He shook his head. “Actually, I’m going to surrender,” he said with a wink of his eye.
Joe’s face registered shock, but Kurt opened his palms and showed Joe the two vials of the Black Mist. One fit neatly in each hand.
“Can you hit the guy on the Sphinx?” Kurt asked.
Joe worked the slide to make sure the Breda wasn’t jammed. “I have ten shells left. I think one of them might have his name on it.”
A gunshot and a scream startled them. “That was only a flesh wound!” Shakir shouted. “The next one will take out her kneecap.”
With a vial in each palm, Kurt put his hands behind his head and got in position to stand.
“Give them the fastball,” Joe said. “Don’t mess around with the slider or the curve.”
Kurt grinned and stood slowly, half expecting to get shot the instant he came out from behind the overturned car.
He straightened up and looked Shakir in the eye. Renata was down on her knees in front of him.
“Your friend as well,” Shakir shouted.
With his hands behind his head as requested, Kurt glanced down at Joe and then back to Shakir. “His leg is broken. He can’t stand.”
“Tell him to hop!”
Joe nodded. He was ready to fire.
“Tell him yourself!” Kurt shouted. He cocked his right arm and hurled the first vial toward the stone sarcophagus Shakir was standing on. It just missed and splashed harmlessly in the water, skipping like a stone.
Shakir watched the projectile fly past and flinched, expecting an explosion. When it didn’t come, he raised his weapon and fired at Kurt.
Kurt had already switched the second vial into his right hand and flung it, sidearm this time. It hit the stone lid of the pharaoh’s coffin right underneath Shakir’s feet. The vial shattered, the contents of the bottle directed upward by the curved edge of the coffin.
Shakir was covered in the Mist and he staggered back, his vision blurring. He knew instantly what had happened, but it mattered little: the Mist was taking him. He fired once more in
Kurt’s direction and fell back as the recoil knocked him over and into the water.
At the other end of the wrecked vehicle, Joe had popped up and braced the heavy machine gun on the front fender. He opened fire at the target on the Sphinx. The report of the Breda boomed through the burial chamber like the sound of a cannon.
The soldier in position on the Sphinx pulled back behind the edge of the statue as the first shots flew wide. But the next burst cut into the statue’s flared headdress, punching holes right through it and out the other side.
The soldier realized his mistake too late. The Sphinx was made of plaster and covered with gold leaf and semiprecious stones. The weapon Joe was using fired shells designed to penetrate armor. They blasted through the headdress like they were punching holes in paper.
He dropped to his knees as one of them hit him. The next hit finished him and he fell to the side and slid off the back of the Sphinx. He crashed into the water and came to the surface, floating facedown.
62
Kurt glanced around, listening. The chamber had gone silent. The shooting was over. And then a disturbance near the Sphinx stirred the water as one of the crocodiles knifed down the lane, snapped its jaws on the dead soldier’s body and rolled over in a swirling death spiral.
“Better get Renata,” Joe said.
Kurt was already moving, grabbing a gas mask from the wrecked vehicle, pulling it over his face and cinching it tight.
Even having spent half his life in water, Kurt was always amazed how hard it was to run once the water level reached above one’s knees. He charged forward and found Renata floating and unconscious. He grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder and climbed up on the stone coffin.
From there, he could see the dilemma. The hungry crocodiles had made their way out of the pit. They were moving around the shallow waters now filling the burial chamber in search of a meal. He counted four, but that didn’t mean he was seeing all of them.
Behind him, Joe had climbed onto the side of the AS-42 and was safe for the moment. But the water was still rising. Seeing no danger between them, Kurt waved Joe over.
With a gas mask on, Joe trudged to the nearest sarcophagus and climbed up. From there, he hopped from one to the next until he stood with Kurt.