A rustle nearby brought her jerking to attention. Fifteen feet away a fennec, the small desert fox of northern Africa, darted after a rodent. A scrape, a squeal, then silence. Jess willed her tension to dissipate, leaning into Donovan’s warmth. A breeze lifted her hair, then stilled, and all was quiet again.
Below, a light flickered.
They saw it at the same time, both of them coming to attention. Eyes straining against the darkness, she whispered, “Where did it go?”
“Wait.” Seconds later, the light shone faintly like a dim flashlight held close to the ground. “There.”
He pulled out his phone. In a low whisper, he said, “We spotted a light at the bottom of the wadi, moving toward you. Do you see it?”
They waited nearly a full minute before Kyle saw it and relayed the message to Mitch. “We’re going down to where we first picked up the light,” Donovan said into the phone. “Meet us at the bend in the wadi where it splits.”
They moved carefully down the trackless hills, using only the thin light of the moon to guide them. They held hands where the slope became steep and detoured around an abrupt drop. Thirty minutes later they stood at the bottom of the wadi. Donovan’s satellite phone glowed green as he sent their coordinates to Kyle, Avery, and Mitch. It took another twenty minutes before Kyle and Avery showed up, their dark clothes keeping them invisible until the last moment. It was another fifteen minutes before Mitch materialized out of the darkness.
Time enough for any one of them to secretly intercept the courier and reveal their plans.
Donovan pointed a flashlight at the ground, the dimly reflected light making their faces barely visible. “What took so long?” he asked Mitch.
“I followed him. He went to a small cave where they hide the electric car. He’s headed off to the Eye of the Gods in Luxor.”
It couldn’t have allayed Donovan’s suspicions, but for now he appeared to accept it without question. “Good. That gives us maybe an hour before he comes back. If we don’t find the tomb, we’ll have to hide and wait for him.”
“Can we use flashlights?” Avery asked. “I can’t see a damned thing.”
“We’ll have to and hope no one else is watching.” He didn’t look happy about it. “Jess, help us out here. What are we looking for?”
She was glad she could contribute something. “Most of the tombs were dug into the hillsides or a cliff face. The robbers probably had to excavate to find this one, so it might just look like a hole in the ground, and it’ll probably be small and hidden somehow. Probably with rocks that are easy enough to move but look like a natural pile of rubble.”
“A pile of rocks,” Avery groaned. “I think I’ve noticed a few million of those.”
“Excellent,” Donovan told her, giving her a rough slap on the shoulder. “That makes you a pro. You can take the point. Our guy came from around this bend, but I don’t know from how far in.”
“It doesn’t go far,” Kyle offered. “I scouted it earlier from the cliffs. It dead-ends about six hundred feet in, like a box canyon.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard yet. A smaller area to search.” She heard a tiny pause. “Mitch, you come with me up the right-hand side. Kyle and Avery take the left. Jess, you’re with me, too. Any questions before we go?” He paused for all of three seconds. “Let’s move out.”
Six hundred feet didn’t seem like much, but in the pitch-dark of an unfamiliar canyon it was a slow, tedious job. The base of the wadi was strewn with rock falls and the cliff faces gaped with vertical cracks and fault lines. They had to check every dark crevasse and move every rock that looked like it could be hiding a manhole-sized shaft. Jess stumbled over a rock in the dark, wrenching her ankle. She shook off Donovan’s hand, more out of pride than necessity, and limped the rest of the way on her own power.
When the two groups met at the back of the wadi, they exchanged grim looks of determination before crossing paths and working back up the opposite side. Forty minutes later they were back where they’d started.
“You’re sure he came from this end of the valley?” Avery asked.
“Yes,” Donovan said. “Jess? You saw him, too. What do you think?”
“He came from this branch,” she agreed. “We didn’t see his light until he came around the bend, but it was definitely this arm of the wadi.”
“Well, fuck,” Kyle muttered. “The guy’s a ghost. Now what? Grab him and make the fucker talk?”
“He’d die first,” Jess said, certain it was true. Kyle looked disgusted but seemed to accept it.