To anyone watching he would look like a delirious soldier with a penchant for checking the time as he kept his eyes on the LCD display on his arm. He had come across several air pockets but no actual caves, and certainly no ziggurat remains. While Queen and Alexander searched the maze of ruins in Babylon proper, King had pursued a different path. Between the bank of the Euphrates River and the exposed Babylonian ruins stood one of many palaces built by Saddam Hussein. A spiraling road rounded the tall mound it stood on. Built from brown stone, it was utilitarian save for the thick arches that surrounded the building and gave it a genuine Babylonian feel. Much of the symmetrical hill was clearly man-made, but Saddam was known for building atop Babylonian ruins with no regard for what lay beneath. And when it came to his palaces, he had no trouble burying the past. What King wanted to know was how much of the hill existed before Saddam added to it. To find out, he’d push the QWIP to its limits.

As he walked up the side of the hill, he activated his throat mic. “Find anything yet, Bishop?”

Bishop’s voice returned. “Not a thing, but that’s not because there isn’t anything here, it’s because there’s too much.”

“We’re drowning in old maps and notebooks,” Knight said.

King had hoped intel would expedite the search, but it seemed finding anything useful in the archaeological archives was as much a needle in a haystack as finding a temple underground with thermal imaging. As he crossed the spiraling road and headed up the hillside, King watched the thermal imager. It showed solid earth all the way through.

As the monotony of the image continued, he looked ahead. Brush and the occasional palm tree covered the hillside. He adjusted his path to avoid a tree and then looked to the west, over the Euphrates. From this high vantage point he could see the desert stretching out in all directions. It was massive—like a tan ocean speckled with floating ruins and carved by modern roads. Fiona was somewhere out there.

As his patience began to fade, King noticed a hill on the other side of the river. Small ruins sat at its base. He toggled his mic again. “Bishop, did Babylon expand to the other side of the Euphrates?”

“Hold on…” King could hear rustling paper and Knight’s voice in the background. “Yeah. Looks like a good portion of it did.”

“That’s all I needed to know.” King broke contact and gave up on his current search. He turned and made for the bottom of the hill, where a U.S. military boat launch had been built. Three black patrol boats were tied to the docks, each with a mounted machine gun.