“Getting that reliquary of yours is challenging enough,” Graham said. “Doing it in the middle of a dust storm is downright stupid.”
“He’s right,” I said. “I say we rebury the reliquary, wait for the storm to pass. Another hour or two won’t matter.”
“Unless it does.” Her voice turned cold. “You are Cy Reed, right? I mean the Cy Reed?”
I frowned. “Yeah, but—”
“You own Salvage Force?”
I nodded.
“And you specialize in extreme salvage jobs, right? The ones where artifacts are lost or in extreme danger?”
I gritted my teeth. “That’s right.”
“And that means you don’t work in front of bulldozers like other salvage experts, do you? You work in war zones, amidst natural disasters … the worst kind of hell this planet has to offer.”
“What’s your point?”
“You’ve saved hundreds, maybe thousands of artifacts. So, how come you can’t save mine?”
I stared at her for a long moment. Then I looked at Graham. “Prepare for excavation.”
He shrugged. As he walked away, I knelt next to the pit.
“How can I help?” Lila asked.
“You can’t,” I replied. “Not in here anyway.”
She frowned.
“Get to the barn. Prep the packing materials. And keep an eye out for us.”
Lila turned around. Moments later, she disappeared outside.
We’d arrived on the scene roughly seventeen hours earlier. Lila was alone, having discharged her team until further notice. She’d told us about God’s Judges, about how they were ransacking the countryside for resources and supplies. To keep them from finding her dig site, she wanted us to conduct a high-speed excavation.
We’d gone to work, clearing soil from the area and transporting it to the barn. Now, we were ready to extract the reliquary from the pit. Afterward, we’d transfer it to Lila's full-size pick-up truck and she’d drive it to a secure location.
Lila planned to return for the excavated soil and rocks at a later date. Then her team could sort through the contextual evidence in peace, searching for more clues about the reliquary and those who’d buried it.
Looking into the pit, I saw a complicated mechanical system. We’d secured it in Jerusalem prior to meeting Lila. It included a hydraulic jack and an even larger metal cradle.
Beverly Ginger stood next to the system. She cut an eye-popping figure in her long sleek boots, clingy leggings, tight long-sleeve shirt, and fingerless gloves. My goggles, still utilizing night-vision, shed a greenish tint on her. But I remembered the various hues of her clothes, namely burgundy, black, gold, and black again.
“Are you ready down there?” I called out.
“Ready,” she replied.
“Deploy the cradle.”
Beverly flicked a switch. A soft rumble rang out. Then a steel plate shot forward from the cradle, accompanied by a shrill clanging sound. It passed underneath the reliquary without touching the stone.
“Cradle deployed.” Beverly said. “Ready for cradling.”
“Cradle it,” I replied.
She wrapped several steel cords around the reliquary’s sides and hooked the cords to mechanisms on the cradle’s opposite end. She flicked another switch and the cords tightened, gently pulling the stone box all the way into the cradle where she proceeded to secure it with more cords.
“Cradled. Ready for lifting.”
I looked at Graham. He stood next to a small gantry crane near the pit. A chain hoist connected it to the cradle. “Lift it,” I said.
Graham worked the control panel. The gantry crane burst to life. Metal creaked loudly as the chain hoist grew taut. The crane groaned as it began to lift the cradled box out of the pit.
“How’s it look down there?” I called out.
“Good,” Beverly replied.
Another stiff breeze kicked up, flinging more dirt particles against the dome tent. Glancing at the flap, I saw swirling air currents, stuffed with dirt. They looked whitish as they streaked across my field of vision.
“It’s getting worse out there,” Graham said.
“It’s getting worse everywhere.” I walked to the gantry crane. “It’s called climate change.”
“If you say so.”
“You’ve got a better explanation?”
“Bad luck.”
“Did bad luck cause the African drought? Or the one in America? What about the tsunamis in India? The floods in China?”
He shrugged.
I kept my gaze locked on the rising reliquary. “You’re a denier?”
“I’m a realist.”
“Then you should be agreeing with me. Manmade climate change is a real thing, backed by consensus science.”
“Scientific consensus?” He made a face. “Consensus once held the earth was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, and substances burned because of a nonexistent element called phlogiston.”
“Science has come a long way from those days.”
“Don’t be too sure about that.”
The wind turned vicious. The covering started to buckle. The exterior frame quivered. The anchor poles shifted in the soil.
“Beverly,” I said. “Get up here.”
“But the machine isn’t done yet,” she replied.
I studied the gantry system. The crane continued to move at a smooth, steady pace. “It’ll be fine.”
Swiftly, she climbed a ladder, her boots scuffing against the metal rungs. At the top, she stared outside. Her eyes widened as she took in the growing storm. “We need shelter.”
“Not until we’ve secured the reliquary.”
“It’s not worth the risk.”
“Yes,” I replied. “It is.”
The reliquary rose out of the pit. It lifted several feet into the air before halting. The clanging ceased.
Wind ripped against the dome tent. Graham cast a wary eye at the covering. “What happens if it breaks?” he asked.
A loud ripping noise rang out. The tent buckled violently as wind swept through a gaping hole, carrying millions of dirt particles with it.
My jaw hardened. “It looks like we’re about to find out.”
Chapter 2
The tent shuddered. More dirt swept into it on the back of the vicious wind. It whirled around us, attacking us over and over again.
Fighting the surging current, I moved toward the reliquary. “We don’t have time to transfer this to Lila’s pick-up truck.”
“You’ve got a better idea?” Graham asked.
“We can use our truck.”
“How does that speed things up?”
“By letting us skip a step.” I nodded at the cradle. “It’s too big for Lila’s vehicle. But can it fit on ours?”
He studied the cradle for a moment. “I think so.”
“Good. Then we’ll place the whole thing, cradle and all, onto our flatbed.”
“I suppose it could work. But how the hell are we supposed to get the reliquary out of the cradle?”
“We’ll figure that out later.” I glanced at Beverly. “Where’d you park our truck?”
“On the far side of the barn,” she replied.
“So far away?”
“It’s not like I saw this coming.” Her hands met her hips. “I’m a lot of things, but a psychic isn’t one of them.”
She was definitely a lot of things. Beverly Ginger had learned how to shoot guns and build bombs while employed by the U.S. Army. Eventually, she’d moved her services to a private military corporation named ShadowFire. During that time, she’d acquired skills in carpentry and other forms of construction work.
But Beverly was far more than her skill set. She was also, for lack of a better term, my sort-of girlfriend. In other words, we hadn’t talked about it.
We’d just sort of lived it.