The Pharaoh's Secret (NUMA Files 13)

Pushed by the wind, the Black Mist swept along the island and off to the west. It left behind only silence and a landscape littered with unmoving bodies.

3

Mediterranean Sea, seventeen miles southeast of Lampedusa Island

A shadowy figure drifted toward the seafloor in a leisurely, controlled descent. Seen from below, the diver looked more like a messenger descending from the heavens than a man. His shape was enhanced by twin scuba tanks, a bulky harness and a propulsion unit strapped to his back that came complete with a stubby set of wings. Adding to the image was a halo of illumination from two shoulder-mounted lights that cast their yellow beams into the darkness.

Reaching a hundred-foot depth and close to the seafloor, he could easily make out a circle of light on the bottom. Within it, a group of orange-clad divers were busy excavating a discovery that would add to the epic history of the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome.

He touched down, approximately fifty feet from the lighted work zone, and tapped the intercom switch on his right arm.

“This is Austin,” he said into the helmet-mounted microphone. “I’m on the bottom and proceeding toward the excavation.”

“Roger that,” a slightly distorted voice replied in his ear. “Zavala and Woodson are awaiting your arrival.”

Kurt Austin powered up the propulsion unit, lifted gently off the bottom and moved toward the excavation. Though most of the divers wore standard dry suits, Kurt and two others were testing out the new improved hard suits, which maintained a constant pressure and allowed them to dive and surface without the need for decompression stops.

So far, Kurt found the suit easy to use and comfortable. Not surprising, it was also a little bulky. As he reached the lighted zone, Kurt passed a tripod mounted with an underwater floodlight. Similar lights were set up all around the perimeter of the work zone. They were connected by power cords to a group of windmill-like turbines stacked up a short distance away.

As the current flowed past, it moved the turbine blades and generated electricity to power the lights, allowing the excavation to proceed at a much quicker pace.

Kurt continued on, passing over the stern of the ancient wreck and setting himself down on the far side.

“Look who finally showed up,” a friendly voice said over the helmet intercom.

“You know me,” Kurt replied. “I wait till all the hard work is done, then swoop in and collect the glory.”

The other diver laughed. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Kurt Austin was a first in, last out type who would keep working on a doomed project out of sheer stubbornness until it somehow came back to life or there was literally no option left to try.

“Where’s Zavala?” Kurt asked.

The other diver pointed to a spot farther out, almost in the darkness. “Insists that he’s got something important to show you. Probably found an old bottle of gin.”

Kurt nodded, powered up and cruised over to where Joe Zavala was working with another diver named Michelle Woodson. They’d been excavating a section around the bow of the wreck and had placed stiff plastic shields in position to keep the sand and silt from filling in what they’d removed.

Kurt saw Joe straighten slightl

y and then heard the happy-go-lucky tone of his friend’s voice over the intercom system.

“Better look busy,” Joe said. “El jefe has come to pay us a visit.”

Technically, that was true. Kurt was the Director of Special Assignments for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, a rather unique branch of the federal government that concerned itself with mysteries of the ocean, but Kurt didn’t manage like a typical boss. He preferred the team approach, at least until there were tough decisions to be made. Those he took on himself. That, in his mind, was the responsibility of a leader.

As for Joe Zavala, he was more like Kurt’s partner in crime than an employee. The two had been getting in and out of one scrape after another for years. In the past year alone, they’d been involved in the discovery of the S.S. Waratah, a ship that vanished and was presumed to have sunk in 1909; found themselves trapped in an invasion tunnel under the DMZ between North and South Korea; and stopped a worldwide counterfeiting operation so sophisticated that it used only computers and not a single printing press.

After that, both of them were ready for a vacation. An expedition to find relics on the floor of the Mediterranean sounded like just the tonic.

“I heard you two were slacking off down here,” Kurt joked. “I’ve come to put a stop to it and dock your wages.”

Joe laughed. “You wouldn’t fire a man who was about to pay up on a bet, would you?”

“You? Pay up? That’ll be the day.”

Joe pointed to the exposed ribs of the ancient ship. “What did you tell me when we first saw the ground-penetrating sonar scan?”

“I said the wreck was a Carthaginian ship,” Kurt recalled. “And you put your money on it being a Roman galley—which, to my great consternation, has been proven correct by all the artifacts we’ve recovered.”

“But what if I was only fifty percent right?”