A gasp trickled from his lips as his gun and phone clattered to the ground beside his collapsing body. Then the chamber fell silent.

Dirk and Giordino climbed down the mound in the darkened chamber and turned on their lights.

“I think you got them,” Brophy announced from the corner.

“You made a nice decoy,” Dirk replied. “Are you okay?”

“Dandy, under the circumstances.”

Giordino had already stepped around the rock pile and was aiming his light at the entry. Two bodies lay still on the ground. The nearest was Gavin, who showed no signs of breathing. Stepping closer, Giordino could see the gunman’s head was bloodied beneath him. His skull had cracked when he was knocked against the wall.

Giordino felt Dirk rush past him to the second figure. It was an attractive woman, he saw, lying on her side with her eyes open. Oddly, she showed no apparent sign she had been struck by the boulder.

Dirk kneeled at her side and gently raised her torso. Riki’s face winced as he did so, then softened as she focused her eyes on Dirk. He felt a warm wetness in his hand and noticed a small rip in the side of her jacket. A ricocheting bullet from Gavin’s gun had found her, striking her in the side of the chest. Dirk pressed his hand against the wound, then looked in her eyes under the glow of Giordino’s light.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she said in a weak voice. “It’s . . . It’s all my mother’s doing. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” Dirk saw she was fading quickly. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.

“Find it,” she whispered. “Find Meritaten and what she had. Then save us all.” She looked into Dirk’s eyes and forced a smile, then she was gone.

71

McKee crouched at the cavern’s entrance, sweeping her light across the room. She saw now that the timber holding the rope was in fact the mast of a small ship housed in the narrow basin. The ledge on either side of the basin was empty, telling her the assailant was hiding somewhere below with the ship.

She knelt next to Rachel, calling her name to see if she was alive. She was not. McKee stood and retrieved the two-way radio.

“Gavin. Are you there?”

Silence.

“Gavin. Please answer if you can hear me.”

“Oh, I can hear you all right,” came the irritable voice of Al Giordino. “Like the squawk of a turkey vulture.”

“Where’s . . . Where’s Gavin?”

“He and his girlfriend are down for the big sleep. Now if you just—”

McKee let out a wail, then tossed the radio at the rock wall. Giordino’s voice fell silent as the smashed radio slid to the ground.

She felt herself go dizzy, and her knees nearly buckled. She sucked in several deep breaths of air to calm herself and regain her senses. It was all too much to process. How could everything have gone so terribly wrong?

The answer came in the form of a voice from the darkness.

“It’s all over, McKee,” Pitt said. “It’s all over.”

Her despair turned to anger at recognizing the voice. Following the sound, she climbed down the steps to the topside of the basin and looked down. The naturally carved cavity was a near perfect rectangle, a dozen feet deep, and extending to the rear cavern wall. What sat inside wasn’t naturally formed, however.

It was a long boat, almost 90 feet in length, but with a narrow beam. It had stem and stern pieces that rose upward in tall spires, and a single high mast with a tattered sail. A half-dozen long oars slung over either side, their tips resting on the basin floor below. Aft of the mast was a lone enclosed cabin that stretched almost to the stern. McKee knew nothing of ship construction, yet even under the weak light of her flashlight she could see the boat was ancient.

She had little concern for the boat or its construction at the moment. Her only focus was for the man hiding in the shadows. She heard a scrape of wood on the far side railing and raised her Beretta, firing three shots into the darkness. The gunfire echoed through the cavern, gradually replaced by dead silence.

Near the bow, McKee saw a wooden ramp from the top of the basin to the boat’s deck. Striding to the ramp, she tiptoed across, realizing that the low-drafted boat was perched on supports, raising it well off the bottom of the basin. Taking a first step onto the deck, she heard a thunk on the side of the cabin. She turned and fired twice more at a shadow that vanished around the back end.

“It’s over for you, McKee,” Pitt’s voice called out from the stern.

She gritted her teeth. Her heart pounded, and her hands shook with an internal frenzy. Moving across the bow, she passed the center mast and heard another sound, this time on the right side of the boat. She raised her light, catching a glimpse of a man’s torso dropping to the deck. She raised her right hand and fired.

Tags: Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net