Read Online The Pharaoh's Secret by Clive Cussler, Graham Brown - Free Book Online Page A

ailments. Among them were three immigrants who’d sailed on a dilapidated rowboat from the coast of Tunisia, surviving the blistering sun, the tail end of a storm and a pair of shark attacks when they’d been forced to swim the last five hundred yards. It seemed unfair, after all that, for them to die of carbon dioxide poisoning in the operating room of the hospital that had been their salvation.
    Finding several of the patients unresponsive, she picked up the last of the portable oxygen bottles. She turned the valve but heard nothing. It was empty.
    The bottle dropped from her hand, banged against the floor and rolled across to the far wall. No one around her reacted. They were passing out, falling into a sleep that might soon end with brain damage or death.
    She stumbled to the door, put her hand on the tape and tried to peel it off. Her grip was too weak.
    “Focus, Renata,” she demanded of herself. “Focus.”
    An orange blur entered the room beyond. A man in some kind of uniform. Her tired mind thought he looked like an astronaut. Or possibly an alien. Or just a hallucination. That he seemed to disappear suddenly all but confirmed her last guess.
    She gripped the tape, went to pull it and heard a voice shouting.
    “Don’t!”
    She let go. Fell to her knees and then over onto her side. Lying on the floor, she saw a thin tube poke through the plastic beneath the door. It hissed like a snake and for a second that’s what she imagined it was.
    Then her mind began to clear. Oxygen—pure, cold oxygen—was pouring in.
    Slowly, at first, but then with sudden speed, the cobwebs began to vanish. A head rush followed, painful but welcome. She inhaled deeply as a shiver ran through her body and the surge of adrenaline hit like a runner’s high.
    A second tube poked through and the flow doubled. She moved out of the way so the oxygen would reach the others.
    When she had the strength, she stood up and put her face to the window in the door. The astronaut in orange reappeared, moving to the intercom on the far wall. Beside her, the speaker came alive with a scratchy tone. “Is everyone okay?”
    “I think we’ll make it,” she said. “What happened to your head? You’re bleeding.”
    “Low bridge,” Kurt said.
    She remembered hearing gunshots. She’d thought it was her imagination or even a delusion. “We heard shooting,” she said. “Did someone attack you?”
    He grew more serious. “As a matter of fact, someone did.”
    “What did he look like?” she asked. “Was he alone?”
    Her rescuer shifted his weight and his posture stiffened slightly. “As far as I can tell,” he said, no longer sounding so flip and jocular. “Were you expecting trouble of some kind?”
    She hesitated. She’d probably said too much already. And yet if there was more danger, this man in front of her was the only one who could possibly defend them until the Italian forces arrived.
    “I just . . .” she began, then switched tactics. “This whole thing is so confusing.”
    She could see him studying her through the cracked visor and the window in the door. There was enough distortion that shecouldn’t truly read his expression, but she sensed him gauging her. As if he could look right through her.
    “You’re right,” he finally replied. “Very confusing. All the way around.”
    There was enough in his tone that she knew he was partially referring to her. There was little she could do now but stay silent and cover up. He’d saved her life, but she had no idea who he really was.

10
    Reagan National Airport, Washington, D.C.
    0530 hours
    Vice President James Sandecker lit a cigar with a silver Zippo lighter he’d bought in Hawaii almost forty years prior. He had plenty of other lighters, some of them very expensive, but the well-traveled Zippo that was worn smooth in places from the touch of his fingers was his favorite. It reminded him that some things were built to last.
    He took a puff on the cigar, enjoying the aroma