Clive Cussler: The Pharaoh's Secret

He dropped it to the deck and inched forward, crying out in anguish with each move. The smell of propane was nauseating, the pain in his gut like a fire inside him. His eyes began to fail. He found the explosive charge but could barely see the buttons on the face of the timer. He pulled at it and it came away from the tank just as the doors to the shipping container swung open.

Bracko turned. A pair of men rushed in, weapons aimed at him. Reaching him, they noticed the timer in his hand.

It hit zero, exploding in Bracko’s grasp and igniting the propane. The shipping container blew itself apart in a brilliant flash of white.

The force of the explosion dislodged the forward stack of shipping containers and sent them tumbling over the side into the sea.

Bracko and the two men from the syndicate were vaporized in the flash, but Bracko’s action had foiled the Egyptian’s plan. Pulled away from the thick steel wall of the propane tank, the charge was not strong enough to puncture the cylinder. Instead, it caused a flash explosion and lit a raging fire fueled by propane still jetting through the open valve.

This tongue of flame shot directly outward from the tank, burning through anything it touched like a cutting torch. As the tank shifted, the tip of the flame angled down and onto the deck.

As the surviving criminals fled, the steel deck beneath the tank began to soften and buckle. Within several minutes, the deck became weak enough that one end of the heavy cylinder fell partway through. The tank was now held up at an odd angle and the jet of flame was redirected along its side. From this point, it was only a matter of time.

For twenty minutes, the burning ship continued west, a traveling fireball that could be seen for miles. Shortly before dawn, it hit a reef. It was only a half a mile off the coast of Lampedusa.

Early risers on the island came out to see the blaze and take pictures. As they watched the propane tank rupture, fifteen thousand gallons of the pressurized fuel burst forth and a blinding explosion lit up the horizon, brighter than the rising sun.

When the flash subsided, the bow of the M.V. Torino was gone, the hull split open like a tin can. Above it, a dark cloud of mist drifted toward the island, hanging on the breeze like rainfall that never quite reaches the ground.

Seabirds began dropping from the sky, hitting the water with tiny splashes and thumping the sand with dull thuds.

The men and women who’d come out to watch the spectacle raced for cover, but the outstretched tentacles of the drifting fog quickly overtook them and they fell in their tracks as they ran, crashing to ground as suddenly as the gulls had fallen from the sky.

Pushed by the wind, the Black Mist swept along the island and off to the west. It left behind only silence and a landscape littered with unmoving bodies.

A shadowy figure drifted toward the seafloor in a leisurely, controlled descent. Seen from below, the diver looked more like a messenger descending from the heavens than a man. His shape was enhanced by twin scuba tanks, a bulky harness and a propulsion unit strapped to his back that came complete with a stubby set of wings. Adding to the image was a halo of illumination from two shoulder-mounted lights that cast their yellow beams into the darkness.

Reaching a hundred-foot depth and close to the seafloor, he could easily make out a circle of light on the bottom. Within it, a group of orange-clad divers were busy excavating a discovery that would add to the epic history of the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome.

He touched down, approximately fifty feet from the lighted work zone, and tapped the intercom switch on his right arm.

“This is Austin,” he said into the helmet-mounted microphone. “I’m on the bottom and proceeding toward the excavation.”

“Roger that,” a slightly distorted voice replied in his ear. “Zavala and Woodson are awaiting your arrival.”

Kurt Austin powered up the propulsion unit, lifted gently off the bottom and moved toward the excavation. Though most of the divers wore standard dry suits, Kurt and two others were testing out the new improved hard suits, which maintained a constant pressure and allowed them to dive and surface without the need for decompression stops.

So far, Kurt found the suit easy to use and comfortable. Not surprising, it was also a little bulky. As he reached the lighted zone, Kurt passed a tripod mounted with an underwater floodlight. Similar lights were set up all around the perimeter of the work zone. They were connected by power cords to a group of windmill-like turbines stacked up a short distance away.

As the current flowed past, it moved the turbine blades and generated electricity to power the lights, allowing the excavation to proceed at a much quicker pace.

Kurt continued on, passing over the stern of the ancient wreck and setting himself down on the far side.

“Look who finally showed up,” a friendly voice said over the helmet intercom.

“You know me,” Kurt replied. “I wait till all the hard work is done, then swoop in and collect the glory.”

The other diver laughed. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Kurt Austin was a first in, last out type who would keep working on a doomed project out of sheer stubbornness until it somehow came back to life or there was literally no option left to try.

“Where’s Zavala?” Kurt asked.

The other diver pointed to a spot farther out, almost in the darkness. “Insists that he’s got something important to show you. Probably found an old bottle of gin.”

Kurt nodded, powered up and cruised over to where Joe Zavala was working with another diver named Michelle Woodson. They’d been excavating a section around the bow of the wreck and had placed stiff plastic shields in position to keep the sand and silt from filling in what they’d removed.

Kurt saw Joe straighten slightly and then heard the happy-go-lucky tone of his friend’s voice over the intercom system.

“Better look busy,” Joe said. “ El jefe has come to pay us a visit.”

Technically, that was true. Kurt was the Director of Special Assignments for the National Underwater and Marine Agency, a rather unique branch of the federal government that concerned itself with mysteries of the ocean, but Kurt didn’t manage like a typical boss. He preferred the team approach, at least until there were tough decisions to be made. Those he took on himself. That, in his mind, was the responsibility of a leader.

As for Joe Zavala, he was more like Kurt’s partner in crime than an employee. The two had been getting in and out of one scrape after another for years. In the past year alone, they’d been involved in the discovery of the S.S. Waratah , a ship that vanished and was presumed to have sunk in 1909; found themselves trapped in an invasion tunnel under the DMZ between North and South Korea; and stopped a worldwide counterfeiting operation so sophisticated that it used only computers and not a single printing press.

After that, both of them were ready for a vacation. An expedition to find relics on the floor of the Mediterranean sounded like just the tonic.

“I heard you two were slacking off down here,” Kurt joked. “I’ve come to put a stop to it and dock your wages.”

Joe laughed. “You wouldn’t fire a man who was about to pay up on a bet, would you?”

“You? Pay up? That’ll be the day.”

Joe pointed to the exposed ribs of the ancient ship. “What did you tell me when we first saw the ground-penetrating sonar scan?”

“I said the wreck was a Carthaginian ship,” Kurt recalled. “And you put your money on it being a Roman galley — which, to my great consternation, has been proven correct by all the artifacts we’ve recovered.”