"What?" Brandt ribbed her. "You going to tell us this really is Vakasa's grandmother. The virgin mother of the virgin mother?"
"No," Rebecca said with a wave of her hand. "But I'm not so sure this is the man I was thinking."
"Levont, Talli, find us a way out of here," Brandt ordered. He didn't bother asking Lopez, as the guy was too busy filming. He turned to Rebecca. They had maybe two minutes to indulge her history geek side.
"Want to share?"
Rebecca chuckled again. "We always assume it's a guy, don't we?"
Brandt frowned. "I don't understand."
"Pharaoh is actually a unisex term," Rebecca explained. "As is 'king' in ancient Egyptian." Brandt still didn't have any idea what she was driving at, but hey, she usually landed her point-in time. Rebecca pointed to the cartouche. "This is the Scorpion King, only I think there's a chick buried in there."
"Whoa!" Lopez exclaimed. "Did you hear that, RJ? Girl power, man. We've got some competition."
Rebecca grinned at the corporal, then turned back to Brandt. "I think a woman united the two ancient kingdoms."
Lopez snapped his fingers. "Hey, wasn't there that other broad, Hapsi-put or something?"
"Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh," Talli corrected. Brandt was pretty damn sure he'd tasked the sniper with another duty, but they were playing it pretty loose and fast today.
"Yes," Rebecca confirmed, then went on. "But she wasn't the only female pharaoh. She was the best known and considered not just a female pharaoh, but one of the most successful monarchs of Egypt. She expanded trade and the arts. As a matter of fact, if a museum has an Egyptian artifact, it is probably from Hatshepsut's reign."
Brandt gave her that look. The one that said, I'm feeling pretty generous, but move it along.
Rebecca seemed to get the message, as she hurried. "Anyway, there were at least five other recorded female pharaohs. Even one called the "Warrior Woman." But this...This means the originator of Western civilization was a woman."
Vakasa kissed the coffin. "Babushka."
"Which, again, great footnote to a paper but-"
The ground beneath Brandt's feet shook.
"What was that?"
Dust filtered down from the ceiling as dirt particles danced along the top of the sarcophagus.
Fuck.
"Cave-in!" Lopez shouted.
No, no, no, Davidson prayed.
But the sight in his scope confirmed the worst. The Egyptians' attempt to clear the rubble underground had triggered a cave-in of the tunnel system that led away from the pyramid.
Sink holes-actually, sink troughs-were poking the desert floor. Radiating out from the Great Pyramid like a destructive spiderweb. Men ran from the monument, fleeing the catastrophe. The tanks they had brought in aimed to escape, but their treads did nothing but exacerbate the damage. One fell gun first into the sand.
Another tipped backward as the ground gave out from under them. Police cars swerved and dodged, trying to keep themselves on firm ground. The scattered chairs of the pyramid light show disappeared out of sight.
And the far-reaching tendrils were advancing rapidly. The crack of the earth filling the air.
At first, they confined themselves to the pyramid complex, but one leg aimed straight for the Sphinx. Straight for Rebecca and the others.
"Is this as bad on the ground as it looks on TV?" Bunny asked in his ear.
He gave a single click.
Actually, Davidson was certain that it was far worse than it looked. However, he didn't have a code for that.
"If it gets much further..."
Yeah, Davidson got it, but he wasn't sure what he could do about it.
It sounded like Bunny was holding back tears. "I don't know how we are going to get the van to them."
There was that problem. However, Davidson feared that Bunny wasn't really allowing herself to go the worst-case scenario. That Sphinx had to be heavy. Even if the encroaching cracks didn't collapse the tunnel where Brandt was hiding...Any damage to the bedrock around the Sphinx would bring it down, right on their heads.
Rebecca finally got Vakasa away from the sarcophagus as larger boulders began falling. She'd been in a cave-in before. Make that several. They never went well. And this time they didn't have hyper-buoyant water to save them.
"Go back out?" Talli suggested.
Brandt shook his head sharply. "At least here we've got some maneuverability."
To accentuate his words, the tunnel past the antechamber shook once, then collapsed.
"Can we get inside these?" Levont suggested.
"So we can get double-buried inside?" Brandt retorted. He was pissed. Not at his point man, but at the situation. Rebecca couldn't find fault with that. She covered Vakasa's head with her hand, trying to protect the girl's fragile skull. Not that a hand would help if one of those boulders fell here.
"Look," Lopez shouted over the increasing rumble. "That corner. There's no cracking."
Everyone followed his finger. The northwest corner did seem intact.
"Great." Talli frowned. "We stand over there and pray?"
That was looking like a viable option, and Brandt seemed to agree, as he urged them over there.
"No, smart-ass," Lopez retorted. "I say we get the lids and prop them up to act as a shelter and a bracing."
"Do it," Brandt ordered before his team could ask any more questions.
Rebecca huddled in the far corner with Vakasa as the men grabbed the nearest lid. They didn't bother with the main sarcophagus. That thing would take a crane to lift. Lopez handed her the camera.
"Film this, will ya?"
Rebecca obliged but feared she would catch Lopez's death on tape. Not the thing that the corporal had in mind for his son. She watched on the screen as the men broke the seal on the first coffin. The stone fell to the side with a loud thud.
"We can't carry it," Brandt admitted. "So let's walk it over!" He had to shout the last part as rubble tumbled from the ceiling.
Even before that slab of stone was firmly in place, tilting over Rebecca's head, the men were on to the next one. Despite the fact the men were being pelted by debris, they brought the second lid over.
"Get in!" Rebecca urged as the front half of the chamber collapsed, crushing the Scorpion King's tomb. But the men refused. They hauled the third slab over. Talli got knocked in the shoulder by a huge piece of ceiling. He stumbled into their meager shelter.
"Brandt!"
The men were trying to secure the last slab, but it refused to cooperate.
She grabbed Brandt by the sleeve and hauled him inside. Lopez and Levont followed. He wrapped his arms around her and Vakasa as the roof cracked and split. It sounded like the world was ending. As her joints shook, it felt like the world was ending.
Lopez took the camera. "Looks like this may be the end of the road..." The corporal gulped as a huge section of ceiling shattered. "Know I loved you, buddy."
He turned off the camera and held it close to his chest as their world collapsed.
CHAPTER 19.
Undisclosed Location 3:14 p.m. (EST) Bunny watched the screen, refusing to believe what she saw. The entire tunnel system had shattered, which was almost to be expected. What wasn't expected and what never should have happened was the Sphinx cracking in half.
Clearly, the ground beneath the giant statue had become unstable. So right at the rib line of the beast, it split and sank a good twenty feet. One rear leg broke off, tumbling to the side. An ear flew off.
The Sphinx's serene face was marred by a network of cracks, making it seem like it was made of parchment rather than limestone.
Then it stopped. The destruction stopped.
Bunny held in a breath. Could they really get that lucky?
No. They could not.
With a resounding bang, the Sphinx's head tilted to the left as if someone had taken an ax to its neck. The visage teetered there for a moment, then crashed to the ground, rolling between its legs.
Whatever had been holding up the weight of the Sphinx gave out. The body split into a dozen other chunks and tumbled into the sink hole. Only one foreleg, broken and ragged, stuck up from the sand.
As the dust settled, Bunny poked Stark in the arm. "Can we get another angle?"
Stark shook his head. "No one was set up over there."
There was no movement. Nothing. The shattered Sphinx just sat there mocking them.
Where the hell were Rebecca and the others?
Davidson wiped his scope-again. The dust plume was still settling out over Giza. Blue-and-white strobe lights illuminated the grainy cloud with an almost-supernatural glow.
He didn't care about any of that. Davidson blocked out the sirens, the screams, the wailing. He only cared about movement near the Sphinx.
The army was already cordoning off the area, keeping everyone away.
This wasn't supposed to be the way this went. None of it was. He shouldn't be out here. He should be in there, with them. Finding a way out.
Gritting his teeth, Davidson shoved down the doubt and recrimination. They had both been close friends to him after the fire. After his old life had been burned away. Rebecca, though, had found him in that Moroccan hospital, scarred and suicidal, yet she had given him hope. Like a present, gift-wrapped. He wouldn't throw it away, just because...well, just because everything seemed hopeless.
Davidson swept the area again, searching for any sign of life. But there was none. Given the level of destruction, it could take days, if not weeks, to find any remains. If they even could. With a crushing collapse like this...
Wait. Davidson panned back to the paw that jutted up out of the hole. Was that a hand? A dark hand? He punched up the magnification.
It was! It was bloody and dirty as all get out, but it was a hand. Then Levont's face came into view. It was a dusty mess, but Davidson could have kissed it.
Abandoning protocol-because who really was going to hear him over the sirens and yelling?-Davidson brought the sat phone to his ear. "Are you seeing this?"
"Yes," Bunny said through tears.
"You've got to get that van over there."
There was a delay. Why was there a delay?
"Bunny?"
"We're not sure..." She paused. He could hear her lick her lips "With the army over there, guarding the perimeter..."
Davidson gritted his teeth and braced the rifle against his right shoulder. "Get them on the move."
Then Davidson did what he did best.
Shoot.
Brandt held tight to the little girl, protecting her with his body. The mass of broken rock and debris was unstable at best. Levont had tested it with his weight, but everything was still shifting, trying to find its equilibrium.
Rebecca was right in front of him, trying to scale the uneven, rocky precipice. Her foot slipped, nearly kicking him in the jaw.
"One foot at a time," he encouraged.
Then the bang of a gun sounded. Then another.
"Are they shooting at us?" Talli asked, a few feet above them.