The Pharaoh's Secret (NUMA Files 13)

A sharp-eyed man came up to them. His uniform was marked with the Eagle of Saladin, indicating he was a major, just as Edo had been when Joe met him.

The major studied Renata’s prone form and then looked Kurt and Joe over. “Are you Americans?”

Kurt nodded.

“Zavala and Austin?”

They nodded again.

“Come with me,” he said. “General Edo would like to see you.”

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Edo stood in his old uniform, which still fit after two years as a civilian.

“Did you reenlist while we were gone?” Joe asked.

“It’s just for show,” he said. “I led these men in. I thought I should look the part.”

“Did you face much resistance?”

“Not here,” Edo insisted. “The men working the plant are civilians, but we dealt with several groups of the Osiris special units coming out of that tunnel. And Shakir will not take this without responding. We have some allies in the government and military, but he does also.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Shakir,” Joe said. “The only problem he’s going to cause now is a case of crocodilian indigestion.”

Kurt added the details, explaining Shakir’s death and highlighting the treasures they’d found at the other end of the tunnel, treasures that were now underwater once more.

Edo listened in a state of fascination. “A great victory,” he concluded.

“An incomplete one,” Kurt said. He held out the empty vial. “All we found was the poison, not the antidote. On top of that, Hassan got away. Once he rallies the Osiris supporters, you’ll be fighting it out politically and in the street.”

“Hassan is a wily fox,” Edo said. “He has survived more purges than you know. But, this time, he’s left us a trail. According to some of the men we captured, he was seen leaving one of the exits to the mine along with a man whose face was scarred and bandaged. I was told they refer to him as Scorpion.”

Kurt and Joe exchanged a glance. “Any idea where they went?”

Edo shook his head. “No. But we’ve learned something else from a couple of their pilots. Let me show you.”

He led them over to a map on the wall. “This chart shows the pumping stations Osiris has been using to divert the water from the aquifer to the Nile. There are nineteen primary stations and several dozen booster pumps designed to keep the pressure up. As far as we can tell, all of them are automated. Except this one.”

Edo pointed to a spot on the map west of Cairo, in the barren area known as the White Desert. “According to the pilots we captured, they flew to this site regularly, delivering food, water and other supplies.”

“So it’s a manned station?” Kurt asked.

Edo nodded. “But manned by whom? According to the pilots, there were civilians there as well as Osiris regulars. Scientists who took delivery of specially packaged, hermetically sealed crates every three days.”

Kurt recalled what the biologist Brad Golner had told him with his dying breath.

“That has to be the lab where they make the antidote. We need to check it out,” Kurt said.

“My men are spread thin as it is,” Edo said. “Until we can get the backing of the full Army, it’ll have to wait.”

“Just give us a helicopter,?

?? Kurt said.

“I don’t have one,” Edo replied. “But,” he added, “there is one sitting on the roof. If you don’t mind flying the colors of Osiris International.”

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