Crescent Dawn (Dirk Pitt 21)

“I never thought inviting a marine engineer to a field dig would generate such an abundance of work for me,” Haasis said as he guided Dirk out of the tent.

Up the hill, they both spotted Sophie walking along the perimeter with one of her agents.

“Coming to Caesarea, I never thought there were such dazzling discoveries to be made,” Dirk replied with a wink, then strolled toward his tent for the night.

14

THE RATTLE OF AUTOMATIC GUNFIRE SENT DIRK BOLT upright in his cot.

The shots sounded dangerously close. Dirk heard some shouting and then the return fire from a handgun. He quickly slipped into a pair of shorts and sandals, then staggered out of his tent as a cascade of gunfire from multiple weapons erupted above the camp. His first clouded thoughts were of Sophie, but he had little time to react. He heard, then spotted two figures charging down the trail, brandishing assault rifles.

Dirk immediately ducked behind the side of his tent, then scurried to a low retaining wall a short distance to the rear. He silently slipped over the wall and followed its cover away from the tents. To the rear of the camp were the crumbled remnants of several buildings that had once served the ancient port city. He threaded his way through the mounds of weathered debris, following a slight rise to a small corner partition. The darkened stone barrier provided a tight point of concealment by which he could observe the entire camp.

While his quick reaction had allowed for his escape, his fellow camp mates were not so fortunate. Sophie had been the next to react, bursting out of her tent near the trail with gun in hand. But one of the gunmen stood just a few feet away and quickly trained his assault rifle on her before she could shake the cobwebs from her eyes. Staring down the gun barrel, she had no choice but to reluctantly drop her weapon to the ground. The gunman responded by viciously jabbing the rifle into her shoulder, knocking her hard to her knees.

“What’s going on here?” Professor Haasis shouted, emerging from his tent half dressed.

“Shut up,” the other gunman ordered, swinging his rifle stock into the professor’s ribs. Haasis sprawled forward, emitting a pained gasp as his body struck the ground. Sophie crawled over and helped him to his feet, both swaying weakly under the overhead lights. Another thug appeared on the trail and took over guarding Sophie and Haasis, while the other gunmen herded the archaeology students from their tents. Sophie gazed toward Dirk’s tent, reacting with muted surprise when one of the gunmen found it empty.

Up the trail, there was a noisy commotion before several figures came into view. One of the antiquities agents, his right arm a bloody mess, staggered down the trail while struggling to support Sam. Sophie’s deputy had a nasty gash across his forehead and shuffled his feet in a dazed state. Two more gunmen marched from behind, prodding the wounded men into camp.

“Sam, are you all right?” Sophie cried, moving cautiously toward the two agents. She grabbed hold of Sam and helped him sink to the ground beside the other seated captives. One of the female students assisted the agent named Raban, wrapping a torn shirt around his wounded arm, while Sophie held a palm to Sam’s bleeding forehead.

“Where’s Holder?” she whispered to Raban.

The agent gave her a grim look and shook his head.

Recovering from his blow, Haasis stood and shouted at his captors.

“What do you want? There’s nothing here worth killing for.”

Sophie studied the group of armed assailants for the first time. They appeared to be Arabs, each wearing a black headdress that covered his lower face. Yet they weren’t the typical dirt-digging grave robbers looking for a few shekels from an old pot or two. They wore dark military-style fatigues and black boots that appeared nearly new. And they carried modern AK-74 assault rifles, updated versions of the venerable Kalashnikov AK-47. Sophie wondered for a moment if they might be a militant commando group that had stumbled onto their camp by mistake. But then one of them replied to Haasis’s query.

“The scroll. Where is it?” barked the gang’s obvious leader, a heavy-browed man who bore a deep scar along his right jawline.

“What scroll?” Haasis replied.

The man reached beneath his jacket and retrieved a small holstered SIG Sauer pistol. Casually aiming it at Haasis’s thigh, he squeezed the trigger once.

The gun’s report elicited a scream from one of the students as Haasis collapsed to the ground, grabbing his leg above the bloody wound. Sophie quickly spoke up.

“They’re in the large tent,” she said, pointing the way. “There is no need for further shooting.”

One of the gunmen ran into the tent and rummaged around a few minutes before emerging with a ceramic box in one hand and a papyrus scroll in the other.

“There are many scrolls. Secured in plastic bins, more than a dozen of them,” he reported.

“Do not leave any behind,” the leader barked. Then he nodded toward the captives.

“Take them down to the amphitheater,” he ordered two of his other men.

The pair of gunmen motioned with their weapons for the captives to stand and move. Sophie helped Sam to his feet while a pair of students helped up Dr. Haasis. With prods and shoves, the captives were herded along the path that led down to the beach. The scar-faced leader walked over to the artifact tent and grabbed the scroll from his subordinate’s fingers. He studied it under one of the hanging lights for several minutes, then grabbed the ceramic box and ordered the man to retrieve a truck parked outside the grounds.

Dirk watched from his hiding spot until Sophie and the others had been marched out of the camp. He then quietly crept through the ruins, making his way toward the beach on a parallel track to the captives. His mind raced to try to develop a rescue plan or find something to use as a weapon, but his options were few against men armed with automatic assault rifles.

There was little ambient lighting once he moved from the camp, and he struggled to keep his footing over the rocky ground. He kept his eyes on the beam of a flashlight that danced to his right, carried by the guard leading the group. The hillside leveled briefly as Dirk crossed what had once been a stone-paved road. The flashlight beam disappeared behind a wall less than fifty feet to his side, but he could still track the shuffling steps of the captives making their way down the path. Wary of the sound of his own footsteps, he stopped and crouched low for a minute or two until the procession moved well ahead, then he made his way to the back side of the wall. Loose gravel crunched underfoot as he approached the barrier. Feeling along its sides, he moved to the end, then peered around the edge to find the meandering beam of light.

A cold ring of steel suddenly jabbed into the side of his throat, nearly blocking his windpipe. Dirk jerked his head to see one of the scarf-clad Arabs materialize from the other side of the wall, pressing an assault rifle farther into his neck. Even under the dim light, Dirk could detect the malicious hostility in the man’s dark eyes.