Keystone (43 page)

Captain Tan Ling Kai looked out
across the bow of the
DDG Hangzhou
,
towards the horizon.
Beyond which lies
America
, he mused.

Barely fifty
years earlier China had been little more than a thorn in the United States’
side; a hugely populous nation, full of promise for the future but no real
threat to the global dominance of the world’s only superpower.

In the decades
since, power had shifted inexorably towards Asia, with China taking up the
lion’s share. China’s dominance in the economic arena was symbolised in many
things, not least of which was the surge in Mandarin language courses in the
West. The greatest compliment to pay to another culture was to learn its
language and customs, and China was more fashionable now than ever before. It
was a sign of the resurgent East.

But becoming a
superpower wasn’t simply a matter of cultural and economic influence; Captain
Tan Ling Kai was part of the blunt edge of China’s hammer blow to end three
hundred years of Western dominance: military might.

The flotilla,
or
zhidui
, was laid out before him,
pointing East towards America. They’d been misrepresented by the world media,
he had heard.
Misclassified as ‘Lanzhou’
class destroyers, a forty year old relic with out-dated stealth technology and
diesel propulsion systems
, he scoffed. But the Lanzhou was a Type 052C
ship, whereas Hangzhou was the first of two Type 056B destroyers, with nuclear
propulsion, advanced stealth and semi-submersible defence systems.

The other Type
056B was in position three miles off
Hangzhou
’s
port bow.

Along with two
Jianghu V class frigates, off the starboard bow, they formed the main bulk of
the Fourth Fleet, a
zhidui
put
together to show America that they could no longer expect to rule the world
unchallenged. The situation in Korea was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate
that China was ready to do that. And thanks to an effective government-run
media campaign, the incidental death of Lieutenant Shi Su Ning in space had
swayed public opinion against the Americans, which had made it far easier for
the State Council to approve the Fourth Fleet’s first active deployment.

Their command
currently came from a nuclear submarine, the
Houjian
, which lurked somewhere below them in the depths of the
Pacific. Their latest orders had been to weigh anchor and sail at a rate of 15
knots to the limit of US territorial waters.

Captain Tan
Ling Kai was proud of his command. As the water was pumped out of her ballast
tanks, the
Hangzhou
rose from her
semi-submerged ‘cruise’ state, where the sea covered the main deck and
visibility was primarily from the bridge and observation deck.

Along with the
satellite dish and radar arrays, in cruise they were the only non-submerged
parts of the vessel. As the water ran off
Hangzhou
’s
angular surfaces, he ordered a weapons systems test – standard procedure
following any submerged state for the new destroyers.

In rapid
succession, sections of the ship slid open, revealing the full range of
weaponry on board. The first compartments, running parallel to each other along
the flanks of the ship, exposed sixteen banks of four vertical launching system
cells for a combination of cold-launch surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and
surface-to-submarine missiles. Capable of undertaking up to eighteen
simultaneous engagements, the brand new Chinese-built VLS was a quantum leap
from the antiquated revolver-style favoured by the outgoing 052C class destroyers.
Next, two compact gattling gun turrets emerged from either side of the bridge,
their deadly barrels springing to attention as they each circled through two
hundred and twenty degrees in a full protective sweep of the
Hagzhou
’s deck. The
sea-whiz
defence system could fire nearly six thousand
rounds-per-minute, up to a range of over three kilometres.

Finally, the
top of the deck midway between bridge and bow folded back and a single domed
turret emerged from below. After rotating through three hundred and sixty
degrees and pivoting the 120mm gun barrel from horizon to zenith, it
disappeared into the bowels of the ship, helping it regain the quasi-zero radar
profile that made it one of the most advanced warships afloat.

China was
ready.

Gail stood, frozen to the spot,
as the corridor sealed itself behind them. The memory of Akhenaten and
Nefertiti’s piercing red gaze was still fresh in her mind.

Patterson ran
back to the door, reaching it the moment it closed, and slammed his palms against
it. “No!” he exclaimed.

Ben started
towards him but was caught off balance by Walker, who slammed him against the
floor and easily prised the pistol from his hand.

“Fucking
Arab,” he muttered as he stood up and kicked Ben in the stomach. He pointed the
gun at his heart and started to squeeze the trigger.

“Wait!”
Patterson shouted. “Don’t shoot!”

Walker
hesitated long enough for Patterson to explain his objection.

“We may still
need him,” Patterson struggled to come up with a valid reason quickly enough.
“What if we find something heavy that needs lifting, what if we need to force
this door open?” He knew it was a tragic excuse, and he almost winced as he
gave it.

Walker weighed
up his options briefly. As far as he was concerned, he’d waited long enough
already. He’d played the nice guy long enough to get out of the crumbling tomb
he’d woken up in following the explosion. Now he was in a corridor lit by
electricity, with increasingly fresh air being pumped in from somewhere. He was
in no doubt that from hereon in he could fend for himself. He couldn’t rule out
the possibility that there may be a need for more manpower, but on the other
hand he didn’t consider the Arab to be particularly strong anyway.

“I doubt it,”
he surmised.

Gail was going
from turmoil to anguish. In the last five minutes she’d had her academic
beliefs finally shattered, and now she was faced with one of her dearest
friends being brutally executed.

“If you kill
him, then I won’t get you out of here. I would die with him rather than help
you.” She was amazed at how calm her own voice sounded; it was like hearing
someone else speak.

“You’ll help
me if I point this gun at you,” he threatened.

Gail shook her
head simply, a wry smile appearing on her face. “You kill him, and we all die down
here.”

After a moment
or two, he lowered the gun and stepped away from Ben. “Your lucky day,
Mohammed,” he jeered.

Ben stood up,
helped by Gail and Patterson.

“Thanks,” he
whispered to them both, with a nod to Gail.

For the first
time, Walker was in control. “You,” he said pointing the pistol at Gail, “find
out how to open this door.”

She knew now
that Ben was only alive because there was a chance she could still be useful.
Thinking hard, she desperately tried to live up to that promise. The corridor
they were in was very similar to the airlock found on Mars. The Russian,
Captain Marchenko, had entered it first, and when the airlock opened for a
second time, to let the other crew members in, he was gone. That meant that
Marchenko had passed through the airlock successfully.
And he must have been groggy, with hardly any air and no power to his
suit
, she thought.

Looking
around, she noticed for the first time the engravings on the walls. Processions
of Xynutians, along with dozens of different species of animals, heading
towards the door that Walker was standing by.

She breathed
in deeply, and noted that the air was almost fresh now, and at a pleasant
temperature, rather than the chill of the hall behind them.

It’s just an automatic airlock
, she
realised suddenly. How else was it possible for an astronaut to make his way
through while suffering from a lack of oxygen, which would have impaired his
thought processes?

She walked
towards the door and pushed past Walker.
No
time to lose, this thing could open any second now!
She moved her hands
over the inscriptions on either side of the door and settled for the head of
one of the Xynutians, who was wearing a particularly elaborate headdress and
holding another staff, this one double-headed, aloft. Pressing hard twice, she
stood back and observed the door anxiously.

“Well –”
Walker began, but before he could continue his sentence the door slid open
silently, and what was revealed instantly made him forget what he’d been about
to say.

For staring
right back at them, its staff held aloft and its teeth bared in a gruesome
sneer, was a Xynutian.

George sat down, exhausted. Tariq
and Manu were gulping down the last of their own water, while Leena had
descended to Ben’s Toyota to fetch more.

He looked
across at Zahra guarding the American, who was shifting uncomfortably against
the hand and ankle ties that made sure he wasn’t going to try and escape.

“We need some
help,” he said. “We need medical help.”

After an hour
or so of excavating, he had been able to squeeze his entire arm and head into
the hole they had created, but despite all of their cries and shouting, no one
had responded from beneath the rubble. If there was still a chance that Gail
was alive, or Ben for that matter, the fact that they weren’t answering meant
that they probably needed urgent medical assistance.

Zahra nodded
her head. “On their way,” she answered. “But by car, and from al-Minya. They’ll
be here as soon as they can.”

George did the
sums in his head and worked out that they were still at least twenty minutes
away. Zahra had only called for backup when there had been no response from
inside the Library.

It was easy
enough to explain what five members of the Tourism Police were doing in Amarna,
as it was still fairly common for tourists to request armed escorts into the
lesser travelled parts of the country, and Egypt had more Tourism Police than
it sensibly knew what to do with.

And the fact
that they’d been involved in a battle with an unknown terrorist organisation
would probably help.

But Haji was
dead, and she was dreading having to explain that. The shock of losing Ben had
dissipated now, and she was only left with the harsh reality of her situation.
What she had thought would be a fairly simple operation had turned into a bit
of a nightmare.

Leena returned
with the water, a large five litre plastic container with a handle, and they
all refilled their bottles.

“Torches?”
George made what he hoped was the international hand signal for ‘torch’, and
not something deeply offensive.

She nodded and
put them down on the ground. It made sense to pack a torch if you were going
anywhere away from the beaten track, and Ben had packed two large Maglites
before setting off from Cairo.

George gulped
some more water down thirstily. The Sun had already set, sinking into the
Sahara almost half an hour earlier. In the twilight, it was clear that the
batteries running the lights inside the Library had run out, as no light
emerged from the hole in the rubble.

Tariq, Manu,
Leena and George stood in a small circle over the hole in the ground. Only one
more stone. They had needed the rest, but now he felt a resurgence of energy, a
desire to reach Gail, whatever her condition, and be with her.

It felt like
years since they’d last held each other, since he’d said goodbye to her in
England, although it had been barely a week. However long, it had been
too
long.

The four of
them took up their positions around the block of stone, which was almost the
size of an average man. On three, they heaved upwards, and managed to lift one
end about a foot from its resting place. Rubble and sand streamed through the
new hole and fell down onto the steps below; the hollow rattling noise the
stones made as they fell caused a pang of emotion in George: they were so close
now he could have let go and slipped through with them.

“Come on!” he
yelled at the top of his voice as they heaved at the mass of sandstone. “Come
on!” As the outburst left his lungs they fell back and the stone crashed down
on its side.
 
Tariq fell on top of Leena,
and they cheered triumphantly, seeing the stone well and truly clear of the
hole.

Tariq got up
and stretched over to slap George on the back, but his hand swiped thin air as
George grabbed a torch and launched himself down the hole, landing on the
bottom steps of the ancient staircase with a thud.

Sweeping the
ante-chamber of the Library with the torch, and ignoring the shooting pain that
ran across the top of his foot following his spontaneous dive down the stairs,
he quickly moved on to the hole in the wall and the Library beyond. He searched
between the empty bookcases, and in every corner of the room, but there was no
one to be found.

“Gail!” he
shouted. “Gail, where are you?” Tears were streaming down his face as
desperation made him lose all self-control. “It’s me!” he sobbed.

The torch beam
fell on the podium that had held the Stickman book. Wiping the tears from his
eyes, he blinked several times before understanding what lay before him. Beyond
the podium, where previously there had been a stone wall, there was a corridor,
plunging down into the depths of the Earth.

Zahra arrived
at his side and handed him his borrowed AK-47, which was still fully loaded. It
reminded him that two of the Americans were still down here with Gail and Ben,
and he checked the position of the safety.

“Where are
they?” she asked.

George
collected himself and took a deep breath. “Down there,” he said pointing down
the corridor. Before she could answer he’d left her behind and was half
running, half limping down into the unknown, the AK-47 in one hand, the torch
in the other, and with renewed hope in his heart.