Havoc - v4 (42 page)

He’d made his way to Odessa, where he caught a flight to Cairo. Salibi had given him the name of an Al Qaida operative who could put together everything they would need, including finding a translator to decipher the photographs he’d taken of the stele. Of course the academic had to be killed to ensure his silence. The biggest delay had been finding men with scuba experience once they realized the tomb was under Lake Nasser.

Now that they were here they found that diving wouldn’t be necessary. Sometime in the five centuries since Skenderbeg’s men had returned the alembic to Alexander’s tomb, an earthquake had cracked the sandstone hills that once towered over the flooded Shu’ta Valley. Many of these fractures were mere cracks in the earth, but there was a long gouge that extended up from the lake. The feature was too straight to be a natural phenomenon. Poli recognized immediately that there was a tunnel rising up from the bottom of the valley and the quake had collapsed part of its roof. He set teams of men to begin digging at the top of the depression where he believed the tunnel’s ceiling had remained intact. Already they had dug down six feet.

Just offshore, the boat he’d planned to use as a dive platform, a forty-foot houseboat they’d bought in Aswân, sat quiet. They’d also bought two outboard boats to act as pickets to keep fishermen and others from the area.

Poli saw Mohammad bin Al-Salibi emerge from one of the tents. With his darkly handsome features and traditional white robes, he cut a dashing figure. The men all stopped as he passed, greeting him with deference or touching the hem of his robe. They might all be fanatics, but they knew who the money man was.

“Who was that on the radio?” Salibi asked.

“Picketboat stopped a yacht about five miles from here. Just some tourists.”

“Ah.” Salibi looked around the encampment. They’d accomplished an amazing amount of work in just a short time. All the tents were up, the kitchen was putting out meals, and the men had already settled into their routines. “So how long do you think this will take?”

“I do not know. The tunnel may be under another inch of sand or another fifty feet. It is possible I am wrong altogether which means I will have to dive and look for the cave’s entrance. You have to be prepared for the likelihood that it has been buried by the earthquake and may never be found.”

“Allah will bless us, I know it.” Salibi gazed out across the bay and continued in a dreamy voice, “We failed in Novorossiysk because the plan displeased Him. It wasn’t a blow worthy of our abilities. When you find the alembic we will strike at the very heart of our problem.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” Poli asked, curious at the depths of depravity Salibi was capable of. He fully understood that the Saudi was doing this for political gain and economic advantage and not for some religious cause, but how he could warp his motivations to convince himself he was doing God’s bidding was fascinating.

“Turkey is the key. Their leaders are all godless secularists who care nothing for
Sharia
, the blessed laws of Islam. If we can make the people see that their government will not protect them they will rise up, throw off the yoke of Western influence, and embrace their faith.”

Poli thought to himself, thereby giving you the ability to cut off the million barrels a day that flows across the country in pipelines and use the Bosporus as a choke point to prevent tankers from entering the Black Sea.

“This is about saving the souls of the Turks because they believe women should have rights and that the church and state should be separate.

“This is about freeing a people and letting them know God’s love. I wish I could join the martyrs who will die in Istanbul for their glorious deaths will lead to a revolution that will see Islam elevated to its rightful place.”

“You plan to use the plutonium against Istanbul?”

“Yes. It will be like in Russia, only this time we will not fail.”

Feines gave a little thought to the fourteen million people who lived in the city straddling the Bosporus and shrugged. “Whatever makes you happy.”

In a secluded bay twenty miles from where they’d been stopped Mercer killed the Riva’s engine and dropped the anchor. The silence seemed to rush in on them after so many hours on the loud boat. They’d already made their plans and used a satellite phone to apprise Ira Lasko of the situation. He agreed they should reconnoiter the head of the bay before bringing anything to the President.

Dinner was subdued as they ate in the cozy dining nook. After the meal they changed into dark clothes. Mercer wondered if subconsciously they’d all known this could happen, because each of them had brought clothing suitable for a night operation. They waited another hour for the last rays of the sun to be snuffed out before hauling the small inflatable raft from the stern garage.

With the three of them plus one set of diving gear it was a snug fit and the little rubber boat sank almost to the gunwales. Their only weapons were a four-inch dive knife and a two-pound hammer Booker had found in the Riva’s tool box.

Using a handheld GPS they motored to within two miles of where they’d been stopped by the guards. Book was at the controls. He slowed the little dinghy to an idle and they crept forward another mile.

“This is good,” Mercer whispered. Book drove the inflatable onto a beach and he and Mercer dragged it out of the water.

“Bring the tanks or leave them?”

There was sixty pounds of equipment to lug another couple of miles over the rough desert but with three of them they could spread the load. “Leave ’em for now. We can always come back later.”

They walked single file and widely spaced. With his years of military experience Booker took point, and Mercer had the drag slot. Book took them inland about a half mile in case Poli had men watching the shore. With the GPS there was no chance they could get lost. The ground was mostly sand and small rocks, easy enough in the daylight, but a misplaced step could turn an ankle and it wasn’t until the landscape was bathed in the milky glow of the half-moon that they started to make time.

There were no sounds except the gentle wind and their own careful footfalls.

An hour into the march Book raised his hand and lowered himself to the ground. Such was his skill that it was as if he’d vanished. Mercer had seen the spot where he had been standing a second earlier but now there was no sign of his friend. He and Cali paced forward in a crouch until they came to a shallow wadi that hadn’t seen a flood in a century. Peering over the far bank of the old streambed, Mercer saw the moon’s reflection on the lake, a dancing white line that stretched to the horizon. Nearer, he saw lights and quickly made out an encampment. He counted a dozen tents. Anchored near the shore was a speedboat identical to the one Book said the guards had used, and a larger boat farther out in the bay. It looked like there was a guard aboard it manning a heavy machine gun.

The sounds of men talking wafted above the rumble of a generator.

Book handed Mercer the binoculars he’d been carrying.

Looking closer, he spotted armed men on patrol walking the perimeter of the compound and another guard stationed near the speedboat. A few men sat in a loose circle listening to another. By the listeners’ expressions Mercer could see the speaker held them spellbound.

“Nothing short of an air strike is going to take them all out,” Booker whispered, his mouth so close to Mercer’s ear he could feel his breath.

Mercer just nodded. He was looking at a spot where Poli’s men were digging into the side of the hill that rose at the head of the bay. The excavation was lit by floodlights and the men worked in teams hauling buckets of sand and loose dirt from the hole. Mercer saw that their work was at the apex of a straight trench that ran down to the water’s edge. By mentally extending the line, Mercer realized it went directly to the bottom of the valley, exactly where the stele said they’d find the entrance to Alexander’s tomb. He thought back to his visit to Egypt years earlier. He’d toured the Valley of the Kings with Salome and he recalled that the ancient Egyptians had dug long tunnels into the mountains in order to bury their pharaohs. He imagined what the Shu’ta Valley would have looked like before the Aswân Dam had filled it with water. It would have mildly resembled the fabled burial place of Egypt’s kings, so was it possible that Alexander’s men had ordered the excavation of a tunnel, only instead of descending into the mountains, his had risen from the valley floor?

“They’re going to have the alembic by tomorrow or the next day,” he said softly and explained his suspicions. “For a tunnel collapse to show on the surface like that it can’t be more than ten or fifteen feet deep.”

“What are we going to do?”

“That’ll be up to Ira. There’s nothing the three of us can do against that army down there.”

“What if there were more than three?”

The voice had come from behind them. Mercer whirled around, bringing up the knife in a lightning move. Ibriham Ahmad had approached so silently that even Booker hadn’t heard him. He wore his trademark black suit even in the desert, though he prudently wore a dark shirt and tie. Behind him were five more men. They wore dark camouflage and combat harnesses loaded with ammunition pouches. All carried several high-tech automatic weapons. Mercer recognized Ahmad’s protégé, Devrin Egemen. The young man bobbed his head shyly in greeting when he met Mercer’s gaze. Even bedecked with an arsenal of weaponry, Mercer couldn’t see the young scholar as a fighter.

“I should have known you’d find a way,” Ahmad told Mercer. His admiration was clear even though he whispered.

“And I should have known you lied to me about not knowing the location of Alexander’s tomb.” Somehow Mercer wasn’t surprised Ahmad was here. “How long have you been here?”

“I’ve had two men camped above the tomb’s entrance since Feines first approached me months ago. I myself arrived this afternoon.”

“You know he’s going to find the tomb quickly.”

Ahmad looked shamefaced. “I never realized the significance of that trench until Poli started digging. I had hoped to bring more men but we are attacking tonight.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Cali hissed. “There are fifty or sixty of them and only six of you.”

“Caribe Dayce had more than a hundred,” Ahmad replied.

Mercer remembered the savagery of that counterattack as he and Cali awaited execution. And he estimated Dayce had at least a hundred and fifty fighters. Ahmad’s team had killed them to a man in minutes. “That was just the six of you?” He couldn’t believe it.

“Actually Devrin was in Istanbul. We were only five. Dr. Mercer, the Janissaries are a military order. We’ve trained for warfare our entire lives.”

“Mercer told me about what you did in Africa,” Booker said. “Taking out a bunch of drunk and drugged up teenagers isn’t the same as going up against fifty battle-hardened terrorists.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Ahmad said simply. “This ends now.”

“It’s suicide,” Cali said. “You know what these fanatics are capable of. They’ll blow themselves up if they think they can get just one of you.”

“He’s right, Cali,” Mercer said. “There’s no other option.” He couldn’t believe what he was about to say when he turned back to Ahmad. “I’m in. What’s your plan?”

Before Ahmad could outline his strategy there was a loud cry from Poli’s camp. Everyone in the wadi looked to where the workers were digging into the hillside. Several of them were dancing in tight circles, cheering and raising their shovels over their heads in triumph. When nearby guards realized the diggers had succeeded in burrowing down to the tunnel, they fired triumphant bursts of gunfire into the air. One of them ran off toward the tents. Mercer followed him with his eyes. Even before he arrived at one set a little apart from the others, Poli emerged. He was wearing just pants and desert boots. His chest was very pale in the dim light but the breadth of it defied imagination. His arms looked as thick as tree trunks and hung from shoulders as broad as a hangman’s gallows. He started jogging up the hill to the excavation.

The man who had been giving a lecture to some of the terrorists stood in a swirl of robes and crossed the desert in Poli’s wake.

“Shit. They’ve broken through.”

Ahmad wasn’t watching the workers celebrating their success. He studied the man in the robes, his mouth set in a grim line, fiery anger behind his dark eyes. “Al-Salibi.”

“That’s the guy funding the operation?” Cali asked. “The one who works for OPEC?”

“He is using Islam as a tool to increase his wealth and power,” Devrin said with as much hatred as his master.

Poli waded into the cheering throng, shouldering aside Qaida fighters until he was at the top of the hole. Al-Salibi joined him a moment later, slapping the big mercenary on the shoulder, a broad smile on his face. Even Feines looked pleased with himself for coming up with this plan to gain easy entrance to the tomb.

“You did it, my friend,” Salibi said to congratulate him.

Salibi would never be his friend but Poli let the comment pass.

The hole was four feet square and sand poured over the sides into the darkness. The sides of the tunnel below were dressed with stone laid in neat blocks. Playing the beam of a flashlight over their surfaces Poli could see they were covered in hieroglyphs. He couldn’t see the floor of the tunnel because it was flooded, water that must have seeped through the rock over the eons and become trapped. He called for a rope. Once an end had been tied around a nearby boulder, Poli tossed the other end into the fissure. He climbed down using just the strength of his arms. As he reached the still surface, he tentatively lowered himself into the cool water, feeling for the floor with his foot. When he touched bottom the water was as high as his upper chest. The tunnel had to be fifteen feet tall and at least as wide. Aiming his beam downslope he could see the loose rubble of where the roof had partially collapsed. There were gaps in it where the ceiling slabs had only crashed partway to the floor. As he pointed the flashlight up the gentle grade the beam of light was swallowed by darkness. The tunnel could climb another two hundred feet before reaching the top of the hill.