When they finally arrived at the hydroelectric plant, the door to the generator room was already pinned wide open. They stepped from the tramcar and were met by a dozen men in Egyptian military uniforms. Rifles were pointed at them and Joe laid his weapon down and raised his hands. Kurt raised his hands as well, balancing Renata over his shoulder.
A sharp-eyed man came up to them. His uniform was marked with the Eagle of Saladin, indicating he was a major, just as Edo had been when Joe met him.
The major studied Renata’s prone form and then looked Kurt and Joe over. “Are you Americans?”
Kurt nodded.
“Zavala and Austin?”
They nodded again.
“Come with me,” he said. “General Edo would like to see you.”
63
Edo stood in his old uniform, which still fit after two years as a civilian.
“Did you reenlist while we were gone?” Joe asked.
“It’s just for show,” he said. “I led these men in. I thought I should look the part.”
“Did you face much resistance?”
“Not here,” Edo insisted. “The men working the plant are civilians, but we dealt with several groups of the Osiris special units coming out of that tunnel. And Shakir will not take this without responding. We have some allies in the government and military, but he does also.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Shakir,” Joe said. “The only problem he’s going to cause now is a case of crocodilian indigestion.”
Kurt added the details, explaining Shakir’s death and highlighting the treasures they’d found at the other end of the tunnel, treasures that were now underwater once more.
Edo listened in a state of fascination. “A great victory,” he concluded.
“An incomplete one,” Kurt said. He held out the empty vial. “All we found was the poison, not the antidote. On top of that, Hassan got away. Once he rallies the Osiris supporters, you’ll be fighting it out politically and in the street.”
“Hassan is a wily fox,” Edo said. “He has survived more purges than you know. But, this time, he’s left us a trail. According to some of the men we captured, he was seen leaving one of the exits to the mine along with a man whose face was scarred and bandaged. I was told they refer to him as Scorpion.”
Kurt and Joe exchanged a glance. “Any idea where they went?”
Edo shook his head. “No. But we’ve learned something else from a couple of their pilots. Let me show you.”
He led them over to a map on the wall. “This chart shows the pumping stations Osiris has been using to divert the water from the aquifer to the Nile. There are nineteen primary stations and several dozen booster pumps designed to keep the pressure up. As far as we can tell, all of them are automated. Except this one.”
Edo pointed to a spot on the map west of Cairo, in the barren area known as the White Desert. “According to the pilots we captured, they flew to this site regularly, delivering food, water and other supplies.”
“So it’s a manned station?” Kurt asked.
Edo nodded. “But manned by whom? According to the pilots, there were civilians there as well as Osiris regulars. Scientists who took delivery of specially packaged, hermetically sealed crates every three days.”
Kurt recalled what the biologist Brad Golner had told him with his dying breath.
“That has to be the lab where they make the antidote. We need to check it out,” Kurt said.
“My men are spread thin as it is,” Edo said. “Until we can get the backing of the full Army, it’ll have to wait.”
“Just give us a helicopter,” Kurt said.
“I don’t have one,” Edo replied. “But,” he added, “there is one sitting on the roof. If you don’t mind flying the colors of Osiris International.”
64
With Renata in the care of a medical team, Kurt, Joe and Edo took to the skies in an Aerospatiale Gazelle painted with the Osiris colors and logo.
Edo was the pilot in command, Joe sat in the copilot’s seat and Kurt studied the blazing-white sands passing beneath them. They covered miles of barren land, endless dunes and wind-carved rock formations that were famous for their ethereal beauty. A pair of vehicles on the desert floor caught their eye, but a quick inspection proved them to be abandoned.
Farther on, Kurt spotted the long, thin track of a pipeline cutting across the open desert. It ended beside a gray cinder-block building, disappearing beneath the desert like a serpent going underground. “That’s it,” he said. “Where the pipeline comes out of the sand.”
Edo angled toward it, descending. There were no vehicles parked by the low-profile building, no sign of a welcoming committee.
“Looks deserted,” Joe said.
“We can’t be too sure,” Edo replied. “They may be waiting for us inside.”
“I can see a helipad,” Kurt said.
“I’ll put us down there.”
The Gazelle caused a minor dust storm as Edo flared for a landing, but the swirling sand abated once the rotors began to slow down.
Kurt was already out on the ground, crouched and holding an AR-15 in case someone attacked them while they were most vulnerable. He scanned doors and windows, ready to fire, but no adversaries appeared.
Joe and Edo soon joined him. Kurt pointed forward. He’d heard a banging noise, like a shutter broken loose in a storm.
He took point with Joe and Edo flanked out wide so no one could hit all three with a single burst. They found a door that had been left open. It was swinging in the breeze and slamming against the jamb but unable to shut because its dead bolt was extended.
Edo pointed to the handle and indicated he would pull it wide. Kurt and Joe nodded.
As Edo yanked the door open, Kurt and Joe aimed their rifles into the building and switched on their powerful flashlights over the lower rails of the stairs, illuminating the room.
“Empty,” Joe said.
Kurt stepped through the door. The building was incredibly utilitarian. Cinder-block walls, concrete floor. A twisting set of pipes led from the main line to a trio of pumps that looked like the high-pressure boosters Edo had mentioned. On the far side lay the only thing that seemed out of place. “Look at this.”
Joe followed the beam of Kurt’s light and added his own to it. The two lights converged on a metallic cage and a powerful winch system. “It looks just like the elevator in the underground cavern.”
“We’re at least thirty miles west of there,” Kurt replied. “But, you’re right. It’s the same setup.”
Kurt found the power switch and the elevator came to life. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”
The three of them climbed into the elevator car. Joe palmed the loosely attached control box. The gates closed and the car lurched downward.
When the gates opened again, the three were hundreds of feet below the surface, in a room filled with more pumps and pipes.
“These pumps are much larger than the ones on the upper level,” Edo noted. “More like the setup at the Osiris hydroelectric plant.”
Kurt noted that the pipes went downward into the ground. “They must be drawing a huge amount of water from the aquifer here.”
“Or putting it back in now, thanks to you,” Joe said.
They moved past the pumps, searching for the laboratory they’d hoped to find. Through one door they found the control panel for the network. On the display, it was clear that the pumps were still operating in reverse, the way Kurt had set them.
“I’m surprised they didn’t just reverse the pumps before running away,” Joe said.
Kurt had been thinking the same thing. He tapped the keyboard and attempted to execute a command. It asked for a password. He typed in some random numbers and was denied. A message box popped up that read System Lock / Osiris Command Key Required.