Crescent Dawn

“I really should get back and coordinate our evening reco

Dirk poured her a half glass of wine.

“How about a small one for the road?”

Sophie nodded and took the glass as Dirk sat close beside her with his own glass. The surf pounded the rocks around them as a deep blue twilight settled over their heads. It was a relaxing romantic moment, the kind that had escaped Sophie’s life for quite some time. She turned to Dirk and whispered, “I’m sorry I yelled at you today.”

He leaned over and kissed her softly, letting their lips linger.

“You can make it up to me another time.”

Snuggling close, they finished the wine before Sophie forced herself to end their time together. Holding hands, they retraced their steps across the beach and up the hill toward camp. A generator-powered string of lights swayed over the assembly of tents, illuminating the campsite in a chalky glow. Sam was settled on a rock wall to one side, speaking to two men in dark clothes.

“I’m in the last tent on the left,” Dirk said to Sophie. “Make sure the grave robbers don’t disturb my sleep, will you?”

“Good night, Dirk.”

“Good night.”

Dirk watched Sophie join her colleagues, then turned toward the row of tents. Before turning in, he stepped over to the large artifact tent, which was still ablaze with light. Haasis was back at it, hunched over a scroll of papyrus with a magnifying glass in one hand.

“Uncover any secrets for the ages?” Dirk asked.

Haasis looked up momentarily, then gazed back at the papyrus.

“Nothing that weighty here, but still fascinating. Come take a look, I think you will appreciate this.”

Dirk stepped closer, looking over Haasis’s shoulder at the thin layer of fibered paper lined with a bold flowing script.

“It’s all Greek to me,” he said with a smirk.

“Oh, sorry,” Haasis replied. “I’ll give you a rough translation. This scroll provides a description of port activity sometime around 330 A.D., I believe. There is a brief description of a damaged Cypriot marauder that was captured adrift by an imperial Roman trireme . The vessel was subsequently towed to Caesarea, where the port authorities discovered that its decks were covered in blood and that a small cache of Roman armament was aboard. Many of the crew bore evidence of fresh wounds from an earlier battle.”

“They were pirates?” Dirk said.

“Yes, apparently so. The incident created a stir, it says, as the personal armaments of a centurion named Plautius were found aboard. He was identified as a Scholae Palatinae , whatever that was.”

“Probably didn’t result in a nice consequence for the Cypriot crew.”

“No, it didn’t,” Haasis replied. “The vessel was impressed into service as an imperial merchant ship, while the crew were summarily executed.”

“Swift justice, indeed,” Dirk said, picking up one of the ceramic boxes. “Do all of the scrolls contain such gripping accounts?”

“Only to an antiquities voyeur like me,” Haasis said with a grin, then rolled up the scroll and put it back in one of the boxes. “I’ve reviewed most of the scrolls, and they are primarily bureaucratic records of port revenues and the like. Nothing too astounding individually, but collectively they will provide an important snapshot of daily life here nearly two mille

He wrapped the box in a loose cloth and placed it on top of a filing cabinet, then turned off an adjacent overhead light. The other boxes had all been carefully wrapped and stored in plastic bins for transport to the university.

“I’ll leave something to look at in the morning,” he said with a yawn. “You think you found everything in the chamber?”

“I believe so,” Dirk replied, “but I’ll borrow one of your trowels and take a second look, just to be sure.”

“I never thought inviting a marine engineer to a field dig would generate such an abundance of work for me,” Haasis said as he guided Dirk out of the tent.

Up the hill, they both spotted Sophie walking along the perimeter with one of her agents.

“Coming to Caesarea, I never thought there were such dazzling discoveries to be made,” Dirk replied with a wink, then strolled toward his tent for the night.

14

The rattle of automatic gunfire sent Dirk bolt upright in his cot.

The shots sounded dangerously close. Dirk heard some shouting and then the return fire from a handgun. He quickly slipped into a pair of shorts and sandals, then staggered out of his tent as a cascade of gunfire from multiple weapons erupted above the camp. His first clouded thoughts were of Sophie, but he had little time to react. He heard, then spotted two figures charging down the trail, brandishing assault rifles.

Dirk immediately ducked behind the side of his tent, then scurried to a low retaining wall a short distance to the rear. He silently slipped over the wall and followed its cover away from the tents. To the rear of the camp were the crumbled remnants of several buildings that had once served the ancient port city. He threaded his way through the mounds of weathered debris, following a slight rise to a small corner partition. The darkened stone barrier provided a tight point of concealment by which he could observe the entire camp.

While his quick reaction had allowed for his escape, his fellow camp mates were not so fortunate. Sophie had been the next to react, bursting out of her tent near the trail with gun in hand. But one of the gunmen stood just a few feet away and quickly trained his assault rifle on her before she could shake the cobwebs from her eyes. Staring down the gun barrel, she had no choice but to reluctantly drop her weapon to the ground. The gunman responded by viciously jabbing the rifle into her shoulder, knocking her hard to her knees.

“What’s going on here?” Professor Haasis shouted, emerging from his tent half dressed.

“Shut up,” the other gunman ordered, swinging his rifle stock into the professor’s ribs. Haasis sprawled forward, emitting a pained gasp as his body struck the ground. Sophie crawled over and helped him to his feet, both swaying weakly under the overhead lights. Another thug appeared on the trail and took over guarding Sophie and Haasis, while the other gunmen herded the archaeology students from their tents. Sophie gazed toward Dirk’s tent, reacting with muted surprise when one of the gunmen found it empty.

Up the trail, there was a noisy commotion before several figures came into view. One of the antiquities agents, his right arm a bloody mess, staggered down the trail while struggling to support Sam. Sophie’s deputy had a nasty gash across his forehead and shuffled his feet in a dazed state. Two more gunmen marched from behind, prodding the wounded men into camp.

“Sam, are you all right?” Sophie cried, moving cautiously toward the two agents. She grabbed hold of Sam and helped him sink to the ground beside the other seated captives. One of the female students assisted the agent named Raban, wrapping a torn shirt around his wounded arm, while Sophie held a palm to Sam’s bleeding forehead.

“Where’s Holder?” she whispered to Raban.

The agent gave her a grim look and shook his head.

Recovering from his blow, Haasis stood and shouted at his captors.

“What do you want? There’s nothing here worth killing for.”

Sophie studied the group of armed assailants for the first time. They appeared to be Arabs, each wearing a black headdress that covered his lower face. Yet they weren’t the typical dirt-digging grave robbers looking for a few shekels from an old pot or two. They wore dark military-style fatigues and black boots that appeared nearly new. And they carried modern AK-74 assault rifles, updated versions of the venerable Kalashnikov AK-47. Sophie wondered for a moment if they might be a militant commando group that had stumbled onto their camp by mistake. But then one of them replied to Haasis’s query.