The Power of Five Oblivion
it. There seemed to be some sort of structure away to his left … not a building but a statue or a memorial of some sort. It looked like a huge, crouching cat. His own jeep, the one he had just left, was in front of him. Richard swung the wheel and swerved round it. He was picking up speed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two of the soldiers running towards him, shouting, but he was away before they could get anywhere near.
Now just one man stood in front of him. From his size and from the colour of his headscarf, Richard knew he must be the commanding officer, the man who had snatched Scarlett in the first place. The jeep was doing about thirty kilometres an hour. Richard pressed his foot down on the accelerator, waiting for the man to dive out of the way. But he just stood there, huge and menacing, a concrete pillar in the driving sand. He was holding a gun but didn’t seem to want to use it. Was he mad? Did he want to be killed? Richard didn’t care. He wasn’t going to let anyone stop him.
And then, at the last minute, as the man’s figure filled the windscreen, something extraordinary happened. It was more horrible than anything Richard had ever seen.
It was impossible to see it clearly – what with the sand, the movement of the jeep, the chaos of the moment. The man’s head seemed to split open. His shoulders peeled back. It was as if he had been hit by a mortar and blown apart. But there was no mortar. The man had done it deliberately, and even as Richard sped towards him, a snake’s head and neck reared up from the ruin of what had been his neck. Huge tentacles slithered out, replacing his arms, and suddenly the man was only human from the waist down. Above, he was a monster, squirming in the sand, the snake mouth spitting, the eyes blazing, the tentacles writhing as if in pain.
Richard knew he couldn’t avoid it. But nor could he stop. So he did the one thing that was left for him to do and stamped on the accelerator, driving straight into the man-thing. There was a dreadful thud as the front of the jeep hit it and Richard felt the shock travel up his arms. The creature let out a hideous screech and disappeared from sight. The jeep lost control, spun in a circle, nearly turning over on one side, then stopped suddenly. The engine stalled.
The creature hadn’t been killed. As Richard looked round, it stumbled to its feet, the snake neck twisting from side to side, its tongue flickering in and out. Richard turned the key. The engine turned over but the jeep refused to start. The creature took a step towards him. Richard froze. Every instinct made him want to get out and run. But he couldn’t leave Scarlett on her own. He tried the key again. The engine was dead. The creature came another step closer.
Then two more men appeared, stepping out of the sandstorm, dressed in pale grey and yellow. Desert camouflage. They were carrying machine guns, waist-high, strapped over their shoulders. They opened fire at the same moment, sending a blaze of bullets like two white-hot knife blades in front of them. The creature howled and twisted as it was cut into pieces by the continuous fire but the two men didn’t stop, keeping their fingers pressed on the triggers until their cartridges were empty and what was left of the creature fell and lay still.
The men ran over to the jeep. One of them pulled open the door, briefly examined Scarlett then turned to Richard.
“Vous êtes sortis de la pyramide?” he asked.
“What?” Richard was too dazed to even realize that the man was speaking French, let alone translate.
“You came through the door – with the girl?” The man spoke English with a thick French accent.
“Yes.”
“Then you must come with us. Now. Quickly. We are here to help you.”
The other man was already lifting Scarlett out of the back. Richard slid out himself. There was less gunfire now and the sandstorm was almost at an end. Looking back the way he had come, he saw three constructions which he recognized instantly – which had appeared in tens of thousands of postcards and which would have been known to anyone in the world.
The pyramids of Giza. And in front of them, the statue he had partly glimpsed. The Sphinx.
Now he knew. He and Scarlett had escaped from Hong Kong.
And the door had brought them to Egypt.
THIRTEEN
They drove Richard at speed through the city. He had never been to Cairo but he had seen enough pictures to be able to identify it – not just the
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