Marah Chase and the Conqueror's Tomb Read online

  MARAH CHASE AND THE CONQUEROR’S TOMB

  JAY STRINGER

  “An archeologist and a spy walk into a bar . . .”

  ONE

  Marah Chase tried to kick-start the engine of her stolen motorcycle.

  Once.

  Twice.

  No dice.

  Chase checked for bullet holes. She hadn’t expected to run out of fuel so soon. Of all the vehicles she could have taken, she managed to pick the one with only half a tank. Chase added this to a growing list of problems, which so far included:

  Being out of food.

  Being out of water.

  Being in the middle of the Syrian desert.

  And—this was her personal favorite—being chased by armed mercenaries.

  It was fair to say that things hadn’t gone according to plan. And, like most missions, this was mostly because she didn’t have a plan. Chase had set off across the sand on a stolen bike, with nothing more than a half-baked notion and a sense of direction.

  Chase squeezed her left arm gingerly. She’d covered a deep cut with a makeshift bandage and could feel the blood sticking to the inside of her jacket. Her throat burned with each breath. Exhaustion was making her nauseated. Chase turned in her seat to look back the way she had come.

  The mercenaries were still in pursuit, their vehicles kicking up a dust cloud as they moved in from the north. Some were firing automatic weapons into the air, and one of them was holding a digital camera. With their heads covered in dark cloth and the black flags waving from their vehicles, they claimed affiliation with ISIL, but Chase knew that was a cover. Al-Salif, under the leadership of Ayman Musab Faraj, was a criminal organization using people’s fears of Islam as cover. Each time they destroyed a temple or statue, the value of the remaining items rose. Ayman Musab Faraj was rumored to have one of the finest collections in the world.

  Chase touched her side, feeling the bulge beneath the leather, where her messenger bag was protected from the elements. There was a statue inside. Priceless. The last piece of a Palmyra temple that had been destroyed during the civil war. Al-Salif wanted it back.

  Chase would rather have died than hand it over. Of course, that wasn’t her preferred option.

  She felt a large swell of fear bubbling up from her gut. But that was fine. Fear was good. Fear was part of the human immune system, the antibody to complacency. Cold, honest, logical. The real heart of fight or flight was a process of elimination. First things first: She could rule out fight. Chase was outnumbered, outmuscled, and outgunned. Any direct confrontation would end badly. Flight? Chase made one last attempt at starting the bike, and this time the engine turned over. She felt the machine start to shake and rattle. It would soon die.

  Chase noticed another dust cloud closing in from the west, and with it the sound of more engines. A jeep crested a rise. Standing on the back, towering over the driver, were two figures dressed in the fatigues of the Syrian military. Two guns were trained on Chase, waiting until they were within range. They were risking a run into occupied territory to make a grab for her.

  Chase breathed in. The fear whispered. There was another way to fly.

  She headed straight for the government jeep, weaving from side to side to avoid the bullets and getting low to the gas tank, making herself a small target. Chase knew they wanted to avoid a direct hit if they could. They wanted her alive. A political prisoner. An example to others in her trade.

  Once she was close to the jeep, she banked into a sharp circle and accelerated into the curve. She let the back wheel whip around, fighting for purchase, kicking up a large dust cloud. Chase rolled off the bike and used the cloud as cover. She flattened herself to the ground and watched as the two vehicles collided, and heard the universal language of surprised grunts. The bike skidded away across the desert floor.

  As the dust and sand in the air began to thin out, Chase could see that the two armed men had climbed down from the jeep and started to walk toward the bike. That left just the driver. He had a size advantage. Chase would only get one shot.

  She took a quick glance to the north and saw that Al-Salif were getting close. They could see her. It looked like they were shouting out warnings, a brief moment of cooperation between two enemy forces. But they weren’t near enough to get the message across.

  Chase climbed to her feet and walked around the side of the jeep. She grabbed the driver by the lapels and prepared to try to heave him out of his seat, but she could tell she didn’t have the strength to pull his weight. He was going to have to do the work. She leaned forward and winked, then blew him a kiss. He shifted his weight and moved toward her, and that gave Chase the start she needed. She pulled him clear of the jeep and kicked him in the face, hopefully stunning him for long enough to get away.

  She climbed into the seat just as the two armed men turned around. When they saw her, they started to shout unholy things about her mother and raised their guns.

  Okay, now they were ready to shoot her.

  Chase put the jeep into gear and floored the pedal. The jeep lurched forward. Chase aimed at the two men, who were polite enough to stand close together, and felt the bone-breaking thud as she drove through them. One fell away to the side, but the other fell toward her. He smacked his head onto the hood of the jeep but managed to grab hold and climb forward.

  Chase spun the jeep around to head back in the direction she’d been going. She could hear shouting now, and revving engines, as Al-Salif closed in. They got within range, and bullets hit the back of the jeep, while the guy on the hood shook his head, gaining focus. He raised his gun and pointed it at Chase’s face. She tugged left on the wheel, then right. The guy didn’t shake loose, but he couldn’t hold the gun steady. He pulled the trigger, and shots flew into the air. Chase heard another volley of bullets from behind, hitting the flatbed of the jeep and coming in her direction. She leaned to the side, out of the way, as the windshield exploded. The guy on the hood took the hits, his face turning into raw mince as he slid off the side.

  Chase looked behind again and saw that two Al-Salif jeeps were close, one on each side of her jeep, and three motorcyclists were coming up between them. With the pedal of her own vehicle floored, Chase was staying just out of reach, but if she slowed down for any reason they’d be on her. And the bullets weren’t all that bothered by the distance between them. Another spray of ammunition lined the floor of the jeep behind her seat. She pulled left on the wheel and felt something hot burn past her right shoulder as a bullet ripped through the seat.

  Chase was all out of luck on this one.

  The next round would hit her.

  TWO

  Traveling through Syria was never easy. Chase had been three times since the civil war started, and each trip had been difficult. None of them had gone this badly wrong.

  This time, Chase had been joined by Ryan Wallace, an old university friend who worked in the same trade. Treasure hunters. Grave robbers. Whatever. The black market for antiquities had been growing since the invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring. The ancient world was being crushed by wars, bombs, and climate change. Thrown into this mix were local amateur archeologists, people digging up their own country for items to sell, raising money to feed their families. Chase and Wallace were part of an elite inner circle of experienced professionals, known on the circuit as relic runners or gold dogs. They could name their price, with bored billionaires and corporations willing to pay through the nose to secure historical items for private collections. The higher the risk, the higher the reward. And it didn’t come any riskier than Syria.

  Coming in had been the easy part. Smuggling was another growth industry, made up of a network of people who w
ould sail up and down the Euphrates, carrying refugees into Turkey. Wallace had hired one of these sailors to get them in, and taking the river allowed them to keep a distance from the consequences of the war. For Chase, this was important. She didn’t want to see the faces or hear the voices. She was stealing their history, but the alternative was to let it be lost.

  In Palmyra, Chase and Wallace had come across an Al-Salif camp. The group had destroyed many of the ancient monuments, including the Lion of Al-lāt, a statue that had stood for more than two thousand years. Chase and Wallace had managed to save a smaller version of the lion, one of around a dozen identical pieces that were being smashed. It was the last of its kind. Al-Salif appeared to be excavating, digging down into something buried deep beneath the sand. When Chase had tried to get a closer look at what they were doing, she’d become separated from Wallace. The mercenaries captured him, and everything had gone wrong from there.

  Now it was three days later. Chase was in the south of the country, with no backup and no supplies, save the stolen jeep. Handing the statue back wasn’t an option. Al-Salif were after her as much as the relic now. People in her line of work had been going missing in this region for years.

  Two months previous, Ayman Musab Faraj had beheaded an archeologist who refused to say where he’d hidden some relics. Three months before that, Al-Salif had dragged a British news reporter from her convoy and beheaded her on camera. They’d uploaded the video to YouTube, and her family had seen it on the internet before the British government had time to contact them. The reporter had been one of the first to break the news of the damage Al-Salif were doing to Palmyra.

  Whichever way she looked at it, Chase was at the top of their shit list. And she wouldn’t be any safer in government hands. The Syrian authorities made a harsh example of people caught smuggling artifacts.

  She turned back to face the horizon. In the distance she could make out the dark shape of Golan Heights. It was contested land, currently split between Syria and Israel. Much of that area was held by the opposition fighters. Western forces had a presence there. It was an open secret that the CIA had been training many of said opposition groups, including some who used to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda. The civil war had made for some very uneasy alliances. Neither Al-Salif nor the Syrian army would follow her up into opposition territory.

  More important, Golan Heights had been Wallace’s plan B. The north was the quickest way in and out of Palmyra, but the south was the safest. They’d gone with speed as plan A, but Wallace never entered a country without a backup option. There was a case full of supplies hidden near the Israeli border. If Chase could get to it, she’d be in the clear.

  She breathed in and closed her eyes for a second, listening to the voice of fear.

  Flight is still the best option.

  It’s not that they’re chasing you.

  It’s that they can shoot you.

  Your next problem is the bullets.

  There was a bag on the passenger seat. Chase started to rummage through it while keeping one hand on the wheel. Her fist closed around magazines for automatic rifles, then some papers and, finally, something useful.

  A grenade.

  Chase held the explosive up above her and heard gears change on the chasing vehicles. She turned to see that they’d slowed down a little, and the next volley of gunfire wasn’t coming. She pulled the pin with her teeth, then twisted in the seat and threw the grenade back toward her pursuers in an underarm lob.

  The two jeeps swerved in opposite directions, leaving a large space between them where the grenade fell. The explosion sent dirt and rock flying into the air, knocking two of the motorcyclists from their rides. Chase heard screams. The jeep to the left had swerved far enough away, but the one on the right was caught by the blast and tipped over, sending its occupants sprawling to the dirt.

  No time for guilt; keep moving.

  The jeep on the left was still behind her, and there was one other motorcycle, but they’d lost ground in avoiding the grenade. Chase kept her foot to the floor, and the distance between her and the remaining pursuers grew. She heard gunfire, but nothing was hitting home.

  The surface beneath the wheels started to change, harsh desert giving way to healthier land. Now she could see sparse vegetation and rocks, with compacted dirt replacing the sand. Up ahead was a collection of burned-out single-story buildings and the beginnings of a dirt track running between them. This would have been one of the many farms that once covered this part of Syria. Before the drought. Before the war. Before the bombs.

  Soon she was on pavement. A road. The engines behind her revved, and Chase heard the occasional bullet hitting the road. This was mostly posturing. As they began the slow climb to the plateau, Al-Salif were starting to fall farther back. Soon they would need to give up the pursuit to avoid running into a battle, but their egos wouldn’t let them simply stop. They needed to rattle their sabers for a while longer.

  Chase looked back again to see that the soldiers had stopped. They parked their vehicles on the road and stood watching her. One of them was bent down over a small metal object that was catching the sunlight. It looked like a Zippo lighter.

  Huh?

  That was when Chase noticed a trail of dark liquid running down the road, right to where the soldiers were standing. The fuel gauge was a lot lower than it had been a few minutes ago. One of the bullets must have hit the tank. Chase saw the stooped figure spark the lighter into life and touch the flame to the trail of gas, sending it chasing after her.

  Oh, come on, that’s not fair.

  THREE

  The jeep exploded into a fireball as it crested the rise. It rolled on for a few hundred yards before coming to a stop, where it stood burning on the road.

  Chase had jumped free in the seconds before the flames caught her, landing on her wounded arm. It took every stubborn inch of her not to scream in pain. Maybe if I give them my nicest smile, she thought, they’ll only slightly kill me.

  Chase reached into the messenger bag and ran her fingers across the surface of the statue. It was cracked, which would reduce the value, but she could still make good with it. The sound of a motorcycle engine filled the air, and Chase turned to see the rider coming up the road. The other soldiers were still hanging back. The rider circled Chase slowly, once, twice, enough to make the point, before stopping before her and killing the engine. She climbed to her knees and put her hands up.

  He laughed and climbed off the bike. “Nice try, Chase.”

  Chase wasn’t sure which surprised her more: that he knew her name or that he spoke with a broad Yorkshire accent. There was an automatic rifle slung across his shoulder, but instead he reached inside his sand-coated military fatigues and pulled out a pistol.

  He pointed it at Chase’s head. “You still have the statue?”

  Chase said nothing.

  He stepped closer and pressed the gun to her head. “They’ve found something. A temple, a tomb—I don’t know what it is.”

  Chase blinked. She said, “What?”

  “They were digging. The statue, your statue, it came out of this chamber they found, in the ground. They keep saying a name. Aten.”

  “Aten?”

  Chase knew the name. It was a sun god from ancient Egypt. She couldn’t think why that would be relevant to an excavation in Palmyra. Or why this guy was telling her about it.

  He turned to look at the other soldiers, who had started up the hill toward them, then back to Chase. “Jump me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m SIS. The bike can get you to the border. Jump me, and make it look good.

  Chase grabbed his gun hand and pulled the weapon away from her face. She threw herself at him. They hit the ground together.

  “Sorry,” said Chase, and punched him in the face. He lay still.

  Chase climbed to her feet, ignoring the way her knee tried to buckle when she put weight on it, and mounted the motorcycle. She kicked it into life again and roared away. Af
ter a minute or so, Chase glanced back. The Brit was standing on the road, staring after her, with the burning jeep beside him.

  When she looked back a second time, he was gone.

  Chase relaxed and eased off slightly on the throttle. As the adrenaline of the pursuit wore off, her aches and pains came back into focus. The cut on her arm stung, and now her knee was throbbing. There was a sharp pain in her right shoulder that could be a pulled muscle. It was going to take a month’s worth of long baths to get over this one.

  Chase took a look around as she rode. The hills and valleys on this high ground were formed by ancient volcanic activity. It was an odd mix of desolate rock and beautiful vegetation. She turned in the direction of a valley to her right and rode down a winding path through a grove of struggling eucalyptus trees. Clearing the grove, she hit the outskirts of a destroyed city.

  Quineitra.

  Ruined houses lined bulldozed streets, with old rooftops lying flat on the ground like gravestone markers. Mattresses and broken toys littered the broken paths, which were separated from the roads by curbs painted alternately black and white. Closer into the center of the city, a number of buildings were still standing, but not by much. Officially, the town was uninhabited. Left derelict as a monument to the cost of war. In more recent times, people had started to come back to try to live in the remaining buildings, huddled around fires at night. The city had become a monument of a different kind.

  In a large square near the center of the old town, Chase saw a small refugee camp made up of tents and small huts built from the remnants of nearby buildings. The drought had driven people into the cities, and then the war had driven them back out again. They were gathered in the tents. Starved and dirty. The makeshift village reminded her of the stories she’d read about Hoovervilles, shantytowns for people who’d lost everything during the Great Depression. The best thing about being interested in history was that it kept repeating itself. There would always be a second chance to see something.