"Which way is east?" Rebecca asked. When Brandt looked confused, she grabbed his shoulder. "East!"
Lopez was the one to point to the wall to his right. "Thata way."
Vakasa joined her as Rebecca dug into the wall.
Brandt was none to happy about it. "Rebecca, we've got to get a safe distance up the tunnel before-"
"No," Rebecca protested as the limestone chipped away. "It's here. If there is a tunnel, it is here."
"Guys..." Talli said, backing up toward them. "There's some guy up there rallying the troops to get this over with. He's got a flash bang."
"Damn it," Brandt spat. "Rebecca, we don't have time-"
Her knife hit something hard. "There!"
Rapidly, the crumbling wall revealed another black slab. Only, this didn't have any hieroglyphics. Rebecca figured if you got this far, the ancient Egyptians assumed you knew what you were doing.
Wasn't there a second half to that passage? Find the rise and the fall?
What in the heck did that mean? Well, she'd better find out quickly, as Brandt's thumb was over the detonator.
Then she heard it. The tinny sound of something bouncing. Not something. A grenade.
Vakasa put a palm on the slab and pushed up. Desperate, Rebecca helped her. With a groan, the stone gave way. Unfortunately, so did the ground they stood on.
Fuck.
What was the rule? What was always the goddamned rule? Don't fucking touch ancient artifacts.
Guess Rebecca forget, as she tumbled down a dark passage.
"Do I shoot it?" Talli asked as he aimed at the grenade bounding its way to them.
"No!" Brandt barked. He didn't have time to give any more orders than that. He just grabbed Lopez by the collar and chucked him down the stone slide. Levont seemed to get the general idea and dove headlong right behind the corporal. Good thing, because the trap door was beginning to close.
Talli jumped out of the way of the grenade. Brandt simply shoved him, sending him down the secret passage. He made it, but damn, that doorway was getting narrow, and Brandt was not a skinny guy.
Hurling himself, Brandt went in headfirst, but twisted midair. He watched the grenade bounce past. Waiting one heartbeat, Brandt hit the detonator. The wall blew at the same time as the grenade. Chips of limestone flew through the closing door, peppering Brandt's side.
But it was worth it. The grenade explosion should cover up their C4 explosives. Hopefully the Egyptians could never prove Special Forces were there.
Then he was slipping and sliding down the slick stone, gaining speed. Brandt only knew the ramp actually ended by the sound of groans as the others hit bottom.
"Incoming!" Brandt warned. He could hear the others scramble to get out of the way. He tried to slow his descent, but there was just nothing to grab hold of. Finally, he gave up as he rounded a curve and slammed into Talli. Bouncing off the sniper, he ran into Levont, who wasn't a lightweight himself. The three of them crashed into the wall.
Shoving the men away, Brandt made it to his feet, a little wobbly but on his feet.
Lopez swept his light at their surroundings, which looked very similar to the tunnel upstairs. Chiseled limestone.
"You okay?" Brandt asked Rebecca, who stood to the side, guarding Vakasa in her arms.
Rebecca held up a hand. "I know, I know. Don't touch the artifacts." Then she smiled. "This one, though," Rebecca said, indicating to Vakasa, "I think this one actually enjoyed it."
The little girl's bright smile took some of the sting out of the multiple bruises he'd just received.
Talli and Levont rose more slowly, brushing off the debris.
They all stood silently for a moment. Craning their ears to see if anyone was going to follow them down the ramp. Sure, there was plenty of noise up there, but their escape seemed undetected.
Brandt swung around to face Rebecca. Her eyes darted to the rest of the men.
"What?" she asked. "Why is everyone looking at me?"
CHAPTER 17.
Undisclosed Location 2:44 p.m. (EST) Bunny watched the live feed from the video screen. No, they didn't have satellite feed, but they did have CNN. Reports were still sketchy. The only thing everyone could concur upon was that there had been an explosion.
For now, they were blaming it on an overzealous officer, but after watching the base of the pyramid shake and the amount of dust that blew out the entrance, it looked as though it might have been something with a little more kick that was set off.
"It's good they haven't reported any remains," Emily stated as she got her phone out.
Bunny had tried to block that sequella out of her mind. Rebecca had to have found that entrance to the underground passages. She just had to.
"Listen to this!" Stark said as he put the audio feed from the police radio on speaker. Everything was so garbled it was hard to make out anything specific.
"Where could they have gone?" an English-speaking voice called out. "Where?"
She hugged Stark, who blushed. Bunny didn't think Davidson would mind, given the circumstances.
Even in an explosion of that magnitude, there would have been body parts, well, all over the place. If they were asking where Brandt and the others had gone, they must not have found any-at all.
Emily answered her phone and spoke quickly, relaying the information to her boss. She put a hand over the phone, indicating to the schematic of the underground tunnels, which it turned out were no longer theoretical. "Which way are they going to go?"
Bunny studied the map, trying to think like Rebecca. She tried to imagine herself suddenly in a millennia-old system of tunnels built by ancient engineers. Surprisingly, it wasn't all that hard. Not after spending any time with Brandt and company.
The question was, how well did Rebecca remember the layout of the tunnels? After about two hundred yards, the tunnel from the Khufu pyramid split into three. One tunnel went out to the Cheops pyramid. The second tunnel emptied out into a near labyrinth of passages that crisscrossed between the other, more minor pyramids. The third main branch angled out to the Sphinx.
Breaking Bunny's concentration was a strange beep. One. Then a pause, then a second one.
"What's that?"
Stark's eyebrows merged into a unibrow. "Not me." Then his face opened up into a grin. "I left the channel open."
It took a moment for Bunny to realize which channel he was talking about. Davidson's channel.
Bunny snatched the headset from Stark. "Sam, is that you?"
Davidson hit the sat phone button once. The faint click was far quieter than if he'd whispered.
"Oh, thank God." Bunny sighed. He liked the sound of it. Living in isolation for most of his life, it was odd for someone to worry about him. And a girl? Davidson had written that concept off even before all the burns.
"Yeah, okay," Bunny continued, clearly nudged on by someone else in the room with her. "Lieutenant Prenner thinks that you have probably set up across from the Great Pyramid. Is that correct?"
Looking through the scope at the sheer and utter chaos at the entrance to the monument, Davidson hit the button once.
"Great-well, not great," Bunny corrected. "I think Rebecca found them a way out of there and they are heading away from the pyramid."
Davidson let out air through his teeth. Since that explosion, he'd been worried he was protecting a perimeter that no longer needed protecting.
He clicked the button once.
"There is three ways they could go..." Bunny's voice trailed off. She wasn't the most decisive of women. Actually, she kind of hated making decisions, especially big decisions. The ones where your backside was on the line.
He clicked the button once to give her some reassurance.
"I think...Emily needs a direction to go to. She's arranging an extraction team."
Davidson clicked it again. He had so little information he couldn't even begin to help Bunny decide. And it seemed like she had an army guy and a CIA operative. Neither of them was going to know Rebecca and her mind better than Bunny, though.
A rustling sounded when Bunny put her hand over the receiver. He could only make out mumbling until she came back on the line.
"Everyone else disagrees, but I think Rebecca is going to head to the Sphinx. The others think she's going to head toward the smaller pyramids. They are closer to the city, but I think she's going for the Sphinx."
He gave another click.
"I am assuming you are thinking, 'Why?'" Bunny stated quickly. "Besides it being what I would choose, it is the only site that a door has been found. The Egyptian government has never allowed it to be open, but the Sphinx is the only one we know for sure that has an exit."
That deserved another click.
Davidson could hear the relief in her voice. "Great. Okay, Prenner says that you should set up on the north since Emily's extraction is coming from the south." Off Davidson's click, Bunny hurried on. "Be careful..." Then, much lower, "Come home."
That almost got him to break his silence. But he couldn't.
Instead, Davidson broke the connection. He couldn't even give her a click. He couldn't guarantee he could fulfill a "yes" answer.
Besides, he had another nest to set up.
Rebecca stood at the crossroads of three different tunnels. So once again, all eyes were on her. She glanced over to Brandt, who was carrying Vakasa on his hip. The little girl looked so right there that Rebecca almost lost her composure. Despite the heartbreak of him being married to another woman earlier this year, Rebecca knew how disappointing it had been when Maria's baby turned out not to be his. She knew how much he wanted to be a dad. To think that the world might never see a child of Brandt's. That by her screwing up which direction they went, they could all die.
"Which way?" Brandt asked. Not demanding. Not cajoling. Not even desperate, although Rebecca knew his heart must be pounding a thousand times per minute. "Don't think about it, babe. Just choose. We'll follow."
Oh, great. No pressure there.
But he was right. Her gut told her to go east.
"That one," Rebecca answered, nodding to the third tunnel.
"All right," Brandt said, setting Vakasa down. "Levont, east it is."
As the point man moved out, with Lopez right behind him, Rebecca took Vakasa's hand and fell into position. Still, she queried Brandt. "Are you sure you don't want my reasons?"
In a surprising display of PDA, Brandt kissed her on the forehead. "Nope. I trust that big beautiful brain of yours." Then, of course, the smile fell. "Now move out."
Rebecca did as asked. Although, it was hard to keep up with Levont. He moved at a pretty clipped pace, and Rebecca was busy trying to take pictures of the walls as the men's lights flared against them for a second, then went pitch-black again.
Whoever built these tunnels had taken great care to line them with incredibly detailed hieroglyphics. If she weren't mistaken, the information was mainly about the history of the building of the pyramids. The inscriptions on these walls could solve about two millennia worth of speculation and academic argument.
And luckily, she had Vakasa with her. Apparently, not only did the little girl speak a dozen languages, she could also read ancient Egyptian.
Bunny's question flared in Rebecca's mind. Is it her?
The child was remarkable. There was no question of that. And delightful too. But was she a messiah? Rebecca looked down at the little hand in hers. It felt so vulnerable in her palm. How could someone so tiny hold all the world's hope?
It just didn't seem possible.
That didn't exactly matter to the Disciples, though.
"Hey, not to be a wet blanket or anything," Talli said, which even Rebecca knew meant that he was about to be a wet blanket, "but let's say best-case scenario we bust our way out of these tunnels, what then? Won't we just be back where we were before we ran into the pyramid?"
Brandt didn't miss a beat. "I guess we're just going to have to count on the fact that Davidson has been very busy."
"Wow, dude," Lopez said, feigning shock, "don't go all mushy on us.
The corporal was right. That was about as inspirational as Brandt got. Usually, he was all "Shut up and hoof it."
And with them all being safe, for at least the moment, which was a high point, really, on this mission, Rebecca delighted in the feeling.
The trek wasn't long. For which Brandt was grateful. That last stunt down the ramp had at the least bruised a rib, his abdominal scar ached, and if he turned quickly to the left, his vision blurred. Par for the course.
"We've got a turn up ahead," Levont informed them, slowing to a stop.
Brandt looked to Rebecca, who frowned. "My best recollection of the tunnel system in this grid..." She sighed. "My best guess is that this leads to only one outlet."