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Alana had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“Seriously,” Linc went on. “Now that we know where the bad guys are, we’ve only got a few hours before they reach the falls. Do you two geniuses have any idea how to find the tomb?”
“We need to see the falls to be sure, but, yeah, we’ve got some ideas.”
This was the first Alana had heard of their plans, and she said, “Hold on a second. I’ve seen the old waterfall for myself. There’s no way a sailing ship could have negotiated them. They’re too steep. The top one is practically a vertical wall.”
“You’re not giving credit where it’s due,” Eric said mildly.
“Here’s the plan.” Linda made eye contact with each member of her team. “We’re going to try to find the tomb. Linc, I want you to stay behind and keep an eye on these guys. Radio when you think there’s an hour left before they reach the falls so we can bug out. Any questions?”
There were none.
Having already marched to the wadi from their chopper’s distant landing zone, the two men and two women still made good time hiking the six miles to the first set of cataracts that blocked the unnamed river. They had stayed on top of the bluff overlooking the bed so when they reached the falls they had a bird’s-eye view. Linda ordered Alana to stay with the men while she scouted the area. Mark and Eric took up a position overlooking the cliffs and scanned them methodically with binoculars.
It was only from above, a vantage Alana and her partners had never enjoyed, that the odd nature of the riverbed became apparent. Upstream from the first cataract, there was a natural bowl that spanned the full width of the river, a basin formed of living rock that had resisted the efforts of erosion for aeons. It was roughly a hundred feet long, and its upstream side was yet another cliff face, only this one was just four feet higher than its predecessor. A man-made wall constructed of dressed and mortared stone ran its length. Unlike the streambed, which had been scoured clean by the powerful currents that once washed between the banks, the basin floor was littered with water-rounded boulders.
Also from above, she could see the footings of another ancient wall that had long since vanished, stretching from the base of the first falls and extending another hundred or so feet downstream.
She borrowed a pair of binoculars from Eric when she first spied the boulders and spent several minutes observing them, as if she expected them to move. Nothing changed, and yet they were telling her a story about what was happening farther into the mountains.
“Those are basalt,” she said, handing back the glasses. “Same with that wall.”
“So?”
“It’s the first indication of anything other than sandstone in this whole godforsaken country. It means there was volcanic activity someplace around here.”
“And that means?” Mark prompted.
“The possibility of caves.”
“Of that there is no doubt.”
Her tone turned to disappointment. “But it doesn’t make any difference. Al-Jama couldn’t have gotten his ship above the falls. Period.”
“You’re looking at this place like a geologist, not an engineer.” He turned his head to talk to Eric. “Where do you think?”
“They’d need them on both banks. The river’s too wide for just one.” He pointed to a flat ledge just above the riverbank. “There for our side, and that promontory twenty feet higher on the other side.”
“Agreed.”
“What are you talking about?” Alana asked. Her only experience with the Corporation was witnessing them as soldiers. She didn’t know what to make of Eric Stone and Mark Murphy. To her they were techno-geeks, not mercenaries, and they seemed to speak in a private code only they understood.
“Derricks,” they said simultaneously. Eric added, “We’ll show you.”
They made their way down to the ledge. It would have remained a few feet above the water level even at the height of the spring runoff. It was almost dead even with the first cliff spanning the river, and was large enough to accommodate a city bus. The two men scanned the ground intently. When something caught their eye, one would bend to brush at the dirt covering the sandstone.
“Got it,” Mark cried softly. He was on his haunches, excavating sand from a perfectly round twelve-inch-wide hole that had been drilled into the rock. He didn’t hit bottom even when lying on the ground and burying his arm to the shoulder.
“What is that?” Alana asked.
“This is where they stepped the mast for the derrick,” Murph replied. “Most likely the dressed trunk of a tree. Attached to it would have been an angled boom that could reach halfway across the river. As you can see by the hole, the boom was massive and would have been capable of supporting several tons. There would have been another on the opposite bank.”
“I don’t get it. What are they for?”
“Using these they could lower stones into the river—”
“Not stones,” Eric countered quickly. “We talked about this. They would have used woven baskets, or possibly bags made of sailcloth, that were filled with sand. This way they would eventually dissolve in the current and wash away.”
