No Rules(96)

Donovan touched his watch, illuminating the dial. She heard his impatient huff and felt his frustration. In everything she’d observed he was thorough and decisive, yet he’d been operating blind, running into walls and being forced to make spur-of-the-moment changes ever since this mission started. She wanted to help but didn’t know what to do.

“He’ll be back soon,” Donovan said. “Let’s take position farther up the main branch of the wadi and wait. If he takes a different turn, we’ll see it. And if he comes down here, it’s a dead end and we’ll be a hundred feet behind him.”

They’d barely found secure hiding places when the slide of footsteps on loose rock announced the courier’s presence. Jess saw only a dark shadow that moved, but heard the crunch of the man’s feet on rock as he took the turn into the dead-end wadi.

This time they’d all seen where he went. Donovan tapped shoulders and directed them to follow before their quarry got too far ahead. They slid out from behind the rock fissure that had concealed them, rounding the corner of the wadi with Donovan hanging back behind Mitch. Jess limped after them, but Donovan turned and took her arm stopping her. “Wait here,” he whispered next to her ear. “We won’t be far away. Take this.”

She didn’t see anything, but felt the molded plastic of a gun grip touch her hands. Her fingers closed around it automatically, then almost dropped it at the surprising weight. “I don’t know how to use it.”

His hands closed around hers. “Feel this?” he said, guiding her fingers. “Push it to unlock the trigger guard, like this. Then point and shoot. Easy.” He locked it again. “Just make sure you know what you’re aiming at.”

She wasn’t going to aim at anything, but if it made Donovan feel better to know she had it, she wouldn’t argue. She held the gun at her side, feeling awkward and uncomfortable.

The night closed in. Their footsteps died away, silent on the hard-packed sand and stone, and their light was dim, sometimes invisible as their bodies moved between her and the solitary flashlight they used. She strained for sounds of rocks being shifted as they found the tomb entrance, or a struggle as they captured the courier. Maybe she’d even hear yells or muffled gunfire if they entered the tomb and found the hostages.

She heard nothing.

The courier could not have gone far, not with the tall cliffs surrounding the end of the wadi. Would the tomb entrance be high in a cliff wall, something that required a rope ladder being lowered to gain entrance? Some tombs had been situated like that, especially once they discovered that the occasional flash floods that tore through the wadi could allow water into tombs or cover them with debris. In fact, that was why Tutankhamun’s tomb had escaped the robbers and gone undiscovered for so long—his unexpected death had caused the priests to appropriate an existing tomb in a less desirable location. KV-62 was in the valley floor where it was quickly covered with debris. The cliff walls remained dry, while the bottom of the wadi had occasionally turned into a river.

She froze. A river. She pivoted in the darkness, imagining the dark cliffs around her as she stood at the bottom of what was essentially a dry riverbed. A wadi. The Arabic word for a riverbed.

Ohmygod. She was such an idiot. Her father’s story replayed in her mind. The beaver family’s lodge was in the middle of a river. Wally hadn’t been wrong after all. It all fit.

It must be right here in the flat center of the wadi. Probably right beneath her feet.

The team was far down the wadi. Following the courier? No, she’d bet anything they’d lost him as soon as he turned into the dead-end wadi, because he’d uncovered the tomb entrance and disappeared underground.

But she couldn’t reveal the team’s presence, couldn’t shout out for them to come back. As much as possible, they would need the element of surprise. They would be back soon, and when they were, she would be able to point out the tomb entrance.

Where could it be? Donovan had left her with a gun, as if that might be useful. What she needed was a flashlight.

The quarter moon would soon disappear behind the cliffs, but in the cloudless sky it still gave off enough light to see the shadows of rocks on the wadi floor. She walked carefully to the first rock she saw about twenty feet away and crouched down, setting the gun on the sandy ground at her side. Using both hands, she pulled hard on the rock. It moved about six inches. She tugged again, grunting, and exposed another six or eight inches of desert sand. She felt the ground where it had sat, scraping with her fingernails. No hole, no trap door.

She rose, wiping her hands on her pants as she surveyed the area. Two stones sat together about ten feet away. She repeated her efforts, shifting one, then the other. Nothing.