The Grail

CHAPTER 15

“Ten minutes!” Captain Graves’s black form was the rearmost figure in the cargo bay. The loadmaster was dwarfed by him, a slight figure in a green jumpsuit holding Graves’s static line.

“Go to rebreathers,” Graves ordered.

“Rebreather on,” Turcotte ordered. The computer on his back immediately sealed the suit’s air inlet on the back of the helmet and switched over to the internal rebreather.

“Stand up.” Graves gave the command quietly, knowing that each man could hear him clearly through the suit radio.

Turcotte stood, reaching up and hooking his left arm over the steel cable that ran the length of the plane.

“Hook up, loadmaster,” Graves said, a departure from the normal procedure. Because each man had weapons attached to the end of their arms, the loadmaster had to go down the line, remove their snap hook from the parachute, and attach it to the static line cable.

Turcotte felt a slight tug as the loadmaster did his. He turned, making sure it was secure.

“Check static lines.”

“Sound off for equipment check.” Graves gave the next jump command, but then once more he added something. “And I mean all equipment. If your suit isn’t working right, now is the time to say something.”

Turcotte, the last man in the stick, nudged the man in front. “OK.”

The word was passed up the line until the man right behind Graves announced, “All OK, jumpmaster.”

Graves turned to face the rear of the aircraft. Turcotte, through the suit’s external sensors, could pick up the change in flight speed as he staggered slightly and quickly adjusted. The plane was slowing to drop speed.

“Three minutes,” Graves announced.

Turcotte watched the screen just in front of his face as it showed a dark crack appear at the junction of the top of the rear. The crack widened as the ramp came down until it reached a level position with the floor of the cargo bay. Graves knelt, then lay belly down, and slid over, sticking his black helmet out into the one-hundred-and-twenty-five-mile-an-hour wind.

Looking past Graves, Turcotte could see dark desert a hundred and fifty feet below. An occasional light, bright as a flare, dotted the landscape here and there. He knew they were east of the Nile coming in low over the desert.

The plane dipped down even lower and banked hard right. A dark black ribbon lay below. The Nile. Turcotte felt a familiar wave of anticipation. For just a second he remembered his last jump. Over China, also over water. Peter Nabinger was the man next to him, and he’d helped the archaeologist get over his fear. And now he was going where Nabinger had considered his home — Egypt, the center of the mysteries that had consumed Nabinger’s life. And the archaeologist had never made it out of China alive.

Turcotte shook his head to get rid of the thoughts and was immediately reminded of the fact that he was encased in a thick, hi-tech suit. The screen in front of him shimmered for a second and he felt dizzy. Then he regained his composure.

“Ten seconds.” Graves’s voice had gone up, and the shout hurt Turcotte’s ears. “Stand by.”

Graves edged forward to the end of the ramp, a hulking figure looking down. The red light above the ramp reflected a deep glow off all the men in front of Turcotte. He blinked as it changed to green.

“Go!” Graves didn’t attempt to keep his voice down, screaming the command as if they were on a normal jump and he had to try to be heard above the roar of the engines. But the green light and Graves stepping off into the night sky reinforced the command more than volume could.

Turcotte shuffled forward, barely noticing the strangeness of the suit encompassing his body as he focused on the edge of the ramp. Then he dropped.

The MC-130 had gone up to less than three hundred feet above the flat black surface of the Nile, the lights of Cairo ahead, not far in the distance.

Turcotte dropped like a rock, the weight of the suit adding to his descent. The static line reached its end and pulled out the three parachutes packed in the rig. Their abrupt deployment jerked Turcotte from terminal velocity into a somewhat controlled descent.

“Down view,” Turcotte ordered. The flat black surface of the river was just below. In five seconds he hit the Nile and was under water. He cut away the parachute and it quickly sank.

“GPS link and team display on,” Turcotte ordered. The dark screen in front of him gave way to a display of the local area. A small red glowing dot in the center was his own position. A dozen other green dots were the rest of the team. A yellow arrow pointed in the direction they had to swim to get to the tunnel entrance — downstream with the flow of the river.

Turcotte oriented himself at a depth of five meters. Gingerly he turned on the propulsion units, while trying to maintain the same depth. It was a case of trial and error as he moved. By the jerky movements of the green dots, the others were experiencing the same learning curve as they traveled downstream.

“Two stones indicate to me that the Grail does two things,” Lisa Duncan said.

Aspasia’s Shadow nodded. “Ah, you are indeed showing some intelligence.”

Duncan ignored the barb. “One is immortality, or at least that’s what you claim. What’s the other half?”

“That is more difficult to explain,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “Is not immortality a great enough gift? Never growing old, never getting sick, having all the time in the world to do the things you’ve always wanted to do?”

“In a world run by you?”

“Somebody has to run things for you humans. Look at what a mess you’ve made doing things on your own.”

“How much on our own have we been over the ages?” Duncan retorted.

The propulsion unit worked well as Turcotte closed the distance to the tunnel entrance. It had just appeared on his screen as a yellow circle about two hundred meters away. He reached it and waited for the other team members.

“IR lights and IR imaging,” Turcotte ordered, switching off the GPS link, which would be cut anyway as soon as they went into the tunnel. The screen cleared and then was replaced by a greenish glow. The infrared lights mounted on his suit penetrated the dark water about ten feet. Turcotte could see the others as they also turned on their lights and infrared cameras. Black forms floating in the water, they waited as each man was accounted for. Turcotte could feel the tug of the water, wanting to draw him into the eight-foot-wide hole in the bank of the Nile.

“All present,” Graves finally reported.

“Follow me,” Turcotte said. He turned, went into the tunnel, and entered the second gateway to the roads of Rostau. The water carried him along. He hit the side of the tunnel, tumbled, regained his balance and orientation, and continued on.

The tunnel widened and Turcotte could stand, chest deep in the surging water. He stayed on the rebreather, though, uncertain when the tunnel would narrow once more. Burton had not gone this way, so all he could hope was to keep moving forward until he found the shaft Burton had come down. He walked forward, the team following, shifting his screen view to up every two steps, then quickly back to forward as long as he saw a roof over his head.

He was beginning to get the feel of the suit and his gait was getting smoother as he penetrated farther under the Giza Plateau. The tunnel was about fifteen meters wide by three high, the walls showing a smooth cut under the IR light.

“Hold on.” Graves’s voice was almost a whisper over the team net. “Anyone hear that?”

Turcotte held up his right arm, signaling for everyone to halt. “Audio magnify to maximum,” he ordered the computer.

He could hear the river, like a thunderous waterfall, going by. And there was something else. The sound of metal on stone a rapid clicking noise. And it was getting louder.

“Let’s keep going,” he ordered, heading directly toward the approaching strange noise.

“The change is inevitable,” Aspasia’s Shadow said.

“Nothing is inevitable.” Duncan found that her gaze had strayed from the wooden box to the canteen.

“Your death is, if you continue to deny me what is mine,” Aspasia’s Shadow swung the canteen by the strap.

“I will not give you the Grail for a drink of water.”

“Then how about for this?” Aspasia’s Shadow held up one the stones. “This is the urim.” He knelt and gently rolled it across the floor.

Duncan scrambled to her knees and caught it between both hands. She held it up in front of her, staring into the sparkling green depths of the stone. Her mind and soul were drawn to it with more power than her body would ever desire water.

She knew better. The part of her that was free over whatever was controlling her, knew better. Still, her hands cradled the stone and she felt whatever resolve she had weakening.

Turcotte stopped, signaling for the others to do the same. He’d stepped down the audio feed by stages, yet the clicking noise grew louder until he had no doubt the source was very close. He peered at the screen just in front of his face. He lifted his left arm, the MK 98 held level, just above the surface of the water.

“Aiming,” he ordered the computer. A reticule appeared on the screen. As he moved the MK 98, the reticule followed wherever the muzzle was aimed, unless he went too far and it went off screen.

The noise ceased. For several seconds Turcotte stood perfectly still, waiting, the team deployed behind him. He took a step forward. Then another.

After four steps the noise came again, not closer, but retreating at the same rate Turcotte advanced.

“Cover me from the right,” Turcotte ordered Graves, as he went back to checking the top of the tunnel every other step. The water rushing around his legs and waist was barely noticeable as he continued down. Whatever was making the noise continued to back up until Turcotte suddenly stopped.

The screen showed a circular opening about four feet wide in the roof. He turned as the members of the team gathered round. “We’re going up.”

Graves stepped forward. “Are we coming back out this same way?”

Turcotte pointed in the direction the noise had come from. “That way should also go to the Nile and you’re with the current. Either way. If we go back the same way we came in, we can always go downstream in the Nile itself to the pickup zone.”

It was strange, not being able to see the men’s faces, to get a sense of what they were feeling. Just dark forms bathed in infrared light. Almost inhuman.

Three of them stuck out thick arms to form a shoulder-high platform. Turcotte clambered up onto the arms. He was able to reach up with both arms and spread them, jamming them between the sides of the shaft.

Using the added power from the suit, he lifted himself into the circular opening. Once inside he braced his legs against one side, his back against the other. Shifting to an up view, he could see that the shaft was not exactly vertical, just as Burton described. Turcotte felt a surge of excitement. He felt they were on the right path.

He began going up by scooting his legs up, then sliding the back of the suit along the stone.

“Down view,” Turcotte said. He could see a suited figure — Graves — right behind. “Up view.” The shaft extended as far as the IR lights could penetrate.

Duncan felt a tremble in her knees and she forced herself to stay upright, her face calm. The urim was in her right hand, the stone giving off an unnatural warmth.

“Why did you give this to me?”

“It is time for us to move on. We cannot stay here forever. Things are happening in the outside world.”

“What do you want in exchange?”

“All I want is for you to pull back the curtain and let me see the Ark and the Grail,” Aspasia’s Shadow said.

Duncan knew there was more to it than that, but she couldn’t figure out what Aspasia’s Shadow was trying to do. It was difficult to think clearly with the urim in her hand, the Grail next to her. Pulling the veil back changed nothing given the weight of the stone in her hand. She reached up and slid the white material aside.

The shaft ended abruptly in stone. Turcotte edged as close as possible, then stopped. “Magnify twofold,” Turcotte ordered. “Suit power lock.” The suit’s muscle magnifiers locked in place, both saving power and keeping him in his place in the shaft.

He scanned the rock, looking for a place to insert the ring. “Magnify threefold,” Turcotte ordered.

It was as if he were searching the surface from just inches away. The slightest of depressions in the smooth surface caught his attention. “Magnification off,” Turcotte ordered. He reached up with his right arm, maneuvering the middle finger, tip bent, ring forward to the depression. It fit perfectly. The stone dropped six inches, then slid aside. Turcotte reached over the edge and climbed into the chamber to be confronted by the mummified body of a man, arm trapped under a stone set in the wall. It confirmed that they were in the right place.

“Who the hell is that?” Captain Graves was the next up through the floor. “Kaji,” Turcotte knelt next to the body. “One of the Kajis,” he amended, thinking of Von Seeckt’s story.

Brown skin was stretched tight over the skull, the eyes covered with a milky surface. Turcotte wondered why one of the succeeding Kajis hadn’t come down here and recovered the body. Perhaps this Kaji’s son had not been guided this deeply into the Roads of Rostau, Turcotte thought. Burton also had Kaji’s ring.

Turcotte recalled from Burton’s tale that he had claimed to have scoured all the walls for a way out and found no place where the ring would work. They had prepared for that in isolation.

“Demo man forward,” Turcotte ordered. “Everyone else, back in the shaft.” Metayer, the senior engineer on 055, went to the block that had pinned Kaji’s arm. Turcotte helped him remove his waterproof pack and lay it on the floor. Unzipping it, Metayer pulled out a long strip of explosive which he pressed along the stone’s seam. He ran out detonating cord with a fuse igniter.

“What about the body?” Metayer asked.

“He’s already dead,” Turcotte said. “I don’t think he’ll complain.”

“Which side does it go in?” Duncan asked. She had the Grail in front of her, between her knees as she sat on the floor. She felt like a child with a new toy on Christmas morning, sitting on the floor, cloaked in the over-sized robes of the ancient priests. The pull of the Grail was irresistible to her. “I do not know,” Aspasia’s Shadow said.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“As far as I know, the stones have never been in the Grail,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “I certainly have never seen it used.”

Duncan wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. “Do you know what it does?”

“The urim does one thing, the thummin another.”

“That’s not much help.”

“I am not here to help you,” Aspasia’s Shadow said. “I gave you the urim so we can end this impasse.”

Duncan placed the palm of her hand on top of one end and waited. The end irised open. Reverently she took the urim and placed it in the depression, feeling the tingle as before.

She stared down at it. Nothing.

A part of her felt relieved.

Metayer held up the ignitor. “I’m all set.”

Turcotte slipped over the edge of the shaft and went down, leaving enough room for Metayer to be above him. The demo man followed.

“Fire in the hole,” Metayer announced.

“Audio down three quarters,” Turcotte ordered the computer. When the blast came, it was muted.

“Audio normal power.” Turcotte climbed up behind Metayer. The chamber was full of airborne dust swirling about.

The stone had been knocked out of position and a tunnel beckoned beyond.

Duncan looked up. Aspasia’s Shadow stood on the other side of the chamber watching her like a hawk — no, more as a vulture would, she realized. A soldier ran up the tunnel, halted next to Aspasia’s Shadow, and whispered something in his ear. Aspasia’s Shadow hissed something in return, never once looking away from Duncan and the Grail. The soldier ran back down the tunnel.

Aspasia’s Shadow reached inside his cloak and removed a small black sphere. It disappeared inside his large hands, the fingers moving around the surface of it. She briefly wondered what it was, but the lure of the Grail was too strong for her to spend much time on that.

Duncan reached in and removed the stone. The opening closed. She turned the Grail over and placed her hand on the other end. It opened. She lowered the stone in and knew she had it right this time as soon as the urim got close. The stone grew hotter, the green light inside blazed brightly, illuminating her and the entire chamber with an unearthly glow.

A shock raced up her arm as she placed the stone in its place. The opening irised tight against her wrist. She tried to remove her hand but couldn’t. Her fingers would not let go of the stone, held by an invisible force. Pain radiated through the flesh that touched the stone, lancing into her bones and causing her to cry out. It was as if her hand were on fire. She could feel the flesh peeling back, charred and burned. She had never felt such intense agony.

In her concern for the pain the Grail was causing, she failed to notice that the light had gone out in the ruby eyes of the sphinx head guards.