edo insisted. “Before the sun rises. Morning will be too late.” One by one, they agreed.

A colonel in charge of a special commando group pledged his assistance. Several of the politicians insisted they would back the decision. A friend who still worked for internal security agreed to dispatch a group of agents to go with the commando team.

Edo was charged-up by the support. If this worked, if he could rally the troops to this movement, he would be a hero of the new Egypt. If it also stopped the bloodshed in Libya, his name would be famous across North Africa as well. He would be a legend. He might even be the next leader of the country.

“Contact me when your men are in position,” Edo said. “I’ll lead them in myself.”

Deep inside the underground nest of tunnels, five miles from the hydroelectric plant, Tariq Shakir could barely control his outrage. He was furious over the failure he’d just witnessed, embarrassed in front of his own men and ready to take it out on someone. Hassan was the easiest target.

Shakir had half a mind to shoot him dead on the spot, but he needed Hassan to coordinate the search.

“Find them.”

Hassan sprang into action, organizing a search and calling for reinforcements. The ATVs at the scene zoomed off down the tunnel. When more men arrived, Hassan dispatched them as well.

A few minutes later, the driver of one of the ATVs came back and spoke to Hassan, before speeding away again.

“Well?” Shakir demanded. “What’s the report?”

“No sign of the intruders, but two of our ATVs were found wrecked. There was no indication of how the crashes occurred. When two from the advance team went closer to investigate, they collapsed.”

“The Black Mist. They have the Black Mist,” Shakir said. “Where did this happen?”

“Three miles from here, in tunnel nineteen.”

Shakir looked at his map. “Nineteen is a dead end.”

Hassan nodded, he knew that from the driver’s report. “Our ATVs appear to have been headed this way when they wrecked. A short way from there, the tunnel splits. Since the intruders didn’t come back through here, they must have gone up into the main hall.”

“The main hall,” Shakir pointed out, “is like the trunk of a giant oak. At least fifty tunnels branch off from it. And dozens more from each of its branches.”

Hassan nodded again. “They could be anywhere now.”

Shakir stood and rushed toward Hassan, grabbing him by the collar and slamming him against the cave wall. “Three times you’ve had the chance to kill them. Three times you’ve failed.”

“Shakir,” Hassan pleaded. “Listen to me.”

“Send your men after them. Put everyone you have on it.”

“We’ll never find them,” Hassan shouted.

“You must!”

“It’s a waste of manpower,” Hassan blurted out. “You know as well as I do how extensive the tunnels are. As you told Piola, there are literally thousands of tunnels and rooms, hundreds of miles of passageways, many of which aren’t even on our maps yet.”

“We have two hundred men to send looking,” Shakir said.

“And each group will be alone,” Hassan pointed out. “Radios don’t work down here. They’ll have no way to communicate with each other or with us. We’ll have no way to coordinate or to measure the progress.”

“Are you suggesting we just let the intruders go?” Shakir bellowed.

“Yes,” Hassan said.

Even through his blinding rage, Shakir sensed Hassan was getting at something. “Explain yourself!”

“There are only five exits to the mine,” Hassan said. “Two of which are hidden under pumping stations manned by our people. The other three can be watched easily. Rather than chase them through the maze, we should station well-armed groups at each opening and wait for the intruders to appear at one of them. Put one of our missile-armed helicopters into the air. Put two or three up, if you wish.”

Hearing what sounded like a sensible plan, Shakir released his lieutenant. “And if there prove to be more exits? Portals we haven’t found yet?”

Hassan shook his head. “We’ve been mapping this place for the past year. The chances of them finding some way of escape that we haven’t discovered are small. More likely, they’ll wander and get lost, dying long before they find any way out at all. Should they happen to find a shaft that leads to the surface which we haven’t discovered, they’ll end up in the White Desert, where they’ll be easy targets for our recon units. And if they come to one of the known exits, our men will be waiting to gun them down.”

“No,” Shakir corrected. “I want them obliterated. And when it’s done, I want to see their bullet-riddled bodies in person.”

“I’ll give the order,” Hassan insisted, straightening his jacket.

“All right,” Shakir said. “But I warn you, Hassan, do not fail me again. You won’t enjoy the consequences.”