Mitch’s mouth pulled into a thin line. “I’m fine.”
“Good. I’m going to try the door.”
There was no knob or latch. He pushed and felt a small amount of give, then a sharp stop and a metallic rattle. He tried again with the same result.
“There’s a lock on the other side,” Avery guessed.
“Damn it,” he muttered. “I’ll have to shoot it, and there’s no way they won’t know we’re coming. Get ready to move in as fast as you can.”
He used two hands to steady his gun, then shot into the wood. The blast was deafening in the enclosed tunnel, sending splinters of wood flying. On the other side metal zinged. A two-inch hole appeared in the door. He shouldered the door quickly, pushing past a small amount of resistance as the door swung inward. Ahead of him, a slightly larger tunnel sloped downward. Another door stood at the end.
“Let’s go,” he ordered. It was a raid now. They did a hunched-over shuffling run to the next door, and this time he didn’t stop to finesse it open. He shot the hinges. Kyle slammed the door so it fell inward and they stepped in over it.
They burst into brightness. Donovan straightened, standing with a few inches to spare between his head and the ceiling. He blinked at the small room, registering impressions in the flash of a second.
Clutter. Hiding places. And one man holding a gun.
Four Glocks raised, pointing at the man standing in the center of the room. The Egyptian man looked startled and unsure about facing so many armed intruders, his gun trembling as it wavered from one person to another.
“Drop it,” Donovan ordered, wanting him disarmed before Mitch had an excuse to shoot him, silencing a potential witness. The man obeyed, letting the gun fall as if from suddenly numb fingers. His wide eyes stared at each of them in turn, obviously wondering who would shoot him first. If he recognized Mitch, Donovan couldn’t tell.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“Who?” the man asked, eyes rolling nervously from gun to gun.
He imagined the man could play dumb all night. “Cover him, Avery. Kyle, Mitch…” He jerked his pistol at the pile of junk to his right. “Check it out. I’ll take this side.”
He took a cautious look at the pile of objects on his left that occupied a quarter of the room, floor to ceiling. It looked like Ramesses VIII had been planning a yard sale, clearing out every piece of crap that had collected around the palace since the days of Ramesses I. Wooden boxes were still stacked neatly, but some perishable items, perhaps clothing or baskets, had not made it through the millennia. Their remains lay crumbled beneath the collapsed piles of boxes and chairs that had lain atop them.
Five more armed men could be hiding in that mess, for all he knew. He ducked around a couple wooden oars and the cracked wooden wheels and strips of leather from what had once been a chariot, and reached out to lift a mat of crumbling fibers that were draped over boxes.
“Don’t touch that!” The man gasped it, his hands reaching out with an imploring gesture and his face contorted with agony. Donovan froze. Kyle and Mitch stopped too, watching the suddenly distraught man with suspicion.
“Why?” Donovan asked. His hand hovered as he looked for wires that might indicate explosives. Across the room Mitch looked too tense. Kyle wasn’t much better, and Donovan hoped to God there were no rats to dart out and startle him into shooting at imagined walking mummies.
“Nothing must be moved,” the man cried. “Not until it has all been cataloged and photographed. It is history. Priceless. Please.” Sudden tears gleamed in the man’s eyes, nearly overflowing.
“A tomb robber with a conscience, huh?” But he moved his hand away. He had no doubt the man’s distress was real, which made it far less likely that the junk pile concealed more bad guys. He peered closely at the boxes and caught the shine of gold plating beneath the layer of dust along the sides of one box. Then on another. Yet another had hammered sheets of gold with raised figures of ancient Egyptian gods striding across it. He looked closer and saw gold rings on the dried wood of the oars and a golden ankh-shaped clasp on a box. The history here might be priceless, but he’d bet many items were pricey even without the history.
Also, a closer inspection showed boxes stacked too closely to allow for hiding spaces. Years of hide-and-seek in his grandmother’s attic had taught him the impossibility of scooting into corners this cluttered without toppling the whole thing over.
He nodded to Mitch and Kyle, a wordless order to stand down from the search. But that only eliminated this room, and Jess had told him to expect several. His eyes followed the bare lightbulbs strung along a wire overhead to where they disappeared under the lintel of a low doorway to an adjoining room. This time no door covered the opening, although Ramesses VIII’s royal collection of clutter covered part of the opening. There must be a battery that powered them elsewhere in the tomb. Also elsewhere in the tomb would be Jess and, hopefully, the hostages.