Chapter 12

            Troubled by Mahmoud Bakhashaf’s experience, Devereaux pulled our team out of the cave network and, using a satellite phone, summoned U.S. embassy security support. As we awaited the arrival of a Marine fire team from Najran, I took Mubarak Awda aside for a conversation. We sat amid boulders, discussing the connection between us.

            “Mubarak,” I said. “What are you doing here? Look at you – you haven’t changed in all these years!”

            He smiled and looked down, as if embarrassed.

            “It’s a coincidence,” he said. “I didn’t know you would be part of this team. I am here because I need to be…. As I was that day in the desert….”

            “Who exactly are you?” I asked rather bluntly.

            “I’m just a guy who’s been asked to play a role in this expedition. That’s really all I can say. I hope you have been well, Emily, after all these years.”

            “Yes, I’m fine. I just think it’s strange to see you again. Damn, you don’t look much older than when I first saw you, fifteen years ago. And you were young then!”

            Something bizarre occurred to me. I shot him what must have seemed like an odd look.     

            “What exactly do you know about the purpose of this expedition?” I asked.

            “Well, I’ve seen the photo,” he said.

            “What do you think of it?”

            “I think it’s a true image. I don’t think it has been doctored.”

            “Then you believe in the jinn?”

            He grinned.

            “This is Arabia, Emily. We all believe in the jinn!”

            “No doubts?”

“No doubts. God created humans and jinn. We are two species, if you like, each with certain abilities, each with free will. We make our own destinies.”

“It’s true, is it not, that a jinni can look like a human?”

“Of course! That is one of the jinni’s abilities: to resemble.”

“So, theoretically, you could be a jinni, right?”

He looked at her carefully, smiling slightly.

“Right?” I persisted.

“Anything is possible, Emily.”

At that point, a hulking military truck, in desert camouflage, rounded a hillside bend and rumbled into view.

Awda said: “It looks like our guardians are here.” He clearly wanted to change the subject.

The fire team consisted of four locked-and-loaded Marines – one of them female – and a grim-faced staff sergeant. After a briefing, one Marine took point, a few steps ahead of our two pro covers, and the others spread throughout the expedition team, with the sergeant protecting from the rear.  We headed back into the cave, this time feeling a little safer. Beside me loomed this huge Latino-looking soldier named Mike Lorenzo. I had a feeling he was assigned to me specifically, because he clung like Velcro. I would have preferred the protection of the woman, a wiry, no-nonsense African American named Private Willis, but for some reason she was kept as far from me as possible.

We continued downhill, moving gradually toward the east. We took the necessary right forks, as we had done before. We passed the bend where Bakhashaf had his vortex experience, and nothing unusual happened this time. Deeper we went. From time to time I felt cool gusts, as if there were some kind of ventilation or outlet to fresh air. We passed through occasional chambers, with lofty ceilings studded with limestone stalactites. No sign of any living presence, jinn, human or otherwise. The tunnel went on and on. Then, suddenly, it came to an end.

Before us loomed a large door, about eight feet in height and four wide, apparently cast from bronze, ornately etched with strange designs and an undecipherable script. The door was shut and seemingly sealed. There was no knob or handle, no obvious way to open it.

“What the fuck?” said the Marine on point, as he eyed the door, up and down. He rapped on the door with his rifle. It clanged, like a huge bell.

Lasser studied the door and its stone frame carefully, running his hands along the edges. He hit the door with the heel of his hand.

“This is bizarre,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s no handle or niche to grip, to pull this thing open. I have a feeling it’s locked, maybe from the other side.”

“It looks incredibly old,” said Devereaux.

“Thousands of years, maybe?” wondered Semple as he gently touched the engraved portions.

“It could be,” I said. I was totally nonplussed. You just don’t find huge bronze doors in the middle of natural caves.

“Well, it looks like this is the end of the road, at least for now,” said Devereaux.

“Let’s think about this,” I said. “Maybe there’s a mechanism to open it – the ancient equivalent of a keypad – somewhere in this cave.”

We began searching the walls carefully for some hidden switch or button, beginning at the doorframe and working outward.

“Here’s something,” said my Marine, Lorenzo. He had found what appeared to be a rectangular block of stone, set into the wall at ground level a few feet to the right of the door. Clearly the stone had been set in an opening. Lasser and Bakhashaf brought out picks and blades and worked the stone loose. Jim shone a flashlight into the hole. It was too small an opening to get us past the bronze door, but it might help us figure a way, I thought.

“I can’t see anything in there,” Lasser said. “It’s dark as all get-out.” He started to insert his hand into the opening.

“Don’t!” Awda cried. Leaning forward, he hooked his foot under Lasser’s wrist and deftly raised the caver’s arm out of reach of the hole.

“Hey, what’s your problem?” Lasser asked.

“You don’t know what’s in there!” Mubarak said. “Maybe snakes or scorpions! Let’s think about this for a second.”

Mubarak approached the door and stared at the engravings intently, as if studying them. Then he touched the door gingerly on an inscribed, cartouche-like oval about two-thirds of the way up, on the right side.

We heard a resounding click. Then suddenly the door slid aside, disappearing into a vertical slot in the right side of the frame. It seemed to me it had to be some kind of gravity system, involving hidden weights.

Mubarak smiled as he looked at us. “Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

“How the hell? –” Lasser started.

“Early South Arabian script,” Mubarak said. “It said: Press here.”

We peered through the door. Bakhashaf shined a torch through the frame, and illuminated a large chamber beyond, maybe 100 meters across. It appeared to be empty, apart from some stalactites and stalagmites, and a smooth – perhaps paved? – walkway down the middle. The Marines entered the chamber first, weapons at the ready. As they did so, the expansive space began to illuminate even more, as if from hidden lights. But we could see no source for the lighting.

Awda and I were the last two to pass through the doorframe and into the chamber. As we did so, I whispered to Mubarak: “That wasn’t South Arabian script.”

He smiled and said: “Humor me.”
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