‘You did! You said she was resting! I thought you meant: RIP.’
Despite the tragedy of the day, or maybe because of it, Papineau started to laugh as well. ‘Josh, you’re a Marine, not a two-year-old. If someone dies, I’ll say they died. I won’t say they’re resting — and I won’t say they’re living on a farm upstate.’
‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’ McNutt blurted as he struggled to make sense of things. ‘You’re telling me that Sarah is alive, but my dog is dead?’
‘Your dog?’ Papineau asked.
McNutt nodded glumly. ‘My parents sent him upstate when I was seven. Despicable people, those two. Obviously a pair of liars.’
‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.’
McNutt shrugged. ‘Oh well, at least Sarah’s alive.’
‘Wow,’ Sarah said as she appeared in the ship’s kitchen from a back hallway, ‘try not to sound so glum when you say that.’
McNutt’s face filled with joy as he sprinted across the room and lifted her in a giant bear hug. ‘Oh my God! I’m so happy to see you! And you smell so clean!’
Sarah appreciated the affection, but she could have done without the hug and the layer of filth that now covered her clothes. ‘Josh, put me down.’
But McNutt didn’t stop. He simply swung her back and forth like the clapper inside a bell. ‘Seriously, you smell really good. I’m tempted to lick your face like Sparky used to do.’
‘Don’t you dare! Josh, put — me — down! Now!’
McNutt laughed as he lowered her to floor.
Sarah took a step back and dusted herself off before she truly studied Cobb and McNutt. At that moment, she realized that nearly drowning might have been the easy way out because the guys looked like they had finished their shifts at a coalmine before they had decided to run a marathon through Chernobyl.
Their clothes were grimy and stained with sweat. Dried blood covered McNutt’s arm and matted Cobb’s hair. Their hands had been scraped raw when they dug through the shattered rock, and their eyes were bloodshot from the smoke of the burning crater.
All in all, she had seen healthier-looking zombies.
Sarah pushed her freshly washed hair over her ears and smiled. ‘I guess they buried the lead about getting me out in time. Sorry about that.’
Cobb shrugged, his eyes locked on hers. ‘I wasn’t worried. I knew you’d make it.’
Sarah blushed slightly. ‘I knew you’d make it, too.’
36
Cobb needed three things: a shower, a sandwich, and a summary of what had happened to Sarah and Jasmine in the tunnel.
At that moment, the shower would have to wait.
McNutt tore into the pantry as Cobb rummaged through the fridge for life-sustaining fuel. Neither had eaten since that morning — an eternity with the stress and workloads of their day — and they were willing to make a meal out of almost anything. Fortunately, they wouldn’t have to rough it. The kitchen was well stocked with meats and cheeses, a variety of breads, and an assortment of fruits and vegetables.
The meal did more than satisfy their hunger. It also gave Sarah a chance to fill them in on everything that had happened between the arrival of the gunmen, which was when the team separated, and her escape through the sea tunnel. She spent a few minutes describing Papineau and Garcia’s heroic rescue before Cobb asked her to concentrate on the evidence that they had discovered inside the temple.
‘Jasmine called it a pictograph,’ Sarah explained as she drew tiny symbols on a paper napkin to illustrate. ‘Carvings on a wall that represented events from the city’s past.’
McNutt whistled. ‘That’s a lot of history. How big was the freaking wall?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘It wasn’t a complete history. More like a highlight reel. It included depictions of various wars, those who came to power, that sort of thing. It even explained what happened to the Library of Alexandria.’
She paused, allowing Cobb and McNutt to ponder that last bit of information. Although they understood the basic implications of her statement, it was Papineau who clarified the importance of such a discovery.
‘The pictograph may not rewrite history — because rumors about the library have existed for years — but it will unquestionably bring it into focus. Where there once was doubt, we now have certainty,’ he said.
‘Great,’ McNutt said as he picked fig seeds from his teeth with a toothpick. ‘But how’s that going to help us?’
‘The wall also describes the history of Alexander’s tomb.’
Cobb perked up. ‘Is that true?’
Sarah nodded. ‘The carvings started with the arrival of Alexander and the creation of his city, and they ended with his body being smuggled out of Alexandria just before a massive flood leveled everything.’
Cobb thought back to Papineau’s original briefing in Florida. It had included a video simulation of a catastrophic tsunami in 365 AD. ‘The earthquake in Crete?’
‘Good memory,’ said Sarah, who was surprised that Cobb was still upright let alone functional. ‘According to Jasmine, an oracle warned the priests that a natural disaster was on the verge of destroying the city. The prophecy gave them enough time to smuggle Alexander’s tomb to safety.’
Cobb grimaced. ‘A prophecy, huh?’
‘Look,’ she admitted, ‘I don’t know about the prophecy part, either, but it doesn’t matter what we believe. People back then lived for that shit. And if the almighty oracle told them that their city was on the verge of a horrible tragedy, I’m pretty sure they would have dug up Alexander and carried his skeleton to somewhere safe.’
Cobb was intrigued by the possibilities, but not enough to distract him from what mattered most — and that was Jasmine. With that in mind, he needed to figure out who had the most to gain by destroying the pictograph and the cisterns.
‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘did you find anything else down there? Were there any signs that someone had been there recently?’
‘You mean apart from the Semtex and the explosive foam?’
Cobb smiled. It had taken a while, but he was actually starting to appreciate her biting sense of humor. ‘Yes, Sarah, other than the bombs.’
‘Maybe,’ she replied. ‘I found a used glow stick at the seaside end of the tunnel. I have no idea if the bombers dropped it, or if it was sitting there for five years.’
‘Did you take it?’
She laughed at the absurdity of the question. ‘Of course I took it. Like you even have to ask. I would have taken the wall, too, if I didn’t have to swim.’
His smile widened. The glow stick was exactly the kind of clue he was hoping for. Torches were impossible to trace, and flashlights were so commonplace that tracking them was almost irrelevant, but the glow stick gave him hope. The technology was relatively new, dating back only forty years or so, and there was only a handful of manufacturers.
‘Josh,’ Cobb said as he assembled a plan of attack in his head. The clock was ticking, and they needed to get to work. ‘How are you feeling?’
McNutt sucked on his toothpick. ‘Kind of bloated — how about you?’
‘I mean, are you able to work?’
He sat up straighter. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. I want you to find out everything you can about the explosives. Who deals in Semtex and Lexfoam in this part of the world? What would it take to get the amount that was needed for this job? I want you to plan the mission in your head and give me all the angles. Your flashlight should have recorded plenty of close-ups of the bomb packs and detonators, so have Hector pull the files if you need a visual reference.’
McNutt’s eyes lit up. He loved the thought of planning an explosion; even the one that had almost killed him. ‘I’m on it, chief.’