Shakir was disgusted. “You really are a coward, Hassan. There are only three of them! Better we kill them and set the pumps back to normal.”
“But they’re in some kind of tank.”
“It’s an armored car,” Shakir said, having gotten a good look at it. “Where they got it from, I have no idea, but it’s not indestructible. All we need is a trap and better weapons. Go to the armory, get some RPGs and bring them back here.”
Hassan glanced around the room. “Come on,” he said to the soldier who was with them.
As the two men ran off, Shakir positioned himself near the center of the room. He spotted another one of his men heading for the outlet tunnel. “Stay and fight,” he shouted.
The man ignored him, racing up the ramp toward the access tunnel. Shakir raised his pistol and fired several shots, hitting the man as he reached the top. The deserter fell and tumbled off the edge of the ramp, dropping into the crocodile pit. The hungry crocs were on him in a second.
Hassan used his key code to open the armory door. Inside lay racks of assault rifles, boxes of ammunition and, against a far wall, a set of Russian-made RPGs. He handed one to the soldier who’d come with him. “Get this to Shakir,” he said.
The man didn’t question the order and took off running.
Hassan spent a moment checking another of the RPGs and then, when he was sure he was alone, moved to a phone. The hardwired line was connected through the control room to the station on the surface. He hoped the line wasn’t out.
After seconds of static, the voice of the section leader came on the line. “Give me Scorpion,” Hassan said.
Scorpion came on the line. “I’m headed to the elevator with two squads of men.”
“Send them on without you,” Hassan replied. “And meet me at the third exit, the old salt mine tunnel,” he said. “Bring a Land Rover. We’ll need to travel quickly.”
Scorpion didn’t question the order. Hassan hung up. The water was swirling around his ankles. It was seeping into the cave from a thousand cracks in the ground. He had no desire to drown down here. He went to the door, looked down the tunnel that led to the burial chamber and took off running in the other direction.
Live to fight another day.
Shakir waited in the burial chamber. The first soldier came running with an RPG over his shoulder, but where was Hassan?
Before he could question his subordinate, another figure dashed into the room, coming from the opposite direction.
It was the Italian woman. She was cutting across the open floor toward the laboratory tunnel. She appeared to be covered in dust. With the reduced lighting, she was well inside the room before Shakir noticed her. But that was her undoing.
Shakir crouched down and waited. She would make a perfect bargaining chip. The Americans were soft. For a beautiful woman, they wouldn’t be able to surrender fast enough.
As she neared the center of the room, the crocodiles roared in their containment pool, fighting over the surprise feeding that had come their way moments before.
The sound distracted her, and Shakir lunged forward, grabbing her and knocking the machine gun out of her hand.
She reacted quickly, swinging at him and connecting with a punch to his jaw, but Shakir only laughed. He flung her sideways, into the edge of the nearest sarcophagus, knocking her woozy. She tried to stand and run, but he tripped her, then yanked her to her feet and slapped her down with an open palm to the face.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
She tried to get up once again, but he kicked her in the ribs, knocked the wind out of her and then stepped on her. This time, he cocked his pistol and aimed it at her skull.
Renata went still.
She had to be expecting a bullet, he thought. If she was lucky, a well-placed one. But he had other plans.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll kill you soon enough. I just want your friends to see it happen. Up close and in person.”
He turned to the soldier with the RPG. “Climb up on the Sphinx. You’ll have a perfect shot from there.”
“What about Hassan?”
“I expect Hassan’s courage has run out.”
60
Joe drove to the elevator room and found a protrusion of metal framing that extended downward from a vertical shaft cut into the rock above. The metal lattice was wide and sturdy and Joe knew the elevator car would be best suited for lifting freight, heavy equipment and large groups of men, like those he’d seen in any number of mining operations around the world.
The car hadn’t arrived, but the gears were turning. Considering that twenty or thirty armed men would be in the car, Joe stopped it from touching down.
Unfortunately, like most elevators, the car was controlled from above, where a heavy drum attached to steel cables raised and lowered it on the rails. The only thing Joe could do was ram the metal framework in hopes of bending the guide rails and jamming the descent.
He got the Sahariana into position and revved the engine. He was about to charge when he noticed that water was flooding into the room from the hall and spreading across the floor in broad, probing fingers.
“We seem to have sprung a leak,” he muttered to himself.
Realizing they might need the elevator to escape in, Joe relented on ramming it and quickly changed over to plan B.
He parked the AS-42, climbed into the gunner’s position and raised an armored plate that protected him. He then locked and loaded both the 20mm antitank gun and the heavy Breda machine gun.
The shadow of the elevator car came into view and then the bottom of the car. The wide metal box slid down into place. There were no doors, just a cage wrapped around a grated floor. At least twenty of Shakir’s soldiers stood inside.
Joe wasn’t interested in gunning down a group of trapped men, but if even one of them got twitchy, he would pull both triggers and not stop until the guns were empty.
The elevator car hit the ground with a resounding boom.
“I’d head back to the surface, if I were you,” Joe shouted with his fingers tight on both triggers, eyes peering through a tiny slot in the armored plate. The lights of the Sahariana were blazing away, blinding the men in the cage.
The outer gates of the elevator cage opened. The men inside clutched at their weapons but were packed in so tightly they couldn’t raise them.
“You don’t have to die today!” Joe yelled.
The inner gates began to open. Joe expected them to make a break for it, and get massacred in the bargain, but no one moved.
They stared back at him, squinting against the glare of the lights. Finally, without a word, one of the men pressed a button. The gates closed, the steel cables pulled taut and the elevator lurched upward, rising rapidly and vanishing into the ceiling.
Joe angled the submachine gun upward, tracking the elevator car, until it disappeared into the shaft. Moving forward, he watched the grated floor of the car rising. Thirty seconds more and he was convinced that they had no plans to return. He hopped back into the driver’s seat.
By Kurt’s earlier estimation, it was four hundred feet to the surface. A two-minute ride at least. Four minutes round-trip. He knew they had at least that much time.
He revved the engine and rumbled back toward the control room. By the time he reached it, he was driving through a foot of water.
He found Kurt halfway down the hall, pinned down by a few of Shakir’s men. Taking aim with the antitank gun, Joe blasted away. The heavy projectiles tore chunks of rock out of the wall and the group scattered.
Kurt sprinted to the vehicle. “In the nick of time,” he said. “How’d it go at the elevator?”