Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

The gunman flung a roundhouse punch, striking him in the midsection. As Stanley doubled over, the assailant jammed his pistol into his throat and forced him back upright. “I don’t have time for games or lies. A tomb is here, and I will blow your head off right now if you don’t reveal the truth.”

Stanley grimaced under the pain of the barrel grinding into his jaw. He blinked rapidly and forced a slight nod. “What is it you want to know?”

20

A stream of air bubbles rose and burst on the Nile’s surface, signaling the presence of an underwater diver. A moment later, a woman in a blue Desco Air Hat dive helmet and matching hazmat dive suit bobbed to the surface. She took her bearings, then swam along a safety line to a small boat. She reached out to the dive ladder, removed her fins, and passed them up to a shirtless man with dark hair who waited at the transom.

While Dirk Pitt, Jr., wasn’t the spitting image of his father, the resemblance was obvious. They both carried the same tall, lean frame and the same strong facial features cut by an easy smile. The younger Pitt reached out a hand, pulled his twin sister aboard, and helped remove her dive helmet.

Summer Pitt shook a mane of long red hair, then unhooked an underwater camera and passed it to her brother. He shut off a humming air compressor, then turned and held up the camera. “Did you make Ansel Adams proud?”

“Only if he enjoyed taking photos in a blizzard,” Summer said. “With the current and murky water, that’s what it looks like down there.”

“Don’t be bad-mouthing the Nile or you’re liable to make the river goddess unhappy.”

“She needs to goddess up and convince the Egyptians to stop polluting the river.”

To avoid burning up under the hot sun, she peeled off the vulcanized dry suit and slipped a T-shirt and shorts over the bikini she was wearing underneath. Tall like her brother, but fair-skinned, she looked at Dirk with piercing gray eyes.

“I think we’re in the right spot. I found what could be remnants of stone pilings in an orderly progression from the shore. There are small mounds and undulations on either side, which could be buried artifacts. And I’m pretty sure I bumped up against a hewn block of stone in deeper water. If our estimate of the change in the riverbank is correct, it seems we have all the hallmarks of an ancient commercial dock.”

Dirk skimmed through the digital photos on the viewfinder and nodded. “Ansel would indeed be proud. This looks like sufficient evidence to file an excavation plan with the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry. There’s the potential for all kinds of cultural debris surviving in the muck next to a commercial dock, even if it’s three thousand years old.”

“Given the annual floods that used to wash sediment down the river, you may be right. Things probably became buried pretty easily.” Summer cocked her head. “What’s that sound?”

Dirk listened a moment to a static-filled tapping.

“It’s the radio.”

He crossed to the wheelhouse and picked up a yellow two-way radio. A repeated clicking came from the receiver. Dirk held the radio to his lips and pressed the transmit button. “Rod, is that you? Come in, please.”

No answer, just the continued clicking.

Summer stepped closer. “That sounds like an SOS call.”

Dirk listened to the repetitive clicks—three short, three long, then three short again. He tried calling Zeibig once more, but got the same result. He tossed the radio aside and turned to Summer. “Pull the boat ahead while I retrieve the anchor. Our favorite shovel bum may be in trouble.”

He pulled on a shirt, climbed onto the bow, and grabbed the anchor line. Summer was already at the wheel, driving the boat against the Nile’s current. Dirk gathered in the line as they moved forward until he could hoist up the anchor. Summer spun the boat around and headed downriver, angling closer to the eastern shoreline.

They were located off the ancient city of Amarna in the desert of Middle Egypt, some two hundred miles south of Cairo. Constructed by Pharaoh Akhenaten on a remote, protected plain along the Nile’s eastern bank, the city had briefly served as the Egyptian capital over three thousand years ago. Shortly after Akhenaten’s death, the capital was moved back to Thebes. The young city was not only abandoned, its stonework and monuments were stripped and salvaged for use at other sites. Still, Amarna represented the only ancient Egyptian city not completely covered by subsequent habitation.

The six-mile-long plain, ringed by high limestone cliffs, contained two small modern villages near the central and southern sections of the old city. But Dirk and Summer were working at the northern end of the plain, near the site of the royal residence known as the North Riverside Palace. Summer drove the boat down the empty river, turning in at a rickety dock. Dirk hopped off the bow and secured the boat, then stepped ashore and waited for Summer to join him.

Even in this remote stretch of desert, the Nile’s banks were devoted to agriculture. The twins found themselves in a field of soybeans that stretched along the riverbank like a wide green carpet. Crossing inland, they stopped at a grove of low trees. From a short distance away they could hear shouting voices.

Just beyond the trees lay the site of the ancient palace. Knee-high remnants of a mud wall surrounded the scattered remains of columns, courtyards, and royal buildings that once rose from the grounds. Dr. Stanl

ey’s excavation site was a few dozen yards south, marked by several canopy tents, a battered pickup, and a yellow front-end loader.

Summer grabbed Dirk’s arm and pointed to a bloody body that lay facedown in the center of the field. “Artifact thieves?” she whispered.

“Probably.”

Terrorists at such a remote location seemed unlikely. Given Egypt’s long struggle against theft at its many cultural sites, profit seemed a more likely motive. If they were thieves, they were especially brazen to attack an active one. Judging by the body, they were willing to kill to get what they wanted.

Mounds of excavated dirt concealed the terrorists, so Dirk and Summer maneuvered down the line of trees. Crouching behind a poplar tree, they could see three gunmen facing an excavation pit, their backs to a high pile of overburden.

In the pit, Zeibig and a few others stood under the watchful eyes of a heavyset man with a belt of grenades around his waist. As the guard turned into the wind, his scarf briefly dropped from his face, exposing a neatly trimmed black beard. Dirk and Summer watched as Dr. Stanley was pulled from the trench and pistol-whipped by a gunman in a checked headscarf.