Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth (16 page)

Drake didn’t move, gun still leveled at Jada and her would-be abductor, but without a safe shot.

“Drop the damn gun, Drake,” the man snarled. “You and Sullivan both.”

Drake glanced at Sully and Olivia. Sully still had his back against the corner of the hotel, hidden from sight, gun still aimed at the sky. He saw the frown on Sully’s face and knew it reflected his own. These guys knew their names. If they worked for Henriksen, the boss had done his homework. Of course, Olivia had known Sully was with Jada, and she could have guessed that Drake was the other man with her on the basis of descriptions from the attack in New York. But Henriksen might have figured that out himself.

“I will kill her right now!” the gunman said.

Drake started to lower his gun, then darted behind a battered, dusty Jeep. He’d give up his gun if he had to, but he wasn’t going to stand there and wait to get shot.

“Dimitri, drive the car!” the gunman said.

The one Drake had thought Middle Eastern turned out to be Dimitri—a Greek. He kept his weapon aimed at the Jeep and hustled over to their BMW and slid behind the wheel. He kept the door open, ready to shoot again.

The linebacker didn’t need to be told what to do. He went to the man Drake had shot dead and lifted the corpse under the arms, starting to drag him around the back of the car.

“Open the boot!” he shouted to Dimitri. “The police will be here in moments.”

The Greek popped the trunk of the BMW, and it started to rise.

Drake took several deep breaths, waiting for the moment when the guy holding Jada would try to muscle her into the backseat. He had seen the fear in her eyes, but he had seen the determination as well. She would fight him if she had the chance, and if she tried to break free again, Drake would be ready. He would shoot the son of a bitch the second he had a target, and he knew Sully was waiting for the same thing.

Distant sirens reached them. The police were on the way. He tried not to think what might happen to an American with a gun and a fake passport in an Egyptian jail.

He heard a new scuffle, and a man cried out in pain.

Go, Jada
, he thought, figuring she had tried to fight back. He swung out from behind the Jeep, aiming at the spot right beside the BMW where Jada and the wounded thug had been a moment before. They were still there, but they weren’t alone.

A darker figure had risen up behind the gunman. Hooded, clad in flowing black, the new arrival gripped the wounded thug by the hair and cut his throat with a long, wickedly curved blade. Jada
had
tried to twist free, had gotten her hand on the gunman’s wrist and forced the gun barrel away from her skull. Now she held on to the man’s wrist and watched him slump to the pavement, dead.

Others emerged from the darkness between cars, four, then six, then eight more of the hooded figures. Two of them fell upon the linebacker, killing him in near silence. Another appeared from the backseat of the BMW, flowing like liquid darkness over the seat and murdering Dimitri, who pounded the car horn—but only for a moment.

Sully had stepped out from the corner of the hotel and taken aim, but he watched in astonishment that mirrored Drake’s as the shadowed figures made short work of Jada’s would-be abductors. For her part, Jada staggered backward in shock.

Hooded figures put the linebacker in the trunk with the man Drake had killed. Others tossed the one Jada had wounded into the backseat of his own car. One of the assassins shoved Dimitri over and took his place behind the wheel of the BMW. Drake kept swinging the barrel of his gun back and forth, wondering if he ought to be shooting at them, though they hadn’t made any attempt to attack him or his friends.

Then one of them darted at Jada so swiftly that when Drake pulled the trigger, he had no chance of hitting the man. The assassin whispered something into her ear and then retreated into the shadows between cars. The BMW’s engine roared, and Drake moved aside as it shot from the parking lot, skidding into the road and vanishing up the street.

When he glanced back at the scene of the melee, Jada was alone. Sully ran toward her, and so Drake did the same thing. Of Olivia, there was no sign. She had vanished.

“Get the car,” Sully snapped at him.

“But—”

“The cops!” Sully barked.

Drake ran for the car, digging out his keys. He was behind the wheel and had it started in a matter of seconds, slammed it into gear, and pulled up beside Sully and Jada, who quickly piled in.

“What about Olivia? We can’t just leave her for the police,” Drake said.

Beside him in the passenger seat, Jada shot him a withering glance. “Are you kidding me? She took off. You still think she didn’t set us up? Let’s go!”

Drake didn’t have to be told twice. He hit the gas and tore out of the parking lot, raced along the street, and slowed at the corner, taking the turn just as a police car barreled toward the hotel from the other direction.

Heart hammering, he kept his speed down until they were out of the city and the desert sky had opened up above them.

“Who the hell were those guys?” Drake muttered.

“The guys who tried to take me or the guys who killed them?” Jada asked.

“Either one,” Sully said.

“Jada, what did that guy whisper to you right before they did their disappearing act?” Drake asked.

She glanced at him as if deciding whether to tell. Then she exhaled. “Go home,” she said.

“Wow,” Drake said. “Y’ know, maybe this is me going out on a limb here, but I’m going to say I think we’re officially screwed.”

Nobody argued with him.

10

Drake woke on Saturday morning surprised not to have been rousted by the police during the night. He was even more amazed when he turned on the television and saw nothing about the violence outside the Queen’s Hotel on the news. Sully had spent the night in Jada’s room, presumably sleeping in a chair—though he might have taken a pillow into the bathtub and curled up there; it wouldn’t have been the first time—and when Drake phoned the room, he answered on the first ring.

“Any cops or reporters down your way?” Drake asked him.

“None. Weird, don’t you think?”

Drake
did
think. “Does Tyr Henriksen have enough money to pay a restaurant full of people to keep their mouths shut?”

“Either that or pay off the Fayoum City police,” Sully agreed.

“Why would he do that?” Drake asked.

“It’s pretty clear he thinks we know something he doesn’t want anyone knowing. If the cops question us, we might tell them.”

“We wouldn’t. Unless we had to,” Drake replied.

“He doesn’t know that.”

“True.”

“How you doing on your morning beauty regimen?” Sully growled. “Jada’s feeling pretty vulnerable. She doesn’t want to spend a minute here she doesn’t have to.”

“Just Jada?” Drake asked.

“You ready?” Sully replied, ignoring the question. “I’ve got some dates and fuul down here.”

“Watch what you’re calling me.”

“Funny,” Sully said drily.

“I just woke up. Give me twenty minutes. We should check out. Whatever happens today, tonight we find a hotel in Cairo.”

“Agreed.”

Drake didn’t actually make it downstairs until a little more than half an hour later, but Sully and Jada must have only been a few minutes ahead of him because they were at the front desk when he walked up. Once they had checked out and settled the bill, they headed outside to the car, all of them blinking back the sunlight and glancing around for the cadre of local cops they expected to descend on them. Still, nothing happened. It was as if the events of the night before had never taken place.

“Did you ask about Olivia?” Drake said, glancing at Sully and ignoring the sharp look the question earned him from Jada.

“She’s registered. We couldn’t exactly ask if she came back to her room last night, and it’s not likely the same clerk on duty, anyway,” Sully said. “I rang her room, but no answer, and we didn’t feel like knocking on the door.”

Drake nodded. There had been too many surprises lately, and he wouldn’t have wanted to knock on Olivia’s door this morning, either. The way she’d vanished, she was either in on it or in even more trouble than they were.

“So, I take it we’re not going to take spooky-ninja-assassin’s advice and go home?” Drake asked.

Jada glanced at him. “No one’s keeping you here, Nate.”

“Hey,” Drake said, holding up his hands in surrender. “We can’t pretend those guys weren’t intimidating. I’d feel better if I knew who they were and what the hell they were doing saving our asses.”

“
If
that’s what they were doing,” Sully said. “Looked to me like they were killing Henriksen’s guys. Was that to save Jada or just because they were Henriksen’s guys?”

“If they
were
Henriksen’s guys,” Drake said.

“Please,” Jada said, waving a dismissive hand. “Olivia may have confused you guys with her damsel-in-distress thing, but I know her. She’s a part of this.”

“Even if she isn’t, she put the blame on Henriksen, too,” Sully reminded them. “Either she was really afraid of him, which means he’s behind it all, or she’s in on it with him, which still means he’s behind it all.”

“I guess we’re in agreement on Henriksen being behind it all,” Drake said.

Jada punched him in the arm.

He said, “ow.”

“Just drive the car, would you?” Sully said, sighing. “It’s not the morning for goofing around.”

Drake frowned. “People tried to kill us again last night. There were hooded assassins—and I mean really, really skilled hooded assassins. As freaked as I am, I think it’s the perfect morning for goofing around.”

Jada stopped short ten feet from the Volvo wagon.

Sully glanced at her. “Hey. You okay?”

She turned to Drake, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his cheek. “I thanked Sully last night. I don’t think I thanked you. For saving my life, I mean.”

Drake wanted to remind her that she’d done a pretty good job of helping save her own life, but he didn’t want to ruin the moment.

Sully smiled. “Well, that shut him up, at least.”

The clock in the Volvo had given up attempting to tell time sometime before they acquired the car, but Drake guessed it was around half past nine when they arrived in a cloud of dust at the Temple of Sobek. Though the temple had been partially excavated years ago, their interest lay beyond it, on a stretch of crenellated desert that seemed at first glance indistinguishable from any other patch of Egyptian dirt.

Only as they drove past the temple excavation and continued toward the site of the labyrinth dig did the idiosyncrasies of the land become plain. A field of tents had been erected in what looked more like a military operation than a scientific encampment. Jeeps and other vehicles suited for the desert were parked in neat rows, though not a single line delineated appropriate parking spaces. Beyond the vehicles and tents there was a great depression in the land where the desert had settled down on top of the ruins of the labyrinth. The depression hinted at the large circular design.

On the eastern edge of the excavation site, a portion of the labyrinth’s walls had been dug out. Another work in progress had been covered by an awning, but Drake could make out what appeared to be the formidable stone entrance to the labyrinth. A small swarm of workers did the delicate work of slowly revealing the outer wall, but from both of the open sections of the labyrinth, buckets of earth were being carried out one by one and sifted through. Other workers carried wooden beams in through the openings, presumably to bolster the walls and ceilings that were being exposed for the first time in eons.

“It’s bigger than I expected,” Jada said.

“The operation or the labyrinth?” Sully asked.

“Both.”

Drake studied the outline of the labyrinth again. “That may not even be all of it. There are probably lower levels, shafts and traps, other twists. These things are never as simple as they seem.”

Jada glanced at the strange ripples of the desert on top of the labyrinth, indicating its basic design. “It doesn’t seem simple at all.”

Sully agreed. “When they were trying to dig out for the lake they were going to put in—” He pointed at the initial excavation point, the broken wall. “—probably right there, the sand started to pour down into the labyrinth. Looks like the level of the desert sank above it; otherwise we wouldn’t even be seeing this much. But most of the ceilings are still intact, so the dig team isn’t going to assume that the design they’re seeing on top is the actual map of the maze.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Drake replied. “As complicated as it looks, that’s only the start.”

Most of the workers ignored them as they parked the car behind the row of others and got out. There were several vehicles there that obviously didn’t belong: luxury vehicles among the faded old trucks and vans of the workers and the Jeeps of the foremen and archaeologists. Drake took note, but then he saw a pair of men in long blue shirts and loose cotton trousers. One had a beige and blue turban, but neither wore the traditional outer robe, the galabeya, so common among the desert dwellers.

“Excuse me,” Drake said. “Can you tell us where to find Ian Welch?”

The man in the turban went on as if they were invisible and had not spoken, but the other man stopped and studied them, perhaps wondering if they worked for his employers. He chose to be careful about who he ignored, smiling and nodding and gesturing them onward toward a row of tents.

“Dr. Welch the little tent,” he said.

His English was functional at best, but Drake didn’t judge. How could he, when he knew barely a dozen words in Arabic?

They thanked the man and hurried on, cognizant of the sun crawling overhead, the morning burning away. They found Welch in a small tent, drinking from a canteen. The heat was brutal, and the archaeologist already had started to sweat. Drake thought the skinny archaeologist, with his mess of hair and his antic, nervous energy, might be the kind of guy who did a lot of sweating.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Welch said, standing to greet them. He had his glasses slipped into the crook of his shirt collar, but now he slipped them on. “I couldn’t put off going into the dig much longer.”