Page 193 of Tomb of the Sun King

“The bug curse?” Sayyid protested with obvious horror.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Anything would be better than bugs!” Sayyid insisted.

“Well, you work on that, then,” Neil growled.

“Fine. But you take this.” Sayyid shoved the scimitar at him. “If I must wield the power of Allah while muttering in Middle Egyptian, then you will keep the villains off me.”

“Me?” Neil squawked, awkwardly clutching the ancient blade.

Sayyid had already turned, stalking toward the ropes at the fissure with the Staff of Moses in his hand. “Hurry up!”

Neil made a noise of dismay in the back of his throat that sounded remarkably like an accurately pronounced ‘khaa’—and ran after him.

??

Forty-One

Shock blanked Adam’smind as explosions lit up the ridge like a volley of artillery, the stone heights blazing with fire.

It was impossible, but that hardly mattered. It was happening—which meant that Ellie was in danger.

“Get down!” Adam shouted, tackling her to the stone.

They weren’t the only ones diving for cover. Half the Al-Saboors had hit the ground as well—except for Hobbles and Scarface, the two cousins assigned to guard the prisoners, who had been watching Ellie’s tête-à-tête with Jacobs like a music hall show. They gaped at the fireworks with their cigarettes hanging from their lips, guns limp in their hands.

Jacobs skidded into the lee of a boulder.

“Take cover, you idiots!” he screamed out at the other men. “Inzil!”

Hobbles and Scarface finally hit the dirt. A cluster of men from the boat, gathered near the edge of the drop to the canyon, flinched down, and bolted for the path off the ridge.

Jacobs sprinted from his hiding place, darting through the shadows toward the heights where pale streams of smoke now ghosted up into the sky.

Adam wrenched at his hands, trying to break the ropes that bound his wrists by sheer force of desperation. “Get me out of these!”

Zeinab skidded into place behind him, her scalpel glittering in her hand. She sliced through his bindings and Adam threw them aside.

“Yalla,” a rough voice grumbled from behind him.

He whirled, fists ready, and barely held back from throwing a punch at the stout, sun-wrinkled figure who stepped from the shadows.

Adam recognized the smuggler, Umm Waseem. Her clever eyes glittered above the black fall of her niqab.

Zeinab had moved to Ellie, who yanked her hands free of her own ropes with a groan—and a spark of delighted interest.

“Youwerecarrying explosives in your bag!” she declared triumphantly. “I knew it! But what was it? Dynamite? Black powder? TNT, perhaps? You made it look exactly as though someone had put a half-dozen Howitzers on the ridge!”

“I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it later.” Adam hauled Ellie to her feet. “After we get the hell out of here.”

Umm Waseem and Zeinab held a quick exchange before the midwife turned back to the rest of them, her green eyes sharp with urgency.

“She has set more charges on the cliffs,” Zeinab reported. “Enough to bring them down and bury this place.”

Adam’s gaze shot to the forty-foot high crown of stone that framed the depression where they sheltered.

“Definitely TNT,” Ellie concluded in an awed voice.

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