The Heretic’s Treasure. Scott Mariani

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       Chapter One

       The Western Desert, Egypt Late September 2008

      Nobody knew how many centuries the desolate Bedouin fort had been standing out here among the oceans of sand, its crumbling walls abandoned long ago.

      Perched up high on a ruined tower, a vulture cocked its head and peered down at the line of dusty 4x4 vehicles that passed through the gateway and pulled up in the courtyard.

      The passenger door of the lead vehicle swung open. A combat boot crunched down into the sand and a man stepped out of the car, stretching his cramped muscles after the long trek westwards and shielding his eyes from the sun’s white glare. There was no wind. The air was a furnace.

      The man’s name was Khaled Kamal, and he was one of Egypt’s most wanted terrorists. The man without a face, the one they could never catch.

      The rest of the group climbed down from the vehicles. Eleven men, all watching their leader. Nobody spoke. They wore a mixture of military combat fatigues, T-shirts and jeans. Six of them had stubby AKS-74 assault weapons slung over their shoulders. There were a lot more guns in the vehicles, the smell of cordite still on them.

      Kamal scanned the empty ruin. He scratched the three-day-old stubble on his chin and thought about the events of the last thirty-six hours.

      The diversion had worked well. If the choppers had been mobilised after the attack, then the anti-terrorist forces were hunting in the wrong place. Nobody would be looking for them out here in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles west across the desert from the Aswan to Cairo railroad where Kamal and his gunmen had opened fire on a northbound tourist train.

      He smiled to himself as he replayed the fresh images in his mind. The passengers had been sitting ducks. Six carriages ripped to shreds by automatic fire. Blood on the tracks and on the sand. Another successful job.