The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,108

gave a gift, a plague to men who eat bread.

—FROM HESIOD’S WORKS AND DAYS, 700 B.C. (TRANSLATION BY HUGH G. EVELYN-WHITE. HESIOD, THE HOMERIC HYMNS, AND HOMERICA. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS; LONDON, WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 1914)

31

June 26, 3:33 P.M. WEST

High Atlas Mountains, Morocco

The lost city must be here somewhere.

Inside the cabin of the cruiser, Gray studied the satellite scans on his e-tablet. Over the past three hours, his team had stopped at four sites along the channel, where ground-penetrating radar had picked up cavernous pockets. But each proved to be a dead end. Literally. Just deep caves that petered out after short hikes.

Doubts had begun to set in.

He fought against them, trusting his instincts.

He shaded his eyes and surveyed their surroundings.

The drone of the outboard echoed off sheer limestone cliffs. The rock walls closed off the gorge to either side, climbing high in stratified layers of purples, whites, and multicolored hues of reds, topped by overhanging lips and broken-toothed edges.

Below and to either side, a dense forest of cedar and Algerian oak spread outward from the banks to the cliffs. As the channel carved higher into the mountains, its path grew more circuitous, its flow interrupted by cataracts. Its color was no longer the sluggish green of the Sous, but a cerulean blue of melting snow and spring-fed streams.

Charlie continued to expertly guide her boat up the narrowing channel, but she had to concentrate now. Her chatter had died away; even the macaque Aggie had grown quieter. Occasionally the cry of monkeys reached them, wild relatives of the little one here. Aggie’s tiny ears would perk, but he only clung tighter to Charlie.

A new noise intruded, a thumping beat felt in the gut. A helicopter passed by overhead, crossing over the chasm and continuing north. Gray watched it pass. It was the third he’d seen.

“There’s a popular tourist spot a few mountains over,” Charlie explained with a deep frown. “Paradise Valley, it’s called. Very beautiful. At least, it once was. Now it’s becoming more and more polluted, like much of the region.”

Ahead, disturbed by the noise of the helicopter, an ibis took flight from the shallows ahead and vanished over the treetops.

Charlie’s gaze followed it. “There used to be much more wildlife in these mountains,” she said with a forlorn tone. “Many have gone extinct. Atlas bears, North African elephants, and aurochs. And more threatened.” She gave Aggie a little scratch with a finger. “With my degree, I hope to help stop that from happening in the future. But it’s not just tourism impacting the area; more and more mines are opening up throughout these mountains.”

“What are they mining for?” Gray asked, glancing again to the stratified cliffs.

“There’s a lot of wealth buried here.” She scowled. “Iron, lead, copper, silver.”

As Gray stared out, he wondered what else might be buried here.

Seichan asked a question pertaining to that very matter. “What about uranium? Or other radioactive elements?”

The odd question drew Charlie’s attention off the river. Her eyes squinted with suspicion. “Is that why you’re here? Are you field scientists for a mining conglomerate? I saw you unpack what looked like a Geiger counter at that last stop.”

Gray should have known nothing slipped past their keen-eyed river guide. In preparation for this excursion, he had asked Painter to supply the team with more than just weaponry. Boxed up along with their guns and ammunition had been a small Geiger counter.

Gray raised a hand against the angry look on Charlie’s face. “No, I promise. We don’t work for any mining company. But why the strong reaction?”

“Pardon. My apologies then.” Charlie returned her attention to the river. “One of Morocco’s major exports has always been phosphate rock. But interest in such deposits has spiked these past few years.”

“Why is that?” Seichan asked.

“Because Moroccan phosphate contains uranium. In significant concentrations. Three-quarters of the world’s phosphate is buried in these mountains. And it’s said, the uranium held in those deposits is twice that of the entire rest of the globe.”

Seichan glanced over to Gray and lifted an eyebrow.

Gray remembered Monsignor Roe’s theory about the fuel powering the mechanical constructs aboard the ancient dhow. Roe believed the substance—which Hunayn and his brothers called “Medea’s Oil”—could be a more powerful version of Greek Fire.

It was impossible to know for sure, since the recipe for making Greek Fire had been lost to antiquity, though it was generally believed to be some volatile combination of naphtha, quicklime, resin, and sulfur. But one other vital component was calcium phosphate, the main

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