“Strategic Explorations is in the area,” Hank explained. “The guys who were killed were probably with them. If they’re missing people, they’re going to come looking. SE is filled with vicious bastards — mercs. They specialize in pitting tribes against each other and then helping whoever is losing until the two sides wipe each other out. Wet ops are run by a guy named Antoine Smith.”
“Antoine?” Dow repeated. “How vicious can a guy named Antoine be?”
“Murderer, sadist. Combines the worst aspects of Charles Manson and Reinhard Heydrich,” Rosier added.
Hank smiled. “Let’s break out the drones.”
Sometimes you put your line in the water and get a bite right away. While Michaels was piloting Establishing Shot high over the jungle where he couldn’t crash into anything, and Rosier was flying Long Shot just above treetop height, Hank slipped Close Up through the jungle. Half an hour into the flight he caught the shiny glint of metal in an overgrowth.
Shiny ancient metal.
He pulled closer. Imaging told him that it was a rock obelisk inlaid with metal patterns. Silver, gold and black.
Black is tantalum.
“Boys, we just found ourselves a man-made resonator. Stone, gold, tin and tantalum.”
“How in the hell did the ancients know how to make resonators?” Michaels asked, pulling a toothpick out of his mouth.
“Don’t know that, but I do know what the Queen of Sheba was talking to Solomon about,” Hank said. “And based on Lynton-Wolfe’s circular eight-pattern, now that we’ve found one resonator we’re bound to find seven more. Tonight we’re going to light this place up.”
CHAPTER 7
Beneath the Nubian pyramids of Meroe, Conrad stared at Serena as a half-dozen armed militants poured into the antechamber behind her. From their rags and badges Conrad recognized them as local thugs. The jarring juxtaposition of the Catholic Church’s “It Girl” with Egyptian extremists gave him a start beyond the AK-47 machine guns.
“What’s a nice little Catholic girl doing in a place like this with these fanatics?” he deadpanned, but his heart skipped a beat and he didn’t know if it was from the AK-47s or his first sight of her in the flesh since South America.
“Trying to stop you from ruining the integrity of another archaeological site, Conrad Yeats.” Passion filled her soft brown eyes, but her hard Australian accent and use of his full name gave her voice an edge. “Look what you did to the relief on this wall you blew up! Gone forever! We’ll never know what was on it.”
She was pointing to the rubble on the floor, and it was indeed a jigsaw puzzle nobody could put back together, much like their relationship.
He looked up and saw a doorway beyond that wasn’t there before. How could he have missed it? It probably led to an adjoining annex chamber. But it didn’t explain how she got to that annex chamber in the first place. “Why do I have the feeling that you already know everything about this place?”
“Please,” she said with that dismissive air of the academic she employed whenever she wanted to put distance between them. “This tomb was already robbed centuries ago by workers building the adjacent pyramid. We came through the tunnel they dug from there to here. It was carefully blocked.”
Conrad called her bluff. “Who knew nuns made such great liars?”
“I’m not a nun, you wanker, I’m a sister,” she fumed, terrifying in her raging beauty. “There’s a difference.”
“Well, Sister, I think you’re protecting something.”
“Yes, I am,” Serena insisted. “I’m protecting this World Heritage Site on behalf of UNESCO, NCAM and the government of Sudan. Meroe bears a unique testimony to perhaps the greatest civilization of sub-Saharan Africa before it disappeared.”
“You should talk. It was the arrival of Christianity in the sixth century that expunged the Kushite civilization. I’m surprised these fanatics are helping you.”
“Helping me keep this tomb buried, Conrad. Modern extremists consider all that is ancient Egyptian to be pagan, pure evil. The last thing they want is for what’s down here to come back to Egypt.”
“What happens in Nubia stays in Nubia?” Conrad raised an eyebrow.
Serena sighed. “Something like that.”
“And what gives you the right to keep this buried from the world?” Conrad demanded.
“I’ve been to United Nations refugee camps all over Africa,” she told him, her voice suddenly soft. “More than five million souls have perished in the Congo alone over conflict metals. The last thing Sudan needs is some spectacular find to start more bloodshed.”
She was looking over his shoulder now, past the statue of Isis to whatever was beyond the wall.
He narrowed his eyes. “Who said anything about a spectacular find? You said nothing was left to find down here.”
She reached toward him and grasped the medallion around his neck. “Do you even know what this says? Who it really belonged to? There’s some bad stuff here.”
“Like you know,” he scoffed, secretly baiting her. If anybody knew it, it would be the Vatican’s top linguist.
“It says Adwa of Asaba.”
“Translation, please?”
“Ada the queen of Sheba,” Serena told him.
“Her name is Ada?”
“Yes, Ada,” she repeated and yanked the Isis amulet from his neck, its gold chain snapping off.
“Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap,” Conrad said as he watched her pocket the medallion. “So that’s the way the Dei does it.”
“I’m not part of Dominium Dei.” She actually looked hurt at the very suggestion. “And I’m most definitely not cheap.”
Conrad lunged for the medallion only to be confronted by the staccato bolt clacks of six AK-47 barrels in his face.
“No, you’re not.” He slowly tossed his pack into the far corner and held up his hands to show he was unarmed. “I suppose you’ll add that trinket to the Vatican’s vast collection amassed over centuries of crusades.”
He glanced at the Muslim militants and back at Serena.
“Crusades,” he repeated.
Serena smiled. “It’s not working, Conrad.”
“We'll see about that, Sister,” he shot back as the timer in his pack against the far wall went off, exploding what was left of his C4 and bringing down part of the ceiling.
Conrad used the diversion to shove one militant into another and grabbed the latter’s AK-47 to ram a third militant in the neck. The gun sprayed a burst of bullets across the chamber, raining down debris and causing chaos.
When Conrad blinked his eyes open, Serena was gone — out the annex escape. He turned and bolted back into the long entrance passageway from whence he had come. He could hear loud cracks behind him and saw sparks as bullets ricocheted off the stone relief of bound mutants being marched into an abyss.
See ya, guys.
He emerged outside under the stars in the pyramid fields and chased after Serena. She had kicked off her sandals and was sprinting barefoot like a cheetah toward two military choppers near the quarries. His boots, meanwhile, kept catching on the iron slags in the sand, slowing him down. Either she could walk on water — or a bed of nails — or she was shredding her soles on the rocks as she ran.
He could hear the rotors of one of the choppers whirring as he approached. By the time he reached the choppers, he saw two pilots on the ground, a trail of blood from Serena’s feet and one chopper lifting up with a roar.
A pillar of blinding light fell on him from the sky, a tornado of wind kicking up rocks and dust around him. Conrad covered his face.
A moment later he was alone in the dark, looking up at Serena’s chopper as it floated away against the constellation Virgo. With rage and resentment, he realized she had stolen more from him than some medallion. She had stolen his heart. Again.