Keystone (39 page)

Gail screamed as Ben shoved her
head down behind the passenger seat of the 4x4. Dr Patterson did his best to
follow suit.

Walker had
ordered the driver to move the car in front of the small building in the middle
of the plateau. The other 4x4 followed, parking at an angle behind them. Their
new position formed a triangle, the bumpers of the 4x4s meeting at the apex,
with the gatehouse to the Library at the base. This provided them with cover
from the gulley, and direct access to the cliff edge, where Walker’s men had
positioned themselves.

As soon as the
shooting had begun, Walker jumped out and fired a quick volley over the bonnet
of the car.

“Out!” he
yelled at Patterson, yanking the rear door open. He gestured for Ben and Gail
to follow. The driver of the other vehicle opened his passenger door and
dragged another out. By the way he fell to the floor, it was clear he was
either dead, or close to it. Only one soldier got out of the back.

They sat down
along the edge of the vehicle, while Walker barked orders into his
walkie-talkie. Gail could see the odd head peak over the cliff-edge: Walker’s
men from the third 4x4. It reminded her of their initial discovery of the
Library all those years ago, when Ben had awkwardly popped his head above the
cliff during her phone call to George.

Except these men
were dressed in black and were carrying the strangest guns she had ever seen.
Not that you’ve seen many
, she reminded
herself.

The man who
had been driving their car loaded a new clip of ammunition into his gun.
Standing sideways, he fired half a dozen shots straight through the windows of
the 4x4 and into the rocks beyond.

A single shot
was returned.

As he came
down from his firing stance, his gun arm fell limply and his weapon crashed
into the dust. He managed to get to one knee as his legs crumpled under his
weight, and then toppled sideways in front of Gail, Ben and Patterson.

It was then
that Gail saw the bloody mess where his right eye should have been. Looking
away in horror, she saw the look on Ben’s face: he was staring at the strange
weapon that had fallen almost into his lap.

He was about
to reach for it when Walker intervened.

“One, you’re
too slow. I saw that coming a mile away.” He took the fallen gun and removed
the magazine with a click. Dropping the empty magazine from his own, he
reloaded with the dead man’s ammunition then looked Ben in the eyes. “Two, you
wouldn’t even be able to fire it.” He nodded at the small indentations on the
grip of the handle. “Unless of course you took his hand with it,” he grinned
viciously before turning back to the two remaining soldiers in their improvised
fortress.

“Fucking
prick,” Gail managed to say under her breath before anyone else got a word in.

Ben looked at
her in surprise. “I’ve not heard you swear like that before.”

“I’ve never
met such a prick before,” she replied, this time elevating her voice slightly
as she swore. Walker gave the faintest of reactions, in the form of a wry smile
as he patted the side of his gun.

The three
soldiers took it in turns to fire over the top and from underneath the cars,
changing position frequently. On a few occasions, as they ducked down after
firing, they exchanged tips on where to fire next. Of the three heads that had
been popping up from the cliff edge, only two appeared to be firing now.

The opposing
gunshots also seemed to be decreasing, with longer gaps between bursts and
fewer impacts around them.

Walker dropped
down to a crouch after firing a particularly long volley, a wild grin on his
face. “Got the Arab bastard!” he exclaimed “Ripped him apart!”

Gail looked at
Ben; it was obvious he was fighting to keep down a torrent of emotions. She put
her hand on his knee and squeezed hard. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t put
a suitable sentence together, so closed it without saying a word.

He put his
hand on hers and squeezed back.

Dr Patterson
nodded towards the gatehouse, its unlocked door swinging freely on its hinges.
The top third of brickwork was covered in bullet holes, though he could see
none in the bottom portion. “Bit odd,” he whispered to them both.

“I’m no expert,”
Gail said, “but if they’re hidden in an elevated position above us, then they
should have an advantage shouldn’t they? And yet I get the feeling they’re the
ones taking the most hits.”

Ben took a
moment to think about it. “They’re aiming high; they know we’re still here.” He
nudged the corpse in front of them with his foot. “Unless they have a clear
shot, and then they’ll aim to kill. The problem is, these guys have figured
that out.”

Gail looked at
the soldiers. With the rhythm they had entered into, it was difficult to see
how any attacker could take a good aim at any one of them. Despite there being
only five of them left, practically all the gunshots now came from their side,
and the louder crackling fire from the gulley had practically stopped, save for
the odd burst every twenty seconds or so.

Walker shouted
a couple of concise orders, followed by some jerky hand signals, which Gail
didn’t get the meaning of.

“They’re
moving in,” Ben whispered quickly through gritted teeth. “Gail, George is up
there.”

Her heart
stopped beating for a fraction of a second. She looked at him in despair.
“What?”

“We have to
stop them moving in, otherwise it’s over,” he said.

One of the
soldiers was crouched down at the back of the 4x4 furthest from the gulley, his
gun held against his chest. Walker nodded at him, and then he and the driver
who had dragged the corpse from the car levelled their weapons towards the
gulley and began firing, while the soldier ran from cover and darted towards
the enemy defences.

“Now!” Ben
hissed.

He got up and
ran towards the doorway, pulling Gail with him. As they ran, he shouted
something in Arabic at the top of his voice.

Patterson
followed, and they all piled into the building and practically fell down the
stone-cut stairway the ancient Egyptians had made thousands of years earlier.
On their way, Gail managed to punch the light switch, and the LED bulbs in the
stairway and entrance hall beneath lit up.

When they
reached the bottom of the stairs, Gail gathered her senses and looked around,
immediately spotting the circular hole cut into the wall of the chamber a
decade earlier, beyond which lay the Library itself.

“We made it!”
Patterson exclaimed, searching himself for bullet wounds.

Ben was
listening intently at the bottom of the steps, a worried look on his face.

“Ben?” Gail
asked.

He hushed her
with his hand and craned his ear upwards.

After a moment
of silence the muffled sound of Walker and his men’s automatic rifles echoed
down the stairs. But this time, instead of being followed by the odd return shot,
a salvo of gunshots and ricochets came back. Even from underground they could
hear glass windows breaking, metal being punctured and the thuds of bullets
hitting the dirt.

“Yes!” Ben
shouted, punching the air. “There must be at least three of them left.” He
slapped Gail on the back, grinning. “We’ll be –”

The rest of
his sentence was cut off by a massive explosion which made the whole room
shake. Dust fell from the ceiling and poured down the steps into the chamber.
Seconds later another explosion shook the room, followed almost instantly by
another, final blast.

Gail
instinctively clasped her hands over her ears and crouched down, closing her
eyes. The rumbling from above continued for a while, eventually replaced by a
loud, painful ringing. She opened her eyes cautiously and in the dust-filled
air saw a pair of army boots on the floor in front of her. As the dust began to
clear she could make out the uniformed legs they were attached to, then the
utility belt with empty holster and spare clips of ammunition, followed by the
shirt with the walkie-talkie in the breast pocket, and finally the bloodied
face of Walker.

He was lying
on the floor, his back and head propped up against the last three steps. His
eyes were open and he looked disoriented, blinking heavily and lolling his head
from side to side.

Ben was
standing over him with Walker’s pistol in his hand, pointed directly at the
soldier’s head.

“I knew I
should’ve killed you,” Walker shouted, slurring his words. “Should’ve put a
bullet in you when I had the chance.”

“Yes, you
should have,” Ben replied. “What was that explosion?”

“Did the cars
blow up?” Gail asked.

Ben shook his
head. “Maybe afterwards, yes, but that first explosion sounded too big to just
be cars blowing up.”

Walker
grinned, his teeth and gums full of blood. It bubbled out of his mouth as he
talked. “Not heard one of those before, tough guy?” His eyes had steadied now
as he trained his eyes on the Egyptian. His head still bobbed up and down
slightly, but it looked like he was regaining his strength. He shifted his
position and grunted, holding his ribcage as he pulled away from the steps to sit
forwards.

Ben took a
step back and brought his other hand up to steady the pistol on the man’s head.
“What was it?”

“Goddamn it,”
he grimaced as he removed his shirt and started to unfasten the body armour he
was wearing underneath. “It was a HICUP Grenade.”

“Hiccup?” Gail
mused.

He looked at
her sarcastically. “Yeah, sweetheart. High Impact Concussion grenade. The UP
stands for Under Pressure, or pressurized. When it explodes, it’s like you
packed a ton of TNT into a baseball.”

Ben looked at
him with a confused look on his face. “We don’t have anything like that to
throw at you, so where did it come from?”

Walker held up
his body armour to display three star-shaped impacts across the chest. “Me,” he
said simply. “I pulled the pin, reached back to throw it, and then got shot.
The impact of the bullets threw me back and I dropped the little bastard. Once
you’ve lit a firework, you just don’t go back to it, so I had to jump for
cover.” He looked at them one by one, and shook his head. “Which is how I ended
up joining your little party you’ve got going on down here.”

“OK, enough of
the story. Get up,” Ben gestured with the pistol and Walker followed him to the
other corner of the room. Standing a couple of metres away from him, he called
over his shoulder, “Peterson, check what’s going on up there, it’s gone very
quiet.”

“Patterson,”
he corrected. “Call me Henry.”

“Oh aren’t you
all just best of buddies now,” Walker said.

They ignored
him.

Patterson left
the room and Ben called over to Gail. “Don’t worry about George, Gail. I’m sure
he’s fine. I left him in very good hands.”

“Thanks, Ben,”
she managed to say.

Patterson came
back down the steps with a grim look on his face. “We have a problem,” he said.

Gail’s face
dropped even further. “Are they still fighting?”

He shook his
head. “I don’t think so, can’t hear anything, that’s for sure.”

“So?”

“The entrance
is blocked with rock and sand in the first flight of steps and I couldn’t make
it more than ten steps up. It’s a job for proper mechanical diggers, we’re not
getting out of here in a hurry.”

They stood in
silence for a few moments before Patterson continued.

“I’m sorry,
Gail, but it looks like we’re going to
have
to find the other entrance to the Library now, because it might be our only
exit before the oxygen runs out.”

Gail cursed
under her breath.

Ben raised an
eyebrow. Looking from the steps to Gail, and then across to the hole in the
wall that led to the Amarna Library, his gaze fell on Patterson, who was
beating the dust from his shorts and tucking his sweat-stained shirt back under
the beltline. “What other way in?”

George sucked air into his lungs
in short wheezing breaths as he slowed to a walk before finally stopping
completely and bending over, his hands pressed against the insides of his
thighs. It didn’t help with the rifle he’d slung awkwardly over his shoulder
banging against his ribcage with every step.

Pain seared
through his chest, and he winced as he looked up to see Tariq stopping some
twenty yards ahead, seemingly unaffected by the gruelling pace that he had set
down the rocky terrain.

It took all of
his effort to lift an arm and motion him to wait. Tariq squatted down and used
the spring in his legs to bounce impatiently up and down as he waited for the
Englishman to catch his breath, never once taking his eyes off the road ahead
for any sign of danger.

From having
accompanied Gail on trips back to Egypt since the discovery of the Library,
George knew that they were only one turn away from the foot of the cliff. It
wouldn’t do him any good to turn up for what he assumed would be a fierce gun
fight if he could hardly breathe. He grunted in amusement as the mental image
of him turning up to a battle and having to ask for a quick timeout popped up.
It was quickly replaced by fear at the realisation that he
was
about to turn up to a battle.

The pain in
his ribcage had subsided, only to be replaced by a heavy ache that seemed to
fill his legs, from the calf up to the thigh, spreading across his groin. He
remembered the feeling from school many years earlier, when the PE teacher had
forced them to run cross-country in the middle of winter. He had never been a
sporty person, and he had always found himself among the stragglers who walked
the final couple of miles back to the changing rooms. Arriving late had its
drawbacks, especially when it meant missing the first half of the next lesson
and being reprimanded by the teacher.

He shook his
head and looked up at Tariq. From behind the coloured spots that filled his
vision, he could just about make out the Egyptian, who was looking over his
weapon, occasionally glancing back at him, while always keeping an eye out for
the road ahead.

They couldn’t
have been running for more than five minutes, but the relentless pace of the
man had been too much for George, and he fought the almost overwhelming desire
to topple onto his back and close his eyes. He’d stopped in the shade of the
rocky slope to his right, the gentle incline to his left dropping off to what
looked like a dried up river bed a dozen or so yards wide before rising up on
the other side, creating a U-shaped valley his secondary education told him was
formed by glacial displacement, not rivers.

But he
couldn’t imagine glaciers round here; maybe the school’s textbook rule didn’t apply
to this hot, arid place.

Straightening
up, he pulled the AK-47 against his chest with both arms and let his legs
propel him gently down the slope until he was standing next to Tariq.

“One more
corner,” he said, gesturing towards the track ahead.

Tariq nodded
and started walking forwards, covering the final yards at a more cautious pace.

The sound of
the gunfight got louder as they neared the bend, and George noted that the
predominant sound was the muffled popping of the American weapons, not the harsh
crackle of their own AK-47s. His heart sank noticeably, and he stood
expectantly a few feet back from Tariq, who took barely two seconds to look
round the corner, take stock of the situation, and return to cover.

“Three,” he
said with his fingers. He then held up just the index finger. “One of them looks
dead, or dying.”

George
followed Tariq’s jerky hand signals accompanied by the odd word of English, and
understood what they were about to do; Tariq would dart from cover towards the
Toyota truck, which was a mere fifteen yards away. George would offer covering
fire from his hiding place if required, but if they didn’t turn around, Tariq
would fire a warning shot into the rocks when he reached the vehicle. Finally,
all being well, George would use his command of the English language to demand
and then accept the American surrender.

It seemed like
a good enough idea, so he nodded his approval. He particularly liked the fact
that if all went according to the plan, he wouldn’t need to fire a single shot.
He still didn’t know if his earlier vomiting had damaged the firing mechanism,
so he offered the gun to Tariq to check over.

The Egyptian
glanced at it briefly and gave a quick thumbs-up.

He checked
round the corner one last time, then gave a brief nod towards George and made
for the Toyota. George brought his AK-47 up and swung it round the rocks.

They were much
higher up than he had imagined, despite Tariq’s best efforts to explain the
layout. The two men who were firing over the cliff’s edge were about thirty
feet above him, and the third lay motionless on a small ledge a few feet
further away. In his peripheral vision, he saw Tariq slide behind the front end
of Ben’s Toyota. He regained his footing and took aim at the men, who were
still unaware of what was going on behind them.

George could
feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins as Tariq completed the
outflanking manoeuvre. Without a shot fired, they were now in a winning
position behind enemy lines, and he waited for Tariq to fire his warning shot
before announcing their demands for surrender.

When the shot
didn’t come, he looked quizzically towards Tariq and saw him grappling with his
gun. George could only imagine it was jammed, and so making sure he kept Tariq
in his line of sight, moved back under cover while he waited for him to un-jam
it. As he watched him feverishly taking his rifle apart, it suddenly occurred
to him that he was dangerously exposed to the Americans. Despite the cover of
the Toyota, he would still be visible if any of the men on the cliff happened
to turn round to face the car, due to their elevated position.

Which meant
that he would have to provide cover for him.

He felt an odd
reluctance to emerge from his hiding place; while he realised it was clearly
the right thing to do, the wall of rocks he was leaning against offered him
some protection against the raging battle. The internal debate was short lived,
and he sucked his gut in before swinging out and aiming directly at the
Americans.

“Hey!” he
tried to say as he pointed the barrel of the gun at the two men. Unfortunately,
his having not said anything loudly for some time together with the effects of
the dry atmosphere made the word come out as a croak, like a teetotaller
knocking back a shot of whisky. Somehow his voice failed to carry far enough to
be heard above the noise of the battle, so he summed up his courage, cleared
his throat and tried again.

“Hey, hands –”
he was about to say
up
when the
thundering sound of an explosion tore through the air. Moments later, a couple
more loud bangs came from the plateau, and he saw a cloud of dust and grit pour
over the cliff’s edge and fall down towards him. “Don’t move!” he shouted to
the two Americans, who had turned to face him more to shield their eyes from
the fallout of the explosion than to question his ‘Hey, hands -’ challenge.
“Throw down your weapons!” he added, his voice shaking as he realised the
fragility of his position: two heavily armed professionals against him – a
quiet Englishman with an antiquated rifle he hadn’t even fired a shot in anger
from yet.

The look of
surprise on the men’s faces was evident. Standing on the track below was what
looked like a tourist, covered in dust. It was only after a second take that
they realised he was carrying a weapon, and that it was being pointed straight
at them.

“You wanna
think real hard about what you’re doing,” the man on the left said. He sported
a thick moustache, and an even thicker Texan accent. To show what he thought
about George’s ‘ambush’, he levelled his gun at him, and very deliberately took
aim. The second man nodded to his colleague before returning to the fight over
the top of the cliff, effectively ignoring them both.

Oddly, it
wasn’t the thought of Gail needing to be rescued that made him see red, but the
wonton disregard for what should have been an unassailable position of
authority: him pointing a loaded weapon at two men should have been met by
humble resignation, when instead it had been met by pure indifference.

He snarled,
aimed for the chest of the Texan, and squeezed his trigger finger to let out a
volley of bullets.

But none came.
The trigger didn’t budge.

The Texan
grinned.

George fumbled
for the safety.
Surely it had been off!

The Texan
pulled his trigger.

A loud crackle
came from the Toyota, and the Texan thumped into the cliff wall, spraying
bullets as his gun-arm flew sideways. The second man turned just in time to see
the barrel of his buddy’s gun pointing into his face, and a fraction of a
second later the man’s trigger finger went limp.

He slumped
against the cliff, motionless, while his shooting partner cart-wheeled from the
ledge and rolled down to the ground, leaving behind a trail of blood and
brains.

George clicked
the safety off in time to see the two corpses settle into the dust.

And then,
almost serenely after what seemed like hours of shooting, the final echo of
gunfire dissipated. His hands and forearms were numb from having held the AK-47
upright for so long, and he pulled them down till the rifle was pointing at his
feet. His gaze fell on the man who had tumbled to the ground.

The top half
of his head was missing.

Of the part
that remained, only his bottom lip and chin were recognisable, the rest was
covered in blood and fleshy fragments.

He didn’t
think there’d be much sick left in him after his earlier episode, but then the
human body always had the capacity to catch you by surprise. After he had
finished throwing up, he turned and faced the dusty plains that led to the
green-belt of vegetation bordering the Nile. A cool breeze came to meet him,
bringing with it the smell of the river. The smell of vegetation and oxygen.
The smell of life.

Tariq placed a
hand gently on his shoulder. For a brief moment, the language barrier between
them seemed to dissolve. George looked up at the Egyptian and saw complete
understanding in his eyes; understanding that George had seen more death today
than ever before, and understanding that for one heart-stopping moment, he had
seen his own, too.

Had it not
been for the soft click of the magazine loading perfectly into Tariq’s
un-jammed AK-47, the Texan would have certainly killed George.

“Hello!” came
a shout from the cliff top behind them. They turned in unison and saw Zahra
waving down at them, a grim smile on her face. “Thanks for that!” She gestured for
them both to come up the cliff, and Tariq helped George to his feet.

They gathered
near the smouldering remains of the two 4x4s and a pile of rubble which used to
be the gatehouse. Leena had her arm around Manu, whose red eyes came not from
the dust but the death of Haji. Tariq stood guard over the one surviving
American who sat bound and motionless in the dirt, staring fixedly ahead.
According to Zahra, he had run from cover moments before the explosions in an
effort to outflank them. Ironically, the daring move had saved his life.

“George,”
Zahra said apologetically. “Your wife was with them, and so was Ben. They ran
down the stairs just before the explosion destroyed the entrance.”

George looked
at the pile of rubble, and instead of replying started to move some of the
smaller stones and fragments of breezeblock from the entrance of the Library.
It looked a hopeless task.

“George,”
Zahra was about to tell him as much, but she was interrupted by a burst of
Arabic from Tariq.

Then Tariq was
at George’s side, helping him lift a beam that had once been part of the tiled
roof. Leena and Manu also joined in, and before long the four of them were
fervently clearing rubble in search of survivors.

Zahra took up
Tariq’s place guarding the American, who looked on, unmoved.