Light rain fell, pattering against the leaves of the tree whose shadows he hid in. The shadows had almost faded now, absorbed by the coming night and the darkness of the storm.
Then he noticed movement on the hillside. Shifting his binoculars, he tracked the movement and saw a small person, dressed in robes, scurrying toward the well.
Thousands of years had stripped the mortar of its vitality, and it crumbled beneath the concerted efforts of the picks the team had brought in their equipment bags. Lourds and Fitrat attacked the wall, quickly discovering the cave that lay beyond. Lourds’s heart sped up as the scent of fresh earth filled his nostrils. There was a hint of something else as well. Something sweet.
He freed another stone block, curled it into his arms, and handed it back to Rahimi, who passed it back to the man behind him. They were dumping all the stones outside the well.
Lourds picked up his flashlight and peered through the opening they’d made. It was almost big enough to crawl through now. The flashlight beam was lost inside the long black passageway on the other side.
“Now I am excited.” Marias took the stone Fitrat passed back. “This could be the way Heracles ventured down into Hades.”
“I know.” Lourds played the beam around the front of the opening. The light revealed the tracked grooves where the stones were supposed to slide across the floor.
“You must stop!” A high-pitched voice echoed in the well, and thunder followed the command.
Lourds spun, turning his flashlight with him. The beam squarely caught a hooded and robed figure standing at the well’s edge. The cloth it wore was black as the night.
51
Fitrat and his men brought their weapons to bear at the same moment Lourds’s light lifted the young boy’s features out of the darkness.
“Stop! Don’t shoot! He’s just a boy!” Lourds spoke in Dari, hoping that language would better serve him. “Captain, he’s just a boy!”
Fitrat told his men to hold their fire. Then he sent four of his men out of the well to secure the perimeter. He turned to Lourds. “I must apologize. Letting someone sneak up on us is very unprofessional.”
“Not a problem, Captain. I think we were all under the spell of this passageway. Under the circumstances — and especially in light of the fact that we’re all still alive — I think we can forgive ourselves.” Lourds approached the boy, who had not run even as the soldiers brandished their weapons and rushed by him.
The boy looked at him, wide-eyed with fear and breathing rapidly. “You must not go in there. It is forbidden.” He spoke in Greek.
“Forbidden by whom?”
The boy shook his head. “You must not go in there.”
“My name is Thomas Lourds. Who are you?”
On closer inspection, Lourds estimated the boy’s age at twelve or thirteen. He was slight and skinny, with black hair that hung in ringlets and eyes like coal.
“My name is Haros. I am the son of Haros, who was the son of Haros before him.”
“Thomas.” Marias spoke softly in English. “You do know what name Haros derives from, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Lourds was fascinated. “Charon. The ferryman.”
According to mythology, Charon was the boatman who carried the newly dead across the River Styx to the Underworld. He was always depicted as a bearded old man in dirty clothing. Sometimes he was shown as a living skeleton, a lot like the Grim Reaper.
“What are you doing here, Haros?”
“I came to stop you.” The boy looked past Lourds and into the yawning mouth of the passageway. “I cannot allow you to enter that place.”
“Is there anyone with you?”
The boy looked nervous. “You may not enter the cave. Only the dead may enter the cave.”
Fitrat, unaware of the conversation because he didn’t speak Greek, turned to Lourds. “No one else is out there. Apparently the boy is alone.”
Lourds nodded. He spoke to the boy. “We mean no harm. We came here to explore this cave.”
“Only the dead may pass.”
“What do you know of this place?”
Haros looked fearful. “This is where the dead go. Where Hades calls them home to the Underworld.”
“Have you been inside this cave?”
“No.” The boy looked past Lourds and into the darkness.
“Then how do you know where it goes?”
“I was told by my father.”
“Where is he?”
Haros nodded to the passageway. “In there.”
“Your father went into the cave?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t enter the cave unless—” Realizing what the boy was saying, Lourds stopped himself.
“My father died last year. But not before he passed on his knowledge to me.”
“Knowledge of what?”
“The cave and what lies beyond.”
“How did your father know?”
“His father told him.” The wind caught the boy’s cloak and pulled it out around him for a moment. He looked ethereal, especially when the lightning flared behind him.
The rain fell heavier now, and small rivulets had formed to run down into the well.
Corporal Rahimi stepped back down into the well and talked quickly with Fitrat. The captain turned to Lourds. “There are other people out there. Soldiers. Rahimi thinks they are Russians.”
Fear slithered down Lourds’s back. Here they were at the yawning gates of death itself, and their enemy had caught up with them. One of Fitrat’s men standing guard at the well’s edge suddenly fell backwards into the well at Lourds’s feet.
Instinctively, Lourds pulled the flashlight beam onto the fallen man. The first thing he noticed was the bullet hole between the man’s wide eyes. Then the sound of the gunshot whipped over them, followed by a cascade of them.
Linko knew from the way the Afghan soldiers acted that one of his men had been seen. At first, he was angry, ready to kill the man who had made such a mistake. Then he realized that he could accept it as fate and move in to take his quarry.
Surprise was still his, and they had nowhere they could go. His team had ringed them on all sides. And the cave was obviously the objective they had been searching for.
He took aim at one of the men beside the well, centered the sights over the man’s head, and took up trigger slack because he wanted first blood. When the rifle bucked against his shoulder, he gave a final warning to his men.
“Do not kill Professor Lourds.”
Then muzzle flashes sparked in the night around the well.
“Get down! Get down!” Fitrat raced up the steps and took up a position at the well’s side, taking advantage of the low wall as he brought up his pistol. He held his fire, though, and he cursed soundly.
Other Afghan soldiers took up positions as well and fired back at targets somewhere in the night.
Lourds sprang up the steps, caught Haros by the robe, and yanked the boy down into the well. He covered Haros with his own body and felt the boy trembling against him.
“See? You have invoked the wrath of Hades!” He hid his face in his hands.
“That isn’t Hades. That’s a group of Russians who have been after the tomb of Alexander the Great.”
“Stop firing! Stop firing! You are wasting bullets!” Fitrat shouted above the din. “The range is too great!”
The soldiers stopped firing and hunkered down. Already, two others had joined the first man on the ground. Both of them were dead as well.
Lourds looked at the dead men and knew that they would not be lying there so far from home if he had not brought them here. But he also knew that this was no time for recriminations if they were going to get out of the situation alive.