They were through the air lock. Several additional guards waited on the other side in their black uniforms. One stepped forward, grabbed Kurt by the wrists, yanked him toward a waiting ATV and threw him in the back. There were two guards in the front seat.
“Take him to the—”
Shakir’s words were drowned out by the engine’s sudden growl as the guard in the driver’s seat turned the key, revved the engine and stomped on the gas.
The tires spun and Kurt was almost thrown off the machine.
The ATV sped down the tunnel, leaving a shocked group behind.
“It’s them!” Kurt heard someone shout.
Gunshots echoed through the cave and sparks flew from the walls as the bullets missed their quarry. Kurt held on and tried to make himself small as the barrage continued until they whipped around the first turn.
He glanced forward, saw Joe and Renata dressed in the uniforms they’d taken from Shakir’s men. Renata had her hair tucked up under a cap.
“How’s that for a rescue?” Joe shouted.
“It’s a heck of a start,” Kurt said as they flew down the tunnel.
And it was only a start. Because a few seconds later the lights from a pair of similar ATVs sped into the tunnel behind them.
“Hang on, boys!” Renata shouted. “I’m about to show them how we drive in the mountains of Italy.”
She had a lead foot and quick hands on the wheel. She took the ATV sliding around one corner, glancing off a wall, and then around another, before they went back onto a long straightaway.
The cars following navigated the turns more carefully and by the time they reached the new tunnel they’d lost substantial ground. The response was gunfire.
Kurt ducked down, but the bumpy ride made aiming an impossible chore. Without an extremely lucky shot, they’d be safe.
“How’d you guys manage it?” Kurt shouted. “I figured you two were long gone.”
“We were changing our clothes when I heard a commotion,” Joe said. “By the time I looked out, that Shakir fellow was giving orders to all these guys in black fatigues. So we just got in line.”
“Genius,” Kurt said. “I guess I owe you another one.”
They were racing through a narrower tunnel now, close quarters pressing in on both sides. A big bump in the road jarred them, the ATV went airborne for a second and the roll bar banged against the low roof.
Seconds later, they came upon a dead end. “Look out!”
Renata slammed on the brakes and the ATV skidded to a halt. She flicked it into reverse and zoomed backward toward their charging pursuers and then swerved into a side tunnel she’d seen as they passed. She hit the brakes again, spun the wheel and hit the gas. The ATV shot forward into the new tunnel and downward across a sloping rubble field.
It proved to be a huge open room, probably mined for decades. It also had no other exit.
“We have to go back up,” Renata shouted as the headlights played across a stark wall.
She turned them around just as the lights from the following vehicles were growing brighter in the entranceway.
“We’ll never make it,” Joe said.
Renata pulled to the side and shut off the headlights. She kept still as the first ATV came through the entrance and rumbled down the rock-strewn slope. Their lights blazed straight ahead and Renata, Kurt and Joe remained hidden in the dark.
The second car followed. As soon as there was a gap, Renata stomped the accelerator and aimed for the exit. Halfway up, she flipped the lights back on.
The transmission surged and protested as tires spun one moment and grabbed for purchase the next. They pulled out into the tunnel again and headed back the way they’d come.
The chase vehicles didn’t give up, emerging rapidly and closing the gap once again.
“Joe,” Kurt shouted. “Cut me loose.”
Joe reached back and grabbed Kurt’s arms. Holding them as still as he could, Joe slipped a knife under the zip tie and pulled. The plastic snapped and Kurt was free.
He unzipped the waterproof pouch on the front of his wet suit and pulled out the case with the cold packs. Opening it, he pulled out one of the vials.
“Is this what I think it is?” Joe asked.
“Black Mist,” Kurt said.
More gunfire came their way.
“Now what?” Joe said.
“Nap time for the group chasing us.”
Kurt flung the vial at the wall as far as possible behind the vehicle. It shattered on impact and spread its contents through the tunnel, causing the glare from the headlights of the ATVs pursuing them to dim momentarily.
The chase vehicles burst through the Mist as the lights of the lead car veered off course and hit the wall. It bounced off, turned sideways and tumbled. The second pursuit vehicle rammed it and the men were thrown from the seats and scattered into the tunnel. They didn’t get up.
Renata kept the pedal to the floor and the wreck was soon far behind them.
“Handy stuff,” Joe said.
“We can’t use it all,” Kurt replied. “We need to get it to a lab so it can be analyzed.”
“Is that why it’s packed in ice?”
“The guy told me we had eight hours or it would degenerate.”
“That was nice of him,” Joe said.
“He wasn’t a bad guy,” Kurt said. “Just in over his head.”
Up ahead, the tunnel split in two. Lights could be seen reflecting down the curving section on the left.
“Always traffic when you don’t need it,” Renata said. She veered right. This tunnel took them up, where it split again and dumped them into a much wider tunnel. She continued on and found several more offshoots, some going up, others going down.
“This must be the central vein,” Joe said.
“I suggest we go higher any chance we get,” Kurt replied. “There’s got to be an exit to this mine somewhere.”
“Not back to the pipeline?” Renata asked.
“It’s going to be guarded now,” Kurt said. “Either we find another way out or we spend an eternity down here like the pharaohs, the crocodiles and the frogs.”
52
Edo stood on the deck of the small boat, scanning the waters of the Nile with night vision goggles. It had been hours since Joe and his friends went into the Osiris building.
The helicopter had left the compound forty-five minutes earlier. The flow of water from the end of the hydro channel had increased to a torrent and still there was no sign of them.
As the clock ticked, Edo grew more and more concerned. He was worried about his friend — that much was true — but being a military man, he also knew the danger of a failed assault. It left one vulnerable to a counterattack.
If any of them was captured, they would be tortured until they gave in. Edo’s name would be mentioned eventually. That put him in danger. Danger of being killed, arrested, imprisoned. And even if nothing so dire came of it, he would still end up back where he’d started: under his brother-in-law’s thumb, working a job he despised and prevented from any opportunity to get free.
Strangely, that fate seemed worse than any of the others.
He decided the time had come. He started making calls. Calls he should have made when Joe first came to him. Initially, his old friends ignored him.
“You must understand,” he told a friend who was now part of Egypt’s antiterrorist bureau, “I still hear things. I still have contacts who are afraid to talk to people such as yourself. They tell me that Shakir is going to strike at the Europeans. That he caused the incident on Lampedusa. That he and Osiris are behind everything taking place in Libya. We must intervene or Egypt as a whole will never survive.”
The men he spoke with were a diverse group: ex-commandos, current members of the military, friends who’d gone into politics. Despite that, their responses were remarkably similar.