The Pharaoh's Secret (17 page)

Kurt pushed the diver to one side and brought the Picasso up to shoot, but the attacking diver was too close and they ended up grappling instead of spearing each other.

To Kurt's chagrin, the attacker was in a full-face helmet and had on a partial hard suit. Otherwise, Kurt would have simply ripped the guy's mask off. Instead, they twisted and rolled until Kurt got the man in a headlock, engaged the thrusters and accelerated toward an outcropping of wood and coral that had once been the bow of the
Sophie C
.

The attacker dropped the speargun and went for a knife, but before he could use it Kurt dragged him across the high point of the bow, slamming the back of the diver's head into the outcropping at maximum speed.

The diver went limp on impact, dropping the knife and sinking toward the bottom with his arms outstretched, knocked-out at the very least.

Two more men came racing toward him from the far side of the work site. Like the first man, these men were wearing full-face helmets, but, unlike the man he'd just knocked out, they were being pushed through the water by propulsion units of their own.

A spear shot past Kurt, leaving a trail of bubbles in its wake. Kurt dove for the bottom, kicking up silt to act as a smokescreen.

He engaged his own thrusters at full speed and the cloud grew behind him. He remembered an old adage from a World War II fighter pilot he'd worked with years back:
Always turn left in the clouds
. Why left and not right, he didn't know, but if it was good enough for the skies over Midway, it was good enough for the bottom of the sea.

He kept the throttle of his dive suit wide open and banked to the left, dragging his foot to kick more sediment. The trick worked for a moment, but the lights of one frogman came rushing out through the cloud. He spotted Kurt and raised a weapon.

Kurt turned, and instead of the whoosh of another spear, Kurt heard the dull, muted thumping of a rifle. It sounded an awful lot like the venerable AK-47.

One of the shoulder-mounted wings of his suit shattered. Kurt continued to move, kicking furiously in addition to the power of the thrusters.

He made it to behind the wreck. “Joe, if you can hear me, I need help in a big way. It's three against one and these guys are carrying underwater rifles. Their propulsion units look Russian to me, so I'm guessing the rifles are too.”

Kurt could think of two different rifles the Russians had designed for their Spetsnaz commandos and frogmen. A weapon
called the APS, which fired special steel-core projectiles called bolts that were nearly five inches long. These heavy bolts cut through the water far better than any standard lead bullet, but they still had a limited range due to the density of water. At this depth, it couldn't have been more than fifty to sixty feet, but as Kurt's aching back attested, they could still deliver a thump even out of the effective killing distance.

“Joe, do you read me? Joe?”

Another thing dense water did was limit even the most advanced communications systems. Joe was out of range. He looked left to the stern of the
Sophie Celine
, there were lights coming around that way
.
He glanced to the right and saw the same thing.

“Three killers out to get me and only two spears,” he muttered. “Next time, I'm bringing a whole stack of spearguns.”

He decided to go right, moving forward, gripping the speargun with both hands. The lights of the other diver came out of the gloom. Kurt focused on them and fired. The spear ran true, hitting the attacker in the shoulder just below the collarbone and coming out through his back.

A tornado of bubbles whirled as the man writhed in agony like a spiked tuna. Instead of down, he spiraled upward, grabbing at his wound and releasing the rifle.

Kurt let him go and dove for the rifle, which vanished into the gloom.

“Lights on,” he said.

The left wing light was shattered, but the light on his right shoulder came on instantly. Its illumination reflected off the sinking weapon and at the same time also gave away Kurt's position.

A fair trade.

Kurt dove hard, only to hear the thudding of another rifle.
Bolts dug into the silt in front of him and Kurt had no choice but to turn or be killed.

The last two divers were converging on him. Kurt steadied himself and released the final spear, aiming at the man with the rifle. The effect was lethal, right through the neck. The man went limp and began drifting in a glowing pool of blood.

He turned back to where he thought the fallen rifle had hit bottom, arriving on the spot at the same time as the last surviving member of the attacking force did.

Both of them grabbed the weapon, Kurt locking onto the grip and the stock as his opponent grabbed the barrel. Kurt had a better position and pulled it free.

He tried to bring it around and fire, but the other diver was too close. He threw an arm around Kurt's helmet, grabbing for Kurt's air hose.

Kurt kneed him in the stomach and the man released the hose but pulled out something Kurt hadn't expected: an explosive bang stick, designed to kill sharks or anything else it touches. Kurt blocked the diver's arm and grabbed his wrist to prevent the explosive tip from hitting his side, where it would have blown a hole in him. He'd seen those weapons take out a fifteen-foot shark with one lethal touch. He had no desire to go the same way—or any way, for that matter.

The two were locked together, spinning in a whirl of weightless combat. The light on Kurt's shoulder reflected off the man's mask. Blinding both of them, but still they grappled.

Only now did Kurt realize how much larger this man was than him. Grabbing onto Kurt's shoulder wing, his attacker gained more leverage, and despite Kurt's best effort, the bang stick began inching closer to his ribs.

The assailant had him dead to rights and he knew it. Kurt saw a lunatic's grin on his face as he closed in for the kill.

And then a wave of light enveloped them both as a yellow blur came out of the dark and hit Kurt's attacker like a speeding bus. Kurt reeled backward, thankful to see Joe in the
Turtle
pushing the man through the sea like a bull might a gored matador.

Joe didn't stop until he rammed the man into the seafloor, crushing him under the weight and force of the
Turtle
and leaving him half buried in the silt.

Kurt dropped down to the bottom, grabbed the rifle again and waited for Joe to circle around.

The
Turtle
eased in next to Kurt. Joe's smiling face was easy to see inside his helmet. “Would it be wrong to paint a dead bad guy symbol on the
Turtle
's flank?” Joe asked.

“Not as far as I'm concerned,” Kurt said. “What took you so long?”

Joe grinned. “From out there, I couldn't tell if you were just having fun or in real trouble. Wasn't until I heard the rifles that I figured you were probably outgunned.”

Ironically, sound traveled a lot farther underwater than the projectiles or the radio transmissions.

“Have to hand it to the Russians,” he said. “They come up with some interesting firearms.”

“That ought to go nicely with your collection,” Joe said.

Kurt collected unique guns, gathered from all around the world. He'd begun with dueling pistols, had several rare automatic Bowen revolvers and had recently expanded to six-shooters from the Old West, including a Colt .45 he'd used to dispatch the last villain they'd faced.

“It will at that,” he said. “Though I have a feeling it's going to get some more use before it becomes a display piece.”

“You realize we're doing this backward,” Joe said. “So far, we've expended a great deal of effort to take the low ground. Not exactly classic military strategy.”

“With a little luck, they don't know we're here yet,” Kurt said.

He hit the thrusters and swam back to the wreck site, where the civilian divers, who were being used as slave labor, were gathering extra oxygen tanks from the equipment platform.

They turned defensively at Kurt and Joe's arrival.

“Better switch on the closed-captioning,” Joe said.

“It's okay,” Kurt said, activating the display. “Guards dead. We'll get you out of here.”

One of them pointed upward and scribbled furiously on his whiteboard.

Worse chicken scratch Kurt had never seen.

“How long have you been down here?” he asked.

Four fingers were held up.

“Four hours at ninety feet,” Joe said.

They would have to be on Nitrox or Trimix, not pure oxygen. But, even then, having spent this much time at the bottom, they would need hours to decompress on their way to the surface. A quick inventory told him there were not enough tanks. Not even close. The divers were dead unless another option was found.

Kurt put a hand on the lead diver's shoulder and shook his head. “You can't go up.”

The diver shook his head right back and pointed to the surface again.

“You'll get the bends,” Kurt said.

The diver read the words on the small screen and then pointed upward again. Following that, he made a strange motion with his hands.

“I don't know what you're trying to say,” Kurt replied.

The diver seemed panicked. Kurt needed to calm him down. He pointed to the diver's whiteboard. “Write slowly.”

The diver took the board into his hand, erased what he had scribbled before and wrote more methodically this time, like a child patiently trying to perfect his ABCs. When he was finished, he turned the board around and showed it to Kurt.

He'd written one word. It was easy to read.

BOMB!

The diver pointed furiously toward the half-excavated wreck. He wrote something more on the board.

When you attacked—they set bomb.

Kurt began to see the pattern. These guys wanted the relics. But if they couldn't have them, they were determined to keep anyone else from getting them. “Show me.”

The diver hesitated.

“Show me!”

Reluctantly, the diver began to swim, kicking slowly and leading Kurt toward the wreck. As they arrived, the diver shone his light down into it. The team had used the vacuum to excavate tons of silt. They'd pulled articles from the sediment and discarded
everything that didn't look Egyptian. Muskets, rotting barrels and old boots rested on the bottom like a garbage heap.

The ship was a skeleton. Most of the outer planking was gone and only the ship's ribs, made of thicker timbers, remained. Gliding over the top of these ribs, Kurt saw what the diver was talking about. Not one bomb but two, blocks of C-4 wired to timers, just like they'd tried to use in the warehouse. The problem was, these explosives had been dropped inside the bones of the ship like steaks tossed into an animal's cage.

Kurt maneuvered closer, grabbed onto the encrusted wood of the vessel and took a closer look. Digital timers on them displayed an alarming number—
2:51
—and dropping.

Kurt tried to squeeze through the wreckage to get at the bombs, but he couldn't fit. He reached down and grabbed for it, but his fingers swiped at nothing. They were at least a foot or two beyond his grasp.

“Joe,” he called. “I could use a little help.”

Joe and the
Turtle
arrived just as the timer hit
2:00
. The ROV had a manipulator arm, which Joe quickly extended, but it too was coming up short.

“We'd better get out of here,” Joe said. “I can drag these guys off.”

“Too late,” Kurt replied. “We'll never get far enough. Considering the amount of C-4 down there, I'm pretty sure we'd be crushed by the shock wave like a submarine getting hit with a depth charge. We need another option.”

Something bumped him and Kurt spun to see the diver he'd rescued holding the vacuum pipe.

“Excellent idea,” he said.

The vacuum was still on, drawing in a small amount of water.
Kurt stuck it down into the framework of the ship and opened the valve.

On the first try, it sucked the big square block of explosives, which became stuck against the nozzle's opening. He drew the excavator back toward them and, once it was clear of the wreck, Joe pulled the charge free.

It was a simple enough process to pull out the electrical leads. Joe stopped the timer as well, just in case.

“Forty seconds,” he said, gazing at the number frozen on the screen. “Let's be quick about the second one.”

Kurt was already lowering the vacuum again. He aimed it toward the second bomb, but instead of getting stuck on the end of the nozzle as the first one had, the baseball-sized charge vanished up the tube.

Both Kurt and Joe looked up, their eyes tracking the tube to the surface.

“Where do you suppose that's going to end up?” Joe asked.

Kurt didn't reply, but both of them knew the answer. The only question was whether the bomb would travel all the way to the surface in forty seconds or get stuck in the line somewhere. Kurt kept the suction on full power, hoping the package would reach its destination.

—

On the surface,
the rattling compressor that powered the vacuum excavator had gone from a low idle back to a full roar. The man in charge of it, whose name was Farouk, seemed pleased. He'd begun to think work had stopped down below.

So far, they'd recovered a few trinkets, but nothing major. He
was beginning to worry. Every time a ship passed in the distance, he wondered if it might be NATO or a patrol vessel from Malta.

He moved over to where the excavator's exhaust port pointed toward the metal screen, watching happily as the trickle of water flowing onto the grate became a torrent, mostly water, with little sediment. But that could change at any minute. Finally, a wave of silt poured through and then something solid. It caught on the grate and one of the men reached for it.

“No!” Farouk shouted.

The explosion drowned out his cry and blew both Farouk and the other man off the barge. The grate, the compressor and a large section of the barge's hull took the rest of the blast.

Water began to swirl in and the stern of the barge dropped quickly.

The only surviving man on the barge picked himself up from a spot on deck near the bow. His ears ringing, his head spinning, he saw the green water rush over the deck, felt the boat tilting and wasted no time worrying about anyone else. He dove overboard and began swimming for the other boat.

As he reached the ladder, one of the men came toward him to help him out, but before he could get a foot on the lowest rung, something sharp dug into his legs, clamping around them and dragging him back. He was pulled from the ladder.

Shark, he thought, fearing the worst kind of death. But when he looked back, he saw a yellow blur. It was a submersible, moving in reverse, its gripper claws latching onto his legs and pulling him underwater.

Just as he was about to pass out, the grip relaxed and he was released. He broke the surface and found himself a hundred yards from the dive boat and unable to do much more than cough and
tread water. He looked around; the submersible was nowhere to be seen.

The two men on the dive boat held their weapons, watching the water around them. They knew they were under attack.

“Do you see anything?” one of them shouted.

“No.”

“Check the other side.”

“Over there!” the second one replied.

He opened fire on what he thought was the submarine, his bullets lacing into the water. Whatever he'd fired at, it quickly vanished.

“There!” the first man shouted, spotting a blur of yellow.

The submersible was running just below the surface, heading right for them, its hull easy to see in the sunlight. Both men aimed and began firing, the shells throwing up ribbons of water as they hit the sea.

Still the yellow beast charged. Its hull broke the surface, an easy target. The two men poured ammunition into it, but it kept on, until it slammed into them.

The impact rocked the boat, but they kept their balance as the machine was forced sideways. It skittered along their hull and moved off into the distance.

Only now did they realize there was no one on the submersible.

A wolf whistle from behind them brought the point home. They turned to see a man with silver hair, standing, in a wet suit, aiming one of the APS rifles their way.

Kurt had surfaced behind them and made it up onto the deck while they were preoccupied with the attacking yellow machine.

“Toss the guns in the ocean,” he demanded.

They did as ordered and then put their hands up.

“Facedown on the deck,” he said. “Hands behind your head.”

They followed this command as well.

With his gun trained on them, he edged over to the captain of the dive boat and used his knife to cut him free and remove the gag from his mouth.

“They have my men down below,” the dive master said in broken English.

“Don't worry,” Kurt said. “Your men are okay.”

The dive master shook his head. “Those men have been down there since first light and our decompression tank was on the barge.”

“We have one on our boat,” Kurt said. “We'll bring it over.” He called the
Sea Dragon
on the marine radio.

“What about the D'Campions?” the dive master asked. “They run the conservancy.”

“What about them?”

“These people have them.”

“Should have guessed,” Kurt said. He pointed a gun at one of the thugs. “Radio or phone?”

“Phone,” the man replied. “In the backpack.”

Kurt pulled a satellite phone out of a green backpack and forced his prisoner to punch in the number.

“Go ahead,” a gruff voice said. “What progress are you making?”

Kurt took it from there. “Are you the man holding the D'Campions hostage?”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Austin,” Kurt said. “And who do I have the displeasure of speaking with?”

“If you don't know my name, it seems prudent that I keep it that way,” the man said.

“I'll find out soon enough,” Kurt said. “Once we've interrogated your men, we'll know all about you and what you're after.”

Laughter was the first response. “Those men know nothing of consequence. Go ahead and torture them. Do your worst. You'll learn nothing you don't already know.”

Kurt was at a disadvantage, one he had to reverse quickly. “Maybe,” he said. “But we'll definitely learn something from the artifacts they recovered. Egyptian relics must be a thrilling hobby. I'm curious what this big green guy is all about. Seems to have magical powers to raise people up.”

It was a gamble, but it seemed to have worked. This time, instead of laughter, there was silence. A far better response, Kurt thought. He knew he'd struck a nerve.

“You have the tablet?”

“Actually, I have three,” Kurt lied.

“I'll make you a trade,” the man on the other end of the phone said.

“I'm listening.”

“You bring the tablets and I will give you the D'Campions alive.”

“Deal,” Kurt said. “Just tell me where.”