Lea looked back at the pool and saw Karlsson’s clothes, now no more than bloody rags floating on the surface of the water. She immediately felt guilty for trying to make Hawke laugh after the American had sacrificed himself to save her life, but it was the only way she knew how to survive.
On the other side of the tomb, Vetrov was attempting to escape using Kodiak for cover as he made his way to the tomb’s entrance.
Hawke spun around the pillar and fired at him, the rounds from his H&K exploding in the plaster behind the Russian’s head as he sprinted across the tomb’s floor, parchment in hand. Hawke tried to take him down, but Kodiak was pouring heavy fire on them with his own weapon and forcing him to keep ducking for cover.
Vetrov was gone, and the order had gone out for his men to retreat. Kodiak, who was lean and fast, took the same route as his leader, but Kosma was slower. The giant Russian padded after them, obscured in the gun-smoke and plaster dust as he moved through the half light of the tomb. He shot at the glow-sticks in an attempt to plunge the place into darkness, but Lexi struck a fresh glow-stick and illuminated everything once again.
No longer pinned down by Kodiak’s fire, Hawke spun around from the pillar and fired at Kosma with the MP5K. His bullets tore into the Russian’s back and exploded out the other side of his body through his wide, heavy chest as if it were made of paper. He tried to call out but fell to his knees in the dust of the tomb floor where he swayed back and forth for a second before falling forward on his face and landing in the sandy dirt with an enormous crunching sound.
Lea frowned. “Damn it all, Joe Hawke! I wanted to put that bastard in the fish tank!” She waved the barrel of the Sig at the crocodile pool.
“Sorry… I thought you’d be happy.”
“I’ll get over it, I suppose — but Kodiak’s mine!”
“Fine with me — but we have to catch them before we can kill them, and I want to look in that big stone box before we leave.”
Hawke got up and gave the order to give chase to Vetrov and his men while he checked the sarcophagus for any other clues. Inside he saw the coffin of Osiris and beside it was a strange stone object shaped like a small shield and covered in more of the same hieroglyphics. He snapped a picture of it and emailed it to Ryan immediately before snatching it up and joining Lea, Scarlet and Lexi at the mouth of the tunnel and emerging into Luxor once again. Night had now fallen and it was dark and cool. Above them thousands of stars were shining over the Egyptian desert.
“Where are the bastards?” Lexi asked, scanning the temple complex.
“Could be anywhere,” Hawke said.
“Wait a minute,” Scarlet said. “Where’s Brad?”
Hawke and Lea shared a concerned glance.
“Well?” Scarlet repeated.
Hawke stepped toward her. “Cairo, listen…”
“What?” Scarlet said, peering over Hawke’s shoulder and looking back down the tunnel to the tomb. “He’s all right, isn’t he?”
“He’s dead, Scarlet,” Lea said flatly. “I’m sorry.”
“Dead?”
Lea nodded. “He died saving my life. I know how you felt about him, and…”
“You know fuck all about how I feel about anyone,” Scarlet snapped. “Shit happens and we need to move on or we get killed.”
Hawke knew she was burning up with rage on the inside, but he also knew the last thing Cairo Sloane would ever do was show that she cared about anyone, so he said nothing and moved on. “Everyone keep an eye out — if they’re behind any of these pillars or walls we’re just sitting ducks.”
“They’re not behind any pillars or walls,” Lea said. “Look!”
A helicopter rose above the ruins, made into a silhouette by the full moon behind it.
“Great…” Scarlet said. “Where are my sodding cigarettes?”
Hawke watched as the chopper flew over them and turned sharply to the left.
“What now?” Lea said. She sounded deflated.
Lexi sighed and collapsed on a block of limestone. “He’s won. It’s over.”
Hawke looked at her, incredulous. “Eh?”
“Vetrov — he’s won. He has both halves of the map and Mazzarro. Nothing can stop him now.”
“Don’t be so defeatist,” Hawke said. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
“You want to say that again?” Lea said, nodding at the line of police cars driving into the vast complex.
Hawke frowned. “Lea, call Eden and tell him we might be indisposed for a while.”
“Damn it all!” Scarlet said. “Now we’re well and truly f…”
“Never say die, Cairo,” Hawke said, cutting her off. “You know that.”
Seconds later they were surrounded by police cars, their flashing lights illuminating the great walls of the temples and pylons like multicolored strobes.
“You were saying?” Scarlet said.
Their Egyptian police cell was even less comfortable than they had expected, and they had plenty of time to consider it as well, because the authorities took hours before getting them for interview. It seemed the Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs was less than amused with their actions at the Karnak temple complex and particularly enraged about the discovery and then annihilation of the secret chamber of Osiris.
“It takes months for excavation permits to be approved by the Minister,” Captain Mustafa Moussa of the Luxor police explained.
“We didn’t excavate the tomb,” Hawke said patiently. “We already explained this. The tomb was broken into and raided by a Russian named Maxim Vetrov.”
“So you say, and yet there is no evidence of this mysterious Russian, but there is evidence that you raided and looted the tomb.” Moussa raised the strange shield from a box on the floor and placed it on the desk in front of Hawke and Lea.
“Ah…”
“Ah, indeed,” Moussa said. “You were holding this in your hands when we arrived at the complex, Mr Hawke. You still deny being a tomb raider?”
“There is that yes…”
Lea rolled her eyes. “This is insane, Captain Moussa! Why are you holding us here when the real culprit has the map and is probably halfway through translating it by now.”
“Map?”
Now Hawke rolled his eyes. “Good work, Lea.”
“Sorry…”
Moussa leaned forward and joined his hands. “Tell me about this map.”
“Listen, we don’t have time for this,” Hawke said firmly. He had already worked out two ways he could get out of custody without the blessing of Captain Moussa and his men, but knew that would stir up a hornet’s nest at the British Embassy in Cairo and wanted to save Eden the blowback.
“Wrong, you have all the time in the world,” Moussa said. “You will start talking — and remember, your colleagues are being interrogated and we will be comparing your stories. If you are lying to us then…”
He was interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come!”
A younger man in a uniform entered the room and they spoke rapidly in hushed Arabic for a few moments. While they conversed, Moussa’s eyes narrowed and he stared at Hawke and Lea. He shouted at the junior man and waved him from the room with a string of what sounded like some fairly x-rated words. Then, he sighed deeply.
“You are free to go,” the captain said at last. As he spoke, he shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
Lea glanced at Hawke and then back to Moussa, her face full of hope once again. “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t be sorry,” Hawke said. “Be gone…” He got up and pushed his chair under the desk.
“But why?” Lea asked, following Hawke’s lead and getting up from her chair.
Moussa sighed. “Because when a police captain in Luxor gets a telephone call from the Office of the President of Egypt telling him to let you go, he lets you go. That is why.”