Smith's Monthly #5 Page 7

  She forced herself to stay as low as she could, keeping the rifle focused on where the trail came out of the trees and brush about a hundred paces below the mine tailings where she lay. The rifle felt comfortable against her shoulder and this time when she fired there were going to be no doubts at all.

  Danny appeared first, on his horse, staring up through the shadows at the cabin and mine tailings. She knew he couldn’t see her if she didn’t move.

  She took a deep breath and made herself wait while Danny got farther into the open.

  “Take Danny, I’ll take Al,” Harold whispered just loud enough for her to hear.

  Danny stopped and Al appeared, his arm wrapped in a white cloth that had a large red spot on it. Danny had a cloth wrapped around one shoulder as well, which must have been where Harold hit him.

  They both stopped and stared up at the cabin, staying on their horses.

  “You think they’re up there?” Al asked, his voice carrying.

  She took a deep breath, focused all her attention on Danny’s chest, aimed slightly high to adjust for firing downhill, just as Harold had taught her, and fired.

  Harold fired an instant behind her.

  The sound of the shots filled the canyon and Danny flipped over backwards off his horse.

  Al spun to his left and also fell off his horse.

  She reloaded and fired again at Danny as he hit the ground. Her second shot missed, kicking up dirt near his head, but her third shot caught him square in the shoulder, the sound a thickening thud mixed with the echoes.

  Harold had also fired twice more.

  The sound of the shots echoed into the distance and then was replaced by the silence of the canyon. Both horses had moved off twenty paces and stopped. The two men lay there in the rocks and dirt, neither moving. Danny looked dead, twisted in an unnatural way, his neck sideways and his head turned too far to the side. If her shots hadn’t killed him, it looked like the fall had.

  Al she wasn’t so sure about. If he moved, she and Harold were both going to fire again, since Al still had his rifle right near him.

  They waited, trying to see any movement at all from either of them. The silence was almost too much to stand.

  Finally, after what seemed like half a day, just as the sun was starting to reach the two bodies, Harold said, “Let’s take a look.”

  Keeping her rifle cocked and ready, she moved down the slope beside her husband, easing up on the two men who had tried to kill them.

  She had been right about Danny. He was dead as dead could be, his neck twisted like a chicken’s. Harold checked closer to make sure Al was dead. He was. It looked as if his shot caught him right under the arm and plowed into his chest.

  She let out a deep sigh and hugged Harold. For the moment they were safe and for the first time on this trip that felt wonderful.

  THREE

  IT TOOK THEM the next hour to unpack Danny and Al’s horses, then hook rope around the dead men’s arms and have their horses drag them up the canyon.

  There Harold spotted a sharp rock outcropping and they stacked the two bodies there. Then Harold went back and got a stick of dynamite. He lit it and tossed it into the rocks above the two.

  The explosion did exactly what he had planned it would do. The rockslide buried them so deep no animal would ever find them.

  An hour after that they had carried water up to the cabin and she had started some boiling for washing. It was going to take her a long time to wash off the grime from those two, and even longer to push the memory back.

  When Harold came in, she turned to him. “Think anyone will miss them?”

  Harold stepped up and held her tightly. “You heard the stories in Boise. If a local didn’t show up to winter there, people thought the mountains got him.”

  Cora nodded and walked with Harold back outside. The air was warm and the faint sounds of the stream were a nice background. It calmed her instead of scaring her.

  She looked up at the peaks while holding onto the man she loved more than anything. The mountains had nearly got her. If Harold hadn’t taught her how to use that rifle, if she hadn’t had a strong will to survive, she might have slipped off that trail like that horse, or let those two men shoot her.

  Harold was worth fighting for. This new home was worth fighting for. She knew that now. A home was never worth much unless you stood and defended it.

  “Regrets?” Harold asked, sounding very worried.

  She hugged him and then kissed him hard. “No, I’d do it all over again if I had to.”

  He sighed in relief and buried his face in her hair. “Can I ask why not?”

  She laughed and kissed him again. “I have you and I have all this.”

  She gestured toward the fantastically beautiful tall mountains towering over them. “That’s more than I could have ever hoped for.”

  He looked at her for a moment, as if her words had surprised him. Then he bent down and kissed her, gently, as if it were the first time.

  Which, in a way, it was.

  What Came Before

  Nineteen-year-old Danny Hawk, his uncle, and his best friend Craig, were in Cairo to look for his missing father. Danny had witnessed the death of his only contact in Cairo, Professor Davis, because the professor had Danny’s father’s journals.

  Danny knows that the men who had killed the professor were now after him and the journals. Danny finds the journals and gets his uncle and friend to safety in an airport hotel where he tells them what happened. They decide to keep searching for Danny’s father and try to rescue him.

  Along the way, Danny and Craig find some help from a street kid named Bud and twins from South Africa who had worked with Danny’s father.

  They managed to escape the men chasing them for the moment at the airport and head back into the main part of Cairo.

  THE ADVENTURES OF HAWK

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  August 20, 1970

  Cairo, Egypt

  BUD DROVE PAST the small apartment building twice before finally backing the cab into a hidden driveway and stopping in the shade.

  The neighborhood around the two-story apartment building looked to be an older residential one, with small buildings packed in tight together. No lawns or shrubs like in the States, just rocks and peeling paint. Some of the houses had laundry hanging in the front or side yards. It was far too hot for anyone to be outside in the sun, so everything felt abandoned.

  “I’ll keep the car running and if you hear a honk, come running. It will be hard to escape this neighborhood.”

  “Got it,” Danny said. “We won’t be long.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” Craig asked as they climbed up the exposed outside stairs to the second floor and faced the wooden door.

  Danny dug for the key in his pocket that his mother had given him. His father had sent it to her as a backup, in case something happened to him and she needed to come here. He always kept the rent paid up for months in advance so nothing would be disturbed by the landlord at least.

  “We gather up what we think might be important, then get out of here,” Danny said. “We’ll let the twins figure out if what we got is important or not.”

  “As good a plan as any,” Craig said.

  “No talking inside,” Danny said. “It might be bugged.”

  Craig nodded. “Good thinking. I’ve just got to get more paranoid.”

  Danny unlocked the door and slowly pushed it open.

  There were no lights, so he stepped inside and let Craig follow before shutting the door and flipping on a light switch.

  The place smelled musty and unused. At least it was much cooler than outside.

  The living and dining areas were almost empty. A wooden table with two metal folding chairs were in the dining room, and a couch that had clearly seen far too much use was the only thing in the living room.

  Danny glanced at Craig who was shaking his head at what greeted them.

  The tiny kitchen had a few glasses and ch
ipped bowls in one cupboard and that was it. Not even a dirty dish in the sink.

  Everything had been cleaned off and wiped down. Danny knew his father was known for being a slob. His mother complained about it all the time, sometimes even going so far as wishing he would leave on another dig so that the house would be clean again.

  Danny knew that his father put all his attention into his work. Keeping a clean apartment was just an annoyance left up to others.

  If Danny’s father had lived here, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure nothing was left of how he lived.

  Or any of his personal things.

  The one bedroom had a made bed against one wall and a small wooden desk against a second wall. The desk was empty. As was the closet and bathroom. The bed was made like a maid had done it.

  Danny wasn’t really that surprised. At least not as surprised as he would have been if he had come here first from the airport three days ago. Someone clearly had come in and taken all of his father’s things and cleaned the place. The only thing left was a large world map that somehow his father had glued like wallpaper to the wall.

  Craig pointed to it after Danny finished checking every corner of the closet.

  Danny stepped over to the map. Small “x-marks” had been made in blue ink, at least a dozen of them all over the world.

  South America’s western coast area had two. One over New York City, three over London and the surrounding area. Another in the Soviet Union behind the Iron Curtain. Even more in Egypt, China, Mongolia, and India.

  Danny studied the marks, not having a clue what they had meant to his father. But his father had put those marks on that map for a reason, Danny was sure of that.

  Danny tried to pry the map off, but it was glued completely. It would completely destroy the map and the wall to take it off.

  The only reason he and Craig were seeing the map with the marks was because the map had been impossible to peel off and the people who had cleaned out the apartment had just left it.

  Danny leaned over to Craig and whispered in his ear. “Memorize the exact locations of all the marks.”

  Craig nodded and both he and Danny stood in the nearly empty apartment for the next few minutes doing just that, like they were both studying for a geography test in school.

  After Danny felt like he had the dozen or so marks clear in his mind, he motioned for Craig that they should get out of there.

  He locked the door behind them and quickly went through the heat down the stairs to where Bud waited in the running cab.

  Bud was clearly happy to see them. “Starting to worry me. Find anything.”

  “Place had been cleaned out,” Craig said as Bud pulled out of the driveway and headed back into town.

  “Except for a map glued to the wall with a bunch of marks on it,” Danny said. “I just hope we can remember where all the marks were. We need to write them down later, while it is still fresh.”

  “Yeah,” Craig said. “And better yet, at some point figure out what they mean.”

  Danny couldn’t agree more.

  “One more stop,” Danny said. “But we have to pick up the twins before we go there.”

  “The Pyramids on Giza?” Craig asked.

  Danny nodded.

  “Well,” Craig said, “at least I get to be a tourist before some goon kills me.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  August 20, 1970

  Giza Plateau, Egypt

  ONE BLOCK AWAY from the bazaar, Bud parked the cab in a shaded alley so narrow that Danny was amazed that Bud could get the cab backed in and still get the door open. Bud was small enough to squeeze out the door somehow and vanished around the corner, leaving Danny and Craig sitting in the cab, clearly trapped. They were both too big to even climb out the open windows between the car and the walls.

  And on top of that, the alley smelled of urine and some sort of fried meat. The two odors did not combine well.

  “You ever wonder what has just happened to our nice, normal lives?” Craig asked.

  “Most of the last three days,” Danny said. “So much for football practice starting next week.”

  “And the homecoming dance I suppose is now out of the question as well,” Craig said, shaking his head. “I was really looking forward to maybe asking Karen. I would have loved dancing with her.”

  “Slow-dancing,” Danny said, smiling at his best friend. “You fast-dance like a monkey.”

  “It’s all the rage,” Craig laughed. “Or haven’t you heard?”

  At that moment, Bud slid back into the car and pulled the car to the front of the alley where Ernie and Ed had room to climb in, Ernie in the front seat, Ed in the back beside Craig.

  “Field trip,” Craig said as Bud pulled out into the busy traffic, narrowly missing another cab and causing at least three cars to swerve to miss him.

  “You have your translations in a safe place?” Danny asked, feeling the backpack on the floor beside his leg with his father’s original notebooks.

  “Hidden safe and sound,” Ed said.

  “Don’t tell us where,” Craig said, holding up his hand. “I think it’s better that we just don’t know.”

  Danny nodded.

  Bud turned west and headed out a wide highway, picking up speed and making it impossible to talk with all four of the windows rolled down. He was going faster than Danny thought any street kid should be allowed to drive. And just like he had done on the main streets, Bud was swerving in and out of traffic.

  Danny just held onto the door handle and let the wind blow in his face from the four open windows.

  Ahead of them, the three larger pyramids of Giza seemed to grow like mountains as the road climbed out of the city and up to the sands of the desert. Actually, the pyramids were very close to the edge of the city. Danny had no doubt that in forty years, the city would surround the entire Giza Necropolis. From what he had heard, the smog was already starting to eat at them, and just recently, people had been barred from climbing on the pyramids anymore.

  There was no way to describe the awe that Danny felt seeing those huge stone pyramids grow bigger and bigger in front of him. How could anyone have built them? Now he understood that age-old question. Pictures just didn’t do them justice and there was nothing in the United States that even compared.

  For a few miles, all of them just stared. Craig his mouth slightly open, just kept shaking his head, as if he wasn’t believing what he was seeing. Danny understood that feeling.

  The most famous of the pyramids was the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the second was the Pyramid of Khafre, and the smaller one, still a giant structure but dwarfed by the other two, was the Pyramid of Menkaue. There were a lot of other smaller pyramid-like structures scattered around the base of the big three. They were called The Queen’s Pyramids by many.

  Three smaller Queen’s Pyramids were between Khufu and the Eastern Cemetery. The Western Cemetery was on the other side of Khufu, and three smaller still pyramids were lined up beside Menkaure.

  The entire area was huge. But it was the three monster pyramids that dwarfed everything.

  “So, where are we headed?” Bud shouted to Ed.

  “The Great Sphinx,” Ed shouted back over the winds.

  Bud nodded and headed to the east to a parking lot there.

  Danny wanted to ask him why the Sphinx, what his father had said in the notebooks that was taking them here, but decided to wait until they stopped so they could talk normally. The idea of rolling up the windows in this hot air was just an insane thought.

  Finally, Bud pulled the cab into a place facing the Great Sphinx and shut off the engine. There were only two other cars in the parking area, and Danny could see no other people around at all. The stones and shallow valleys were such that hundreds of people could be in the area and not be seen from the parking lot.

  The silence was like a thunderclap to Danny. He was startled by it, after being in the cab and in the city and the bazaar. Out here there was only the win
d blowing over the sand and that seemed to suck away noise like a soundproof room.

  They all piled out of the cab and headed up the tourist sidewalk.

  The Great Pyramid towered over everything, a good fifty stories tall. Danny couldn’t believe how large it was. He just kept staring up at it.

  Finally, after a dozen steps in silence, Danny finally got his head together and asked the twins, “Where was my father’s dig from here?”

  “Abusir,” Ed said.

  “To the south and east of here about twelve kilometers,” Ernie said, pointing up the Nile.

  Ed nodded. “Your father believed that under the 5th Dynasty cemeteries of Abusir were remains of a much older civilization, dating back to far before King Scorpion in what is called the Archaic Period.”

  “Far older than four thousand years B.C.” Ernie said.

  “That’s old,” Craig said, shaking his head.

  “Isn’t the Great Sphinx believed to be much older than the 4th Dynasty pyramids built here?” Danny asked.

  Both Ed and Ernie shook their heads no.

  “It was built in the stone quarry for the Great Pyramid, by Khufu’s men,” Ed said.

  “But,” Ernie said, “the famous Hall of Records from the legendary civilization of Atlantis is supposed to be buried somewhere near the Great Sphinx.”

  “Edgar Cayce predicted that would be where it was found,” Ed said.

  “Your father believes it is here as well,” Ernie said.

  “Atlantis?” Craig asked.

  Ed nodded. “It is believed to have existed before the great dynasties of Egypt, and the survivors from the great disaster flocked to the Nile valley and other places around the world to live and rebuild.”

  “The Hydra League was formed in the time of Atlantis,” Ernie said.

  Danny just shook his head and stared up at the ancient pyramids, amazed at what it must have taken four thousand years ago to build them. If he had been sitting at home, on his couch, he would have never believed any of what Ed and Ernie were telling him. But Danny had men from this Hydra League after him now, and he was facing giant pyramids that he doubted that 1970’s technology could build. So he was willing to believe just about anything at the moment.