Drake closed his eyes with the frustration. They had lost the race here simply because they had stopped to help people. Because the cars had gotten snarled up and the mercs had access to helos. Having said all that, he wouldn’t have changed a moment of it.
“The same?” Crouch repeated. “We know the capstone is the weapon. Please do not tell me those mercs are now headed to where it’s hidden?”
“The last depiction showed a section of the lower wall highlighted. The kids with the brains — and the mainframes — took a gander. They used thermal scans and say the whole thing lit up. There’s a passage, a big one, inside this pyramid, hiding the capstone.”
Crouch blinked. “Which capstone?”
“The capstone. The capstone of the Great Pyramid. I’m sure you know — the one that’s being missing for thousands of years?”
Crouch couldn’t stop himself shifting in utter amazement. “Here? I find that… incredible. You’re saying it’s been here the whole time?”
“Along with all those passages the Egyptians knew about and never bothered to excavate. Yes.”
“We have to go,” Dahl urged. “They already have a five-minute start.”
“Wait a minute,” Hayden said. “If they’ve found the capstone here, inside the pyramid, are they now able to use it as the doomsday machine?”
“Lady,” the professor said, “I was there, greatest moment of my life, finding and ogling the missing capstone, so it took me a while. But let me help. The capstone isn’t the weapon. You’re standing in it.”
Hayden glanced at her feet, then back at the professor.
Crouch looked like he’d been hit with a car tire, but recovered fast.
“Dahl’s right. We must get moving. But we can’t. We need this man’s knowledge. I believe I know what’s happening now. It’s one of those legends nobody really knew was real because the only way to properly test it, was to turn it on.”
“I don’t follow,” Dahl said as he started to run. “Turn it on?”
The professor shifted uncomfortably, still bleeding despite Crouch’s and Drake’s best efforts. “The fantastical legend is real, it seems. As far back as the nineteenth century the British inventor, Siemens, was allowed to climb to the top of the pyramid with his Arab guides. On hearing stories that other guides heard an acute ringing noise when they raised their hands with outspread fingers, Siemens did the same. Bear in mind this is the founder of the Siemens Company, of course.” The professor paused for a hacking cough, face turning paler by the second. “Siemens raised his index finger up there and felt a definite stinging sensation. After that, he raised a wine bottle that he’d brought to drink from and received an electric shock. Being a scientist, he moistened a newspaper and wrapped it around the bottle to create a rudimentary capacitor.”
Crouch looked dumbfounded. “I read about this but thought it farfetched.”
The professor nodded. “And I. But Siemens was not a joker. Holding the bottle up, he saw it charged with electricity, sparks being emitted from it. When the Arab guides attempted to stop him he pointed the bottle toward the Arab and gave him such a shock that it knocked him to the ground.”
Hayden frowned, helping Kinimaka stand as the big man struggled with a head wound.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not the capstone, it’s the pyramid,” Crouch said. “The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the ancient doomsday weapon.”
Drake urged the team to rise and make ready. “What do we need to know, Professor? I’m sorry we can’t save you, but to help us, to save countless lives, what do we need to know?”
“Physicists throughout time have studied the Great Pyramid with painstaking detail. They concluded it could have been designed to gather, amplify and gel energy emissions from a particular target and return them with the exact same harmonic frequency. Opera singers can do it — smash glasses with their voices by matching the basic harmonic vibration of the glass. It causes a shift in the glass’s natural vibratory rate and makes it shake until it shatters. You’ve all seen it happen. In 1997, I think, the US government conducted research into acoustical weapons. They also analyzed the Great Pyramid and determined that the configuration of its chambers, and the placement of its passageways, could be used as a great loop, generating sound waves which could then be directed at a target. It was thought to be the most powerful weapon that ever existed on earth. Amplified energies.” He wheezed. “Enormous force. It would neutralize all electronic equipment and detonate all explosive devices, including nuclear bombs. It would directly kill every living thing, including viruses. In truth, it is the way the chambers are placed and the passages built, the inclusion of shafts that lead nowhere, the precision with which it was built, metal pins attached to doors that look like electrodes, that made people look at the pyramid as a machine, rather than a tomb. The placement of the capstone will… switch it on.”
“Right,” Drake said. “Grab the capstone. That’s all you had to say.”
In another few minutes the professor’s life had drained away, taken by the heartless, merciless men he had been forced to help.
Crouch bowed his head. “At least he paid them back in the end.”
“Let’s hope,” Drake said. “We do this for him as well as the rest of the world.”
They raced toward the pyramid’s exit, surrounded by bedrock and ancient majesty, the ghosts of long-dead workers still haunting these halls, the labor they had undertaken an epic endeavor that would resonate through time. The Great Pyramid soared above them, a mass of six million tons perceived and crafted by the hand of man; extraordinary.
Is it really all just a big coffin?
Drake shut the thought down, listening to Crouch as he yelled out an explanation. All the while, the exit drew closer.
Dahl slipped out into the light, backed by Smyth. Drake came next, quickly shifting his body in all directions and scanning the area for hostiles. They moved swiftly and carefully to the right, heading toward the eastern side, since that was where the hidden tunnels had been found.
“Here we go,” Dahl breathed.
Mercs were waiting for them, dug into the sand. Drake dived forward onto his stomach, landing hard but keeping his head up, his gun up, and firing blast after blast. Sand kicked up around the mercs. They scrambled behind some ruins, several low walls that were left to crumble with time. Bullets destroyed some of the stone, tumbled others. Drake rolled in the sand and dirt, firing potshots at the enemy. One was hit and then then second, precious minutes passing, and then they were up, running hard for the eastern corner of the pyramid.
The sun beat down hard. Weariness was a predator tearing at their limbs. Drake hit the side of the pyramid hard first and waited for the others, concealed, just waiting to sneak a look around to the other side.
“Moving?” he asked.
“Ready,” they said.
He peered around the wall, eyes going wider and wider as they encountered one of the craziest, most astonishing scenes he’d ever witnessed.
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
In all his days Matt Drake never expected to see anything like this.
About thirty mercs stood against the wall of the pyramid, guns raised and tough looks stretched across the granite-like faces. Most of them were shouting. A helicopter hovered close to the ground and off to their left, further away from Drake’s vantage point. A big one. A Sikorsky, he thought, capable of lifting enormous weight. Three more civilian choppers rested behind, their rotors idle for now.
Sunlight flashed from every surface.