The limo’s driver stared at his passenger, as a scowl drooled down his elongated features. He pulled in by the side of the road and let another ambulance scream by. Whatever just occurred, it was over, and his passenger was angry.
The passenger slammed a slender hand against the leather-covered doorframe, as the driver moved the limo into an open field adjoining the activity.
The taxi operator who reported dropping the group off at the airport was very specific. Even after his passenger tortured the man to ensure he was not paid to give the wrong information, the man replied with the same location, Kom Ombo. They waited at the temple, the resting-place making perfect sense of the data accumulated so far. Seven teams, each more expensive to hire than the last swiftly assembled to intercept the group at the first sign of arrival, but there was none.
Then the second call arrived, the labyrinth of Sobek. The passenger’s world began to fall apart, the realisation dawning they were hundreds of miles away from where they should be. A jet was hastily procured and a flight taken. Even so, by the time the driver was pulling out of Cairo International in another limo, word was already beginning to circulate on the local radio about an earthquake measuring two-point-one on the moment magnitude scale in the region.
Now it was too late. One of the passenger’s targets, Private Justin McDonald, had already been arrested on what was being described by the local media as a square kilometre of total devastation at the earthquake’s epicentre.
According to their sources in local law enforcement agencies, it appeared all other members of his group were lost when an underground system they were exploring collapsed, triggering an explosion of unknown origin. Locals backed up the story of a great trembling in the earth, before a ball of golden fire engulfed everything. The look on the passenger’s face confirmed he knew exactly what that meant.
With the driver still watching, the passenger picked up a handset and dialled a number ignored too often that day. After a sole ring, a familiar female voice drifted from the handset’s speaker around the back of the vehicle. “Good Afternoon. How can we assist?”
“This is no time for pleasantries.” said the passenger, with ire. “Put me straight through.”
“I’m sorry, but that is not possible at the moment. Can I...”
“I do not have time for games girl!” said the passenger, disdain coating every word. “Get off your chair, leave the room, and get Mister Morgan on the phone immediately!”
“I’m sorry.” the woman said, after an awkward pause. “There is no one here by that name.”
With that, the line went dead, leaving the passenger confused and upset.
Shaking his head, the driver prised himself from his seat and exited the vehicle, shutting the door with a heavy clunk. He walked a good distance from the car toward a dilapidated barn, and tugged a battered packet of Marlboro from his uniformed trousers. He turned and looked at the car, lighting his last remaining cigarette with a rusted Zippo and removed a metallic box from his jacket pocket.
Through the back window of the car, he could see the passenger looking bemused, as he tried the handle. The driver watched the strangely dome-headed man, with increasing rage and panic, begin to push and pull at the door.
The driver glanced into the passenger’s eyes, as his thumb hovered over the backlit button in the centre of the control. The passenger’s eyes flashed with an ageless fury, which poured down his long, almost feminine face, as he screamed unheard through his glass and metal prison to be set free.
Three and a half thousand years of existence and he still could not follow a simple order like no real names. There was no pity to be found for stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance; no matter how much the man meant to his superiors.
With the passenger still frantic to be freed from the back of the vehicle, the button was pressed and the limo exploded, ejecting a mushroom cloud of smoke and debris high into the evening sky.
With gleeful finality, the great serpent finished its ageless circle, returning a long-lost soul to the sands of its homeland.
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