Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

“It’s a softer material. Almost feels like plaster. It makes sense. There’s a lot more work involved in carving a curved wall from a slab of stone. And there are no seams. We should have noticed it.”

“Easy to miss in this light.” Summer rubbed the wall as well. “Maybe plaster mixed with sand. It has nearly the same texture as the limestone. Do you think we can break through it?”

“We can try. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Dirk took the penlight, leaving Summer in the dark for a minute as he hiked up to the others. He returned with two jagged chunks of limestone that had fallen into the passageway. He passed one chunk and the penlight to his sister. Taking the other chunk, he held it on edge and struck it against the wall.

The stone sliced a deep gouge into the plaster, kicking up a cloud of white dust. Dirk turned and smiled at his sister. “Crude, but effective.”

Summer held the penlight with her teeth and joined in chipping away at the plaster wall. As it fell away, they could see the plaster was about two inches thick. Beyond it lay packed sand.

Starting at shoulder height, they each cut a slim vertical seam toward the floor. Dirk reached the ground first.

As he cleared the debris, Summer called him aside. “Look at this.”

She had knocked away a chunk of plaster at knee level, exposing a slight gap. She dug out some of the sand behind it and exposed the lip of a horizontal limestone slab.

“A step,” Dirk said as she aimed her light. “That has to be it.”

He attacked the plaster above the slab with renewed fervor. Together they carved a two-foot-wide opening in the plaster, then began digging at the sand behind it, exposing two more steps.

Soon there was room for only one, so they took turns digging out the sand while the other scooped it to the side. They dug a tight tunnel following the steps upward until they reached a ceiling of limestone pavers smaller than the slabs over the passageway. Dirk easily broke the light mortar that held them together and pulled away the pieces.

The sand above them gave way easily, but he still had to scrape through an additional foot with his rock before a sharp jab poked a small hole that let in some daylight. He took a sandy shower as he carved away a larger opening, then poked his head aboveground.

There was no sign of the tomb robbers. The body of the antiquities agent had vanished, as had, he supposed, that of the third gunman.

He dropped back into the hole. “Looks safe up top.”

Summer grinned. “I’ll go tell the others we found the front door.”

Stanley was the first to appear at the base of the steps, aided by Zeibig and one of the laborers. Dirk helped hoist the archeologist through the opening, then stretched him out on the desert sand.

“Still hot out,” Stanley whispered with a pained smile. He looked back at the opening. “You did it.”

“Your clue to look for the steps was the key,” Dirk said.

“Likely the entrance to a family necropolis. But only a child was buried there. After Akhenaten died, the family must have abandoned the home, like everyone else in Amarna.”

“I wonder why they didn’t relocate the casket.”

“We’ll never know the answer.” His eyelids drooped heavily.

Dirk turned and helped Riki and Summer through the entrance, then looked toward the village to the north.

One of the laborers climbed out and approached him. “There’s a doctor in the village. I will go and find him.”

Before Dirk could reply, the man turned and sprinted across the desert.

Summer rummaged in the archeologist’s camp and returned with a small medical kit. Stanley’s wounds were bandaged by the time an SUV roared up with the doctor, a policeman, and the director of the local antiquities authority. Finding Stanley’s pulse weak, the doctor called for a medical evacuation. In fifty minutes, an air ambulance from Assiut arrived and whisked him away.

As the sand kicked up by the helicopter settled, the remaining group made their report to the authorities. The young policeman seemed overwhelmed, but took abundant notes. Dirk suspected that in this remote part of Egypt, there would be little capacity to investigate the attack.

With Zeibig’s help, he found a tarp, and they used it to cover the new entrance to the tomb.

“The site will remain under twenty-four-hour surveillance until archeological and security teams can be summoned from Cairo,” the antiquities man promised. “We will do everything in our power to recover the lost artifacts.”

“I hope you also recover the thugs who killed your man,” Dirk said.