Disclaimer: I don't own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Chance didn't waste any time: "Winston, where are the earpieces?"
They quickly distributed the devices among themselves. The humming of the military vehicles rapidly grew louder and soon their headlight beams were sweeping the area close to them.
"Ilsa and Ames, go and find the professor's tent in the archeologists' camp. Try to figure out where they discovered the gold coins. Maybe that'll lead us to the rest of the treasure. Winston and Guerrero, go to the excavation site and wait for instructions from Ilsa and Ames. Jessica and I will talk to the military."
"You sure I shouldn't do the talking?" Winston quickly adjusted his ear piece. "Don't get me wrong, but diplomacy isn't exactly your strong side."
"Dude, this is Syria, not Egypt. Pharaoh's curse won't get you. Let Chance do the talking, he's the only one who speaks enough Arabic." Guerrero retrieved something that looked like a small military survival pack from his luggage and shouldered it.
"Just don't want the conversation to end in the literary explosive way…" Winston muttered as he followed Guerrero into the darkness, just in time to avoid getting caught by a headlight.
"As if talking could prevent that anyhow", Ilsa thought darkly. Quietly she and Ames advanced towards the tents of the deserted archaeologists' camp. The humming of the engines had turned into roaring now.
Soon enough five jeeps pulled up in front of Chance and Jessica, manned with six heavily armed soldiers each. A thin but tall man in the first jeep, apparently the unit leader, went down to business immediately – he started talking even before his vehicle had come to a complete stop. "Gold coins have been found that belong to the people of Syria. We're here to make sure they stay in the possession of their rightful owners." His English was broken, but comprehensible.
"It's not as easy as that…", Chance began.
… … …
"Looks like the archaeologists discovered a subterranean tunnel system underneath the temple", Ilsa told Winston and Guerrero, pouring over what looked like a half-finished ground plan on a wobbly desk in the professor's tent. Ames was illuminating it with a tiny flashlight, hoping the soldiers wouldn't notice. So far none of them had come near the archeologists' camp. Well, naturally they'd be more interested in the dig site itself.
"Yeah, we've found the entrance of it", Winston confirmed.
"The coins were all discovered in a tunnel leading westwards, together with …uh…"
"Don't tell them!", Ames chimed in.
Predictably the men didn't take kindly to that comment.
"You realize we can hear you, dude, don't you?"
"Don't tell us WHAT, Ames?"
"The coins were found together with…" Ilsa hesitated and decided against being too specific. "…a couple of skeletons." In an attempt to divert the men's attention, she then quickly added: "Maybe tomb raiders. Many ancient graves were plundered only days after the funeral. Thus the many curses on the walls of Egyptian pyramids."
"But this is a temple, not a tomb." Good, the distraction was working with Winston.
"Tomb raiders or not, they died of something very quickly." Trust Guerrero to point out the bright side of things.
Anxiously Ilsa and Ames listened to the sounds coming in over the earpiece. Scrunching and scraping, boots on sand-covered floors that hadn't been used in a thousand years. On the other channel they could hear Chance, speaking Arabic. Apparently he had switched to the unit leader's native language to explain the poison issue more clearly. It didn't sound like the conversation was going well.
"You're already walking down that tunnel, aren't you?", Ilsa asked Winston and Guerrero.
"Not much of a choice. Chance won't be able to stop the soldiers for long", Guerrero replied. "Let's hope the doc was right and it was really just poison and not some airborne fungal thing after all... Dude, watch your step!"
"You're worried about me damaging some ancient piece of man's cultural heritage, or what? If this is another crack about my size…" Winston steadied himself after tripping over yet another skeleton he hadn't seen in the dim beam of the flashlight.
Not for long, though.
The wall he was leaning against gave way. Not in the elegant, astonishing way a hidden secret door would give way, no, it simply broke into pieces. In 1089 a major earthquake had hit Palmyra. Apparently it had not only destroyed what had been left of the ancient city's visible part, it had also weakened the subterranean structure of the Ba'al temple. Winston, unable to keep his balance, stumbled through the new opening into an adjacent room.
Unfortunately not for long again.
His weight was simply too much for the old floor – it made a loud, groaning sound and Winston fell again. At least only briefly... Rattling metallic sounds announced that he had landed somewhere.
"Guerrero? Guerrero? What has happened?" Ilsa via earpiece. On both channels she had heard shouting, shooting, crashing, it was impossible to tell what was happening where.
Cautiously Guerrero shone his flashlight down the hole. His face turned grave at what he saw. "Well, the good news is, we found the rest of the treasure. Bad news is Winston just took a bath in a ton of poisoned coins."
"Sounds like really good news", a stranger's voice in broken English replied.
Oh damn. The shouting and shooting on Chance's side of things... Apparently the unit leader had somehow gotten hold of the earpiece.
"Don't triumph too soon." Chance's voice via earpiece, ragged, but he sounded okay. "Looks like the local rebels want to have a say in the matter, too. These cars there don't look military, but the weapons do - didn't you lose an arms delivery in an ambush lately?"
Ilsa and Ames couldn't see it, but judging from the ruckus outside in the distance and from what she had heard via Chance's earpiece, a group of local partisans had arrived to find out what the military was up to in the ruins.
... ... ...
Not only the women listened to everything that was going on with a sinking heart, though. Winston, lying on the coins that were slowly passing on their poison to him, he realized that, should either the rebels or the soldiers get their hands on the gold, chances were there would be poisoning victims all over Syria. The danger that they would spread it before the symptoms set in was just too big. Lives were at stake. Many lives.
"Guerrero!", he yelled.
"What is it, dude?"
"Can you seal the tunnel shut with an explosion? I know you've got C4 with you…"
"Dude, you hit your head during the fall."
Winston took a deep breath. "No, I didn't. I'm asking you to seal the damn tunnel so that neither the rebels nor the soldiers will get to us without heavy equipment which they most likely don't have with them. This will give Chance and the doctor time to get the antidote and us time to figure out what to do with both parties."
Guerrero just looked at him for a long moment. "You realize what you're doing, Dude?"
"Yes. Trusting Chance."