The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

As the rain fell, they passed another group of signs. As luck would have it, a car was traveling in the opposite direction at almost the same instant. Its high beams cut through the rain and lit up a sign on the far side of the road long enough for Joe to read it.

The weathered blue placard was sandblasted and bent, but the words were clear enough.

“Marsa Alam,” Joe said as he read the sign. “Fifty kilometers.”

The name was familiar. Marsa Alam was the name of an Egyptian port on the Red Sea. It lay behind them. It must have been where the ferry tied up and the trucks disembarked. That meant they were three-quarters of the way from Cairo to the Sudanese border and only a couple of hours from Luxor.

“I’m in Egypt,” Joe whispered, quickly realizing what that meant. “These guys are headed for the Aswan Dam.”

CHAPTER 45

RAIN CONTINUED TO PELT THE CONVOY OF JINN’S TRUCKS as they rumbled west on the highway from Marsa Alam. With the moisture, the natural cooling of the desert at night and the wind swirling around the back of the truck as it raced along, Joe began to shiver.

At first he welcomed it as a relief from his time in Yemen and in the hot box of the ferry, but as the night wore on, the cold began to seep into his bones, and Joe pulled the flap shut to keep the wind and the mist from the truckbed.

It was four hours overland from Marsa Alam to Aswan, but after three hours the convoy began to slow as they came out of the open desert and into the swath of civilization that bordered the Nile.

The trucks crossed the Nile on a modern bridge and entered the town of Edfu on the west bank of the river. As Joe looked around, he saw multistory apartment blocks and storefronts and government buildings. It wasn’t exactly the Beltway, more like a dusty version of East Berlin in the desert, but it was civilization.

The truck slowed further, and Joe hoped they’d come to a red light, but they found a roundabout instead, turning a three-quarter circle before heading north in a straight line once again.

“It had to be a roundabout,” Joe mumbled.

He figured they might end up back on another highway at any moment and that he’d be in Aswan before he could get free. As the engine growled in low gear and the truck picked up speed, Joe decided the time to abandon ship had arrived.

He climbed under the flap and out onto the rear bumper. He glanced around the edge of the tarp, straining to see what was coming. No telephone poles or lights or signs. The coast was clear, and Joe leapt off the truck.

He hit the wet macadam, rolled and slid through an expansive puddle of muck where the rain had gathered as it soaked the street. He stayed down in it for a moment, watching the trucks for any sign the drivers had witnessed his stunt.

They rumbled north in the dark, never changing speed or even tapping the brakes.

Soaking and filthy, Joe pulled himself from the muck and looked around. He’d landed in an open area. Through the rain he could see a huge structure to the left lit by spotlights.

Ignoring new pains in his shoulder and hip and doing the best he could not to notice how badly his ankle hurt once again, he limped toward the lit-up area. It looked like a construction site and an ancient temple cross-pollinated, and only as Joe got close did he realize he was standing in front of the Temple of Horus, one of the best preserved ancient sites in all of Egypt.

The front wall had two huge wings that rose a hundred feet into the night sky. Human figures carved into the wall were sixty feet tall, and gaps that allowed the light into its interior were spaced evenly up, down and across.

During the day the site would have been filled with tourists. But at night, in the pouring rain, it was empty. Except, Joe noticed, for a pair of security guards in a lit booth.

He ran toward it and rapped on the window. The guards just about died from shock, one of them literally jumping from his seat.

Joe pounded on the window again and eventually one of the guards opened it.

“I need your help,” Joe said.

The still-startled guard appeared confused, but he recovered quickly. “Ah … of course,” he said, “come in. Yes, come inside.”

Joe moved to the door. Fortunately for him, guards at the site were picked partly for their ability to speak English, as many of the tourists were Americans and Europeans.

Joe stepped into the lighted booth as soon as the door opened. He was soaking wet, dripping muddy water all over the floor. One of the guards handed him a towel, which Joe used to dry his face.

“Thank you,” Joe said.

“What are you doing out in the rain?” one guard asked.

“It’s a long story,” Joe replied. “I’m an American. I was a prisoner of sorts until I jumped out of a moving truck, and I really need to use your phone.”

“An American,” the guard repeated. “A tourist? Do you want us to call your hotel?”