Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

Square mainsails were partially raised and rigged fore and aft for maneuvering as the boats navigated north, propelled by the current. Small oil lamps dangled off the prows, providing faint light to the dark waters ahead. Leaving the city of Memphis in their wake, the boats sailed silently, except for the slap of water against their hulls and the dip of oars into the river.

Twelve miles downriver, murmurs rippled through the boats. Ahead, a string of lanterns had appeared. It was a vessel moored in the center of the river.

Meritaten squinted at the illuminated barge. Ropes stretched from it to either shore, to serve as a ferry during daylight hours, while at night it served as a tax station for passing merchant boats. But shouts of alarm from the barge revealed it was prepared this night for more than tax duty.

“Extinguish the lantern!” called the captain of Meritaten’s boat, a gruff man with a clean-shaven head, and looked to the other boats.

Too late. All three had been seen. A team of archers assembled on the barge let loose a barrage of arrows.

Gaythelos shoved Meritaten to the deck. A crewman screamed and grabbed his neck where an arrow had struck.

“Stay down!” As two guards stood watch alongside, Gaythelos dragged a sack of grain across the deck and covered his wife with it.

Under the sack, she could only listen to the battle. The three boats turned to the far shoreline, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the barge. The first boat approached one of the barge’s ropes, and men with swords leaned over the bow to sever it. Several were picked off by the archers, others sliced the barrier free.

The three boats continued downriver, but the barge released a small chase vessel, filled with warriors and more archers. Putting oars to water, the pursuit craft made for the closest merchant vessel, the one carrying Meritaten and Gaythelos. It closed the distance quickly and pulled alongside. Its warriors swarmed over the side, expecting little resistance.

Gaythelos and the armed contingent sprang from the shadows, thrusting spears and striking their attackers with bronze swords. Hand-to-hand fighting spilled across the deck as every crewman fought to repel the boarders. Archers on the attack boat fired arrows into the melee, killing warriors on both sides. Bodies of the dead splashed into the Nile. The battle raged back and forth until the attackers seemed to gain the upper hand. Sensing defeat, Meritaten rose from her hiding place and picked up a dead warrior’s sword.

“Seize victory!” she implored, plunging the blade into an attacking boarder.

The defenders rallied at the sight. Charging the attackers, they drove them to the stern, killing them without mercy. The attack boat came next. The princess’s raging swordsmen jumped into the vessel and massacred the remaining archers, then shoved the boat to drift away with its cargo of the dead.

Meritaten stepped to the bow in search of her husband. The deck was soaked in blood, dead and wounded men lay everywhere. Gaythelos appeared, holding a bloody dagger. She wrapped her arms around him.

“We are safe now,” he said. “You have led us to victory.” He turned to the captain, who sat at the steering oar, an arrow protruding from his shoulder. “Isn’t that true?”

The man nodded. “There will be no more obstacles. We are nearly to the Delta—and multiple paths to the sea. By morning, Egypt will be in our wake.”

The armada sailed through the night, squeezing down an eastern branch of the Nile Delta bordered by fields of ripe barley. The Mediterranean soon beckoned, and the three boats glided into the turquoise sea. They kept their distance from an approaching line of trading ships from the Levant as the sun brightened the morning sky.

Meritaten sat with Gaythelos as the Egyptian shore drifted away behind them. She clutched the goatskin bag tight to her chest, contemplating her future. While she had saved untold lives, she had also sacrificed everything she held dear.

Rising to her feet, she stepped to the ship’s bow with a newfound sense of destiny. Facing the horizon across the open sea, she gazed toward the unknown world that beckoned her.

PART I

CASCADE

1

May 2020

COPAPAYO, EL SALVADOR

Elise Aguilar watched with somber eyes as the funeral procession marched through the dusty village square. The four male pallbearers strode with downcast faces as they balanced a child’s white casket on their shoulders. A small bouquet of yellow orchids had been slid across the lid, covering a hand-painted image of a soccer ball.

The dead child’s family followed, weeping openly despite words of comfort offered by the townspeople.

Elise tracked the entourage until they disappeared around a bend thick with foliage. The town’s tiny cemetery lay on a small hill just beyond.

She ignored a black Jeep that skirted the funeral procession as she turned and followed a worn footpath in the opposite direction. She walked past a handful of low-roofed, white stucco buildings that were home to the village’s thirty residents. The path ambled downhill and opened onto an expansive view of a shimmering blue lake.

Cerrón Grande was a reservoir, the largest in El Salvador, built to supply hydroelectric power for the region. Hundreds of families had been resettled when the Lempa River was flooded in 1976, some to the hastily constructed village of Copapayo. Elise glanced at the lake. A fisherman in a canoe and a small workboat cruised across the waterway. To the right, a powder-gray concrete barrier marked the upper lip of the Cerrón Grande Dam that had created the lake.

Elise descended the path nearly to the water’s edge. She stopped and wiped her brow in front of a large awning made from gnarled tree roots and covered with palm thatching. A half-dozen red tents were pitched in a semicircle around the awning’s opposite side, facing the shaded interior. To either side lay a large tract of farmland, bursting with rows of green cornstalks.

Under the awning, fellow scientists from the United States Agency for International Development sat around makeshift worktables, performing experiments or computer analysis. The group wore shorts and T-shirts in the steamy climate.