Serpent of Moses Read Free Page A

back, channeling as much confidence as he could.
    The immediate response was a chuckle that Jack barely caught.
    “Your last shot missed by a considerable margin,” the other man said, humor in his voice. “You’re either a horrible shot, in which case we might just try our luck and come in after you, or you don’t have it in you to kill someone.”
    “That first one was a warning,” Jack answered. “I won’t miss a second time.”
    “Assuming I believe that,” the Englishman said, “how do you think you’re going to get out of here?”
    Jack did not have a ready answer to that question. After a pause he shrugged and said, “I haven’t quite figured that part out yet.”
    “And while you figure it out, all we have to do is wait. We have the benefit of being able to restock once our supplies run out, so we can simply set up camp here until you starve.”
    “I’m not so sure about that,” Jack said. “Unless you have a pass from the Libyan government, which I’m guessing isn’t the case, then you’re in the middle of an illegal antiquities operation. Are you really going to wait around and hope the local authorities don’t stumble in here while you’re waiting for me to die?”
    There was no response to his question.
    “You know, I didn’t even get what I was after,” Jack went on. “So, to be honest, I’m not sure why you’re concerned with me anyway. The staff is still back there.”
    Even as he said it, he knew they wouldn’t take his word for it. They’d been looking in the wrong place, and the bullets had started flying before they could have gotten a good look at what he was doing. They wouldn’t let him go until they assured themselves that he didn’t have the artifact.
    “I’m sure it is,” the Englishman said. “The problem is that I have a few friends with me who are not so trusting.”
    “Are these the same friends who shoot before making proper introductions?”
    “Sadly lacking in social skills,” the Englishman conceded. “And that might be why they’re discussing where to place the C-4 that will bring the entire cavern down on you.”
    Jack didn’t reply to that. Instead he squatted in the dark, his gun at the ready, wondering if they could possibly have an explosive. He thought the odds were against it. As a general rule, things like C-4 seldom lent themselves to the discipline of archaeology. Too, if they were not content to let him go for fear that he had the artifact, he considered it unlikely they would bury him beneath several tons of rock.
    As he considered that, he saw a flash of movement—something flying out from behind the wall and landing on the ground.
    “That’s so you don’t think I’m making up the bit about the C-4,” the Englishman shouted. A few seconds later a beam of light emerged from the enemy cover to illuminate it. The object was gray and about the size and shape one would expect C-4 to look like. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
    Jack had to concede that if it was a bluff, it was a good one—one that left him with few options. Even so, it took almost a full minute before he pushed himself away from the wall, struggled to his feet, and after thumbing the safety in place, tossed the gun a few yards in front of him. The second the weapon left his hand, doubt washed over him and he wondered if he’d just made a terrible mistake. Yet he fought the urge to go after the gun.
    “That was the sound of me tossing my gun away,” he said.
    There was no immediate response, and Jack was about to make the announcement again when a lone figure stepped into view. Even with multiple lights in his face muddling his perspective he could see that the man was enormous. That impression was solidified when three other men joined the larger one, all of them dwarfed by the first. As the parties regarded each other, the previous feeling Jack had entertained—the one that told him he’d made a mistake—returned with a vengeance. While he was