Eric countered, “With that much sand right in front we’ll be buried before we can push it open.”
“We’re trapped,” Alana said, panic making her voice crack. “What are we going to do?”
Stoney looked at Mark Murphy, and for the first time neither man had an answer.
THIRTY-ONE
TARIQ ASSAD THANKED HIS PILOT FRIEND AND STEPPED from the helicopter. He closed the flimsy door, gave it a tap, and scurried from under the whirling blades. The small service chopper lifted off the desert floor in a dust storm of its own creation. Assad had to turn his back to it and keep his eyes tightly closed.
As soon as the helo had lifted clear, he strode toward the team commander. The seething anger he had felt in the wake of the police raid back in Tripoli had been replaced with unmitigated joy. He embraced the terrorist leader, kissing him on both cheeks effusively.
“Ali, this is going to be a great day.” Assad grinned.
He’d radioed ahead that he was coming and saw with satisfaction that his orders had been carried out. The men were waiting at the rear cargo ramp of their Mi-8. When Assad waved, they gave him a rousing cheer. Their prisoner was bound to one of the bench seats, a rag tied over his mouth.
Ali noticed Assad’s look. “When we do not gag him, he shrieks like a woman. If he wasn’t such a supposed expert on Suleiman Al-Jama, blessings be upon him, I would put a bullet through that fat lout’s head and be done with it.”
“What a remarkable turn of events,” Assad said, Emile Bumford’s treatment all but forgotten. “A few hours ago, I was moments from being grabbed by the police, and now we will shortly discover the lost tomb.”
“Tell me again how you found it,” Ali invited. They strode to the waiting chopper, whose blades started to beat the superheated air.
“Coming in on the helicopter, I had the pilot swing south when we crossed the border into Tunisia, and as we came down the old riverbed, flying just above it, I spotted an area where it appeared that a section of the bank had been blasted into the river. Had I known about the waterfall a little farther downstream, I wouldn’t have paid it any attention, for surely a sailing ship couldn’t have navigated it. But I didn’t know, so I had the pilot set down so I could investigate.”
“When was this?”
“Moments before I radioed you. What, a half hour ago? And when we landed, I saw evidence that people had been there recently. There were four distinct sets of shoe prints. Two are women, or maybe small men, but I think one might be the American archaeologist who worked with our guest there.” He pointed across the cargo bay to Bumford.
The turbines’ whine made it so Assad had to shout to be heard by the man sitting to his left. “The prints all disappeared into a cave located behind a hill along the river. They must all still be inside. We have them, Ali, the Americans who have disrupted our plans for the last time, and Suleiman’s tomb.”
JUAN ACCEPTED A CUP of coffee from Maurice, the Oregon’s chief steward.
“How are you feeling, Captain?” the dour Englishman asked.
“I think the expression is ‘rode hard and put away wet,’ ” Juan said, taking a sip of the strong brew.
“An equine reference, I believe. Filthy creatures, only good for glue factories and betting at Ascot.”
Cabrillo chuckled. “Dr. Huxley juiced my leg so it’s fe
eling pretty good, and the handful of ibuprofen I scarfed down are kicking in. All in all, I’m not doing too badly.”
The one secret about pain Juan had never shared with anyone other than Julia Huxley, as medical officer, was that he felt it constantly. Doctors call it phantom pain, but to him it was real enough. His missing leg, the one shot off by a Chinese gunboat all those years ago, ached every minute of every day. And on the good days it only ached. Sometimes he’d be hit with lances of agony that took all his self-control not to react to.
So when it came to dealing with the discomfort from where he’d cut out his tracking chip, it wasn’t bravado that made him ignore it. It was practice.
Around them, the op center buzzed with activity. Max Hanley and a pair of technicians had an access panel removed under one of the consoles to replace a faulty computer monitor. The duty weapons officer was talking with teams working throughout the ship to make certain her suite of armaments was operating exactly to standards, while the helmsman maintained a steady course well beyond Libya’s twelve-mile territorial limit.
The ship and crew were ready, only, for the time being, Cabrillo had nothing for them to do.
They still hadn’t received an updated list of Libyan naval assets capable of landing a helicopter, and until they did there was nothing for Oregon to do but wait.
Juan hated to wait. Especially when he had people on the ground. His feelings toward them made it as though everything they went through exacted a physical price on him, too.
“Call coming through,” the radio operator said over her shoulder.
Juan hit a switch on the arm of his chair, and from hidden speakers came the sound of heavy breathing, almost panting.
“You’ve picked a bad time for an obscene phone call,” he said to the unknown person.