David Golemon - Ancients

"Not yet," she answered, and then she waved the diggers over and used the interpreter to order several pilot holes dug in the sand for her equipment to take readings.

"Major, we will be placing portable ultrasound units at the base of what's left of the foundations and inside the remains of the prayer tower. If there's something buried here, that should tell us."

Jack had moved away from Everett and stood watching the eastern part of the desert. The midday sun was a killer as he stood still and listened. He had that old prickly feeling in his stomach that told him they were not alone in the desert. For the life of him, he could not tell where a potential enemy could hide. There was very little cover, just scrub and sand. The Blue Nile was more than a kilometer away, and any force coming from there would have given ample warning to the op team at the mosque site.

He shook his head as he started to turn, and as he did so he saw a mark in the sand. It was only a track, but it was one with which he was familiar. He did not want to lean down and examine it in case eyes were on him, so he removed his sunglasses and stretched, and as he did so he eyed the track more closely. It was a track in the literal sense: padded and linked; the sort of track used on a bulldozer or a backhoe. It had been brushed over but not completely wiped from the desert floor.

He replaced his glasses and turned back to the mosque. He had just confirmed that the dig team was not alone in the desert. Jack also knew that they had arrived too late.

As he casually walked back to where Everett was watching the camp and mosque, he reached into his pocket and felt the reassuring touch of his panic button.

Professor Leekie was getting frustrated with her equipment. She slapped at the laptop computer she had perched on the broken wall and cursed.

"This damn sand is so thick, it's almost impenetrable."

Dutton was just returning from the perimeter of the encampment, where he had checked on the positions of his twenty-five-man team. He shook his head after hearing Leekie curse her equipment. He saw her assistants return from laying their last remote ultrasound probe in the ruined tower of the mosque.

"Fifteen thousand years ago this area was forest land with compacted soil good for trees and plants. This equipment should have no trouble penetrating a few lousy feet of sand to reach the old earth beneath."

"What's the matter, Professor Leekie, modern science failing you?" Dutton asked with a smile, masking his ire.

"If we have to use the laborers to remove six or seven feet of sand before we can search, we'll be here forever. Let me try the probes attached to the walls; their base should be closer to that ancient topsoil--at least two thousand years closer."

Dutton heard Professor Leekie curse again:

"Damn, I'm getting a better reading, but there's still nothing there. No metal and no empty space that would indicate a shaft or cave.... Damn, I thought ... Oh ... Just damn!"

One of the Event Group assistants slapped his head with his palm. "Just a sec, Doc. I didn't switch on that last sonic probe."

Leekie shook her head and watched as the young man trotted back to the base of the prayer tower and vanished through the arched doorway. She wanted to shout out that it wasn't necessary but then decided that they had to be thorough, at least.

"All right, Doc, it's on," her assistant called out from the tower's opening.

Leekie switched the mode over to the frequency of the last probe. When the picture came onto the screen, she saw only a rounded blackness, as if she were looking into an old well. She tapped the laptop once again in anger.

"This thing, I swear--" She looked over at the base of the prayer tower. It was round . Then she looked at the screen again. The darkness there was round, too. She looked up suddenly. "There's nothing!"

"Well, maybe your people were wrong and this is just a wild goose--"

"No, I mean there's nothing there! The ultrasound probe isn't picking up anything under the sand inside the prayer tower but empty space!"

"What are you saying, Professor?" Dutton asked.

"I'm saying that the empty space I'm looking at is a covered shaft of some kind and it's deep. Damn, this may be the place. The mosque is here to cover the opening!"

"I was informed that no one knew about this spot until recently," Dutton stated. "You said earlier this burial site predates all religions. So why is there a mosque here?"

"Who knows? Maybe it wasn't a mosque to begin with. Maybe it was something else long ago and future generations just added to the foundations." Leekie's pretty face lit up with the answer to her earlier question concerning the age of the mosque and its foundations. "My God, that's why the foundation and wall ages don't match. Don't you see, it all fits! The people of this area, never knowing an original structure covered the ancient burial site, have used this place repeatedly. They never knew that a structure was here literally thousands of years before their civilization was even born."

"Okay, you sold me, Professor. What are you waiting for--let's recover this device," Dutton said, impatient to be out of there.

"I can't believe it," Leekie said, slamming her laptop closed. She smiled and jumped up and slapped the reserved Dutton on the shoulder. Then she ran to get the diggers to unearth the shaft inside the smashed prayer tower.

"She's excited about something," Jack said, adjusting his field glasses. "She must have discovered the burial site."

Carl watched Leekie as she hastily gave out orders; the reserved professor was more excited than any of her colleagues at Group had ever seen her before.

"Damn, Jack, you didn't say she gets to keep the diamond, did you?" Everett asked.

The Ethiopian diggers worked within the confined space of the ancient and collapsed prayer-tower base. The sun was now beyond its zenith, which cut the heat significantly. The sand was loose and hard to keep out of the hole they were digging. Finally, a shovel struck something hard with a loud ping--a sound that Leekie had always equated with finding buried treasure.

Three workers went to their knees and started shoveling the remaining sand out with their hands, until they hit a smooth surface. Leekie squeezed her way through the workers and knelt, brushing away the last of the sand.

"A cover stone," she said barely above a whisper.

"What's a cover stone, Doc," Mendenhall whispered beside her.

"In ancient times, civilizations such as the Egyptians and Greeks used cover stones to ... well ... cover anything buried. They were a deterrent to grave robbers and usually had curses written in their language warning an intruder that foul things and horrible deaths would befall them if they removed the cover stone."

"I guess that's you, huh, Doc?" Mendenhall asked, becoming nervous when she mentioned the word curses .

"Yes, that's me, Lieutenant."

Leekie instructed her team to remove the large, flat stone from the hole. Three Americans plus Will started pulling and prying with long-handled steel bars. The stone moved easily, and Leekie was surprised at the ease of removal after thousands of years.

"Can we get some lights over here?" she called out.

In minutes, several high-powered lights were shining down into the deep shaft. Leekie pulled a long tube filled with green liquid out of her pack. She snapped the inner casing inside the tube, then shook the liquid inside to life. When it began to glow bright green, she tossed it into the hole, where it soon struck bottom.

"There's flat flooring beneath. This is definitely a manmade excavation."

Mendenhall watched as Leekie removed a small device that resembled a flashlight from a case, turned it on, and pointed it down into the shaft. A thin red laser caught some of the swirling dust, making the beam visible. She turned it off after only a second and looked at the readout on the handle.