The Shroud Key Read online

  Before we begin the trek, Sameh turns to us while pointing at the sun-baked hill directly before us.

  “There is a trail that leads up through that hill,” he says. “Once at the top we should have excellent cover with an even more excellent view of the valley beyond and the dig. Hopefully, we will spot Dr. Manion alive and well.”

  “Hopefully,” I repeat, adjusting the strap on my satchel bag so that it doesn’t interfere with the AK47 and the RPG rounds I’ve elected to heft while Sameh straps the launcher to his back.

  “He’s okay,” Anya says, her beautiful brown eyes now hidden behind a pair of Ray Ban Aviator sunglasses. “I can feel it.” She too has been armed with an AK. Lucky girl.

  “Let’s move, Sameh,” I insist, feeling the need to get moving while our employer’s optimism lasts. “I want this to be a quick in-and-out job.”

  “Your wish is my command, good sir,” he says, leading the way.

  “Did he just say what I think he said?” I say to Anya.

  “Your ears need no adjusting, Ren Man,” she giggles.

  I walk.

  Like I’ve said before, distance in the desert is deceiving. So is the rate of vertical climb on what Sameh describes as a “hill.” There’s not a tree to be seen in this seemingly lifeless arid country, so the trail is really just a footpath that over the many centuries has been cut and carved into the sandstone with the sandaled or even bare feet of the many nomads that at one time or another throughout history, have called this inhospitable territory their home.

  An hour of climbing passes before we’re at the top of the hill. Almost immediately we make our way to the opposite site of the hilltop and look down upon the dig.

  “Get down,” I order, as all three of us collapse to our bellies. Bringing my binoculars to my eyes I make out a good-sized excavation which is going on outside the mouth of a cave. Behind it is a large tent that’s been set up as a bivouac area. There’s a 22 gauge rail-bed that’s been set up at the mouth of the tent and that runs into the interior of the cave and no doubt goes for quite a distance inside the mountain. Parked beside the tent is a pair of 1990’s era Toyota pickup trucks, one of which contains a tripod-mounted 30 cal. machinegun set in the bed.

  God knows archaeologists require the use of 30 cals…

  Parked maybe fifty feet beyond the trucks is a helicopter. An old retrofitted Huey that must date back to the mid-1970s. The entire perimeter is surrounded by armed guards wearing the traditional headdress and light-weight, ankle-length kanduras or tunics of the Muslim Brotherhood. The white converse and Keds sneakers they choose for footwear make them look almost clownish. But I know these men to be steadfast in their beliefs and extremely lethal in their courage. The Japanese Kamikazes of World War Two have nothing on these would-be martyrs.

  “You see him?” Sameh begs.

  “Give me a sec,” I say. “There’s some people moving in and out of the cave. He could be one of them.” Now handing the binocs to Anya. “You see him?”

  She takes the binoculars in hand, sights in on the mouth of the cave for a few moments.

  “That’s him,” she says. “In the green shirt and the khaki hat … That’s him … That’s Andre.”

  “Allow me,” I say, stealing the binoculars from her. Eyeing the cave, I see the green-shirted man. Dr. Andre Manion. He’s a little bit thinner and grayer than the man I remember from eight years ago, but he is most definitely the same man. From my vantage point up on the hill, he appears to be arguing with someone who has not quite come into view since he is still hidden under the tent.

  “What are you seeing?” Sameh poses.

  “Hold onto your panties, Fixer,” I say. That’s when I see who Manion is arguing with. It’s the suited man from the King’s Hotel bar and the stocky leather jacketed goon who took a shot at me inside Amun’s antique store. If the information Cip fed me back in Florence is correct, the suited man is an oil tycoon, and a very rich member of Cairo Muslim Brotherhood. He alone would possess the resources to sponsor a dig for the Jesus remains in the desert. He would also know of some interested buyers on the archaeological black market once the bones are found. The suited man and his buddies must be choppering themselves in and out of the dig on a daily basis.

  I roll over onto my side, face Sameh, hand him the binocs. I begin to explain about the suited man and the beefy leather-jacketed one. How they went after me at Amun’s less than twenty-four hours ago.

  Binoculars pressed against his eye sockets, he gazes at the two men in question, and exhales a long deep sigh.

  “They are very bad people. Very wealthy and very powerful. If they get to us, they will kill us … Behead us, more than likely. Do it on the internet for all the world to see. They will pretend to give credit to the Muslim Brotherhood or perhaps even Al Qaeda, and thus wash their hands of it.”

  “The only reason they haven’t killed Manion is they need him,” I suggest.

  “How are we going to get him out of that hornet’s nest without getting stung to death?” Anya inquires.

  “How about we go all Bruce Willis on them,” I offer. “Crash the joint, guns ablazin’.”

  I roll onto my side, face a nonresponsive Sameh and Anya.

  “In all seriousness,” I go on, “we’ve got two choices. We can try and bust up the camp now, starting with taking out those guards in broad daylight. Or, we can take the slow and methodical approach and hit them under the cover of darkness. It’s your money Anya, and Sameh, it’s your ass.”

  “Awfully dark in this desert at night,” Sameh instructs. “We have night vision, but it’s no guarantee that it will be effective should the wind decide to pick up again.” He pauses for a minute to think. Then, “I’m sorry to say it, but we need to take him now. During the daylight.” He smiles the smile of the optimist. “But I believe we can do it, Chase.”

  “Okay,” I say. “We know what we’re working with. It’s too far for me to perform a flanking maneuver, so we’ll have to go with the next best option.”

  “Which is?” Anya says.

  “I’m going to politely walk right into their camp, and kindly ask them to release your husband.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Minutes later I have a 9mm strapped to my waist, another shoulder-holstered under my leather jacket. I have three grenades mounted to my leather belt and a fighting knife secured to my ankle with duct tape. Just for good measure, a pair of brass knuckles are resting at the ready inside my jacket pocket.

  “You all know what to do,” I say. “In exactly thirty minutes, we meet right back at this spot. All goes well, I will have Manion with me. If by some slim chance, I don’t make it back here within one hour, don’t wait any longer. Just go and live to rescue Andre another day. Understood?”

  Anya nods like she’s totally down with my plan. If you want to call it that. But I can smell the fear oozing off her body. Or perhaps the fear is my own. Doesn’t matter. We just have to live with the fear, the same as we must live with the hot sun above our heads and the dry sand beneath out feet. Sameh raises up his right hand, rests it on my shoulder.

  “Salem assalamu alaikum,” he says. “You are my friend. Now, yallah. Go … Yallah … Go.”

  Turning back to Anya, I take hold of her arm, pull her into me, kiss her hard on the mouth. Pulling away, I say, “Wish me luck, baby.”

  “Don’t get yourself killed, Ren Man,” she says. “Heaven would bore you to death.”

  “And hell would never take me in.”

  With that, I begin descending the hill on its easterly slope so that I can maintain cover for as long as possible. I won’t enjoy that cover for very long, but it’s all I’ve got to work with. I also know that by the time I’ve reached the valley and begin making an all-out sprint towards the dig, Sameh and Anya will be keeping the armed bandits busy on the opposite side of the camp. That should leave me with only the suited man and his burly goon to deal with. In theory at least.

  At the bottom of the hill,
in the mouth of the valley, I pull out my hip-holstered, 9mm, cock a round into the chamber, thumb the safety off. What I wouldn’t give right now for a horse. Or a camel. Maybe a motorcycle. But all I’ve got to rely upon are my legs. Legs that have seen better days.

  Oh well, time to go to work…

  Time to steal back my old boss, Dr. Andre Manion, and finally find the bones of Jesus of Nazareth, grab my ticket back to New York and my daughter. Sounds simple, right?

  I run.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Small arms fire erupts from out on my left flank. One of the RPGs is triggered. I don’t need to see it to recognize the sound I came to know so well during the first Gulf War. Its lethal warhead swooshes and sings a high-pitched song across the flat expanse of desert valley, takes out the interior of the chopper cockpit like a vengeful God on a bad day. A really, really bad day.

  Good old, Sameh. Looks like he knows how to throw one hell of a party…

  I sprint past the burning chopper feeling the heat from the flame while a half a dozen Muslim bandits shouting out Arabic curses focus their fire into the open valley in the opposite direction.

  Ducking down before the first Toyota pickup, I see the suited man run out of the tent, followed by his leather-jacketed goon. Almost at the same time, I see a man with a green shirt and a khaki hat emerge from the cave.

  It’s Manion.

  “What in the Lord’s name is happening?” Manion demands.

  The suited, mustached man raises up his right arm, points an extended index finger at Manion.

  “You … You get back inside that cave!” he shouts in an Arabic accent. “This is no concern of yours. Yours is to work. To dig. To find what we’ve come for.”

  Small arms fires rattles our eardrums. It feels like the whole place is about to explode. But Manion doesn’t go back inside the cave. He stands his ground while the gunfire grows more intense, fills the valley, echoing off the mountain and hillsides so that you never know precisely where the shooting is originating from.

  I’ve got a clear choice here. I can take out both the business-suited man and his goon, leave them for buzzard food, snatch up Manion and head back to the rallying point, no worse for wear. Or, I can hold the suit and the goon at gunpoint, grab Manion and proceed to said rallying point without skipping a beat.

  If I should go with the former, there’s a good chance a bounty will be put on my head by some rather hateful religious fanatics whose arm extends far beyond the perimeters of the desert, Egypt, and even the Middle East for that matter. In a word, if I shoot these bastards where they stand in cold blood, their friends will stop at nothing to see me dead. They will come after me one night while I lie asleep in my bed in Florence or even New York. And once I’m dead, they could very well go after my daughter and my ex-wife. They might belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, but the rules of engagement apply in these matters. These people prefer to use swords for God’s sakes. Their preferred method of execution is beheading, just like it has been for thousands of years.

  Better therefore that I opt for the latter choice, and at least present myself as somewhat chivalrous. Because this is indeed a crusade and, in the end, I’m only doing what they’ve already done: Stealing Manion. In the end, if I steal him back and uncover the true resting place of Jesus, all the better for me. I win, fair and square.

  That solidly in mind, I raise myself up from my protective perch behind the pickup, aim the business end of the 9mm at the two captors.

  “Down on your knees!” I shout.

  Business suit shoots a look at the goon. He smoothes out his thick black mustache with his forefinger and thumb like he’s contemplating what sandwich to order from a MacDonald’s menu. Leather Jacket mumbles something to his boss in Arabic. I haven’t a clue what he’s saying. But if I had to guess, it would be something like, “Shall I kill this man now?”

  Out the corner of my right eye, I’m watching Manion. The archaeologist is staring at me, his jaw dropped to somewhere around the middle of his chest. I switch the pistol from my right hand to my left, never veering my aim from the two captors.

  “Nice to see you again, Professor,” I say. “Been a long time. How’s about a ride home?” He doesn’t move. “Now, Professor. I ain’t got all day and neither do you.”

  He drops what’s in his hand, and approaches me.

  In the distance, another explosion rocks the camp. I hear screaming. It’s not the voice of Anya or Sameh. I’m guessing he’s used his second RPG and scored a direct hit on a rat pack of bandits.

  For a brief second, we all turn to gaze over our shoulders at the sight of the explosion. That’s when Leather Jacket begins lifting his AK47, firing off a burst of rounds as the barrel raises up. It’s all happening in slow motion, the rounds spitting up sand and gravel in a direct line for the spot of ground I occupy. I don’t move now, I’ll be split in two from caudal to clavicle.

  Dropping fast onto my right-hand side, I trigger a volley of bullets that land square in the center of Leather Jacket’s chest. He drops back onto his ass, speaks something soft and low, then lies back slowly, and dies. So much for trying to avoid a bounty on my scarred head.

  I keep the gun poised on the suit.

  “I know who you are,” he says. “You have come for Jesus before, along with Dr. Manion. But you did not find him. Perhaps you know something now that I do not.”

  He smiles, as if I am going to share my secrets with him.

  “What does a good old Muslim boy like yourself want with the bones of the Christian Christ?” I pose.

  “The bones prove the Koran true. That Jesus, the mighty prophet, used an imposter to fill in for Him on the cross. That the real Jesus married, bore children, lived a long life. When the world comes to realize the truth, the earth will shake and the heavens will open up and Allah will reveal himself as the true messiah. The true son of God.”

  “And, armed with this newly proven revelation, you and yours will no doubt declare a final war to end all wars with every Judeo/Christian on the planet. Am I close?”

  Another smile.

  “We shall proclaim ourselves victorious as Israel is crushed once and for all, and as the Vatican crumbles. You have seen your trade center destroyed and the thousands of infidels who burned and fell to their deaths. You have seen your ships and consulates attacked and obliterated with explosives. You have seen your people beheaded in the name of Allah on YouTube, and these things are mere preludes to a great and just war that is sure to come. Once we have the bones of Christ to prove the righteousness of our universal and ancient cause, nothing will stop us. Do you understand me, Mr. Chase?”

  Now I feel the need to excavate the Jesus remains, not for the cash reward, or for the benefit of scholarly study, but simply to keep them away from the filthy hands of these radical extremists. Like I said, the God fearing world depends upon it.

  My pistol trembles in my hand.

  It isn’t as if it’s grown heavy. More like its metal and plastic has come alive, its inner workings connected to the synapses in my brain and fueled by the anger in my heart I feel for this man and all he represents. But killing him like this is not my style. Wounding him might be a different story however.

  Lowing my aim, I pull the trigger.

  His right thigh explodes in a red spray of arterial blood.

  Turning, I approach a stunned Manion. I grab hold of his arm.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  Behind him, maybe two dozen robed workers fill the wide opening of the cave. Not a single one of them isn’t smiling. My guess is that these workers are more or less slaves to the suited man. His cause. His threats of extremist style retribution should they protest their working conditions.

  In the near distance, more gunfire.

  Sameh is holding the bandits back, but I know it’s only a matter of time until they come after me. Maybe a shorter time than I realize.

  I spot the pickup with the 30 cal. mounted to it.

  “There
, Professor,” I shout out to Manion. “You okay to drive?”

  He nods. “Yes,” he says. “I believe so, Chase.”

  I point to the opening in between the hills on the other side of the valley plain.

  “I need you to take us through that pass. Gun it. Don’t stop for anything until I tell you to. You with me, Professor?” He nods. “Good, now go.”

  We run for the truck. Opening the driver’s side door, I pray the keys are in the ignition. Because this isn’t Hollywood and I have no idea how to hotwire a Toyota pickup, or if it can be hotwired at all.

  The keys are in the ignition.

  Maybe Allah really is smiling down upon us…

  “Fire her up, Professor!” I shout, as the bandits begin to give chase.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The pickup’s thick off-road wheels spit up sand, until the four-by-four catches hold of firm earth. We buck forward heading in the direction of the pass just as the first shots whistle past my head.

  Spinning the 30 cal. around on its tripod, I plant a bead on three bearded and robed bandits coming at me on horseback. The pale riders of my personal apocalypse. I thumb the trigger and spray them with multiple rounds. The first man’s head explodes like a melon while the two behind him are split in half at the chest. The frightened horses stop, rear, turn and sprint off in the opposite direction of the gunfire. I don’t expect them to stop running for hours.

  For the moment there are no more bandits to be seen. But I know that more will be coming. In the meantime I take a quick visual survey of the surrounding landscape. I don’t see Sameh anywhere. Pulling the radio from my belt, I make a call for him.

  “Sameh, do you read me? Over.”

  Static fills the speaker as soon as I release the transmission trigger.

  Thumbing the trigger again: “Sameh, do you read me? Sameh, you there? Over.”

  I listen for a response. But all I get is more static.

  I don’t have the time to make another call, because coming up on our tail is the second pickup. I aim for its front grill, trigger a short burst of belted 30 cal. rounds. The pickup engine explodes, a piston shooting out the metal hood like a ballistic missile. The truck spins out, comes to a dead stop. Two bandits emerge from the doors, firing their AK47s at us. But it’s too late. We’re already approaching the pass. I could shoot them, even from this distance. Shoot them out of anger, revenge. But I elect not to.