Serpent of Moses - By Don Hoesel Page 0,2

into the darkness than the meager light could penetrate.

An hour ago, on the way in, as he picked his way over the sloping terrain, he’d had time to choose his course with care, to ascertain the irregularities of the path and decide where to place each step in order to disperse the pain in his ankle. Now, as he scrambled to keep in front of his pursuers, he felt each step in sharp stabs that ran between ankle and knee. He’d injured the ankle during his journey in, which meant he stood no chance of avoiding further damage with caution thrown to the wind.

Jack stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He could hear voices behind him—closer than he liked—and knew his chances of staying in front of those voices for the mile that separated him from the cave exit were slim. As he started off again, the beam from the flashlight played over the ground, illuminating the multiple pairs of boot prints he’d followed deeper into the tunnel. He’d found himself irritated at the boot prints an hour ago, and not just because their existence signified the presence of other people interested in what he himself had come here for. Rather, his annoyance had come from the fact that they upset the illusion—that they robbed him of the opportunity to convince himself that his were the first feet to pass over this ancient ground in a thousand years. Cultivating that belief, false though it might be, went a long way toward stroking the ego of any respectable archaeologist. In Jack’s current predicament, though, he found himself wishing he’d allowed the existence of those prints to dissuade him from entering the cave at all.

He raised the light and shook his head as the far edge of the beam tapered away without finding a wall. That indicated a long stretch of straight tunnel that would expose his back once his pursuers rounded the corner behind him. Forcing more speed into his legs, he sent his mind scrambling for anything that would increase his chances of reaching the open air of Jebel Akhdar, and the only thing that presented itself was the fork in the tunnel that served as the sole split from the main passage he’d followed in. Jack hadn’t explored that rabbit hole, as the map now crumpled into a ball in his jacket pocket had kept him on the wider path. Consequently he had no idea where it went or if it provided a way out of the labyrinth that cut through the mountain. But beyond the split Jack’s memory provided an image of a quarter mile of ramrod-straight rock that he knew he’d never be able to traverse before they caught him. So the fork was his only chance.

Even as he settled on that goal, he noticed the light behind him was growing stronger, which meant he was about to lose the angle that had provided him some measure of protection from the rounds that had followed him from the treasure room’s antechamber. He couldn’t run any faster; his breath came in ragged gasps that over time had settled into a rhythm matching the sound of his side bag slapping against his thigh. All he could think to do was to swing his pack around so that it covered the small of his back, then crouch as much as he was able without sacrificing speed. A moment later he heard the advance squad of a renewed volley.

As he cringed against an anticipated hit, and as the bullets struck the rock on either side of him, the small part of his brain that wasn’t dedicated to survival picked out a single voice amid the other sounds and, if he wasn’t imagining things, it sounded as if the voice’s owner was imploring his companions to stop shooting. Unfortunately the command had no effect on whoever held the guns.

In front of Jack, the beam of light bounced along, giving him just enough information to keep him from running into a wall. And on one of its upward swings he saw, about forty yards ahead, the spot where the tunnel widened to accommodate the second branch. Before he could find any hope in that realization, one of the many bullets that had tracked him for the last half mile nearly found its mark, bisecting the sliver of space between his ribs and right bicep and leaving on the latter a tangible and painful reminder of its passing.

The distraction pulled his attention