Shooting the Sphinx (15 page)

The Egyptian crew stood by watching, ready to lend a hand. The crew chief and Charley seemed to recognize each other instantly as the men who made things work. In a minute they had developed their own sign language.

“Oh my god.” Ari opened the last case and slid it next to the cargo bay door. “This helicopter has got to be fifty years old!”

“At least.” Charley strapped on a tool belt.

“I hope it doesn't fall apart on us. Charley? How long do you think before we're ready to fly?”

Charley pulled out a tape measure and checked the distance from the short wing with rocket launchers on it to the ground.

“We're in luck. See this hole in the wing? This is a military camera mount.” Charley pointed at what looked like a big aluminum grommet through the wing close to the fuselage. “We can just screw in the ball right here underneath.”

“Is there enough clearance for it under there?”

Charley looked at the tape measure. “Three feet, one inch. Just barely.”

Samir's phone rang. Ari flinched.

Samir looked at the number. “It's from the United States.”

“Don't answer it,” commanded Ari with a tinge of panic.

“But … did you look at the new budget?” Samir drew a sheaf of papers out of a plastic folder. “I finished it at dawn. Here.”

Samir handed Ari the spreadsheet with every line item in it. Ari flipped straight to the last page for the total.

“Oh no, Samir. This is double the bid. This is a quarter of a million dollars?” Ari imagined Beth's face seeing the number on her computer, probably just a minute before she placed that call.

“Yes, it is very thorough.” Samir showed Ari the level of detail on the other pages.

“She'll freak out.” Ari closed up the pages and handed them back. “How am I going to justify this?”

“Everything has taken twice as long,” protested Samir. “Everything costs double.”

“Not really, Samir. It's not twice the work. They won't pay this. They'll say you're cheating us.”

“Look at it line by line. You will see.”

“It can't be double. Beth will punish us for this.”

“Punish us? How?”

A jeep pulled up next to them on the tarmac to take them to the squadron commander's office.

“We've got to get airborne before anyone in LA wakes up,” Ari said emphatically, half to himself. “Where'd I put my Sphinx and pyramids?” Ari gathered his props from off of one of the cases. As he stepped into the jeep, he barked out a question. “How long, Charley?”

Charley emerged from the ground crew hovering around him waiting for some little piece of the equipment puzzle to carry into place. “Ninety minutes,” said Charley.

“You've got one hour.”

Ari and Samir clambered into the jeep, which drove away from the ramp along taxiways through the sand. The Air Force base was one vast rectangle of desert with runways in the middle. Off in the distance behind a long low dune was a plane graveyard with commercial airliners that looked like they would never fly again. Some were missing engines. Their paint had been sandblasted off the sides from years of desert sandstorms. They had faded names on the side of coup-ridden nations like Air Mozambique or Libya Air. Beyond them was the civilian half of the airport that Ari knew so well.

The jeep pulled up in front of a low long building of simple military construction. The jeep driver, a corporal, led them into the squadron commander's office.

There was the big desk, and in front of it, the customary two lines of chairs facing inward filled with the pilots of the entire squadron in a staff meeting. Ari looked at the Egyptian pilots, and like pilots in every air force, he knew they were not really military men. In fact, the urge to fly is such an act of freedom that military discipline is diametrically opposed to it. Most infantry don't even consider pilots soldiers at all.

The squadron commander, a compact, slightly bald major, was smoking. He rose to shake their hands, introduced them to two lanky pilots, both captains in flight suits, and invited them all to sit. Mint tea was served.

After a respectful three sips, Ari held up his pyramids and gestured for permission to set them up. The major nodded, and Ari set out his mini Necropolis on the desk.

Ari “flew” his toy helicopter very low around the Sphinx. The two pilots nodded. The squadron commander shook his head.

“What's the problem now?” asked Ari.

“Major Horus says that the pattern is too low,” translated Samir.

Major Horus raised Ari's hand with the helicopter.

Ari turned to Samir. “That won't work. It's too high.”

Major Horus and Samir exchanged a few words in Arabic. “He says it will frighten the tourists.”

“The Sphinx will be open?” Ari couldn't believe that. The statue could be easily cordoned off as it actually had a wall around it and a gate. Ari and Samir had been there. They had been locked inside it for their private audience with the creature.

Samir gave a look of warning to Ari to let the matter drop and said, “The Sphinx never closes.”

 

Chapter 32

The three-foot-round SpaceCam ball hung under the wing with barely an inch to spare off the tarmac. Charley gave the ball a hard tug. It seemed solidly mounted, so he grabbed his fist, giving the ready sign to Don. The lens in the ball turned left, right, then up and down.

“Good to go,” said Charley.

One of the ground crew offered the military censor a cigarette, then held out a lighter. At the exact moment the censor was distracted by lighting it, the crew chief put his arm around Charley's shoulder, and another ground crew member pulled out a digital camera and snapped a picture of them both next to the SpaceCam. The censor spun around suspiciously, but the crew chief had already relaxed his pose and nothing looked amiss.

Then in an almost choreographed ballet of picture taking, half a dozen cameras appeared in the hands of the ground crew, Samir, and even Charley. Every time the censor spun around, another camera appeared behind his back, snapping away. This game delighted everyone. Ari had to admire the skill with which these men could run circles around their own censor.

Ari enjoyed a good practical joke as much as anyone, but he distrusted too much horsing around on set. That's when things go wrong, he thought. Fights erupt, things get broken, or people get hurt. He made a spinning motion with his finger to the pilots. Once the jet engines started to spool up, all the cameras disappeared into pockets.

“Don?” asked Ari.

Don sat on the deck of the cargo bay behind the camera control console.

“I'm set.” Don gave Ari the thumbs-up.

Samir's cell phone rang again. Ari froze.

“It's Beth,” said Samir, examining his phone.

“Don't answer,” insisted Ari.

“But she must approve this budget.” Samir held up his copy in the clear plastic folder.

“Don't answer the phone! I'm telling you, she'll hold us up. She'll stop us.”

“But without her approval, how can I know if I will get the payment for this flight?” asked Samir.

“I'll get you your money,” Ari promised. “But I can't talk to her now.”

“Why not?” Samir was mystified. “This is not the correct way. I gave her my word.”

“I need to believe what I'm saying, don't you understand? I need to have confidence when I talk to her.”

“Confidence?” asked Samir. “Confidence in what?”

“That we got the shot. Then I can sell it. Then I can sell anyone on anything, as long as I know that the shot's in the can. Hang up!”

Samir shook his head in a tremor of resentful tics. He could not serve two masters. “I do not like this.”

“Trust me.” Ari pointed at the ringing phone. “I know what I'm doing.”

Samir denied the call. Ari reached into a case and pulled out two sets of aviation headphones. He put one around his neck and passed the other to Samir.

“So you can hear the pilot over the engines and the rotor going round.”

Ari walked to the chopper. He had a mercurial look in his eyes, a hyperawareness that subdued Samir.

“Let's get in,” commanded Ari.

Ari and Samir climbed into the cargo bay next to Don. The crew chief ran over to Samir, speaking into his ear over the rotor sound.

“What's wrong?” asked Ari.

“The pilot says that the camera ball is too big. It is only one inch above the runway. As we taxi it will hit the ground and break.”

“No, no, it'll be fine.” Ari got in and plugged his headset into a jack.

“Tell him that once the rotor spools up the aircraft will rise on the landing gear about five or six inches off the ground. That will be enough to taxi.”

The crew chief shook his head.

“He says no.”

“Tell him it's my personal camera. Tell him I own it. If we break it it's my responsibility.”

Samir balked. “But that is not the truth.”

“So what? Tell him!” insisted Ari.

Samir shouted a few words over the growing rotor noise and pointed at Ari. The crew chief nodded, then hopped into the cargo bay, taking his position in front of the bay door. The military censor climbed in and found a place behind Don where he could watch the screen. Ari looked at the censor, then jumped up.

“I'll be back in a second.”

Ari hopped off the chopper. Ran to his bag and grabbed his own little digital camera. He slipped it into his pocket.

“We have a clearance to fly!” Samir yelled at him from the chopper as it started to roll forward onto the taxiway.

“I'm coming! I'm coming! Don't wait for me!” Ari ran back and jumped aboard as the chopper lifted off the ground. The rotors made a heavier thwacking sound, biting more air. The black tarmac on the sand dropped away under them.

Ari looked at his crew. “Samir, I think you're blushing.”

“You were right,” Samir admitted. “This is the coolest.”

“Now, it's my turn to give you a date with the Sphinx you will always remember,” said Ari, panting hard from the run to get his camera.

 

Chapter 33

From up in the air, Egypt makes geographical sense. The Nile runs north within a narrow band of green stretching down into the desert. However, Cairo is the place where the longest river in the world fans out into an enormous delta. Some twenty million people live on that vast triangle, starting with Giza, then the city of Cairo, as the river grows wider and wider, into a verdant martini glass shape.

“Look down there.” Samir pointed out of the cargo bay door. “That fast boat on the Nile.”

Ari craned his neck out into the downdraft from the thwacking rotors above. On the broad river across their path was one of the most incongruous sights he had ever seen. A speedboat splayed out a white vector behind it. Within and without the V, a water-skier slalomed back and forth, expertly jumping the wake. Never would Ari have expected to see waterskiing on the Nile, let alone find that the skier was a woman in a full black burka with a veil and gloves.

“Don, roll a few feet on that woman waterskiing. That'll wake them up in the editing room.”

Don zoomed in on her with his three-hundred-millimeter lens and turned on the camera for a few seconds.

“Have you ever seen that before?” Ari asked Samir.

“No.”

With the water and the wind, the black fabric clung, wet, to every curve of her body.

“Man, she's an excellent skier. That wet burka, that's not hiding her figure at all. She looks really…” Ari caught himself.

“Go ahead,” urged Samir. “You can say it.”

“Sexy. She knows what she's doing to all the men for miles. She's got to know.”

“She must be a Saudi,” said Samir.

“A Saudi feminist. Cut! Cut the camera, Don. That's enough film of that. Look, all the cars on the bridge are slowing down to watch her. If she doesn't keep going upstream, there's going to be a traffic jam.”

“If she doesn't disappear down the Nile,” said Samir, “all the men in Cairo will go swimming.”

“Samir the Hammer, you made a joke!”

“Look.” Samir grew serious and pointed toward the pyramids out the cargo bay door. “The Necropolis. Are we ready to shoot?”

“Yup,” said Ari.

The military censor was busy watching the woman skiing, so Ari pulled out his camera and snapped a picture of Samir behind the censor's back. Samir's smile had emerged. It was as if he'd become a different person, boyish, excited; his smoldering had vanished somehow. Ari felt a warm sentimental wave of affection for him. The pyramids on the plateau of Giza loomed in the distance.

“Look.” Samir pointed excitedly. “The Necropolis. Should I tell the pilots to start?”

“We're set,” said Don.

“Remember, Don, we shouldn't know it's the Sphinx until we pull back,” said Ari.

“Right, boss.”

The pilot banked around past the top of the Great Pyramid and dropped down into the little valley underneath the Plateau of Giza. The ship lined up abeam to the Sphinx.

“Ready and … roll camera,” said Ari.

The pilot flew in a perfect arc around the Sphinx's head, corkscrewing back up and past the top of the Great Pyramid. Don zoomed in tight on the top of the head of the massive statue, but not tight enough. Ari could still tell it was the Sphinx, even from the beginning of the shot. That was not what he wanted.

“Cut, cut, cut!” said Ari. “Reset.”

“How was that?” asked Samir.

“No good. We're up too high. We've got to fly lower.”

Samir translated into his headset.

Ari looked out the back of the banking helicopter as the horizon of the desert tilted vertically to one side and then all the way to the other. He could see over the ramp that made a tailgate at the back of the aircraft; it was like the back of a pickup truck, the only difference was size. You could drive a pickup truck up that ramp inside this helicopter, he thought. The horizon leveled off. Then the chopper started on its course again.