Still, there were questions that couldn’t wait.
‘What about the guys? Did they make it out?’
Garcia shrugged. ‘We lost them.’
Sarah took the news like a sucker punch.
Sensing her misinterpretation, Papineau jumped in to clarify the situation. ‘What he means is that we lost their signals.’
Sarah stared at Garcia, annoyed by his poor choice of words.
Garcia quickly realized his mistake. ‘Oh, God. I didn’t mean it like that. They’re not dead — at least, we don’t know that for sure. We just lost tracking and communications. When the bombs detonated, it must have damaged their electronics.’
This time, his words struck a different chord.
‘When the comms went out,’ she said, struggling to find the right words. ‘When we entered the second tunnel and we couldn’t hear you, could you still hear us?’
Papineau waved off her question. ‘Sarah—’
‘Could you still see the video feeds from our cameras?’
Papineau again tried to silence her. ‘Please, you need to—’
This time it was Garcia who cut him off. ‘We lost the live feed, but that doesn’t mean we lost the footage. If you were still using the flashlight camera, it was still recording. There’s internal memory, a micro-drive that stores the video files.’
‘How much footage will it hold?’ she asked.
Garcia shrugged. ‘Something like a thousand hours, why?’
Papineau shook his head in frustration. Their attention shouldn’t be on the treasure; it should be on the things that really mattered.
Sarah fished both the flashlights from the cargo pockets of her pants and presented them to Garcia.
‘We found something,’ she explained. ‘A wall with carvings all across it. It’s a pictograph that explains what happened to the library and why Alexander’s tomb was moved. I remember some of the details, but these should show us everything.’
Cobb and McNutt climbed out of the wreckage and into a nightmare.
The streets were lined with victims of the tragedy. Those who made it out of their homes and offices before the buildings collapsed now watched in horror as their neighbors suffered. Paramedics tended to the injured. Firemen rushed to contain the flames. Police officers struggled to keep the gawking crowd at bay.
It would have been easy for Cobb and McNutt to flee the chaos and return to the relative safety of the yacht to have their minor wounds tended to. After all, they were still dazed from the blast and grieving for the friends they assumed were dead and/or buried under so much rubble that there was no way they could reach them, but leaving the scene would have gone against everything that they stood for.
One trip into the burning rubble quickly became two, and then five, and then ten. Time and time again they shuttled the wounded from the smoldering wreckage to the waiting medical personnel. Cobb knew that many of the victims had fatal injuries. Still, those not mutilated or burned beyond recognition deserved a chance to survive, and both he and McNutt were determined to give them that opportunity.
Eventually, there was nothing left to be done. The twisted pile of debris was too unsteady to climb on, and the growing fire had become too hot to withstand. Continuing their effort would only put more lives at risk — including their own.
They had saved everyone that they could.
Now it was time to find the bombers.
33
Cobb’s tank was empty. So was McNutt’s. They had started the day on a magnificent yacht, and now they leaned against a battered fire truck. Their muscles ached and their wounds throbbed as they tried to make sense of everything that had happened.
The cisterns were destroyed, the tunnels were buried, and hundreds were killed or injured — all at the hands of a mysterious foe that had surfaced with violent intent. Sarah and Jasmine were presumed dead since they had last been seen heading toward the epicenter of the blast, and they couldn’t reach Garcia to confirm anything.
All in all, it was a horrible day.
The worst they could remember.
Despite the carnage, McNutt forced himself to take stock of his surroundings. Everywhere he turned, all he saw was chaos. Burning buildings. Sobbing onlookers. Emergency vehicles of every shape and color, along with dozens of crews attempting to handle the situation. After a while, it all started to blend together into one continuous vista of death and destruction… until he saw something that stood out.
McNutt rubbed his eyes in disbelief, convinced that the smoke was playing tricks on him. And yet the man’s appearance didn’t change. He had seen him less than an hour earlier in the cistern.
McNutt nudged Cobb to get his attention. ‘Jack, it’s one of them.’
‘One of who?’
‘One of the guys from the tunnels. The goddamn monkey men.’
‘Where?’
‘At your three o’clock.’
Cobb zeroed in on the triage area, scanning for anything that looked familiar. Only one man stood out. ‘Black pants, black tunic, dark skin.’
‘That’s him.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Almost positive.’
Cobb nodded in understanding. McNutt didn’t recognize his face, but the man was wearing the same clothes as the other men in the cistern.
Plus, he was acting strangely.
With nothing else to go on, they stood back and watched as he worked his way through the tent that had been set up on the edge of the blast site. The victims, both dead and alive, had been spread out in rows so that the doctors could quickly work their way through the masses. Many of the dead had been covered with sheets, towels, or scraps of clothes, and he took the time to uncover every last one.
Cobb and McNutt understood his intentions.
He was searching for someone.
Maybe one of his own. Maybe one of his targets.
Either way, it showed remarkable dedication to his cause.
And his boldness filled Cobb with rage.
Once the man had finished his search, he broke away from the makeshift hospital and made his way toward the periphery of the madness. Determined to get answers, Cobb knew they needed to act fast. They simply couldn’t let a lead like that walk away. Despite the crowd, Cobb sensed their opportunity and decided to take him down.
‘Nice and slow,’ he whispered to McNutt. ‘We don’t want to spook him.’
‘Slow, I can promise. But nice is out of the question.’
Cobb took a course to intercept the man while McNutt trailed from a safe distance. No discussion was needed; both knew how to proceed. They had been taught well by the US military. They knew how to coordinate their actions and predict each other’s moves. The entire time they scanned the crowd for trouble without making themselves known. They walked casually but quickly, confident but not defiant.
They simply looked like they belonged.
Meanwhile, the bomber was the exact opposite.
He strode purposefully through the chaos. Not strolling or running but somewhere in between, as if he were trying to do some light cardio in the middle of a warzone. As he walked, the man shook his head back and forth to someone in the crowd.
The movement was subtle, but Cobb noticed it. Looking ahead, he spotted an ambulance parked fifty feet away. A second man stood next to an empty gurney behind the vehicle. He looked the part of a medic — the uniform, the comfortable shoes, the sterile gloves — but the anger on his face gave him away.
This was a man who took lives, not a man who saved them.
Cobb lowered his head and tried not to be spotted, but he was a large white man in an Egyptian city. It wasn’t easy to hide. Eventually the medic saw Cobb’s approach and knew their cover had been blown. He slapped the side of the ambulance, shouting instructions to the driver in Arabic. A moment later the engine roared to life as the medic opened the rear doors and climbed into the back of the van.