Storm Clouds Read online

  “Right. Past nine you got a shot; past ten, no way.”

  “He is predictable.”

  This was the most pleasant conversation with Alicia that Mako could recollect in recent history. Alicia might have a stone face, but he could tell she was excited by her voice. “What do you have?”

  “Mako, TJ here.”

  “Right on.” Talking to the two of them at once reminded him of his grandparents’ calls. He wondered for a brief second if Grandpa Storm had been a spy as well.

  “I’ve done some work. Filtered the area by probable elevations, then converted your map to a vector file. Took hours to convert it to 3D and run through all the options, but I think we got a match.”

  Mako and Gretchen exchanged an excited look. He realized that something had crystalized in his thinking while he was asleep. His subconscious was adept at letting him know when he was off the rails. If only he was better at listening, he might have avoided a few pitfalls along the way.

  The truth. That was always what John Storm was after. Gretchen had vocalized it and Mako realized it was the only goal. His personal compass was often out of alignment, but he knew where north was now.

  “We should be in Luxor in an hour.”

  “Like I didn’t know that,” Alicia cut in.

  Mako was surprised at how sassy the normally pragmatic analyst was. Whatever TJ had discovered had to be big.

  “What do you have?”

  “Valley of the Kings, old boy. Cliff on the back side, facing west.” He went on to describe the few details he had.

  A picture formed immediately in Mako’s mind. A glance at Gretchen confirmed it. “Been there. Funny, though, it’s where the new tomb is.”

  “Close, but not it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think they got lucky, or maybe whoever set up the ruse had good instincts. It’s really just pattern recognition. Look long enough for a particular kind of thing and you see it wherever you look.”

  “Dr. Mustafa is about to call their bluff and open the tomb.”

  There was a pregnant pause. “We’ll get back to you in a few,” Alicia said.

  Mako disconnected. He expected John would be on the next call.

  He turned to Gretchen. “We’re going to need some local help.”

  “Alaa?”

  “He seemed to have a grasp of things. Do you remember his number?”

  Gretchen pulled a card from her pocket. Mako took it and dialed the guide’s number. Mako felt badly that he hadn’t thought of Alaa since they had been escorted from the hotel to the airport and back to Cairo by the minister’s men. He dialed the number.

  “Alaa.”

  “Mako and Gretchen here.” Mako wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “My friends.” There was a slight pause. “And calling from an Egyptian number?”

  “We’re on our way back to Luxor.”

  “And the minister knows nothing of this?”

  “No.” Mako wasn’t about to go into the details of what had happened over the last few days. The stories could wait until the mission was complete. “We could use your help.”

  “Of course. As it turns out, I am still here in the hotel.”

  “What?”

  “After you were taken by the guards, I was left alone. They forget about me.”

  “Good news. We need to go back to that site at the Valley of the Kings.”

  “Let me speak to your driver.”

  Mako wondered for a brief second how he knew they had a driver, but then realized it was almost a given here. He handed the phone to Assam, who had a quick conversation in Arabic. He handed the phone back.

  “He knows where to take you.”

  39

  The Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  Ahmed was storming mad, but did his best to restrain himself. It was a good thing Rashi was on the phone instead of in front of him, though, because when he disconnected the call, he kicked over the chair where she would have been.

  She was about to undo everything he had worked for. It took a few minutes for his rage to settle. When he was able to think clearly again, it was time to put his personal feelings aside and make the call he had dreaded. It would end everything, but leave him unscathed.

  “Find Beecher,” he called to his aide.

  The excavator had returned late yesterday with nothing to show for his efforts. Ahmed had thought it a shot in the dark, anyway. He used the opportunity to have the excavator set the charges last night.

  “We’re going to blow it.” Ahmed hesitated. “And take that bitch along with it.”

  “You sure about that? She’s not without her supporters.”

  “And would you be one of them?” Ahmed knew that Rashi’s endorsement of a project meant it would be permitted and funded, avoiding reams of red tape and years waiting for approvals. “Never mind. Just do it.” He disconnected the call and threw the phone at the pile of furniture accumulating on the floor.

  Ahmed knew the proverbial fuse had been lit. There was no stopping now. His anger dissipated after knocking out a hundred pushups. He took a cold shower and reassured himself that what he was doing was necessary and, in the country’s best interest. Better to have lost something that they never had instead of finding out it was a fraud.

  Rashi was another matter. But she knew too much. He was now glad that he had let the American “escape.” His surveillance had followed their visit to the library and the meeting with Rashi. That alone put her outside his ring of trust, and when that happened in Egypt, there was only one solution.

  Ahmed stepped out of the shower and dressed in a lightweight suit. He needed to be on his game today. It would be his face in front of the cameras and his ability to spin the events he had just set in motion that would dictate how they were perceived by the world.

  “Let’s go,” he called to his men in the adjoining room. He heard a TV, but there was no answer. With his anger building again, he moved to the doorway and unlocked his side. The other door was ajar, allowing him to see the guards staring at the TV.

  “The fucking Undertaker rocks, man,” one said.

  “Boom,” the other guard replied, mimicking a move from the TV.

  If his men, or most of Egypt’s twenty- and thirty-year-old men, worried about their work as much as they did in the WWF reruns, the country would be the better for it. He stormed through the room and, not seeing any controls on the TV, yanked the cord from the wall. The men looked at him in awe, almost as if it was a wrestling move. He snarled at them in what they thought was mock anger, but at least he felt better for it.

  They ultimately got the message and followed him out. They walked down the hall to Rashi’s room, where he nodded at the two men guarding the door. They stepped aside. He gave her the courtesy of a knock before he entered. There was no point in arousing her suspicions.

  “The tomb is ready to be opened?” he asked, as if he didn’t know better.

  “Well, at least for the fiber optic cameras to have a look.”

  Ahmed nodded, knowing what they would see. “Did you alert the media?”

  She ignored the question. “It’s as if I’m a prisoner here, Minister.” She said it like the fact that it was.

  “Just for your protection. We have had word of some people who are trying to undermine the find. That would make you a prime target.”

  She smiled at him. “I appreciate your concern.”

  Ahmed was beyond caring if these were merely platitudes or if she was sincere. “I can send a press release. What time?”

  “I’d like to inspect the preparations first and make sure everything is in order.”

  Ahmed shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  “Give me a few minutes to get ready?”

  “Of course. I’ll get a table in the dining room.”

  On the way out, he instructed the guards to allow her fifteen minutes, then bring her down. He had a schedule to keep.

  Ahmed walked to the eleva
tors. While he waited, he stepped to the side and texted Beecher to set the charges for ten o’clock. That would give the press three hours to get in place.

  Exactly fifteen minutes later, Rashi took the seat across from him. Another ten minutes and he was watching her devour a full breakfast. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach, making eating impossible.

  “I have the press set up for ten,” he said as she finished.

  Rashi glanced at her watch. “That’s not much time. If we waited until this afternoon, we could stream it live. The views will be incredible.”

  That’s what Ahmed was afraid of. There was a lot that could go wrong in the hours ahead and he wanted the ability to manipulate or, if need be, stifle the story.

  “It is already done.”

  Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  Explosives would have been easier, but Beecher considered himself an artist. He also wanted to escape both the blast and the investigation to follow. There was no question in his mind that the minister was getting desperate, and would have no qualms about throwing him to the wolves.

  Beecher hadn’t lasted as an outsider by being naive. Recordings and screenshots of the calls and texts ordering the blast were safe with his attorney. The problem wasn’t the public legal system, but the covert one. The secret police, or SIS, had recently come under scrutiny for abusing children in their custody. Beecher knew the adults in their care faced worse. If he were to be detained by the SIS there was nothing his lawyers could do.

  Staying one step ahead had saved Beecher many times before. His network of informants was spread across every level of the archeological community, from the laborers to the minister’s secretary. No one needed to tell him what Ahmed had planned for him. It was plain as day. With an empty cavern and time expiring on the search for the relics, he knew he was going to be sacrificed.

  He had to admit Ahmed was clever. The media and government would gladly blame an outsider for the “loss.” Beecher had other plans. Erasing the evidence of the ruse would benefit him as well, but he was not going to get caught.

  Boring holes in the interior of the portal while the archeologists drilled the exterior for their cameras was tense work. He had depth gauges on his bits to ensure they didn’t penetrate to the outside, and his battery-powered drills were quieter than the generator-driven electric ones the scientists used, but there was no insurance their paths wouldn’t cross.

  It was critical to his plan to not only destroy the cavern, but also turn the portal into rubble to avoid any further investigation into its origin. That would take a lot of holes, and it was work he had to do alone.

  It had been a long night. First, hauling the supplies over the ancient trail from the Valley of the Workers, where his Range Rover was parked. The back entrance he had created the other night allowed him access to the cavern without being seen by the guards on the other side. Then the work began.

  Using the ground-penetrating scans from the drone, he had determined the weak points in the rock above and below the chamber. After a dozen holes were bored, he had moved to the portal stone itself. Drilling the cliffs had been child’s play compared to the granite slab. By the time he was satisfied, he had exhausted his supply of drill bits and batteries.

  Beecher checked his watch and sipped from his water bottle. It was two hours until the minister had asked for the explosion to occur. That gave him plenty of time to mix and pack the expansive grout, as well as get away before the cliff face fell.

  The water provided little relief, and Beecher thought about how satisfying the taste of the beer in the cooler in his Range Rover would be. It was hot and humid in the cave. He was drenched in sweat and bone-tired. Slowly he got up. knowing that if he sat much longer it would be that much harder to go back to work.

  Mixing the grout was the next step. It was also the art part of the operation. The proportion of water to the expansive material was critical to the end result—the difference between a crack and a chasm. Beecher settled on a “hot” mix, adding a small amount of accelerant to the water. He’d run out of batteries and silently cursed under his breath as he stirred the material by hand instead of with the paddle blade he had brought for the drill.

  There was a little less than an hour until the time Ahmed expected the blast when Beecher started to pack the holes. Working alone, and with so many holes, he was forced to move between them, adding more material each time. As he worked, he wondered why the timing was so important.

  Ahmed knew Beecher was not going to get caught in an explosion of his own making. But to insist it be in the mid-morning, when there were bound to be people in close proximity, suggested that he wanted casualties as well.

  The last hole was packed and Beecher quickly gathered what he could carry, then stashed everything else in a deep crack. Once the roof of the cavern fell, any evidence of his involvement would be lost under tons of rock.

  He made his way out of the cavern. The desert air, though as hot as a blast furnace, was a relief compared to the air inside the cavern. A slight breeze cooled him as he started on the well-worn trail back to the Valley of the Workers.

  He turned around when he was a quarter-mile away to see if he had been followed. From his vantage point he could see the front and back of the cliff. A glance at his watch told him fifteen minutes remained until the “explosion.”

  A large crowd surrounded the scaffolding set up in front of the cliff face. When he saw the media vans, he understood why Ahmad had stressed the time element. He wanted the loss of the grave to be recorded.

  Beecher found a rock by the trail to sit on and watch. From this distance, he knew the traditional robe and headscarf he wore, though hot, would camouflage his identity to anyone below. He drank from his water bottle and watched the partylike scene unfold.

  Off to the side, he noticed a boy riding a donkey. He looked to be about school age, and Beecher recognized him immediately. It was a common enough sight, and he thought that Adon was just trying to get a look at what was going on, until he disappeared behind the cliff and entered the area where the back door lay.

  Beecher called out to warn him, but he was too far away. He tried to convince himself that there would be little damage to that area, but he suspected otherwise. It wasn’t the boy’s safety he was worried about as much as his tools being uncovered.

  Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt

  Mako clung to the headrest of the seat in front of him as the small taxi scrambled for purchase in the soft berm beside the freshly graded road. The terrain didn’t look threatening, and Assam had no qualms about taking the vehicle off-road. From the expression on the driver’s face, this was more fun than dangerous.

  The site was a restricted area, with a guard station set up at the entrance to the access road that had been plowed by a bulldozer only days earlier. With no credentials, they had followed another group that was apparently also trying to crash the party. The military was loosely patrolling the area, but acting more like sheep dogs rather than wolves. They were simply outnumbered.

  After a quarter mile, the groups of vehicles merged together.

  Assam followed in the tracks of the string of vehicles making their way to the scaffolding erected by the cliff face. Theirs wasn’t the only vehicle unprepared for the deceptively rough terrain. Several media vans with flat tires were pulled off to the side.

  Deserts were known for their sand and rolling dunes, but in reality they also were composed of rock and gravel. The colors tended to blend together, and it took an expert to navigate the abusive terrain.

  Visibility was another issue. Mako expected that if viewed from above the convoy itself would be invisible because of the dust cloud that consumed it. The fine particles kicked up by the vehicles ahead of them seemed to penetrate the closed windows and ventilation system.

  Assam and Alaa were clearly enjoying themselves, but Mako and Gretchen were worried. Rashi’s decision to open the tomb now would force the minister’s hand. Mako guessed that was what s
he wanted, but he didn’t think she understood what she was dealing with or the consequences of cornering a rat.

  She had given them a brief biography on the way to Cairo last night. Her life had been somewhat sheltered. Living with her grandparents during her schooling in England had given her a glimpse of a very different way of life. Coming back to Egypt, she had been a minor celebrity. With her family pedigree and her recent degree, she was quickly accepted into academic circles and immediately placed in line to succeed her father. And as Mako well knew, academia was not well connected with the real world.

  Mako was from the other side of the tracks. He had spurned school to jump into the fray. Somehow, though, they were both naive.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Alaa. The guys up front were listening to a local broadcast and told them the opening of the tomb was scheduled for ten—less than a half-hour away.

  “Can you get ahead of these guys?” Mako asked.

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Assam wasted no time and swung hard to the left. The cab quickly swerved in the soft material. Gretchen was thrown against Mako as the driver’s-side wheels sunk into the ground and became mired in sand. Assam recovered nicely, but had learned his lesson. In World War II, Jeeps had revolutionized desert travel. The combination of their light frame and four-wheel drive was perfect for this environment. Originally included in the lend – lease program by the American’s who had no use for them, the British troops found them indispensable in the desert environment. Their car bore no resemblance to the iconic Jeep. It was soon clear that the road, even though it was barely different in appearance from the ground around, it was the road for a reason.

  Another vehicle pulled over with a flat tire, and before Mako could say anything Assam dropped speed and merged back in the caravan. With fifteen minutes to go, they reached the site and were directed by guards in military garb carrying AK-47s to a cleared area about a hundred yards away from the cliff.

  “Wait with the car,” Mako directed Assam. “Just in case.”

  Mako and Gretchen got out of the back and were joined by Alaa as they followed the procession toward the scaffolding. They were directed toward a large tent. Cameras were at the ready and reporters were jockeying for position around several large TVs set on tables. Mako left Gretchen with Alaa near the edge of a group clad in the latest safari gear. He needed to find Rashi.