“If you are thinking of killing me,” Aspasia’s Shadow began, a second before Turcotte pulled the trigger, “you need to know I am the only one who can revive her. Without me, she dies.”
“What did you do to her?” Turcotte demanded.
“I didn’t do anything,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “She accessed the Grail and now the process must take its course. And I am the only one who can make sure it develops properly or else she dies a most terrible death.”
“What process?”
The two men had reached the ledge, less than twenty feet from Turcotte. They paused as Aspasia’s Shadow came up behind.
“We will go now,” Aspasia’s Shadow said, the other survivors from his group on the stairs, carrying the Ark.
“What process?” Turcotte repeated.
Aspasia’s Shadow pointed and the men moved forward. Turcotte held his ground for a second, then stepped aside. “You’ll never get out of here.”
“I believe we will,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. He smiled, revealing long, sharp teeth. “Do you know who she is?”
Turcotte was at a loss for an answer, not understanding the intent of the question.
“She is not who you believe her to be,” the creature continued. “She has lied to you — or more likely even she does not yet know her true identity.” The two men and Duncan disappeared into the blackness. “Do not follow us or she will die.” He stepped into the blackness before Turcotte could say another word.
“Damn!” Turcotte cursed. He wondered if Graves and his men would ambush them. He waited a few seconds, so he wouldn’t be caught in the kill zone, then dashed into the darkness, the heavy metal thud of his legs hitting the tunnel floor echoing into his helmet.
The blackness grabbed him, and he propelled himself forward, the MK-98 extended, finger ready. He stumbled over something as he entered the tunnel on the other side, hit his knees, forced the muzzle of the weapon up, scanning the screen for targets — nothing moving.
As he got to his feet, he almost fell once more. “Down view.”
Turcotte blinked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. A black tube, about two feet long. Turcotte took a step back as he realized what it was. The severed leg of one of the team members, still encased in the suit armor. “Forward view.”
The tunnel was littered with body parts, some still in armor, others ripped out of the suits. A head, half out of the helmet, lay to one side. It was Graves, dead eyes staring at nothing, neck cleanly severed. The body was ten feet away, farther down the tunnel, blood pooled where the head should be. The walls of the tunnel held large divots where darts had hit, so the team had put up a fight against whatever had attacked them.
“It’s the whole team,” Turcotte whispered to himself, as if hearing the words would make the impact less severe. He counted, trying to add up body parts and suits. As near as he could make out, every member of the team was dead.
How could Aspasia’s Shadow have done this? He wondered, but even as the thought crossed his mind, he realized this had happened while he was in the chamber still talking to the alien creature.
The MK-98 was still pointing ahead, but Turcotte wasn’t aware of where the reticules were, the vision on the screen too overwhelming. Turcotte remembered something from the briefing given by the space command representative. He went over to Graves’s body, turned it over, the backpack now accessible. With his right hand, he pushed a button. A cover popped open, revealing the master computer. Turcotte removed a DVD disk. He knew he could put it in his own computer and have whatever it had recorded from Graves’s cameras and mikes played on his screen, but there wasn’t time for that now. He shoved it into one of the empty ammo pouches on the front of his suit.
He began to run. He left the bodies behind, hoping that carrying Duncan would slow Aspasia’s Shadow down enough so that he could catch them.
The pressure on the suit leg was so slight that Turcotte almost didn’t register it. He skidded to a halt, his instincts warning him a second before his mind was aware. Too late as the trip wire ignited the mine.
Steel ball bearing ripped into the TASC-suit, the concussion of the blast knocking Turcotte off his feet and sending him flying backward down the tunnel ten feet.
Two SA 365 Panther helicopters blew up sand as they landed next to the Great Pyramid. Egyptian troops surrounded the area, but none came close as Aspasia’s Shadow and his entourage came out of the Caliph’s entrance, carrying Duncan and the covered Ark toward the choppers.
They loaded, the doors slid shut, and the choppers lifted, heading to the east.
Turcotte had felt pain like this once before when he’d been shot in the chest while wearing a protective vest, except this was all over his body, not localized in one place. He was in complete darkness, and it took him a second to figure out why that was.
“Screen on,” he ordered. “Forward view.” Nothing.
He tried moving, but the suit didn’t respond. The inner, airtight pressure layer pushed in on every part of his body except his head, clinging, not allowing him to move. Into his trapped darkness, Turcotte screamed, the sound reverberating inside the helmet. Then he passed out.
“We’ve got two bogies moving due west. Takeoff point just about on top of the Great Pyramid.”
“Identification?” Colonel Zycki asked as he came down the aisle in the AWACS to stand behind the screen watcher who had made the report. “Negative ID.”
“Signature?”
“Definitely helicopter. Flying low level but fast. They aren’t Egyptian, because whoever’s flying them has got to have LLTV and extensive night-flying capabilities that the Egyptians don’t have.”
Zycki considered that. “Notify our Israeli friends and forward them updates on the helicopters.”
“Yes, sir.”
Zycki turned to another of his people. “Anything yet from the team?”
“No, sir.”
Zycki checked his watch. They only had an hour of darkness. He didn’t think they could manage an exfiltration from the Nile in broad daylight.
Turcotte regained consciousness and immediately began hyperventilating. He tried to get it under control, knowing that was how he had passed out.
“Status display?” he whispered, hoping the computer was back on line.
Only darkness. He tried to move his arms. Nothing. Legs immobile. He focused his mind back to the orientation he had received. There was an emergency release if all power was lost. Where? He remembered, turning his head as far as he could to the left and sticking his tongue out. It touched a toggle, which he flipped up.
Turcotte bolted upright as the front part of the suit swung away from his body. He rolled out of the suit, savoring the feel of the stone under his hands and knees. He just lay there for a minute. He knew that Aspasia’s Shadow and Duncan were long gone. He’d been in too much of a rush. He stood, pulling a flashlight out of the small butt-pack strapped to the rear of the suit.
Turcotte shone the light down on his suit. The mine had ripped the armor in many places. The protection had held — or else he wouldn’t be standing right now — but the pellets had ripped into the computer, damaging it beyond repair. Without that working, the suit was just a large pile of high-tech garbage.
Turcotte checked the SATCOM link that was bolted on just above the computer. It was also trashed. He grabbed the DVD disk he’d taken from Graves’s suit. He also took the Watcher ring off the right arm. Then he unlatched the MK-98 from the suit. Without the suit’s strength augmentation, the full weight of the weapon reminded Turcotte of carrying a fully loaded M-60 machine gun. He fastened a sling from his belt and slung the gun over his head. He took one of the lithium batteries from the suit to power the gun, increasing the weight he was carrying by ten pounds.