Running it over and over again. Different speeds, different filters … Always the same.
So often throughout the day she had wanted to give up and break down. Have the equipment packed up by the workers and flee this place. But she couldn’t, not yet.
Because something down there had killed her father. And Melissa could not leave, could not run, until she knew what it was. But maybe she already did.
The Dream Dragons …
They had been waiting for him down there. They had been waiting for the men who had killed Winchester, as well. Perhaps they were always waiting, left there by the true builders of what lay beneath the surface to deny entry to those who did not belong. We are, after all, trespassing on the past, Melissa recalled from another lesson of archaeology. But no one else would ever be trespassing here again, because tomorrow she was going to seal the chamber her father had uncovered. What might be the greatest find in the history of mankind would be buried once more, hidden before more damage was done.
Melissa reached the ladder and stretched before beginning her climb. Her legs were asleep from her being seated for too long. Her neck and shoulders ached with stiffness. She tried to rub the blood back into them and then began to pull herself upward.
Kamir reached down to help her over the rim, just as the jeep drew to within a hundred yards of the site. Her father had been clear about the possibility that rumors of the dig would draw hordes to it. And there was also the possibility that the jeep’s driver was connected to Winchester’s killers. Melissa looked on neither option favorably and made sure that the jeep’s driver would be able to see she had rifle in hand when he approached.
The man parked his jeep behind Kamir’s truck and stepped out with his hands in the air.
“Say, anybody know where I can find a cash machine around here?”
The long flight from Kennedy Airport to Istanbul had left McCracken little time to catch the next fifty-five-minute commuter flight to Izmir. He had landed barely an hour ago, rented the jeep, and pieced together the most direct route here possible, following the map obtained in San Francisco as best he could.
The armed woman standing before him was obviously not impressed or soothed by his sense of humor. She stood her ground silently.
“Okay, let’s try it this way,” he said to her, eyes trained on her rifle. “I’m Blaine McCracken and you’re fucking up royally.”
“Excuse me?”
“Every man and every gun you’ve got is in sight. You can’t do that. You can never do that. Never let the enemy see everything you’ve got.”
“Then you’re the enemy.”
“Lady, if I was the enemy, you and your boys here would already be waiting to become some future archaeologist’s find.”
Melissa felt uncertainty sweep through her. The man before her who called himself McCracken was tall and very broad. Even through his baggy, sweat-soaked white shirt she could see his upper body was sculpted into a muscular V exaggerated all the more by the stance of having his hands clasped over his head. He had a close-trimmed beard and a pair of dark eyes that never seemed to blink.
“If you’re a fortune hunter, you’ve come to the wrong place,” Melissa said, the words sounding incredibly lame even to her.
“You’re British.”
“Very observant.”
“Spent some time there myself. Didn’t make a lot of friends.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised. Who are you?”
“We’ve moved beyond the name stage. Excellent. The truth is, I’m not even sure I’m in the right place; at least, I wasn’t until I encountered your hospitality.”
“Where did you come from? How did you find out about this place?”
“There’s a map in my right-hand pants pocket. I’ll take it out and—”
“Stay as you are! Kamir will relieve you of this map.” She looked toward the foreman. “Kamir.”
“Yes, Sayin Hazelhurst.”
Kamir had started forward when McCracken spoke again.
“No, no, no! You don’t send an armed man to retrieve something from an unarmed man, especially when the armed man is carrying one of the best weapons in your arsenal,” Blaine said, his eyes gesturing toward Kamir’s M-16 rifle. “Quickest way to have the tables turned on you in a hurry. But you told him to do it, because he’s the only other one here who speaks English. ’Nother bad move on your part.”
“What should I do, then?”
“Have me pull the map from my pocket with two fingers and toss it away from my feet. Then send an unarmed man over to pick it up.”
“Are you that good, Mr. McCracken?”
“You don’t have to be that good, given this opposition.”
Melissa smirked. “Then let’s handle it just the way you suggested….”
Blaine followed his own advice precisely and watched a workman who had temporarily discarded his rifle approach to retrieve the map. The workman delivered it in tentative fashion to the British woman. She unfolded it and McCracken watched her eyes bulge.
Melissa realized instantly that it was a copy of the same map her father had entrusted to Winchester, one of the seven different ones that had sent his dig teams scouring the Mideast; maps that had once belonged to the Nazis.
She stormed forward toward McCracken, thrusting the map outward, rifle slung from her shoulder and totally forgotten.
“How did you get this?” she demanded.
“You’re breaking the rules again, miss. Approaching with a loaded gun….”
“Shut up or I’ll empty it into you! Now tell me how you got possession of this map!”
“I gather I’ve come to the right place.”
“Talk!”
“Long story. Better told in the shade over a glass of mineral water.”
Melissa backed away from him, shaking her head. “You really don’t know what this is, do you?”
Blaine gazed over her shoulder to the crater that had been dug in the ground. “I assume whatever it might be is over there, Ms. Hazelhurst.”
“Don’t call me that! Don’t call me anything! I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you!”
Again Blaine aimed his gaze over her shoulder. “What’s down there?”
“Leave! Get out of here!”
“Maybe I can help.”
“I doubt it.”
“Let me try.”
Melissa felt herself weakening, although she never could have said why. “Why should I?”
“Because it’s what I do.”
“Archaeology?”
Blaine shook his head. “Helping.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“I think you do. You’re no match for whatever it is you’re up against.”
“How could you know that?”
“Because I left a trail of bodies between the shop where I picked up this map and the Pacific Ocean, before I headed to Turkey.”
McCracken watched her stiffen.
“Judging by your reaction, Ms. Hazelhurst, I’d say that trail has extended all the way here.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” she told him.
“Won’t know that till I try.”
“You don’t understand. You could never understand.”
Blaine slid a little closer to her. “Won’t know that till you tell me.”
Melissa Hazelhurst was sitting before the tiny video screen beneath the canopy when Blaine climbed down the rope ladder into the excavation. He got his first look at the raised rectangular opening and knew that he was face-to-face with what the map obtained in Ghirardelli Square had directed him to — what Al-Akir had sought and what Billy Griggs was determined to keep from being uncovered. Back on the surface he had inspected the remains of both Winchester and Benson Hazelhurst. Hazelhurst’s corpse caught him totally off guard. He had been expecting anything, but not this.