“Yes!” Ben shouted, punching the air. “There must be at least three of them left.” He slapped Gail on the back, grinning. “We’ll be –”

The rest of his sentence was cut off by a massive explosion which made the whole room shake. Dust fell from the ceiling and poured down the steps into the chamber. Seconds later another explosion shook the room, followed almost instantly by another, final blast.

Gail instinctively clasped her hands over her ears and crouched down, closing her eyes. The rumbling from above continued for a while, eventually replaced by a loud, painful ringing. She opened her eyes cautiously and in the dust-filled air saw a pair of army boots on the floor in front of her. As the dust began to clear she could make out the uniformed legs they were attached to, then the utility belt with empty holster and spare clips of ammunition, followed by the shirt with the walkie-talkie in the breast pocket, and finally the bloodied face of Walker.

He was lying on the floor, his back and head propped up against the last three steps. His eyes were open and he looked disoriented, blinking heavily and lolling his head from side to side.

Ben was standing over him with Walker’s pistol in his hand, pointed directly at the soldier’s head.

“I knew I should’ve killed you,” Walker shouted, slurring his words. “Should’ve put a bullet in you when I had the chance.”

“Yes, you should have,” Ben replied. “What was that explosion?”

“Did the cars blow up?” Gail asked.

Ben shook his head. “Maybe afterwards, yes, but that first explosion sounded too big to just be cars blowing up.”

Walker grinned, his teeth and gums full of blood. It bubbled out of his mouth as he talked. “Not heard one of those before, tough guy?” His eyes had steadied now as he trained his eyes on the Egyptian. His head still bobbed up and down slightly, but it looked like he was regaining his strength. He shifted his position and grunted, holding his ribcage as he pulled away from the steps to sit forwards.

Ben took a step back and brought his other hand up to steady the pistol on the man’s head. “What was it?”

“Goddamn it,” he grimaced as he removed his shirt and started to unfasten the body armour he was wearing underneath. “It was a HICUP Grenade.”

“Hiccup?” Gail mused.

He looked at her sarcastically. “Yeah, sweetheart. High Impact Concussion grenade. The UP stands for Under Pressure, or pressurized. When it explodes, it’s like you packed a ton of TNT into a baseball.”

Ben looked at him with a confused look on his face. “We don’t have anything like that to throw at you, so where did it come from?”

Walker held up his body armour to display three star-shaped impacts across the chest. “Me,” he said simply. “I pulled the pin, reached back to throw it, and then got shot. The impact of the bullets threw me back and I dropped the little bastard. Once you’ve lit a firework, you just don’t go back to it, so I had to jump for cover.” He looked at them one by one, and shook his head. “Which is how I ended up joining your little party you’ve got going on down here.”

“OK, enough of the story. Get up,” Ben gestured with the pistol and Walker followed him to the other corner of the room. Standing a couple of metres away from him, he called over his shoulder, “Peterson, check what’s going on up there, it’s gone very quiet.”

“Patterson,” he corrected. “Call me Henry.”

“Oh aren’t you all just best of buddies now,” Walker said.

They ignored him.

Patterson left the room and Ben called over to Gail. “Don’t worry about George, Gail. I’m sure he’s fine. I left him in very good hands.”

“Thanks, Ben,” she managed to say.

Patterson came back down the steps with a grim look on his face. “We have a problem,” he said.

Gail’s face dropped even further. “Are they still fighting?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so, can’t hear anything, that’s for sure.”

“So?”

“The entrance is blocked with rock and sand in the first flight of steps and I couldn’t make it more than ten steps up. It’s a job for proper mechanical diggers, we’re not getting out of here in a hurry.”

They stood in silence for a few moments before Patterson continued.

“I’m sorry, Gail, but it looks like we’re going to have to find the other entrance to the Library now, because it might be our only exit before the oxygen runs out.”

Gail cursed under her breath.

Ben raised an eyebrow. Looking from the steps to Gail, and then across to the hole in the wall that led to the Amarna Library, his gaze fell on Patterson, who was beating the dust from his shorts and tucking his sweat-stained shirt back under the beltline. “What other way in?”

Chapter 69

George sucked air into his lungs in short wheezing breaths as he slowed to a walk before finally stopping completely and bending over, his hands pressed against the insides of his thighs. It didn’t help with the rifle he’d slung awkwardly over his shoulder banging against his ribcage with every step.

Pain seared through his chest, and he winced as he looked up to see Tariq stopping some twenty yards ahead, seemingly unaffected by the gruelling pace that he had set down the rocky terrain.

It took all of his effort to lift an arm and motion him to wait. Tariq squatted down and used the spring in his legs to bounce impatiently up and down as he waited for the Englishman to catch his breath, never once taking his eyes off the road ahead for any sign of danger.

From having accompanied Gail on trips back to Egypt since the discovery of the Library, George knew that they were only one turn away from the foot of the cliff. It wouldn’t do him any good to turn up for what he assumed would be a fierce gun fight if he could hardly breathe. He grunted in amusement as the mental image of him turning up to a battle and having to ask for a quick timeout popped up. It was quickly replaced by fear at the realisation that he was about to turn up to a battle.

The pain in his ribcage had subsided, only to be replaced by a heavy ache that seemed to fill his legs, from the calf up to the thigh, spreading across his groin. He remembered the feeling from school many years earlier, when the PE teacher had forced them to run cross-country in the middle of winter. He had never been a sporty person, and he had always found himself among the stragglers who walked the final couple of miles back to the changing rooms. Arriving late had its drawbacks, especially when it meant missing the first half of the next lesson and being reprimanded by the teacher.

He shook his head and looked up at Tariq. From behind the coloured spots that filled his vision, he could just about make out the Egyptian, who was looking over his weapon, occasionally glancing back at him, while always keeping an eye out for the road ahead.

They couldn’t have been running for more than five minutes, but the relentless pace of the man had been too much for George, and he fought the almost overwhelming desire to topple onto his back and close his eyes. He’d stopped in the shade of the rocky slope to his right, the gentle incline to his left dropping off to what looked like a dried up river bed a dozen or so yards wide before rising up on the other side, creating a U-shaped valley his secondary education told him was formed by glacial displacement, not rivers.

But he couldn’t imagine glaciers round here; maybe the school’s textbook rule didn’t apply to this hot, arid place.

Straightening up, he pulled the AK-47 against his chest with both arms and let his legs propel him gently down the slope until he was standing next to Tariq.

“One more corner,” he said, gesturing towards the track ahead.

Tariq nodded and started walking forwards, covering the final yards at a more cautious pace.

The sound of the gunfight got louder as they neared the bend, and George noted that the predominant sound was the muffled popping of the American weapons, not the harsh crackle of their own AK-47s. His heart sank noticeably, and he stood expectantly a few feet back from Tariq, who took barely two seconds to look round the corner, take stock of the situation, and return to cover.